who has time to cook breakfast during the week? we sure don’t. and since we don’t want to be forced into skipping it entirely or microwaving a frozen boca burger each morning, we make one huge tofu scramble on sunday, and eat it all week long. this week’s tofu scramble was (and still is, there’s so much of it!) awesome. probably because we based it on the kick-ass ppk recipe for scrambled tofu.
scrambled tofu (adapted from the ppk recipe!) with field roast sausages, tomatoes and sour supreme.
now i’ve eaten a lot (and i mean a lot!) of tofu scrambles in my time, and this was actually one of the best. i make them constantly at home, either with mix out of a box, using recipes online, or simply by throwing everything from my cupboard and fridge into a pan with some tofu…and this was the first one that can hold its own with breakfast from my favorite restaurants. the tofu was spot on, firm and not mulchy at all, and the spices were blended perfectly, enhancing but not overpowering.
each morning the scrambly mixture just needs to be spooned out and microwaved for 1 minute to be the perfect breakfast again and again. we also cut up some fresh tomatoes each morning and split a chipotle field roast sausage, both fresh off the grill. and of course i cover mine with the hottest of hot sauces and garnish it with a goop of sour supreme every time, i just can’t help it.
all hail the ppk—they rule and so does this scramble. it has been a great sunday and monday breakfast so far, so i know it will help get me out of bed and get me through the rest of the week.
adapted ingredients and more after the jump.
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There’s a Piazza in Rome with a small pizza house in it called “American Pizza Company”. It always makes me chuckle whenever I walk by - the terms “ice to eskimos”, “coal to Newcsatle” and “pizza to Roma” all imply the duplicative, perhaps unwanted and inferior activity of taking something to somewhere where there’s already plenty of it there.
Now, while Americans don’t (Chicago pizza aside) have much to teach the Italians about making pizza, they did invent an interesting variation called a “Calzone”. When we in the west adapt a food item from another culture we instantly give it an overly authentic name, hence “Calzone” - can’t sound more Italian than that. We British did the same thing with Vindaloo - a fictitious “Indian” curry based upon, of all things, a Portuguese recipe.
Anyway, while there are plenty of vegan pizza recipes around I thought it would be fun to set about creating a vegan calzone recipe, in honor of the American Pizza Company which serves a damn good, albeit non-vegan calzone.
A calzone is basically a pizza folded in half with lots of extra ‘toppings’ tucked inside. The secret to a properly prepared calzone is to get the crust just right, and then shove in as many toppings as you can without the thing bursting or leaking while it’s being baked.
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sometimes i just want greasy, oily mexican food that makes me remember what it was like to be a vegetarian. unfortunately, i can’t trust the stuff at conventional mex restaurants, and a lot of the veganized establishments offer dishes that are a bit too healthy-tasting. so i’ve decided to take matters into my own hands and create a masterpiece of junk food with no redeeming qualities except for a few tomatoes, and the fact it tastes ridiculously fine. vegan homemade nachos! so yummy, despite the fact that all i had on hand was follow your heart cheese.
now, imho, what sets these apart from the countless vegan nachos in everywhere else you’ve ever eaten, is that these include homemade chips. most restaurants smother store-bought corn varieties (from the bag) in vegan cheddar and all the fixins, leaving people like me 10 minutes and 1,000 calories short of satisfaction. now, while cool places like pure luck have the homemade chip thing down, they don’t even provide a nachos options. wtf! that’s where quarrygirl comes in: care-free, greasy, unforgivable homemade nachos…from the chip to the guacamole.
recipe, pix, and more. all after the jump.
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Back in 1983 I was fortunate enough to play chess with Garry Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time. Actually, about 60 school-age kids and I played him simultaneously in a large hall as he walked systematically from table to table making move after move. Each of us had a while to plot our next move before Kasparov arrived at our table, yet he still beat every one of us, including me when I was mated after only 11 moves.
What stands out most about that experience, though, is not the humiliating (but expected) defeat rather his intriguing lunch salad of curry-covered chicken on a bed of spinach that he seemed to very much enjoy, despite the fact it came out of a polystyrene container.
This food item haunted me for years, as I was almost a vegetarian by then, and as a vegan now I longed to create the same dish that the soon-to-be World Champion (he was crowned in 1985) so nonchalantly downed while taking me, and 59 of my friends, down some 25 years ago.
Kasparov Salad - Curried Vegan Mayo with spicy “chicken”, tomatoes and mushrooms.
