You know, I almost postponed this entry for tomorrow, what with being all tired and full of new information and all. This morning I met with my new accountant so as to ask relevant small business questions. Despite many terms being bandied about that I kept having to have clarified and the terrifying thought of dusting off my Excel spreadsheet skills, I left with an unmistakable buoyancy in my step. There are a lot of fun interesting things you get to do, no matter the hard work you still gotta put in. Right now I never thought it’d be so difficult to chose a name for my very poorly kept secret.

Anyway, would you believe that until this past weekend I’d never had scrambled tofu?

Oh, I never had anything against it; it just never sounded appealing. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of places around Atlanta where I bet the scrambled tofu is awesome, and when I visit home, I’ll make a point to experience a couple of them. But until I decided to go full-on vegan/vegetarian and eliminated eggs entirely, scrambled tofu was never for me.

As of this past Saturday, I take it all back. With a thoughtful sassy recipe to guide me, I spent a pleasurable hour in my kitchen, cup of tea at the ready, making flour tortillas, scrambled tofu, and a creamy vegan cilantro dressing to drizzle over everything. Sure, I fudged on the tortillas a bit by using a dry mix my mom mails to me from home, but hey, it still beats the pants off the tortillas you buy at the supermarket!

The beauty of this recipe is you really can mix and match vegetables you like to it. Mushrooms and I seem to have become hesitant friends, so I didn’t mind having them in there. If you like vegan sour cream (or if you’re less virtuous, actual sour cream), pile it on there, too, or heck, even guacamole! You can find the recipe for the cilantro dressing here.

Scrambled Tofu

adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance, Isa Chandra Moskowitz (Da Capo Press, 2005)

1 tbl. olive oil

1 medium-size yellow onion, chopped into 1/2-inch chunks

2 cups thinly sliced cremini mushrooms

2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb. extra-firm tofu, drained

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

juice of 1/2 lemon

for spice blend:

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. dried thyme, crushed with your fingers

1 tsp. ground paprika

1/2 tsp. ground turmeric

1 tsp. salt

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Saute the onions for 3 minutes, until softened; add the mushrooms, saute for 5 minutes; add the garlic, saute for 2 minutes. Add the spice blend and mix it up for 15  seconds or so. Add 1/4 cup water to deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom to get all the garlic and spices.

Crumble in the tofu and mix well. Don’t crush the tofu, just kind of lift it and mix it around. You want it to remain chunky. Let cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding splashes of water if necessary to keep it from sticking too much. Lower the heat a bit if you find that the tofu is sticking. Add the lemon juice. Add the nutritional yeast and mix it up. If the mixture is sticking to the pan, add splashes of water. The moistness really depends on how much water the tofu was retaining before you added it.

Serve however you want.  I think I like my burrito option.

I love ginger. I love the heat and sharp flavor. I love that this rhizome is so handy in savory and sweet dishes. Usually in our household, you can find it powdered, fresh, and crystallized. I love cooking with fresh ginger, but often end up with sad little withered nubs because I couldn’t use them up fast enough. Matt even introduced me to the singular best ginger beer I’ve tasted—no joke, it’s Canada Dry’s Golden Cockerel ginger beer. This soda tastes like what I’ve often sought from ginger ales back in the States: fizzy, crisp, and most definitely gingery. Alas, it seems as though this soda is being phased out of production, and I am on the hunt for a replacement.

But this isn’t about soda. This is about ginger cookies. And we’re talking about what could quite possibly be the best ginger cookie in existence. It doesn’t skimp on its token ingredient, it’s chewy and addictive, and with the shiny sparkle of demerara sugar scattered over top? Well, if you’re the kind of person who makes stuff for bake sales/fairs/your own personal cookie jar, you’d be remiss to not make these. Seriously, I made a batch on Thursday, but it’s Monday and we’re down to one cookie left, people.

Now when you make this dough, it’s crazy soft. Like, oh-my-gosh-did-I-mess-up soft. My solution? Place the batter in the fridge for about 10 to 15 minutes before scooping onto your cookie sheets and in between trays, keep the batter in the fridge.

