Creamy Spicy Tomato Vodka AND a Creamy Almond Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce

Well, the new year diet is going very well. I've lost 10 pounds so far and am eating so much healthier. It's all been very delicious just not very 'bloggable'. You know what I mean, lots of stir fries chock full of veg and light curries....delicious but nothing anyone can't throw together! So, I'm not really in the kitchen creating anything new these days :-)

This, however, has been a basic sauce in our house for quite a while now. I searched online for a vodka sauce as I was curious to try one and came across this one (**edit - see below!). It looked interesting as it used almonds to create the creaminess as opposed to the traditional cream. It is dead easy to make, very versatile and absolutely delicious. The original recipe blended in sliced almonds but I thought I would make it easier by just using ground almonds, or almond meal/flour. It works so well, when you add the almonds the sauce changes from bright red to a creamier looking orange and the sweetness of the almonds counters the sharpness of the tomato perfectly. I've been using ground almonds in loads of sauces now to get the same creamy effect, it's brilliant!

I was also thinking this sauce would make a great pizza sauce, because basically, if I can find any new way of combining booze and pizza, I will :-) So I made my standard pizza base then made this sauce but simply cooked it down a little more so it wasn't as runny as a pasta sauce. Spread it over the base, topped with whatever I fancied at the time, bit of cheezly and baked. It was so good!

Creamy Spicy Tomato Vodka Sauce:

-recipe serves 2 as a pasta sauce

1/2 tsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1/8 tsp chilli flakes

250g passata (creamed tomatoes/plain tomato sauce)

1 Tbsp vodka

1/8 tsp oregano

1/8 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp salt

2 Tbsp ground almonds (almond meal/almond flour)

fresh basil

freshly ground black pepper

*If making pasta for two I would add 200g dry pasta for a main dish*

First mix together the passata, vodka, salt and dry herbs - set aside. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan on low heat and gently fry the garlic and chilli for about a minute. It will get really fragrant but be careful not to burn the garlic - not nice! Add the tomato mixture, stir well, put the lid on and simmer for about 10 - 15 minutes, stir now and again. It will cook down slightly and get thicker. Stir in the almonds and fresh basil and stir well, it will change in colour and get creamy looking. Add a few grinds of pepper and that's it! Pour over your cooked pasta and enjoy :-)

As this is a very basic recipe it is quite versatile too. In regards to the herbs, I think I've used a different selection every time I've made this, from just oregano, to just thyme, to both, to basil to an 'Italian blend' mixed herbs etc... Just use whatever you have - the recipe is very forgiving. I've even made this with balsamic vinegar in place of the vodka when I discovered quite late that I didn't have any, was still delicious.

Source: Recipe based on this one.
** Edit - was just looking through my Veganomicon cookbook and realized this recipe actually comes from there! So to give credit where credit is due - it's really from Veganomicon!!** (cheeky other site!)

Nutritional Analysis: just the sauce, whole recipe.
Calories: 196
Protein: 6.2g
Fat: 18.1g
Sat Fat: 0.8g
Fibre: 4.8g
Carbs: 14g
Sugars: 9.3g
Calcium: 35.4mg
Sodium: 397.7mg

♥

*2012 Edit - I've since made a new variation on this sauce that we are having much more often than the vodka one. My son couldn't have the spice anyway and to be honest, I really couldn't see what difference the vodka was making in there. I did however love the idea of using almonds to make a tomato sauce creamy and came up with this basic tomato basil sauce using almonds for creaminess, body and their natural sweetness counters the acidity of tomatoes perfectly. THIS is now our standard pasta sauce recipe :-) Recipe serves 3.

Creamy Almond Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce

320g passata

100ml water

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1/2 red onion, diced

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp dried oregano

freshly ground black pepper

3 Tbsp ground almonds

2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil

300g pasta - spaghetti is nice here

Blend the passata, ground almonds and water in a blender until smooth and creamy looking. In a saucepan heat the olive oil and add the onion, fry gently with a few grinds of black pepper until the onion is soft then stir in the garlic. Add the tomato sauce, salt and herbs and stir well, bring to a simmer, put the lid on and simmer for about 10 minutes until thickened and slightly reduced. Turn off the heat and stir in the fresh basil. Pour over freshly drained pasta and return to the heat for a couple of minutes, stirring well until everything is well coated and hot. Serve immediately.

