Vegan Pasta

The purpose of today's cooking adventure was to see what fake soy cheese was all about. Continue reading for the results...


Meet the ingredients: Pasta, Coconut Milk, White Beans, White Onions, Garlic, Shallots, Fake Soy Havarti, Shallots, Yellow Pepper, Red Pepper, Endives...

Margarine, Flour, Sun Dried Tomatoes in Oil, Capers and Olive Oil.

My first thought was to make a basic Mornay Sauce without the butter, milk or cheese. So, let's just call this a "Yanrom Sauce". I made a "roux" with margarine and flour. Then I poured in a can of scalded coconut milk.

This is the soy havarti, aka fake cheese. Since I couldn't find fake edam or parmigiano-reggiano, I settled for something with a hopefully creamy taste. I was wrong. Fake cheese is awful. Icky, ick, ick! So with nothing else to do with the entire $6 block of fake cheese, I put all of its 900 calories into the sauce hoping the other ingredients would obfuscate its flavour.

At least it melted, but it's just not gooey or stringy. Add salt, pepper and I also put in a few capers for good measure.

While the cheese is melting in the sauce, use some olive oil in another pan to fry the onion, then shallots and finally the garlic. After a Little While (tm) add the rinsed out can of white beans, sun dried tomatoes and chopped up peppers. I deglazed with water a couple times. If white wine were on hand, that would have been the preferred deglazing agent.

Now came the endives. I've never cooked with them before and they were expensive!

Chop, chop chop! Endives are grown underground so they remain white. Raw, they are somewhat bitter.

To complete the sauce, I combined both pots together.

And there it is, on top of some pasta. Tasty. You can barely taste the cheese at all! I'm not sure how to describe the flavour. It's an Asian-Italian-Hippie infusion.

Chocolate Cranberry & Almond Brownies

Not having made brownies in over ten years, I decided to give it a whirl.

Meet the Ingredients

Cream butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla and elmond extract
In a double boiler, melt some chocolate. In this case, some blocks of unsweetened baker's chocolate and some semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Add chocolate to butter mixture.

I understand baking power is a leavening agent of some sort. I threw some in for good measure.

Then I added flour, almonds, dried cranberries and skor toffee chips.

Bake at 350 till a toothpick says otherwise. 45 minutes for me.

Then for some reason, I decided I wanted cold brownies, so I inverted them on a sheet and...

Put them in the freezer for an hour.

Voila. Decadent. Perhaps a bit too much sugar and the sugar's caramelized a bit too much on the bottom.The cranberry is a really nice contrast with all of the sweet. A little bit of orange would probably go well too.I used sliced almonds, so they're hard to taste in there. Almond chunks or walnuts next time.

Pear, Apricot & Almond Bread

Inspired by Eileen's delicious Apricot loaf and Jamie Oliver, I bring you my latest no-recipe bread creation!

Flour, water, yeast, salt and sugar

Create your own retention pond (man-made lakes for you marketing folk)

Knead (poorly) and let rise.

Step 4: Caramelize Pears in butter


Add Amaretto and Corn Syrup. I was looking for honey, but I couldn't find any. Hence the Corn Syrup.



Add some dried apricots while you're at it. Oh, and some Apricot Jam. I wanted to add marmalade too, but I went with...

Zest du L'orange

I ended up reducing it for over an hour by continuously adding water. The pears were really resilient and refused to soften! When done, reserve and allow to cool.

After dough has doubled in size, knead some of the gooey fruit mixture into it along with sliced almonds.

It goes into a greased pan.

Alternatively, roll out some dough and create some sort of bread turn-over with the filling.

The Loaf took about 70 minutes at 350 degrees.

The "turn-over" took 50 minutes at 350.


Yum, yumm!

In retrospect, the bread is a bit dry, perhaps over-cooked. Sixty minutes next time along with some butter or olive oil in the dough to keep it moist. Maybe some almond extract in the dough as well.

