Vegan Bean and Beet Protein Patty

I had a vegan burger the other day at Red Robin (Keep It Simple: ancient grain and quinoa), and while I haven't tried to replicate the ingredients of this one, I tried another bean/beet centered recipe. As a carnivore who loves digging into a slab of grilled bovine, I have to say that this alone is probably not going to convert me from giving up my greenhouse-gas producing meat sources. After putting it on a bun slathered with deli mustard and homemade ketchup, and frying up the vegetarian patty with Tillamook Colby Jack cheese and plating it with some dill pickles, neither the taste nor texture even comes close to a real beef burger. Sad, I know.

As for cost, it's about the same as beef; unless you factor in the labor it takes to make these. Bringing the entire batch together took well over an hour of prep time. How I made this is not entirely vegan, since I used chicken broth to cook the dry lentils. And while I have all the ingredients on hand to make a vegan cheese sauce, the whole process seems daunting. My first foray into making vegan cheese with coconut cream as its base turned out disastrous and I hadn't thought about it for several years since then. Each patty is roughly 200 calories. After plating it as a "burger" like object, calorie count rises to around 500 from the dairy-based cheese and bun.

Makes 8 vegetarian patties.

The Foodening Blog: vegan bean and beet patties

Ingredients

1 can organic garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 can organic black beans, drained and rinsed
1 c cooked lentils, drained
1.5 c organic old fashioned oats
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 large portbello mushroom cap and stem, chopped
olive oil, for cooking

Directions

1. Chop the mushroom into 1/2" pieces, including the stem, and fry over medium heat in a pan with olive oil. Remove from heat and drain.

2. Blend half of all the ingredients together in a food processor. I have a 7-cup food processor and I had to pulse in batches. You should probably add the nutritional yeast early in because the blended stuff will be rather dry-ish.

2.5. Use a patty mould to press into patties. Place each patty onto a square of parchment paper or waxed paper.

3. Heat a frying pan with olive oil and add the patty. Once you flip the patty, you can add a slice of cheese (dairy or vegan), cover the pan and let the cheese melt. Total cooking time is less than 5 minutes after the pan initially heats up.

4. Serve with mustard, ketchup, dill pickles, and bun if desired. Personally, I would not eat these things as is. 

Vegan Mushroom Jerky / Slow-Roasted Mushroom Strips

As far as snacks go, this was so time consuming with little reward (remember the zucchini chips?) that it makes me almost want to buy a food dehydrator. I doubt I'll ever use fresh mushrooms this way again. It's no wonder all the mushroom jerky recipes call for those large portobello mushrooms. The mushroom slices shrink by more than half, which is why you'd want to use the largest mushrooms as possible. I, however, did not have portobello mushrooms and used fresh shitake mushrooms instead. Recipe ratio comes from Food52.

Ingredients

2 tbsp low sodium tamari soy sauce
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp ground chili powder
x large or medium portobello mushrooms

Directions

Slice mushrooms to 1/4" thickness. Add to marinade. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 250 F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Arrange mushroom slices on the sheets.

Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until the pieces have shrunken and are dried out. You could flip the slices at the midway time mark, but I didn't bother.

Certainly flavorful and I ate half before I stored the rest in the fridge.

As a snack food, this is a waste of time for so few calories.

I added the remainder of the finished batch to a soup and it was delicious.

Marinade for Mushroom Kabobs

Originally I thought about using this marinade for both the brown (cremini) and white mushrooms, but ended up just using the brown mushrooms with red and green bell peppers. I only have aged balsamic vinegar and it seemed a waste to use a tasting vinegar for a marinade so I used half balsamic and half rice vinegar for the vinegar part.

The Foodening Blog - grilled mushroom and vegetable kabobs

Makes: 9 skewers (using 10" bamboo skewers)

Ingredients

8 oz brown cremini mushrooms, stems trimmed
8 oz grape or cherry tomatoes
1 large red bell pepper, sliced into 1" pieces
1 large green bell pepper, sliced into 1" pieces
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tbsp fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Directions

Combine all items in a resealable container. Shake to coat everything with the marinade. Refrigerate for an hour or until ready to use.

To grill:

Stab vegetables and mushrooms in an alternating order (for variety!). Grill vegetables for 10-15 minutes, rotating at the half way mark until the mushrooms are done. The bell peppers can be slightly charred.

Turkey Gravy with Mushrooms

After the turkey has been removed to a cutting board or serving platter, everything leftover (except for the burnt bits) are fair game to be incorporated into the gravy. If the burned charcoal bits bother you for health reasons, simply take a spoon and scoop them out of the pan before proceeding with the gravy.

Ingredients

8 oz cremini mushrooms (small brown mushrooms), washed and sliced

4 green onions, white part only, sliced

1/2 c dry red wine

1 1/2 c turkey broth

1 1/2 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

3+ tbsp all purpose flour

roasting pan juices, lard and bits from the roasted turkey

Directions

Place the roasting pan over two stove burners and turn on both burners to low-medium heat. Use red wine to deglaze the bottom of the pan. You may need more than the specified amount of turkey broth to dilute the saltiness of the gravy. Hopefully you started a stock pot with extra turkey necks when the turkey was put into the oven. Add all the ingredients and whisk to combine the flour with the gravy. More flour may be needed after the broth is added.

The gravy should be thickened and runny; and certainly not gloppy with flour.

From a 15 pound turkey, this made roughly 3 1/2 cups of gravy.

Fresh Mushroom Soup

A couple weeks ago I had the worst-ever bowl of cream of mushroom soup at Palomino's in Bellevue. There was no excuse for it. Certainly not on my part since I finished reading Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential that weekend, in which Bourdain clearly says what foods to avoid on certain days. For example, never order seafood on a Monday (because the fresh stuff comes in on Friday morning for F/Sa/Su). And, sure enough, the dungeness crab sliders that came with my soup were cold, soggy, tasteless, and ugh, the crab tasted like it was frozen and reheated a couple times. Never order cream of anything at a restaurant, he warns. That is because you can hide all sorts of things in a cream-based soup. Heck, if I can make a decent crab bisque with a meatless carcass, imagine what an experienced chef can do in the kitchen. Anyhow. Here's a much better rendition of mushroom soup.

Ingredients

8 oz fresh white mushrooms, sliced
1 qt organic beef stock
1 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp unbleached AP flour + 1 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp organic white wine
1/4 c buttermilk, or cream
sea salt, freshly ground black pepper to taste
fresh parsley, chopped (optional, for garnish)

Directions

1. In a medium-sized pot, melt butter over medium heat and saute mushrooms until tender; about 5 minutes. Remove mushrooms from heat and set aside.

2. Add remaining butter and stir in flour. This will make a roux. The flour will clump together into a ball, but not to worry, it will smooth out once the broth is added. Speaking of which, gradually add the broth, whisking until the flour dissolves in the broth. Pour in the rest of the broth and add the wine. Return 2/3 of the mushrooms to the pot. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Turn off heat and let the soup cool before using an immersion blender. The idea is to not purée the mushrooms, but to chop them up into little bits. Return remaining mushrooms to the pot along with the buttermilk, salt, and black pepper. Bring up to a boil for five minutes.

4. Remove from heat and ladle into bowls.