Charity Bake Sale Today at Mulligan's at Scottsdale

Come to Mulligan's in Scottsdale 7381 E Stetson Drive (old town) today between 3 & closing to help us raise money for a wonderful young man that passed away this week, Andrew Waits, leaving behind a young son, Phoenix. A percentage of the sales will go into a trust for him and help and the family with the many expenses as he had no insurance. If you are headed out for a Saturday cocktail or dinner, please make it count for something very special. We will be hosting a bakesale and auction also. I work with his mother and sister and I know how deeply grateful they will be.


There will be a limited number of vegan items including these beauties: Chocolate mint cupcakes!! There will be some vegan cookies and muffins too. Make sure to get there early before they run out!

Food Network Friday - Slow Roasted "Pork" with Coconut Curry Sauce

I have been really struggling with motivation to go out in the flipping heat and grocery shop. I got into my car today and my thermostat said 120!!! Granted the outside temp was ONLY 113, but parking lot temps are much higher. I braved the crazy heat to hit up the Asian/International market to re-create this very flavorful and spicy dish from the Food Network website. 

Like many of my foodie/blogger friends, I don't usually shy away from hunting down specialty ingredients in the name of experimentation. Today's challenge was to try and find Chinese fermented black beans and keffir lime leaves. The leaves are not that hard to find, but this particular store has lots of herbs together. Some of them look very similar and the signs are in an Asian language of some sort. Thankfully there was a young man working in the department that helped me find them. The store is huge with shelves full of all kinds of sauces and other specialty ingredients. So it took me a good hour to get all of my goodies.

I did run across Jackfruit today. Most of the cans were the fruit in syrup. This dish needed some savory action. I was fortunate enough to find one brand that had the young fruit in brine. SCORE!! So I took my goods and headed out to the hellishly hot parking lot and gradually made my way back to the house. 

I got a phone call from Tyler about a bake sale she and her friends are holding tomorrow. I changed gears and baked up some goodies, so this is getting posted late. I'll post tomorrow about that and my baking class with Chef Tess Bakeresse. I've been wanting to check out her classes so badly, so I am super excited there is one tomorrow near my house.

I stuck fairly close to the original recipe. I substituted Jackfruit for the pork. It was my first time using this very interesting fruit. It is native to Southern Asia and is also used in Jamaica and as a substitute for meat in curries in Sri Lanka. If it's good enough for Sri Lanka, its good enough for me! It is an amazing food. It really absorbs the flavor of the spices and has a very meat-like texture and look. It is high in fiber and even contains some B vitamins!! The Jackfruit takes quite a while to cook. I used the cooktop method as I did not do my homework. Next time I think I'd use the slow cooker.

I stayed true to the recipe for the Coconut Curry Sauce. I was even able to find the recommended brand of yellow curry after some searching. I may have been slightly heavy handed on the curry, but not by much. I did use light coconut milk rather than full fat for no other reason than it is what I had in the panty. In hind site, it was nice to cut back on some of the fat. It didn't take away from the dish at all. For the rice I subbed brown jasmine rice for the basmati. I also decided to forgo vegan butter. The salsa was another matter. Because it was so late and I was feeling a bit lazy, I used ground cumin instead of toasting the seeds and grinding. I used 1 teaspoon. I also decided to use some hot hatch green chiles instead of the jalapeno and pablano called for. I had both in the fridge, but the others were already roasted...lazy little short cut. 

This dish had a lot going on both flavor and texture-wise. I love the heat from the curry and the chiles. There were a lot of components to it, but everything was pretty simple. This would really be a good weeknight meal if you use the slow cooker. The salsa can be made while the rice is cooking and there you go. A tasty, spicy, exotic meal in your own home on a weeknight no less!! It's been a while since I've done FNF. It's good to be back!!

Al Fresco Spanish Happy Hour

There are so many wonderful moment and memories from our trip. Today I'm going to share an impromptu patio happy hour we had. Our friends invited us the Gijon for dinner one evening. When we arrived at their house, we parked ourselves on their beautiful patio. Laurie and Fred enjoyed a nice cigar and we all enjoyed a beautiful bottle of wine and some quick snacks. One of my new favorite finger foods are these wonderful caper berries and garlic. One of the things that really stood out for me was that the brine was not super acidic as sometimes they can be. The light brine let the true flavor of the caper berries shine. The piquant flavor of the capers combined with the garlic beautifully. I loved them so much, I stowed away a couple of jars in my suitcase to bring home! Move over olives, you have some serious competition!!!

Espana!

I have to apologize for my long blogging break. Summer is the busiest time of year around here to begin with. This year we added a 16 day trip to Spain!

The Spain adventure began and ended in Madrid. We spent 3 nights total with out wonderful friends Jose and Nena. After taking us for a tour of Madrid and Segovia, we got to spend some quality time with them in their home. They went out of there way to make sure we had wonderful non-meat laden fare and lots of good wine and company. They also gave us a lovely place to stay. As an added bonus Nena agreed to share some recipes and film a little cooking video. The video will be forthcoming as I need time to edit it for your viewing pleasure. In the mean time, I will share pictures of the delights she made for us.

I have already forgotten the name of this incredible beet-tomato soup. Some of you may remember that beets and I do not always see eye to eye, but in the velvety flavorful cold soup, it was delicioso! The earthy flavor of the beets along with the nicely acidic tomatoes, throw in some fresh flavorful garlic and you've got crimsony perfection in a bowl. Nena recommends serving it on an all white table setting to make it the star that it is. Look at that gorgeous color!

