A plus and a minus

I made a couple of recipes from Enemy of the Steak tonight: a luscious tempeh dish called Picadillo (tempeh, onions, garlic, bell peppers, tomato sauce, raisins, capers, and seasonings) and Glazed Plantains. I had a dab of the Saffron Rice left over (gotta buy that again) and heated it up. I guess you can tell which is the plus--it's the tempeh dish. The cinnamon gave it a nice kick, and lazy girl that I am, I used Whole Foods "Stoplight" (red, yellow, and green) peppers even though the recipe calls for one green pepper. It's something I do when I have dishes that call for chopped bell peppers. It adds a splash of color to my favorite tofu dish.

I don't know what went wrong with the plantains--maybe they weren't ripe enough, and time in the fridge didn't help. I'll have to keep an eye out for ripe plantains. Considering my neighborhood has a large Latino population, one of the stores must carry plantanos. I suspect this recipe will work better with soft, ripe plantains rather than unripe "tostones." I made a couple of other very minor changes, but it shouldn't have affected the flavor. It was the texture that was sort of problematic.

I've mentioned that I do not object to using frozen veggies. Unless you're doing a stuffed pepper, you can easily sub a few handfuls of the frozen bell peppers. I usually run warm water over them to get the ice off and start the defrost process. The upshot is my freezer is crowded with frozen fruits and veggies, plus some shortening, stick margarine, a few convenience foods, and soy ice cream. My small fridge is also crowded with tea pitchers, grains, nuts, stuff I've cooked, sauces, dressings, and a few cooking oils.

I need a larger fridge.

Quick and Easy

There are times you need a recipe that doesn't take more than a few minutes to throw together.

I found a simple recipe in the Amerian Heart Association cookbook and veganized it. I cut up a large hunk of seitan (if you're really lazy, I suppose you could get a couple of packages of the premade stuff, but I find making my own works better) into bite-size pieces and sauted it, tossed in some bottled teriyaki sauce, added some frozen peaches, pineapple, and mango, and threw in some almonds. Did I tell you that I think frozen fruit is awesome? If you can't get fresh organic fruit, you usually can get frozen organic fruit, and it works just fine in recipes. I also heated up some frozen green beans and used some leftover saffron rice from the other night, although I think brown rice would have worked much better. But I was feeling a little lazy and didn't really want to delay my dinner any longer.

I submitted my recipe for Puckery Pomegranate Seitan to the VegWeb site, and hopefully I'll see it up there soon. It's adapted from a fessenjen recipe, but I really didn't feel like calling it Seitan Fessenjen since I've never had the meat version and I never will. So I invented a new name for it with a made-up word (although Microsoft Word also redlines "seitan" and "tempeh"). I fixed the problem that made the recipe fail to show up legibly, so you should be able to make it yourself. Let me know what you serve it with--I wonder if a nice wheat berry pilaf would go with it or I should just prepare the brown-and-wild-rice pilaf I made last month. And maybe some roasted veggies like mushrooms, zucchini, onions, and bell peppers. I can eat zucchini if it's cooked right, but I just can't get into yellow squash. A lot of vegetables most people dislike they just haven't had cooked properly. When it comes to broccoli, though, it doesn't matter. I still hate the stuff.

Plantains, yay!

When I was growing up in Florida a less enlightened person, I loved Cuban food and (blush) arroz con pollo. I especially loved the plantanos or plantains that came on the side. So when I saw a packet of three peeled plantains at Trader Joe's today, I had to get them. I had on hand a box mix of Casbah Saffron Rice, which can be Middle Eastern or Caribbean. Hey, it takes only 20 minutes to cook, including the time to heat the water to boiling. It's quick and easy--in fact, everything on my plate was quick and easy.

After pressing the tofu, I mixed up some garlic powder, Mexican seasoning mix, and oregano and dredged the tofu. I put it in a baking dish with a cut-up onion and a 14.5-ounce can of chopped tomatoes (note to self: next time, use more tomatoes) and baked it at 350 degrees for half an hour, turning the tofu slices midway through. The plantains, you just slice and saute, then drain on paper towels. The riper the plantain is, the sweeter, and these must not have been terribly ripe because it had the starchiness of tostones as opposed to the sweeter maduros. This is the only negative to buying plantains peeled.

I'm going to be tinkering with this recipe, I think, mostly with the amount of ingredients. I may try cutting the tofu differently to get more spicing as well. If I get this perfected, I'll let you know.