Featuring recipes I’ve created, learned from friends, or modified from the Internet. Rarely featuring simply unreal vegan creations from establishments around North America. And I don’t make you read my life story before I let you see the ingredient list — what a feature!
I have another website that contains some of my math/software projects. It is nothing like vegan cooking.
Heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan. To make the 2 flax eggs, combine 2 T flax meal and 6 T water in a small dish. Refrigerate for at least 5 min. To make the vegan butter milk, mix 1⁄2 T lemon juice in 1⁄2 cup vegan milk. In a big bowl, add a cup of sugar. Grate and whisk the zest into the bowl.
Add the wet ingredients to the bowl:
Whisk in the dry ingredients in this order:
Once smooth, whisk in:
Finally, scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 45-60 minutes.
While it’s baking, combine the following in a small bowl and mix well:
This stuff makes a phenomenal spread. When the loaf has finished baking, let it (mostly) cool in the pan. Slice off a thick piece, butter it and enjoy!
This recipe is something I’ve compiled from two different sources. The first is this video, which I drew on to figure out the baguette-specific components of the recipe: the folding, the resting times, the baking duration, etc. The other source is this book by Ken Forkish. While I haven’t tried other books, I highly recommend this one as an effective introduction to making great bread.
Make a poolish the night before. Add 1⁄8 tsp instant yeast to 500 g bread flour in a 6 quart container and mix. Next, add 500 g water (with a temperature of roughly 30 degrees Celsius). Let sit 12 – 14 hours or until 2 – 3x its original size.
When the poolish is ready, add 500 g bread flour to a 12 quart container. Add 3 g instant dry yeast and 21 g salt. Mix well.
To the 6 quart container, add 250 g of approximately 41 degree Celsius water. If you pour it around the edges it will help to un-stick the poolish from its container.
Pour the poolish slurry into the 12 quart container and mix well by hand, ensuring there are no lumps. Next begins the folding and resting phase.
If you plan to add garlic to the baguette, now is the time! Add and fold to ensure it distributes evenly.
Let the dough rise for the next 2.5 – 3 hours. During this time, the dough will require 3 – 4 folds to build its strength. It’s easiest to do the folds in the first hour or so (e.g., every 20 – 25 minutes, fold all four corners of the dough to their opposite sides). After the second or third fold, you should notice that the dough is better able to retain its shape.
Once the dough has risen in volume to 2 – 3 times its size, it’s time to cut and portion the dough. With a dough scraper, cut the dough into 4 equal sized pieces (roughly 443 g each).
Give the dough an initial shape by stretching, folding the sides into the centre, and then sealing the top to the bottom against the working surface. See here for an excellent video description. They should now look elongated — vaguely baguette shaped, even!
Set your oven to 500 Celsius and start the pre-heating process. Make sure your pizza stone is in place if you’re using one, otherwise set a baking tray on the oven rack so that it heats.
Once the rough-shaped doughs have rested another 15 minutes, it’s time to do the final shaping.
Shape the dough into baguette form. Use the pushing and rolling technique as seen here.
Let the baguettes rest another 45 minutes. Ensure they are supported on both sides so that they rise up and don’t flop to the side.
Top with flaked maldon salt, if desired.
Score the loaves and insert them into the oven. Bake for 15 minutes or until they just start to acquire some burn-ish spots. I find that throwing an ice cube or two into the bottom of the oven helps to keep the oven humidity up, which aids crust formation.
Enjoy!
You’ll want to start this the night before, too, so that the veggies have time to absorb the flavour of the pickling solution.
Boil some water.
In the meantime, cut the carrot, daikon and cucumber into spears. Cut the jalapeno into rounds. Insert them into a jar. Inserting them aligned allows you to fit more, and it looks nicer too!
Mix the boiled water, rice vinegar, salt and water in a container.
Add the liquid mixture to the jar of veg. Let the liquid cool for an hour, and then store in the fridge overnight.
If you’re using smoked tofu, it goes great just the way it is. Slice it up and get ready to put it on some fresh rounds of baguette.
Cut the baguette into rondelles. If you want to toast the fresh baguette slices, you can put them in the oven at 400 Celsius for 2–5 minutes.
