I was just finishing up my lunch of leftovers and had to share! I made the awesome Veganomicon Shepherdess Pie last night, with the same tweaks as last time (1 tbsp. liquid smoke in the tempeh) and (nutritional yeast in the smashed potatoes), PLUS I threw a finely chopped, medium carrot in there too, and it was super yum! If you don’t own the Veganomicon, or lack someone nice enough to let you borrow it, you should probably add it to your wishlist or shopping cart, and stat! : )
So a few exciting things to report in this post.
First, thanks to all of you reading the blog out there. At the time of this writing, cpv had just passed 20,000 hits. Pretty exciting for me! 
Second, I received my copy of Vegan Pie in the Sky this week, Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero’s latest volume on pies, tarts, and such. I had it on pre-order for the last couple of months, and was thrilled when I came home one day and it was waiting for me. The first recipe that caught my eye was the Brownie Bottom Peanut Butter Cheesecake. Just look at that title! Need I say more? After a thorough reading, I placed an amazon order for things I would need to become a Vegan Pie in the Sky goddess… springform pans, a tart pan, pie weights, and agar powder. (I only had agar flakes. They expressly warn you against using the flakes!)
Invigorated by said agar powder’s arrival, I flipped through the book one more time. I found this recipe for pumpkin pie, which is actually their adaptation of the one from The Vouptuous Vegan, and decided to give it a try since I had all the ingredients. That, and I’ve been meaning to kick off my preparation posts for Thanksgiving. This is actually going to be the 1st of several posts about Thanksgiving related foods as we get closer to the holiday. Since this is my 1st Thanksgiving spent at home fully vegan, I want to make sure that I have some well tested recipes to bring to the occasion.
Third, we finally got a cold front, so the weather dropped to the low 60s, and I opened up all the windows, preheated the oven, and got into a serious baking groove! Yay! : )
Now on to the pie…
I was pretty excited that the instructions called for making the pie filling in the blender. Not only did that let me use my Vitamix for something other than green smoothies for once, but it also made it a super easy to make! I happened to have some whole wheat vegan pie crusts in the freezer from last year, when I was going to attempt pumpkin pie (!) so this was a pretty good excuse to put those to use. I used two cans of squash* for the 3 c. of pureed squash called for, and one was pumpkin and the other was butternut squash. This seemed to work pretty well except maybe it was just a little more than three cups, because the pie plate seemed pretty full on what poured out of the blender, so I didn’t even bother scraping it out.
*So yah, you may be thinking, huh? butternut squash? But Isa gives you the greenlight on using any winter squash you care to try. And that canned pumpkin that a lot of companies sell to you under the pumpkin name is usually not pumpkin, anyway! It’s generally a combination of different winter squashes like Hubbard, Boston Marrow squashes, butternut squashes and/or the Dickinson pumpkins that Libby’s uses. Google it!
If you're using canned pumpkin, I recommend using one of these small spatulas that are perfect for scraping cans.
Everybody in! Could a recipe get easier than this? Just blend after adding it all.
Ta-da!
Pour in the pie crust.
Fresh out of the oven.
After cooling in the fridge over night.
Results:
Well, this pie isn’t THEE pumpkin pie for me. The biggest thing I have against it is the consistency. When it came out of the oven, it seemed to still be very liquidy. After a night of chilling in the fridge the filling still only firmed up to a pudding texture, and it formed a thick skin on top. That being said, it is still pretty tasty. I would probably make it just a little more spiced if I made it again. When I tasted the batter out of the blender, I wasn’t convinced it was sweet enough, but after the tasting the completed pie, I thought the sweetness was just right.
My mom’s standard pie is the Libby’s pumpkin pie recipe that comes on the can label (since 1950!). I may try to duplicate that by special ordering some vegan condensed with vegan evaporated milk, while there’s still time. I’ll probably also take another stab at an existing vegan pumpkin pie recipe. Any suggestions? If all else fails, I may attempt a pumpkin pie cheesecake instead. I will keep you posted!
