I Can't Believe It's Vegan! Volume 2 – All American Comfort Food Entrees: Our Top 10 All-Time Favorite Kitchen-Tested, Family-Feeding, Down Home Delicious American Comfort Food Dinner Recipes is copyright © 2013 by Felix Whelan and Carol Ann Whelan.
Published on Smashwords by NuEvan Press.
All Rights Reserved.
License Notes:
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Preface: What Is "Comfort Food?"
Introduction: "Meatless" Does Not Equal "Boring"
(I Can't Believe It's) NOT BEEF STEW TWO!
None Dare Call It… "Meat Loaf"!
Fool a Scotsman Vegan Shepherd's Pie
Gourmet Vegan Beans and Franks
Homemade Vegan Chicken and Dumplings that Taste Just Like Sweet Sue® !
"Half Homemade" Vegan Chicken Pot Pie
Mom’s Amazing Tuna Potato-Stick Casserole, This Time Done 100% Vegan!
A Big Thank You from Felix and Carol Ann!
The phrase "comfort food" gets bandied about a lot on TV cooking shows these days, graces the cover of many a bestselling cookbook, and even appears on restaurant menus... But what does it mean?
Webster's dictionary first included the term in 1977. Here's their definition:
food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal
I like this definition from Dictionary.com even better:
simple, home-style food that brings comforting thoughts of home or childhood.
I was born in 1962, and did the bulk of my "growing up" in the 1970s, in a Midwest, USA small town. It was a simpler time, and in many ways, a better time. There were only three channels on anybody's TV – NBC, CBS and ABC, and consequently, everybody watched the same shows. We all listened to the same music, went to the same movies (VCRs had not been invented yet, let alone DVDs and Blue Ray players), and to a remarkable degree, we all ate the same home cooked meals. And in that inexplicable way the smell of roses can carry you back to the night you first fell in love (or your most embarrasing date), or a picture from a childhood Christmas can reduce one to unexpected tears, the home cooked meals we remember from childhood have an almost magical power to transport us backward in time, to the happier, less complicated days of our youth.
That's comfort food. If you're an American Baby Boomer, chances are you and I are talking about the same dishes when we apply that term – pot roast, beef stew, chicken and dumplings, tuna casserole...
But wait! you might reasonably object at this point, this is a VEGAN cookbook! Those foods are all meat! Don't vegans and vegetarians have to swear off American cuisine forever? Is it even possible to live as a vegan in the USA, and still eat any of the foods we grew up with? WHERE'S MY COMFORT...?
It's right here, waiting for you in these pages. You did not exchange your credentials as an American for your "vegan ID." You can be both! This cookbook series will show you the way. "The way home" might be overstated... But the way, nonetheless. The foods you remember from childhood, especially if you grew up in the 1970s, are all here, recreated in a way that preserves their "comfort," but eliminates all animal products. This is guilt-free nostalgia at it's best!
Volume One of the I Can't Believe It's Vegan series explored meals prepared in that 1970s kitchen standard, the Crock Pot. This volume focuses on dinner main courses. Future volumes will explore lunch favorites, desserts, holiday menus, and more. To be notified when future volumes are released, visit www.FelixatFifty.com, and enter your email address in the sign-up box.
Probably the biggest obstacle preventing most Americans, even those who feel powerfully drawn to the ethics of a meat-free lifestyle, from going vegetarian or full vegan is fear of the unknown.
Will giving up meat mean I have to eat lettuce and bean sprouts all day? Isn't all vegan food super-expensive weird stuff you have to buy at a health food store? What about the meals I loved as a kid that I still love... Do I have to surrender everything...? I'll get bored! I can't do it!
With this cookbook (or any cookbook by Felix and Carol Ann Whelan) in your hands, yes you can!
Carol Ann and I grew up in the American Midwest during the 1970s, members of normal, Middle Class, meat-loving families, raised on a steady diet of good, old-fashioned all-American comfort food. "American cuisine" is in our genes, so when we first went vegetarian (each of us, individually, before we met) we had the same doubts any other red-blooded American would have at the thought of exchanging burgers and fried chicken, beef stew and pot roast, sloppy Joes and meatball sandwiches for "rabbit food"...
But, as it turns out, that wasn't the bargain at all. The truth is that you can, in fact, live life as a vegan, but still eat like an American! This book will prove it to you.
What Carol Ann and I have discovered over the years, and will be sharing with you in this series of cookbooks, is that we have yet to discover a single American Classic meal that can't be re-created vegan... and taste just as good, if not better, than the original.
Not one. We keep trying, and we keep... Well... succeeding. We hope that, once you try some of the amazing recipes in this cookbook, you'll agree.
If you're not already vegetarian, we hope these recipes inspire you to take the plunge. If you're already vegetarian or vegan, we hope you'll cook these dishes for your carnivorous friends, and let them experience first hand that going meatless requires no sacrifice of flavor or food favorites at all!
The Whelan family is vegetarian – technically lacto-ovo vegetarian – but we are not vegan. That means we do not eat any meat, fish or fowl, nor do we consume products with ingredients that require an animal's death to obtain, such as gelatin or beef or chicken stock. We do, however, eat eggs and dairy products like cheese.
Someone following a vegan diet eschews all animal products, including eggs, milk and cheese, but also things like honey. Veganism is really a subset of vegetarianism (all vegans are vegetarian, but not all vegetarians are vegan... Remember sets and subsets from grade school?).
