Week 4: Kale Challenge - Kale and Black Bean Enchiladas with Kale Rice and Kale, Tempeh Bacon and Pepita Salad

This was always going to be an interesting challenge as I've never cooked with Kale before. It's not that common here in New Zealand, and as I learnt about veganism before LiveJournal was founded and don't own a single achingly hip vegan cookbook I haven't had much reason to become acquainted with it. I also pretty much made up the recipes as I went and was in a hurry so I don't have detailed recipes this week and will have to settle for a rough description of the process without quantities.

Kale and Black Bean Enchiladas

Filling:

• Onion
• Garlic
• Mushrooms
• Black Beans
• Curly Kale
• Cumin
• Basil
• Fresh Chipotle
• Ground Chipotle
• Cayenne Pepper
• Canned Tomatoes

1. Saute onion for a few minutes, then add garlic and saute for another minute.
2. Add roughly chopped mushrooms and saute until mushrooms are reduced.
3. Add cumin, basil, fresh and ground chipotle and cayenne pepper and cook for a minute.
4. Add tomatoes and kale, lower heat and cook until the tomatoes are reduced and the mixture is thick.

Enchilada Sauce:

• Onion
• Garlic
• Oregano
• Sugar
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Canned Tomatoes

1. Saute some onions and garlic.
2. Add tomatoes, oregano, sugar and balsamic vinegar and cook over a medium heat until thickened.

The recipe for Cashew Cheese Sauce can be found here.

To make the enchiladas:

1. Pour a little of the sauce on to the bottom of a baking dish.
2. Throw some of the kale and black bean mix on a soft tortilla, and roll the tortilla around the mix.
3. Put the tortilla and kale and black bean mix into the baking dish with the loose part of the tortilla facing down.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you run out of tortillas, kale and black bean mix or baking dish to fill.
5. Pour most of the enchilada sauce over the enchiliadas.
6. Bake at 200C/400F for about 30 minutes until things are looking cooked.

Chances are the enchiladas will look a bit rough after cooking, as below, but they're about to be slathered in sauces so it's no problem.

To serve:

Put a couple enchiladas on a plate, then top with some enchilada sauce, plenty of cashew cheese sauce and some avocados or guacamole.

Kale and Rice

I threw a cup of rice, 2 cups of kale and 1/2 a teaspoon each of cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and paprika into my rice cooker with some chicken style stock and let it do its thing.

Kale, Tempeh Bacon and Pepita Salad

The tempeh bacon was made by marinating thinly cut strips of tempeh in a mixture of wheat-free tamari, maple syrup, ground chipotle, paprika, cumin and liquid hickory smoke for a few hours and then pan frying them until they were starting to crisp. While they were cooking I also threw a handful of pepitas in the pan to toast them. Once the cooked parts were done I tore up some kale, sliced up some radishes and cut up some avocado. This was all tossed with a lime vinaigrette.

Week 3: Meal under $10 - Polenta Fries with White Bean, Sage and Pumpkin Ragout and Leek with Cashew Cheese Sauce

Price for four people: $9.34 New Zealand Dollars / $7.93 USD (full pricing info below)

This is not only a cheap meal, but one of my favourites too. The recipe is from Peter Berley's Modern Vegetarian Kitchen and I can't recommend both the recipe and book enough. Most of the recipes are quite simple, yet tend to get rave reviews from the harshest of critics (my kids). This recipe also shows that the difference between decent food and food you love is probably going to be a few decent ingredients. In this case it's using a good quality cinnamon quill, fresh sage rather than rubbed/dried sage and fresh ginger to turn what could just be a tomatoey mess into something special.

In addition to the polenta fries and ragout, I had a large leek laying about and some leftover thick cashew cheese which I had made to use as a panini filling. I added a little almond milk to thin it out for pouring over the leeks.

In total this came in comfortably under $10 to feed four, and there is still at least one more meal's worth of leftover ragout after my daughter asked for some in her lunch for school today. This is after four dinner servings have been taken out of the pot.