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i know everyone and their mom has been talking about how great veganomicon’s chickpea cutlets are, so i had to try them out. guess what? everyone was right. they were so easy to make and they tasted delicious.
at quarrygirl, we like to do things a little differently—so we decided to make a chickpea cutlet sandwich, but with the protein sandwiching the carbs.
quarrygirl sandwich with mashed potatoes and veganomicon’s chickpea cutlets
i baked my cutlets in the oven (frying seemed just too decadent) and they turned out just right: crispy but not overly dry. i imagine they would be much better fried, and contain millions more calories. i think i will give a try next time anyways.
yo vegans: first off, if you haven’t already, go grab a copy of veganomicon asap. i’m not easily pleased, nor am i a very good cook….and everything i’ve made from that cookbook tastes swell. secondly, once you have it, rush home and whip up some chickpea cutlets. the blog hype was right: they totally kick ass.
no sandwich required. i wonder what i will make with this recipe next time. i’m thinking a chickpea cutlet burrito….? the possibilities are endless.
as the summer rapidly approaches, it’s handy to have an arsenal of cool, refreshing meals that can be whipped up in less than 15 minutes. enter veganomicon and pete’s tofu to go.
veganomicon’s corn & edamame sesame salad, atop spinach leaves with asian dressing
pete’s tofu 2 go ready made tofu, with mango wasabi sauce (and we added in some chili garlic sauce as well)
so simple to make and ready in minutes, this was the perfect meal for a scorching hot evening spent sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine. there was just enough to satisfy without leaving us full, bloated and feeling guilty.
more pix after the jump…
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so i finally got around to making a meal from the much raved about cookbook, veganomicon. i picked what appeared to be the easiest recipe in the book (i cannot cook), did some ingredient hunting at the local health food store, and i was in business. special thanks to your vegan mom for pointing me in the direction of nature mart for their bulk bins of vital wheat gluten.
veganomicon’s black bean burger with sautéed mushrooms, sprouts, tomato, onion, avocado, vegenaise and colman’s english mustard.
in the end, these burgers turned out great…although i was a little worried during the process. after i had done all my fancy ingredient shopping at nature mart and whole foods, while in ralphs i realized i’d forgotten to buy bread crumbs. argh!!—all the varieties they offered contained whey, nonfat dry milk, or (shudder) egg whites. i decided it wasn’t worth the trip in la traffic to the nearest health food store just for one ingredient, so i used crumbled up hamburger buns instead. i think this resulted in my patties falling apart a little bit, but i just kept cooking them (longer than the recipe suggested) and they turned out just dandy.
more pix after the jump.
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One of the glorious things about pasta is that it’s really quick and easy to cook. It takes a lot of practice to get amazing pasta, but you have to try almost as hard to screw it up completely (overcooking it is about the only sin). One of our favorites is extremely fast to prepare and can be adapted in a multitude of different ways. Like most Italian recipes it’s simple and leaves little scope for error.
Tastes even better than it looks!
The key is to prepare everything separately, and then bring it together into a tremendous crescendo of flavor and texture right at the last minute. In that way you’ll keep the sausages crispy, the pasta firm and the sauce just tangy enough.
Yummy pasta in a bowl!
This is so simple to cook, you could do it with your eyes shut, but I don’t suggest you try that in case you get burned. That’s not good.
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because i have a traditional english husband, i decided to cook him a traditional english dinner…vegan style!
cornish pasty: a baked savoury pastry case filled with diced fake meat, potato, onion and peas.
the pasties came out wonderful. i’d never had one before, but my husband assured me they tasted authentic, as good as anything he’d had back home.
recipe after the jump.
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i write this post for two reasons: to give you a wonderful, hearty chili recipe that can be ready in no time, AND to show you a great new product i just discovered.
extra protein seitan and worthington chili
this chili recipe is awesome, and soooooo full of protein…but even more importantly, i hope it introduces you to a WHOLE NEW VEGAN PRODUCT that’s been right under your nose for years: worthington!
have you ever even heard of this product? i hadn’t until recently. but now that i know it exists, i find it in every ralphs i visit, from city to city.
recipe after the jump. (and even if you are familiar with worthington, you’ll wanna read how to make this ultimate seitan chili meal anyways!)