As we developed the recipes in this book for our family, our concern was making sure they were vegetarian. But having accomplished that goal, it only takes a little bit of research and experimentation to take them all the way to vegan, finding suitable substitutes for any eggs and dairy.
And out of love for our vegan brethren (and "sisteren," I suppose...), we have done just that for this series. Every recipe to follow is either full vegan as presented, or vegetarian with well-researched suggestions for "veganizing" specific ingredients.
There is nothing in this book that cannot be enjoyed by every vegetarian everywhere, no matter how strict their observance! Everyone is welcome!
This is a cookbook series focused on American Cuisine. American Cuisine is, almost by definition, "meat heavy." You can't just leave the meat out of most classic American dishes and reach the same result. "Pot roast" without the "roast" is just vegetables. Tasty vegetables in gravy, but still just vegetables. If that had the power to win anybody over, the whole world would have gone vegetarian a long time ago...
So we turn to meat substitutes. All of the recipes in this cookbook call for one meat substitute or another, so as to keep them vegan, but still grant them their unique American appeal. Some recipes call for readily available commercial products, like Boca crumbles, Morningstar Chik'n Strips, or Soyrizo. Others tell you how to create your own meat substitutes using tofu, TVP, vital wheat gluten, etc.
It is a common vegan attitude (at least on the Internet!) to reject meat substitutes, following the reasoning that consuming vegetable products that are intentionally crafted to look and taste like animal products is hypocritical. If that is your opinion, I sincerely hope you will at least sample one or two of the recipes in this cookbook. We just might change your mind!
They way I see it, if people who think they can't live without the taste and texture of meat discover they can satisfy their cravings with plant-based substitutes, it makes embracing vegetarianism easier, and more and more people will do it. "Meat substitutes" will eventually become just "meat." In the future vegan world we are all working toward, no one will even remember that "meat" ever came from our animal friends. "Meat has always been a soy product, right...?"
That's the dream, anyway. Help me make it a reality!
Most cookbooks preface every recipe with an estimate of how long it'll take to prep and cook the dish, and how many people you can expect it to serve. Many also provide a nutritional breakdown, showing how many calories are in the finished product, how much fat, sodium, vitamin C, etc...
I don't do that. I reject the first two factors, prep/cook time and number of servings, because my long experience in the kitchen tells me both numbers are absolutely useless.
How long does it take to chop an onion? Depends on how fast you chop. Are you using a knife or a food processor?
Number of servings is even worse. Are you serving Prima ballerinas of NFL football players? Picky six year olds or ravenous teenagers? I don't think I've ever seen "serves 8" on a recipe and had it serve more than four.
Both of these are meaningless numbers, so I just don't go there...
Here's my suggestion: Prepare each recipe the first time, as written. Then you'll know how much it makes and how many of the real people in your real life it will serve. Next time you make it, double or halve the recipe, depending on your own clear observation.
Now let's talk nutritional breakdown. In this series of cookbooks, we're focusing on American food – American comfort food for the most part, at that. American comfort food is designed to taste good, take you back to your childhood, and to be soul-satisfying to folks like you and me who grew up in the USA. And I love that! So do you, or you would not have read this far...
But American comfort food is not "health food." An honest nutritional breakdown could only serve to discourage us from our pursuit of culinary pleasure. And who wants that?
Rest assured that these vegan versions of classic American dishes are a whole lot healthier than their carnivorous cousins... But let's not count calories, OK? Let's just agree to enjoy ourselves and be proud of our heritage!
God bless America! Let's eat!
This introduction, "Meatless" Does Not Equal "Boring," is a general introduction to the whole series of recipe collections Carol Ann and I plan to release in the months and years to follow. In the spirit of "reduce, reuse, recycle," these same first thousand words or so are going to open every volume, so folks discovering the series at any point along the way get to "start at the beginning," so to speak. No matter what door a new reader enters through, we all start on the same page!
Point being, next time you purchase a book in the I Can't Believe It's Vegan! series, feel free to skip the introduction and move straight to the recipes. Thanks!
And now, without further adieu...
The first volume in this series, All-American Crock Pot Classics, included the recipe "(I Can't Believe It's) NOT BEEF STEW!" Have no fear, this is NOT the same recipe reprised! It's a completely different, yet equally wonderful, oven-going stew, substituting seitan instead of tofu for the "beef."
Seitan, known as "Buddha Food" in the East, is a vegan meat substitute made almost entirely from vital wheat gluten, so gluten-free folks be warned!
Seitan is expensive to buy in whole foods markets, but it's dirt cheap and easy to make at home – which I suggest you do! You will find the recipe Carol Ann and I use to make our own seitan posted in the "vegetarian recipes" section of my blog at www.FelixatFifty.com. Check it out today.
You'll be shocked at how easy this stuff is to make, and how incredibly versatile it is as a stand in for any meat in a recipe, but especially for beef or chicken. It can be sliced, ground, grated or otherwise uncomplainingly abused just about any way you want to make it look like whatever you're replacing in a traditional recipe. It has no real flavor of its own, but gleefully soaks up anything you add to it. It's almost magical in its versatility. Make large batches to keep frozen, so you always have some handy when culinary inspiration strikes.
Ingredients:
1 lb. seitan, cut into bite sized chunks
2 Tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup flour
4 large carrots, cut into "stew-sized" chunks, whatever that means to you
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into stew-sized chunks
1 large onion, VERY THINLY SLICED. The onion will nearly disintegrate as the stew cooks, becoming part of the naturally-produced gravy. Thick-sliced onions won't do that!
