Veggie Boners

Tempeh bacon

Not eating meat doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy flavors typically associated with meat dishes. Bacon is great because it’s salty and smoky. Yet you don’t need to eat part of a pig just to get those flavors. Here’s what you’ll need to start:

• 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 Tablespoon maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 package of tempeh (8 oz, not pictured)
• about 2-3 tablespoons olive oil for frying (not pictured)

Start by slicing the tempeh block into long strips.

If you’ve never seen tempeh, don’t freak looking at that picture. The tempeh is still good (at least, according to the package disclaimer). Next, mix the soy sauce, maple syrup, and liquid smoke together in a shallow dish to make the marinade. The amounts listed above for the individual ingredients are only suggestions—you can (and should) adjust those to your taste. Taste the marinade to make sure you like it before moving on because this is the primary source of flavor.

Place the tempeh strips in the container with the sauce. It should immediately start to soak up the liquid. Turn the strips around so the sauce distributes as evenly as possible.

The spots of the tempeh that appear to be rotten are now less noticeable. Congratulations! Let this sit for as long as possible. I would let it sit as short as a few hours or as long as overnight. The longer you wait, the better. Not only will it maximize the marinade (i.e., the flavor) that the tempeh absorbs, but it’ll make it easier to cook. Have you tried putting something wet into a pan full of hot oil? I haven’t, and I don’t plan to.

After you let the tempeh absorb the marinade, it’s time to get cookin! Pour about 2 tablespoons of oil into a saute pan, and turn on the burner to medium heat. After the oil heats up, add approximately half of the tempeh, depending on the size of the pan.

Cook until it develops color. I sauteed my tempeh strips for about 6-7 minutes on each side, but you can make them more or less crispy. The maple syrup adds a nice, dark color to the tempeh. Unfortunately, it also makes the tempeh strips stick to the pan, and it makes the pan turn black. Turn the heat down if it gets too hot.

Please don’t let the strip second from the left affect my credibility—it was the strip from the edge of the block. After cooking both sides of the tempeh strips, remove the strips from the pan, and place them on paper towels to soak up the extra oil.

Continue cooking the rest of the tempeh the same way. It will be tough because the strips tend to stick to the pan more on the second batch. That’s why I call for quite a bit of oil here.

The result is tempeh bacon that’s a little salty, a little smoky, and wholly delicious. And if you fuck up like I did and turn the heat down too much, so the tempeh absorbs a lot of the oil, it’s quite fatty too!

Use the tempeh bacon like you would normal bacon. Crumble it over a salad, use it to top soup or a baked potato, or do what I did, and make a BLT.

The amount of tempeh on this sandwich is relatively little compared to the lettuce, tomatoes, and bread, but it MAKES this sandwich. A little tempeh bacon goes a long way.

Roasted Cauliflower

Vegetables are delicious.  I could eat carrots every day.  I have a passion for kale, and I’ll gladly eat a bucket of Brussels sprouts in one sitting.  A self-proclaimed veggie lover, I’m a huge fan of saying, “I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like.”  I’m also a huge fan of lying.  Ever since I was a kid, I’ve hated cauliflower.  It’s just so plain.  And bland.  And white.  It’s the vegetable equivalent of mayo, and I mean…ew.  It looks like a brain!  Who would want to eat that?  As an adult, I’ve made several attempts to give cauliflower another chance, resulting in pulling a rotten head of cauliflower out of my fridge a month or two later. 

This week, while perusing the produce section, I noticed that cauliflower was on sale.  I decided that this time would be different.  This time, I would conquer cauliflower.

And I did.  Here’s how: 

• 1 (2.5 lb.) head of cauliflower
• 4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• black pepper
• sea salt
• 1 lemon, sliced into 4 wedges

First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Using an expensive knife, remove all of the green stuff from the cauliflower.  Then chop off the stem.  The goal now is to break the cauliflower into 2-inch florets, which is quite a fancy word for such an ugly vegetable.  You could chop it up, but I found that pulling it apart with my bare hands worked really well.

Next, spread the florets out on a rimmed baking sheet.  Drizzle them with olive oil and give them a nice rub-down so that they’re evenly coated.  Wash your hands so you don’t get everything else greasy, and then sprinkle the florets liberally with salt and pepper.  When I say liberally, I mean it!  Don’t oversalt, but pepper isn’t expensive, and this is where all the flavor is coming from!

Once you’ve seasoned the cauliflower to my liking, pop the tray into the oven and roast for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  I stirred mine twice.  I also noticed that cauliflower smells like garbage while it’s roasting.  (This doesn’t affect the flavor.)

You’ll know it’s done when it starts to get nice and brown.  Plate (or bowl) it and squeeze lemon juice over it.  This cauliflower is indescribably good, but I’ll try.  It’s crispy on the outside, yet creamy on the inside.  It’s somehow buttery, although there’s no butter, and I didn’t even use much oil.  And it’s light. 

The special bonus of this dish is the tiny little pieces of cauliflower that crumble away from the florets.  The caramelization on these is off the chain; they taste like they’re fried (like good fried food from a fancy restaurant with fabric napkins).  I gave myself a nice, reasonable portion of this (see above), and then proceeded to eat the rest of the cauliflower off of the tray with my hands.  It really was that good.