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We British love our curry. For sure, a vindaloo is the British national dish over fish and chips - factually, more brits eat curry on a regular basis than any other cuisine. They say “you never miss what you never had”. Well, I’ve had it and I miss it, yearning frequently for a rainy evening where I can pop out of my local pub into the Bombay Palace restaurant across the road, and order an onion bhaji followed by vegetable vindaloo with pilau rice and a roti. Don’t get me wrong – there are Indian restaurants here in LA, but none of them come remotely close to the taste, texture and experience of a British curry.
So, I set out to emulate the Great British Curry in my own kitchen, and I can tell you that I’ve come pretty close.
Here’s a close-up of what you can expect:
And here it is in a dish ready to be served:
Within an hour of prep time I can make a curry dish that tastes so similar to a curry house back home that I can close my eyes after eating it and hear the patter of rain on the streets of London.
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ahhh…sunday morning breakfast. what better way to begin the end of the weekend than with a stomach full of homemade vegan food?
fantastic frittata: quarrygirl.com’s veganized version of the monterey frittata
i REALLY love a leisurely sunday breakfast. 3 cups of coffee and a calorific vegan feast sounds like the perfect way to prolong the agony of the forthcoming week. but in a world where most restaurants are packed on sunday mornings and/or pride themselves on the fact they shovel heaping piles of eggs onto peoples’ plates, it’s hard for me to get morning meal satisfaction on the day it matters most.
this week, i found solace in this amazing recipe…located right under my nose, in the back of my cupboard, on the back of a tofu scrambler box. all it needed was to be veganized…
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Ordering pizza was one of my favorite activities before I became a vegan. Now, though, that avenue of pleasure is firmly closed off to me since I don’t eat dairy. All is not lost, though — if you live close to Hollywood in LA, there’s always Damiano’s, but their delivery customer service is appalling (last time I ordered it took them nearly two hours to deliver a cold pizza — and that was when I lived under two miles away). There’s a reasonable frozen pizza option, but nothing beats freshly made pizza with ingredients you can select and add at will.
So, I set about creating a similar experience to delivery pizza in terms of taste, timing and effort. I succeeded in two of those (taste and timing), but on the effort front, nothing beats the convenience of calling a ‘phone number to get hot food delivered to your home, just as nothing beats not being milked to death if you’re a cow.
When I used to order pizza, it would take around 40-50 minutes from picking up the ‘phone to the local Pizza Hut to when it arrived on my doorstep. This method of preparing this pizza takes a little less time, but the end result is very comparable to delivered pizza if you’re happy to put in the effort.
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There’s a sushi restaurant in West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard called Ari-Ya. It is descended from an identical restaurant in the same location called Murakami. I remember when Murakami became Ari-Ya: the only thing that changed was the name, even the menus were the same, with sticky labels gracefully replacing Murakami with Ari-Ya. It’s still that way, if you check it out!
They have a regular sushi menu (the veggie rolls are a perfect vegan treat), but the reason I go there is a totally unique salad that’s SO GOOD. While, technically, this should be an Ari-Ya salad, I’m calling it by its maiden name of Murakami salad. Why? Just because.
In keeping with the Quarrygirl modus-el-operandi, I decided to emulate said salad at home, and hopefully improve the recipe to my own taste. The secret to a good salad is proportion: too much of any one ingredient throws the taste off balance quickly.
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every time i go to the uk, i try new and wonderful food that i wish i could take back home to los angeles. well guess what? turns out i can!
spicy dumpling noodles (the quarrygirl version): steamed vegetable gyoza, asian vegetables, udon noodles, and miso broth
on a recent trip to london, i felt so out of my element. i was wandering the streets looking for any one of the vegan restaurants i’d so carefully researched online…none of which i was finding. to make matters worse, i was with my ex-vegetarian (now vegan) english husband who was kindly patronizing me as i promised to show him all the “vegan friendly” restaurants i’d bragged about finding in his hometown that he’d failed to notice, because he must have been blind!
2 hours later…no vegan restaurants. he’s late for a meeting…and his stupid american-girl-of-a-wife, who doesn’t even know from which direction the traffic will be crossing, is aimlessly pulling him around the west end looking for a restaurant that understands the difference between vegan (vg) and vegetarian (vo). disaster.
15 minutes left before the lunch window slams shut and my husband has take off, we happen across a little shop called itsu on regent street, and he convinces me to give it a try. completely pwned, i agree, and follow him in and try to make the best of the situation.
and boy am i glad i did!
recipe after the jump…
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