Mini Onion Cheese Tarts with Heirloom Tomatoes

This is definitely something that was time consuming but oh so worth it!  

A couple months back my mom sent me several pounds of baby onions from my Grandfather's garden back in Michigan.  Have I ever mentioned that my mom has this amazing organic garden in Michigan and is constantly overnighting me things when they are in abundance?  Well, this year my grandpa had tons and tons of these baby onions, and supposedly once you pick them, you are supposed to let them sit in the garage or some other cool place on top of newspapers until the skins completely dry out.  Once this happens, you can store them in the large mesh onion or other fruit bags and they will keep for a long period.  I still have about half a pound, although they are now in my refrigerator.  I did keep them in a bowl on the counter for a good couple months (trying to remind myself to use them!) and true to my mom's word, nothing happened to them.  They remained super fresh.

I got the idea for this recipe from my friend Brittany who made mini butter tarts (with real dairy butter) and was kind enough to share her recipe with me, which I easily converted to vegan.  So, with lots of patience and excitement (initially!)  I decided to make these bad boys and was happily rewarded when Hubbs decided to eat over 12 of them in one sitting (no joke!).  Glad he liked them, but kind of wish I had someone a little girly or foodie over so they could ooh and ahh over them like I did.  I had a great time making these, but likely will not again unless my little niece or mum help me.

Mini Onion Cheese Tarts with Heirloom Tomatoes:



The gorgeous end result!



Yields: 24 mini tarts, with a small amount of dough leftover

Butter Crust:

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup chilled earth balance

3 tablespoons ice water, or as needed

Seasoned Onions:

10-12 mini onions, ends removed, and first tough layer removed

2 tablespoons earth balance

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

pinch sea salt and black pepper

Remaining Toppings:

Baby heirloom tomatoes, sliced

Fresh basil, Chiffonaded

Daiya, as needed

1.  Prepare the dough.  Place the flour and salt in a medium mixing bowl.  Whisk well together.  Add the earth balance and gently incorporate with hands, being careful not to over-mix and make the dough too tough.  Add the ice water, starting with the 3 tablespoons, mixing, and adding more as needed.  Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it chill out in the refrigerator while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2.  Remove the dough from the refrigerator after about half an hour.  It should be relatively firm, but still pliable.  If it is too firm, allow it to sit out for about 5-10 minutes before proceeding.  Dive the dough into 2 pieces (it's easier to work with).  Cover the half you are not currently working on back in the plastic wrap.

3.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

The dough rolled out

4.  Sprinkle your work surface with flour and sprinkle the top of the dough as well.  flatten lightly with your hand.  Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough evenly and use a cookie cutter or other round object, also dusted in flour to cut out the pieces needed for the tarts.



The circles for the tarts cut out.

5.  Lightly oil a mini muffin pan with spray olive oil or whatever you have on hand.  Press the cut out pieces of dough into the pan, being sure to press into the edges.  




The dough all pressed into the pan!



5.  Partially bake the dough base in the oven for about 10-12 minutes, or until the dough is cooked and golden.

6.  Meanwhile, in a saute pan add the earth balance over medium heat and allow it to both melt and become hot.  Once it is hot, add the dried thyme and let it sizzle for a minute or so.  Add the onion slices, separating into rings as you place them in the pan.  Sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper, stirring frequently, just until the onions begin to soften - you still want them to have texture.  Season to taste.

7.  Remove the baked crusts from the oven and add several of the onion slices, followed by two slices of the heirloom tomatoes, a couple pieces of daiya and bake, just until the daiya melts. 

8.  Once the tarts cool slightly, top with the basil pieces.  Be sure not to do this when the tarts are still hot or the basil will shrivel and turn brown right away.

Here are those yummy onions!

Enjoy!

-Koko

Toasted Pinenut Quinoa Salad

This is a super simple, super easy salad recipe I made up on the fly when I wanted something really quickly and fresh for lunch.  Quinoa is one of my definite go-to grains to cook when I don't want any fuss.  So,  I opened the fridge, saw what was available and decided on this.  I had a small container of toasted pinenuts left over from a class from a couple weeks back and decided to use it up.  (I know there's the scary thing with pinenut mouth going on right now, but these were definitely organic and definitely real pinenuts - they should be at $30 per pound!).  You could (and probably should) add some chopped parsley or cilantro for color, but I didn't have any. 

