Vegan Cooking With MinneSarah #2: Mac Daddy!

Hello my hungry friends! MinneSarah was nice enough to invite Newest Industry over for another night of drinking, Spotify dancing, Instagram-ing, and delicious vegan food.

This time she undertook the Mac Daddy recipe from Veganomicon. If ya don’t know, Mac Daddy is a vegan baked macaroni & cheese dish and it’s phenomenal. Also, if you’re interested in vegan cooking, Veganomicon is an absolute must. Everything in that cookbook is three stars or better.

The first thing to do with this recipe is to boil up a box of pasta. She used elbows this time around. Sadly, NI showed up too late to get a picture, but, honestly, taking a picture of a box of pasta is pretty fucking pointless. You know what it looks like.

While you wait for the water to boil for your pasta, you may as well pour yourself a drink.

MinneSarah opted for some good old-fashioned vodka Red Bulls this time around.

For this recipe, you’ll need the Cheezy Sauce ingredients (see below) plus:

1 lb. of extra firm tofu
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice

Once the pasta is boiling and the drinks are poured, it’s time to start on the Cheesy Sauce. For those who’ve never tried it, this is pretty much the best vegan cheese option. It’s a little spicy and definitely better than anything that can be found in a store.

The Mac Daddy recipe calls for a double batch of Cheezy Sauce.  NI’s taken the liberty of doubling up the quantities in the recipe below, so if you decide to make this at home, just use the numbers below.

4 cups veggie broth or water
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tbsp olive oil
6 cloves of garlic
A pinch of dried thyme
1/2 tsp salt
Several pinches fresh black pepper
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 cups nutritional yeast
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp prepared yellow mustard

First, combine the broth and flour in a bowl and whisk it with a fork until it’s dissolved. Set aside momentarily.

Second, mince up the garlic and place it in a small sauce pan with the olive oil. MinneSarah owns a sweet garlic press that makes this step about a thousand times less tedious than actually chopping the garlic yourself.

Fry up the garlic or low heat for a couple of minutes. Once it’s sufficiently golden, add the thyme, salt, & pepper and let it fry for 15-20 seconds.

Add the broth, turmeric, & nooch and raise the heat to medium. Use a whisk to stir the mixture. It should start bubbling up within a couple of minutes.

 Once the mixture is bubblin’, stir in the lemon juice & mustard. Give it a couple more minutes and blaow! Best vegan cheese ever!

Preheat your oven to 325, because it’s time to put all the pieces together.

God willing, by this time your noodles are done, strained & good to go.

First, crumble up your tofu into the baking dish. Add the salt, olive oil, & lemon juice. Press & stir the mixture with a fork until it becomes something resembling ricotta cheese.

Add half a cup of the Cheezy sauce to the tofu & stir it all together.

Add the macaroni to the tofu/Cheezy mixture and then pour three more cups of Cheezy Sauce on top of that.

Stir up the whole mixture and then flatten it out with a spatula. Once the mixture is level, add the rest of the Cheesy goodness and smooth it all out with your aforementioned spatula. It should look something like this:

Put that in the oven and let it bake for about half an hour or until it’s slightly brown.

Now, last time I checked, this was America. As such, MinneSarah deemed it necessary that we add chopped up Smart Dogs to the mix. Also, because MinneSarah believes in at least attempting to balance out meals, she decided we should steam some broccoli to add to the finished dish.

So, while the Mac Daddy was baking, she chopped & steamed some broccoli.

Somewhere Dana Carvey is smiling.

While the broccoli was steaming, she chopped up the Smart Dogs so we could use the steaming water to boil them up.

Boil up the Smart Dogs for just a couple of minutes.

By now, hopefully, the Mac Daddy is lightly browned and ready for consumption.

Boom! Let the whole thing settle on the stove top for 10 minutes. Once it’s cooled off a bit, grab yourself a plate, fork, and 3rd or 5th drink: It’s time to eat!

That’s as real as it gets!

As always, big thanks to MinneSarah for hosting, cooking, letting Newest Industry take pictures, and being suitably passive-aggressive as we ate and left without cleaning up any of the dishes.

If you’re on the Twitter, you should definitely be following MinneSarah (@MinneSarah), especially if you enjoy cats, Mormon fashion, and the 90’s.

Vegan Cooking With MinneSarah #1: Barbecued Seitan Ribz!

