Potato Bread with Scallions

I regret that I let yeast doughs intimidate me for so long. Making bread at home is really easy, it makes your apartment smell super. Barring some crucial mishap (and I haven't had one yet, and I doubt you will) you'll have better bread than you'd be eating otherwise and you'll pay less for it.

This is from Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson. The recipe is for potato bread with chives but I used scallions and substituted whole wheat for some of the white flour in the recipe. The onion flavor was subtle, but nice. Oh, and it made a two fat, happy loaves!

Blueberry-chocolate cake, sweet potato bread

Hi everybody. Grad school is kicking my butt, but I still do eat food, so here are some pics:



Blueberry-chocolate cake, recipe from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen blog. I used a chocolate-hazelnut spread my friend brought me back from Paris to adhere the fruit to the cake in lieu of agave. This was delicious, quick and looks pretty fancy to boot. I used these farmers market blueberries that made you say; "oh yeah, that's what these things are supposed to taste like!"





Braided sweet potato yeast bread loaf, recipe from IVU (International Vegetarian Union). Delicious, but somewhat dense. The recipe doesn't instruct you to warm liquid ingredients to room temperature, and I only thought of that halfway through the process, but it still rose quite a bit, so I think next time using warm soymilk and yams it will be even better. I made two spreads for this, both based off of Bryanna Clark-Grogan's vegan "boursin" recipe. One was made with cranberries, walnuts and orange zest and the other had dill, garlic and scallions. Both were delicious (google that recipe, I make it all the time!) but neither were super photogenic unfortunately.

Palak Tofu and Sweet Potato Paratha

Here is the Palak Tofu from Mahanandi, a recipe I've had bookmarked forever, alongside some red quinoa and Sweet Potato Paratha, inspired by a post by Kamutflake Girl.

The palak tofu was made with palak (spinach) and with collard greens, so I guess it's really saag (greens) tofu. There is powdered poppy seed in the recipe, but since I was unable to powder the whole seeds in my food processor I just added them whole, and I don't think they did very much thickening, though they certainly didn't hurt the flavor. Next time I'll used ground cashews instead and save the poppy seeds for lemon bread. I also used canned tomatoes since those are no way in season in NYC, and I don't think I hurt anything. Overall, this is very tasty, and pretty low-fat (for me anyway), and didn't require any ingredients that I didn't already have so I will definitely be making this again. I will continue to tweak this recipe a bit though and also probably try some new ones. Saag paneer was always a favorite of mine and I'd love an Ultimate Vegan Version of the American-ized version I ate in the past. Plus dark, leafy greens are probably the healthiest things on the planet, like ever.

The parathas (whole wheat chapati Indian flatbreads with vegetable filling) were very yummy, and are made with unbelieveably simple dough, so I think I'll probably just make them instead of buying flatbreads from the store from now on. Seriously, just some flour, water, oil, maybe some earth balance for frying and a *little* bit of time and you're on your way to impressive, homemade, customizable breads. I couldn't figure out how to fill they correctly so they were more chapati than paratha on my first shot. Now that I've watched this helpful tutorial though, I will try again very, very soon. Also I still have all this leftover sweet potato filling in my fridge, so I kind of *have* to. Life is soo-o-oo hard!

I'm still very, very much a novice at Indian Food, but I love cooking it at home so far. I can control how much oil I use, and I can use substitutes for dairy (like tofu and margarine in the case) or vary my grains by using quinoa instead of rice if I'm in such a mood. Which I was. And of course at home you can make huge quantities to eat later. Which I will. Yum