Toasted Pinenut Quinoa Salad:

Serves: 4 large servings or 6-8 small servings

2 1/2 cups cooked quinoa

2 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 pinches cayenne pepper
1 garlic clove, minced

1 roma tomato, chopped, about 1/2 cup

1/2 cup small diced red onion

1/3 cup toasted pinenuts

1.  In a medium bowl, add the olive oil, lemon juice, sea salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper and minced garlic.  Toss ingredients to coat with a rubber spatula. 

2.  Add the cooked quinoa, chopped tomato, onion and toasted pinenuts.  Toss ingredients to coat again.  Season to taste with additional salt, lemon juice or olive oil, as needed. 

3.  Serve cool or at room temperature.

Enjoy!

-Koko

Hubby's Invention: Noodle Vegetable Soup

This is something the Hubby made for me several days ago when I was working late.  Until we get a couple more people in the department I am working in, I have been and will continue working crazy shifts that span all hours of the day.  Some days I do not finish work until 8 or 9 pm and will not have eaten all day, so my loevely Hubbs will make a nice dinner for me.  What a sweetie!  This time was a variation of a soup that he makes pretty often.  I love that he put slices of the corn on the cob in the soup - that was really fun to eat (and messy!)

Noodle Vegetable Soup

Serves 4

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1/2 small onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, sliced in half down the middle and chopped

4 sprigs cilantro, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 corn on the cob, sliced into 4 circles

1 potato, peeled and chunked

filtered water to cover

unchicken boullion

3/4 cup thin pasta, broken into pieces

black pepper to taste

1.  In a medium pot over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and allow to become hot.  Once the oil is hot, add the onion, celery, cilantro and garlic.  Cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant. 

2.  Add the corn on the cob and potato and stir.  Add enough filtered water to cover all of the ingredients, plus 2-3".  Add the unchicken boullion and bring contents to a boil.  Once the contents are boiling, lower heat, and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes and corn are tender. 

3.  Add the pasta and stir into the simmering soup.  Cook for about 8 or so more minutes, or until the pasta is cooked through.  Serve.

Enjoy!

-Koko

Spicy Lime Tofu with Roasted Mushroom Risotto, Green Peas & Salad

Hello everyone out there.  Hope everyone is doing well.  I have been insanely busy with my new job - it's taking up the vast majority of my time, and what little time I have left is taken by the Hubby either by cooking dinner for him (well, us really), working on our cafe plans together or trying to have enough time to go on a date.  This unfortunately leaves me little time left to blog about all of the tasty things I am still making on basically a daily basis.  I definitely still want to share the delicious things I am doing, and I hope you are still wanting to see them, however, there is no way with the way things are currently going, that I will be able to write as thorough of posts as I have in the past.  I am thinking of doing something similar to the blog What The Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway, in that I would share menus and pictures, and when time, recipes and stories.  I think that is what is going to work the best for now, but it could always evolve from there and maybe eventually go back to a recipe for each post.  We'll see.  Until then, thanks for checking out my blog and enjoy through pictures the tasty things I am making for the Hubbs and I, or what I am preparing professionally or privately.



Dinner Tonight: Roasted Mushroom Risotto, Spicy Lime Tofu,
Mixed Green Salad and Green Peas.  Tasty and simple,
though the risotto was definitely time consuming!



