Braised Fennel with Gravy

Well, I made another delicious and seasonal dinner tonight. Tempeh with my berbere marinade, an experimental dish with roasted beets, eggplant, peppers in a curry mustard sauce (it needs more perfecting before it goes on this blog) and, finally, braised fennel with gravy. Tonight, I'll let you know the recipe for this absolutely delicious fennel. Savory, rich, and effing delicious. Definitely the best part of this dinner.

For two side servings, you'll need:

• 1 bulb of fennel
• 1 T olive oil
• a couple dashes salt & pepper
• 1/4 + 1/8 c veggie broth (homemade is best, of course!)
• 1-2 t flour (use rice flour and it'll be gluten free)

The steps:

1. Prep your fennel. Cut the stems off and discard (or save for a crunchy snack). Slice fennel bulb lengthwise in roughly 1/2 inch slices.
2. Heat olive oil in a saute pan over medium high heat and add fennel slices.
3. Brown fennel slices. Flip once. Cook for a total of 5-8 minutes or until nicely brown and caramelized on each side.
4. Reduce heat to low and add broth, salt, and pepper.
5. Cover and cook for 10-12 minutes, or until fennel is tender.
6. When fennel is cooked, remove from pan but leave cooking liquid, simply dish out onto your plates
7. Return heat to high and quickly stir the liquid until it bubbles. Reduce heat to low.
8. Add a small handful of flour, sprinkled across the pan. Quickly stir, ensuring not to burn the flour. Stir until completely incorporated and smooth. 
9. Quickly pour the gravy over the fennel and serve.

Stuffed Peppers & Basil Garlic Smashed Potatoes [vegan]

Well, here is a sorta fancy looking dinner with very simple ingredients. Seasonal, savory, delicious. Let's start with the peppers then move onto the potatoes. I cooked the potatoes while the pepper was cooking in the oven, so it's easy to time these together.


VEGAN SUMMER STUFFED GREEN PEPPER

For two stuffed peppers you'll need:

• 2 bell peppers
• 1 medium large tomato
• 1 fennel bulb
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 1/2 T margarine
• 3/4 c pastini
• dash paprika
• dash oregano
• 1 t good balsamic vinegar

The steps:

1. Slice the tops from the peppers, remove seeds and membranes.
2. Place peppers in a pot of salted water. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 5 minutes
3. Chop fennel bulb into small pieces. 
4. Melt margarine in a skillet over high heat and add fennel. Saute for about 5 minutes, stirring often.
5. While fennel is cooking, smash and mince your garlic.
6. Add garlic to the pan, reduce heat to medium low, cover, and cook for about 5 minutes longer, stirring occasionally. 
7. While garlic and fennel are cooking, chop your tomato and measure out pastini.
8. Once the fennel is just beginning to brown, add pastini and tomato. Return heat to high, stir quickly until just combined then remove from heat. Pastini should not be cooked yet. Pastini will cook through as the peppers bake.
9. By this time, your peppers should be finished boiling. Remove from water with tongs and place in a baking dish.
10. Preheat oven to 365.
11. Stuff your peppers to the brim and place in oven. Bake for 30-35 minutes until pepper skin just starts to brown and blister.
12. Let stand a few minutes and serve

VEGAN BASIL GARLIC SMASHED POTATOES & GRAVY

For 4 servings of potatoes (leftovers are nice), you'll need:

• 10 small potatoes. We used a mixture of royal purple and red potatoes.
• 3 T margarine
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 t nutritional yeast
• 1/2 c soy milk
• 2 t basil
• salt & pepper to taste

The steps:

1. Wash potatoes and chop into 1 1/2 inch chunks
2. Place in a pot covered with water (you can re-use the hot water from boiling your peppers) and salt. Bring to a boil and cook for about 20 minutes, until fork tender.
3. Drain potatoes, add margarine, garlic, yeast, soy milk, basil, salt, & pepper.
4. Mash potatoes in the pot until smooth as you desire. Taste and season as needed.