Sparkled Ginger Cookies

adapted from Vegan With a Vengeance, Isa Chandra Moskowitz (Da Capo Press, 2005)

4 tbl. turbinado or demerara sugar (these are just super brown coarse sugars that you should really have in your pantry anyway)

2 cups AP flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger

1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1/2 cup canola oil

1/4 cup molasses

1/4 cup soy milk

1 cup sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease two cookie sheets, or do as I did and just cut out parchment paper and place it on there instead. Place the turbinado sugar in a small bowl.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. In a separate large mixing bowl, mix together the oil, molasses, soy milk, sugar, and vanilla. Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and combine well. At this point, I recommend placing the batter in the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes so it can tighten up. Then roll into 1-inch balls, flatten into a 1 1/2-inch-diameter disk, press the cookie tops into the turbinado sugar and place 1 inch apart sugar side up on a prepared cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, let cool on cookie sheets for 3 to 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack.

It should come as no surprise that I am occasionally given to hyperbole. And today I am using that to say: “Good gravy, y’all, this cake is currently the best cake I’ve ever made.” Because right now it is. And I will continue to be convinced of that until I tackle something else that turns out phenomenal and then give it the blue ribbon.

This is a cake which speaks to you of springtime tea, of sitting with friends: cradling china cups, tipping a drop or two of brandy into yours when no one is looking. It is also a cake in which you will desperately desire another slice immediately, calorie intake be damned.

Continuing on with my Nigella-veganization, today we have a beautiful, moist almond cake. It gets all the delicious almond goodness from the addition of marzipan in the cake batter.

This makes very large and flattish—well, flatter than most cakes anyway—cake that I advise you to be very careful with when removing from the springform pan bottom. In fact, let me say that I cut out a parchment paper circle to place in the pan before pouring the batter in.

I think I may have added too much silken tofu in the batter (t’was the egg replacer y’see) but have adjusted my calculations for the recipe rewrite below. You could ice this, but it would be better served if you sieved some icing sugar over it—especially in one of those lacy doily patterns—and while raspberries aren’t a must, they certainly don’t hurt. Of course, it’s so good it doesn’t need anything at all.

Another spot of advice: I would suggest you consume this cake—invite friends over if you have to—within 3 to 4 days; it’s terribly moist that any prolonged exposure (of course, if you want to put it in the fridge, let me know how that goes) will do it no good.

Easy Almond Cake

adapted from How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus, 2000)

*since the original measurements for this recipe were in UK standards, I’ve rejiggered them for US bakers.

8 oz. softened Earth Balance (vegan margarine)

8 oz. marzipan (room temperature, please)

5 oz. caster sugar

1/4 tsp. almond extract

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup silken tofu

5 oz. self-raising flour

10-inch Springform pan, buttered, then parchment papered, that buttered too, and floured

Preheat oven to 325F. Chop the Earth Balance and the marzipan to make them easier to break down, and put them in the bowl of the food processor, fitted with the double-bladed knife, with the sugar. Process until combined and pretty well smooth. Add the extracts, process again, scraping down the sides as needed. Add the silken tofu and process, scraping down the sides. Tip the flour down the funnel, processing yet again, scraping down the sides as needed (again!), and then pour the mixture into the prepared tin, scraping the sides (one last time, I swear) and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula.

Bake for 50 minutes,  but check from 40 (mine only needed 45 minutes, but your oven may vary). Then, when the cake looks golden and cooked and a cake-tester comes out cleanish, remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin before turning out. (This is when you will be feeling grateful if it’s the Springform you’re using.)

There is no vegetable that isn’t improved by being roasted. Sometimes I think the act of roasting vegetables as being magical. How does a carrot, already naturally sweet, become something of a crispy, salty-sugary marvel when placed in a hot oven? Even root vegetables—never a favorite for Matt—become something scrumptious and yielding when roasted. Personally I like all the nearly-burnt bits; I like the crunch they make, the smokiness of them.

