nothing fishy burgers

Day 19 Vegan MoFo is the final burger in this burger marathon and it is my Nothing Fishy Burger. This is in lieu of salmon burgers, crab cakes and other sea animals, that are best left in the ocean and not piled onto a sandwich.

This burger utilizes oyster mushrooms, which have an awesome texture for this type of a filling and it is accented with a hint of seaweed. I use my absolute favorite sea vegetable: dulse flakes. They are just a reminder of the sea instead of a harsh sea flavor, and therefore, they are perfect for the uninitiated.

I top this burger with a Caper-Relish Sauce, which is a kicked-up tartar sauce (because we can't have any repeats this month!) thanks to the capers and chipotle peppers. To cool things down, the Cucumber Slaw is a welcome addition for its effect and it's crunch.

I've made a crab-cake like sandwich before: Crabby Cakes, HERE, which we loved, too. Those are made with tofu and these Nothing Fishy Burgers are soy free. Oh, the choices!

Now that the burgers are all done, what will tomorrow bring, the final Vegan MoFo Day of 2014? A Round Up, of course, and ...perhaps some tips and advice on how to make your own vegan burgers. Let me, one whose made the mistakes, let you in on a few tips of the trade.

NOTHING FISHY BURGER PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Nothing Fishy Burger

Makes 5 burgers

3 tablespoons neutral oil, divided

1 large onion, minced

6 garlic cloves, minced

Sea salt and black pepper

1 pound oyster mushrooms, trimmed

2 teaspoons dulse flakes, divided

¼ cup vegan mayonnaise

1 ½ teaspoons Old Bay seasoning

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons dry bread crumbs, divided

¼ cup chopped parsley

Cucumber Slaw, recipe below

Caper-Relish Sauce, recipe below

5 burger buns, toasted

1. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Stir in the onions and cook until golden, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and season with salt and black pepper. Cook for another 2 minutes and remove from skillet to a large bowl.

2. In the same skillet, add 1 tablespoon oil, increase heat to medium-high and add half the mushrooms. Cook, stirring infrequently, until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer mushrooms to work surface and chop well, but do not mince. Repeat with remaining 1 tablespoon oil and mushrooms.

3. Add the chopped mushroom to the large bowl with the onions. Add 1 teaspoon dulse, mayo, Old Bay, ½ cup bread crumbs and parsley. Mix well and season with salt and black pepper. Divide into 5 portions and form into burgers. Handle them carefully. Just like crab cakes, these are delicate and will fall apart if handled with a harsh hand. Gentle dredge each burger in the remaining bread crumbs.

4. Heat the skillet again, add a little oil the remaining dulse flakes and cook them until golden brown, about 3 minutes per side.

5. Assemble the burgers by spreading the bottom bun with the sauce, adding a burger and topping with the slaw. Serve.

Cucumber Slaw

½ large cucumber, cut into julienne strips

1 medium carrot, cut into julienne strips

1 tablespoon white vinegar (such as white balsamic or coconut vinegar)

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

½ teaspoon natural sugar

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1. Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl. Sti well. Adjust seasoning with salt and black pepper

Caper-Relish Sauce

¼ cup vegan mayo

¼ cup vegan sour cream

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon drained capers

1 tablespoon sweet relish

2 teaspoons minced chipotle

Sea salt and black pepper, to taste

1. Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl. Stir well and season with salt and black pepper.

© 2014 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved

premium patty melt

Day 10 VeganMOFO Burger Bonanza is a souped-up Premium Patty Melt. Sure it's an easy one - more to the point - a familiar burger. But, unlike a regular patty melt which consists of cheese, burger, bread and is really nothing more than an underrated panini or an overrated grilled cheese, mine is so much more!

I used vegan cheese, melted well, grilled bread and a vegan burger, but this one also has a Special Sauce and caramelized onions and mushrooms.

When onions and mushrooms are cooked properly (onions, low and slow; mushrooms, high sear) they taste incredible. Object is to avoid burning the onions before they are tender and avoid steaming the mushrooms.

I added a sauce (a doctored 1,000 Island dressing) to add some ooey, gooey creaminess that usually comes from a ton of dairy cheese, and to give the sandwich a bit of tang to off-set the sweetness from those fine caramelized onions.

Use your favorite burger patty, grill it up and serve with chips or fries and be instantly transported to the 80's, except this time, go in style!