Vegan Buffalo Wings and Yukon Gold Oven Fries

It’s playoffs time!  I hate football, but I love wings and beer.  Some team is playing another team tonight, so I thought it was the perfect occasion for making some of my vegan buffalo wings (adapted from this recipe here).  They are INSANE.  They’re made of tofu, which at first blush may kill your food boner, but lemme tell you: this is some killer tofu.  Something about the frying just makes it all chicken-y, but with none of those purple stringy things that actual chicken wings have!  I made some oven fries to go with them, because it’s nice to have something starchy to sop up all that extra sauce.  Here is what you’ll need to make the wings and fries:

• a block of extra-firm tofu drained VERY WELL
• 2/3 cup cornstarch
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• cayenne, to taste
• garlic powder, to taste
• a shitload of canola oil (more on this later)
• 1/2 cup of plain soy or almond milk
• 1/2 cup vegan “butter” like Earth Balance
• 1/3 cup cayenne pepper sauce (I like Louisiana or Texas Pete, but just go with whatever you’re into)

• 3 or 4 Yukon Gold potatoes
• 4 teaspoons olive oil
• sea salt, to taste
• black pepper, to taste
• thyme, to taste

First, preheat your oven to 450.  Hack your potatoes up into wedges.  The size isn’t too important, but you want all your wedges to be approximately the same thickness so that they cook evenly.  Toss them with the olive oil and spread them in a single layer on a cookie sheet.  Sprinkle with sea salt, freshly-cracked black pepper (if you don’t have a pepper grinder, why the hell not?), and thyme.  

Now, chop your tofu up into wings.  Go on, do it!  There’s really no right or wrong way to do this, but I like to cut mine into 24 little pieces, as shown below:

Next, pour your faux milk of choice into a bowl.  In a separate, shallow bowl, mix together the flour, cornstarch, garlic powder, and cayenne.  These are your breading ingredients.

Now you’re going to take all those tofu nuggets and turn them into something delicious.  Take a nug and plop it into the milk, coating the entire surface.  

Great job!  Now, pick up that wet nug and shake off the excess nutmilk (LOL).  With your OTHER HAND (seriously, don’t dip your wet hand into the dry mix; you’ll end up battering your fingers and you’ll have a muppet hand) toss the nug into the flour/cornstarch mixture.

You want to coat the whole wing in the dry mixture.  The easiest way I’ve found to do this is not to roll it around, but to leave it in the same spot and shovel a mound of the dry mix all over it, as if you’re burying a body.  Then pick it up, shake off the excess flour and cornstarch, and place it on a plate or cutting board.  It should look something like this:

If you look closely, you can see where I set my cutting board on fire.  Now, repeat the milk dipping/flour dredging process with all of your wings.  You can leave them with a single layer of batter, but I like to go fuckin’ nuts and DOUBLE BATTER my wings.  Just repeat the whole dip/dredge process again if you, too, want your wings to be the BEST.

Somewhere along the way, stick your fries in the oven.  They only take 20 minutes, so you can just figure out when you need to start cooking them.  I CAN’T DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU.  Also remember to flip them halfway through.

Back to the wings: get out a big-ass skillet, the biggest one you have.  Pour in lots of canola oil.  You want enough in the pan so that the wings will be completely immersed in oil.  This way, you won’t even have to flip them!  You can be a bit more health-conscious and just use a few tablespoons of oil and flip them around while they’re cooking, but that is a lot of work and who even cares about getting fat?

This is a picture of my skillet full of oil.  There is no point to this picture except that you can see the reflection of my Elvis pictures in the oil.  Awesome!

Now, crank up the heat on your stove.  Not the highest heat, but almost.  You want your oil to be sizzlin’, about 375.  If your oil isn’t hot enough, your wings will just be greazy, not crispy.  Do you want greazy wings?  I didn’t think so.  Since I can never find my thermometer, I like to test my oil by sticking the handle of a wooden spoon into it.  When there are little bubbles all around the handle, your oil is good to go.  I mean, it’s hot enough to cook a wooden spoon!

Wow, my hand is gross.  Now it’s time to gently, gingerly, tenderly place your wings into that boiling oil.  I’m usually at least semi-drunk by this stage of the recipe, which is dangerous and I do not endorse.  I said BOILING OIL!  

Let those wings relax in their hot tub while you dump the hot sauce and Earth Balance into a small saucepan, stirring them together over low heat until combined.  You can add other things to this sauce, like some Sriracha, minced garlic, or agave.  Experiment!  That’s what college is for.

Back to the wings.  They typically take 5 to 8 minutes to cook, provided you got your oil hot as hell like I told you to.  I test mine for doneness by pulling one out with a pair of tongs and tapping on it with my finger.  If it feels and sounds hard, I know they’re ready to be in my mouth.  If you’re using some clean oil, these wings aren’t going to get really dark even when they’re well done.  Just give them a tap.

Once they’re done, use tongs to remove the wings from the oil, shaking off excess oil before placing them into a big tupperware container WITH A LID.  Pour your buffalo sauce over the wings and shake them around to coat them with the sauce. Dump them out onto a plate and admire your handiwork.

Did you forget about the fries?  Neither did I; I never forget about fries.  Twenty minutes has surely elapsed by this time, so for God’s sake, take them out of the oven!  Put them on a plate with your wings and eat them up!  But let them cool a little bit or you will singe your esophagus.