Romesco!

Have you made romesco yet this year? This complex and flavorful Catalonian sauce is perfect for grilled spring and summer vegetables. It can be time consuming to make, but it keeps well and the flavors improve with time in the fridge. Make a big batch and eat it with grilled veggies, rice, sandwiches, and crusty bread all week long.

This recipe is cobbled together from several others and has served me well. Feel free to tweak the ingredients, but please don't skip the sweet smoked paprika. After one whiff you will want to dust your mustache with it every morning.

Romesco sauce

Makes about 2 1/2 cups.

1 yellow onion
2 red bell peppers (if you are not a huge pepper fan, sub a third tomato for one of the peppers)
2 ripe tomatoes
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
2 T Sherry vinegar
2 cloves garlic
1/3 - 1/2 C almond meal (DIY by grinding 3/4 C almonds in a coffee grinder or food processor)
1 slice bread, white or wheat, stale or toasted, torn into small pieces
1 t sweet smoked paprika (also known as pimenton de la vera; available in fine food stores or spice shops)
1/2 t chili powder
1/2 salt, plus more to taste

Preheat oven to 400. Rub onion, peppers, and tomatoes lightly with olive oil and roast in a pan with sides for 45 minutes, turning occasionally. Remove from oven and immediately cover with foil or place in a plastic bag for 15 minutes (this traps the heat and humidity and helps the skin separate from the vegetables). Peel the onion, peel and seed the tomatoes and bell peppers and place all the vegetables in a food processor.

Toast the almond meal by moving it quickly over medium heat in a dry pan on the stove, or spreading it in a thin layer in a baking dish and sticking it in the oven for about 8 minutes while the veggies are cooling. Add 1/3 C of the toasted almond meal to the food processor.

Add the remaining ingredients (olive oil through salt) to the food processor and blend until smooth. The consistency should be similar to ricotta cheese: soft, but thick enough to spread. If your veggies are larger and result in a thinner sauce, add the remaining almond flour. You can further thicken it by adding more toasted bread.

Allow the sauce to cool and serve at room temperature. Eat it by the spoonful, spread it on toasted baguette slices, serve it over rice with grilled tofu, spread it on a sandwich, or plop a huge dollop of it in the center of your plate and surround it with grilled or oven roasted vegetables.

I made it this week and brought it to a friend's house for a grilled vegetable extravaganza. Nomnomnom:


Grilled spring onions with romesco.


Feast! Sandwich with grilled eggplant, vegan mozz, fresh basil, and romesco. Grilled corn, brussels sprouts, onion, asparagus and tofu with romesco.

Bonus wiener-in-a-babushka:

Balsamic Grilled Tofu Panini (Make this sandwich!)

It's in the 70s in Denver right now and this kind of weather makes me crave grilled things. Grill pans make summery grilled foods possible for those of us that live in third story, balcony-free apartments, and I am so thankful for that. This recipe is delicious, pretty, and requires almost no effort. Get to it!

Balsamic Grilled Tofu Panini

(Makes three sandwiches*)

Equipment: Grill pan, grill, or George Foreman type thing.

1 block extra firm tofu, sliced into six even slices
10 or so cremini mushrooms, sliced

For the marinade:
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
Salt and fresh black pepper to taste

For the sandwich spread:
3 T Vegenaise
1 T Annie's Woodstock Dressing OR 1 T of the remaining marinade

6 slices of bread
Handful fresh baby spinach
Red onion, sliced thinly

Lay the tofu slices on a paper towel or clean dish towel and press gently with another towel to absorb some of the water. Whisk together the ingredients for the marinade and place tofu and mushrooms in a shallow dish with the marinade. Let it marinate for an hour if you've got the the time, or at least ten minutes if you're in a hurry. If you're using a grill pan, turn the dial to medium high heat and grill tofu for three minutes on each side, or until nice grill marks appear. Throw the mushrooms on the grill after you turn the tofu.

Meanwhile, mix together the ingredients for the sandwich spread and brush the one side each slice of bread with olive oil. Spread a thin layer of sandwich spread on each slice of bread on the side opposite the oil. When the tofu and mushrooms are done, layer two slices of tofu, a third of the mushrooms, 1/3 of the spinach, and a couple of slices of onion on each sandwich. Place on grill for about two minutes on each side, pressing with either a large spatula or a large lid (see below), and then serve.


Ohmygoodnessgrillmarks.


How I press'em.


Panini with cassava chips and red grapes.

* The tofu keeps well in the fridge, so you can make one sandwich a night for three days in a row. Hot damn.

PDX ain't got nothin on MSP.

Guess what I found at the Minneapolis-Paul airport? A little kiosk called French Meadow Bakery (right next to the the Chili's Too near Concourse G) that had two to-go meals specifically labeled vegan. One was a "spa salad" that included tofu, nuts, dried fruit, olives, and some other stuff, and one was a wrap with grilled tofu, spinach, carrots, kalamata olives, and hummus with a side salad of mixed greens and white balsamic vinaigrette.

And the tofu was really good!


The label, so you can spot it the next time you are stuck at MSP.


