Vegan Football Sunday: Potato Skins, "Wings," and Guacamole

The Eagles were televised yet again, so I thought it would be fun to have a few friends over to watch the game.  I decided to do a number of vegan friendly and football friendly finger foods for the occasion: "wings," loaded potato skins and guacamole.

The wing recipe is from the October 2011 Vegetarian Times.   I used Upton's Naturals original seitan, Cholula hot sauce, Whole Foods maple syrup, Original Vegenaise and the smoked paprika we had handy in the spice cabinet.  The wings needed to marinate for two hours before being breaded and cooked, so I did that step first and then popped them in the fridge.

Next, I started the prep for the potato skins.  My husband had picked up a five pound bag of medium potatoes for me earlier in the week, so I baked those in the oven for 45 minutes at 425, and sent them on a wire rack to cool.

While the potatoes were cooking, I made tempeh bacon crumbles.  The October 2012 Vegetarian Times had a recipe for Warm German Potato Salad that included directions for the "bacon" crumbles, so I decided to try those for my skins.  The recipe's not online yet, but it includes tempeh, low-sodium soy sauce (I used Bragg's Liquid Aminos), blackstrap molasses, ketchup or tomato paste, and liquid smoke.  I ended up using both ketchup and tomato paste to get the crumbles to a more "bacony" color, and also cooked them in the pan a bit longer than the recipe called for to get them to crisp up more.  There is a TON of "bacon" left over, so I'll likely sneak it into recipes throughout the week.

To finish the potato skins, I used this CHOW recipe as a guideline, but veganized the ingredients. Instead of butter, I used Earth Balance, and I stuffed the potatoes with the vegan bacon crumbles and daiya cheddar cheese, then topped them with freshly chopped chives.  The potato skins were definitely the hit of the party - my non-vegan friends couldn't believe they were vegan, and especially that I didn't use real cheese.  When I explained what daiya was, my friend Greg joked that I have "gone to the dark side."

To make the guac, I used four ripe avocados,three roma tomatoes (diced), two serrano peppers (seeds removed, minced), half a red onion (minced), four cloves of garlic (minced), the juice from one fresh lime, fresh cilantro (chopped), sea salt and freshly ground black pepper,  I set out the guac with some Garden of Eatin' Multigrain Blue Corn Chips for my friends to eat while I finished the skins and wings.  I also had a tray with carrots, celery and hummus.

After the potato skins were out, I finished up the wings, using whole wheat panko for the breading.  The breading really didn't stick as well as I would have liked, but they had a nice golden exterior.

 

For dessert, thanks to my friend Carol, we had Football Shaped Oreos.  Did you know Oreos are vegan?  (My friend Valerie describes them as "accidentally vegan.")  That's yet another example of an everyday food that non-vegans eat that's vegan friendly.  I'd put them in the same category of pasta with marinara sauce, PB & J, rice and beans and the guac I made today.

Are you a vegan football fan?  How do you veganize your favorite football snacks?

Sunday Football Lunch: Quorn Vegan Burger and Alexia Organic Crinkle Cut Fries

I've written before about my favorite vegetarian and vegan football eats, and I thought it would be fun to see what I eat on game days throughout the 2012 season.

Last week, I went to Rhino, which is DC's Eagles fan HQ.  They've changed up their menu (though the website doesn't reflect it), and added a veggie burger that's made with grains veggies and black beans.  It's a bit dry and was lacking garnish, so if I order it again, I'll remember to ask for some fixins and douse it in ketchup. 

Today, since the Eagles are televised and we're headed to Erev Rosh Hashanah services right after the game, I'm at home and thus able to prepare my own football food.  Since last week's burger was lackluster, I decided to prepare my own.

Quorn now has a vegan burger.  It's soy free and the texture isn't bad.  Husband was in the kitchen and helped prepared my lunch (it is unwise for me to be near hot ovens and sharp knives unsupervised during an Eagles game), and he thought that it smelled like barbeque.  I topped the burger with daiya, and garnished it with raw kale, grape tomatoes, red onion and german mustard.  Since our local market didn't have good vegan whole grain bun options, I ate it on Spring Mill Bread Company whole grain bread.

For a side, I tried Alexia Organics Salt and Pepper Crinkle Fries.  I was happy with the seasoning level and didn't feel the need to add any additional salt.

Football Munchies: Seitan Hot Wings and Rosemary Sweet Potato Chips

This is not news to those of you who know me in real life, but I am crazy about football.  From September to February, my Sundays go something like this . . . Get up at 9.  Turn on ESPN.  Leave for bar at 10.  Arrive at bar to stand in line at 11.  Sit down at 12.  Get beer.  Watch Eagles 1-3.  Scream myself hoarse.  Go home.  Watch 4:15 game.  Watch 8:20 game,  Lather, rinse repeat.

The true football experience requires football food.  Unfortunately, most football food doesn't fall in the vegan or even vegetarian camps - cheesesteaks (Granted, I have come up with a nice vegan cheesesteak), chili nachos, etc.

But, perhaps the ultimate football food is wings, preferably hot, hot, hot.  Fortunately, this month's Vegetarian Times has a vegan version - Seitan Hot Wings.

