Gnocchi with Beer Braised Seitan Sauce

Happy Sunday, ninja readers!  Here's a delicious recipe for you that's perfect to make on a lazy weekend day when you've got nothing better to do but cook up a storm.  This recipe was inspired by an article in Philly Beer Scene magazine that talked about cooking with beer.  The original recipe was for non-vegan gnocchi with beer-braised lamb shoulder.  I tweaked it to make it both veg-friendly and to suit my own tastebuds.  I have to say, it turned out very well.  Both Mike and I found it delicious anyway.  Making the gnocchi does take some time, and it can get your kitchen pretty messy, but it's fun and easier than you might think - this was my first time ever making gnocchi and I think they came out perfectly.  If you don't feel like making the gnocchi, this sauce would be great on any type of pasta or even polenta (hm, now I might have to try that; I haven't had polenta in forever!) so even if you're now down for the gnocchi, try making the sauce because it comes together pretty quickly.  The sauce has a fancy-schmancy taste, but it's really super easy, so make it next time you want to impress someone with your ninja cooking skills.

A word on beer: please use a good, hoppy beer for this recipe.  I used an imperial black ale called Iniquity from Southern Tier brewery.  It's a nice, strong-flavored dark beer, which is what you need to bring depth to the sauce.  I know some vegans take issue with drinking alcohol, and if that's the case with you, you could try substituting white cooking wine or vegetable broth.  You definitely won't get the same delicious sauce though.  Oh, and please don't go using a tasteless, mass-produced beer in this sauce.  You need a craft brew.  If you're a foodie vegan who doesn't have any issues with imbibing every so often, I'd encourage you to learn about what good microbrews are available in your area.  Beer can play off of food just as well (or, in my opinion, even better than) fine wine.  Just a word of advice from this Fur Ninja who also happens to be a beer snob :)

Onto the recipe!

Gnocchi with Beer Braised Seitan Sauce

Ingredients

For the sauce:
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon non-dairy butter
1 onion, diced
5 gloves garlic, minced
1 lb seitan, diced into bite-sized pieces
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon salt
several grinds fresh black pepper
1 cup strong, hoppy beer
14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes

For the gnocchi:
3 lbs white potatoes, baked and skin removed
2 cups flour + more for rolling the gnocchi
1/4 cup pureed silken tofu
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons rosemary
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon non-dairy butter (for pan-frying the cooked gnocchi)

First, make your sauce.  Heat the butter and olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the diced onion.  Cook for 2 minutes until the onion begins to soften.  Add the minced garlic and seitan and raise the heat to medium-high.  Add the rosemary, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper, crumbling the rosemary and thyme a bit in your fingers before adding to the pan.  Brown the seitan for 6-8 minutes, being careful not to burn.  A bit of sticking is ok (we're going to deglaze with the beer) but if it looks like things are sticking to the pan too much, add a small amount (a Tablespoon or so) of water and turn down the heat.  Once the seitan is browned, and there are some little crispy bits sticking to the pan, deglaze with the beer.  Make sure you scrape the pan with your spoon to get up all the delicious bits of seitan and spices off the surface of the pan.  Add the can of tomatoes and 1/2 cup of water.  Simmer for 10 minutes.  Taste for salt and pepper and adjust if necessary.  Keep warm until you're ready to serve.
Next, get started on the gnocchi.  Mash the potatoes well in a large bowl.  Get them as smooth as possible; you want to make sure you don't have any large pieces of potato left in there.  Add the tofu, olive oil, salt, and spices, crumbling the rosemary and thyme in your fingers before adding.  Stir until combined.  Now add the flour 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition.  Once the dough starts to form you can ditch the spoon and knead with your hands until it forms a dough.  Be sure not to over-knead; stop as soon as the mixture is a uniform and rather stiff dough.
Now the fun part!  Break a handful of dough off and roll it into a long rope on a well-floured surface.  The rope should be about 1/2 inch in diameter.  Once you've done that, use a knife to cut the rope into 1/2" pillow-shaped sections.  Then take each little "pillow" and using your thumb, roll it down the tines of a fork until it reaches the end.  You should end up with a small impression from your thumb on one side, and little ridges from the fork tines on the other.  Set finished gnocchi aside on a large plate.  Don't stack them too much on top of each other or they may stick.  Repeat this process until you are out of dough.
Boil a large pot of salted water and add the gnocchi in 3 batches - don't overcrowd the pot!  Once your gnocchi floats to the top of the pot, it's done (this should take about 2 minutes).  Some will take longer than others to cook; just skim the cooked ones off the top of the water with a slotted spoon and place in a colander to drain.  Continue until all of your gnocchi are cooked.
Heat 1 Tablespoon non-dairy butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the gnocchi and fry for 6-8 minutes, just until they are lightly golden and crispy.  Remove from the heat.
Serve generous portions of the sauce over individual bowls of gnocchi.