Country Fried Seitan, Sesame Kale, Fried Zucchini & "Fried" Rice

This is one of the many times the Hubby has come home and said "Mucho Hambre Mami", meaning "I'm very hungry honey!".  Insert roll of the eyes here.  Since when is he not hungry?  Seriously?  It's scary thinking what it's going to be like if/when there's another guy added to the family - like a son!  They would eat me out of house and home!  I always tell people I have to cook for at least 3 people (Hubby counting as 2 people)!  Anyway, knowing that he loves rice and can literally eat it everyday, I made some fried  - more like sauteed - because I already had some cooked rice in the fridge.  And since I was making country fried seitan, which takes a while to make, I'm not going to lie, I wanted to make something that would be a little simpler.  I got this recipe idea from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook.  The original recipe wasn't exactly super tasty, so after messing around with the spices a few times, I hit it and now it's amazing.  Since the thing that takes the longest time is mixing together the spiced flour, I have wised up a little and made a giant batch of it and now keep a Ziploc of it in the refrigerator at all times so that whenever Hubbs or I have a craving, it's not as far away.  Also always having a batch of homemade boiled seitan in the freezer definitely helps.  (After I finish with this recipe, I will have emptied my supply and am going to have to replenish it soon.)  I've also got the fried zucchini down and can whip that up ridiculously easily.   I have figured out that the key to making a quick meal is to have things ready before hand to help you out and save time for those days when you're really busy.

Country Fried Seitan, Sesame Kale, Fried Zucchini & "Fried" Rice:



Country Fried Seitan, Sesame Kale, Fried Zucchini, Fried Rice



Serves about 4, with extra seitan left over

Fried Zucchini

Sesame Kale

Fried Rice:

2 cups cooked rice, cold

1/4 cup shredded carrots

1/4 cup green peas, cooked

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1 tablespoon tamari/shoyu

1/4 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

1/2 small onion, small diced, about 1/2 cup

2 green onions, sliced

Country Fried Seitan:

1/2 - 3/4 lb. homemade seitan steaks

Spiced Flour Mixture:

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour

4 teaspoons baking powder (yes, baking powder!  It will make the seitan crispy)

1 teaspoon dried parsley

1 teaspoon seasoned salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon boullion powder

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard powder

2 pinches cayenne, optional, but a good idea

Wet Seasoned Mixture:

1/3 cup seasoned flour

1/2 cup filtered water

3 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard

1.  Begin by getting everything ready for the fried seitan.  Mix together the flour and all the spices.  Set aside.

2.  Begin making the rice.  In a wok over medium-high heat, add the olive oil and let it become hot.  Once it's hot, add the onion and carrot and saute until the onion is fragrant, about 3-4 minutes.  Add the peas and stir for a minute.  Add the rice and "fry" aka saute for about 10 minutes, letting the grains become a little crispy.  Add the rest of the ingredients, being sure to combine thoroughly.  Continue to cook for an additional couple of minutes.

3.  Back to the country fried seitan.  Set up a station: 1 bowl will have the wet seasoned mixture, the second bowl will have some seasoned flour and a clean plate should end this assembly line. 

4.  Place a large pan over medium heat and cover the bottom with a layer or no-taste oil, like canola.  Allow the oil to become hot.  In the meantime, prepare the seitan.

5.  Assembly line:  keep one hand for the wet mix and the other hand for the dry mix.  Squeeze out any liquid that may be in the seitan into the sink.  Dip the seitan pieces into the wet mixture, coating well.  Shake off excess liquid.  Now place the seitan into the spiced flour.  Cover every surface of the seitan with the flour.  Shake off excess flour and place on clean plate.  Repeat with remaining seitan. 

6.  The oil should now be hot.  Carefully place the coated pieces of seitan into the oil, cooking for several minutes on each side, until browned and crispy.  Once browned on both sides, drain on paper towel covered plates. 

7.  To serve, place portions of each item on the plates, and be prepared to serve seconds.  Delicious!

Enjoy!

