Brunswick Stew

I grew up in Atlanta and had my share of bbq and brunwick stew before moving North and going vegan. Needless to say, I was intrigued by this month's VegNews magazine which had a recipe for Southern Vegetarian Brunswick Stew and Cornbread. I thought this might be a good stew but had no notions that this would actually taste like the stew that I grew up eating. My husband Mike did not either and was a little afraid of my dinner plans. After we started eating it, we were shocked to find it did actually taste like brunswick stew. SHOCKED. It was really good.



The recipe is from Robin Robertson:

Vegetarian Brunswick Stew

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 12 oz package vegetarian sausage links, cut into 1/2-inch pieces *
1 sweet yellow onion, finely chopped
2 large white potatoes, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger **
3 1/2 cups vegetable stock or water
1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (16-ounce) package frozen succotash
3 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
2 teaspoons prepared mustard
1 teaspoon light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 (12-ounce) package frozen vegetarian burger crumbles ***
1/2 teaspoon Liquid Smoke

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the "sausage" links and cook until browned, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the sausage from the pot and set aside.

2. Reheat the oil in the saucepan and add the onion, potato, garlic, and ginger. Add 1/4 cup of the stock or water, cover, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the lid, add the remaining stock and stir in the tomatoes, succotash, tamari, mustard, sugar, allspice, Tabasco, and salt and pepper to taste, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, uncovered, until the vegetables are tender, about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. During the last 10 minutes of cooking time, add the reserved “sausage,” the vegetarian burger crumbles, and the Liquid Smoke.

Serves 4 to 6

* We used only 6 oz lite life vegan sausage links. Next time we might try sausage crumbles instead, maybe lite life in the tube.
** Ginger People jarred prepared ginger works fine here.
*** Morningstar frozen burger crumbles

We served this with some vegan southern cornbread (modified from the article in veg news by Robin Robertson) cooked in an iron skillet.

Cornbread

1-2 Tbsp canola oil
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup soymilk
3 Tbsp maple syrup
1 cup frozen corn, defrosted
1/4 cup canola oil

Place an 8" cast iron skillet in the oven with 1-2 Tbsp canola oil in the skillet. Place in oven and preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, mix the soy milk, maple syrup, oil, and corn. Add to the dry mixture and stir until just mixed. Pour into the hot skillet, and spread it if necessary. Bake for 25-30 minutes until lightly browned on top. Turn cornbread out of skillet and onto a plate (it will be upside down). Cut into wedges.

Printing recipes

I installed a new plugin to my site today which makes the entries print in a printerfriendly way. Now you can print the recipes and not get the sidebars, just the entry and comments. It should just work autumatically when you print (no special buttons). I haven't been able to test this yet because my printer has decided not to connect to my wireless router today.

Tomato Spinach Bread Pudding

We got 7 lbs of Tomatoes from the CSA this week AND 2 quarts of cherry tomatoes. This weeks menu kind of sounds like Forest Gump talking about tomatoes: Cherry Tomato Sauce with Orzo, Tomato Soup, and Tomato Bread pudding. This is the tomato bread pudding:



Tomato Bread Pudding

5 medium tomatoes or 3 large (~2 lbs - peeled, halved, cored, and seeded) *
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
pepper
2/3 Whole wheat baguette (cut into 1 to 1 1/2 in cubes)
2-3 Tbsp vegan margarine, melted
1/4 cup vegan parmesan replacement **
1 bunch of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
fresh thyme, minced (~4-5 sprigs)
1-2 Tbsp fresh basil, roughly chopped
1 tsp balsamic

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Grease a 1 1/2 qt shallow casserole dish.

Place the tomatoes in a food processor with salt, pepper, and sugar. Pulse 4-5 times until the tomatoes are nearly pureed, but still have some recognizable tomato chunks. Set aside.

Toss the bread cubes in a bowl with the margarine. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for about a minute until the garlic is fragrant. Add the spinach and stir. If there is no water clinging to the spinach from washing, you might need to add a teaspoon. Cover and cook for about 30 seconds. Stir. Cover and cook for about another 30 seconds. You basically want to cook it until it is just wilted. Add the balsamic.

Place 1/2 the bread cubes in the casserole dish. Top with the spinach mixture. Sprinkle the basil over the spinach. Add the rest of the bread cubes. Top with the tomato puree and gently stir around a little to incorporate the tomatoes (just a little stir/poke).

Bake for about 30 minutes until browned. Top with the vegan parmesan replacement. Cook for about another 4 minutes.

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* Invest in an Oxo tomato peeler. These are great if you only have a few tomatoes to peel. If I need to peel a lot, I'll resort to the old boiling water trick, but for a few this peeler is very handy. It also works well on peaches.

** We make our own vegan parmesan replacement from a recipe in the uncheese cookbook. In the picture above, you can see that I didn't grind it enough in the food processor when I made this batch, but it is really tasty anyway. It is made from miso, blanched almonds, nutiritional yeast, and salt. You can find this recipe if you go to this google book search page and scroll to the bottom right of the page and search for "parmesan". It should be around the 3rd hit. It is also a good book to have, so I would recommed ordering the book. I have made this "parmesan" with both white mellow miso and with the darker barley miso. I liked the taste of the barley miso better, but it looks funny. The white miso looks better as a parmesan topping and has a milder taste.

Apple Streusel Pie

This is my grandmothers recipe which I've used for many many years and has been veganized. I let this one get a little dark on the top, but it will still taste just fine.



Vegan Dutch Apple Pie

Filling Ingredients
6 large apples (or 7 medium sized), peeled and sliced (I prefer Granny Smiths)
3 Tbs vegan margarine
1/4-1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 deep dish pie crush (make your own or just buy one)

Topping Ingredients
3/4 cup unbleached flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup brown sugar
6 Tbsp vegan margarine


Preheat oven to 425 F.

Poke holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork and blind bake the crust for about 9-10 minutes. Take out of the oven and set aside.

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Topping: Mix the flour, cinnamin, and brown sugar. With a fork or pastry cutter, work in the butter till it becomes incorporated and crumbly. Set aside.

Filling: Melt the butter in a large pot. Add the apples and stir to coat. Cook for about a minute or two until they just start to soften a little. Stir in the sugar and the cinnamon.

With a slotted spoon, move the apples to the pie crust, leaving behind the juices (they will make the pie soggy). Sprinkle with a little more cinnamon if you wish. Sprinkle/pat the topping over the apples.

Bake at 450 for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and bake another 15. You may need to add a foil collar around the edge of the crust after the first 15 minutes if the crust starts browning too quickly.

Cool and eat with some vegan vanilla ice cream.

What to do with 12 lbs of Apples??

After apple picking last weekend, we wound up with 12 lbs of apples. I got a bunch of green granny smith apples because they are so good in pies. The first thing we made was a German Apple Cake from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. It was sooooo yummy. And it definitely did not last long. Since the recipe was pretty healthy (low sugar, low-fat) we ate it for breakfast a couple of days. Here are some pictures:

Chocolate Chip Cookie update - better the next day

This is an update to my previous entry about the chocolate chip cookies from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's new cookbook, The Joy of Vegan Baking. These cookies became amazing the next day. Normally cookies are best right out of the oven, but when we tasted them right out of the oven, they seemed to greasy. The next day, that element was gone and the cookies were great.