Tips and Tricks:

1. As I've said before, I highly recommend making your own seitan over buying it pre-made, as it is very easy and much cheaper.  I recommend the "simple seitan" recipe in the amazing cookbook, "Veganomicon."

2. Crisping the gnocchi is a purely optional step.  If you don't feel like doing this, you can just serve them right after they are boiled.

3. Don't freak out about the gnocchi.  It's actually a lot easier than it sounds.  The dough is pretty much a no-brainer so really the only "hard" part is shaping them, and you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly once you try it.  And if they're not perfect?  So what!  I actually think mine came out too big and slightly oddly-shaped (the indent from my thumb wasn't very prominent - do I have weird thumbs??? - so they were kind of flat), but that didn't affect the taste one bit.  Jump in there head first and give it a try!

4. Serve the gnocchi with some of the beer you used for the braising - it will bring out the flavor perfectly!


Well, ninjas, I hope you try out this recipe and enjoy it as much as Mike and I did.  I definitely think I'll be making this again on a regular basis with pasta or polenta since it's so freaking easy.  I might try it topped with some chopped fresh herbs as well.  As always, comments and feedback welcomed!

More to come soon - "cheater" white bean curry, lemon-carrot muffins with blueberry filling, and Mike and I just got a huge grill for the back "yard" (a.k.a the fenced in concrete slab off the alley haha) so my mind is spinning with ideas for bbq tempeh, grilled pizza, and all sorts of other things.  Plus our garden is bursting with cucumbers so I'm probably going to have to make some pickles soon.  Thanks for reading and until next time, I'm wishing you bellies full of good food and hearts full of happiness.

Much love,

The Fur Ninja

Fudgy Cashew Caramel Swirl Brownies with Coconut and Macadamias

"That damned brownie!"  That's what my ninja-love Mike exclaimed when this super, super rich brownie gave him a stomach ache....but was so good he had to eat another piece.  Please note: I cannot be held responsible for tummy aches, diabetic comas, chubby bellies, jiggly butts, or any other ailment or condition that results from eating too much of these brownies.

Fudgy Caramel Swirl Brownies with Coconut and Macadamias

Brownies:
1 cup non-dairy butter, melted
2 1/2 cups sugar
1.5 cups unsweetened cocoa 
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup non-dairy milk
4 Tablespoons flax seeds
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt


Caramel:
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons agave nectar
2 Tablespoons water
3/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons cashew butter
4 Tablespoons non-dairy butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 Tablespoons non-dairy milk


