Carnitas Sandwiches (vegan)

This recipe is from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

Recipe: see page 129 of Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day.
This closes out my week on the Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day Blog Tour, the new cookbook from Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen, but the tour will continue on for the next two weeks.

You can see a lot of photos related to the book and blog tour on the  Pinterest board for Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day that I set up. I will be adding to it in the future as I continue to find available photos to pin and as I make recipes from this book.

Traditional carnitas are made from pork. The translation of carnitas to English means 'little meats'. Look at that. This recipe really does look like pulled pork, but... it is made from canned young green jackfruit.

I discovered canned young green jackfruit earlier this year when I was reading about the famous jackfruit tacos on the Seabirds food truck here in Orange County, California. I tried making my own version and they never turned out very well.

So I was excited to see this recipe in Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day, and as I read it, it became apparent to me what I was doing wrong. I was pulling the jackfruit apart and frying it and adding some spices. In this recipe it is cooked and marinated before going into a skillet. That makes a lot of difference, and gives it a much better flavor throughout.

BTW, make sure you use 'canned young green jackfruit'. You DON'T want fresh jackfruit. I have read this is extremely pungent. Canned may be the only way to find green jackfruit in the United States, and it is preferred in recipes like this because it is odorless and tasteless. The flavor will come from the spices and marinades that are used in its preparation. I found it here in Southern California at the 99 Ranch grocery stores.

The carnitas have a strong citrus taste that comes from the orange juice and lime juice. They are also a little sweet from the brown rice syrup. The sandwich also includes a layer of guacamole and 'chili creme'. The creme is based on silken tofu, lime juice and cilantro and packs a lot of flavor.

I've only made 8 recipes from Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day, so I'm not going to pretend to review it, but I will tell you the three things I find most impressive about the book.

First is the sauces. The four recipes I've made that have had dip, sauce, creme, dressing, or spread, etc in them have all been outstanding. A lot of intensity. I keep wondering what the shelf life of these are because I just want to keep them around in the fridge for general use. I'm hoping at some point Tami and Celine will do a book just on sauces, etc.

The second most impressive thing about this book is the number of color photos. The book features 55 full color photos of the recipes. These aren't generic stock photos, these are Celine's photos, shot for this book to illustrate these recipes. As far as I can tell that was a record at the time this book was published two months ago. It appears the new book Gluten-Free and Vegan Bread by Jennifer Katzinger has photos of every recipe, as does the recently published Very Vegan Christmas Cookies by Ellen Brown.

Fair Wind Press is publishing this book. They also did last years The Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Hester, which had 40 full color recipe photos. Historically, most vegan cookbooks have been low-budget productions, so this is pretty ambitious. I hope Fair Wind keeps this up, and I hope it raises the bar for some of the other publishers.

The third most impressive thing about this book relates to the very first thought I had after I received it and flipped through the pages..... "I could open my own vegan sandwich shop and use this book for all the recipes".  (BTW, secretly there are 3 fantasy businesses most men want to own. A bar, a driving range, or a sandwich shop).

I shied away from buying this book because I was expecting it to be too basic. Like what could the authors tell me about a sandwich? I know how to spread mustard and cut tomatoes and lettuce. This book goes far beyond. I keep using the word ambitious, but it is appropriate.

I won't be doing any more posts until after Thanksgiving, but when I'm back I want to continue with a few recipes I'm really interested in, but didn't have time to make for the blog tour this week, like the North End Grinder, the German-inspired Bierocks, the Unfishwich, the Retro KFC-Style Sandwich, the Party Monster, and the Dagwood Special.

Ingredients:
(for carnitas) canned jackfruit, orange juice, onion powder, garlic, lime juice, tamari, hot sauce, dried cilantro, cumin, brown rice syrup, olive oil, shallot.

(for chili creme) silken tofu, olive oil, lime juice, sea salt, onion powder, fresh cilantro. 

(for sandwiches) guacamole, sandwich  rolls.

Peanut Butter Brownie Sandwiches

This recipe is from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

Recipe: see page 171 of Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day.
All this week I have been participating in the Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day Blog Tour, the new cookbook from Tamasin Noyes (American Vegan Kitchen) and Celine Steen (Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites).

You can see a lot of photos related to the book and blog tour on the  Pinterest board for Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day that I set up . Hopefully that will give you a better idea of the types of sandwiches you can make with this cookbook.

One of the interesting things about this book is that it features a few desserts in sandwich form. There are recipes for Sesame Berry Ice Cream Sandwiches, Mango Butter and Ginger Whoopie Pies, Oreo Wafflewich, and this one for Peanut Butter Brownie Sandwiches.

I am absolutely awful when it comes to making baked goods like cookies. My oven cooks things unevenly. Anything towards the corners on a cookie sheet will come out much darker than what is in the middle of the sheet. I've tried rotating the sheets midway through cooking, and putting them on different shelves. Everything always bakes unevenly. I don't do baked goods that often, so I suppose it's not a big deal.

