Recipe Thursdays - Mushroom Stroganoff

As many of you know, I got my Isa Does It cookbook in the mail.  Since I've gotten it, I've made a few recipes which I'll blog about in the future but my favorite so far has been the Mushroom Stroganoff.  I'm not going to type out the recipe because I'm too lazy, but you can find the recipe HERE.

I didn't make it with the tofu because I was kind of crunched for time and wasn't sure if I was going to make it out of the house in time so I sacrificed what I'm sure would have been a delicious addition to this dish.  Also I used bowties (or "farfalle" in Italian which basically means "butterfly") instead of fusilli because I love bowties and think that they are just so darn cute.

Mushrooms and onions sauteeing with garlic and thyme. 

 In the past, I had been intimidated by cashew-based sauces, so this was my first one ever.  It was so easy! It just seemed like so much work... the soaking and the blending.  I really thought I was too lazy for that.  In Isa Does It, Isa Moskowitz, the author says "ABS" or "Always be soaking", so now I always make sure to have some cashews soaking in case I need to use them.  I really really really want a new blender though.  This must be what it's like to be a grown up... to want a blender more than anything else. 

Adorable little bowties cooking

 I remember growing up my mother would make stroganoff and I would flip out.  It was my favorite.  Sometimes I would put soy sauce in it because I was a rebel.  Making this recipe in the future, I think I would add more mushrooms because I love mushrooms.

The mushrooms and onions soaking up the white wine and tomato paste

 This being my first time making a cashew based sauce, I was bound to screw it up a little bit and I did.  I didn't blend the cashew and vegetable broth mixture enough.  I thought maybe it was the blender, but on one of the next recipes that I tried I blended longer and the results were better, so this was my bad.  But it was still great!  The sauce thickened in about five minutes and it was so so tasty.

The sauce thickening

I was really proud of myself for this recipe because 1) it was my first cashew-based sauce 2) I made it really efficiently in a short amount of time 3) it was delicious! I had TWO people tell me, so I know I'm not deluding myself. 4) I used my mom's cheap Chardonnay from a box as the "dry white wine" ingredient and it was still amahhhhzing.

yumyumyumyumparselyyum

It was so good that I forgot to take a pic before I started eating.  Whoops.

Also I binge-read this one blog called Vegan Runner Eats and THIS is by far my favorite post on there.  It teaches you how to maximize the health benefits of your plant-based diet by eating certain foods together.  It's really interesting and I really recommend reading it.  She's also a really good example of how cutting back on meat, eggs and dairy (or eliminating it completely) can help your body run more efficiently!  She runs marathons!

ps. here's a bonus pic of the delicious bruschetta I got at dinner last night at Il Cerbero.

yummm. and of course wine.

ciao ciao! -Katelyn

UPDATE: I made this today with some sautéed seitan and I added a few splashes of soy sauce and it was amazing!!

Seitan is my favorite

I eat SO much seitan.  It's my favorite (aside from the "haha i thought you said SATAN" jokes).  I posted the recipe that I use before, and I will post it again because it is perfect.  Some of the seitan recipes you find online need cheesecloth, and there's boiling involved and you have to spin around nine times and have it blessed by a priest for it to turn out right and it's a pain in the ass. BUT NOT THIS RECIPE.
This literally takes three minutes to throw together and then it has to bake for an hour. Done.
CLICK HERE FOR BEST SEITAN RECIPE EVARRRR

I usually make it about once a week because I eat it so often.  Here are a few pictures of my weekly seitan bake.

 I ordered this stuff online because they don't sell it in the stores here and they sent me a whole box of it.  It is unreal the amount of Vital Wheat Gluten that I have in my pantry. 

Doesn't that look gooood? Or maybe a little like vomit.  Whatevs.  In the ingredients list, it says to use soy sauce, but lately I've been doing 1/2 soy sauce and 1/2 Bragg's Liquid Aminos. 

When you mix it, it turns into a nice dough.  When I try to describe seitan to people without making it sound gross, I say that it's like bread, but denser and approximately 400 times more delicious. 

You can do basically anything with it.  Sometimes I chop it up and put it in salads, sometimes I put it in a stir fry, or fajitas or my new favorite thing to put it in: wrap.  Lately I've been making this perfect wrap with a spiced tomato flour tortilla, vegan mozzarella shreds, baby spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and peppers.  The sauce I use is a mixture of Larrupin sauce (Click here to learn about the wonder that is laurrupin sauce) and balsamic vinegar and it is so so so good that my mouth is salivating as I type. 

My aunt introduced me to Larrupin sauce when I was in California a few months ago, and you can usually only get it in Humboldt County but I found somewhere that delivers online and I just realized today that I have been spending $16 a jar on this sauce.  But you know what? It's worth it because it's amazing and perfect.  It's a mustard dill sauce.  Just looking at mustard used to make me want to vom, but now Larrupin sauce is ALMOST tied with balsamic vinegar as my favorite condiment and anyone that knows me knows that this is a BIG DEAL.  

Also last night I went on a pizza date with my boyfrannn at my favorite pizzeria, Il Panda and I got a pizza marinara and it was all sorts of delicious.  He got a diavolo which has cheese and like three different kinds of meat but that is irrelevant.  What is relevant though is the wine because it was on point.

The moral of this post is that seitan is delicious and everyone should make it and eat it because it's magical. brb going to make more seitan

xo Katelyn

ps. I just got my Isa Does It vegan cookbook in the mail after waiting for TWO MONTHS and I will be making something from it shortly!