potstickers for two

Have I mentioned yet how any food that requires a lot of fingerwork is pretty much destined to get made in my kitchen at some point? Also, I'm trying not to do groceries for a bit, and I had seitan in the freezer, so..... yeah, I made (sort of) chinese dumplings! Extremely yummy, and since I faked out a recipe I'll send it back out to you guys. One thing though - the filling could do with maybe 3/4 cup of vegetables (like celery or steamed cabbage), and the wrappers ended up being very thick - you could probably make 18 dumplings out of this and that would take care of the extra filling. I just vowed not to do groceries. Anyway, enjoy! This was a killer lunch!

~ Potstickers For Two ~

Won Ton Wrapper Dough:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp warm water

- mix together the flours in a medium sized bowl, then add the water and knead on a floured surface for about 10 minutes, or until it's soft and pliable.
- cover tightly with plastic and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Seitan Filling:

1 cup seitan, crumbled (I used Vcon simple seitan)
2-3 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked and minced
2 scallions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger, grated
2 tsp tamari
2 tsp cooking sherry
1 tsp cornstarch

- mix together in a bowl and let it sit for about 20 minutes to let the flavour develop.

Hot Chile Dipping Sauce:

3 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp grated ginger
1/2 tsp hot chile oil or sesame oil
1/4 tsp brown sugar

- combine and (yep, you guessed it) let it sit for a few minutes... oh, about 20.


Putting It All Together:

1. Divide the wonton dough into 12 equal pieces. Cover unused dough in plastic wrap, then take a piece and roll it out on a floured surface until it's a circle about 4 inches across.

2. Hold the wrapper in your non-dominant hand, then put one tablespoon of the seitan filling in the center and wet the outside of the circle with water. Crimp the top together like a purse, then fold the top side of the wrapper in on itself as you seal it to the edges, squeezing excess air out as you go (there's no way I can describe this well enough, so here's a video.)

3. Put a kettle on to boil.

4. Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat, lightly oil it, then place the potstickers flat-side down in the pan and heat until golden and crispy on the bottom. Pour 1/2 cup of the boiling water into the pan, cover, and let them steam for about 7 minutes, or until all the water is gone.

5. When the pan is dry and the bottoms are crispy again, plate them up with a little bowl of dipping sauce, break out your chopsticks and eat!

(damn, these were savoury delicious. And sooooo cute!)

E is for....

Thank you so much to Veggie from the So What Do Vegetarians Eat Anyway blog for giving me a blogging award of excellence! Her blog is quite excellent as well and she's a fellow Ontarian, too! I'll do my best to not post when I'm tired and cranky and hopefully live up the that pretty little Jpeg of awesome. ;) As for passing this along, I'll send it to Vegetalion, Dabbles with Apples, Tofu For Two, The Metal Femme's Vegan Living, and Don't Lose Your Lunch!, even though there are SO many others that deserve it, these are the first 5 that come to mind.

And sweetie Lori of Pleasantly Plump Vegan has tagged me to reveal 5 facts about myself, which I hope I can manage without going off of a bunch of tangents! Ha ha, anyway, here goes:

1. As much as I seem pretty slothful (and I am), I used to teach snowboarding and yeah, I was pretty darn good at it, too.

2. I'm a super geek - comics, anime, sci-fi, fantasy rpgs, video games, you name it, I probably have some history of obsession with it. Especially Final Fantasy and the Chrono series, and wacky shows like FLCL and Haibane Renmai. I also have a black/blue Magic card deck that could probably smoke your artifact-deck to little pieces. :D

3. Both my parents are from B.C., and I think I have a bit of a west coast accent, at least I drawl out my short A's sometimes, especially if I'm feeling lazy.

4. My favourite colour is red.

(Incidentally I'm addicted to hot sauce. I went through half a tube of harissa yesterday, just by squirting it on pickles as a snack! :P)

5. I hate sleep. I'm constantly sleep-deprived because I think staying in bed is SOOOOO boring. Eek, right?

(BONUS FACT, because it's the most important thing about me and I forgot to mention it --- I live and breathe food, it's true, you know that. But to give some sort of perspective, my mind is actually divided 44%/60%/6% - Food, Art, and Not Tripping Over Stuff. For the record. :D)

So that's five (or more) random things about me. And now I'm passing this on to..... , Vegan Soul Power, Adventures in Vegan Cooking, Bitchin' Vegan Kitchen, Epicurvegan, and Half Baked Vegan. Yay for getting to know everyone better!

And just so this post isn't entirely devoid of food, here's the best video on Youtube, ever ----

white food, rainbow taste

Oooh, I've been wanting the Vegan World Fusion Cuisine cookbook SOOOOO badly, I've been pretty much in love with how it all looks so fresh and spirit-full, and complicated in the sense that there's a lot of small ingredients involved, but essentially simple to prepare. Plus it's all colourful, and semi-raw! Anyway, fortunately enough you can read a bunch of it online, and two of the recipes just about stepped off the page, took a gander at my fridge and said, "you know girl, you have everything to make this AND it would use up that gigantic organic cauliflower you got for 99 cents that's been sitting like a delicious white ghost in your fridge just waiting for the right soup recipe to come along."

