Recipe Round-Up: Vegan Vittles

The first edition of Vegan Vittles has a special place in my heart. It was one of my earlier cookbooks, and really introduced me to the joys of homemade vegan meats, cheese, and other tasty treats. It also has super cute photos and stories about animals at Farm Sanctuary, which is really sweet. Being one of my older books, I had already made quite a few recipes before I started taking food photos, so these days I am doing a mix of remaking some to get photos, as well as trying new recipes. You can see other posts I have made about this book here.

Oven-Roasted Tom Tofu with Golden Gravy: This is just a bowl of comfort. The tofu is marinated in a tasty broth (including soy sauce, nutritional yeast, and lots of seasoning), then coated in a mix of cornmeal, flour, nutritional yeast, and more seasoning. The marinade called for poultry seasoning, which I didn't have, so I just left it out. The tofu is baked until crunchy. I found it a little dry, but that also made it perfect for covering with gravy. (While I made another gravy recipe from the book to serve with this, you can also make a gravy with leftover marinade. I did this the next day. Just saute some onion and mushrooms, add the leftover marinade, and thicken with cornflour). But back to the gravy of the night, the Golden Gravy. This is super easy to make, and is based on flour and nutritional yeast with soy sauce and seasonings added. As you see, I served it all over mashed potato and some steamed green beans.
Rating: Tofu :), Gravy :)



Extended Maple Syrup: Maple syrup is pricey here, at least AU$7/250mL. So when a recipe calls for a lot, you have to think about what is going in there. I was making some stuff for a bake sale, and thought I might try making this extended maple syrup to help with costs a little bit. It is a mix of water, maple syrup, and cornstarch to thicken. Not surprisingly, while it is quite sweet the maple flavour was fairly subtle. I think when I try it again I will add a few drops of maple extract as well. But it worked well in the recipe (in which I also used a bit of normal maple syrup, so there was lots of maple flavour in it), and is a good way for cutting some costs!
Rating: :)



Banana Chocolate Shake: This is so fast and so easy, using frozen banana as the creamy and cold aspect. There is also the option to make this with carob instead of cocoa powder, but as I prefer food that doesn't taste like dirt I chose the latter.
Rating: :D



Fruit Smoothie: I've made this recipe a couple of times. It is very simple, and you can switch up the juice and fruit as you feel like it. For this one I used some Impressed Jack Rose Juice (which is apple, strawberry, and mint), a frozen banana (the mandatory ingredient), and frozen mangoes and raspberries. It is sweet and refreshing, though not very filling.
Rating: :)



Spinach Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette: A simple salad of spinach, mushrooms, and grated carrot (which I used instead of raw red onion), that is tossed with a vinaigrette and topped with some bacon bits. There is a recipe for bacon bits in the book, but I just used some store-bought ones for ease. The vinaigrette itself is based on orange juice. The recipe calls for a mix of OJ concentrate and water, but I can't get OJ concentrate here (only fruit drink concentrate, which is mostly sugar) so I just used straight up OJ for all of it. It also has some Asian flavours as well, which is lovely.
Rating: :)



Spaghetti with Meaty Mushroom Sauce: I love how my older cookbooks use a lot of TVP, I feel that you don't see it as much now days. Everything is ground seitan or store bought vegan mince, but TVP wins my heart. This is a great, savoury, satisfying sauce based on TVP and mushrooms, served over spaghetti. It looks simple, but is totally delicious.
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Speaking of missing loved ones, I can't believe it has been over seven and a half years since I had to say goodbye to my sweet Gizmo.