1 large Bay leaf
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 1/2 cups of hot vegetable broth. The commercially packaged kind is fine, but you can also use 1 1/2 cups hot water in which 2 vegan bouillon cubes have been dissolved
1 teaspoon vegan Worcestershire sauce (see Carol Ann's recipe for homemade vegan Worcestershire sauce under "vegetarian recipes" on www.FelixatFifty.com)
1 Tablespoon Kitchen Bouquet
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon sugar
4 to 5 cloves
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup of Burgundy wine (NOT red "cooking wine!" That stuff is nasty. Use real Burgundy – the cheap stuff is fine.)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put the flour and the seitan chunks together into a bag. Shake to coat. (Remember the old "Shake and Bake" commercial? "...And ahhh helped!")
3. Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a deep, lidded oven-safe pot. A cast iron Dutch oven is perfect, but use what you have. Brown the seitan until it resembles cooked (lightly fried) beef.
4. Turn off the heat and add the carrots, potatoes, thinly sliced onion, minced garlic and the Bay leaf to the pot, right there on top of the seitan.
5. In a large mixing bowl, combine the hot broth, vegan Worcestershire sauce, Kitchen Bouquet, salt, pepper, paprika, sugar, cloves, apple cider vinegar, and Burgundy. Stir to mix thoroughly.
6. Pour broth over the seitan and vegetables. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Vegetables should be nice and tender. If not, re-cover and continue baking another 10 minutes or so.
7. Before serving, remove the Bay leaf and the cloves.
Note: The seitan will puff up and look a little weird as it cooks. Don't worry, it's supposed to do that. It will shrink back a few minutes after you remove the pot from the oven and lift the lid.
Every red-blooded American kid loves spaghetti and meatballs. My mom served her dry, balled up hamburger version at least once a week, and my siblings and I never tired of it. I can picture to this day how, if you didn't eat fast enough, the grease mom used to pan-fry the meatballs would rise to the top of the sauce and glisten there all blue and shiny like the droplets of motor oil our '69 Rambler routinely shed on the driveway... Mmm Mmm Good!
Ingredients:
1 lb spaghetti noodles
The Meatballs:
1 clove garlic
1 small onion, peeled (not chopped; you're going to do that in your food processor in a minute)
1 1/2 cups cooked brown lentils, rinsed and drained
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 tablespoons water
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs, seasoned with:
2 tablespoon onion powder
2 tablespoon garlic powder
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon basil
1-2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
The sauce:
Buy a jar of your favorite sauce, seriously... Or if you absolutely MUST "rough it":
2 - 16 oz. cans stewed tomatoes, do not drain
1 - 32 oz. can tomato sauce
1- 12 oz. can tomato paste
1 tbsp. sugar
2 cloves garlic, pressed
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 lg. onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 teaspoons basil
2 teaspoons oregano
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 shake chili powder
1 teaspoon. salt
1 lb. fresh mushrooms, sliced
Directions:
The breadcrumbs:
If you can find a commercial brand of Italian seasoned breadcrumbs that are vegan, by all means use those. Most have egg in them, though. If that's your dilemma, leave 4 or 5 slices of bread out overnight to get good and stale. Next day, crumble the stale bread into a mixing bowl. Crush well with something heavy (I used a tomato paste can... It was small and handy...). To the crushed breadcrumbs add:
2 tablespoon onion powder
2 tablespoon garlic powder
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon basil
1-2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Mix thoroughly.
The Meatballs:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a food processor fit with a standard "S" shaped chopping blade, pulse the garlic until it is finely chopped. Add the onion and pulse until finely minced. Don't leave any big chunks of onion – mince thoroughly! Transfer to a mixing bowl and set aside.
3. Now combine the cooked lentils, nutritional yeast, wheat gluten, soy sauce, tomato paste, olive oil and water in the food processor and pulse a few times until everything is well blended. Once everything gets thoroughly mixed, puree until smooth.
4. Add this mixture to the onions and garlic in the mixing bowl. Add the seasoned breadcrumbs. Knead everything together with your hands for a few minutes, until it turns into a nice dough you can work with. If the mixture is too soft, put the whole mixing bowl in the fridge for an hour or two. The cold will stiffen things up.
5. Form into approximately 1 1/2 " meatballs. Make as many as your batch of dough will make (unused meatballs make great leftovers, with or without the spaghetti).
6. Heat a Tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large skillet. Add the meatballs and roll them around in the skillet until they are thoroughly coated with oil. Continue cooking about 5 minutes, or until the meatballs have browned.
7. Transfer as many meatballs to a baking pan as it will hold (you may have to bake these in batches). Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Take the pan out of the oven and roll the meatballs around so they will cook evenly. Return the pan to the oven and bake an additional 10 minutes.
The sauce:
Did I mention you could just buy a jar of sauce?... But barring that, do this:
Sauté onion and green pepper in olive oil until onion is translucent. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer 2 to 3 hours.
The Presentation:
1. Cook the spaghetti noodles according to package directions. Divide between serving plates.
2. Arrange meatballs elegantly atop the noodles on each plate.
3. Top with the sauce and serve!
Childhood flashback alert: The meatballs created using this recipe taste remarkably like the "mini-meatballs" from a classic can of SpaghetiOs. I've never seen the little hoop-shaped noodles for sale dry at the grocery store, but I'll bet you can find them online. To recreate classic SpaghettiOs with meatballs, roll the meatball dough created above into cherry sized balls instead of 1 1/2 " lunkers. Follow the same cooking instructions. For the sauce, I recommend buying the cheapest jar of marinara you can find... Yum!