Yes, roasting vegetables in your oven when the weather is perfect for a grill could be construed as an act of madness.

But it’s also an act of impatience. Feminism be damned, I leave the chore of hauling the hibachi from storage, setting it up, and firing it up to my husband. When I come across a recipe brimming with tons of roasted veggies, time is of the essence.

Parsnips (which are hard to find this time of year, as they should be), red onions, slender fingerling potatoes sliced into coin-sized slabs, oodles of those teeny baby carrots, all tossed in olive oil, dried rosemary (though you could sub the dried herb of your choice here), kosher salt and fresh ground pepper….heaven. Of course, this recipe is ripe for your own making. There are zucchini, yellow squash, baby tomatoes, whatever’s going in your farmer’s market is perfect for roasting.

I followed the very autumnal directions of serving these roasted beauties over chewy short-grain brown rice, but if you want to make it feel like summer, I would suggest grilling them over charcoal, or you know, whatever grilling apparatus you own. You could serve them as is, hot and crispy, or at room temperature with some sort of dip or dressing. Or even greedily eat the leftovers cold out of the fridge when no one is looking. Oh, roasted vegetables, you could never steer me wrong.

Porcini Brown Rice with Roasted Root Vegetables

from New Vegan Cookbook, Lorna Sass (Chronicle Press, 2001)

1 oz. porcini or other dried mushrooms (about 1/4 cup loosely packed)

4 cups boiling water

1 lb. red-skinned potatoes, trimmed and cut into 1-inch chunks

1/2 lb. baby-cut carrots

1/2 lb. parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks

3 medium red onions (about 1 pound), peeled and quartered

3 tbl. olive oil, divided

1 to 2 tsp. dried rosemary (broken into bits), or thyme, or marjoram

salt and freshly ground pepper

2 cups chopped leeks or onions

1 cup diced fennel or celery

2 tsp. Italian herb blend

1 cup short-grain brown rice

1/2 cup black buffalo barley, colusari red rice, or just additional brown rice (which is what I did)

1 bay leaf

3 tbl. minced parsley

Set the porcini in a bowl and pour the boiling water on top. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes or longer.

Arrange the potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and red onions in one layer in one or two roasting pans. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Sprinkle with rosemary, and season well with salt and pepper. Set two racks in the middle portion of the oven, and start preheating your oven to 450F. Set the vegetables aside while you turn your attention to the rice.

Lift the porcini from the soaking liquid with a slotted spoon, and coarsely chop any large pieces. Set the porcini and soaking liquid aside.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a heavy 3-quart pot over medium-high heat. Cook the leeks and fennel for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the Italian herbs and cook for another few seconds. Pour in the reserved porcini liquid, taking care to leave any grit behind. Add the porcini, grains, bay leaf, and 1 1/4 teaspoons salt. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover, and cook over low heat until the grains are tender, about 40 minutes. (Some broth may not be absorbed.)

While the grains are cooking, roast the vegetables, tossing every 10 to 15 minutes, until tender and easily pierced with the tip of a paring knife, 30 to 40 minutes in all. (A few tips: Rotate the roasting pans(s) if the vegetables are browning unevenly. The onions are done when lightly singed around the edges; they’ll remain slightly crunchy. Remove any vegetables that begin to burn or dry out before the others are done.)

When the grains are ready (they will remain slightly chewy, even when fully cooked), remove the bay leaf and add more salt, if needed. Cover and let sit off the heat for 5 minutes, or until the roasted vegetables are ready.

To serve, reheat the roasted vegetables, if necessary. Mound the grains on individual plates. Spoon any unabsorbed porcini broth over the grains. Distribute the vegetables on top or alongside. Sprinkle with parsley, if you wish.

