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Monday, October 24, 2011

Awesome Birthday Soup

One of my room mate's birthday is today and so I offered to cook something ( for yesterday cause I had work today). I was planning on going for cupcakes or something dessert related but he requested creamy potato and broccoli soup. He's somewhat lactose intolerant so he asked if it could be made with as little dairy as possible. I'm always up for a challenge so I browsed through a few different types of recipes to get some ideas. I looked at potato leek soup, Panera cream cheese potato soup, non-dairy mashed potatoes and a few others. At the conclusion of my research I had a pretty good idea of how to create a nice non-dairy soup. I think that it came out pretty kickin' considering that I've never made potato soup before. I might have added a little less broccoli and cooked the potatoes for a little shorter so they held together better, but I think overall it achieved success. A little cheese thrown on top wouldn't hurt either.

So here's my recipe for Vegan Potato Broccoli soup: (I didn't measure anything so it's a little vague)
Ingredients-
2 small or 1 large head of broccoli

3 russet potatoes

1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
Olive oil
Plain Soy Milk
Vegetable stock
( or chicken stock if you're not cooking for vegetarians)
Toffuti 'cream cheese'
1 tsp Flour
Sprig of
Fresh Rosemary
Salt, pepper, Onion powder to taste


Instructions:
Peel potatoes and cut into small chunks. Add potatoes and vegetable stock to a pot. Potatoes should be covered so add water if there's not enough stock (ideally all stock would be better but I didn't have enough). Boil potatoes until just tender.

Meanwhile, dice the onion and the garlic and saute in a pan with oil until nicely browned. Chop broccoli florets into halves. Add the onions and garlic to a large soup pot with the broccoli. Add a little oil to the pan and cook the broccoli. After 2 minutes add a few teaspoons of water to the pot to help steam the broccoli.
When the potatoes are tender add half the stock water to the large pot and continue to cook the broccoli. Add all the potatoes. Mash a few of the pieces to release starch and to thicken the soup. Add soymilk until creamy. Make sure you use plain soymilk, not vanilla or the taste will be sweet. The soup will still be pretty thin at this point. Add three healthy tablespoons of tofutti. Add Rosemary for taste. Add salt and pepper for taste. Onion powder can be added as well.

If soup needs thickening ( which I think it does) mix flour in a small bowl with a small amount of soy milk. Stir until mixed thoroughly and add to the soup. This will help thicken it up nicely.

Taste the soup to see if it needs anything. I needed to add a bit more salt and pepper. The soup has a nice creamy quality without having any dairy in it! Of course you can add a nice sprinkle of cheese on top if you want too. Enjoy with a bagel flat!

And what else goes well with a delicious soup? Pie of course! I had a can of pumpkin so I couldn't resist making a nice pumpkin pie. It's insanely simple, except for needing to buy the spices. It's basically a can of pumpkin + sweetened condensed milk +Eggs+ ginger, nutmeg and Cinnamon and a pie crust. Bam! Pumpkin Pie!

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Don't Trust the Gorton's Fishermen


Even if the commercials tell you to trust the Gorton's fisherman, don't do it.

It's a rare occasion ( less rare than it used to be) that I actually want to eat fish, but sometimes the mood strikes me, as with the recent tuna post, so I go for it. Meandering down the frozen food aisle, I found Gorton's Breaded fish fillet's. I'd been planning to cook something nice and healthy, but abandoned it on discovering these crunchy breaded fillets and I opted to eat them for dinner instead.

The instructions stated that 17-20 minutes in an oven at 420 would cook them up to golden, crispy perfection. My oven, as I may have mentioned, seems to be extraordinarily hot, so I checked them early. When I went to flip them over, I noticed that they seemed incredibly oily. Thank God I didn't fry them, which is what I thought about doing originally. I let them cook all the way, in the hopes that they would crisp up some more.

Sadly they were still very oily when they were ready to come out. The fish inside was pretty dissapointing too. You could tell that it was an actually fish, which at least was good, but it became very mushy around where the breading was and the overall texture was mush soaked in oil. Overall I found them pretty lame. Despite the fact that they look nice on a plate, I'm giving them a big thumbs down :(

They're heeeeere!


Another Delicious Sign of the Season .... the Holidays are coming. Let's be happy!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Dinner Adventures... Quorn off the Cob


A few days ago I was browsing the fridge for dinner options ( I agreed to cook for my room mate as well) and I decided to use my favorite new anti-meat product Quorn.

I think I may have mentioned these before, and if I haven't then really I should have. Quorn is a meat substitute made from fungus, yes fungus. Mushroom are fungi, however according to the people at Quorn, there are over 600,000 types of fungi. A quick little bit of research indicates that Quorn has been a top seller in the UK and was only recently introduced to the States.

It's made of Mycoprotien, which is a specific type of fungus. The website describes it here:
"Mycoprotein is the main ingredient in all Quorn products. It's made from a member of the fungi family, which includes mushrooms and truffles, and is a high-quality meat-free protein that's naturally low in fat with very few calories."

My room mate bought the Quorn 'chicken' nuggets, which I tried once, and so I bought the 'chicken' tenders, which are supposed to emulate bits of grilled chicken. I have tried a pretty sizable amount of imitation meat products, having grown up in a half vegetarian household, but I think that by far Quorn takes the cake over all of them. The first time I tried it, I literally did a food double-take because I could not believe it wasn't real. Unfortunately, it's also pretty expensive, which is why I've only bought one package so far.

So, now what to do with the Quorn. I pulled some things out of the pantry and off the shelves and wound up browning up the Quorn tenders in a pan with some onions, adding peppers ( the rest of which I roasted and they came out fabulously!) and topping off with a can of tomatoes. It wasn't quite as liquidy as I wanted so I supplemented with a little bit of tomato sauce and a tiny bit of stir fry sauce.