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Vegan Yorkshire Pudding

Served with 'Veganomicon's infamous 'Chickpea Cutlets', mashed potato, steamed veg and a mushroom gravy.

I was going to post this a Sunday roast but really it's the Yorkshire puddings that I'm focusing on here! I have tried a few of these before, I can get them to rise a bit but something was always not quite right. I'm very happy with these ones though, only problem is their bottoms didn't get fully cooked, they are a little gummy there. I didn't mind it though and as they don't contain any egg - not a health problem ;)

I based this one on my mom's popover recipe, popovers are an American thing (mommy's American :)) but very similar to Yorkshire puddings. I guess the only thing is they rise even better than Yorkshire's so thought they would fare well veganizing. I swapped the eggs with this new egg replacer I've been enjoying using xanthan gum and replaced the water with sparkling water. I find the taste very similar AND the texture, minus the bases not fully cooking. I think I can get around that by cooking longer at a lower temp perhaps.....I'll mess around with them I'm sure but at this stage I'm very happy with these!! Always loved popovers/Yorkshire puds and am so glad to have a replacement :) :)

I also absolutely love the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon, I know they are all over the vegan blogging sphere and rightfully so! They do call for vital wheat gluten which is very hard to find here. I had a box of harvest direct seitan mix and used that. It's not straight vital wheat gluten but a mix however it works just fine in the recipe.

Yorkshire Puddings - makes 8
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp potato starch
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp xanthan gum
2 tsp oil (I used peanut, veg should be fine)
just under 1/2 cup water
-------------------------
3/4 cup rice milk (180ml)
1/4 cup sparkling water (60ml)
1 Tbsp vegan margarine, melted
1 cup minus 2 Tbsp flour (120g)
1/2 tsp salt
more oil for the muffin tin

Place 1/2 tsp of oil into each of the 8 muffin tin holes and place the tin in the oven. Preheat the oven to 375F/180C to get the oil hot. Next make your 'eggs', in a large bowl whisk together the cornstarch, potato starch, xanthan gum and baking powder. Add the water and whisk well until no more lumps (there may be a few, that's ok). Add the oil and whisk well again until slightly frothy. Whisk in the rice milk and sparkling water until well incorporated. While whisking pour in the melted margarine in a steady stream until all added. Add the flour and salt and whisk until combined but lumpy. Remove the pan from the preheated oven and pour the mixture in until almost full. Pop back into the oven and bake for 20 minutes, remove and slice the tops and slightly open then bake for another 20 minutes. Check after they have had 1/2 hour but they may need longer for the bottoms to fully cook. Let cool slightly in pan then remove and serve with lots of vegan gravy of your choice!

Mushroom Gravy:
15g vegan margarine
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
60g button mushrooms, finely sliced
15g plain flour
1/4 litre veg stock, I made mine with 1 oxo veg cube
some fresh thyme, a few strands - optional

Melt the marg in a saucepan and fry the onion gently until golden, add some black pepper. Stir in the mushrooms and fresh thyme and fry for a couple minutes until they start to sweat. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute on low heat. Slowly start adding the hot stock, a little at a time, stirring well between each addition. Keep going until all added then turn the heat up and cook until thickened. Remove the thyme and serve.

Source for the egg replacers .

Lasagne and Garlic Bread

Lasagne layered with mushroom sauce, spinach, basil tofu 'ricotta' and topped with pine nut cream - most courtesy of Veganomicon.

My usual garlic bread....

Decided to go for lasagne and garlic bread for Easter dinner. We haven't yet set on a 'traditional' meal for Easter so I tend to change it around every year. I have made several vegan lasagne's so far, I haven't blogged one yet as I've been waiting to find the perfect one. This one just may be it. Other's I have tried have used soya mince for a meat replacement and faux cheese sauce but loved this one the most - even the very picky boy loved it, so that's saying something!