Slowly but surely our seedlings are growing; next weekend, we attempt to put them in the ground and hope for lots of tomatoes and peppers. The weather here in Quebec is perfect for it right now: not too hot, not too cool. The proverbial third bowl of porridge. And of course, it’s the perfect temperature for yours truly. I’ve been riding my bike around the neighborhood everyday—well, every day it hasn’t rained—breathing in the smell of oncoming summer. Yes, back home began to bloom months ago, but here the blossoms and grasses to seem to be sharper colors.

Admittedly today’s dish seems a bit too wintery for such mild days. But there isn’t heft and heaviness here; it is by no means light, true, but there isn’t the slightest hint of heartiness one associates with snowy days. I used the homemade seitan in this; I must say for all the effort I put into cubing it after it cooled, I was a bit irritated that the recipe called for mincing it in my food processor. It leaves it with a texture like finely ground beef. (Also, in case you’re curious, the seitan itself wasn’t too salty as I’d feared.) With a base of fresh ginger, garlic, shallots, and wrinkly Thai peppers (they were getting long in the tooth), it smelled like Thai restaurant. Very heady, that melange of flavors, and a preferred taste for Matt. I like to cook Thai for him when able; I still haven’t found a pad thai recipe that pleases him, though.

Anyway, I added considerably more seitan than the recipe called for. Seitan is very perishable, especially when homemade, and since we were going out of town this weekend, I didn’t want it to go to waste. Heaped over fragrant jasmine rice, eaten with crispy poppadoms, this dish hit all the right notes for us. I hope you try it and I’ll see you after the holiday weekend (there may be no blog entry on Monday as we’ll be on the road).

Thai-Inspired Broccoli in Coconut-Cilantro Sauce

from the New Vegan Cookbook, Lorna Sass (Chronicle Books, 2001)

2 lbs. broccoli (3 large stalks)

1 large clove garlic

1-inch chunk ginger, trimmed and cut into eighths (peeling is not necessary)

1 medium shallot (about 2 ounces), peeled and quartered

1 or 2 jalapenos (depending on desired heat), halved and seeded

1 good-sized bunch cilantro (about 4 ounces; include stems and roots if available, but rinse thoroughly  to remove all sand)

one 13.5-ounce can coconut milk (not light)

1 1/2 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

8 to 12 ounces seitan

1 large red bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch strips

1 large yellow bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1/4-inch strips

1 to 3 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce (tamari or shoyu)

a few basil leaves, shredded, for garnish (optional)

2 limes, cut into wedges

Cut the broccoli florets from the stalks, and separate them into small pieces. Trim the stalks, and use a paring knife or peeler to remove the fibrous outer layers. Cut the stalks into 1/2-inch chunks. Set the florets and stalks aside.

With the motor of the food processor running, pop the garlic and then the ginger, shallot, and jalapenos into the feed tube, and chop finely. Reserve 1/2 cup tightly packed cilantro leaves. Chop the remaining cilantro a few times, add to the processor, and chop finely. Add the coconut milk, sugar, and salt, and process to blend thoroughly.

Transfer the coconut milk mixture to a 4- or 5-quart pot, and bring to a boil. Boil gently, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, remove the seitan from its tub. Reserve any marinating liquid if you like its taste, and add enough water to equal a total of 1 cup liquid. Stir this liquid (or 1 cup plain water) into the coconut milk mixture. Chop the seitan finely in the processor, and add it to the pot along with the reserved broccoli.

Cover and cook at a moderate boil for 2 minutes. Add the bell peppers, cover, and continue cooking, stirring once or twice, until the broccoli is tender but still bright gree, 3 to 4 minutes longer. Add more water during this time if the mixture becomes dry.

Just before serving, coarsely chop the reserved cilantro leaves and stir them in. Add enough soy sauce to create a good balance of flavors. Ladle into soup bowls, and garnish with basil, if you wish. Accompany each portion with a few lime wedges.

So a personal project of mine has been taking recipes out of How to Be a Domestic Goddess by my beloved Nigella Lawson and veganizing them. This is a fairly new thing to be doing, but considering this is her definitive baking book (more or less) and what I do nowadays is bake, why not? Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s very tricky; she’s quite a fan of having a bajillion eggs in her recipes and the ones that call for egg yolks only? I will have to skip those entirely, I think.