Grilled Pork and Mango Salad

From my new favourite cookbook, Company's Coming: Simple Suppers.

1lb Pork Tenderloin
1 tsp Chili powder
1/4 cup hickory bbq sauce

8 Cups cut or torn romaine lettuce
14 oz can of sliced mangoes, chopped
1 cup thinly sliced red pepper

Sweet and Spicy Dressing
1/2 cup Italian or ranch dressing
2 tbsp Lime or orange juice
2 tbsp liquid honey
1/2 tsp chili powder

Sprinkle all sides of pork with chili powder. Cook on grill until done, turning occasionally. Brush with bbq sauce and cook for another 4 to 5 minutes. Remove to cutting board. Cover with foil and let stand for 10 minutes. Cut into slices.

Layer next 3 ingredients on 4 large plates. Top with pork.

Dressing
Combine all ingredients in bowl. Makes about 3/4 cup. Drizzle over salads.

Okay, here's my improvisations. First of all, I was only cooking for two so I halved the pork and the lettuce. For the pork I actually used two boneless pork chops and cooked them on the George Foreman. I didn't have romaine lettuce so I used iceberg. I used one fresh mango. Use two if cooking for four. I cut up half of one red pepper.

For the dressing I used the Italian and the orange juice. Lime would have been better, but I didn't have it. I made the full recipe and kept the left overs to use on my lunch salad the next day.

The meal turned out great and was quick and easy. Would have been better with a nice white wine.

Yam Fries Dipping Sauce

Made this in Victoria a little while back. No pictures I'm afraid.

In a sauce pan, sauté shallots garlic and onions in some butter. Reduce heat, add gobs of mayo. Spicify it with smoke paprika, salt, pepper, cumin, dried parsley and whatever you desire. Add secret ingredient which is pureed chipotle peppers. Add second ingredient: a massive amount of parmesan cheese.

Apply liberally to yam fries.

Have heart attack.

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

A friend sent me this recipe and I decided to try it this weekend. It seemed kind of interesting. I would have never ever thought of combining sweet potatoes and coconuts in a million years. Especially not in soup form. Anyways, here's how it went.


I started out by frying up some onions and garlic in a saucepan. This is always my favorite part of cooking because it smells sooooooo good :)


Next step was to add some chopped up sweet potatoes and some chicken broth and boil for a bit (until the potatoes turn soft).


Once the potatoes were soft, I was supposed to add some coconut milk and spices... so I did. The recipe called for curry powder, but I didn't have any, so I used chili powder instead.


I put everything into the blender for a bit to get it all into one consistent mixture. Have I mentioned that I love my blender?


The result was interesting. It wasn't quite was I was expecting. It was good, but I wasn't blown away by it. Maybe cuz I didn't follow the recipe to the letter. I think next time I might try using regular milk instead of the coconut kind. That may work better for me. We shall see!

Taco Pie

I made my infamous taco pie for dinner tonight. Soo good. The ingredients are shown above. Ground beef, taco seasoning, onion, green pepper, tomato, cheese, shells, and spicy death sauce.


I started out by frying some onion and green pepper and browning the ground beef simultaneously.


Once that was done I dumped the veggies into the beef and added the taco seasoning and spicy death sauce. I suppose you could add some beans to the mix too. But, like most things beans give me gas, so I chose not to :P


I also added some chili powder and some "secret ingredient". I then simmered everything until most of the liquid was gone.


Once that was done, I layered the shells and the taco beef mixture in a casserole dish. If you use your casserole dish as much as I do you may want to wipe out the dust first. (I think this was actually the first time I used it). Then I threw some tomatoes and shredded cheese on top and baked the whole thing for about 20 min or so.


And here it is! It was pretty tasty and I ended up eating more than I should have. Soooo full now. The good news is I still have over half of it for leftovers this week. I probably won't have to cook again until the weekend. Nice.