I'd also recently purchased a package of rice vermicelli noodle sticks to try ( I've been getting curious about the gluten free craze going on... but that's for another post). Although the dish was not remotely Asian, I wanted to see how the noodles would mix with my creation. The noodles cook up in just a few minutes and with the help of a little oil they mixed in pretty nicely to the Quorn dish.

Once I tried the dish, I realized that I had made my own version of a dish my mom used to make and that was one of my favorites growing up- Spaghetti squash and veal ( or fake meat). The rice noodles have a similar texture to the squash and her dish also had a tomato base with pepper and of course a protein source. So now I have my own version. I got a big thumbs up from my room mate as well.

I have yet to see too many stores carrying the Quorn products, but hopefully it will become more popular, and perhaps a little cheaper? There are Quorn burgers, Quorn turkey and all sorts of other goodies to try. As with other meat substitutes ( including soy) there isn't a lot of information about what ingesting this type of product can do long term. There have been claims of allergies etc. but so far I haven't found anything serious. Some controversy is surrounding the product because it markets itself as mushroom based, and the Advertising Standards Authority contested that while it is fungus based, it is not mushroom based.

Quorn actually was first released in the UK in 1996 and in the US in 2002. It was originally developed to combat the predicted shortage of food and of protein in the average person's diet. The name comes from a town in the UK.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Tuna Two Ways

When I moved out East, I bought a Foreman Grill at Target because it was ridiculously cheap and it seemed like a fun way to cook things. It was only $15 but it is also pretty tiny, which works nicely for my lack of counter space.

A while back, I also purchased a nice frozen, air-locked 3- pack of tuna steaks from Trader Joe's. I've bought their fish once before and it was pretty tasty, so I figured it's a good thing to have on hand. I rediscovered the fish in my freezer the other day and decided it was time to get them cooking.

The tuna thawed all day in the fridge, which only left me with the problem of what to do with it. I decided to test out the grill, which so far has been sitting in the box, unopened. I wanted to test out a few methods though, so I decided one for the grill and two for the oven. I have had this packaged thai peanut seasoning that I've been wanting to try out as well so I coated two steaks in the seasoning and let one marinate in a ziplock bag with oil, vinegar, onion powder, garlic salt and a little soy sauce.

The grill was a little scary because it was brand new and smelled weirdly of new material. I decided to test it out on a few carrots that weren't in good shape anyway. You can see them there at the bottom in the drip pan when I took them out.
It seemed safe enough to cook so as my tuna steaks with Thai peanut coating were in the oven I put the marinated one on the grill. It cooked up really fast and came out with those pretty grill marks. I think the grilled one came out just perfectly done.

The others were good but I think they could have come out of the oven sooner. I was afraid of under cooking them so I think I overcooked them a tiny bit. They still tasted good, but the grilled one was the perfect texture.

I really enjoyed the Thai peanut coating though. It had a really nice kick to it. The box comes with two packages and I only needed one for the tuna steaks.


I cooked up some frozen french cut green beans to go with my meal and I was done. They were a little underwhelming, but don't they look pretty?

Monday, October 10, 2011

Happy Blogiversary!!


Road Raging Foodie is 1 years old!!!
Actually it's now 1 year and 2 days old ( but who really is counting?)
Incredibly a year has passed already and another one is likely to just zip on by. Amazing.
I have lots of pumpkiny treats to update on, but not tonight. I also will have some photos of the Halloween porch decorations and beautiful cleaned cabinets! I spent probably 4-5 hours in the kitchen today cleaning out all the drawers and shelves, most of which have been sitting empty and dirty since we moved in. Now all of them are lined with contact paper and everything is nice and clean. Finally we can put some dishes and food away!

Maybe soon I will have pictures of a new car. I'm on the hunt for a nice Jeep Wrangler :) The office might actually move soon so I won't have such a long morning commute ( though I must say I've been enjoying taking the train).

Monday, October 3, 2011

Closing of a Season




At last, Fall is here for real! How do I know? Not only because the weather has finally dipped down to the 50s and 60s ( yay!) and I now get to use my heated seats (yay again!) but also because a local tradition is shutting down for the close of the season.

When I moved out to Suffolk I was introduced to Ralph's Famous Italian Ices. Now, I don't believe that everything that claims to be famous actually is, however, these ices certainly deserve their fame. Overall I'd say ices aren't particularly high on my list of crave-worthy desserts, however my opinion has certainly changed since trying Ralph's.

I thought there was just one little ice shop, but I soon discovered that they are all over the Island, not to mention Queens, Manhattan, New Jersey ( not near my parents) and Staten Island. Ralph's proudly displays their story in each store of Ralph Silvestro, who came to the US from Italy and started the first store in 1928.

You can buy the ices in 3 different sizes or take home a pint. In my opinion, they are far better "fresh" from their freezers than if they sit at home in my freezer for a while. The flavors are truly awesome. I started with a simple cherry, which might be the best cherry ice I've ever eaten, then tried some other more interesting flavors. Currently my favorite is the peanut butter cookie dough. The ices with dairy in them, like that one, have a unique texture somewhere between ice and ice cream. Many of the fruit flavored ones have actual bits of fruit in them, as the cherry does.

This weekend was the last open weekend of the year so I stocked up with mint chocolate chip and PB cookie dough. Other flavors include cantaloupe, sour cherry, root beer, bubble gum, island punch, java chip, lemon, chocolate, canoli, black cherry cheesecake tons more. According to the flavor list, the ices with dairy are considered sherbert. So long Ralph's! Maybe I'll see you next year!

Mint chocolate chip


Peanut Butter Cookie Dough