I’m starting off with her plain and loaf cakes because those are easy-peasy to do vegan swaps for. Only I think today’s loaf cake might be—dare I say it?–a failure.

In vegan baking, you have a myriad of options for egg-swapping—milk and butter are easy to trade in, vegan-wise—but it depends on what you make. I find I’m starting to prefer silken tofu for most cakes; mostly because it gives you a beautiful moist texture and there’s no funky aftertaste.

Silken tofu doesn’t keep long in your fridge and since I didn’t have any but I did have a lot of flaxseeds, this is what I used for the Madeira cake. Madeira cake is a classic English teatime favorite and if you know us, we’re Anglophiles around this household.

One tablespoon of flaxseed (ground or whole) mixed with 3 tablespoons of water and left to sit for ten minutes produces a eggy consistency to replace one whole egg. Of course, it also leaves a slightly earthy aftertaste and a cake too moist to hold up being flipped out of its loaf pan. The cake isn’t dreadful; it’s just not what I hoped for.

I’ve used my preferred silken tofu swap in the modified recipe below; if you use it, let me know how it goes, okay?

Nigella’s Mother-in-Law’s Madeira Cake

adapted from How to Be a Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson (Chatto & Windus, 2003)

1 cup softened vegan margarine (like Earth Balance)

3/4 cup caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup silken tofu

1 cup self-raising flour

just a little more than 1/3 cup AP flour

loaf tin, buttered and/or lined

Preheat oven to 170C/gas mark 3/325F.

Cream the margarine and sugar, and add the lemon zest. Add the silken tofu in 3 parts, following each with a tablespoon of flour. Then gently mix in the rest of the flour and, finally, the lemon juice. Sprinkle with caster sugar (about 2 tablespoons should do it) as it goes into the oven, and bake for 1 hour or until a cake-tester comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack, and let cool in the tin before turning out.

My husband and I have this weird compulsion to make our own foods: yogurt, pesto, hot mustard, ice cream, beer, to name a few. He’s currently making a very large batch of red wine vinegar and last night I made seitan. Seitan is a wheat-based “meat”; it’s very common in Asian cuisines (it’s especially favored by Buddhists). I decided to make my own because while it’s fairly common to find tofu and tempeh products here, seitan is more difficult to find. Plus, I like a challenge.

So…seitan Avengers, assemble!

No real tricky ingredients here; you can find vital wheat gluten at your local health food store. In fact, I’ll wager it’s easier for you to find because odds are your labels are in English. It wasn’t until I did a Google search on my phone while in the store that I found what the French could possibly label it; it was farine de gluten, if you were curious.

After a minimum amount of kneading and mixing—during which your husband is sure to come in, see you knuckle-deep in what looks like brownie dough, and ask if you’re making cake—you just put your dough, sliced into sections above, in a soup of broth or water and soy sauce and go read a magazine or something. Seriously. It takes at least an hour for everything to simmer and then you have to wait for everything to cool before handling and storing.

I must confess a certain amount of trepidation regarding making my own seitan. There is an incredible amount of soy sauce in the recipe, both in the dough and the broth, and being a salt wuss, I am concerned about the end result. Yes, yes, I haven’t tried it yet, but it is one of the main components of my next blog entry. Curiosity may get the better of me before then so perhaps I should head off to the fridge…

Homemade Seitan

from Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, (Da Capo Press, 2005)

2 cups vital wheat gluten flour

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

2 tbl. AP flour

1 cup cold water or vegetable broth

1/2 cup soy sauce

1 tbl. tomato paste

1 tbl. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, pressed or grated on a Microplane grater

1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest

for the broth:

12 cups water or vegetable broth

1/2 cup soy sauce

In a large bowl, mix together vital wheat gluten, nutritional yeast, and all-purpose flour. In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients through the lemon zest.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine with a firm spatula. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes until spongy and elastic. Let the dough rest for a couple of minutes. In the meantime, stir together the ingredients for the broth in a large saucepot (do not boil the broth at this point).