PREMIUM PATTY MELT PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Premium Patty Melt

Makes 4 burgers

3 tablespoons neutral oil, divided

2 large onions, thinly sliced

Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

10 garlic cloves, minced and divided

1 pound button mushrooms, sliced

4 burger patties, sauteed, grilled or baked

Vegan butter, as needed

8 slices rye bread

½ cup shredded vegan cheese

Special Sauce, recipe below

1. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, cover and cook until soft, about 15 minutes. Uncover and season with salt and black pepper. Stir in 4 minced garlic, reduce heat to low and cook until caramelized, about 30 more minutes.

2. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a separate large skillet over medium-high heat and stir in the mushrooms. Cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper and continue to cook until golden, about 7 more minutes. Stir in the remaining garlic and cook for another minute. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. Cook the burgers in the skillet, if sauteeing the burgers.

4. Heat the large skillet over medium heat. Spread a thin layer of butter on one side of the bread slices. Add 4 slices of bread to the skillet and add 2 tablespoons of cheese to each bread. Cover the skillet to melt the cheese and toast the bread.

5. Divide the onions and mushrooms evenly over each cheesy bread and add a burger patty to each bread. Spread 2 tablespoons of sauce on the burgers and add the remaining bread slices, butter side up. Flip the sandwiches to toast the uncooked bread slices.

6. When toasted golden, cut the sandwiches in half and serve.

 

Special Sauce

½ cup vegan mayonnaise

1 tablespoon dill relish

1 tablespoon ketchup

1 teaspoon sriracha

Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

1. Combine the mayo, relish, ketchup and sriracha in a small bowl. Add salt and black pepper to taste.

© 2014 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.





Last chance giveaways!

Vegan Heritage Press is giving away a copy of "Everyday Vegan Eats" (my cookbook). Enter to win HERE. Contest ends September 14.

Have you entered to win "Vegan without Borders," the soon-to-be-released cookbook by Robin Robertson? Contest ends September 14. Enter HERE.

portobello adobo burger + "vegan chocolate" winner

Day 2 of our burger extravaganza is a Portobello Adobo Burger with Roasted Corn and Guacamole. This is a gluten free burger, depending on the bun used. What makes this burger an adobo is the marinade, which is a dried pepper puree, spiked with a few seasonings, including cumin, oregano and garlic.

It is important to remove the gills of the portobellos, otherwise you end up with an unappetizing black mushroom instead of a lightly seared, red-ish colored masterpiece. Use a spoon to scrape out the gills and discard or compost them.

Guajillo peppers used in the adobo are not all that spicy, so it makes for a perfect adobo. You can use other dried peppers, but be wary of the heat level. You can procure dried chili peppers in the produce section of most grocery stores or hit up your local Mexican market, where you will find more varieties of dried chillies than you'll know what to do with.

I served our mushroom burgers with rice and beans flavored with lime zest and cilantro. Another great side dish could be this Creamy Macaroni Salad, the Tex-Mex Variation (EVE, page 98), from Everyday Vegan Eats.

As a quick reminder, Vegan Richa is giving away a copy of Everyday Vegan Eats in the next few days. It's easy to enter to win! Go HERE.

And now for the recipe:

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PORTOBELLO ADOBO BURGER PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Portobello Adobo with Roasted Corn and Guacamole

Serves 4

1 ounce (about 6) guajillo peppers

2 tablespoons neutral oil, divided

½ small onion, chopped

6 garlic cloves, chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon dried oregano

¼ cup water

½ teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon natural sugar

½ teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Fresh ground black pepper

4 portobello mushrooms, stemmed and gilled

4 burger buns, toasted

½ cup corn kernels, thawed if frozen

Guacamole, recipe below

Spinach leaves, as needed

1. Toast the peppers in a dry skillet over medium heat until the peppers are pliable and lightly toasted, about 2 minutes. When cool enough to handle, stem and seed the peppers. Soak the peppers with fresh water just enough to cover in a medium bowl for about 20 minutes. Drain and transfer the peppers to a blender.

2. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, cumin and oregano. Stir and cook until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Transfer the mixture to the blender.

3. Add the water, salt, sugar, vinegar and black pepper, to taste, to the blender. Blend until smooth. Transfer the mushrooms to a large baking pan and add the adobo marinade. Rub the mushrooms with the marinade on both sides. Set aside to marinate for at least 15 minutes or overnight.

4. Heat a few teaspoons oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add a few mushrooms and cover the skillet. Cook until the mushrooms begins to soften, about 3 minutes. Flip the mushrooms and continue to cook on the other side, covered, for another 3 minutes. Flip the mushrooms again and continue to cook if the mushroom is not tender.

5. Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Add the corn and stir and cook until golden brown, about 6 minutes.

6. Divide the spinach among the burger buns, top with a mushroom, gill side up, add about 2 tablespoons of guacamole and top with 2 tablespoons of roasted corn. Add the top of the burger bun and serve.

Guacamole

2 avocados, peeled, pitted and mashed

1 small ripe tomato, finely chopped

3 scallions, finely chopped

¼ small jalapeño, finely minced

2 tablespoons minced cilantro

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper

1. Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir well and adjust seasoning with salt, black pepper and lime juice.

© 2014 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

Now for the winner of  "Vegan Chocolate - Unapologetically Luscious and Decadent Dairy-Free Desserts" by Fran Costigan. Drum roll, please....

The winner is comment number 13: Turtle. I'll be contacting you! Thank you everyone for playing along. Stay tuned for more giveaways, as it is, after all, MoFo and I'll be giving away 4 more cookbooks this month, including Vegan Tacos by Jason Wyrick.

"everyday vegan eats" making its debut!

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food trucks! bar-b-cuban sandwich

Here. We go. Again.

This is my fourth year participating in Vegan Month of Food. Before I get started, I'd like to send a shout-out to all the lovely people who make this extravaganza of vegan food not just possible, but incredibly fun. It seems there are more and more blogs participating every year! Welcome to all the new folks making their MoFo debut this year! Can't wait to check things out!

For the past three years, my theme has been veganizing restaurant foods. This year, I am veganizing food truck food. This is of course more challenging in the sense that not only have I not tasted any of these dishes, but in most cases, I haven't even seen any of them. Not to be deterred, I've done lots of research and I have a great imagination - hopefully that will be enough to fill in any gaps.

Food trucks have not only hit the foodie scene like a ton of bricks, but millions of people have tuned into The Great Food Truck Race on Food TV, for the fourth season in a row, making this show the network's second most watched program. 

The first two seasons of the show featured already established food trucks as the competitors, while the latter two seasons featured competitors who had never before had a food truck, however, some had already owned brick-and-mortar food places. 

Austin Daily Press, one of the first-season teams, still does a grooving business in Austin, and I am happy to report that they have vegetarian and vegan menu items. And I love their logo - as toasted as you are. They make paninis and toasted sandwiches, although not all of their sandwiches are actually hot, since not all sandwiches lend themselves to being toasted. 

I made my version of their Bar-B-Cuban Sandwich, which is a Cuban sandwich with smoked pork, ham, pickles, Swiss cheese, cheddar cheese and Carolina Mustard Sauce.

Let's talk bread. Authentic Cuban bread has a nice crust and a soft inside. Since it is also made with lard, I opted for a ciabatta bread, which has a great crust, especially when toasted.

Let's talk cheese. Daiya has added a new line of vegan cheese to their brand - slices. Perfect! Their Swiss-style vegan cheese was available at my Whole Foods and I snagged it up, along with a Follow Your Heart Cheddar-style cheese block. FYH takes about twice as long to melt than Daiya, so keep that in mind.

Let's talk meat. Or let's not! Along with the above mentioned cheese, my Whole Foods also had gorgeous oyster mushrooms available, for a great price, too- $6 a pound. That did it. I decided to use my stove-top smoker to smoke the mushrooms using hickory chips and they turned out fantastic. Lovely smoky flavor, but not overpoweringly so. 

Pickles + Carolina Mustard Sauce + Smoked Oyster Mushrooms + Mojo Artichoke Hearts

In addition to the mushrooms, I used artichoke hearts, which I found in packages in the produce section right near the mushrooms. Kismet. These are actually artichoke hearts, the very same ones you carve out of a steamed artichoke. Delicious. 

I cooked the mushrooms and artichokes in a screaming hot pan until they developed a golden brown color, after which I added orange and lime juice and spices - a mojo sauce, in essence. 

Let's talk sauce. Cuban food is not spicy as in hot, but instead is more sweet, salty and tangy. Cuban cuisine is a fusion of Spanish, Caribbean and African with lots of citrus. The called for mustard sauce hits all those flavor notes. It is tangy because of the mustard and vinegar and sweet thanks to the maple syrup and brown sugar.

 This sandwich has all of those superb Cuban flavors. It is a surprisingly easy 'wich to put together, to boot, probably more so if you aren't the one having to reinvent it! 

Hope you enjoy as much as we did.

