Perogies, cake, curry — FOOD GALORE!

November 7, 2008 · Filed under baked goods, berries, cake, curry, dips, fruit, pasta, potato, potatoes, Restaurants, rice, sauce, tempeh, vegan · Tagged banana, bread, bulk barn, cake, curry, oregano, perogies, pumpkin, ukranian

So O.B. and I ate a lot last weekend… I don’t even know where to begin with the photos.

Let’s start with the simplest recipe: SALSA!! O.B. and I love this simple recipe, but this time we gave it a twist. Normally the only ingredients are finely diced tomates, a liberal quantity of cilantro, and some diced jalepeno. This weekend we added some chopped organic cuban oregano from a rescued house plant.

I bought this little guy last winter and unfortunately left him too close to a non-insulated window. Almost overnight, the plant shrivelled up and died, but for a small green stub embedded in the soil. I quickly moved the plant to my fume hood in the chemistry lab I did my thesis project in, and very slowly the plant regerated into its current splendour. And then we ate it. LOL. Okay, just a tiny piece.

Cuban oreganos are wonderfully fragrant and made a delicious addition to our salsa.

One of my favourite places in the WORLD is any bulk-food store. I’ve never lived close to one, and honestly, it’s like going to prom for me. My new abode is really close to a Bulk Barn and I LOVE IT. I recently made the most glorious find: Sunset Blend, a mixture of parboiled medium rice, lemon garlic orzo pasta, sweet potato orzo pasta, Himalayan red rice, and brown mustard seed. YUM!!!

This blend was PHENOMENAL and I loved it.

We ate it with Kohinoor's Dal Palak curry

Over Thanksgiving, O.B. and I came to the surprising realization that we shared similar ancestry. Specifically, we both have Ukranian roots. In celebration of this fact, we decided to emulate our hard-working grandparents and make perogies from scratch:

boiling

perogies

This is a pretty easy recipe:

5 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 cups warm water

Mix flour and salt. In another bowl, mix oil and water. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour oil/water mixture in. Mix with hands until it forms a soft ball. Roll out until dough is about as thick as pie crust. Cut cereal-bowl sized circles. Add your filling, seal by firmly pressing edges together, and drop into a pot of boiling water until it floats (about 5 mins).

We made ours a little thick because we didn’t have a rolling pin :-(

Fillings: we made 3.

The first was mashed Russet (white) potatoes with cilantro

The second was mashed sweet potatoes (yams) with Montreal Steak Spice

And the third filling, for what I termed dessert perogies, was mixed berries

dipped in light maple syrup

I also made a whole bunch of junk food for freezing and later consumption:

My favourite banana bread, modified to be a bit healthier:

banana bread

banana bread

Here is the new recipe:

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1.25 cup 12-grain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp each of baking soda, salt, and ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup Earth Balance (margarine), softened
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 5 mashed ripe bananas

Heat oven to 350 C. Grease a 9X5 inch pan. Whisk soy milk + lemon juice, and set aside. In a bowl, combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. In another bowl, beat butter, applesauce, and sugar with an electric mixer until light. Beat in vanilla and bananas. Stir in flour mixture alternatively with soy milk mixture. Mix and pour into pan. Bake for 40-60 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean.

I also made a batch of Pumpkin Cake with Pecan Streusel from Veganomicon, making a few substitutions as above (swapping half the white flour with 12-grain, swapping half the margarine with applesauce, halving the sugar):

Pumpkin Cake with Pecan Streusel

I also made Gingery Bars from Andrea’s Easy Vegan Cooking:

Yum! I think I undercooked these a bit, but as a result they were quite fudgy and that's actually perfectly fine with me!

To cap off a great weekend, I had lunch at The Table with my dear friend, the Veggie-Happy Omnivore:

There is just so much on this plate, I can't even identify it all. There's definitely red quinoa, eggplant curry, tempeh cubes, chickpea curry, sweet potatoes, and a chickpea patty with mango chutney.

But of course I saved room for dessert:

Blurry pumpkin pie. Yeah, I'm still not over autumn flavours :-)

After all those gastronomical indulgences, it was positively painful to return to the reality of soup cups and granola bars. I really need to find someone to cook for / eat with out here.

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Maureen