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Showing posts with label You Won't Belive Its Vegan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label You Won't Belive Its Vegan. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Mofo: Pizza Roll Madness!!

So I was scouring the internets last week for some new pizza recipes, because perfecting my own pizza dough has become a little big of an obsession of mine lately.  The You Wont't Believe It's Vegan! has a pretty good one that i've been using, and it's worked well for me many a time, but I wanted to shop around a bit before I commit wholely to this one pizza dough....Anyway, I end up on the Vegan Dad blog, and I gotta say, that guy really knows his stuff.  I lust after his food and his mind, you gotta check it out if you haven't.  So what do I find, but a recipe for vegan pizza rolls.  After my initial rage that I had to get this idea from someone else instead of coming up with it myself, I immediately started making them!!  I used the reposted pizza dough recipe he had up from Vegan With a Vengeance, I'm not sure how it's possible that I don't own this cookbook, but somehow I dont.  Weird.  I liked this recipe more, although to be honest my pizza dough turns out differently enough each time I make it and the two recipes were similar enough, that I suspect the difference was more user error that the actual recipe.  Either way, bygones.....
 They turned out sooooo GOOD!! And they were pretty easy too, I have to say.  You basically take the pizza dough and roll it out into a big square, slather it with sauce/toppings, and roll up.  Very similar to a

cinnamon roll.  It actually makes me want to attempt cinnamon rolls again, so that may be a later  post.  Anyway, I'm not gonna go into too much detail because while I was super stoked about these bad boys there were a couple things I wanted to do differently, which is why I had my dear friend, Caitlin (formerly a carniwhore, but probably not anymore due to a nasty run in w/ some salmonella), over last night.  We were going to reinvent the pizza roll, yet again, this time with a mexi-twist! So we went grocery shopping, got some wine, got some super top secret ingredients, bought nothing for a side dish because my smart self thought I had brussel sproats in the fridge that were still good (first time ever in the history of the world that I've had to throw out brussels), go back to my apartment, make some dough, make some filling, turn on season 4 of The Office, put our feet up, and WHAMMO!!!! Electricity goes out! First time since I've moved in, and of course I have no flashlights, candles seemed dangerous as we had already finished the bottle of wine, I do have a fireplace but nothing to burn, and it didn't seem like the ideal time to operate the fireplace for the first time ever, and I don't have a fire extinguisher, and honestly, for how much I cook, I should really buy one.

Epic Pizza Roll Fail!  We'd also thrown together some pineapple, red onion, brown sugar, and spicey bits to roast in the oven and they were almost done, but unfortunately abandoned in our pursuit of Light and more wine.  Completely forgot about them til I woke up this morning and pulled them out of the oven. Sad, sad day.  But all the pizza roll necessities are in my fridge waiting for me, and I will be posting pictures and a recipe for my new and improved pizza roll success, so hold tight!  Either later tonight or tomorrow, although if I do post it later tonight I'm totally going to change the date on this post and pretend I did it yesterday;) shhh, don't tell! 

Friday, November 5, 2010

Vegan Mofo: Day 5


My mom and the cousin! Aren't they cute!

So my Italian cousin came to visit Washington this summer, and that resulted in a ton of family time and multiple barbeques.  They weren't intended to be potlucks but I take every opportunity to stuff my food down people's throats.  What started with the homemade barbeque sauce from Veganomicon,  turned into a two month obsession with barbeque sauce, pineapple, and tempeh.  It was actually kind of sick....and it's still going on.  But seriously, the Backyard BBQ Sauce is really good, and it actually got better after I froze it and later dethawed it, and let it sit for a minute! 

The first thing I used it on was some ribz from Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit.  I know she got the recipe from a couple difference sources, but I ended up just following the recipe that was reposted on her website, and I used almond butter for the nut butter, because I have a jar that will just not go away!!!  Those turned out beautifully and the bbq sauce got all dark and  sexaay.
Along with ribz I made the Zippity Do Da Coleslaw from The Gluten Free Vegan Cookbook, and yes it's got a goofy name, but it also had pineapple in it, and I'm a very easy sell.  It turned out good!  It's been a long time since I've had coleslaw to be honest, and I used to hate it before I went vegan...maybe because mayonaise is disgusting, but yeah, I liked it.  I think I like coleslaw now....
After my two week hiatus while my cousin was visiting, I had to go back to work....Yes, insert deep depression here.  I did have BBQ sauce left tho, so I brought it with me and went Iron Chef! 

BBQ Tempeh
1 package tempeh, cubed, and boil for 15 min
1/2 cup Backyard BBQ Sauce from the Veganomicon
1 clove chopped garlic
1/4 cup chopped shallots
2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup cubed pineapple
2 green onions, chopped, for garnish
red pepper flakes to taste

*My measurements, like usual, are probably a bit off, b/c I work at a restaurant so everything was prechopped and waiting for me to throw into a pan....it's so convenient! 

Anyway, I sauteed the shallots and garlic in the olive oil, let cook down a little, and added tempeh, browned that up, and added the pineapple and the bbq sauce, let it cook down a little, and garnished with the green onion.  It was super delicious.  My prep cook liked it, my cocktailer liked it, and it was the brainchild for the bbq, tempeh pizza I made the next week! 

I definitely do not have a recipe for that badboy, but I pretty much did the BBQ Tempeh recipe, threw it on top of a pizza crust I made using the You Won't Believe It's Vegan! recipe and then did a kinda improv cheezy topping using Follow Your Heart mozzarella, nooch, spices, and Earth Balance.  My carniwhore friend that I cooked dinner for LOVED it!

So that's basically my month of August.  Tempeh, BBQ, pineapple, repeat....nom nom noms.  This was actually the kickoff to my homemade pizza addiction, fueled by Daiya.  And now I know, BBQ sauce is a gateway drug, dammit all!!