Polenta Fries

• 1 Cup Polenta - I use a fine polenta to lessen the cooking time
• 3 Cups Vegetarian Stock (check for gluten to confirm entire meal is gluten free)
• 1 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Tsp Salt

1. Bring stock and oil to a boil.
2. Slowly add the polenta while whisking to avoid lumps.
3. Reduce to a low heat and cook until the desired consistency is reached. For me, it took about 5 minutes with instant polenta to reach a thick consistency.
4. Pour the polenta into a greased or non-stick container so that it's just over 1cm thick, then let it set in the fridge for at least an hour. I use a 20cm by 20cm baking pan for this.
5. Once the polenta is set it can be sliced in the pan into 1cm by 5cm 'fries.' The size isn't too important, which become evident when you my total lack of uniformity in the picture below.
6. Bake at 200C/400F for about 25-20 minutes, turning half way through cooking. The longer they cook the crunchier/more awesome they get. I didn't cook these for too long as I was in a hurry to get my kids fed.

You should end up with something like this, but probably beginning to brown for extra crunch. However, as the polenta is cooked before becoming fries it's entirely up to you how long you bake them for.

White Bean, Sage and Pumpkin Ragout

• 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 Large Onion, diced
• 500g Buttercup Pumpkin (or Butternut Squash, preferably), roughly chopped
• 5 Garlic Cloves, minced
• 1 Tbsp Minced Fresh Ginger
• 800g Canned Diced Tomatoes
• 3 Cups Cooked Haricot Beans (from 1 cup dried beans)
• 1 Tbsp Minced Fresh Sage
• 1 5cm Cinnamon Quill
• Salt and Pepper

1. Heat the oil over medium heat, then cook the onion and a little salt under the onion is softened.
2. Add the pumpkin, garlic and ginger and saute for about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the tomatoes and raise the heat to bring to a boil.
4. Add the beans, sage and cinnamon. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25-30 minutes until the squash is tender.
5. Remove the cinnamon and add some water if the ragout is too thick.
6. Season with salt and black pepper.

Leeks with Cashew Cheese Sauce

Cut the dark green top off the leek, sliced it in half lengthwise then chopped the leek halves into strips about half a cm wide. Once chopped wash the leek in a colander under a cold tap to get rid of the dirt that leeks love to bring with them to the store, then cook in a little olive oil and salt over a low heat until very tender (about 15 minutes). The cashew cheese sauce is the recipe you can find here, but without the chipotle added... I used about 4 tablespoons of the cashew cheese and thinned it with almond milk until it reached a good pouring consistency and threw it in the microwave for about a minute.

Pricing

The prices below are in New Zealand dollars, and some of them should be cheaper as they were bought for me from road-side vege markets and I don't know the price paid... the prices I've used are from a local supermarket in the city. I've also not priced the olive oil, salt or pepper... but it's negligible.

Polenta - 64c
Stock - 25c

Onion - 40c
Pumpkin - $1.25
Garlic - 30c
Ginger - 20c
Tomatoes - $1.66
Beans - $1.60
Sage - 15c
Cinnamon - 10c

Leek - $1.79
Cashew Cheese Sauce - $1 - This is a rough, and exaggerated, estimate


Notes:

• I use Massel's Chicken Style stock for polenta, as the flavour goes well with corn/polenta and it's gluten free.
• In the Modern Vegetarian Cookbook the ragout is served over soft polenta. I prefer the crunch of polenta fries so am happy to make the polenta a couple hours in advance. If you're pressed for time soft polenta is fine; just use 4 cups of liquid rather than 3, and serve in a bowl straight after cooking so it's still soft.
• I much prefer Butternut Squash in this recipe, but Buttercup Pumpkins were cheaper so I grabbed one. It would still come in under $10 with the squash and I would recommend it over the pumpkin.
• I actually used one 400g can of tomatoes and a few very ripe tomatoes that would otherwise have gone bad. For something that is going to cook a while I almost always use canned tomatoes.
• Normally the ragout is made with Great Northern Beans, but I used Haricot Beans as they are readily available at my local supermarket.

Week 2: Breakfast - Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes with Cinnamon Cacao Tofu Cream

I'm not much of a breakfast person, preferring to grab some fruit and a coffee on my way to work than spend time preparing something, so I again had a short list of ideas for this week's meal.

The first idea I had was trying to clone the awesome Scrambled Tofu they serve at Maranui Surf Life Saving Cafe (http://www.maranuicafe.co.nz/) here in Wellington. It's a great, if often crowded, cafe where you can sit and watch the feeble Wellington waves come ashore while enjoying one of their vegan options and a decent long black. However, it turns out they've been nice enough to share their recipe already (http://recipefinder.msn.co.nz/recipes/campaign1/765180/scrambled-tofu) making a cloning attempt redundant... and ruining my one good idea. I'd highly recommend making their scrambled tofu recipe, or come to Wellington and let them make it for you :)

In the hopes of finding some inspiration I headed off to the supermarket and as I walked in I noticed some buttercup pumpkins stacked precariously in a corner. I love the natural sweetness of buttercup pumpkins and figured there had to be a decent sweet breakfast option in there somewhere. Further into the store I noticed the pre-packaged pancake mixes and it was settled; I needed sweet pumpkin pancakes. I was hoping to make a cashew creme fraiche to top the pancakes with but raw cashews were the one bulk bin item the store had run out of, so I opted for a tofu cream instead. I prefer a cashew creme fraiche, but the tofu cream still tasted pretty good.

