Tag Archives: rice

Mar 18 2012
7 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Vegan Longanisa

You’re either thinking, “Say what?! Vegan longanisa?!” or “WTF is longanisa?” after seeing the title of this post. Longanisa is a garlicky Filipino sausage made traditionally with pork. Some people liken it to chorizo. It’s eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or midnight snack and usually served with sinangag (garlicky fried rice) and fried eggs. For me, longanisa is kind of like an equivalent of frozen pizza. We usually had some in the freezer and could cook them up when we wanted something easy and delicious to eat. A lot of Filipino restaurants offer longanisa for breakfast. Uncle Mike’s in Chicago is one of them:

Photo from LTH Forum

Longanisa is one of the things I knew I would miss after going vegan. It’s not just the taste of it. It’s like this connection to my culture, something I can mention to any Filipino person that will instantly bond us. We didn’t have it often growing up which is a good thing when you consider how fatty it is. Longanisa is like the frozen Ramen noodle for Filipino-American kids when they move out of the house and want something that reminds them of home. So, yes. I miss longanisa, and I had accepted the fact that I would probably never eat it again. But then, I decided to try and veganize it.

Ingredients:
14 oz Gimme Lean Beef Style Veggie Protein
1/2 head minced garlic — came out to about 1/3 cup
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp sea salt
4 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
safflower or olive oil, for frying
The following are optional:
2 tbsp flax meal
1-2 tsp annatto powder (to give the sausages a red color; I did not add this)

First, I minced the garlic and then tossed it in with the ‘meat.’ I set it aside and then mixed together the dry ingredients in a small bowl. I added it to the ‘meat’ mixture along with the vinegar. Then I mooshed it all together.

I formed the ‘meat’ into small sausages (about the length of your average breakfast link but with more girth… heeeheh… girth). I ended up with 16 sausages. I put them in the fridge to chill. I won’t comment on how they kind of look like poo. Oh, oops. I just did. Hmm… maybe the whole purpose of adding annatto powder is to make it look less like poo.

Traditional longanisa recipes call for the meat to sit in the fridge for at least one hour, preferably for over 24 hours. I couldn’t wait so I took some out after about 2.5 hours and fried them up in safflower oil over medium heat for about 10 minutes, turning every 2-3 minutes.

I made some sinangag and a salad of tomato, onion, and cilantro to accompany my longanisa. I have always felt like being Filipino and loving Filipino food would make going vegan an impossible challenge. I’m glad to have proven myself wrong yet again. Is the recipe exactly like traditional longanisa? No. But it’s a great substitute that I know I’ll improve on with every try. As a bonus, it has ZERO cholesterol. Who wants all that pork fat anyway? Gross!

Kain tayo! That means “let’s eat!” …. Melissa

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Feb 03 2012
5 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Almond crusted tofu and saffron cardamom rice!

Kinda like a party in your mouth. Of course, everything’s a party in your mouth when you’re vegan. My sense of smell and taste got a lot more sensitive after I stopped eating animal products, particularly dairy. The fat in cheese, cream and butter really numbed my tastebuds. I find I like subtler flavors these days and think everything is too sweet. Who knows. I was feeling ambitious tonight.

I threw a good pinch of saffron and a couple of green cardamom pods. I’m showing you brown cardamom too… but it’s not right for pairing with saffron. The flavor for brown cardamom is WAY more intense. Good saffron has gold tips and deep red ocher coloring. Sometimes it’s dyed with turmeric or other things… EEK! You can tell if it’s it has been dyed if the saffron is uniform in color.

I prepared my brown rice in the microwave because it’s easy and I’m a little lazy. Is that going to be a problem? Lazy or not, I do recommend removing the cardamom pods before serving the rice. Leaving it in risks you or someone else biting into it and tasting how I imagine lemon cleaning solution would taste. Meanwhile I combined in a bowl:

1 cup of almond meal

3-4 tablespoons of arrowroot starch (any starch will do)

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

salt to taste

I chopped up my tofu and ‘breaded’ it. I spread it out on a foil lined pan that I sprayed with olive oil and threw a handful of slivered almonds onto it to keep the tofu from sticking.