Topping:
3/4 cup chopped macadamia nuts
3/4 cup unsweetened coconut



Lightly grease a 16x9 inch baking pan with cooking spray or non-dairy butter.  Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.
First, make your brownie batter.  Combine the melted non-dairy butter, sugar, cocoa, salt and vanilla in a large bowl.  Whip the non-dairy milk and flax seeds together in a blender or by hand with a whisk until thick and creamy.  Add to the ingredients in the large bowl and mix well.  Add the flour and mix until it disappears into the batter.  Then beat the batter vigorously for 1 minute by hand with a wooden spoon.  The batter should be smooth and shiny.  Pour batter into prepared pan.
Next, make the caramel.  Place the sugar, agave, and water into a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil and boil for 5-6 minutes, whisking continuously.  The sugar should melt and the mixture should be bubbly.  Remove from heat and stir in cashew butter, non-dairy butter, and vanilla.  Return to the saucepan to the stove over medium-low heat and whisk for two minutes, adding the non-dairy milk one Tablespoon at a time until the mixture is relatively smooth and creamy.  The caramel should be thin enough that it drips in ribbons off of a spoon.  If it is too thick, continue to add non-dairy milk by the Tablespoon until you reach the right consistency.  Remove from heat.
Pour 1/2 cup of the caramel into the pan with the brownie batter.  Use a butter knife to swirl the caramel in with the chocolate.  Reserve the rest of the caramel.
Now toast your toppings.  Place the coconut and macadamias in a dry skillet over medium heat.  Toast for 2 minutes, stirring constantly, until the coconut is light golden.  Be careful not to burn!
Pour the remaining caramel over the batter in the baking pan and use a spatula to spread it over the entire top, all the way to the edges.  If your caramel has thickened up too much as it cooled, whisk in non-dairy milk one Tablespoon at a time until it reaches a spreadable consistency.  You don't want it too thin or it will just sink into the batter.  After spreading the caramel over the top, sprinkle the toasted coconut and macadamias over the whole top of the caramel.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean.  Allow the brownies to cool for at least 15 minutes before slicing.  Enjoy with non-dairy ice cream!

Tips and Tricks:
1. You really could substitute any type of nut butter for the cashew butter.  I originally intended to make the caramel with macadamia nut butter, but Whole Foods didn't have any.

2. The caramel is a bit touchy, so just be patient with adding the non-dairy milk by the Tablespoon until it looks right.  If it's slightly thicker or thinner than mine, or isn't perfectly smooth, don't worry; it will still be delicious!

3. I use almond-milk (unsweetened) as my go-to non-dairy milk for pretty much everything from cooking to baking to morning cereal.  Feel free to use soy or hemp or whatever non-dairy milk you like, with the exception of rice milk.  Rice milk doesn't have the creaminess of other non-dairy milks and might change the consistency of the caramel.  But hey, if you really wanna do rice, let me know how it works out!

4. Make sure you scrape the brownie batter bowl and caramel pan with a spatula and lick it clean!


Enjoy these brownies sparingly.  Seriously - they sit like bricks.  AMAZING though.  I made these for my ninja-grandmom's 90th birthday and my whole family raved about them despite the stomach aches.

See you again soon, ninjas - recipes for gnocchi with beer-braised seitan sauce and "cheater" white bean and sweet potato curry up soon.  Same ninja time, same ninja channel.

Love,
The Fur Ninja

Stop Your Yapping and Eat...a.k.a. Why New Vegans Annoy Me

So it's not often that I bother to post unless I have a recipe to share, but I'm exceedingly irritated right now.  Maybe it's the fact that I'm on my third cup of coffee....or that Mike has been banging out some good, hard beats on the turntables for the last hour....but whatever it is, I'm feeling the need to metaphorically punch someone in the face via a little rant on the internet.

