This Spud's For You!

I seldom eat potatoes. I grew up eating them at nearly every meal, but once I was doing my own cooking, I discovered I much preferred rice or grains or pasta. Even so, there come times when I yearn for a giant baked potato, burst open to expose its fluffy, white interior and then stuffed with all manner of tantalizing delicacies. Since the usual trappings of butter and sour cream were out of the picture, I wondered if I could even create something akin to all that non-vegan goodness.

Then came the day I looked into the refrigerator to find a bevy of vegetables that needed to be used. I tossed them on a large sheet pan, drizzled them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and put them in the oven. My plan was to make pasta primivera. But then I had this off the wall idea: why not make potato primivera? Figuring it might be a tasty solution to my stuffed potato quest, I tossed a well-scrubbed Idaho spud into the oven with the veggies. Hey, what could it hurt?

While I was waiting for everything to get done, I made my usual vegan bechamel sauce. Once the vegetables were roasted, I tossed them into the sauce, along with a few dashes of cayenne pepper and a couple drops of hot sauce, and then I poured all that creamy goodness into the potato and atop and then let it run down the sides. I sprinkled it all with fresh chives. Doggone, it sure looked inviting. But would it taste good?  Give it a try and let me know what you think. Far as I was concerned, it was the best stuffed potato I ever ate.

My stuffed spud turned out great but wouldn't you know, the battery in my camera is dead, so no pix because I ate all the evidence while I waited for it to recharge. I guess you'll just have to imagine how it looked. Of course you know what I have to do now. Make it again so I can take a photo. Life is hard.


STUFFED SPUD 

What You'll Need:

Baking potatoes, large

Vegetable medley, roasted

Vegan Bechamel sauce


The following recipe makes enough sauce for 2-3 large potatoes. If you cook for one, as I do, you'll have enough left to use in another recipe.

2 cups roasted vegetables. I used zucchini, yellow squash, onion, tomatoes, carrots, bell pepper, and garlic. I cut them in pieces, tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and fresh thyme and rosemary and spread them on a baking sheet. Roast at 400 for 20-30 minutes. When cool enough to handle, cut the vegetables into small pieces so they'll fit into the baked potato easily.

Make the bechamel sauce while the veggies are roasting. You'll find the recipe in my post called Seitan, Onion, and Mushroom Pasta, which I posted on 7/29/11.

Stir the roasted vegetables into the creamy white sauce, give a stir to marry the flavors and add a bit of cayenne and hot sauce if you like things spicy. Stuff the results into a fluffy hot potato.

It doesn't get better than this.

Seitan, Onion, and Mushroom Pasta

You can use any type of pasta in your cupboard. The first night I used  penne; the second night, I used spaghetti. They were what I had in my pantry. The sauce is what makes this dish. Now if only I could figure out how to take food photos as well as I do scenics, you wouldn't have to take my word for how good this recipe tastes.

Seldom does any dish, vegan or otherwise, taste so good I make it two nights in a row. That all changed when I created the following recipe. You can call it good luck or blessed endeavor. I call it serendipity. I had no idea what I was making when I began throwing things together and nobody was more surprised at how it turned out than me.

While there have been many times in my life that I've eaten the same thing twice in a row because of leftovers, never have I purposely cooked the same thing twice. From someone who hates to be in the kitchen as much as I do, my belief is that every meal should be something quite different than the one before it or else why bother cooking at all?

I suppose that belief came out of living with my husband of 53 years who never ate a leftover in his life until he married me. He came from such a poor family that there was barely enough food to go around, let alone have any left. So when I placed leftovers on the dinner table just a few weeks into wedded bliss, he kindly informed me not to do it again. That began my quest to turn leftovers into something entirely different by dragging things out of the frig and cupboards to disguise the original meal. I got really good at it. And even though Jim figured out what I was up to, he didn't mind because the whole result tasted far different than what I'd started with.

Now all of that to say that when I looked in my frig this week and saw a bunch of mushrooms that needed to be used and a package of seitan, which I'd yet to try, I decided to put them together. The dish was a process of tasting and adding and then declaring it good. Truthfully, the result tasted like I had put meat in it. Perhaps pork or chicken. But it was just a seitan trick to fool my palette. A vegan friend had informed me that seitan tasted nasty and that's why I had let mine sit in my frig for so long. However, the store bought seitan I used was to the point of being delicious. Figure that one out.

The recipe is so simple, you may laugh at me for bragging about how it turned out. Considering I've been a vegan for only 5 months, I ended up patting myself on the back for creating something that was not only edible but enjoyable. Give the recipe a try and see what you think. Then let me know. The people I served it to the second night I made it devoured it with relish and declared it one of my best vegan meals yet. Who knew?

SEITAN, ONION, AND MUSHROOM PASTA

This recipe involved cooking the pasta, making the bechamel sauce, and sauteing the vegetables. You can choose the order in which you build the meal.

In a saute pan put:

2 Tbs. olive oil

1/2 of a medium onion, minced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

Cook till the onions are translucent. Turn them onto a place to cool.

In the same pan put:

2 Tbs. olive oil

1/2 of an 8 oz package of purchased seitan, cut into thin strips

Brown the seitan till it resembles meat. Set aside with the cooling onions.

Wipe out the saute pan so it's dry.

Add to the pan:

1/2 lb. of brown mushrooms, chopped. I used criminis.

Cook on low till all the water is evaporated and the mushrooms are completely dry. Do NOT salt the mushrooms and do not use oil for browning. It will make the mushrooms slippery.

Into the saute pan place:

All the onion and garlic mixture, the seitan, and the mushrooms. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put the pan on a back burner to stay warm.

COOK THE PASTA

While the above ingredients are cooking, set a pan of salted water on the stove to come to a boil. Cook the pasta according to package directions. I used 8 oz. for this recipe and it was plenty.

BECHAMEL SAUCE

4 Tbs. olive oil

4 Tbs. flour

Heat the oil in a saucepan, add the flour and cook about 3 minutes or until the flour comes together. The mixture will be lumpy. That's normal. Do not shorten this step or the raw flour taste will ruin your sauce.

Using a whisk, slowly stir in:

2 cups of creamy soy milk, either warm or at room temperature. Do not use it cold as it won't whisk in well.

Cook the sauce, whisking continuously until it begins to thicken. Lower the heat and cook a minute or so longer. If the sauce is too loose, let it cook another minute or so; too thick, whisk in more soy milk.

When the sauce is the consistency you wish, grate fresh nutmeg into it and add salt and pepper to taste. I also added a tiny pinch of cayenne because I like spicy.

Add the sauce to the saute pan with the seitan/vegetables/mushrooms in it. Mix well. Now add the pasta, along with a bit of the pasta water if need be. Stir everything together and let it cook a minute or so to blend flavors. Serves 3-4