Chinese seitan salad

The veganized version of the one recipe that I make regularly from "joy of cooking". I got the book as a present and use it as a guestbook for vegans since then, and one day, oh yes, one day all those pictures and texts that tell you how to make something edible out of a whole bird or how to boost your cholesterol level with recipes containing 99 % eggs will have vanished under greetings and flyers and stickers! Serves 2-4.

I guess this would look prettier if it was not all mixed up in the big bowl, but this is my weekday dinner and I am hungry!

Preparation time: 20 minutes (if you have seitan and peeled peanuts)
Suggested music: Something assimilated... Nouvelle Vague - Bela Lugosi's Dead

Ingredients:

• 1 cup asian noodles (your favorite kind)
• 1 onion, chopped (the book says: 2/3 cup sliced scallions, but I can't eat raw onions :/ )
• 2 cups thin strips seitan
• 4 cups shredded Napa cabbage (Chinakohl)
• 1 cup peanuts 
• 1 can mandarin oranges (11 ounce)
• 1/2 cup canola oil (book uses peanut oil) + a bit of a more heat-stable oil for sauteing
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• chili oil or chili flakes
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce + a bit for deglazing
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• salt & pepper

What to do:

1. Heat water in a pot and prepare the noodles according to instructions on the package. Place in a big bowl when finished.
2. In a pan, heat a little bit of oil (for sauteing) and saute the onion and seitan. Deglaze with a bit of soy sauce. Add to the bowl when finished.
3. Place cabbage, peanuts, mandarin oranges (keep the juice!) in the big bowl.
4. Prepare the sauce: 2/3 cup of mandarin orange juice, oil, lemon juice, chili oil/flakes to taste, soy sauce, ginger, salt & pepper to taste. Mix and enjoy.

Lentil rice curry with fruit

Real friends are easy to recognize if you are vegan: They don't annoy you with discussions. Instead, they cook delicious food for you. Here's a recipe from the best ever omnivorous friends from Tübingen. Serves 2.

Preparation time: 2 hours soaking, then about 40 minutes cooking
Suggested music: Moby has a free EP for download (Be The One) :-)

Ingredients:

• 100 g rice
• 100 g lentils
• 1 onion
• oil for sauteing
• 2-3 cm fresh ginger
• 1 clove of garlic
• 2-3 teapoons turmeric
• 2-3 teaspoons curry
• salt & pepper
• 1 teaspoon fresh cilantro
• lemon juice
• fruit! The basic mix is 2 apples & 1 banana. 1 apple can be replaced by anything you like. In sommer, nectarines are really great. Mango works as well.

What to do:

1. Soak the lentils and rice for 2 hours in 500 mL water.
2. Dice the onions and saute for a few minutes. Add minced ginger and garlic. Add turmeric and curry and roast for a short time.
3. Add the lentils and rice plus the soaking water. Let simmer until all the water has been absorbed (about 30 minutes). In the meantime, chop the fruit.
4. Add cilantro. Add salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.
5. Add fruit. Let simmer for 3 more minutes before serving.

Sacher Cupcakes

Today, someone mentioned Sacher torte. And posted a recipe (german). And I did not have chocolate since... I can't even remember (if I don't count the chili in I made on the weekend). Here is my version of this old and famous cake!

Preparation time: with baking and cooling and all about 90 minutes
Suggested music: Oh, we need something from Austria again... Georg Kreisler maybe? (The song is very old and about poisoning pigeons in the park - not very vegan ;-) )

Ingredients:

• 150 g flour
• 100 g sugar
• 100 g margarine
• 2.5 tablespoons soy flour
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• pinch of salt
• 130 mL water
• about 4 tablespoons apricot jam for the filling
• 50 g semidark or dark chocolate + 2 tablespoons soy milk for glazing

What to do:

1. Put paper cupcake liners in your muffin pan and preheat the oven to 175 °C.
2. Mix all ingredients from flour to water to form a relatively sticky dough. 
3. Fill a tablespoon of dough in each of the wells. I got 11 half-filled ones. With a wet finger, press down the dough and flatten the surface. If your finger is wet, the dough won't stick to it.
4. Bake for 18 minutes (check with a toothstick). Take out of the muffin pan and let cool.
5. With a finger, poke a hole in each cupcake and fill with jam. Add a thin layer of jam on top of the cupcake.
6. Melt the chocolate in a hot water bath; take out of the bath and mix with the soy milk. Add a layer of this ganache on the cupcakes, being careful not to mix with the jam.
7. Chill cupcakes in the fridge until the ganache is a bit more solid.