EDIT:
I bought some SOYATOO! Soy Whip to top my pie with and it is absolutely DELISH! So much for making home made vegan whipped cream! ; ) This pie tastes even better on day 2 with the whip, and firmed up a little bit more. Plus, the whip makes it a bit prettier. I just ate two slices for breakfast!
**** 11/23/11 Final Edit, day before Thanksgiving:
After many trials I finally perfected my own pumpkin pie recipe! Ty’s Perfect Pumpkin Pie! 
Here’s another recipe that I made awhile back, and was meaning to tell you about. It’s the Tempeh Shepherdess Pie pg. 167, from the Veganomicon cookbook. We were having another couple over for dinner, and I decided to go for a big pan of vegan comfort food lovin’ for our guests. This recipe does not dissapoint. I’ve often stated that I have an aversion to mushrooms, but over time I’ve realized that they add a really nice flavor, and if I chop them up finely enough, they don’t even bother me! So that’s exactly what I did here with the 8 oz/3 c. of mushrooms called for. I have been using baby bellas or shiitakes, in this case I used the former.
Tweaks: I added some liquid smoke to the tempeh mixture, and some nutritional yeast to the mashed potatoes based on reading some reviews. I think these were wise choices, as they upped the flavor ante. Nutritional yeast really makes mashed potatoes spectacular, and I always use it when I make them. Oh, and I used canned peas, because that’s what I had, and Braggs for tamari/soy sauce.
Results: This is true comfort food right here. Hot food for a crowd that you’re proud to serve and really isn’t all that hard to make. Perfect for weeknight entertaining.
While I was trying out new recipes from The Angelica Home Kitchen cookbook I realized that I had a whole bag of oranges that would be perfect for making this orange poppyseed cake! It happened to work out that it was also right around Thomas’ birthday, so I made the cake two days before, and managed to frost it just before the clock struck midnight and his birthday began! I also gave it the proper Star Wars decorations that any birthday cake honoring Thomas should have.
I’d never made a layer cake before, or even frosted an entire cake, only cupcakes, so I divided the work. Doing the cake a day ahead worked out pretty well, because the cake was well cooled and easy to work with, and I was all fresh to start on the frosting the next day. I think the hardest part of this recipe was the orange zesting. It calls for 6 tablespoons of zest altogether, 4 for the cake, and 2 for the frosting, which is a lot! I had Thomas come in and relieve me when my hands started to get sore. At least the number of oranges it took for the zest (6-7) was about the amount you need for the fresh orange juice required, so no weird zested oranges to keep! I didn’t have as much poppyseed as required by the recipe (1/3 c.), maybe only half as much, but it still worked out fine.
The frosting was a learning experience too. All the frostings I made in the past were powdered sugar & butter/shortening based. This one is macrobiotic and made with tofu, agar agar and olive oil and maple syrup. After mixing it all you let it sit in the fridge to firm, cut it into pieces and then process until smooth. Even with 3/4 cup of maple syrup I thought it wasn’t quite sweet enough and added about 2 tbsp. of agave syrup.
Results: This is a macrobiotic cake! You can’t really tell by the cake part, but the frosting is definitely different than traditional or vegan cakes. It is only moderately sweet, and after you get used to that, it provides a nice contrast with the sweet cake. (Because of the frosting though, I’d be hesitant to serve it to non-health food eating people, but hey, you never know?) I thought the flavor of this cake really improved after a couple of days in the fridge. It was delicious, and we ate the whole thing over the course of the week. I bet the lemon variation of this cake would be especially awesome. I’m excited to try more of the desserts in this book. It’s a good way of showing your palette that you can enjoy desert without all that insane sweetness. I’ve never been a super big fan of sweets, so this is especially good for me!