My old favorite vegetarian lasagne was a spinach and mushroom one, it had a mushroom tomato sauce layered with noodles, spinach and a cheese sauce. I decided to use that mushroom sauce but replaced the cheese sauce with Veganomicon (and VWAV's) basil tofu ricotta, kept the spinach and then topped with their pine nut cream, as used in the potato eggplant moussaka . It's altogether a variation featured in the cookbook, and sorry as most recipes come from the book I can't post here, although I'm sure an internet search will find these for you!

As it has a lot of layers, each that need preparing, it can take awhile. However you can make almost all the layers in advance, even a day in advance, making the whole thing a lot easier. This fits one 8x11 inch pan.

Mushroom Sauce:
50g vegan margarine
2 onions, diced
450g mushrooms, sliced
2 cloves garlic, pureed
8 Tbsp tomato puree
800g can chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp sugar

Melt margarine in a large saucepan and fry the onion until transparent. Add the garlic and fry a minute more. Add mushrooms and some pepper and fry until cooked and any liquid reabsorbs. Stir in puree, chopped tomatoes, soy sauce and sugar. Bring to the boil then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside.

1 x recipe Basil Tofu Ricotta
1 x recipe Almesan
1 x recipe Pine Nut Cream
Baby Spinach
Lasagna noodles - enough for 3 layers in your pan, I precook as I don't trust the ones that say you don't need to.

Lightly butter your pan then add some of the mushroom sauce. Layer with noodles, half the ricotta, lots of baby spinach, mushroom sauce. Finish with a layer of noodles and top with more mushroom sauce. Cover with foil and bake in 190C oven for half an hour. Remove from oven, take off foil and top with the pine nut cream. Put back in oven for another 20 minutes or until topping cracks and looks dry. Remove from oven and sprinkle generously with the almesan. Let sit for 10 minutes then cut and serve. With the size of pan we used we got 6 servings out of this.

Garlic bread:
Recipe is the same as my old post here but I used a par bake baguette slicing it as you see in the pic.

Eggplant Potato Moussaka with Pine Nut Cream

So, yet another entry from Veganomicon! I still had some eggplant and silken tofu leftover from the Veganniversary on friday and saw this in the cookbook. I had a quick look online to see what others thought and everyone seemed to love it - rightfully so, it's delicious....BUT, as a few bloggers have noted the quantities of eggplant and potato are seriously out of whack! Even knowing this beforehand and cooking up extra potato and eggplant I didn't have enough to do two layers, hence my vertically challenged moussaka you see here....

Anyway, it didn't impede the flavour at all and the dish is lovely - the cinnamon in the tomato sauce is a nice addition and that pine nut cream will certainly be used in other dishes as well, it's fantastic. The recipe has been re-printed with permission on Vegan Peace HERE , just make sure you at least double the quantities of eggplant and potato!

Furthermore I don't know why I took a picture where you can't see the layers, must be cooking exhaustion! The sprinkles you see on top is some of Veganomicon's 'almesan' that I had leftover from the eggplant rollatini - it went really nice with this.

A Veganomicon Veganniversary!!!!

Eggplant Rollatini with Tofu Basil 'Ricotta', Toasted Pine Nuts, Spinach and Olive Marinara Sauce over spaghetti.

In the pan post fried and rolled but before baked, some of these are breaded with panko and some with paxo breadcrumbs - I couldn't decide which to use but felt the paxo being finer worked better with these.

So yes! It was our 1 year veganniversary on vriday (sorry, couldn't resist!) and I decided to make a big deal out of it and prepare an entire meal straight out of 'Veganomicon' (which has yet to fail me - amazing cookbook - buy it!). Normally I would make small changes here and there but this time I followed everything to a T and made everything by scratch (well, bar the spaghetti!). The eggplant rollatini is thinly sliced eggplant, breaded and fried in olive oil then rolled up with spinach, toasted pine nuts and their tofu basil ricotta - which is amazing! The breading mixture is also flavoured with their 'almesan' - a very tasty parmesan type recipe. They recommended the marinara sauce in the cookbook but specifically the olive variation one which has chopped black olives added to the sauce. As for what to serve it with they recommended just some steamed broccoli to keep it light or some spaghetti with more sauce for a bigger meal - clearly, we did the latter!

