Deb's Night - Vegan with a Conscience

Welcome to summer!  Here in the land of summer, we have fans, sweaty bodies, and produce.  It's also Deb's birthday, and also her night, so she is making her favoritest meal ever.  Of course, for Deb, this distinction depends entirely on her mood, but tonight it means turning to the Conscious Cook for luscious vegan food.

We've used it before and found some of the recipes a bit hit or miss.  Tal Ronnen intersperses his cookbook with paeans to celebrity vegan chefs, like the inventor of Gardein, his favorite fake meat.  Unfortunately, most of the purchasers of fake meats for supermarkets don't carry it, so we have some non-Gardein fake meats.  Hopefully it will do!

Deb <3 fake meat

Fortunately, tonight's fake meat involves searing it with pine-nuts and basil, and then making a mushroom beurre blanc and serving with braised kale and roasted fingerling potatoes.  I guess it's not the summery-est meal, given that kale and potatoes are kind of in season all the time.  Nevertheless, I took a detour early to Russo's and now I'm munching on these baby heirloom tomatoes which are blowing my mind, so, it's summer in my tummy!

Also a summery treat, we're making peach pie!  We're probably going to have a few adventures here (who doesn't love adventure?) because we've made a vegan crust and we're making mini-pies, so the baking times will be a bit mysterious.  Nevertheless, onwards and upwards!  This recipe comes with a video, which Brian and I both watched and then promptly forgot all of the details of, so...yeah, we're still pretty much on our own.

Brian peels peaches!

So, Jim is mincing mushrooms, Deb is cutting kale, and Brian is peeling peaches and I'm touch typing.  Oh yes, it's swell.  Some vegan lady told Deb that we need to use parchment paper on the bottom of our mini-pies, which may prevent the pies from sticking.  After all, we have no butter.

Flattening fake meat.

For our pine nut crusted "chicken", Deb puts some pine nuts in the toaster oven.  This, of course, makes us all terrified that we will burn the kitchen down (this is not unsubstantiated) but we will be VERY VIGILANT and be aware of burning smells and smokey kitchens and toasters being on.

Those toasted pine nuts get mixed with basil and flour and food processed until they make a fine powder.  Then, we're going to coat our 'chicken' with it and...fry it?  Bake it?  From the blogger's view, I'm not actually sure yet!  The recipe calls for flattening the chicken, which definitely isn't happening with the Quorn, as it basically just falls apart.  We also get these 'smart cutlets' which also don't seem to look favorably upon being smooshed.

Deb:  "This dude knows what he's talking about!  He's a vegan!"

Deb dredges cutlets.

Jim has sauteed the mushrooms and added cashew cream (yum) and white wine, and it looks really delicious!

Now, we have to roll out the pie crust, which Brian made ahead of time.  This pie crust uses coconut oil instead of butter, so...who knows what will happen!  I mean, it will be delicious, but will it have the right texture?  We will see!

Apparently, the goal is not just to have pie, but to have...hand held pies!  I should note here that since our dinner is very nearly done, and we have prepped zero pies, this may be...uh...challenging...in terms of time.

So, as Brian boldly reconstitutes our accidentally frozen dough into malleable, rollable dough,

Jim adds oil to mushrooms.

Deb is going to fry the dredged 'chicken cutlets'.  When cooking from the conscious cook, you must always make a nonstick surface in your pan by first adding salt to the pan, and heating it in for 60 seconds.  Then, add your oil, and let it heat for 30 seconds.  Do this, quoth the book, and no sticking will ever happen!

Deb:  We're going to break all the rules.  We're doing vegan science, here!  You've gotta trust these people!

After a search for nutmeg (it was NOT in the spice shelf) we mixed the floury sugary stuff into the peaches, and now we're filling the pie crusts with the mix.  Hungry Deb dashes over to the pies chanting "Overfill! Overfill!" trying to get as many of those peaches into her hand-held pie as possible.  I'm also getting "YOU ARE GOING TOO SLOW" vibes from Deb, as she evicted Bri from the rolling of pie crust to do it herself.  I am doing my best to make things go as not-slow as possible by trying to not be in the way, but I eventually got pulled in to help somehow...

Chicken Cutlets with Pine-nut Basil Breading, Braised Kale, Mushroom Beurre Blanc and Roasted Potatoes

Bri - A- for one and B for the other.  One was amazingly salty, and I don't think I've ever had something oversalted before!  The sauce was fabulous!  The kale was...meh, kale.  I would give it a B.  Kale is kale.  The potatoes and sauce, on the other hand - great!

Deb - A.  I really liked them a lot!  I don't think they could be much  more improved, although I'd like to try the Gardein.  The sauce was the main thing.  The potatoes were a little bland by themselves, but almost perfectly cooked.  The sauce made this whole meal.

Jim - Overall, I'd give the meal an A.  I preferred the smart cutlets to the quorn.  The sauce was awesome - I thought the kale was nice, simple kale.

Alex - Overall, I give the meal a B.  I don't think either fake meat was able to be the focal point of the meal, and I didn't like the flavor of the burnt pine nuts.  I thought the kale was just ok, and the potatoes weren't quite crispy and fresh enough - I think they suffered from the time under the heat lamp (e.g., toaster oven).  The sauce was awfully tasty, though!

Peach Pies

 

Deb - B+  The crust was the only thing lacking, but it was delicious!

Jim - A.  I thought the peach filling was delicious, and the crust was good.  It wasn't perfect, but it was good!

Bri - I give it a C+.  The peaches should have been chopped finer.  The crust was problematic.  And...it was a fruit pie (editor's note - Bri ate approximately two bites of his pie)

Alex - A-.  I really liked it!  It wasn't BOLD and AMAZING, but I thought it was really solid and delicious!

Television

So, we watched another ridiculous episode of True Blood, which is ridiculous, because it's about fairies and witches and vampires and werewolves and sex, and we've tried to find a few things to cut it with.  Here are our possibilities:

A future cop gets sucked back in time to stop terrorists.

The X-Files meets Monk meets Dawson's Creek.

Sexy Succubus Fights Crime by Having Sex

We started with Lost Girl, which in addition to being monster of the week, is a little bit...kind of not very good.  Deb and Bri enjoyed the episodes they watched the first time, but since Jim and I had to catch up, they came to realize that it was actually really tedious.  I'm a bit more critical, so I concurred.

We watched the long pilot of Continuum, which, although it had its moments, wasn't exactly gripping.  So this time, we tried Fringe.  While I initially thought it was a vehicle for a strong female lead, it later turned out to be a vehicle for Pacey from Dawson's Creek (and those Mighty Ducks movies).  It also has "science" in it, which is groantastic for anyone that has problems with suspension of disbelief.  It was ok.  We'll see if we continue!

As for me, I am holding out hope that we will just end up watching the most important television show ever made.

“Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!”