So, I'm not really sure these brownie sandwiches baked the way they are supposed to. They look pretty, but they seemed kind of dense. I went back and made sure I used the correct flour (a common error I seem to make), and everything was in order. I liked the taste, but when I bit into it, the brownie was so dense and heavy that it smooshed out all the peanut butter from the inside, and I had that all over my hands and very little icing was still inside the sandwich.

I put the rest of them in the fridge for a little while before taking them over to my parent's house, and that made the peanut butter icing harden up a bit. My mom and dad loved them, and the peanut butter didn't smoosh.  Not sure if I made them right, but as long as people like them, right?

Tomorrow I will be doing the Carnitas Sandwiches from the book, which are made with canned green jackfruit. I've got that marinating in the fridge right now.


Ingredients:
(brownies) nondairy butter (Earth Balance used here), brown sugar, vanilla extract, plain nondairy yogurt, all-purpose flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, sea salt.

(frosting) creamy salted unsweetened peanut butter, vegan shortening, powdered sugar, vanilla extract.

Apple Tempeh Triangle Dippers

This recipe is from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

Recipe: see page 157 of Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day.
Every day this week until Saturday I am participating in the Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day Blog Tour, the new cookbook from Tamasin Noyes (American Vegan Kitchen) and Celine Steen (Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites).

Just another reminder, I have set up a Pinterest board for the book Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day so you can see some of the recipe images from the book and various blogs, including my own. As of today it is up to 24 images, and counting. Hopefully that will give you a better idea of the types of sandwiches you can make with this cookbook.

Today I am going for the Apple Tempeh Triangle Dippers, which is one of the recipes that uses some of the batch of Tempeh Bacon I made yesterday. This is a fairly quick recipe if the Tempeh Bacon is already prepared.

I like working with puff pastry. It makes me feel like I've made something fancy and beyond my meager cooking skills. Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry is vegan, and that's what I used here.

The Tempeh Bacon, which has a mild barbeque flavor, gets chopped up and added to a mix of chopped apples, lemon, cinnamon, and pomegranate seeds, which is then baked inside the pastry. It's a nice mix of smoky, sweet and tart.

There is a nice contrast of textures too: the flakiness of the pastry and the seeds that add bursts of juice as you bite into them.

The pastry is good by itself, but the dipping sauce takes this to another level. It's essentially grenadine syrup, but much better. Grenadine is pomegranate juice, sugar, and a little bit of orange flower water. These days, commercially sold grenadine is made with high fructose corn syrup which gives it an odd little metallic aftertaste. There is none of that here because real maple syrup is used as the additional sweetener. The dipping sauce is insanely sweet.

The recipe is called Apple Tempeh Triangle Dippers, but really, the flavor of the pomegranate dominates.

Come back tomorrow when I will have a plate of Peanut Butter Brownie Sandwiches waiting for you. Dessert sandwiches. Yum!


Ingredients:
(for triangles) apple, pomegranate seeds, lemon juice, cinnamon, all purpose flour, vegan puff pastry (Pepperidge Farm used here).

(for tempeh bacon) tempeh (Trader Joe's Organic 3-Grain Tempeh used here), vegetable broth, maple syrup, tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, tamari, cumin, coriander, sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, liquid smoke, olive oil. 

(for pomegranate maple dipping sauce) pomegranate juice, maple syrup, lemon juice, cornstarch.

Tempeh Bacon

This recipe is from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

Recipe: see page 179 of Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day.

There are a few different recipes for meat alternatives in Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day.

"Gobbler Slices" is a seitan that simulates luncheon meat in sandwiches like the "North End Grinder", "Dagwood's Special Sandwich", and "The Party Monster".

"Mushroom Tomato Slices" is a seitan cold cut analog that features sun dried tomatoes, porcini mushrooms and black-eyed peas.

"No Cluck Cutlets" replaces chicken in sandwiches such as the "Rachel" (a variation on the Reuben), ""Retro KFC-Style Sandwiches", and "Puff Pastry Pot Pie Sandwiches".

"Moo-Free Seitan" is a versatile seitan recipe that is used in "Pittsburgh Steak Sandwiches" (a take on the Philly Cheesesteak), and the "Wingwich" (a Hot Wing sandwich), as well as a number of others.

There is even a recipe that uses tempeh to try to approximate fish sticks so you can make the "Unfishwich", which may be a variation on the famous McDonald's Fishwich sandwich.

And then there's bacon.

First, let me say, I enjoyed this recipe. I am a fiend for tempeh. I love tempeh and have it at least 3 times a week. It's high protein, high fiber, and when bought from Trader Joe's, comparatively cheap ($1.69 for 8 ounces, AND it's organic. That's cheaper than a can of organic beans around here. AND that's about $4 less than a brick of tempeh at any of the major chain stores).