It was amazing! We have been very anti-eggplant in the past having had it only a couple times in restaurants clearly poorly prepared. As a result I have never actually bought any myself, or cooked with it. It was a wedding we went to in the summer where our vegan meals contained eggplant rolls, cooked properly, that we realized what we were missing out on. So glad I tried this as it's great for fancy dinners and I can now safely say I love eggplant! Out of the whole recipe, the only thing I would change next time is to add a tiny bit of sugar in the sauce just to take the acidic edge off as it was quite sharp. Otherwise, everything was perfect.

Their uber rich and delicious 'Smlove Pie' for dessert...

It's a chocolate amaretto pie in a digestive crust with a peanut butter caramel and maple candied pecans drizzled with a chocolate ganache...

And for dessert.....this was amazing, I guess it's somewhat of a turtle pie... The tofu base originally called for frangelico which is hard to find in this country for some reason, looks like Waitrose sells it but there's not one near me. I had amaretto though so used that - it was still delicious, in fact I could easily eat that filling before it got baked. I had a small problem with my crust though - it was too small for my dish which is a very large 10 inch pie plate. The filling went up over the sides while baking then there wasn't much room for the caramel etc... Not a big deal, just ascetics...

The caramel is particularly good, as are those maple candied pecans! I will definitely be making those again just to snack on, I wasn't sure there was going to be any left for the pie as I couldn't stop eating them.... so good!

No recipe for the main as it's from a cookbook, but Isa herself has posted the recipe for the lovely pie on her blog HERE !

Pasta Della California

This was soooo good! Again the photo here is doing it no justice as you can't see the main flavours of lime and chili but they are there! Recipes comes from, again, Veganomicon - which has yet to fail me. This is definitely going on the regular dinner rotation...

Lentil, Bean and Veggie Stew

This is a slightly adapted recipe of 'Cholent' in Veganomicon. They called for caraway seeds and tarragon but I personally am not keen on any 'liquorish' tasting herbs so, I used more traditional stew herbs of rosemary, sage and thyme and loved this. In fact it tasted so much like my mom's stew growing up (which is what I was after). They also added TVP chunks, which you can see in the photo there but we weren't keen on those so I no longer add them. I'll try and update this photo soon!

It's warm, comforting, nutritious and filling; we serve it with fresh from the oven bread rolls slathered with vegan butter to dip into the stew - lovely! This has become an autumn/winter family favourite.

Lentil, Bean and Veggie Stew:

Serves 3.

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, diced 
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped
• 1 tsp fresh thyme, finely chopped
• ½ tsp dried mixed herbs
• 1/8 tsp dried sage
• 1 bay leaf
• ½ tsp salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 60ml / ¼ cup red wine
• 50g / ¼ cup dry puy lentils
• 100 - 150g carrots, peeled and sliced
• 250 – 300g baby new potatoes, quartered or diced large
• 1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes
• 100g frozen peas
• ½ a 400g tin of red kidney beans drained and rinsed (about 170g)
• about 250ml water

Wash and rinse the lentils well. Bring a pot of water to the boil, add the lentils, stir, put a lid on and fast boil for 10 minutes. Drain in a fine sieve, rinse well with cold water and set aside.


In a large saucepan heat the olive oil. Gently fry the onion with a few grinds of black pepper until soft and translucent.  Add all the herbs, garlic and salt and fry gently for about a minute, let it get really fragrant but be careful not to let the garlic burn – keep it on low heat. Add the red wine to de glaze – give it a good stir, then add the carrots, potatoes, par-boiled lentils, chopped tomatoes and the water. 

Cover, bring to a boil then reduce the heat to simmer. Let it simmer for about 30 – 40 minutes or until the potatoes, carrots and lentils are cooked and the stew has thickened. When there is about 10 minutes left, add the kidney beans and frozen peas. If it is still too liquidy, cook a little longer with the lid off until it is the right consistency. If it’s too dry, add a bit more water. Season to taste and serve.

Nutritional Information: 1 serving

Calories: 326
Protein: 16g
Fibre: 11.2g
Carbs: 33.5g
Sugar: 10.9g
Fat: 5.5g
Sat Fat: 0.9g
Sodium: 647mg

♥

Curried Udon Noodle Stir Fry

This was very good, a slightly adapted recipe from Veganomicon. The original recipe called for seitan (which I didn't have) or tofu (which I didn't feel like) and also called for broccoli and red pepper for the veg. I just wanted to use veg that I had in the house so used green beans and carrots. Personally I think these work better as I can't see red peppers going with this so much, although broccoli would. Anyway, you can use whatever you like, it's the base of noodles and a curry roux sauce that make it.