 

Nena was born in the Canary Islands. She and Jose lived there when they were first married. She shared with me a very traditional Canary Island dish called Mojo Rojo. Mojo Rojo translates to wet red sauce (according to my lovely translator Laurie). So basically it is a wet dip for savory goodies. It is a relatively easy sauce to make. All of the ingredients are raw and pureed in the blender. Perfect for those lazy days where you want flavor but don't want to work long or hard in the kitchen.

I know I've said it many times before, but I am a total potato fiend, so I was thrilled that Nena's dish featured "wrinkled" potatoes. She has a special cooking method that makes the skin shrivel on the potatoes. She added that it is important to use thin skinned yellow potatoes (I'm thinking fingerlings or baby yukon golds are the perfect selection). She used a pressure cooker, so it only took about 10 minutes total to get these babies on the table.

OK kids, cover the eyes of those who are sensitive to language, these are f@$king awesome! No not just run of the mill awesome...way more than that! I could drink the sauce all on its own. It is smokey, piquant, rich with tomato flavor and has just the right balance of flavors. I had to restrain myself from licking the plate like a dog. Poured over the perfectly tender, creamy potatoes these will surely give you back your MOJO! 

 

 Check back for more Spanish adventures!!

La Grand Orange English Muffins

So the other night I was out celebrating my buddy Laurie's birthday. She and I drink far too much wine together! But this time, our communal drink fest produced a great surprise.

After indulging in two lovely wines at Postino on Campbell and 40th St in Phoenix, we ventured over to La Grande Orange Pizzeria so that one of our companions could grab some 1/2 price cookies (after 7pm). They have a lovely deli counter and bakery, but it is decidedly not vegan focused.

As we walked into the deli, I noticed these impressive super gigantoid English muffins. They were so huge they actually looked like bagels, no lie. I was going to check out the ingredient list, when as plain as day the package read "vegan". Well shiver me timbers! I was so excited.

I am not one to shy away from spending some hard earned cash on an enticing product, but I was a little hesitant. They were a bit pricey at $9.00 for a package of 6, but I just had to try them. I decided to get two packages and bring them to work. Holy crap! These babies are incredible. They are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside like the perfect English muffin should be. Two caveats: one, they recommend toasting them twice (they are that big) and two, they are a bit oily. I didn't care though. I just grabbed another napkin. I slathered on some Naturally Nutty Cinnamon Almond Butter and had a crazy filling and delish breakfast.

If you want to splurge and you are in the area, run down and get a package. They would be killer as a "McGigantoidMuffin"

Mid-Summer Girlie Lunch

It's no surprise that is is blazing hot here in the Valley of the Sun. I invited some of the girls over that I haven't seen in a while. We all worked in a fine dine restaurant together in the day. We have remained great friends since 1993-ish. We have all been around the block food-wise and these girls can tell stories of my meat eating ways that would probably turn your stomach. This fine group of ladies would probably tell you I was the least likely candidate for digging vegan food and cooking.

It's been a couple of years now, so they have gotten used to the idea that I'm not going to be serving the carnage of yore. I have to say, I still spend a lot of time contemplating what to make for them. I want to make sure they LOVE what I make. If they love it, I can usually be confident that it is pretty good. These gals know their food. It has been a very long time since all of us have been together. It was so much fun being with such long-time awesome friends. I loved hearing all of the conversation and laughter at the table. We were having such a great time our lunch lasted almost into dinner time, so I pulled out the leftovers and we started snacking again.

This fine week as the temperatures were reaching 112, I really didn't want to turn on the oven or even be out at the grill. I decided to go for a totally cold spread. This made for a pretty pleasant day in the kitchen. The only thing I had to cook was the beans (in the slow cooker) and some orzo pasta. While my intentions were to see my friends it never hurts to have an audience to try out some new original stuff. The reviews were really good! The kale salad was a surprise hit, so I will share the basic recipe with you. It is super easy to throw together.

Kale-Avocado Salad

8 servings (4 as a main dish)

1 large bunch green kale, stems removed and torn into bite sized pieces, about 8 cups
1 1/2 tablespoons good quality olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/3 cup cranberries
1/3 cup roasted, salted sunflower seeds
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
1 large just ripe avocado (make sure it is still a bit firm so it doesn't turn to mush in the salad) diced into 1/2" cubes

In a large bowl place washed kale. Drizzle in olive oil and vinegar. Make sure to massage the kale with your hand until the kale is brighter green and a bit softer. This will take out some of the toughness and bitterness that kale can have. Add remaining ingredients except for the avocado and mix well. Gently toss in the avocado, being careful not to mush it up. Salt and pepper to taste.

Thats it! Simple. Beautiful. Delicious. Filling. Oh and as an added bonus for summer, no oven!!!

Vegan 4th of July? What are you going to grill?

While much of the nation is grilling all kinds of different animal parts, we had our own plans for some grill action. I'm doing some testing again, so I had a few test recipes that were perfect for firing up the grill! It was super hot here again today, so I applaud Fred for firing up the charcoal grill. He smoked tofu, then I got to work.

I made some incredible stuffed jalapenos! These are a tester, so I can't divulge too much, but holy wow!! I thought the heat of the jalapenos was going to be too intense, but the grilling mellowed them...almost too much. It was hard for me to share them, they were that good.

I had visions of making potato or pasta salad today. But it just didn't happen. I didn't want to deal with it. Lazy lazy today. What I ended up doing was grilling up some corn, bok choy and Chipotle BBQ Tempeh. This is a vegan kind of BBQ! Now I have to decide what we should do for dessert!