What to do with cabbage

Spring is about to start, but the organic stores still have only the winter vegetables. I asked some veg*ans what to do with cabbage, and was told that it is perfect in african peanut stew. I love african food since I went the first time to the Africa in Tübingen, so I had to try this!

This stew is very tasty, but a bit frustrating concerning the freshly made peanut butter because it uses a lot at once. Peanut peeling time again! This is the recipe I used. I changed some things, and as it is in german, I'll translate it here. Serves 4, together with your favorite grains. I froze the leftovers, and will try to make Injera when I thaw it again.

Preparation time: about 45 minutes
Suggested music: I do not have any african music, but I listened to Irfan during cooking

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 2 carrots
• 1 small (!) cabbage (mine was small and it was still a lot... consider using half a cabbage)
• (the original recipe uses 1 red bell pepper in addition)
• oil for sauteing
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• chili flakes (amount depending on your flakes and your taste buds)
• 1 tablespoon mustard
• 1 can tomatoes
• 250 mL vegetable stock
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 4 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1 can corn
• juice from two oranges (original recipe uses mango juice, to taste)
• salt & pepper

What to do:

1. Dice the onions. Peel the carrots and cut into smaller pieces. Peel the cabbage or wash the outer parts and cut into stripes.
2. In a large pot, heat the oil. Saute the onions and carrots (and bell pepper, if using) until the onions soften. Add chili, cumin and mustard and stir for a minute. Add the cabbage.
3. After a few minutes, and before the cabbage gets burned, add the tomatoes and vegetable stock, plus the thyme, paprika and peanut butter. Let simmer for 10 minutes (until the cabbage is soft).
4. Wash the kidney beans and remove the liquid from the corn. Add to the stew and heat through.
5. Add orange juice and salt & pepper to taste.

3rd Veganniversary

As a vegan, you have to be happy every day that you're alive, because, as everybody knows, it's no way possible to survive at all on a vegan diet. No proteins and such, you know. So, every year that you survive has to be celebrated! Manuel's veganniversary is in January, but we celebrated a bit later. Pictures are not too good, because he was late from the airport and we were terribly hungry ;-)

First: Tofu fish sticks (the german recipe can be found here) with a bit of salad (carrots & apple) and remoulade (vegan mayonnaise I won at the Paris Vegan Day with cucumber and herbs).

Second: Mac & Cheese with alibi green stuff (spinach). Still have sauerkraut left over!

Third: Little layer cake with vanilla pudding and blueberries. The dough I made as in this recipe, the pudding as described here, without the chocolate, but with vanilla soy milk and some extra vanilla. The blueberries I found somewhere in my freezer...

Peanut butter

Or: Reducing a big bag of peanuts to a tiny glass of tasty spread.

When buying peanut butter, you have several choices:

• Regular peanut butter with yummy hydrogenated fats. 
• Organic peanut butter with palm oil. Why does everything have to contain palm oil? This is really annoying because rain forest is destroyed for palm oil plantations. Even some organic companies have been criticized for it recently.
• Organic peanut butter without any other ingredient - no salt, nor sugar... hm, possible, but not optimal.
• I guess there are more options, but these were mine yesterday ;-)

But then you remember that there are some peanuts left somewhere in your kitchen, and just make the peanut butter yourself!

Preparation time: Peanut peeling takes a while, making the spread itself takes about 15 minutes.
Suggested music film: X-Files Season 3 Episode 18 (which has got nothing to do with peanuts, I just watched it while peeling...)

Ingredients:

• peanuts
• salt
• sugar
• oil (anything that does not taste too weird and does not oxidize too fast; peanut oil for example)

What to do:

Start with a decent amount of peanuts.

Watch an episode of X-Files and magically end up with this:

Take an immersion blender or a food processor and puree the peanuts. I use an immersion blender and puree several small batches of peanuts, otherwise the blender becomes hot and starts smelling like burned plastic. It helps to add a little bit of oil - blending will be easier, and the consistency becomes a bit softer. Then add salt and sugar to taste.

Store the peanut butter in the fridge. I'm not sure how long you can keep it there, because mine rarely lasts for more than two weeks.

The hidden powers of sauerkraut

Mac&Cheese seems to be a very famous dish in the US. I had never made it before, but I could not resist the recipe posted by Isa Chandra Moskowitz a few days ago: Click me, I am a tasty recipe! The reason was that it contained a secret ingredient: Sauerkraut! It sounded incredibly weird, but as it came from one of the vegan chefs I would trust the most, I tried it.

Seriously, this tastes fantastic! I have no idea what the sauerkraut does exactly, and how on earth one would try to use sauerkraut to obtain a cheese taste, but it works.

The only downside is that I have a huge glass of leftover sauerkraut in the fridge now, and will be eating it for the rest of the week...