I made a giant batch of The Angelica Home Kitchen’s Pear-Apple Chutney pg. 108, a while back to go with some lentil soup, and had a ton leftover so I decided to make some yummy veggie samosas to eat it up with. Worth mentioning is that the recipe called for currants, which I couldn’t find, so I used raisins instead. Also in lieu of using a tied up cheesecloth sachet, I just added the cloves, sticks of cinnamon, cardamom pods and bay leaf into the pot, and fished them out at the end! : )
I turned to The Indian Vegan Kitchen for some samosa guidance. Luckily she had 2 recipes, one for the filling and dough, and one with instructions on how to use frozen puff pastry dough. I already had the latter in my freezer, so I decided to go the easier route with her Quick Vegetable Pastries pg. 62. Even with the frozen dough, it still takes a bit of work and diligence as you have to roll it out and stuff 25 pieces. It turned out that I had about half of the filling left when I was finished, so you can definitely use both sheets of pastry dough if you want or need 50 pieces. (I’m going to combine these fragrant leftover mixed vegetables with some leftover enchilada filling I have and make leftovers enchiladas!)
Results: These two recipes tasted great together! The cool chutney was a nice touch served with the flaky, spicy little bundles. This filling is super delicious and really comes through the pastry.
I spotted Fat Free Vegan’s Easy Macaroni and Cheeze recipe on twitter and thought I might give it a try. At first I was going to make mine instead, but I had already been busy making veggie samosas and didn’t have enough energy left for whisking a roux. Also, I wasn’t too sure about the flavor profile of the beer we had in the fridge pairing well with mac n cheese. Two more things made me excited about trying hers. 1. the sauce is made entirely in the blender – EASY! 2. I was out of almond milk and figured since I was making it in the Vita-Mix anyway, I could add almonds to it, if necessary.
Turns out I didn’t need to add any nuts at all. It was perfectly fine and creamy with just substituting [more] water for non-dairy milk! My other changes were about a tbsp. of dijon mustard instead of mustard seed, barley miso instead of white, another 1/4 c. of nutritional yeast, more cayenne pepper, and about a tablespoon of leftover pepper jack Daiya. I served it sprinkled with a little vegan parm on top.
Result: I loved how easy it was to prepare, and was pleasantly surprised at the creamy texture. It’s a great base recipe for you to tweak to your taste! Keeper!
Here I prepared another awesome dish from Vegan Fire & Spice and served it with some of my very own Baked Penne for an awesome vegan Italian feast! James was over, and he & Thomas were getting their costumes ready for Thomas’ Superhero birthday party, which was last night. James is a meat and potatoes type of person and didn’t like the tempeh, but had a GIANT second helping of my baked penne, so that was a pretty good compliment. Especially since the penne is loaded full of things he would hate to know he ingested like TVP, nutritional yeast, and vegan cheese. : ) I used brown rice penne here too, just to check it out. It smelled sweet when it was cooking, but was fairly indiscernible in the dish. I used some shallots in the penne sauce for extra flavor.
The Tempeh Cacciatore was outstanding and Thomas & I were only sad that we served it to James without having him try a piece first so there would have been more for us! A sauce full of tomato and carrot that just felt like Italian home cooking, and gave the tempeh wonderful flavor. I’m definitely hooked on this book and will be making lots more from it in the future.
brown rice penne
fresh out of the oven!
cacciatore sauce
A really great pairing!
and in our costumes! James (Deadpool), Thomas (Symbiote Spiderman), Me (Black Cat) and our friend Eric (Wolverine)!
Next on my list of things to try from the Angelica Kitchen cookbook was the Three Bean Chili w/Seitan, pg. 98. Black beans, kidney beans, green lentils and seitan give the chili its variety of flavors and protein punch. Dried ancho pepper, chipotle peppers (I put in 3 instead of just two, and left the seeds in for extra heat) and sun-dried tomatoes make up the base of the sauce without any chili powder at all. At the restaurant, they serve it with a huge piece of the Southern-Style Cornbread, pg. 158, so I made sure to cook a batch in a skillet while it simmered away. I ended up using all of the cooking water from the beans for the chili and it was still pretty thick, so I simmered it covered for almost all of the time. I thought it could use a little sweetness, and added about a teaspoon of tomato paste, but I could have used more. Once served, the sweetness of the cornbread provided a nice contrast.
