Vegan Meat (Asian style)

Being vegan below the Mason-Dixon line can be challenging. Depending on where you are, almost everything in the South can seem like its been pulled (from animal ribs, not from the ground), fried, laden with cheese, and served with a side of lard-based beans and sausage.  Not that this food isn’t good for your soul.  I’ve eaten fried artichokes, vegetarian beans and rice, and bread pudding in New Orleans that I made my heart soften towards Southern Comfort and my soul scream, “hallelujah!”

Not all restaurants in the South are like this, but I definitely didn’t expect a vegetarian, vegan-friendly restaurant to pop up when I Google-searched “Greensboro vegetarian” the week before visiting the quaint, beautiful North Carolina city.  To my surprise, Greensboro is home to Boba House, a restaurant and tearoom just off the UNC-Greensboro campus.  Established in 2003, Boba House is the winner of the Vegetarian Restaurant of the Triad (the “Triad” includes Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point) and both the Rhinoceros Times and the Triad Diner Vegetarian Restaurant of the Year Awards.

My last vegan restaurant review featured the Chicago Diner, a dive that skillfully and deliciously purged all animal products from American food including BLTs, Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, and even milkshakes and cheesecake.  Boba House offers some dishes that are similar to the Chicago diner—the staple burger and yam fries and vegan cakes—but serves predominantly Asian cuisine, each entrée served with a different type of vegan “meat.”  Some tantalizing examples from the dinner menu include blackened tuna, ginger chicken, and sesame beef. Boba House also offers delectable appetizers including crispy rolls and fried calamari. For dessert, vegan guests can choose from cheesecake, carrot cake, and chocolate cake.  “Boba” (bubble) teas are the signature drinks and can be made with either with tapioca pearls or coconut jelly, but a wide variety of black, green, and herbal teas are also offered. 

Boba House is open Monday-Friday 11:30AM-3:00PM and 5:00-9:30PM.  Saturday hours are 12:00PM-9:00PM; the restaurant is closed Sunday.  Prices are extremely reasonable, with dinner entrees ranging $8-$11.  The lunch specials, however, as Cody and I discovered, cannot be beat.  Boba House offers some of their most popular entrees as lunch portions, including Eternal Bliss, “a harmonious blend of green treasures,” and Black Pepper “Steak,” starting at $5.99.  Each entrée comes with your choice of “meat:” tofu, chicken, beef, or shrimp (all vegan).  Guests can also add salad or crispy rolls for an additional $1.99.

Cody and I shared the Eternal Bliss with tofu and the Pad Thai with chicken for lunch.  Each entrée was beautifully presented on a colorful plate and the portions were generous (we were too full to try any of the vegan desserts).  The servers were friendly and outgoing, and Boba House indeed seemed like the neighborhood meeting place, with the crowd including students, faculty, and everyday townies.  Not all of the Boba House patrons could have possibly been vegan, which to me was an encouraging sign of vegan cuisine having the power to attract vegans and meat-eaters alike.

Boba House also sells all of their “meat,” including chicken, steak, shrimp, fish fillets, and ribs online, providing an alternative to some of the grocery store meat-replacement brands.  To order vegan meat from Boba house, click here.

It was a pleasant surprise to find a vegan restaurant in Greensboro, and our meal at Boba House was the tastiest we had on our road trip.  Be sure to check out Boba House’s beautiful website here and pay a visit next time you’re traveling to North Carolina!

Vegan Hamentashen

To revisit the Adventures with Sourdough post from two weeks ago, creATE reader Sam S. suggested the following to bake lighter and more flavorful sourdough bread:

• Work for a moister and more pliable dough
• “Retard” the dough by putting it in the refrigerator for several hours during the second rise

On my second attempt at sourdough bread, I followed Sam’s suggestions, making sure my dough was moist and pliable after mixing all the ingredients and let the dough sit in the refrigerator for approximately 6 hours during the second rise.  I extended the baking time during the second (375 degrees with no water) phase to 50 minutes, although this could be an inconsistency with my apartment’s oven.

Sure enough, the bread was much better, and gone within 24 hours.  Thanks, Sam!

The Jewish holiday Purim begins tonight at sundown.  I’ve always enjoyed Purim because it’s one of the happiest holidays, celebrating the Jews being saved from extermination by the Persians.  Along with reading the story of Purim, dressing up in costume, and engaging in age-appropriate festivities, my favorite aspect of Purim is the tradition of giving money or food to charity and delivering small gifts of food to family and friends.  I love this tradition because we are commanded to be happy and community-friendly in one great day.

For Eastern European Jews, it’s custom to eat hamentashen, triangular-shaped cookies filled with fruit, poppy seeds, or chocolate.  This cookie is symbolic of the three-cornered hat that the Purim story’s villain, Haman, wore in the story.

Jewish holidays, as with holidays in many cultures, can be challenging for vegans, and I struggled to find a recipe for vegan hamentashen and an even more difficult time finding a vegan chocolate filling, which is my all-time favorite flavor.

After scanning through several recipes that looked unreliable, I tweaked the most promising version I could find for creATE.  Enjoy! (And share with your friends.)