Roll the dough into a log shape about 10 inches long and cut it into 6 pieces of roughly equal size. Place the pieces in the broth. It is important that the broth be very cold when you add the dough, which makes for a nicer texture and ensures that the seitan doesn’t fall apart. Partially cover the pot (leave a little space for steam to escape) and bring the broth to a boil.

When the broth has come to a boil, set the heat to low and gently simmer for an hour, turning the pieces every now and again.

Turn off the heat and let the broth and seitan cool for at least 30 minutes. This will produce a firmer seitan. It is best to let everything cool completely before removing the seitan from the broth.

What you do next depends on the recipe you are using. If storing the seitan for later use, slice it into bite-size chunks, put it into a sealable container, and cover with broth. Seal the container and place it in the fridge for up to five days.

On this cool rainy day in Quebec, I stare outside at the ruin that is our front lawn and curse the heavens for not allowing me to till the weeds and junk on the ground to pave the way for my pretty garden. Yes, once again we will attempt to create a vegetable garden that we promise to weed every day. Last year we did okay with our crops: lots of cherry tomatoes, a few hot peppers, a green bell pepper or two, giant marrows, and some decent heads of lettuce. We had hoped to get a head start on it this year—we started way too late last year—but alas, the Traditional Gardening Weekend in Canada is next holiday weekend (Victoria Day for those of not part of the Commonwealth) and we will be in Ontario. The weekend after, a holiday weekend in the U.S. (Memorial Day for those of you not in the continental United States), I suppose we will try and make up lost time. Until then, let us talk of tempeh.

I am sure for those of you less inclined to eat anything that involves soy, this will not appeal to you. Tempeh is compressed and fermented soybean patties, very dense and meaty. They’re quite a good substitute for vegans/vegetarians when you simply cannot stand the idea of eating tofu again. Most skilled vegan cooks will ask first-timers to steam the tempeh before marinating/frying/baking because there can be a slight bitterness to it you may not be accustomed to. Thursday I did just that, steaming my slabs of tempeh (listen, I know “slabs” isn’t an appealing word, but that’s what they were packaged like) in my rice cooker steamer basket, feeling quite pleased at my cleverness as the hulled barley got chewy and tender at the same time as my tempeh did its thing. After I pulled it out of the steamer basket, I cubed it, tossed it in a mixture of curry, ginger and oil. Honestly, I think you cannot cook any sort of cuisine poorly if you use curry powder. Most Asian ingredients elevate any sort of cooking to an almost obscene awesomeness.

Yes, I won’t lie to you: this is a fairly healthy dish. You’ve got the whole grains from the barley, you’ve got the protein from the tempeh. And when you use your rice cooker, it becomes much simpler. Of course, you could do as the original recipe suggests and always have cooked whole grains frozen in the proper portions, but whoever thinks ahead like that?

Skillet Grain Medley with Curried Tempeh

The New Vegan Cookbook, Lorna Sass (Chronicle Books, 2001)

for curried tempeh:

8 oz. tempeh (soy or three grain)

2 tbl. curry powder, hot or mild (I used hot because I like the heat of it)

1/2 tsp. ground tumeric

pinch of salt

1 1/2 tbl. grated fresh ginger

2 tsp. peanut or canola oil

1/3 cup water

for skillet grain medley:

1 cup water, plus more if needed

1/2 cup grated, dried, unsweetened coconut (often available in health food stores)

1 tsp. fennel seeds

1 tsp. cumin seeds

1/4 tsp. salt, plus more if needed

1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp. cayenne (optional, especially if you used hot curry powder)

3 cups cooked grain of your choice, (if frozen, pour boiling water over them to partially defrost)

1/2 cup frozen green peas

Cucumber-Mint “Raita” (recipe to follow)

Set the rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 425F.

