I got these mozzarella sticks the first time I went to the Rockville Center one and loved them so much. The second time I went, they said they were all out, and I almost cried. This time I ordered them the second my butt touched the chair, so as not to waste any time. As soon as they arrived I ate three of the five back to back and my will to live was slowly restored. They are just daiya, but they just do it really right. Also how do you guys pronounce daiya? I always thought it was  "DIE-ya" but I heard a few people say "DAY-ya" and I was like, how silly, but then someone told me they got corrected by someone from daiya when they pronounced it "DIE-ya" and that the true way is "DAY-ya." What gives?

The bottles of water for the tables were so fancy, they looked like they could hold angels' tears.


I ordered the seitan scarpariello, which is like a sausage-and-peppers-with-setian thing. It was okay. the pasta was undercooked and the seitan had a really weird texture. And I filled up on the bread and salad and mozzarella sticks by the time this came, so shame on me. #sorrynotsorry.

I will say that the entrees came on Italian-sized plates. That is to say that the plates the entrees were served on were the size of Italy. That was great for us, except that we forgot to bring our extended families with us to help us eat all of it. Alex ordered the seitan parmesan, which ruled. It was so good and everything you want from seitan parmesan. I wish I had ordered it -- or not ordered mine and just ate a KZ-sized portion of his. There would still be leftovers for both of us. Anyway, A+ on the seitan parm. Oh, and I love that "GO VEGAN" is painted multiple times on the front windows, and that all of the waiters' shirts have "Go Vegan!" written underneath their "3 Brothers" logo. It warmed my progressive vegan heart.

For dessert we shared the PB Bomb, which like all their desserts, comes from Vegan Treats bakery. It was a clear choice, because peanut butter, but they had lots of great options like keylime cheesecake and white chocolate raspberry cheesecake and PB brownie cake and lots of other stuff too.


We could barely fit this inside our bodies. But we did. We did it. In the name of peanut butter and vegan food.
Overall I had a great meal and a great evening. It was a hefty bill -- $80 for two. We shared an appetizer and a large salad, each got an entree (that will feed us maybe two more times each) and split a dessert. So for Italian food, I'd say that's a little overpriced. But I have no real complaints, besides my entree not being my favorite. I'm sure most other things I could have ordered would have been great. We did skip the alcohol, which is what usually drives up the bill, but we did get and appetizer and a dessert, so that ain't cheap either. But I'm a young adult and it's possible one day we won't be young adults anymore, and maybe we'll have a mortgage and a million blonde vegan baby brats to feed, and we won't be able to drive 60 miles on a Tuesday night for Italian food. So I think we should get apps and zerts now. We're young. Right?

Each squash half is going to feed 1 person. I roasted two cut-side up and two cut-side down. Why? Not sure. In hindsight, I would have roasted them all cut-side down, to decrease cook-time. Should of had hindsight...



I like this rainbow quinoa because it is beautiful and colorful and interesting (like me) and it looks great in the finished product, but any kind of quinoa will work fine. 1 cup of dry quinoa makes about 4 cups of cooked quinoa, and I'm making 4 portions. So do all that math according to who you're feeding and then measure your quinoa.
This is the part where I got lazy and forgot to take more pictures.
I remembered while I was toasting almonds, so I took a pic of that so you guys wouldn't get mad.


About an hour after I started, I emerged from the kitchen all festive and housewivey with these two beautiful plates!


That pomegranate molasses drizzle really tasted great with everything and I think made it extra "holiday tasting" but you could totally use balsamic vinegar or just leave it off if you can't find it, don't have any, or just don't feel like roaming isles in Whole Foods.




When I make a totally elegant meal I get real fancy, plop it down on the table with a beer and marathon Twin Peaks. Doesn't everyone do that?


I would have at least served this with red wine if it were in fact Thanksgiving. But it isn't and I have a surplus of beer and well, we just can't have that..


Happy Thanksgiving to all the Vegans out there!! May your tables be filled with tofurkys, tempeh bacon and thanks.