In this recipe, you set the tempeh strips in a smoky flavored marinade overnight, then bake it in the oven the next day, then store until you are ready to fry them up and serve them.

Maybe it's the nature of the Trader Joe's tempeh, but I've never seen it really absorb any kind of marinade, ever. The strips are only a quarter of an inch thick, so the marinade doesn't have far to go to permeate the entire slice, but it just didn't make it. I cut one of these open after marinading and baking and it was still white on the inside. That may be why the flavor was mild, which was a bit of a letdown. I wonder if another brand of tempeh may absorb better.

It has a smoky and mildly sweet flavor. The marinade stuck to the outside, so it does have a little flavor.  It tastes more like tempeh in a light barbeque sauce than something approximating bacon. I don't know if the flavor was worth the overnight wait, and the additional step of baking before frying.

Like I said, I still enjoyed it, but the term bacon is kind of misleading. It's a loaded word that comes with a lot of expectations. I wouldn't serve this to an omni bacon-lover and say 'this is a vegan version of bacon'. I'd never hear the end of that. I'd say 'this is smoky tempeh', or 'hickory tempeh'. I wouldn't use the term bacon. 

Ingredients: tempeh (Trader Joe's Organic 3-Grain Tempeh used here), vegetable broth, maple syrup, tomato paste, apple cider vinegar, tamari, cumin, coriander, sea salt, onion powder, garlic powder, liquid smoke, olive oil.

Welsh Rarebit (vegan)

This recipe is from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

 

Recipe: see page 48 of Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day.
This week I am participating in the Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day Blog Tour, the new cookbook from Tamasin Noyes (American Vegan Kitchen) and Celine Steen (Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites).

I have set up a Pinterest board for the book Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day so you can see some of the recipe images that are floating around the interwebs. It has the photos that I am shooting for this blog, as well as some of the photos made available on Pinterest by other bloggers on this book tour, and a number of photos from the book that were shot by Celine Steen.

Yesterday I made the really outstanding Chickpea Shawarma. and today is Welsh Rarebit.  This was the first recipe I saw when I cracked the book open for the first time, and looking at the ingredients list, I suspected the authors might be nuts. Beer... nutritional yeast... oatmeal... stale bread... What the hell is this 'rarebit'?

Well, it turns out the traditional version of Welsh Rarebit is a gooey cheese, mixed with mustard and Worcestershire and sometimes thinned out with beer, baked on top of old bread. A fast, cheap, open-faced sandwich from Wales.

For some reason, I've always equated 'rarebit' with 'rabbit'. I think that's because there is an old Bugs Bunny cartoon called 'French Rarebit'. Have you seen this one? Bug Bunny is in France, and there are two chefs fighting over which one is going to cook him. Bugs turns the table on them, dresses them up as rabbits, then cooks them in the oven with a stick of dynamite instead.

It's alarming how much of my education has come from cartoons and comic books.

Anyway, cheese toast. I can get on board with that.

The recipe specifies a vegan lager beer. I consulted this Guide to Vegan Beer from VegNews magazine. Dos Equis is the one I went with because it seemed to be the only one I could find locally.  I was able to track down vegan Worcestershire sauce at Viva La Vegan grocery store in nearby Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Once I had the ingredients, this was very quick to prepare. All of the sauce ingredients are combined in a blender then cooked on the stove a few minutes so the cornstarch can thicken it up and make it gooey. This gets poured on the stale crusty bread rolls, then baked in an oven until the cheesy topping browns a bit.

It's cheesy but has a very intense, deep hearty flavor that comes from the lager beer, Dijon mustard and Worcestershire. It's savory and salty. The recipe suggests serving it with pickles, brown vegan steak sauce (according to PETA, A1 Steak Sauce is vegan), caramelized onions or figs. I have another photo below that shows the Welsh Rarebit with pickles and A1 (I really liked that).

Nutritional yeast is one of those foods with a polarizing flavor. I like it because it has a cheese-like taste, and since I don't eat dairy, that's close enough. Really, nutritional yeast doesn't fool anyone into thinking they are eating dairy cheese. So if you make this, don't go into it thinking it is going to taste just like gooey cheddar cheese. It cheesy, but in that uniquely interesting nutritional yeast kind of way.

I am going to continue doing a recipe a day from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day until Saturday. Tomorrow I am going to try out the Tempeh Bacon recipe. So, check back in.

Ingredients:
(for sauce) unsweetened plain soymilk (Trader Joe's used here), vegan lager beer (Dos Equis Lager used here), nondairy butter (Earth Balance used here), paprika, garlic, sea salt, onion powder, Dijon mustard, tahini, nutritional yeast, vegan Worcestershire sauce (The Wizard's Organic Vegan Worcestershire Sauce used here), quick-cooking oats, cornstarch.