Amazingly, I had all the ingredients in my house to make said wings.  The marinade included hot sauce (I used the Original Cholula brand), vegan mayo (I use Follow Your Heart's Soy Free Brand), maple syrup and smoked paprika.  I didn't look closely at the recipe until 7 or so.  It suggests a marinating time of 2 hours.  Oops.  But, I cut the marinating time to one hour and it was fine.  I did notice, however, when I went to bread the wings that the breading got soggy quickly and stopped sticking, so you may want to use two separate bowls for breading.  Also, I probably cut the seitan a little too small, so it was more like bites or poppers than wings.

The wings were yummy - they had a nice crispy texture and a great kick.  Husband also tried them and said I should make them again.

As a side, I made crinkle cut rosemary sweet potato chips. I used Hannah Sweet Potatoes, which, as I've mentioned in previous blogs, have a pretty yellow color.  Using the crinkle blade on my mandoline slicer, I cut very thin slices of sweet potato.  I tossed the slices with olive oil, dried rosemary, black pepper and salt.  Since the oven had to be at 350 for the wings, I did the sweet potato at that temp, though I usually prefer to go at least 425 with potatoes.  However, I figured slicing them extra thin would help.  They were in the oven for about 40 minutes (10 minutes more than the wings), and I tuned them once halfway through.  Thanks to our uneven oven, some of them got nice and crispy, but others could have used more time.

I added some leftover corn salad from last night - it was just as good cold as it was hot.

Overall, I would definitely make the wings and potato chips again.  And we still have 15 regular season weeks to go, not to mention playoffs, so I'll have many an opportunity!

Vegetarian Cheesesteak - Brought to You By My Friend Seitan

My co-workers were asking me about a vegetarian diet today, specifically how I get protein.  It's a common question when you tell people you're a vegetarian, I suppose. 

Now, I'd venture to guess that most people's first suggestion about protein for a vegetarian would be tofu.  One challenge I have is that I've got a soy allergy.  It's nothing life threatening, but I do get violently ill if I have too much of it.  So, that puts tofu and a number of "fake meats" out of the picture.

That said, I really don't feel protein deprived - I eat all kinds of beans, lentils and nuts (with the exception of walnuts and hazelnuts, which make me even more violently ill than soy).  Quinoa, farro, bulgur and wheatberries are also good sources of protein.  I still eat the occasional egg and dairy product.  And, I'm a big fan of Quorn - both in the grounds and tenders styles.   (I will share a post on the glories of Quorn sometime soon - the stuff is really amazing).

But, my #1 favorite vegetarian protein source is seitan.  With a single serving having around 25 grams of protein, it's a great way to work more protein into your diet if you're concerned you're not getting enough.  I avoided seitan for awhile, because I assumed that it was soy based.  In actuality, seitan is a form of wheat gluten.  From our friends at Wikipedia:

Wheat gluten, also called seitan (pronounced /ˈseɪtæn/), wheat meat, Mock Duck, gluten meat, or simply gluten, is a food made from the gluten of wheat. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until all the starch dissolves, leaving insoluble gluten as an elastic mass which is then cooked before being eaten.  Wheat gluten is an alternative to soybean-based meat substitutes such as tofu. Some types of wheat gluten have a chewy and/or stringy texture more like that of meat than most other substitutes. Wheat gluten is often used instead of meat in Asian, vegetarian, Buddhist, and macrobiotic cuisines. Simulated duck is a common use for wheat gluten.

I will note that Seitan is more challenging to find in a traditional grocery store than tofu and "fake meat."  In all the grocery stores I frequent in the DC area (and man, do I hit them all - I love the grocery store!), the only place I can ever find it is Whole Foods.  That said, it does have a decent shelf life, so I will often stock up on several packages at a time when we go there.

The brand I buy is WestSoy.  I prefer the strips to the cubed version.  You can sub it anywhere you'd use strips of meat - stir-frys, etc.  But, my #1 favorite way to use Seitan is in my Vegetarian Cheesesteak.

The Vegetarian Cheesesteak came to be last Fall.  At that point, I had been "off meat" since May.  And then football season started.  As a native Philadelphian and a die-hard Eagles fan, I ate my share of Whiz Wit in my day.  And, lo, when I was looking for something to eat during MNF (that's Monday Night Football for those of you not as football obsessed as me) I missed my cheesesteaks, but not enough to go back to actually eating beef.

Enter Seitan!  When you run a knife through it roughly, it resembles cheesesteak meat.  To make the sandwich above, I saute onions in olive oil until they are golden, then add the seitan.

Once the seitan is nicely browned, I season it with red pepper flakes and add sliced peppers (I used the leftover roasted yellow peppers from Sunday's enchiladas), spinach and cheese.  I use Daiya when I want a vegan version, but since we're out of both Daiya (need to make another run to Whole Foods, as I've also cleared out all my seitan), I used what we had in the house, which was some rennet free Cabot Monterey Jack cheese (Provolone is also great on this, and more traditional, but the other eater in my house may have eaten all my provolone . . .).   I serve the whole thing on a whole wheat sub roll carried by my local market.

The result is a satisfaction of my craving for a cheesesteak without that feeling of having swallowed a bag of lead.

Good sides for this bad boy are oven roasted potato fries (425 or 450, yukon golds cut into wedges, seasoned with salt and pepper, bake until browned) or sweet potato fries (I'm particularly fond of using Hannahs.)  Tonight, since I got home on the late side from yoga and it takes our oven about 37 years to heat up, I had a side of fresh fruit - blueberries and golden raspberries.