113g dry udon noodles
Curry Roux Sauce:
1 Tbsp peanut oil
1 Tbsp flour
3/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp garam masala
1/4 cup vegetable broth
1 tsp sugar
Stir Fry:
1 Tbsp peanut oil
1/2 large onion, slice into thin halfmoons
1/2 tsp grated ginger
66g carrot, cut into matchsticks
113g green beans, cut into 1" size pieces (weigh after slicing)
1 red chili, deseeded and slice thin
2 Tbsp vegetable broth
1 Tbsp soy sauce

Cook the udon according to package instructions, drain and rinse in cold water and set aside. Prepare the roux: Combine the flour and peanut oil in a small saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stir constantly until the it browns and smells toasty, about 10 minutes or less. Stir in curry powder and garam masala and cook for another minute while stirring constantly. Pour in the vegetable broth in a steady stream stirring constantly. Whisk in the sugar and cook the roux, stirring constantly, until a thick sauce forms, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside. *

Prepare the stir fry: Heat the peanut oil in a wok and cook the sliced onion for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent. Add the ginger, chili, beans and carrots and cook, stirring now and then until veg are softer. Give the noodles another rinse if they are sticking and add to the pan, stir in the soy sauce and stir fry 2 - 3 minutes.

Add the 2 Tbsp stock to the roux and give it a good whisk. Pour sauce over the udon stir fry and stir to coat everything completely with the sauce. Stir and cook for 2 - 3 minutes until the sauce is simmering and the noodles are hot. Serves 2.

*notes - the sauce was always too thick, it was never at a stage where I was able to 'pour' it over the noodles so I added a lot more water to it after whisking in the second lot of stock, I didn't want to add more stock in case it all got too salty so the water worked fine. May reduce the amount of flour next time to make it more saucier.

Corn and Edamame Sesame Salad

From: Veganomicon

This was so simple and so good, great to have another interesting salad option for the summer. I'm thinking this cookbook can do no wrong...

Baby Pak Choi with Crispy Shallots and Wasabi Mash

for dinner with griddled tofu

alternative view - for lunch with no tofu
click on pictures for more detail

Sometimes, things in life just turn out. Case in point, I had a large bag of baby pak choi and shallots that needed using. Had a flip through my veganomicon cookbook and there is a recipe for 'baby pak choi with crispy shallots and sesame seeds' - perfect. Then they suggested that it's perfect alongside a mound of wasabi mash potatoes, well I'm not one to argue, so I included that too. This was amazing, the crispy shallots went so well with the pak choi, which gets a syrupy glaze while cooking, and the wasabi mash was surprisingly mild, great flavour of wasabi but no sinus clearing heat. I served mine with some griddled tofu using leftover marinade from the cubes below. Will definitely make this again, I doubled the amount of shallots and glad I did, could even double again they are so good, and I also added 1/2 tsp of toasted sesame oil to the pak choi.

I have added the second photo - that was lunch today, it was just too good to not make again. I didn't add the tofu this time, not that it didn't go I just couldn't be bothered for lunch. Decided to display it differently this time as the first photo doesn't show the lovely green of the pak choi. It also worked out well this way as the mash catches the lovely sweet salty glaze from the pak choi. I also doubled the wasabi today and it's still mild enough but with just that much more of a kick - lovely. Oh and I nearly tripled the shallots, could eat those as a snack...

Udon with Shiitake Mushrooms and Kale in Miso Broth

From: Veganomicon

Notes: Didn't have shiitake so used chestnut mushrooms.

Only had sweet white miso so used that, recipe said to use more if using the sweet white so did.

Added more soy sauce, mostly for colour.

Would either cook the kale longer next time or steam it first, then add.

Otherwise perfect.

Edited to add: have since made this with shiitake mushrooms as the original recipe stated and it was very good, better in fact. Used 10g dry shiitake mushrooms rehydrated according to package instructions. Actually, we have a new front runner - sliced portobello mushrooms! Best yet!

♥