So I don't just blog my own adventures in veganism, I also read the blogs of others for various reasons - new ideas, supporting other writers who are also lovers of this Earth's furry, feathered, and scaly creatures, and also maybe to try to feel some sense of community with other vegans, since I don't really have much contact with any in real life.  I was reading a blog today that shall remain nameless, and I realized something....."new" vegans annoy the hell out of me.  Not because they seem entrenched in using processed fake cheeses (although I swear, if I read one more blog post that tells me to use Daiya shreds as a main ingredient in a recipe I'm going to punch my computer) but because they're, on the whole, a bunch of self-righteous, narcissistic jerks.  Or at least that's how they come across on the internet.
The blog in question isn't written by one person, but accepts post submissions from anyone who registers with them.  The posts that get the most votes are featured on their site, and judging by the blogger profiles, most of these vegan writers have only been living the lifestyle for a year or so.  I originally signed up hoping to get some exposure for my own writing since I only have 7 followers and one of those is my mom (hi, mom!) and I really wish my love of food could reach a wider audience.  I ended up never submitting because once you submit a post to the site, they essentially own it.  Screw that.  I work HARD in my kitchen coming up with delicious creations and I'll be damned if someone else is going to claim ownership of that.  I readily share my recipes with anyone and everyone, but something about that didn't feel right.  So anyhow, I read this blog and most of the posts really, really irritate me.  Most of the recipes are terrible, relying heavily on "substitution" foods marketed directly at vegans, and there's a lot of "how to be vegan" or "what do you eat as a vegan" posts, which would be great if they were actually informative, but there's usually no "meat" to the articles (if you'll pardon the expression).  It's just someone blahblahblah-ing on for a few paragraphs about how awesome it is to be vegan without actually giving a new veg or veg-curious reader any substantial info on how to make those changes.  One of the "how to be vegan" posts even recommended "flexitarianism" as a method of going vegan without making the commitment.  I'll get into my beef (haha, there's another one) with that particular term in more depth another time I'm sure, but suffice to say at the moment that it pisses me off because it's not even a real thing.  Eating meat some of the time is just called being omnivorous, which ALL humans are.  Anyone who is so desperate to be different that they need to assign some BS, meaningless label to themselves so they can give themselves a nice pat on the back for how progressive and forward-thinking they are is just sad.  Veg*nism isn't about being "cool."  It's about living peacefully and with love for ourselves, each other, non-human living creatures, and this planet that we were entrusted with.
But enough about labels.  What set me off today was reading a blog post entitled "How to Talk to Non-Vegans" and, as you can imagine, it went on to talk about how (imagine me putting a hand to my forehead and speaking in my best damsel-in-distress voice here) vegans are sooooo persecuted by society at large.  The whole blog was about how all those mean and cranky meat eaters would say nasty things to you because you don't eat meat, and how you should counteract that by telling them why eating meat is so very, very bad.  Ok, well first of all, if you're going to be the kind of dickish vegan who sits next to someone eating a steak and starts telling them what a horrible person they are for eating it, you deserve whatever nasty comments you get back.  No one wants to hear crap about factory farms and downed cattle and migrant workers and fields full of animals walking around in their own poo while they're trying to enjoy a decent meal.  Second of all, where the heck are all these militant omnivores who are going around flinging horrible insults at nice little vegans and making them go home and cry into bowls of tofu?  I've been vegan for nearly eight years now and the responses I've gotten from family, friends, co-workers, and even complete strangers about my dietary choices have been overwhelmingly positive.  And bear in mind, it's not because I come from some hippie commune where we all eat nuts and berries and sit around singing Kumbaya all day long.  No one in my family is vegan (although my brother and sister-in-law had a short stint as ovo-lactos before starting to eat fish again), I've never dated a vegan, and I've had ONE vegan friend in real life and he went off somewhere out west to be a skydiving instructor and I never heard from him again.  I'm surrounded by lovers of good steaks, burgers, fried chicken and the like, and yet almost no one in the last 8 years of living vegan has had anything to say that even borders on the hateful attitudes that supposedly the world has against us.  The reactions I get range from bored indifference, to genuine interest, to actual admiration for being someone who takes a stand for what I believe in.  My friends and family are always more than willing to try my cooking (which is great because I basically show my love through feeding people) and are great about making sure there is something I can eat at gatherings (on the rare occasion that I don't bring ridiculous amounts of food with me to share, that is).  Then again, maybe I'm not your average vegan, in that I don't go around berating other people about their food choices either.  You want to eat a steak next to me?  Go right ahead; just don't ask me to take a bite.  Everyone is entitled to their own choices in life, and everyone has to be okay with their own set of morals.  If someone asks me why I don't eat meat, sure, I'll tell them, but I counter that with saying that I do it because I feel that I want to live peacefully....and part of that is accepting that others are not necessarily going to think or live like I do....and that's okay.

So I know this is getting long, and I definitely apologize (not like many are going to read it anyway), but I guess my point is this: if you're going to be a vegan, do it for the right reasons - filling your body and your life with love and peace and compassion - not to give you something to self-righteously bitch about on the internet.  And then accept that maybe....just maybe....the world at large isn't terribly interested with what you are or aren't putting in your mouth.  Live the best way you know how, accept that others are trying to do the same, and the next time you feel like you're going to talk about how unfair the world is for us poor, persecuted little vegans...shove a vegan chocolate chip cookie in your mouth instead and shut the hell up.  You'll feel better for it.

Love,
The Fur Ninja