food

Edit: this got too long. I'm sorry. But its good! And I think some hints that would have helped me!! :((((

One that is weirdly popular with anyone I cooced it for: pasta with creamy vegan chicken, pesto sauce. Here in Germany every supermarket by now has cheap, vegan chicken chunks.

Prep: chop onions, maybe garlic. Dice celery (root, or knot. Not the green stick things), maybe a bit of carrots very finely. If you want, you can dice a few cocktail tomatos for a bit of soureness. All while heating the pan, if you have, use stainless steal to get the most flavor (tip for better results: get it pretty hot, to where water droplets don't stick but dance in the pan, but not too hot, so that the oil does not smoke. Put oil in only when the pan is hot (dancing water)) I don't prefer Teflon as the don't develop any flavour, they just get hot. You could also use a stainless steel pot I suppose, but they have a smaller bottom so things take longer and don't end up as nicely

You can start to boil water now.

Put everything In the pan (maybe garlic a bit later to prevent it from burning) and add the chicken chunks. Fry everything until the carrots and celery is a bit soft and everything is nice and brown. Turn down the heat to low medium.

Put the pasta in the water now.

Add 2 tbs of basil pesto (I love the vegan one from Barilla), herbs (ital. Herbs, Rosemary, basil, caraway, whatever is in you spice rack). Maybe add a few tbs of soy sauce (always get the kikoman, nothing else please.) and if you want adda tea spoon of miso paste. Stir everything while scaling the bottom to get the flavours off and prevent burning. Than add about, 500ml of cream (soy or oat, whatever you want). Add veggie stock and mushroom powder (secret tip to get umami. Its addictive. Get it in most asia n supermarkets).

Then simmer and stir and scape the bottom, add the tomatoes in the last few minutes, until pasta is done.

Have fun with it!

I have a lot of these, but one that might be suitable for Hexbear in particular is my

Burritos:

This has no hard or fast rules and you can use whatever beans you like.

Fry a diced onion, some chillies (ancho is my fav)and garlic in a pan with olive oil. Add two cans of rinsed beans, I typically use kidney and black beans.

Fry the beans and season them with taco/fajita seasoning. Add some tomato paste, salsa, some wine if feeling fancy and a can of baked beans and some water.

Cook the bean mixture until its nice and thick and well flavoured.

Take large tortillas and fill them with the bean mixture. Here you can add cheese or vegan cheese, avocado, salsa, sour cream, lime juice and some crunched up tortilla chips before rolling the thing up, depending on what you have.

It's great cheap everyday food. I typically make quesadillas from the leftovers.

I once went to the store during covid and there were quite a few different veggies on sale, so I just grabbed all of them only to arrive at home to realize I didn't have the slightest idea what to make with them. What this turned into is now a standard dish of mine and everyone who tried it liked it so far. The original "version" contained non-vegetarian options, but I've long since stopped using them, so now it is a full vegetarian dish that I think could be turned into a vegan one pretty easily.

One after the other, you add onions, green onions and champignons in a pan with some neutral oil at high heat. Once the mushrooms have shrunk and turn brown, you reduce the heat and add cream and heavy sour cream and mix it with the veggies. Add as many spices as you want here, but I do recommend turmeric, black pepper, salt, paprika (sweet and spicy) and a mix of green spices of your choosing. Cook some noodles and pour them in an oven pan, mix it with chopped broccoli pieces, then pour the sauce over and add a layer of grated cheese of your choosing. Put in the oven (it's 185 Celsius for me) for around 45 minutes.

Put a recipe here, but I misunderstood the assignment

I made tofu scramble pies a few months ago! They were incredible, although definitely a bit of work.

For the pie crust, I did a standard short crust pastry situation using vegan butter and vegetable shortening for the fat.

For the tofu scramble I usually start by cooking some (vegan) sausage, we really like the Lightlife GimmeLean, but whatever is easy and cheap will work. I bet soyrizo would be incredible, we just can't find any where we live currently. Then once the sausage is cooked (usually in patties, whatever, it'll get crumbled into the rest of the scramble in awhile), remove it from the pan and set aside.

Then in the same pan, saute an onion, a bell pepper, and a spicy pepper of some sort, usually a poblano or jalapeno, whatever looks good at the store. Then once the veggies are pretty soft, but definitely before they begin to brown, crumble in a (pressed) block of firm or extra firm tofu. Add nooch (nutritional yeast), turmeric for color, and whatever other seasonings and things you'd think you'd like, as well as salt and pepper, of course. We usually do oregano, cumin, (dried) parsley and a touch of brown mustard. Then when you're happy with how cooked the veggies and tofu are, crumble in the sausage, and also a can of beans, we usually do pinto, but it doesn't matter.

You want to let the scramble cool to room temperature before filling the pies so you don't melt the fat before it goes in the oven.

Then once the scramble is cooled, make the pies and toss them in the oven at like 400 fahrenheit for like an hour, or until the pastry is cooked. I've never had the filling overcook doing this, but if you're worried, just slightly undercook your scramble.

Then, finally, you're going to want some gravy to top the pies, because the tofu scramble is (purposefully) fairly dry. For a gravy, I'll start with a roux (cook together oil and flour), then I add milk, we usually use almond, but whatever you have on hand is fine. You want to season your gravy pretty well, if you have extra sausage that was too much for the scramble, adding some to the gravy is nice. Otherwise, you're going to want to get some umami flavor from wherever you can. We buy this mushroom stir-fry sauce from an Asian market and I find that it really improves a gravy. You also want your gravy to be heavily peppered. If you think you've added enough black pepper, toss another shake in, just to be safe.

And then yeah, the pies come out of the oven, you let them cool for a couple of minutes, then spoon or pour the gravy on top, and they are so very good!!!

It's not an easy meal, really, but it is extremely, extremely delicious! And the tofu scramble part is a full meal by itself that's actually quite easy. It's just the added complication of pastry and gravy that makes stuff difficult. But it's so, so good that I find it's worth it!