If you grew up in the Seventies, chances are every Wednesday night was "meatloaf night…" No point ditching your mom's bad cooking to cozy up to your friend's dinner table on hump-day – every Wednesday menu on the block was the same: crusty, oven-dried hamburger meatloaf smothered in Ketchup, or if you were lucky, brown gravy, with the ever-ubiquitous Hungry Jack instant mashed potatoes and canned green beans on the side… I don't actually remember ever liking meatloaf as a kid, but we had it so often that to this day I find the smell of hot Ketchup strangely comforting…
This recipe differs from the classic meatloaf of yore by not only by being 100% vegan, but by actually tasting great! It's what Mom's meatloaf should have been…
Ingredients:
The Meatloaf:
1 cup lentils
3 cups vegetable stock (or 3 cups water in which 3 vegan bouillon cubes have been thoroughly dissolved. If you have access to the "no-beef" kind, they're the best for this recipe. If your local grocer doesn't carry vegan bouillon, you can order whatever you need through the Felix at Fifty Webstore)
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large carrot, grated
1 stalk celery, diced
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons garlic, minced
1 cup breadcrumbs (not the seasoned kind)
3/4 cup walnut meats, chopped
3 Tablespoons ground flax mixed with 1/2 cup water (for cohesion; this replaces what would have been the egg in Mom's recipe)
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
The topping:
2 Tablespoons ketchup
1 Tablespoon maple syrup
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, combine the ground flax and 1/2 cup water. Set aside.
3. Put the lentils, vegetable stock, and a pinch of salt into a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Once the pot boils, reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 25 minutes or until the lentils are tender and have absorbed all the stock. When they are done, remove from heat altogether and let cool.
4. In a large skillet, sauté the chopped onion and diced celery in the olive oil over medium high heat for six minutes, or until the onions turn translucent (not brown). Add the garlic and grated carrot and cook for another four minutes, stirring frequently.
5. Toast the walnuts on a cookie sheet in the preheated oven for six to seven minutes. Add them to the skillet and stir well.
6. Add the oregano, salt and pepper. Stir well to combine. Remove from heat and let cool until you can handle the mixture without burning your hands.
7. Transfer cooled skillet mixture to a large mixing bowl. Add the breadcrumbs, flax/water combo, and cooked lentils and toss well. Press mixture into a greased loaf pan and set aside.
8. In a small bowl, combine the ketchup, maple syrup and vinegar. Spread on top of loaf. My mom always made one thick stripe down the center of the loaf, but you do it however you remember.
9. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.
NOTE: Leftovers make great cold meatloaf sandwiches the next day!
Yes, I know there's a seitan-based, vegan pot roast recipe in I Can't Believe It's Vegan, Volume 1: All-American Crock Pot Classics, but this is not a simple rehash of that recipe! My favorite meal, as a carnivorous kid, was my mom's pot roast, and I have traveled many culinary backroads in my quest to recreate it vegan. The slow cooker recipe in volume one is excellent, and really easy to prepare because the crock pot does all the work. This recipe is also fabulous – but you'll be doing the heavy lifting yourself. It's worth it, though… No pain, no gain, right?
Ingredients:
1 pound seitan, cut into 1/4 inch-thick slices (Make your own seitan! It's cheap and easy! Click the "vegetarian recipes" link at FelixatFifty.com!)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup dry red wine
6 cipollini onions, unpeeled
1- 8 oz bag baby carrots
1 pound small new red potatoes, skins on, halved
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock (or 2 1/2 cups water in which 3 vegan bouillon cubes have been thoroughly dissolved. You can purchase vegan bouillon through the Felix at Fifty Webstore)
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons cold water
Directions:
1. In a small bowl, combine 2 Tablespoons olive oil, garlic, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. Rub this into the seitan to season. Place the seasoned seitan in a shallow bowl and pour the wine over it. If you have rub left in the bowl, scrape that in, too. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. The longer you let the seitan marinate in the fridge, the better. Up to 8 hours is A-OK!
2. Parboil the cipollini onions for about 5 minutes to make them easier to peel. Let them cool until you can comfortably handle them. Peel and set aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
4. Remove the seitan from the marinade. Be sure to save the marinade.
5. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the seitan slices and brown on both side. Remove the seitan and set aside.
6. In the same skillet, add 1 tablespoon olive oil and heat over medium heat. Add the onions, carrots, and potatoes and brown, stirring frequently. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
7. Move the browned vegetables from the skillet to a baking dish with a tight cover. Add 1/2 cup of the vegetable stock. Cover and bake for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
8. Add the seitan to the vegetables in the baking dish. Cover and return to oven for 15 minutes.
9. In a small saucepan, combine the remaining 2 cups vegetable stock, tomato paste, soy sauce, and the reserved marinade and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Whisk in the cornstarch/water and boil, stirring constantly for 1 minute, or until the sauce is thickened.