3 kinds of legumes, ready to boil & soak
sun-dried tomatoes & chiles getting hydrated
I used about 1/4 - 1/3 of this double batch of seitan i made a couple of days ahead
ground to the perfect consistency
simmer begin
cornbread makes everything better!
all. together. now!
Here’s another cookbook that I’ve had for a long time, and hadn’t really tried yet, Vegan Fire & Spice by Robin Robertson. I made the falafel last week and it was pretty tasty (though I ended up baking them instead of pan frying, they held better that way). So I picked out two more recipes to test, and this was the first of those. So far I really like the book. The recipes have a lot of flavor without being really fussy. This may sound like it was complicated, with rolling out scratch dough and everything but really, it wasn’t. You put all the dough ingredients in the food processor, knead slightly and roll out. The filling is just everything else combined in a bowl. You don’t need even need to chop or cut anything! Though I did cut the sausages into thirds before throwing them in the food processor to “crumble” them the easy way.
My adjustments: I used 1 package of Tofurky for the pound of vegan sausage, and 2 packages of firm tofu (lightly squeezed with my hands) for the 2 pounds of tofu. I was a little worried since the recipe called for a 10″ pie plate (though my standard one said 9.5″) but had no problem getting everything to fit. I used white whole wheat flour for the crust, and ended up using almost 2/3 c. of cold water to get it to a dough consistency. (The recipe calls for unbleached all-purpose, and has you start with a 1/4 c. of water.) Also, I could have sworn that I had fennel seeds, but it turned out to be anise seeds, so I used them instead. oh! I also added a little more salt and 1/4 c. of nutritional yeast after mixing and tasting. A little gloss of almond milk/agave over the top would have been a nice touch, but I just thought of it! ; ) To round it out, I served it with a side of lightly steamed kale.
Results: Yum! Thomas ate 3 servings (pieces). 3!! Hah! ; ) Definitely a keeper.
One thing I really miss about living in New York is all of the wonderful vegan dining. I really got hooked on a few places, and Angelica Kitchen was definitely one of my favorites. When I realized they had a cookbook a while back, I was thrilled, and ordered it. This cookbook has all the goods, the cornbreads, the how to for making dragon bowls and their signature dishes, all of it! My favorite sandwich is hands down, the Sam or I sandwich. It’s made up of several recipes in the book, including the marinated tofu recipe used here to make this hybrid of the Tofu Sandwich with Roasted Vegetables & the Sam or I, pg. 165.
I used sprouted grain bread and:
1 recipe for Baked Tofu with Lemon-Rosemary Marinade pg. 105
I subbed fresh lime juice for lemon and used extra-firm pre-pressed sprouted tofu instead of firm. You couldn’t tell, it was just awesome tasting tofu.
1 recipe for Oven-Roasted Onions and carrots pg. 168
I used 3 medium onions and a bunch of small carrots. I didn’t make as much as the recipe called for, but it was still way more than enough for the sandwiches!
1 recipe for Soba Sensation Sauce pg. 209
This recipe yielded 3 cups, so I halved it and made it in the small bowl of my food processor. SO GOOD! We only used half of this for the sandwiches, but it’s so good, we’ll definitely use it up. (Especially on steamed greens!) It lasts a week in the fridge and pretty much made the sandwich. I subbed Bragg’s for tamari and extra virgin olive for sesame oil.
I thought the sandwich needed some greens, so I steamed a couple of large kale leaves, torn into pieces and added it in the mix. It was the perfect addition!
Glorious!