To prepare the curried tempeh: Use a fork to prick both sides of the tempeh deeply about 20 times. (Now’s when you want to steam it for 10 minutes if you want the marinade to really penetrate.) Cut the slab into 1/2-inch cubes and set aside.

In a sealable storage container, combine the curry powder, turmeric, salt, grated ginger, oil, and water. Add the tempeh cubes, close the container, and shake gently to coat the cubes evenly. (Most of the marinade will be absorbed instantly.) Set aside for 5 minutes.

Arrange the tempeh in  one layer in a nonstick baking pan or shallow roasting pan. (Set aside the storage container and any unabsorbed marinade.) Bake the tempeh for 5 minutes. Toss, and then continue to bake until the cubes feel crisp and dry to the touch, 5 to 7 minutes longer. (Do not bake longer than 12 minutes, as the tempeh will dry out; it may not brown significantly.) Set aside in a warm place.

To prepare the grain medley: Pour the water into the container you used for the tempeh marinade, and blend in any unabsorbed marinade. Heat a large, nonstick skillet and add the coconut, fennel seeds, and cumin seeds. Stir almost constantly until the coconut becomes fragrant and about half of the batch turns golden, 1 to 2 minutes. (Take care as the coconut can burn quickly.)

Immediately pour the marinade water into the pan and stir. Add the salt, cinnamon, and cayenne (if using). Boil gently for 2 minutes. Stir in the grains, peas, and more salt, if needed. Cover and cook over medium-low heat until good and hot, stirring occasionally to prevent the grains from sticking, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in a few tablespoons more water during this time if the mixture becomes dry.

To serve: Mound the grains in the center of large lipped plates or shallow soup bowls. Surround with “moats” of Cucumber-Mint “Raita” and top with the curried tempeh.

Ever had that moment when you’re staring into the messy maw that are your pantry shelves, yearning to make something sweet, and instead of rummaging around to see what you’ve got in there to make anything, you just sigh and say, “Oh hell with this”? I do that often. Part of changing my lifestyle is trying to tally what exactly is in my fridge/freezer/pantry and work from there, thus reducing our food costs and making me feel better about my rampant consumerist ways. I am a terrible sucker for interesting/fancy things in groceries and it sometimes takes a great amount of restraint to not buy the gourmet ingredient I’ve just recently read about on Chowhound.

But you didn’t come to hear that. You came to hear about cookies.

This is one of those recipes where I was reading the cookbook—which I do with the concentration people ascribe to doorstop-sized novels—and went, “I have that, and that, that too. Oooooh, I have all of this to make these!”

These weren’t really going to be delicious tempting cookies meant to hang around the house, taunting with their yumminess. These were cookies for Matt’s writer’s group—because someone always brings something for the group and he hadn’t yet—and from I was told, they were a hit.

These are so easy and take so little time, it’s almost shaming. I guarantee you probably have all the ingredients in your pantry right now. These are that cookie dream of crispy yet chewy, chocolatey yet light.

You had better clear your afternoon schedule.

Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies

from the Veganomicon, Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero, (Da Capo Press, 2007)

1/2 cup raspberry preserves

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 tsp. almond extract

1/2 cup plus 2 tbl. unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

1 1/2 cups AP flour

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly grease your cookie sheet, or do as I did and use your silicone mats so you don’t have to clean your cookie sheet.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the raspberry preserves, sugar, canola oil, vanilla and almond extracts.

In a separate mixing bowl, sift together the other ingredients. Add the dry to the wet in three batches, mixing well with a fork after each addition. When you get to the last batch, you may need to use your hands to work the batter into a soft and pliable dough.

Roll the dough into walnut-size balls and then flatten them with your hands into a 2 1/2-inch-diameter disks. Place on a cookie sheet (they need be only 1/2 inch apart because they don’t spread out when baking). Bake for 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

I’ll level with you: you should have gotten a tea cake recipe today. For a vegan potluck I didn’t get to go to (I misunderstood the time it started), I successfully transformed a recipe from my beloved Nigella Lawson into a vegan delight. But I was frazzled the Saturday morning I made it, realizing that I thought I mixed up the two flours you use for it, worrying if it would come out too done, and when everything came out lovely, was bummed to learn I didn’t take pictures of anything. I’ll probably make it again, use the glaze I think it needs for total perfection, and this time take photographs.