Some googling when I got home revealed this pancake recipe, which I have basically ripped off with a few minor changes - http://cookieandkate.com/2013/pumpkin-oat-pancakes/

Spiced Pumpkin Pancakes

Wet

• 1 Cup Pumpkin Puree
• 1/2-1 Cup Soy Milk (start with a half cup and reserve the other half for later use)
• 2 Tbsp Olive Oil (plus some more to oil your skillet)
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 2 Tsp Maple Syrup
• 2 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• 2 Tsp Grated Fresh Ginger

Dry

• 1 Cup Oat Flour
• 1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
• 2 Tsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 Tsp Salt
• 1/4 Tsp Ground Nutmeg
• 1/4 Tsp Cloves

1) Combine wet ingredients in a small bowl, using only half a cup of the soy milk.
2) Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
3) Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, and stir gently to combine.
4) The batter will likely be quite thick and a bit dry, depending on the moisture content of your pumpkin puree. Add more of the soy milk until the batter is more batter than dough, but not as thin as a standard pancake batter.
5) Let the batter sit for ten minutes, and heat a cast-iron skillet over a medium-low heat. The heavy skillet ensures an even heat across the entire surface, which pancakes love.
6)  Pour a 1/4 cup of batter onto the skillet and cook for three minutes, then flip with a spatula and cook for a further 90 seconds. These pancakes don't hold together quite as well as normal pancakes, so no matter how good you are at flipping pancakes with just the pan, don't - you will end up with a mess.

As I could only fit two pancakes in my skillet at a time I put the cooked pancakes on a cookie sheet in the oven at 100C/212F to keep warm while the rest cooked. I also made the tofu cream while cooking the pancakes, however making it in advance and letting it sit in the fridge would result in a thicker consistency. However, the cream will thin as it warms... and once served, these were never going to last long anyway so I wasn't too worried.

The recipe below yielded WAY more tofu cream than I needed... something in the order of ten times as much as I needed, so feel free to move the decimal point one place to the left to make a single serve batch (if you have small enough measuring spoons).

Cinnamon Cacao Tofu Cream

• 350g Box of Soft Silken Tofu
• 1 1/2 Tbsp Ground Cacao Nibs
• 3 Tbsp Maple Syrup
• 1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon

1. Throw all ingredients in a blender.
2. Blend.

I served the pancakes in stacks three high, with maple syrup between each layer with a couple teaspoons of the tofu cream and more maple syrup on top. My six year old pronounced this the best breakfast he has had, and he's not a fan of tofu or pumpkin... so this is definitely a winning combination in my mind!

Notes:

• The temperature these are cooked at is important. My stove is terrible and only allows for five heat settings... the perfect temperature would be somewhere between 3 and 4 on my stove, so I had to keep swapping back and forth in an attempt to get the pancakes to brown without overcooking. As you can see in the photos, they are 'well done' but still tasted awesome... and I also enjoyed the texture of the crispy edges - almost to the point that I'd claim I did it on purpose.
• The linked recipe states that these are gluten free but oats are not gluten free... however, the glutinous protein in oats (Avenin) does not cause issues for about 80% of people with coeliac disease. If you have coeliac disesase procede with caution.
• The COOKIE+kate site says to buy pumpkin puree rather than pumpkin pie mix for their recipe, as the pie mix is pre-sweetened. I haven't seen either product here in New Zealand, so I just make puree by roasting the quartered the buttercup pumpkin then blending it once cooled.
• I don't have oat flour, so just threw 1 1/4 cups of oats into a blender and blended to a flour-like consistency. This yielded just over 1 cup of oat flour.
• I only used fresh ginger as I didn't have dried ground ginger on hand. It's entirely likely the flavour would be better with dried ginger.
• If possible use freshly ground whole spices as they test so much better. I have a coffee grinder I only use for spices and a ginger grater I also use for grinding whole nutmeg.
• These taste way better than the photo makes them look... I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to taking photos, and only have a phone as a camera, so feel free to pretend there are some exquisite artistic photos that make them look as good as they taste. Also, I made these for my kids in a rush before heading to work so you can also pretend there are more photos of the pancakes being made, or just check out the nice photos at the COOKIE+kate site linked above.