10. Arrange the vegetables and seitan slices on a serving tray. Cover with sauce and serve.
Real Scottish shepherd's pie is made with lamb, but my mom, of course, used hamburger… In a household where ground beef and instant mashed potatoes formed the cornerstones of the "poor folks food pyramid" (with canned green beans, peas and corn at the top), there was a part of me, even in childhood, that suspected Mom created her shepherd's pie recipe by simply combining everything she knew how to cook in one baking dish… Which is probably pretty close to how the original shepherd's pie was created. If a meal this profoundly delicious and soul-satisfying is "poor folk's food," then I don't ever want to be rich!
Ingredients:
The potatoes:
3 russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 cup plain unsweetened soymilk
3 Tablespoons vegan margarine (I use Blue Bonnet Light because it's vegan, cheap, and available everywhere. Earth Balance costs more, but is probably better for you…)
Salt and pepper to taste
The filling:
2 - 12 ounce packages Boca meatless ground burger crumbles, thawed to room temperature
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and diced small
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tablespoons canola oil
2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped
1 large sage leaf, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 cup vegetable stock (or 1 cup water in which 1 vegan bouillon cube has been thoroughly dissolved. You can purchase vegan bouillon through the Felix at Fifty Webstore)
2 teaspoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon vegan Worcestershire sauce (see Carol Ann's recipe for homemade vegan Worcestershire sauce under "vegetarian recipes" on www.FelixatFifty.com)
1 - 14 ounce cans peas
1 - 14 ounce can whole kernel corn
Directions:
1. Put the cubed potatoes, the crushed garlic, and a pinch or two of salt in a large pot. Fill with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook for about 10-15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
2. Drain the potatoes and mash with salt, pepper, soy milk and margarine. Add more seasonings or margarine if needed to reach the flavor and consistency you want.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
4. In a large saucepan with a lid, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions and carrots and sauté for 3-4 minutes. Add the garlic and continue cooking another 1 to 2 minutes. Add the Boca crumbles and sauté until they begin to brown. Add the flour, salt and pepper, and stir until evenly distributed.
5. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the tomato paste and the vegetable broth. Add to the sautéed vegetables and Boca crumbles. Add the Worcestershire sauce and fresh herbs. Stir well, cover, and turn down the heat. Let simmer for 10-12 minutes until the sauce has thickened.
6. When ready, pour the filling mixture into an ungreased Pyrex baking dish. Drain and rinse the peas and corn and add them the baking dish. Mix well to combine and smooth out.
7. Dollop the mashed potatoes over the top of the filling. Spread the potatoes smoothly and evenly over the filling, making sure to form a seal all around the edge of the baking dish to prevent the filling from bubbling over.
8. Bake on the middle oven rack at 400 degrees for 25 minutes, until the potatoes begin to turn golden brown. Let the pie cool 10-15 minutes before serving.
My mother was a working '70s "Supermom" who dragged home from the office most weekday evenings to the sound of three latch-key children pathetically mewling that we were S-T-A-R-V-I-N-G! Hurry! Feed us…!
My exhausted, but ever-resourceful, mother could crack out a skillet of savory beans and franks faster than we could catch our breath for another round of whining… And, ah, the glory of it! Canned pork and beans, a little ketchup added to sweeten things up, with half pack of hotdogs sliced into coins, stirred in, and heated through… When you're ten years old and ravenous, that's gourmet, Baby…
True story: My siblings and I used to fight over who got the little cube of fat floating like a bloated tequila worm in the pork and beans can… And people wonder why I went vegetarian?
Vegan Beans and Franks, the easy method:
Open a can of Bush's Vegetarian Baked Beans. Add a healthy squirt of ketchup. Slice four or five tofu dogs (I prefer Yves brand) into coins, stir in, heat through and serve!
But this is a cookbook, and that's not really cooking (my apologies to Mom). So here is a fabulous recipe for gourmet vegan beans and franks, made with real baked beans, actually baked in the oven. Do stick with the Yves tofu dogs, though. They're vegan, taste great, and are available just about everywhere (even our rural Wal-Mart superstore carries them)!
Ingredients:
3 cups cooked pinto beans. Purists can cook their own dry beans before starting this recipe. Lazy chefs like me can open two 15 oz. cans… Your choice!
1 yellow onion, diced
A little olive oil for sautéing the onion
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses
1/4 cup BBQ sauce
3 Tablespoons maple syrup
2 Tablespoons ketchup
1/2 cup tomato paste
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
4 to 5 Yves brand vegan tofu dogs
Directions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Heat olive oil in a skillet and sauté the chopped onion until translucent.
3. In a large casserole or baking dish, stir together the sautéed onion with all the other ingredients. Mix well to combine.
4. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
5. Slice the tofu dogs into 1/4" wide coins. Stir into the beans, cover, and return to oven for an additional 15 minutes.
6. Serve hot! Stop the mewling!
NOTE: If anybody out there can come up with a vegan version of that little cube of fat from the pork and beans can, email me at FelixatFifty@yahoo.com. I'd love to include it in this recipe to add a touch of true culinary "authenticity!"
In every American "comfort foods" survey I've seen, a steaming pot of chili ranks high on the list of dinners most of us remember fondly from childhood. But if you ask me, it's not our mother's chili that so fuels our grown up "warm cuddlies" (though I admit, my mom's hamburger chili was pretty good... And no green beans...). Instead, I think it's a memory, held way down deep where our noses and bellies remember but our minds can't quite reach, of the lunch chili served at least once a week in every public school cafeteria in 1970's America. I'd give anything for a set of those mint green Melmac bowls they served the stuff in, and a few of those chipped up, brownish-black plastic cafeteria trays we held while sliding side by side down shiny chrome rails, filling our trays with chocolate milk, room temperature chili, and those amazing cold celery sticks filled with creamy, brown peanut butter... Ah, the memories! A bite of chili, a taste of peanut butter... chili..., peanut butter... chili... I'm going crazy thinking about it! Yum!