MinneSarah is arguably the best vegan cook in the Twin Cities. At the very least, she’s Newest Industry’s favorite. She’s also on a very short list of good reasons to visit St. Paul (just ahead of the Science Museum). Last night she was kind enough to invite NI over for a dinner of vegan ribs, scalloped potatoes, and citrus collard greens (and rum & cokes). Fortunately, she was kind of enough to share the recipe and take a few pictures so that everybody out there in the ether of the internet could indulge in vegan ribs as well.

It makes sense to start with the scalloped potatoes since they take about an hour to bake up. She was using the recipe from Vive Le Vegan! by Dreena Burton.

What ya need:

3 cups plain non-dairy milk
1 large garlic clove
1/4 cup miso
3 tablespoons arrowroot powder
2 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
1 teaspoon rosemary
1/4-1/2 cup honey alternative
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/8-1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
pinch of ground pepper
2 lbs Yukon or red potatoes
1 1/2-2 cups thinly slice onion

Topping:

2 cups bread crumbs
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Preheat the oven to 400 F and slice up those potatoes and onions.

In a blender or food processor, prep the the sauce with 1 cup of milk, garlic, miso, arrowroot, flour, olive oil, mustard, rosemary, honey alternative, salt, nutmeg, and pepper and blend until, er, blended.

Add 2 more cups of milk and blend again.

In a casserole dish (or hotdish dish where MinneSarah comes from) add about a 1/3 of the potatoes, followed by 1/2 the onions, repeat until you run out of onions and potatoes.

Add the topping mix, loosely cover with aluminum foil, and bake for 50-60 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

While that bakes…

For the main course she was working with a recipe from Fat Free Vegan (though she guiltlessly added fat by using olive oil). The recipe can be viewed here.

What ya need:

1 cup vital wheat gluten
2 teaspoons paprika
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 cups of water
2 tablespoons tahini (or other nut butter)
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup of barbecue sauce (roughly)

Spray an 8x8 pan with with a bit of oil.

Mix the vital wheat gluten, paprika, nutritional yeast, onion powder and garlic powder in a large bowl.

Mix the water with the tahini, liquid smoke & soy sauce. Add that mix to the mixture of dry ingredients. Stir that shit up and knead it lightly.

Put the dough into the pan and flatten it out so it covers the dish evenly. Cut the whole thing into 8 strips, then cut those strips in half to for 16 strips.

Place it in the already heated-up oven for 25 minutes.

While you wait, feel free to indulge in a rum & coke and some dancing.

Once 25 minutes has passed, pull out the ribs and re-cut them along the lines. Brush the top of the ribs with barbecue sauce (continue dancing if you’re so inclined)

 Spatula them out of the dish, flip ‘em like they’re kilos and you’re name is Pusha P, put them on the stove/grill/griddle and brush the other side with more barbecue sauce. They should look like this:

Grill it up (keep an eye on it so it doesn’t burn). Once one side is brown, flip it over and brown the other side. Keep the heat low.

While the ribs are slowly browning up, get the collard greens ready. She used the recipe from Culinate.com (which you can read here.)

 What ya need:

2 large bunches of collard greens
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 minced garlic cloves
2/3 cups of raisins

In a large pot, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil and add the salt. While the water comes to a boil, chiffonade (yeah, that’s a verb, means ‘chop into thin strips.’ Who knew?) the collard greens.

Boil the greens uncovered for 8-10 minutes. While they boil, get a bowl of cool water ready, ya gon’ need it.

Meanwhile, pull the potatoes out of the oven, pull the cover off, and give them a poke. If they’re nice and soft, add the topping mixture of breadcrumbs, olive oil, and salt. Leave those spuds uncovered and put them back in the oven for 7-10 minutes (or until browned).

Meanwhile, pour yourself another drink and have a little dance, as you’re about 15 minutes from eating yourself into a coma.

Alright, once the collard greens are done, drain and pour them into the cold water (this preserves their color and texture).

In a pan over medium heat, heat up the oil and add the minced garlic. Saute that up for about a minute before adding the collards, raisins, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. Saute that mix for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add the orange juice and saute for another 15 seconds.

At this point the potatoes should be just about done. Let them cool for 5-10 minutes, finish off your drink, and it’s time for dinner!

Bam! Perfect for Minnesota’s chilly nights.

While MinneSarah did plenty of prepping, cooking, drinking, & dancing, she had only this to say about the meal:

"Those potatoes were bland.  Ribz are pretty darn easy.  Collards are the best!!!!’

Bland potatoes or not, that was a hell of a meal. Big thanks to MinneSarah for all the hard work and a delicious dinner! She can be found on Twitter (@MinneSarah) tweeting about cats, mormon fashion, the State Fair, and 90’s music. Highly recommended.