As a person who has always loved fruits and vegetables (I'm also generally one of those who would rather fill up on a nutritious dinner and skip dessert altogether,) I've never really understood the desire to make them taste like meat. Why should nourishing foods that taste perfectly good in their own right aspire to taste like something they are not? Especially in light of the fact that acquiring a taste for said foods could be the gateway back into a life of over-consuming animal products?
I'm just going to come out and say it: Veggie burgers are the gateway drug of plant based foods. Next thing you know you'll be scarfing down big slabs of pink slime at your local fast-food chain. (I'm kidding, sort of.)
In truth I've actually often been an eater of veggie burgers,(here comes the but) BUT i have always preferred the varieties that haven't been processed, textured and seasoned to simulate an actual burger. I've tried various ch'kins, and even facons, and with few exceptions, these types of products usually fail miserably at their goal.
I thought I would experiment with a couple such recipes at home, and see if I couldn't get a better handle on why so many of us seem to love meatless meat.
The first selection I chose was a non-meatloaf. The recipe came from the Vitamix "Live Fresh" cookbook, and the ingredients are as follows:
16 oz firm tofu, drained, patted dry, and weighed down in a strainer overnight to expel as much liquid as possible (if you forget, and I'm not saying I did, it will come out just fine if you give it a thorough pressing wrapped in several paper towels.)
2 tbsp arrowroot powder (this is an easily digestible thickening starch, similar to cornstarch but gentler on your system. Bob's Red Mill makes it, and you can find BRM products at Ocean State Job Lot for less then you will generally find them elsewhere. Initially I sleeved out over buying food there too, but they have some great bargains on non-perishables. This does NOT mean I am turning into my father.)
4 tbsp water (organic vegan water is best, but if you cannot find any, clean tap water will do the trick.)
2 tsp Bragg's Amino Acids
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/4 cups chopped onions
1/2 cup organic chopped organic vegan celery
2 cups chopped portobello mushrooms
1 tbsp water (see above.)
1 tbsp + 2 tsp no salt seasoning (I used Spike, although I tossed the ox a while ago and I honestly don't recall whether or not. It contains salt.)
1 1/2 tsp dried basil
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried sage
3/4 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs
1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice (one last interjection here, did you know you can buy cooked rice in the frozen food department? I literally came across this yesterday and was astounded at the sheer laziness of the person who doesn't have a few minutes to plop some dry rice and water into a steamer. Then, as luck would have it, I went to prepare this recipe, and being the last ingredient on the list, had everything else done and had to stop and wait for my rice to cook, at which point I was astounded by the sheer genius of the person who thought of frozen cooked rice.)
Some of you are just wondering why I don't shut up and tell you how to make it? Well, fine. (grumble, grumble.)
Preheat the oven to 325 or 350, but 350 if you want to do it right. Grease a loaf pan with olive oil, and neglect until you have paid sufficient attention to the ingredients. Arrowroot, water, Aminos, tofu, and walnuts into the Vitamix in that order!
Blend until they form a lovely milk-shake consistency. Sautéed onions, celery, and mushrooms in water with spike and herbs until veggies are flaccid.
Combine tofu mix, veggies, rice, and breadcrumbs in a bowl and transfer contents into the greased loaf pan. The cookbook does not instruct you to remove the mixture from the bowl, however, one assumes that one didn't grease the loaf pan in vain, so one takes a bold and flashy leap of culinary faith and goes ahead and transfers the mixture anyway, despite not being told! I stand in defiance of lonely loaf pans! Viva la revoluçion!/i>
Once again, in an unprecedented turn of events, place the pan in the oven and bake for 75 minutes. Cool for 30 minutes, then flip it out onto a serving platter and serve. If you are very impatient, and find yourself thinking you don't need to wait 30 minutes, let my absence of a photo serve as a cautionary tale. While my meatloaf was In fact delicious, and the texture and flavor surprisingly satisfying, some might even say meaty, my flip after 10 minutes was a disaster.
I do have a shot of it in the dish, looking much more like hamburgerless helper than meatloaf.
I also made a spicy Thai sauce to go with, mostly because I happened to have all e ingredients on hand already:
Mighty Thai Sauce (also from the Vitamix Cookbook.)
1/2 cup tamari
1/2 cup agave nectar
2 peeled cloves garlic
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup OVW (Organic Vegan Water)
1/2 cup raw tahini
Blend. All in all it wasn't the best compliment to the meatloaf. The picture is shown with some organic ketchup on top. Sometimes you just don't screw with the classics.
I followed this up with a raw "Un-Chicken Noodle Soup" from the Boutenko's "Fresh" cookbook.
Ingredients:
2 cups OVW
1/2 cup walnuts
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup chopped celery
2 tbsp Nama Shoyu
2-3 cloves of garlic (word to the wise,stick with two unless you want this to be really spicy.)
1 grated carrot
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
2 white potatoes, grated or Spiralized.
I have to say that while I enjoy this cookbook, the directions are often unclear. For example it begins by instructing you to blend all the ingredients together, then add the next few ingredients, blend some more, and add the last few unblended, which is hard to do if you followed the first instruction correctly. As near as I can figure, your best bet is to blend everything up to and including the garlic, then combine in a large bowl with the carrot, parsley, and potatoes (which constitutes the "noodles" of the dish.)
This one was ok, but not my favorite by any means, and I would honestly suggest skipping the grated veggies in favor of some cooked soba noodles or something else. The "broth," as it were, was spicy but tasty.
I hope you're enjoying reading this blog! I am having a great time cooking things up and writing about them for you! Stay tuned!
- Posted using BlogPress
Location:Madison, CT
No comments:
Post a Comment