Bar-B-Cuban
Makes 4 servings

3 tablespoon neutral oil, divided
Cuban Rub (recipe below)
1 (12- ounce) can artichoke hearts
1/4 cup minced onions
12 ounce smoked oyster mushrooms (see directions below)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup lime juice
Loaf ciabatta bread
Vegan butter, as needed
Vegan cheese, as needed
Pickle slices, as needed
Carolina Mustard Sauce (recipe below)
Watercress, optional

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over high heat. Sprinkle about half of the rub on the artichokes. Cook the artichoke hearts and onions until golden brown, turning the artichoke once. Remove the artichokes and onions from the skillet and set aside.
2. Heat another tablespoon of oil in the same skillet over high heat. Sprinkle the rest of the rub on the mushrooms. Cook the mushrooms until golden brown, turning them once. Remove the mushrooms from the skillet and set aside.
3. Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in the skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until golden brown. Add the orange and lime juice to the pan. Increase the heat to high and cook until the juice is reduced to a syrup; reducing it by half. Pour over the artichokes.
4. Slice the bread in half. Butter each half of the bread. Layer the filling: cheese, mushrooms, artichokes, pickles, Carolina Mustard Sauce, watercress, more cheese. Top with the other half of bread. Grill the sandwich (cut it in half if the sandwich is too big to fit in a press or skillet) in a panini press or in a large skillet. If using the skillet, weigh the sandwich down with another heavy skillet. Serve immediately. 


Cuban Rub

2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon dried oregano

Combine all the rub ingredients in a small bowl.

Carolina Mustard Sauce

¼ cup vegan mayo
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon ketchup
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl. Whisk to combine

Smoking Tips

I smoke oyster mushrooms, but you can smoke any kind of mushroom you like. Trim the mushrooms and slice them into ½-inch slices if they are too big.

Using an indoor smoker, use hickory chips. Cover the smoker tightly with foil to prevent any smoke from escaping. Smoke the mushrooms for 30 minutes. 


© 2013 Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

char siu tofu bánh mì

The Food Network is currently airing their fourth season of the Great Food Truck Race. Ever since the first season, when the Nom Nom Truck was a contender, I have been dying to make a bánh mì sandwich, one that is just as great as the Nom Nom Truck's. Difficult to tell though, since I can't taste the show's sandwich.

Last week the Food Network aired a rerun of the first season and all those desires came flooding back: I needed to finally make a bánh mì.

 In recent years, bánh mì, a Vietnamese baguette sandwich, has taken the U.S. by storm. The sandwich, or some variation there of, has shown up in a multitude of places, including the vegan world.  

There is a killer bánh mì sandwich in Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day! by Tamasin Noyes and Celine Steen and Robin Robertson has her own spin on this popular sandwich in One-Dish Vegan called 

the Bánh Mìzza.:

Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day!

One-Dish Vegan

Both of the above culinary masterpieces are amazing, so grab the books and start cooking. Naturally, these are not recipes I can share with you, but I can share the version I made.

I chose to make a Char Siu Bánh Mì. 

First things first:  we need to define just exactly what a "bánh mì" is. It is a Vietnamese baguette  sandwich with a (meat) filling, pickled vegetables, jalapenos, cucumbers and cilantro.

The pickled vegetables are a local replacement for the French cornichon pickles, which was an expensive ingredient for the local folks. The French influence, also responsible for the bread itself, is because of French colonization of the local region in the 1800's.

Char Siu is Asian barbecue pork. It is sweet, sticky, and bright red. Most Asian countries have adopted this Cantonese staple and have adapted it to suit their own needs and tastes. I am falling in line and adapting it to my tastes and needs. I used pressed tofu as the base. After marinating the tofu in the BBQ sauce, I baked it and then broiled it to achieve that  "burnt" or "siu" componenet that this dish is known for. 

I pickled daikon and carrots in a simple brine for about three days before making the sandwich. My bánh mì is served with the char siu, daikon pickles, cilantro, jalapenos, sauteed shiitake and onions, and my Cilantro-Sriracha Sauce. 

It is a little involved to make this sandwich: pickling the veggies, pressing and baking the tofu and all that slicing and dicing.  

 The hype alone that surrounds this sandwich is a good enough reason to spend a few hours in the kitchen. Decide for yourself - tasty enough for all that effort? In the end, we thought it was well worth it.

Char Sui Tofu + Daikon and Carrot Pickles + Cilanto-Sriracha Sauce 

Char Siu Tofu Printer-Friendly Recipe

Daikon and Carrot Pickles Printer-Friendly Recipe

Char Siu Bánh Mì Printer-Friendly Recipe