-Koko

Tofu with a Tahini Sauce, Rice, Brazilian Braised Kale, Hominy

This is certainly not the prettiest of dishes I have ever made, but damn was it tasty!  I am by no means a Southerner.  I am from pretty much as high north as you can go in Michigan.  Therefore, I have never eaten Southern food, nor have I ever really felt the need to eat any kinds of Southern looking foods in the past.  This has changed recently once I started working with B, a lovely intern from the Natural Gourmet Institute, the culinary school I graduated from in NYC.  She happens to be from Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the sweetest person ever!  She also helped disabuse me of all of my preconceived notions I hadn't even realized I had about Southern people.  Weird, right?  Anyway, she was always telling me about foods her mother would prepare for her and things that are typically Southern.  Keep in mind though that she is a culinary graduate living in NYC, so she certainly has creative, delicious ideas, but still talks about the foods she ate.  So this was my tribute to her in a not-really Southern way, but a Southern-inspired way, with the greens and hominy.  I'm not even sure where I came up with the idea for the tahini baked tofu, but there it is, and it was a tasty meal. 

Tofu with a Tahini Sauce, Rice, Brazilian Braised Kale, Hominy

Yields enough to coat 1 lb. tofu

Tahini Sauce:
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon tamari
1 teaspoon agave
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 pinches black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice
pinch cayenne, or to taste

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Lightly oil a baking tray with spray oil and set aside until ready to use.
2.  Remove the tofu from the package, carefully squeezing out some of the water and being sure not to break the tofu.  Cut in half the hamburger way, then cut each half into 4 slices. Lay each slice on the prepared sheet tray and drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper.
3.  Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the top has browned.  Use a spatula to flip over the tofu.  Sprinkle with additional sea salt and black pepper and continue to bake for an additional 10-15 minutes. 
4.  While the tofu is continuing to bake, prepare the tahini sauce. 
5.  In a medium saucepan, add all of the ingredients except for the water and tahini.  Mix together the water and tahini in a separate small bowl until smooth and the tahini has thinned.
6.  Add the thinned tahini to the rest of the ingredients in the pan.  Whisk everything together and turn the heat to medium-low.  You only want to heat the sauce.  Be sure to stir the contents continuously. 
7.  Once the sauce is simmering, add the tofu into the pot, flipping each piece to coat. 
8.  Serve with additional sauce on top. 

Enjoy!

-Koko



Homemade Hummus

Snack time!  Seriously!  Lately at my new job we have not had enough coverage in my department, and I have been having to cover the shifts, which means no break and long hours.  Since there are always customers around and I am working with food, I can't just stop and grab something to eat - it doesn't look good.  So, I came home from work yesterday super hungry, and since it was Hubbs' day off he didn't want to cook, so I had to throw something together really quickly.  I was looking through my fridge and found some cooked chickpeas and immediately thought hummus!  It's been a while since I've made it - I usually make the recipe out of the Candle Cafe's cookbook  - it is delicious and perfect every time - with my modifications of course!  I was too lazy to do that though, so I just improved this recipe and it turned out really nicely.  The only thing I did was toss the chickpeas into a pot of boiling water briefly to heat them up - hummus is much much much better when it is made when the chickpeas are hot.  While they were heating, I put all of the other ingredients in the food processor.  Once the chickpeas drained, I added those to the processor and blended everything. 

I was feeling hungry and lazy, but you can be really creative with this recipe.  You can roast a pepper, skin it and add it to the mix.  Or roast a head of garlic, squeeze out the bulbs and add it.  Or roast a tomato with some garlic and herbs and add it to the mix.  Or add a ton of garlic, lemon, parsley and finely chopped carrots.  Or add some sour cream and dill!  Yum - seriously the possibilities are endless!  Try whichever one suits your fancy at that moment.  Even kalamata olives!  Or chipotle peppers!

Homemade Hummus:

Creamy, Tasty, Spicy Goodness (That's cayenne & olive oil on top!)

Yields: about 3 1/2 cups

3 cups cooked chickpeas, preferably still warm

1/4 cup tahini

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons sea salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon paprika

3/4 teaspoon cumin

2 pinches cayenne

3/4 cup filtered water, or as needed



1.  Place all of the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor, but leave 1/4 cup of water on the side in case you don't need it.  Pulse until the mixture is completely smooth and silky, adding more water as needed to achieve your desired consistency.  That's it!

2.  Eat immediately.  Serve with raw baby carrots, celery sticks, raw broccoli or cauliflower, or be bad and eat it with chips!

Enjoy!

-Koko