This recipe embodies that memory. There's not so much peanut butter in it that you actually taste it outright, but your mouth remembers and tells your soul to be happy. It's that good, really!
Ingredients:
1 package Boca meatless ground burger crumbles, thawed to room temperature
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 – 28 oz. can diced tomatoes, not drained
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 – 12 oz can tomato paste
2 cups vegetable stock (or 2 cups water in which 2 vegan bouillon cubes have been thoroughly dissolved. If you have access to the "no-chicken" kind, they're the best for this recipe. If your local grocer doesn't carry vegan bouillon, you can order whatever you need through the Felix at Fifty Webstore)
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2 – 15 oz. cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
2 – 15 oz. pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 – 15 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 – 15 oz. can whole kernel sweet corn, not drained
Directions:
1. In large sauce pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped onion and garlic and sauté until the onions are translucent. Add the thawed Boca crumbles and stir until they are good and coated with the oil. Sauté another 5 minutes or so until they brown a bit.
2. Add the diced tomatoes (liquid and all), the pepper, salt, cayenne pepper, paprika, chili powder, and red pepper flakes. Let simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Add the tomato paste, vegetable stock, and peanut butter. Stir until tomato paste and peanut butter are well incorporated. Let simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Reduce heat to low and add the beans and the corn. Let simmer for 30 to 45 minutes – or longer if you want. The longer this dish simmers, the better it tastes!
5. Serve in shallow, pastel Melmac bowls. See if anyone can guess why a nostalgic tear comes to their eye with every bite!
If chicken and dumplings registers high on you personal "comfort food meter," chances are your mom or grandmother made it from scratch, in a tall, simmering pot of golden goodness, in which giant, fluffy "light as a cloud" dumplings floated dreamily, so perfectly dry in the center and saucy on the outside...
This isn't that recipe! My fond chicken and dumplings memories all center on 1975 or so, when, at the tender age of 12, I entered my brief, but super-fun, tour of duty with the Boy Scouts of America.
The "Klondike Derby" is a traditional Boy Scout winter competition in which each patrol of boys builds a wooden dog sled, just like they use in the Iditarod, and then pulls it (that's right, we're the "dogs") around a winding snowy race course, stopping at various stations to do Boy Scouty things like start a fire without matches, tie a double half hitch, build a lean-to, etc. The first patrol to master every activity and complete the course wins!
Racing the Klondike Derby is great fun for active boys. It also generally takes place in super cold weather, takes all day to accomplish, and requires tremendous physical exertion (especially for a 12 year old)! Needless to say, it's a race a boy finishes H-U-N-G-R-Y!
So, it's 1975. My patrol (the "Beavers," if I recall correctly) did not win the race, but we did at least finish. My compadres and I are all as ravenous as the dogs we've been impersonating all day...
Back at camp, we are finally free to tear into the heavy, twin duffle bags of "campout food" that have been weighing down our sled all day.
What's for dinner?
I had not been a member of the committee that planned our camp meals, but they must have been true boy geniuses... One of the duffle bags is completely filled with can after can of Sweet Sue Chicken Stew®, the other with cans of Sweet Sue Chicken and Dumplings®...
I have never tasted anything so magnificent. Here's my vegan recreation of the chicken and dumplings half of that superb culinary experience. Enjoy!
NOTE: The dumplings in this recipe turn out deliciously flat and doughy, just like the ones in the Sweet Sue® can. If you prefer the fluffy kind, ask your mother for her recipe. Isn't it time you talked, anyway?
The soup:
Ingredients:
1 package Morningstar Farms Recipe Starters Chick'n Strips, or your favorite vegan chicken substitute
2 Tablespoons canola oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 cup pea and carrot mix (frozen or canned)
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 teaspoons ground sage
1 Tablespoon ground thyme
1 teaspoon ground marjoram
1 teaspoon ground rosemary
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 cup nutritional yeast (a must for flavor, plus it turns the soup that unearthly bright yellow color you remember from the can)
2 cups plain, unsweetened soy milk
4 cups vegetable stock (or 4 cups water in which 4 vegan bouillon cubes have been thoroughly dissolved. If you have access to the "no-chicken" kind, they're the best for this recipe. If your local grocer doesn't carry vegan bouillon, you can order whatever you need through the Felix at Fifty Webstore)
The dumplings:
Ingredients:
1 lb. (half a two pound bag is the easiest way to measure it) self rising flour
Water
That is seriously all there is to it! Amazing!
Directions:
The Soup:
1. In a large sauce pan or stock pot with a lid, heat up the canola oil. Sauté the onions until translucent. Add the garlic and cook a few minutes more. Finally, add all the vegetables and sauté until very lightly browned.
2. Add everything else to the pot. Bring to a full, rolling boil. Once the soup is boiling, reduce the heat, cover the pot, and let simmer 30 to 45 minutes.
The dumplings:
1. Put the flour in a large mixing bowl. Scoop a depression out of the center, and add about 1/2 cup water. Push the sides of the flour over the water, and work it with your hands until it turns into dough. Add water along the way if you need to, but just a little at a time. Don't overdo it. You want the dough to be stiff and dry, not wet and squishy.