Quinoa & Seitan Stuffed Acorn Squash:

2 acorn squash
1 red bell pepper
2 cups butternut squash, cubed
1 1/2 cups seitan, chopped small
1 cup uncooked quinoa
2 cups veggie broth
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, chopped
1 pound spinach, washed
1/3 cup white wine
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1 lemon
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
1 cup chopped almonds

pomegranate molasses, for drizzling

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Slice the acorn squash into halves. Place cut-side down on a baking tray. Slice the red bell pepper in half and place each half cut-side down on the tray next to the squash. Peel and cube the butternut squash and roast either alongside or in a separate baking dish. Put both trays/baking dishes in the preheated oven and roast for about 35 minutes or until squash is tender.
While the squash roasts, make the stuffing. First, rinse the quinoa and add it to a 2-quart saucepan. Add the veggie broth, salt, paprika, thyme, dried basil, sage, and fennel seeds. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for about 20 minutes or until there is no remaining broth. Remove from heat.
Meanwhile, heat up a cast-iron or heavy pan with a little oil and add the seitan. Cook until browned and remove from pan. Set aside. In the same pan, add the sliced red onion. Sauté for about 5 minutes over medium heat until nicely softened. Remove the onions from the pan and set aside. Add the spinach and white wine. Cook for 1 minute or until wilted. Add the juice of half the lemon and turn off the heat. Add half the cooked red onion to the spinach.
Combine the quinoa in a large bowl with the seitan, the remaining half of the red onion and the remaining half of lemon's juice. Remove the roasting pan from the oven. Peel the skin off the peppers and remove the seeds. Slice into strips and then slice those strips into thirds. Add them to the quinoa with the cubed butternut squash and the chopped fresh basil. Stir and taste for seasonings, adding more salt as needed.
Now take a big scoop of the filling and mound it into the cup of each squash. The filling should be packed in and over-filling the cup of the squash. Place the stuffed squashes back into the oven for ten minutes. Meanwhile, toast up your almonds in a dry sauté pan for about 5 minutes or until the nuts are golden brown. Remove from heat.
Once the squash are done, remove from oven. Spoon some of the spinach and onion mixture onto each plate. On top of the spinach, place a stuffed squash. Sprinkle with the toasted almonds. Carefully drizzle the pomegranate molasses over each plate. Serve!

 Okay, back to food. Alex always requests something meat-and-potatoes-y. He requested it last night and I went to the store thinking, "Okay, how about a cacciatore-style seitan, with capers, peppers..." And he says, "No peppers." And so I am like WTF, why not?! and "What is the seitan supposed to be like?" and he says, "Make it American." And so I had been thrown into loop, where I couldn't visualize my dish, the palate I wanted it to accommodate, and thought, "there's no theme?? What kind of seitan dish follows no path? WHO IS IT VERSUS??"


Under the spell of someone's brief stroke of genius, I decided to press the seitan into breadcrumbs and pan-fry the cutlets, then slice them before plating.

Alongside, I made her Venezuelan Black Beans, which required "sofrito" which is mostly just an aromatic base of cooked veggies. I chopped for a while...


And then I had vegetable confetti! You can celebrate something with any leftover vegetables. Just kidding. Don't throw vegetables.


I used my bamboo steamer to steam the foil packets of seitan for this, but they wouldn't all fit nicely inside. After this, I bought a huge steamer pot suitable for tamales and steaming anything else the size of or smaller than a regulation-size basketball. So now I'm set up in steam-town.


The beans just had to be soaked overnight, but other than requiring a labor-intensive sofrito, they were the easy part.


I served it over her Yellow Garlic Rice, with a huge scoop of guac, and a Mexican beer, you know, for authenticity...


Ta-da. Dinner for 20. People-- not dollars.

Alex moved to Philly for the summer for work, and came home to visit this weekend. He isn't exactly the seasoned chef I consider myself, and had been basically living on beer and Hip City Veg, and was looking forward to a home-cooked meal upon his return. I decided to make a throwback, waaaay back, to when we were sixteen, when I would cook something a lot like this.


It worked out pretty great. We had a nice dinner with red wine and bread. I think you are supposed to use white wine to drink with this, but I like red wine better. So that's what I did. Incidentally, I was recently yelled at by a sommelier for drinking red wine with vegetables. After finding out I was vegan, he told me I just "couldn't understand the finer things in life."