For 2 servings of simple vegan gravy (it's best to make it fresh), you'll need:*

• 3 T margarine
• 2-3 T flour
• 1 t nutritional yeast
• 1-1 1/2 t herbes de provence

The steps:

1. Melt margarine in a pan over high heat. When margarine just begins to bubble, reduce to low and quickly add flour, nutritional yeast, and herbes de provence.
2. Stir constantly, being sure not to let the flour burn to the bottom. Stir quickly until smooth.
3. Serve quickly over your potatoes.

*To make this meal gluten free, use rice flour to make the gravy.

Homemade Potato Chips!

Hooray for homemade junkfood! If you've read Food Rules, you've heard the rule "Eat all the junk food you want, as long as you make it yourself." So, here's my recipe for delicious homemade potato chips. This time, I used purple majestic potatoes but I often use yukon gold or red potatoes. I prefer these smaller varieties over big russet potatoes.

For 2 large servings, you'll need:

• 4-6 potatoes, depending upon the size 
• 1 c vegetable, peanut, or canola oil. If the oil is used, even better.
• seasonings of your choice
• Seasoning blends for grilling actually work great (I used garlic herb tonight)
• You can make a simple BBQ chip by combining the following, in roughly equal parts:
• chili powder
• cayenne pepper
• cumin
• paprika
• raw sugar
• salt
• just plan salt + vinegar is always good

The steps:

1. At least an hour before you want to start frying, begin prepping the potatoes. I would suggest around 3-4 hours in advance.
2. Wash thoroughly but do not peel your potatoes then slice them using the slicing attachment on your food processor
3. Place potato slices in a large mixing bowl and cover with water, ice, and a couple dashes of salt. Let soak until you are ready to fry. If you have room in your fridge, place the bowl in there.
4. When you are ready to fry (about 15min before you want to eat), pour oil into a saucepan and heat over med-high. You can test that the oil is hot enough by flicking a bit of water into the oil. The water should sizzle and then make a sort of clanging popping sound when the oil is hot enough.
5. While the oil is heating, drain the potatoes using a colander.
6. Now you're ready for frying. Using your slotted spoon or skimmer (my favorite), carefully scoop a spoonful of potatoes into the oil. I usually fry 2 scoops at a time. The oil may bubble up on you when you first add the potatoes, but that's okay. Have a lid on hand in case things get out of hand. 
7. Stir the potato slices occasionally to avoid clumping.
8. Cook longer than you think you need to. I would estimate 5-7 minutes. You want the chips to bubble and get a little brown.
9. When chips are cooked, carefully scoop them out and place them on a platter that you've lined with paper towel. With each batch, lay out new paper towel for draining so as to avoid making the chips on the bottom soggy.
10. Once you've removed the chips, season them while they are still hot. Once they've cooled, you'll want to taste a couple chips from the first batch to be sure you have the seasoning right.
11. Let cool and enjoy!

Jalapeño Peach Salsa

Well, I'm back stateside. I ate some amazing food in Turkey and Cyprus and would return again just for the cheese and ice cream (clearly, I didn't eat vegan while traveling). After a few days rest and a conference in Virginia, I'm back in the swing of things. So, for my first recipe since returning, let's go for a nice summer salsa. We pulled in a big haul today from our CSA: jalapeño peppers, green bell peppers, fennel, peaches, yellow plums, red cylindra beets, red tomatoes and mixed cherry tomatoes. We got garlic and onions last week that are still good. This seemed like a great time to make salsa. The resulting salsa is spicy, fresh, and slightly sweet. Here goes:

For about 1.5 qts (or a full food processor) of salsa, you'll need:

• 1 medium red onion
• 1 green bell pepper
• 3 jalapeños
• 3-4 cloves garlic
• 3 large tomatoes, roughly baseball sized
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro
• 1 medium peach, baseball sized, again
• 1/2-1 t cumin
• 1/2-1 t oregano
• salt & pepper to taste

The steps

1. Prep your produce. Remove stems and seeds (if desired) from peppers. Peel onion and garlic. Slice tops of tomatoes. Pit your peach.
2. Place peppers, onion, and garlic in food processor with the blade attachment and pulse briefly until chopped.
3. Add tomatoes, cilantro, peach, and spices and process again until chopped.
4. Taste and season accordingly.