Week 1: Comfort Food - Chipotle Mac and 'Cheese' Burger with Portobello Fries

When I think comfort food I think of three things: lasagne, mac and cheese, and burgers. As I was already eating leftover lasagne when I discovered the theme for the first week, and didn't want to eat lasagne for most of the next week, I thought I'd go with mac'n'cheese or a burger for my comfort food... or better yet, mix mac and cheese with a burger for something like comfort squared. All burgers need fries and portobello mushroom fries are a good choice to provide a facade of healthiness to part of the meal.

There are four main parts to this meal... making the vegan mac and cheese, forming and crumbing the burger patties, making the fries and assembling the burgers.

Vegan Mac and Chipotle Cashew Cheese (Makes enough for six burger patties)

• 250g Macaroni
• 1/2 Cup Raw Cashews
• 1/4 Cup Vegetarian Stock
• 3 Tbsp Savoury Yeast Flakes
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• 1 Tsp Ground Chipotle
• 1 Tsp Salt

1. Soak the cashews in water for at least two hours, but preferably overnight. Soaking the cashews ensures they blend more easily and create a creamier sauce consistency.
2. Cook the macaroni noodles as per the instructions on the packet.
3. While the macaroni is cooking, strain the cashews and combine with the rest of the ingredients in a blender, and blend until the cashews are creamy... about 3 minutes in my blender.
4. Combine the sauce with the strained macaroni and stir to combine.

To make the burger patties I use egg rings as shown in the picture below, but something like round cookie cutters would also work. Refrigerate in the egg rings for about an hour so the cashew cheese sauce sets and the patties hold their shape.

Once the patties are set, they need to be crumbed. The standard crumbing technique involves coating things with three ingredients in order: flour, egg and bread crumbs. Instead of eggs I used a half cup of leftover vegetarian stock mixed with two teaspoons of cornflour to thicken. As the cashew cheese is not very solid at room temperature care should be taken when flipping the patties so they don't fall apart. The crumbed patties should be set to one side, to be cooked later when the portobello fries are baking.

Portobello Mushroom Fries

• 3 Portobello Mushrooms
• 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 Cup slightly thickened liquid, such as vegetarian stock with 2 tsp cornflour
• 1 Cup Panko Breadcrumbs
• 1 Tsp Rubbed Oregano (optional)

1. Slice the mushrooms into chips about 2mm thick.
2. Season the breadcrumbs with salt and pepper, and add the oregano if you are using it.
3. Crumb the chips by coating them with flour, liquid then breadcrumbs.
4. Bake in a single layer on a cookie tray at 200C/400F for 15-20 minutes, turning once.

Before the fries go into the oven, they should look like the picture below. They're done once they've gone golden brown around the edges, which should take just over 15 minutes.

While the fries are baking shallow fry the patties over a medium heat, and assemble the burgers with any further ingredients and/or condiments you wish. My burgers, from the bottom up, go: burger bun bottom, hot sauce, rocket/arugula, mac and cheese patty, sliced avocado, tomatoes, more hot sauce and the burger bun top.

What really makes these burgers for me are the hot sauces. Here in New Zealand we have a fantastic hot sauce company called Fire Dragon Chillies that makes great hot sauces with home grown organic chillies. The sauces I used in my burger are pictured below. The NZ Chilli Eating Champs commemorative sauce provides a great chilli kick while the smokiness of the Sh!thot Chipotle sauce works really well with a creamy cashew cheese sauce.

Note:

The most important thing to me is the savoury yeast flakes. I use the Lotus brand Savoury Yeast Flakes below, as I can order them online from a New Zealand source at a reasonable price.

If I don't have any of these yeast flakes my only other option is a local organic food store which has a nutritional yeast they package themselves which is an entirely different beast. I once bought a bag of their nutritional yeast and made a 'cheese' sauce with it, and promptly discarded the unused yeast after tasting the sauce. The lotus flakes smell and taste cheesy, while the stuff from my local organic store smells and tastes like Marmite which is definitely not what I'm looking for in a cheesy sauce. If you're not aware of what marmite is, it's a yeast extract spread which many New Zealanders love on toast... but it most certainly doesn't taste like cheese.