I have come out of hibernation and I must say there has been a lot of cooking out of Veganomicon over the holidays but I still haven’t even made a dent in the recipes. My dad visited me which was a good excuse to make some fancy food – first up was mushroom-spinach lasagna. It had tofu ricotta, almond parmesan (“almesan,” which I skipped because there were so many other things going on) and a pine nut cream topping (recipe below) which was a really good idea, especially since vegan lasagna is usually lacking that melted cheese people like to top it with. Lasagna is a really good thing to feed to omnis or vegetarians if you want to impress them because it tends to actually taste like cheese! They also have instructions for this new-fangled way of making lasagna where you put everything together with the noodles raw and then pour a cup of water on it, but that sounded way too scary for me.
Pine Nut Cream:
Combine the following ingredients in a food processor, and spread on top of lasagna for the final 10 minutes of baking.
- 1 lb soft silken tofu
- 1/2 cup pine nuts
- 3 tb lemon juice
- 1 tsp arrowroot powder
- 1 clove garlic
- pinch nutmeg
- 1 1/4 tsp salt
- white pepper (omitted)
I also made the spicy tempeh and brocolli rabe with rotelle (unfortunately forgot to take a photo) – which was an interesting combination. There were definitely a lot of flavours going on… if I were to make it again I would probably use regular brocolli because I didn’t really like the bitterness of the rapini, although I would recommend trying it because my dad thought it was the greatest thing ever. The tempeh was neat because you cut it into chunks, mash a few of them up and then fry it so it browns and the little pieces crust onto it. Yum. I think it would be good for people who are weirded out and are afraid of eating tempeh.