Top the baguette with: vegan mayo, a slice or two of smoked tofu, some pickled veggies, and a few drops (or light drizzle) or sriracha.
Enjoy!
Mix the dry ingredients together. Ensure the protein powder is mixed thoroughly with the other dry ingredients, so it doesn’t get clumpy. Make the “buttermilk”: juice a lemon, remove the seeds, combine the juice with the milk and stir until the texture/viscosity visibly changes (5 – 10 seconds). Add the buttermilk to the dry ingredients and mix until homogeneous. The batter should be quite thick. If you think it is too thick, add more soy milk. Add the olive oil and teaspoon of vanilla until combined.
To a heated frying pan on medium heat: add oil, add batter, let the pancakes begin! The secret to knowing when they’re done on the first side is to look for “dry” edges and air bubbles popping up through the centre.
Plate them, top with some banana slices if desired, and ladle on some berry compote.
Pour the frozen berries into a sauce pan on medium heat. Stir regularly and help the berries break down by poking/prodding/squishing them with a wooden spoon. When you’ve got a textured berry juice, raise the heat until the mixture starts to come to a boil, then add the sugar and the corn starch. Reduce heat to simmer and stir while the corn starch changes the viscosity of the mixture. Enjoy!
My experience wound up being relatively straightforward, but I’d recommend reading through all the steps once before begining, so you know where you can multitask and where you cannot. :-)
Sautee the onions and garlic on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add vegetable broth and water. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat to simmer. Add ginger, garam masala (I didn’t measure, but maybe 2 tbsp?), turmeric (maybe 1 tbsp?) and soy sauce (1-2 tbsp) to taste. I added ~1 tbsp chili oil (for the heat, but let’s be honest, it’s mostly because the one I own has MSG). Let the soup simmer for as long as you can stand it (20-30 minutes). In the last 5-10 minutes, add some spinach for health reasons (yay iron).
* You can use more traditional sounding ingredients to flavour the broth: cloves, star anise, cinnamon, etc., but these ingredients are staples of a garam masala spice mix, so I simply opted for the cheaper, easier option that comes with a few bonus flavours.
In the meantime, sautee the shiitake mushrooms in a nice little mix of sesame and grapeseed oil (or whatever your preference is). Lightly salt, pepper and/or lemon the mushrooms near the end of their experience in the pan so as to accent their natural savoury flavour. When they’ve seen a nice little fry, take ‘em off the heat and set them aside.
Optional idea: add the mushrooms right into the broth so that the broth picks up that savoriness. I didn’t do this, because I wanted to retain that fried ‘shroom texture.
While you’re frying the mushrooms, bring some water to a boil in yet another pot that you’ll have to wash later. Boil the rice noodles until they’re done. When they’re finished, pour them into a strainer to get rid of the water, and run them under cold water to bring down their temperature. Pour a tbsp of sesame oil over them so they don’t stick together and then serve into bowl(s).
The rule with tofu in pho is: the more kinds you generate, the happier you’ll be. Pho is about variety!
The simplest way to prep some protein for the pho is to cut up a block of firm tofu into bricks and to add them directly into the broth to soak up the flavour.
Additionally, you could dry fry about half of the bricks in a pan until they stop “screaming”. They’ll come out golden brown and crispy, with a unique texture that I find very appealing.
Galaxy brain: marinate the tofu in a mix of oil and nutritional yeast. Sautee until golden and slightly crispy.
Finally, you could also buy a block of smoked tofu (or “Sriracha tofu”) and use them for protein-filled pho toppings.
To prepare the garnishes, pluck the basil from its leaves; chop the green onion, rinse the bean sprouts, and chop the Thai red chilis into thin rounds like you did the green onion. Serve on a plate so that each dinner guest can add garnishes to their liking. Augment with a dish of soy sauce and one of chili oil, Sriracha, etc.
With the noodles already in soup bowls, add a small pile of shiitakes on one side of the bowl, add tofu piles in other parts of the bowl, and add a small pile of sprouts in the centre. Ladle soup over the contents in the bowl and make sure that the noodles are nicely covered with broth. Add garnishes as desired. Enjoy!