Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking by Celine Steen (Plus a Giveaway!)

Squash Blossom Pizza from Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking (page 63)
by Celine Steen. Photograph by: Celine Steen

I have never been so excited to do a cookbook review then I am to do this one. Celine Steen of Have Cake Will Travel fame is a long time dear friend and co-conspirator in the vegan cookbook scene. Her and I go way back to when we penned 500 Vegan Recipes together in 2008, and then went on to write several more cookbooks together. Even when we weren't partnering up to write, I still made sure to have her gorgeous food photography grace the pages of a few of my solo efforts. It's fair to say I had VERY high hopes for this tome.

Nothing could make my heart swoon more than flipping through the pages of Celine's solo debut, Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking! From the cover, to the font, to the photos, and, of course, the recipes...just everything about this cookbook makes me squee!

Make sure to read all the way to the bottom of this post to enter for a chance to win a copy of Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking for yourself!

Curry Pita Pizza

This here pizza was full of flavor and managed to abide by the ETL rules.
The following was spread onto a whole grain pita, then topped with dried figs and red bell peppers.  Then I baked it at 400 degrees F for about 15 minutres.

Cashew Curry Sauce (sorry for the lack of specific measures)
soaked raw cashews
a small amount of silken tofu
curry powder, to taste
a little bit of unsweetened soy milk to thin it out
Directions: Blend until smooth

Carmelized Onion Marmalade
2 yellow onions, cut into thin rings
1/2 cup low sodium vegetable broth
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Directions:   In a hot skillet, add onions and vegetable broth.  Cover and cook until very soft.  About 20 minutes.  Add balsamic vinegar, toss to coat, reduce heat to low, uncover and cook until almost all of the liquid is absorbed, and  mass of "slimy" onions is left.

I also really like to eat my salads right on top of my pizza, so after the pizza was cooked, I topped it with a romaine salad topped with pine nuts and the Green Goddess Dressing from Isa's Appetite for Reduction.  I made the dressing sans the salt, and it is still really, really yummy.

Pizza topped with SAlad

Why yes, that IS avocado on my pizza.

Taking it back, old school,  all the way to the original Mofo and The Great Grocery Experiment of 2007...

Garbage Pizza. 

Ready to go into the oven:

Ready to go into my belly:

There is a version of this in Cozy Inside, and I am somewhat known for making "pantry" or "garbage" dishes pretty fabulously, if I don't say so myself.  So, when I was scanning my kitchen and trying to decide what to  make for dinner, I kept thinking, "Wow, there's a lot of stuff in here that I will have to throw out soon, if I don't use it, like, now."  And this garbage pizza was born.

Here's what it is:
A large ciabatta bread, cut in half for the crust
Half of an already opened jar of spaghetti sauce
Baby spinach
Almost too ripe avocado
Daiya
Crispy fried onions
Follow Your Heart Creamy Garlic Dressing
Parma Chipotle Cayenne Sprinkles



Jason Ellis Show Update

Sorry it took so long guys...things have been pretty crazy up in this joint. Anyhow, I think my appearance on the Jason Ellis Show went rather well. My husband says I played it safe, but I guess that's better than sounding like a crasshole. But in the end, I did get a , "Red Dragons!" so I guess that says it all.

I brought Jason some Barbecue Baby Back ribs, and a couple of vegan pizzas I made from scratch. He seemed pretty stoked, especially on the pizza. He even twittered about it later in the week and posted a picture of his daughter enjoying the pepperoni pizza I made for him.



Here's a couple of pics of the food I brought for him:

Seitan Ribs with Cedar Bones (Picture by Celine Steen)
Pizzas:


(TVP Pepperoni (recipe below) with vegetable tomato sauce and yellow and white Daiya on a THIS crust)


(Seitan BBQ ribs, Orange Chipotle BBQ Sauce, garlic, onions, cilantro, and yellow and white Daiya on the same crust)
Here's the recipe for the Pepperoni Topping. It will be featured in Celine and my next book, The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions.