I swear, they said that! (it's a pretty magical book). So I soaked up some seeds and maybe an hour later I had some seriously sparkling food. The sunflower seed pâté is so cool, you get a woosh of olive and then a woosh of sundried tomato, and so on like that. And the soup! It's light but almost buttery and easy enough to make that I did it all with one hand while talking on the phone. Went really well with the sandwich!

And because I got the recipes online anyway, I'm just gonna cut to the chase and post them up here, cause they're that good. I can't wait to buy this book!!

Bhakti's Broccoli Bisque (*Cauliflower variation*)

5 cups filtered water or vegetable stock
3 1/2 cups cauliflower florets
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup cashews, roasted (I only had 1/3 of a cup and it was totally fine)
1/2 cup celery (I didn't have this, didn't miss it)
1 tbsp garlic
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 tsp sea salt, or to taste
1 tsp fresh dill (or 1/2 tsp dry)
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
black pepper, ground to taste
Nama shoyu, to taste (optional)

1. Add water or stock, cauliflower, onion, celery and garlic to a 3 qt. pot and cook over medium-high heat until all veggies are just soft, approximately 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
2. Remove from heat, allow to cool 10-15 minutes, place in a blender, add cashews and very carefully blend until smooth (I used my stickblender). Blend in batches, being careful to fill blender only half full. Start with low speed initially, slowly increase speed until desired consistency is reached. Return to pot, add remaining ingredients and stir well.

Jai to the Most High Sunflower Seed Dip

1 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup lemon juice, fresh squeezed
1/2 cup filtered water
2 medium sundried tomatoes, soaked in warm water
2 tbsp red bell pepper, diced
1 tbsp green onion, diced
1 tbsp olives, sliced thin
2 tsp fresh basil, minced
2 tsp italian parsley, minced
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp Nama shoyu, or to taste
1/2 tsp garlic, minced (optional)
1/4 tsp oregano, fresh minced
1/4 tsp sea salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper, ground to taste

1. Soak sunflower seeds in water for at least an hour.
2. Soak sundried tomatoes in warm water for 20 minutes. Drain & chop small and place in a large mixing bowl.
3. Place soaked and drained sunflowers seeds, lemon juice, water and garlic in food processor and process until smooth.
4. Place all ingredients in the large bowl and mix well. For best results allow to sit for a few hours before serving.

happy birthday to me, and bon voyage dilly!

My friend Dilly is leaving tomorrow to go to Jordan for 2 months, to live with her father and get some experience in sustainable development, maybe teach English, that sort of thing. So of course, we had to have a sushi party to see her off well, and my other friend Shine is the whiz-biz at sushi, no joke - she made uramaki'd (inside outed) california with fuji apple, shitake & sweet potato, avocado & peanut, bunny rolls, some with veggie pâté, some with peanut butter (surprisingly good!), mango cilantro rolls, futomaki, various tiny single-ingredient rolls, caterpillar rolls with mango on the outside.... so amazing. We feasted on the floor and drank yerba teas and inhaled gorgeous little sushi pieces until we couldn't eat anymore.

But then I did have to eat more (poor me, I know!) - they brought out a slice of spelt-crusted chocolate-banana pie with a big sparkler in it, just for my birthday! (it happens to be today but I hadn't breathed a word of it). So incredibly sweet! I have a hard time with undue attention and a whole birthday cake would have probably blown my mind and made me blush enough to pop a gasket, but one slice of beautiful pie and a small round of 'happy birthday'... well, it was perfect.

Here's to 24! :D

(and I'm still making a key lime Pie Of Greatness for my birthday, just probably the next time I go home)

chewy chocolate & counterstrikes

I don't feel much like cooking right now, but I do feel like shouting the praises of these cookies from the rooftops because they are AH-maize-ing. (no, they don't have corn in them, but they're good enough to warrant a special spelling of, um, "maz"). If you have Eat Drink & Be Vegan, don't overlook the double carob cashew cookies, cause they rule. I had to grind my own cashew butter but that just gave them this glorious nubbly-nut texture, along with the righteous chew factor, which these have definitely got. And they're made all of chocolate, even though I love carob. I just didn't have any around. a-MAIZE-ing. Go make them, you'll like.