As a consolation prize, I got stroll through the early Sunday morning vegetable/fruit stalls at Atwater Market for the ingredients of last night’s dinner. Montreal really does have amazing markets; I prefer Jean-Talon—it’s funkier, more ethnic—but Atwater is good, too, if a little more tony than I like. I picked up some Brussels sprouts (they are on the edge of out of season), some beautiful red and orange bell peppers, shiny cherries like glossy red lipstick, and a small basket of pears. (I am trying to develop a taste for pears because they really do come in handy in so many baked goods.) And after a quick spin through the specialty shops inside, we headed home.

Quick question: who likes Brussels sprouts?

Okay, I bet not a lot of you said “I do!,” but that’s unfair. One of my best friends, Matt C., makes an amazing roasted Brussels sprouts dish with pancetta, or sometimes, goat cheese. But without roasting them this time out, I made a pretty yummy faux-Asian dish with lots of veggies and miso.

This dish includes udon noodles as well, another favorite of mine, even though we curiously don’t eat a lot of pasta. (I know you can make awesome vegan pasta dishes, and I have, but pasta always demands some sort of excess that I feel I must bow to.) I should add when I made this recipe, I reduced the amounts of soy sauce it asked for; I am fairly salt-sensitive, so I tasted the dressing as I went along, making sure it was just salty enough.

I must confess being baffled when it comes to how much recipes say they serve. Not just this one—which will make enough for tonight’s leftovers and possibly lunch the day after as well—but most of them. When I whip up a dish that states it will serve four people, invariably I am left with an amount which I think would serve more than four. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I just eating smaller portions than the recipe writer thinks people eat?

Brussels Sprouts & Udon Noodles in Miso Sauce

The New Vegan Cookbook, Lorna Sass (2001, Chronicle Books)

1 lb. or two 10. oz pints Brussels sprouts

2 tsp. olive oil

1 tbl. peeled, minced ginger

1/2 tsp. minced garlic

6 scallions, thinly sliced (keep white and green parts separate)

1/2 cup finely diced red bell peppers

1/2 cup finely diced yellow or purple bell peppers, or additional red peppers

1/4 to 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

3/4 cup water

8 oz. udon noodles

2 1/2 tbl. dark miso

1 tbl. rosemary-infused olive oil (or 1 tbl. olive oil and 1 to 2 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary), plus more if needed

1 to 2 tbl. Japanese soy sauce (shoyu or tamari), to taste

1/2 cup toasted pecans (I used toasted walnuts because I had a lot of them)

Trim off the root end of the Brussels sprouts, and discard any browned or damaged outer leaves. Cut the Brussels sprouts lengthwise into 1/4-inch slices. Set aside. Begin bringing a large pot of water to boil for the udon.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the ginger and garlic, and cook, stirring constantly in your hot pan, for about 20 seconds. Add the sliced white part of the scallions, bell peppers, and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute.

Turn off the heat. Standing back to avoid spattering oil, add the water. Add the Brussels sprouts, cover, and cook over medium-high heat again until the sprouts are tender-crisp and still bright green, 2 to 4 minutes. (Add a few tablespoons additional water during this time if the mixture becomes dry.) Set the skillet aside, uncovered.

Break the udon in half and add them to the boiling water. In a small bowl, dissolve the miso in 1/2 cup of the noodle cooking water. Stir in the rosemary-infused miso and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce.

When the noodles are just short of done, drain them. Set them in the skillet with the Brussels sprouts, and stir in the miso sauce and reserved scallion greens. Add more soy sauce and rosemary oil, if needed. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, just until the mixture is good and hot. Toss in the pecans and serve immediately.