(for sandwiches) stale crusty bread rolls.

Welsh Rarebit (vegan) with pickles and A1 Steak Sauce from the cookbook Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

Chickpea Shawarma

This recipe is from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen.

Recipe: see page 131 of Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day.

Welcome to week four of the six-week Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day Blog Tour. This is a new cookbook from Tamasin Noyes (American Vegan Kitchen) and Celine Steen (Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites).

This week I will be making some of the sandwiches from the book and sharing my thoughts and photos. I will be doing one sandwich a day from today until Saturday. I won't be doing a contest (sorry!), and I won't be sharing any of the actual recipes from the book (again, sorry). But please check out some of the previous and upcoming stops on the tour if you are interested in those, as well as reviews and interviews with the authors.

This sandwich sounded interesting to me, and it was one of the few ones from the book where I happened to have all the ingredients on hand, including the nondairy yogurt, which I never have, and which was in the fridge and pushing the expiration date. So I made this sandwich with a sense of urgency.

This was relatively quick to prepare, which is good, because some of the other recipes in the book are a little intimidating to me in terms of prep time. Being a fan of comics, I'd really love to make the Dagwood Special sandwich (named for the elaborate super-tall sandwich creation made by the character Dagwood in the comic strip Blondie), but it requires two different types of homemade seitan, and a tempeh bacon recipe that has to marinate overnight.

Usually I end up trying to figure out what to make for a meal about 10 minutes after I become hungry. So that kind of long-term meal planning hasn't really been part of my process.  I really want to make the Dagwood and will eventually, but I was relieved to find a recipe I could make on short notice, with ingredients I already had on hand.

I thought this was really tasty. It wasn't like anything I've ever had before, and I mean that in a good way. It's Indian-inspired and has got a little bit of heat from the curry powder and is tangy from the nondairy yogurt and lemon. The chickpeas get cooked in a mixture that gives them a thick pasty coating. That could have been a meal in itself.

The coated chickpeas get assembled on the sandwich along with some shredded lettuce, tomato,  parsley and a tahini dressing that is really outstanding. This is going to be my standard go-to recipe for tahini dressing from now on. It's creamy and tangy and lemony and has a little bit of zing from the garlic and red onion.

This is a vegan sandwich with very intense flavors. I love it.

Tomorrow I am going to make Welsh Rarebit from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day. I have no idea what that is, but it recalls another old comic strip. Winsor McCay was an American newspaper cartoonist in the early 1900's, and one of his most famous comic strips was called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. The storyline consisted of characters who, after dining on rarebit, would fall asleep and have bizarre dreams and nightmares. And then, in the last panel, they'd awaken and regret they'd eaten rarebit.

Mmmmm. And now there's a vegan version. I've got to try this.

See you tomorrow for Welsh Rarebit.


Ingredients:
(for chickpeas) medium curry powder, chickpeas, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, unsweetened plain nondairy yogurt, olive oil, garlic, onion powder.

(for dressing) tahini, unsweetened plain nondairy yogurt, water, lemon juice, olive oil, red onion, garlic, salt, pepper.

(for sandwiches) shredded lettuce, pita bread, tomatoes, fresh parsley, lemon wedges.

Mojito Pinto Beans

This recipe is from The Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Hester.

Recipe: see page 68 of The Vegan Slow Cooker.

Ingredients: pinto beans, mint, lime, rum (Myer's Dark Rum used here), cumin, tomato paste, vegan chicken-flavored bouillon (recipe for this is in the book and consists of onion, carrots, celery, thyme, parsley, pepper, salt, nutritional yeast, water).

Kidney Bean & Butternut Jamba Stew

This recipe is from the vegan cookbook Appetite for Reduction by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

 

Recipe: see page 256 of Appetite for Reduction.

I LOVE this recipe. It is spicy from the cayenne and mildly sweet from the butternut squash, and it has a great contrast of textures. The butternut is so smooth, it really feels like it is melting in my mouth.

I'm a compulsive list-maker, and going through my notes, I realized there is only one other recipe I've made this year that I loved as much as this, and that was the Tofu Scampi with Spinach from Quick-Fix Vegan. This recipe definitely makes my list of favorites.

Early in the summer I put two butternut squashes into my garden. I've never grown those before, and it seems some types of vegetables are hit and miss for me, but these turned out great. Between the two plants I was able to harvest 17 butternuts. I was kind of intimidated trying to find recipes that would use them all up, but no more. I am going to be making this recipe a lot more.

Ingredients: kidney beans, butternut squash, white basmati rice, canned whole tomatoes, yellow onion, green bell pepper, celery, olive oil, garlic, bay leaves, paprika, cayenne, thyme, oregano, vegetable broth, salt.