Also, Bazu put it way better than I could ever say, but there's this revolt against Anthony Bourdain going on right now that's clever and almost-non-vindictive and results in possible charity for animal rights organizations. We, as vegans, are going to attempt to veganize (and thus improve!) Bourdain nastypants' recipes and make those into a zine for fun and nonprofit, and maybe a mouth-melting new onion soup recipe or two. I just wanted to make sure there was another link to all that in the blogosphere, because it's pretty cool, and some of you out there must be whizzes at french cookery, or know anything at all about french cookery, which is more than I can say and why I'm passing the message along. -------> Fork Bourdain for Charity -- Hezbollah Tofu

zounds, it's found !!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, omg!!!! I moved my blanket off of my bed AND THERE WAS MY CAMERA! I *knew* I didn't remember forgetting it (how's that for a thought, eh?). And not only that, but after a whole night in a five-floor art-gallery-student party-til-dawn, I apparently took one picture of art, and twenty-three pictures of people's feet. Ha! Awesome.

the one picture of art. really beautiful, actually. (the whole night was spectacular.)

I also, and this is the best part - took a picture of the drunken dinner I made for myself at six in the morning, cause when I'm soused as a goose I apparently start sauteeing cabbage. Screwy! And you know what? It didn't even suck the next day! I also love how I manage to get saffron, turmeric, onion and garlic in there, and I think there's tomato and lemon juice. Not that I would ever sautee beans in my right mind, but aside from the little dried up pellets they turned into, the veggies were great! Oh, and I almost forgot - I think in my silly way I was trying to approximate Emmie's saffron bean salad from her Veg Bitch blog, because I'm a goofball.

I picked the photo with the haze-blur on it on purpose. XD

And for contrast, the terrible mac-photo of what I had for dinner tonight! Vcon double pea soup with roasted red peppers, pita with za'atar spice inside the pockets, and er... italian marinated broccoli stems, because they had their days numbered (regional cooking be damned). Does anyone else notice with split pea soups that the first bite is a soft and exciting taste sensation and then the rest of it tastes like vaguely musky mush? Could just be me. This is definitely one of the better pea soups, though, I love the fresh peas and red peppers in it. And hell, if I wanted to I could take a real photo of it tomorrow so you could actually see the pretty red and green bits at a resolution higher than awful, hurray! :)

r.i.p. camera (but the soup is awesome!)

I lost my camera last night! *sob* *wail* *gnashing of teeth* ..... *more sob*
There were a couple tears... but I definitely learned a lesson in there somewhere about scatterbrains, expensive toys, and wild nights on the town not mixing so well. Sigh... this is the last batch of beautiful food pictures, and then it's back to macbook camera for a while....

*okay, one more sob* ;_______________;

Now on with the food:

I'm trying to press and marinate my tofu more, cause I squish it up into mash a LOT, and eating it like this is probably a good exercise in patience and, uh.... planning. Plus chewy chunks of 'fu are the building blocks of life, or at least a dinner that resembles something you might want to throw some candlelight over. Or something. Anyway, it was yummy, and completely encrusted with sesames, totally worth the trouble. (with roasted eggplant and zuke on bass, lemon quinoa doing drums and glockenspiel)

Little mini enchilada casserole, with refried pintos, avocado chunks, salsa all over, diy-pitted black olives, and lots of Vcon cheezy sauce with green chiles in it for kicks. Also some tabasco was thrown around and appropriately enough there were corn tortillas involved. SO. FORKING. GOOD. msnarf and such.

I loves coleslaw so much... I'll probably make my way through every major variety before the summer's out. This one is kind of curry-based, with toasted mustard seeds, red chiles, cumin, wonderful long green raisins, thin-sliced green beans (to use up 4 green beans I had) that look PRECISELY like long green raisins (ha!) and almonds and stuff. I think I hit that sweet spot of coleslaw where all of a sudden it starts tasting like piquant juiciness and you want morrrre, which is okay, cause it's good for you.

EDIT: I found out the raisins are an Iranian thing, and they're called Keshmesh in Farsi. They're dried in the shade and aren't treated with sulphur so they're much more fruity and less sweet than the regular kind. This page describes them SO much better, though --

"Highly concentrated, like all dried fruits, keshmesh strike the palate with a trinity of flavors; pineapple, lemon and a nutmeg-tinged green apple to be precise. Even the sound they make when poured into a dish draws the attention as they delicately ping against the bowl like small hollow stones..." - Glass Petal Smoke

Neat!

And finally, I can't recommend the Vcon tomato rice soup enough - I like, never (hardly ever) remake recipes in the interest of trying new things, but this soup has officially entered Rotation. I'm such a tomato-soup head, and this is basically what my belly wants when I start craving the red stuff (plus it's way more healthier than tinned goop <-- bonus!). And the moon biscuits? Well... I tried to quarter a biscuit recipe and only halved the amount of margarine, sooooo.... they didn't need extra EB slathering, I can tell you that. Good, though! I eated up every melt-in-your-mouth crumb with gusto. Now I go make myself chocolatey chocoblock chewy-choc cookies to make up for being such a stupid last night, or at the very least watch Nigella do the same thing, which is almost as good, and just eat a brick of Lindt. yay.