Pepperoni Topping for Pizza

1 cup (96 g) dry TVP granules
1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon (6 g) ground black pepper, depending on your heat preference
1 tablespoon (7 g) paprika
1 tablespoon (8 g) garlic powder
1 teaspoon anise seed
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper or dried chipotle powder
1 cup (235 ml) water
2 tablespoons (30 ml) olive oil
2 tablespoons (30 ml) liquid smoke

In a microwave safe bowl, mix together TVP with all of the herbs and spices.
Stir in water, oil and liquid smoke.
Cover tightly with plastic wrap and microwave on high for about 6 minutes.
Carefully remove from microwave, and allow to cool enough to handle.
Alternately, mix spices together with TVP.
Bring water to a boil, add in oil and smoke, stir into TVP and spice mixture, cover and let sit for 10 minutes.
Fluff with a fork and use to top your pizza, or stuff a calzone!

Friday Night = Pizza!

Sure, any one of us could make a kick-ass-home-made-yeast-risen pizza, but, after a long, long work week, everyone deserves to have dinner delivered in a big, flat box. Even us vegans. The trick is to find a delivery joint that will deliver vegan pizza. Just find out the ingredients in the crust at your local pizza joint, and order it cheeseless with your favorite veggies on it. If you want to, doctor it up with some vegan cheese and enjoy! Even those of you that live in the least vegan friendly cities don't have to go pieless. Little Caesars has a vegan crust, as well as the breadsticks, as long as you specify "no-cheese."

I also live outside the delivery zone of any vegan pizza delivery joints, so tonight, mine is the "Crispy Thin Crust" from Domino's with mushrooms and roasted red peppers (and some added Daiya.



Happy Friday!

Deep Dish Pizza Dough and Bread Bowls

Well, hello there! It's been a while, I know. Celine and I have been feverishly working on and testing for 500 Vegan Recipes, and oh boy, are there some awesome foods coming out of our test kitchens! Check out the pictures over on the flickr pool.

I thought I'd share one of those 500 with you guys, after all I haven't posted a new recipe here in almost a month!

This is actually two recipes in one. This dough makes an awesome cast iron deep dish pizza, but more interestingly, it makes virtually indestructible bread bowls for soup! One of the testers stress tested a bread bowl with five bowls of soup and reported absolutely no leakage. I don't necessarily recommend eating five bowls of soup in one sitting, but you can rest assured that you will safely make it through one or two!


Home Made Bread Bowl filled with Rustic Potato Leek Soup


Deep Dish Cast Iron Pizza topped with Bechamel, Basil and Tomatoes

1/4 ounce (1 packet) active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup warm water
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup vital wheat gluten flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil
additional olive oil

Mix together yeast, sugar and warm water. Let stand ten minutes. In a mixing bowl, mix together flours and salt. Add in yeast mixture, water and olive oil. Adding more all purpose flour if too wet, more water if too dry, a little bit at a time. Your goal is a soft elastic dough ball that is easy to handle and not sticky. Knead for about 10 minutes. Divide into two, form into a ball. Brush with a light coat of olive oil, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for one hour.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Punch down the dough, knead an additional 2-3 minutes and form into a pizza crust. Bake with your favorite toppings for about 10 minutes, or until crust is a nice golden brown.

Yield:2, 10 inch crusts

Note that I made mine in a cast iron skillet and my husband made his on a cookie sheet. They both cooked for the same amount of time, but he pressed his out much thinner so he got about a twelve incher, while mine was only about 9 inches. Both yielded excellent results.

Bread Bowl Variation
I made up a double batch of this dough. With the remaining two pieces, I formed them into balls (skipping the second knead), cut a few slits across the top, baked at 400 for 15 minutes, removed, brushed with nondairy butter, baked an additional 5 minutes…BREAD BOWLS FOR SOUP!