NOTE: Whatever you do, don't add salt! There's already a ton of salt in the self rising flour. Add more and your dumplings will be inedible!
Once the dough hardly sticks to your hands, it is the right consistency. Knead vigorously for 3 to 5 minutes, then let the dough rest for about 10 minutes.
2. Move the dough to a big cutting board you have sprinkled generously with regular white flour. Roll the dough out flat with a rolling pin, until it is about 1/4 " thick. Cut into 1" to 1 ½" squares.
3. Bring the soup back to a boil. If there doesn't look to be enough liquid to cook the dumplings in, add some more vegetable stock. Don't overdo it, but the dumplings do need plenty of liquid in order to cook.
4. Add the dumplings. Keep the heat on high until the soup is boiling again. Reduce heat, cover pot, and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure the dumplings don't stick to the bottom of the pot. The dumplings are done when they all sink to the bottom and stay there.
NOTE: Total simmering time for this recipe is 60 to 90 minutes – 30 to 45 minutes for the soup alone, then an additional 30 to 45 minutes once the dumplings have been added. If you want to add simmering time on the theory it makes the soup taste better (I agree), add time to the soup only part of the recipe. Don't overcook the dumplings!
My only childhood memory of pot pie (of any variety – chicken, beef, turkey, etc.) is of Mom opening the little Swanson's boxes and sliding the foil-dished delicacies into the oven... From whence they always hit the dinner table just piping hot enough to scald the roof of your mouth on first bite...
But somebody's mom must have been making those babies from scratch. My extensive "comfort food" research tells me lots of folks consider homemade chicken pot pie a cherished treasure of childhood... You not only remember the taste of Mom's amazing filling and oh, so rich gravy, you recall with delight watching her make the crust from scratch, carefully fluting those edges, poking the center with a fork...
Okay, here's my lazy man's compromise... How about a homemade vegan chicken pot pie filling, poured into a store-bought crust?
Voila! Perfection!
Ingredients:
The filling:
Morningstar Farms Recipe Starters Chick'n Strips, or your favorite vegan chicken substitute, diced into tiny cubes
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 drops (and no more!) of Liquid Smoke
3 stalks celery, diced
1 cup peas and carrots mix (frozen or canned)
1 cup southern style hash brown potatoes (the ones shaped like little cubes)
The gravy:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup Nutritional Yeast
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
4 Cups vegetable stock (or 4 cups water in which 4 vegan bouillon cubes have been thoroughly dissolved. If you have access to the "no-chicken" kind, they're the best for this recipe. If your local grocer doesn't carry vegan bouillon, you can order whatever you need through the Felix at Fifty Webstore)
2 teaspoons ground sage
1 1/2 teaspoons ground thyme
1 teaspoon ground marjoram
3/4 teaspoon ground rosemary
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
3 Tablespoons fresh parsley (diced)
The crust:
2 deep dish 9" frozen pie crusts
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large skillet, heat olive oil and Liquid Smoke over a medium heat. Add the cubed chicken substitute (whatever brand you chose) and sauté until golden brown. Set "chicken" aside to cool.
3. In the same skillet, make your Gravy. Toast the flour, nutritional yeast and 2 Tablespoons olive oil until it starts to brown. Whisk in the vegetable stock, a little at a time. Keep whisking until there are no lumps.
4. Stir in sage, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, nutmeg, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, celery seed, and parsley. Heat till it thickens and starts to boil.
5. Stir in the diced celery, the hash browns, the "chicken," and the peas and the carrots mix. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Pour mixture into one of the pie crusts. Turn the other crust over and pop out of the tin onto the top of the filled pie. Seal the edges and poke holes in top crust.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, until crust is golden brown.
Yes, the original vegetarian (not vegan) version of this recipe did appear in Carol Ann's and my first book, I Can't Believe It's Not Tuna!: 55 Vegetarian Recipes for Mock Tuna Casseroles, Sandwiches, Melts, Burgers, Salads, Pasta Dishes, and More! But when we went to press on that book, I was exuberant at having recreated Mom's signature tuna dish vegetarian – I really didn't believe it could be further refined all the way down to vegan without sacrificing at least some of the qualities that make it such a fantastically satisfying comfort food classic... After all, there couldn't possibly be a vegan substitute for canned Cream of Mushroom soup, could there?
Turns out there is... And not some expensive, hard to find commercial brand of vegan canned soup, either (I would never send you on that kind of wild goose chase). Instead, I stumbled upon a "from scratch" vegan cream of mushroom soup recipe that reasonably reproduced the Campbell's experience, rebuilt my original vegetarian-only redo of Mom's vintage recipe around it, and voila! Vegan tuna casserole to die for!
Back in the '70s, there were a variety of soup can label tuna casserole recipes making the family dinner table rounds, probably the commonest of which was the version with egg noodles and peas, sometimes served up with a coating of crushed potato chips on top. If tuna casserole is a childhood comfort food classic for you, that's probably the one you remember ...
BUT THIS RECIPE IS BETTER. I do not say that lightly. In fact, I saved this recipe for last in this book because I wanted to earn your trust before making so bold a statement as to say outright that the tuna casserole of my youth was better than the one you remember so fondly...
