FNF - mushrooms and the bodacious bulb

Food Network Friday!

Brought to you by Tami Noyes' Vegan Appetite blog, this month's Food Network Friday recipe of choice to replicate is Guy Fieri's Chicken and the Bodacious Bulb. The recipe is shallow-fried chicken pieces with a garlic-infused gravy. 

Guy asks us to make a Garlic Oil and I was more than happy to oblige. I love garlic, as anyone close enough to smell me can tell. The fact that the recipe itself uses almost two cups of garlic is enough to send most people packing and other less sane ones into the kitchen. I belong to the latter group. 

Chicken is something that is easy enough to replace with tofu (especially marinated), seitan or any of the commercial replacements on the market. Very easy and satisfying. I didn't want to go the same old route, especially since Food TV relies so heavily on animal protein that most anytime we would have an FNF, it is a meat product. I needed to change it up a bit. 

I strolled down my local Whole Foods produce aisle looking for something captivating. Eggplant. Nice, but no. A root vegetable? Nah, not this time. Nothing was quite it until I got to the fungus section. I pounced on the Oyster Mushrooms and to round off the meaty-ness, I also went for a few portobello caps.   Perhaps not what Fieri had in mind when he created the recipe, but I like it better this way.

Since he shallow-fries the chicken in the garlic oil, I knew it would make a crispy crust on the chicken and I needed to make that happen for my mushrooms. I breaded them in matzo meal and brown rice flour, appropriately seasoned. This is a simple process of dipping the pieces in non-dairy milk and then in the crumb mixture. Allow it to sit in the fridge for about ten minutes before proceeding. I fried it just as he directed, but mine has a homemade crispy crust - not one made by an animal. 

The gravy is made using chicken stock he asks you to make. I used the carrot, onion and celery, as in the recipe, but for the chicken flavor I added 2 t. nutritional yeast, 1/2 t thyme, 1/2 t sage, 1/2 t smoked paprika, 1/2 t onion powder and 1/2 t garlic powder. I cooked the stock until the carrots were tender. The garlic bulbs (from the garlic oil) are added in the stock as well and I added 1 t of vegetable concentrate. I am telling you it was creepy how chicken-like it tasted. I mean it was like going to a restaurant where the server ignorantly tells you the soup is made without chicken stock and you only find out it was an error when you taste it and then double-check with the manager. That creepy. 

Overall, this was delicious! The garlic was not overpowering since it was cooked in the oil, the garlic chips were sweet, the tomato dices were juicy, the gravy was creepy-good and the mushrooms were crispy and flavorful. Really a pleasant meal.

Cost Breakdown

portobello, oyster: $9

spices, herbs, carrot, onion, celery: $1

garlic: $2

flour, tomato: $1

Total to make 4 bodacious servings:

$13.00

VEG-Aside: You could be the next vegan! Besides for this wonderfully-informative blog, and many others like it, the realization that you can't love animals and eat them, and a few great cookbooks, what will get you well on your way is The Ultimate Vegan Guide by Erik Marcus. This edition is now available as a Kindle reader for less than a buck. Only $.99. Really!

You don't need a Kindle to read it, since it is an eBook with the help of a free Kindle download to your PC or phone. 

I have this in paperback and have worn it thin, that is how helpful it is.

"You could be the world's next vegan. It's easy if you know how, and this uniquely helpful book tells you everything you need to know. Every topic related to vegan living is covered including cooking, nutrition, food shopping, travel, dining out, and much more.

You'll get clear and straightforward guidance from Erik Marcus, a vegan of twenty years and counting. Join the thousands of people who've used this book to easily and successfully transition to a vegan lifestyle.

Erik Marcus is the author of Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, & Money, and A Vegan History: 1944-2010."

Vine and Dine, herbed ravioli with porcini pesto and tofu ricotta

The second Vine and Dine, hosted by Tami Noyes of American Vegan Kitchen, is from Voluptuous Vegan, by Myra Kornfeld. We missed the first Vine and Dine of May mostly because I didn't realize there were two in a month. 

Voluptuous Vegan was one of the first three cookbooks I bought to help us transition into veganism back in the good ol' days. Over the years this book has been put to the wayside mainly because the recipes are so involved to make. The recipes I made out this book required a great deal of time and dedication. 

No exception with this recipe.

Every three years or so I take out my pasta roller to make some ravioli. Every three years, I again realize why it's been three years since I've made ravioli. 

Tami had great timing with this V&D. It's been three years since my last forage into ravioli-land. After the meal, the pasta roller was safely tucked back into the cabinet, awaiting my future memory-lapse.

The ravioli was delicious. I love porcini mushrooms and the mixture with the tofu ricotta was very good. The pepper salad was a welcome addition and the basil pesto was great as well. My only complaint with the recipe is the amount of prepared ingredients. I used much less of the porcini pesto than I made and we have a lot of red pepper salad still in the fridge. Other wise, a wonderful meal with a ___ wine. What kind of wine? Here is David with the Ho-Down:

That is Mikel's Stitch Hat. Mikel has worn it everyday for the last week. He is a big Stitch fan and has even dubbed his  voice in this YouTube Video. Yes, that is really Mikel!
 I guess David felt like getting in touch with his inner-child.

 This weeks Vine and Dine entrée of Herbed Ravioli With Porcini Pesto and Tofu “Ricotta” turned out to be a very tasty offering.  Of course, when I heard we were having another pasta dish, I selected another red to pair with the mild richness and pleasant earthiness of the porcini pesto.

My choice, this time around, was an organic La Rocca Zinfandel, estate bottled in 2006.  This wine turned out to be an excellent partner in crime for the herbed ravioli!  The La Rocca Zinfandel is a medium bodied, fruity wine with sweetness so mild that it perfectly complemented the earthy flavors put forth by the herbed ravioli with porcini pesto.

The Chef and I tried a glass about a half-hour before the meal, to establish a baseline from which to judge the complements between the meal and the fermented grape nectar.  The wine by itself is very nice but when paired with the pasta it becomes something more.  Chef and I both agree, the fruity flavor with a slightly spicy undertone (we didn’t really taste much spice but this wine is supposed to be famous for it’s peppery flavor) truly enhanced our enjoyment of the meal.

As you can see, this bottle of wine has a cork, which makes me feel much better about my selection, even though there are more and more vineyards that forgo the tradition of corking.  I give the La Rocca Zinfandel four and a half stars out of five and I look forward to trying this one with a seitan steak or maybe a seitan and vegetable kabob.