Vegan Hamentashen
2 cups unbleached flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ cup non-hydrogenated vegetable oil spread (such as Earth Balance)
¾ cup brown sugar
¼ cup soymilk

Your choice of filling.  Suggestions include: any flavor fruit preserves or butter (blueberry and cherry are my personal favorites), pie filling, chocolate (see filling recipe below), or vegan cream cheese.

1. Mix together the flour and baking powder in a medium bowl and set aside. 
2. In a large bowl, cream the vegetable oil spread, brown sugar and soymilk.  Mix in the dry ingredients.  Chill dough for 6 hours or overnight.
3. On a floured surface, roll dough ¼ inch thick.  Use a 3-inch cookie cutter or drinking glass to cut circles in the dough.  Place a small amount of filling in the center of each circle.  Pinch three corners of the dough to form a triangular-shaped cookie with a small hole in the center.
4. Bake on a lightly oiled cookie sheet at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool on wire racks.

Vegan Chocolate Filling
½ cup cocoa powder
½ cup flour
½ cup soymilk
½ cup brown sugar or other natural sweetener
¼ cup vegetable oil

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl until blended.

Enjoy!

Mac and Cheese: Vegan style

When I first decided to go vegan, my best friend Jenna reacted with the following statement: “But you love cheese!”  And I really did love cheese before I went vegan.  The problem was that cheese didn’t like me so much and I didn’t really like the idea of eating cheese.  After two years of a vegan lifestyle, I still miss crave something cheesy every once in a while.

During my most recent cheese craving, I visited The Earthen Jar, a favorite vegetarian spot in Ann Arbor, hoping for a plate of their vegan macaroni and cheese.  For creATE readers who aren’t familiar with Ann Arbor’s Earthen Jar, it’s a fantastic hole-in-the-wall mostly vegan establishment that serves buffet-style Indian cuisine. Not only can visitors to the Earthen Jar sample dozens of delicious Indian entrees, but Earthen Jar always has sautéed and scrambled tofu, vegan cookies, and, most importantly, vegan macaroni and “cheese.” My only problem was that the last time I went to Earthen Jar they were out of mac and cheese. 

I’ve been craving vegan macaroni and cheese ever sine that trip, and, now that I have a real food processor, I finally felt like I’d be able to cook up—and blend—a decent vegan cheese sauce. The recipe I used was a combination of the vegan macaroni and cheese recipes from my favorite vegan cookbook, Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson, and a recipe my friend Gabe makes at his co-op.  This recipe called for nutritional yeast, a deactivated form of yeast, is very different from active yeast, which is used in baking.

As discussed in my last creATE post, Adventures With Sourdough, active dry yeast, the type of yeast most commonly used for baking breads, is nearly devoid of all nutrients.  While active dry yeast can make your bread rise, if you eat it raw, it will live in your intestinal track and suck nutrients out of your body.  Nutritional yeast, in contrast, is pasteurized and dried so the actual living yeast is killed, and what remains is a vegan superfood (when consumed in moderate quantities).  Below are the nutrition facts for 2 heaping tablespoons of Red Star nutritional yeast flakes:

Calories: 60
Total fat: 1 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 5 mg
Total Carbohydrate: 7 g
Fiber: 4 g
Protein: 8 g

Vitamins and minerals (as percentages of Daily Value recommendations):
Thiamin (B1): 640%
Riboflavin (B2): 565%
Niacin: 280%
Vitamin B6: 480%
Folic Acid: 60%
Vitamin B12: 133%

Nutritional yeast also contains chromium and selenium, trace minerals important in regulating blood sugar levels. 

Besides providing an excellent source of nutrients that vegans often have trouble obtaining from plant foods, nutritional yeast also tastes cheesy.  It can be used as a flavorful topping to popcorn, pastas, burgers, or pizzas, or can be baked into casseroles where cheese might be lacking.

Here’s the recipe I ended up using for my vegan macaroni and cheese:

8 oz (1/2 box) elbow macaroni

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups soymilk
1 12-oz. package soft silken tofu, drained
1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1 tbsp. spicy mustard
2 tbsp. Italian seasoning blend (includes basil, oregano, rosemary, and thyme)
salt and pepper

1 cup bread crumbs (homemade is best!)

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cook elbow macaroni according to package instructions.  Drain, rinse, and set aside in a large bowl.
2. In a medium frying pan, sauteé onions and garlic until onions are tender.
3. In a food processor, combine onions and garlic, soymilk, tofu, lemon juice, nutritional yeast flakes, spicy mustard, and seasonings.  Blend until smooth.  Pour mixture over macaroni noodles and stir to mix evenly.  Spread noodles and sauce evenly into a lightly oiled 9x13-inch baking pan.  Top with breadcrumbs.
4. Bake covered for about 25 minutes, or until hot and bubbly.  Uncover and bake 10 more minutes for crispy, golden brown breadcrumbs. Enjoy!

Websites about nutritional yeast:
Bulk Foods
Sundance Foods
Best Natural Foods
The Cook’s Thesaurus