Trust me on this. Try this recipe ASAP. Your very first taste is going to utterly transform the way you think about tuna casserole. It's going to rewrite your childhood, erase the tuna casserole your mom made from your memory and write itself over the file, like some crazy culinary computer virus. It will become the only tuna casserole you remember, that you think about, that you could ever imagine craving... It will become a staple of your family dinner table, and you will ceremoniously present a copy this recipe to each of your children when they come of age, as a treasured family heirloom to be preserved and passed on to generations to come...
My mother would be so proud!
It really is that good. Try it, you'll see. Don't expect it to come out of the oven creamy or "slippery" like the tuna-noodle casseroles you might remember from childhood. The texture of this dish is hard to describe... "Crunchy-smooshy" is about as close as I can come using mere words (at least without digressing into poetry...). The flavor, of course, is fantastic. But it's that "crunchy-smooshy" texture (I hate the term "mouth feel," but that's essentially what we're talking about here) that sets Mom's tuna casserole, and this vegan version by association, apart from all the rest. It is genuinely addictive. Try this recipe once, and you'll be dreaming about it for the rest of your life...
Enough salesmanship, you already bought the book... No go forth and enjoy!
Ingredients:
1 16 oz can chick peas (some brands call them Garbanzo Beans – it's the same thing, either way!)
8 good sized baby portabella mushrooms, chopped fine
1/2 cup Vegannaise
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon granulated kelp, or just about any dried seaweed you can find in your local grocery store. Seaweed adds the "fishy" flavor to the mock tuna at the core of this recipe. Whatever variety of seaweed you use, crush or chop it up fine, both to release the flavor, and to avoid having recognizable "chunks" of seaweed in your finished casserole.
1 Tablespoon canola oil
1 large yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 – 15 oz or smaller block of silken tofu
1/2 cup plain, unsweetened soy milk
1 8 oz can potato sticks
1 cup frozen peas (optional)
Salt to taste
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the chick peas into a large mixing bowl. Mash them gently by hand with the tines of a fork until there are no whole round ones left. Your end result is going to look a whole lot like flaky tuna from a can – that’s what you want!
3. Add half of the finely chopped portabella mushrooms, and mix thoroughly.
4. Add the Veganaise and Dijon mustard. Mix thoroughly.
5. Add the granulated kelp (or whatever seaweed you choose) and mix thoroughly.
You now have your "tuna." Next comes the condensed cream of mushroom soup:
6. Heat the canola oil in a large skillet. Sauté the minced garlic and half the chopped onion until the onion is translucent. Add the remaining half of the chopped portabella mushrooms and sauté until another 5 minutes or so.
7. Transfer the mushroom/onion/garlic mixture to a blender. Add the dried oregano, dried thyme, and the nutritional yeast. Pulse until well mixed. Add the tofu and puree everything together.
Now we make the casserole:
8. Retrieve the large mixing bowl where your mock tuna is waiting. Add the contents of the blender, the remaining chopped onions, the soy milk, and the potato sticks. Add the peas if you are including them (not part of my mom's original recipe, but I always add them – tasty!). Blend everything vigorously, using your hands. The end result is going to look like a big, gloppy mess, but have no fear, it's going to taste fantastic! The mixture will appear "wet" at this point, but that will cook off in the oven, trust me.
9. Salt to taste. OK, let's talk about salt. Canned tuna is very salty. I know salt is not considered "healthy" these days, and a lot of folks are required by their doctors to avoid it... But if you choose not to add salt at this point, your casserole may not taste quite as "tuna-ey" as you were hoping. When I make this recipe, I go by taste, adding more salt than most of you would probably be comfortable with (don't lecture - my doctor and my arteries complain enough, thank you!)... I have made this casserole using "Mrs. Dash" instead of salt, and it turned out pretty good. Braggs brand "Sea Kelp Delight Seasoning" has kelp plus 24 herbs and spices (all organic), so that might be another good choice in lieu of the white stuff. It's not the easiest thing to find on the grocery store shelf, though... So do what is right for you at this stage in the recipe!
10. Pour mixture into a greased, Pyrex baking dish. Do not cover.
11. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for one hour.
Serve hot! Prepare to be transformed! Once you've tried this recipe, I'd love to hear what you and your family thought of it. Email me at FelixatFifty@Yahoo.com. I can't wait to hear from you! Thanks!
Felix and Carol Ann Whelan live in rural Missouri with their 17 year old daughter, Kathryn (Kate), their 11 year old son, Conner, and (at last count) twenty or so dogs, cats, chickens, sheep and goats overgrowing their one acre hobby farm. They are vegetarians surrounded by cattle farmers, Catholics surrounded by Protestants, and ex-city slickers transplanted to a town that will never completely trust anyone whose great grandparents weren’t born there…
But most of all, they are very, very happy!
“Felix at Fifty” is a blog about food, faith, family and finding fulfillment at (and after) fifty. It’s about discovering that, despite past wrong turns and missed opportunities, the road ahead looks amazing… It’s about waking at the milestone of your fiftieth birthday to find that somehow, in spite of it all, you’ve managed to build an awesome family, you’re surrounded by people you love, you’re grounded in devout Faith, and feel alive with passions that inspire you. It’s about gratitude for a very good life. It’s about accepting the wisdom and authority of your years. It’s about counting blessings in the present while relishing, and working hard to fulfill, the bright promise of the next fifty years.
Join Felix and Carol Ann as they journey together through their fifties, experiencing the inevitable highs and lows of aging, but celebrating at every stage their passion for faith and family, friends, food and fun.
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Felix and Carol Ann Whelan