I baked it at 350F/175C for 15 minutes covered in tinfoil and took it off for the last 10 minutes. The last 10 minutes browned the edges and made it pretty. I sliced up some avocado because I had a ripe one and kind of liked how the beige, yellow and pale green looked together. Everything got a light dusting of sea salt, I drizzled some balsamic vinegar on the avocado and then I ate it. The end.

Just kidding. The buttery avocado was balanced by the balsamic vinegar. The light saffron was perfect with the avocado and with the nuttiness of the almond crusted tofu. The light lemon, floral, spice aroma from the cardamom brought out the honey and olive aromas in the saffron and tied the whole thing together… like that rug from the Big Lebowski.

This is Christie, signing off.

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Dec 07 2011
3 Comments
Main Dishes, Recipes

Delicious/Disgusting Bachelor Chow

Here’s the deal : I like mixing different food together to make something new. Ultimately, it looks unappetizing, inedible. I don’t care because it’s me eating it.

This is why writing for this blog is going to be decidedly difficult.

When I first started going vegan with by better half, I hit the same wall all soon-to-be-vegans do : WTF can you eat that doesn’t have meat or dairy in it? My go-to was rice.

Rice is deceptively easy to cook if you treat it tenderly and with respect. I prefer brown rice which is harder to cook for some, mostly because it takes longer to cook. And I must admit that it took (and is taking) a lot of trial and error to get the texture right. But the result is healthier than white rice.

Regardless of which kind of rice you choose to cook, rice by itself is pretty effing dull. Granted, you’ll get some basic nutrition out of it, but without loading up on soy sauce it can pretty much suck. Especially when you eat it every. night. like I did when I was first going vegan.

My solution to the boring rice problem was Bachelor Chow.

No, it’s not the dog food you see on Futurama. Rather, it’s a mix of things that can be super easy to cook, and winds up giving you an extraordinary amount of nutrition. Then I proceed to make it into junkfood with the things I add to it.

Let’s begin with the ground-level edition of BachChow, shall we?

BACHELOR CHOW

~6 Cups Water
1 Cup Brown Rice
1 Cup Quinoa
1/2 Cup Lentils

Estimated prep/cooking time ~50 minutes

Get a pot big enough to furnish ~7-8 Cups of material. Drop your water in there, and bring it to a full boil. Dump the rice, quinoa, and lentils all into the boiling water. Wait until the water starts to act all uppity and try to boil over, and drop the burner head down to medium heat (a little above medium is sufficient). Now, you play the waiting game.

With rice, you shouldn’t have to stir it to make it do its thing. Just let the boiling water do the work. Wait a half hour, and then return to the pot. If it still has water, let it boil another 5 minutes or so. But once holes start appearing in the mixture, that’s when it’s go time (Read : Get ready to make sure you don’t lose your batch of Bach to the burn deities).

Get your wooden spoon and go around the edges of the mixture to keep it from sticking. Then go from the outside of the pan in, so you scrape the bottom of the pot. If you feel resistance or a bumpy texture at the bottom of the pan, quickly go around the pot outside-inning until you ensure there is no stickage at the bottom of the pot. Turn off the heat. Note that there may be a little teensy-weensy bit of water left in the bottom of the pot. That’s totally cool. Just let the rice absorb what’s left of it.

Now you should have baseline BachChow. It has some fiber, some carbs, some aminos, some iron.  The rice should be soft, the lentils should be squishy, and the quinoa should make the dish look like a bunch of tiny sperm and egg exploded. It’s pretty damn good as it is. But you may want to add some flavor.

Below are some suggestions on how to spice up your BachChow to make it look horrific, and make it taste amazing.

Things you may want :
Daiya grated cheese (Mozzarella and Cheddar)
Garlic salt
Liquid Aminos
Hot Sauce (Tapatio, Cholula, Sriracha)
Tempeh

I’m not saying you need to mix all of the above into the BachChow. But I’m not saying you can’t, either. I like to add Liquid Aminos, hot sauce, and Daiya at the minimum. If you want to add some meaty texture, make some tempeh strips and drop them in there. Garlic salt can be a gangster addition, but some freshly diced garlic is a healthier choice.

Frankly, BachChow is something you should experiment with. Add veggies, add other sauces, add tomato sauce. Do what feels right. You may end up making an earth shattering mixture that is deceptively easy to make and reproduce.

Good luck with your BachChow.

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