SLOP 2013

Growing up in a large family we went through a lot of food.  Sometimes we improvised on meals and created instant classics.  Slop was such a meal.  I've taken the old 1970's recipe my mom and I came up with and brought it into the 100% whole food, n(o)il, plant based era.

Ingredients:

1 cup TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein)
1 cup dry mushrooms chopped in a food processor to resemble the TVP or with your knife
5 cups Roasted Vegetable Stock (RVS)
1 onion diced
1 red bell pepper diced
10 coves garlic, rough chop
1 cup frozen or fresh corn
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 TBL Better Than Bouillon
1 Tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp crushed thyme
4-6 baked potatoes cubed (about 2 cups)

Rehydrating TVP and Dried Mushrooms

Boil the RVS and rehydrate the TVP and mushrooms for about 10 minutes.
In a hot skillet, saute the onions and red peppers. Remember to keep everything moving in the pan and if they begin to stick, add a touch or water or RVS.  When the veggies are brown, add the garlic.  Keep it moving for about a minute, then add the TVP and mushroom mixture along with the liquid it was soaking in.  Mix well then add the remaining ingredients.  Continue simmering until most of the liquid has cooked down.  Taste for salt.  The Better than Bouillon has salt so you may not need more...depends on your taste.

Serve with a dollop of my sour cream n(o)il of course, some of my whole wheat sourdough bread and a nice Zinfandel and you'll have a great meal.  You can also add frozen edamame beans, fresh spinach or cut up lacacinto kale for more veggies.

Enchiladas Cheat

OK, this was so easy because I cheated the whole way.  I just wanted to make something quick, easy and delicious.  I went to my favorite grocery story and checked out the backs of several types of taco seasonings and enchilada sauce packets.  I had a couple things in mind when comparing brands and they were no dairy (some actually had some), no oil (even though these are dry packets, some still listed oil) and not too much salt.  After that, I followed the instructions on the packets.

Preheat the oven to 350°

For the filling I used TVP (or you can use TSP).  I rehydrated it in boiling water for about 10 minutes.  I wanted to end up with about 3 cups, so I would start with about 1/2 cups of dry and just cover in the boiling water.  I also cut up one whole onion and added it to a hot non stick skillet.  When the onions begin to stick, wait about a minute more then add some water.  Once browned, follow the instructions on the taco seasoning packet for the meat.  Squeeze out as much water as you can from the TVP and add it to the onions and spices.  If it starts to dry out, just add water or vegetable stock.

Follow the instructions on the Enchilada sauce.  When that is done you're ready to assemble the Enchiladas.

You will need about 15 corn tortillas, a large can of Rosarita Fat Free Refried Beans, sliced black olives (as many or as few as you like, 15 oz can of corn (drained and rinsed), Cilantro for garnish, nutritional yeast for garnish (and that cheezy taste).

Pour some of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of a 9 X 13 inch pan.  Fill each tortilla with about 1 1/2 tablespoons of refried beans, 1 1/2 tablespoons of TVP Taco mixture (you can also use meat crumbles which is basically the same thing only more expensive), about a teaspoon each of the corn and olives.  Fold them either in half or in a circle and place in the pan on the sauce, seam side down.  Continue until the pan is full and cover them with the remaining enchilada sauce.  Cover pan and put it in the oven for 15 minutes covered.  When you uncover it  sprinkle sliced olives and nutritional yeast on the top and continue baking for another 15 minutes uncovered.

When you take it out of the oven, garnish with chopped or whole cilantro leaves.  Serve it with guacamole and you'll be in heaven.

Pizza, Pizza

My sister wanted to make pizza for few of her friends, so I said let's try it out ahead of time to see how it goes.

For the base we used a sangak bread which is a Persian national bread.  It is basically whole wheat flour, water and yeast with sesame seeds on top right before baking.  It's kind of fun to watch them make it at our local store.  It's a very wet dough and is pretty much poured on the hot grill.  It's about three feet long, 14 inches wide and works great for pizza.  This is what I used, but you can use any whole wheat, oil free pizza dough you would like.

We made two different kinds.  The top one is a roasted tomato sauce with grilled veggies.  For the second one we call it sausage and onion.

For the roasted tomato sauce, roast the tomatoes as I showed you on my previous post a couple of days ago, along with the onions and garlic.  Put it all in a Cuisinart or blender and whir it up.  Use about a cup and a half of the sauce and to it add 1 tsp. crushed red pepper (more if you like it spicy), and s&p to taste.  Pour the sauce and cover the bread leaving about an inch around the edges with no sauce.  We grilled up some zucchini, yellow squash, red, yellow and orange bell peppers and eggplant.  At the end add sliced black olives.  Put it on a sheet pan lined with silpat (previous post) or parchment paper, or a pizza stone if you have one.  Put it in a 500 ° preheated oven for about 5 minutes.  Just keep an eye on it.  It's done when the edges start to look dark brown or black.

For the second one I took no fat meat crumbles (you can use TVP textured Vegetable Protein if you can't find the ready made crumbles.  Just rehydrate it with equal parts hot water to TVP) and to the crumbles added 1 tablespoon no beef bouillon, 1 tablespoon Vegan Worcestershire, 2 tablespoons fennel seed, half crushed, half whole, 1 tablespoon dry rosemary crushed, 1 tablespoon tomato paste, 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper.  Heat all of it in a non stick pan.  Put about 6 large handfuls of spinach in it and add 1/2 cup water.  Cover so the spinach will cook down.  Once it's all cooked down, stir it up and you're ready to go.

For the pizza we made a cashew cheeze sauce using 1 cup cashews, ground fine, the juice of 2 lemons, 1 cup of basil firmly packed, 1/2 cup of the extra roasted tomato sauce.  Blend this all in your Cuisinart or blender (taste for S&P)  and you're ready to go.

The Cheeze is the base of the pizza  followed by the sausage mixture.  To that add grilled mushrooms, grilled onions sliced and rehydrated sundried tomatoes (rehydrate by putting the dry tomatoes in a cup of water in the microwave for one minute.  Let them soak about 5 minutes then thinly slice them).  Bake the same way as the vegetable pizza, 500° preheated oven about 5 minutes.

As an added feature, though I don't have any pictures of this, I added chopped kale mixed with one avocado and the juice of one lemon and 1/2 tsp of salt together.  Mix everything up with your hands (that's right, squish it all together). This is the topping that will go on the vegetable pizza when it comes out of the oven.

For the sausage pizza, take about 2 cups of arugula (rocket if you're from Europe) and squeeze the juice of one lemon on it with a little salt.  Put this on top of the pizza when it comes out of the oven.