Roman-Style Seitan with Garlicky Green Beans and Mashed Potatoes

4 Seitan Cutlets, use your favorite recipe
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 white onion, sliced into half moons
3 bell peppers, I like to get one of each color, sliced into strips
1 cup white wine
3 large tomatoes, diced
 4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons capers
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Big pinch of salt, pepper

5 yukon gold potatoes, washed, quartered
3/4 cup cashews
1 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil
ten cloves garlic, unpeeled
salt, pepper

1 lb green beans, washed
5 cloves garlic, sliced thin
2 teaspoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Take the ten unpeeled garlic cloves and spread them out on a baking sheet and put in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.
Place the potatoes in a pot and fill with enough water to cover them.
Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and cook until very tender, about 25 minutes.
In a large cast iron skillet, heat the tablespoon of olive oil over pretty high heat.
Add the seitan cutlets and let them brown nicely on each side, then remove from the pan.
Add the onions and peppers to the pan, and cook until they have softened and reduced in size, about 10 minutes. Leave the heat up high, so that it happens quicker.
Meanwhile, add the cashews and water to a blender, and blend like the dickens. Now you have cashew milk!
Add the garlic to the pan with the peppers, and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring often, until the garlic is fragrant.
Add the tomatoes and wine, salt and pepper.  Now nestle the seitan cutlets back into the pot, distributing the veggies over the cutlets. Cover and reduce heat to medium low.
At this point you can steam and shock your green beans if you have room on your stove. You can also boil them for about 5 minutes, then plunge into some ice water to keep them bright green and crisp, thus shocking them. We are going to cook them with garlic last.
Check the potatoes, which should be pretty tender by now, and drain. Pour them back into the pot they were boiled in with the roasted garlic, which you can now peel. Pour in the cashew milk, olive oil, salt and pepper. Mash until very smooth, and the garlic cloves have been mashed into unification with the potatoes. Taste for salt. Cover and keep on the back of the stove until the rest is ready.
Add the 2 teaspoons of olive oil to a frying pan and heat up. Add the sliced garlic and cook for 1 minute until fragrant. Now add your green beans and toss pretty continually until warm and coated with the garlic and olive oil. Sprinkle a little salt and turn off the heat. Turn the heat off the peppers and seitan and add the capers and parsley. I like to take the cutlets out and slice them before plating, but it's not really that necessary. Serve with a lot of peppers and wine sauce from the pan. Obviously serve with more wine!

 Also if you live in NYC, get your hands on DF Mavens ice cream. It's an order. I had it last year at the NYC Vegfest and fell in love with it. I scored some from the health food store in Astoria. At least Astoria is good for something.

Happy Vegan Thanksgiving to all Vegans!!!
I love you all, and am so thankful you all exist.
Glob Bless You,
Love,
KZ
<3
 

Complete with nuggets, V-Mac and fries in a homemade fry-container. Ketchup, Mustard and BBQ all for your dipping pleasure.

To the left is the BBQ chicken pizza, with seitan, red sauce, bbq sauce, and cucumber ranch. I love just dolloping the bbq sauce on the pizza before baking it, because it gets really syrupy and intensified in the oven, and it's unreal. The pizza on your right, is the spicy chicken, which I am now referring to as "Heatzza", has red sauce, seitan, chopped pickled jalapeños, and red onion, with sriracha zigzag. I think this might benefit from a sauce of sorts or a topping or two more. Anyhow, Pizza Progress, if nothing else.

I used all meaty, hearty ingredients in my rice-spice stew, like a homemade cajun-spiced seitan, some large quartered mushrooms and seared artichoke hearts. Brown rice makes this a dish that you can make with a break in the middle. It takes its time soaking up the juices, so you can clean up your kitchen and rest a while before you eat. When you're done, cool the stew a smidge and then stick the whole pot in the fridge. Dinner for the rest of the week-- done.

Cabbage is a controversial side dish. It always makes the table, but just seems to get passed around and no one ever puts any on their plate. I love cabbage, personally, and think if I braise it long enough and cover it in enough beer, I might convince skeptics to eat some. A healthy dose of caramelized onions mixed in couldn't hurt my odds either.



So after making all this, I'm thinking you might have some leftovers. Tradition says, make a sandwich! Get some marble rye, of course, and spread each side with spicy mustard and cram all your leftovers in between. Leftover sandwiches are way-awesome.