I usually associate traveling (the getting to and from part) with eating food that's terrible and/or terrible for me, so this was a nice surprise. I also noticed a place called Maui Taco (near gate C5) that seemed to have several vegan options.

I wonder which airport is the most vegan friendly. Atlanta has Moe's (Tofu Moos!) and Greensboro has Alternative Baking Company cookies at their book stores, but at the moment I can't think of any other airport (besides MSP) where I've found something better than a bagel.

Vegan Mofo: Lovely Sundays

If you work a Monday through Friday sort of job, Sundays are the best and worst day of the week. There is nothing quite like that wonderful lazy feeling you get first thing in the morning, and then that bummed out Monday-is-coming feeling you get as the day is coming to an end (Danny calls this The Sunday Sad).

I try to stretch out the good feeling with brunch, farmers markets, and bike rides, and stifle the bad feeling by distracting myself with an afternoon movie. Yesterday was an example of a perfect Sunday, and it was full of excellent vegan food.

We were up and at 'em at the crack of 11, and off to City Park with Cooper and Jipetto. It was sunny and bright, but the air was crisp. This is my favorite sort of weather.


Frolicking wiener dogs are the best kind of wiener dogs.

Around 2 we headed to Watercourse for brunch. It was fantastic, as usual, and we lingered a little too long over our post-brunch cookies and coffee.


The Dona Lee (Crispy seitan, avocado, and vegan ranch). This isn't typical brunch food, and we didn't have it at typical brunch time, but I think brunch is more the style of eating (relaxed, served whenever, maybe a little decadent).



Watercourse fries are just the right sort of crispy. I forgot about food porn until it was a little too late.



Cookies and coffee. The both of us let out a simultaneous audible sigh after the first bite.

After scarf and hat shopping (we are ill equipped for Denver winters), and a movie downtown, we went to City 'O City (Watercourse's sister restaurant) for a late dinner of tea and pizza.



Pesto, vegan mozzarella (made in house), seitan sausage, and mushrooms. So good.

And then a short ride home and early to bed. Sigh.

Vegan Mofo: Vegan Exploring!

Vegan Mofo is here and I am so excited. My goal is to make twenty posts for the month of mofo, and read five blogs a day. I love how everyone is getting into the spirit, and there will be a later post highlighting some of my favorites (so many already!). But for now, I want to discuss VEGAN EXPLORING.

This is a fairly new concept to me. It's only been in the past year or so that I've started to plan my vacations and weekend road trips around food. I think this happened after I went to Portland. The Vegan Pilgrimage to Portland is a bit cliche, but it's a necessary cliche. Vegan bars with tofu fritters on the menu and vegan hardcore on the stereo? Food carts with vegan breakfast burritos? Vegan donuts? This is the stuff vegan dream vacations are made of, and it is the reason why I consult Happy Cow or The Square at The PPK (Use the search function!) every time I am traveling more than three miles from my house.

Because, as it turns out, there is incredible vegan food to be found nearly everywhere. And one of the many perks of veganism is that your fellow vegans love to share their good finds.

Danny and I went exploring in Ft. Collins today. Ft. Collins is an adorable, bike friendly, liberal college town, so you'd expect to find some decent vegan fare. VegColorado pointed us to Mugs, a coffee shop and cafe, and we were not disappointed.

Danny had the Seitan Caesar. It was good (not fantastic), but I have never seen nooch (nutritional yeast) sprinkled on anything as condiment on its own. I have heard that this happens, but it was not until this salad that I've seen it done. I was skeptical, but it was actually really good.


I had The Med, a panini with spinach, basil, tomato, chicken style seitan, and Follow Your Heart Mozzarella. I assumed the FYH would be melted (I can't stand it unmelted), but the sandwich arrived with the cheese just slightly warmed and still very much unmelted. And you know what? It was awesome. It tasted just like the caprese I loved in my pregan days. I have no idea how this happened. Maybe it just needed a different context (in this case, a panini), to show its true, delicious colors. I still won't be eating it straight out of the package, but I am thrilled that I don't have to melt the hell out if it to enjoy vegan mozzarella.


Extra props to Mugs for having a whole section of the menu clearly labeled vegan. I am a sucker for menu recognition.

After lunch and a tour of CSU, we went to mooch free beer from the New Belgium Brewery. Minus the ones that are clearly labeled as containing honey, New Belgium beers are vegan. And they are environmentally conscious in their building and brewing procedures, and promote the hell out of bicycles as transportation.


Beer and bicycles! These are my people.



Complimentary and delicious.


We are nothing if not classy.


My manifest.

Vegan Exploring is different from plain ol' exploring in that you have to dig a little deeper, and so the rewards are that much sweeter. Also, because vegan cuisine has not yet been worked over the way omnivorous cuisine has, I learn new things about cooking almost every time I eat somewhere new. If you've got the time during this busy mofo season, tell about your favorite Vegan Exploring experience.

First post = food porn

There was so little food in the house, and there is something about Sundays lately that makes me dread the idea of leaving the house. Lolo saved the day with her delicious tomato, basil, and Tofutti sandwich.





So so so good. Recipe is at VeganYumYum. Go now!