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After we perfected the Ranch Dip using a Cashew Base (see today’s other post) we found a recipe for ranch using the Earth Balance Mindful Mayo. We fiddled with the recipe because liked the flavor profile we had developed for the Ranch Dip Using a Cashew Base better. The result is pretty awesome. We both like our version with cashews better as a dip, but if you can’t have tree nuts that recipe won’t work. And this recipe was closer to real ranch dressing for use on actual salads, and much less expensive. I used it on a salad and I just about cried because I could have ranch dressing again. (I’m guessing that at some point I’ll be using this recipe and the Penzey’s Creamy Peppercorn dressing mix to experiment further with obtaining more replacements for dairy based salad dressings). We also served this dip to people who can eat dairy at a bridal shower and they also really liked it.
Ranch Dip/Dressing Using Earth Balance Mindful Mayo
1 cup of Earth Balance Mindful Mayo (I’ve tested it with original and organic but have not tried it with the olive oil version)
1/4 cup of rice milk (original, unsweetened, or use rice milk powder following directions on container)
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until all ingredients have been incorporated, scraping down the sides as needed. You can also do this in a bowl and mix it by hand, if you prefer not to have to wash your blender, but I think the spices blend better in the blender. Taste the mixture and adjust spices as needed. Let sit for a couple hours before serving and the flavors will develop.
Ranch dressing. It’s one of those things that seems really, really hard to replace. And you miss that creaminess, salty, tart flavor, especially on salads, buffalo, wings, or just with a veggie tray at a party. When Mary Kate and I started this blog, we began a list of things we missed desperately (okay, so it was a spreadsheet divided up by category, but anyway). I don’t think ranch even made the list. I don’t think it was even something that we considered being able to replace. But while I was researching replacement mayo recipes, I came across a recipe on Yummly.com that used cashew nuts to make a ranch dressing. Mary Kate and I didn’t think the flavor profile was quite right, so we messed around a bit with the spices. It was one of our first real successes and even people who can have real ranch dressing seemed to be shocked at how much they liked it. And it’s really pretty easy. I know this recipe won’t help those of you who can’t have tree nuts, but we’re posting another ranch recipe that will help.
Ranch Dip Using a Cashew Base
1 1/4 cups cashews (raw, unsalted, and if you buy cashew pieces it’s cheaper)
3/4 cup rice milk (original, unsweetened, or use rice milk powder following directions on container)
Grind cashews in spice grinder or coffee grinder, in small batches until the cashews are a nearly a powder, but not to the point they become a butter.
Place the ground cashews and all remaining ingredients into a blender and blend until combined and until mixture thickens a bit. Taste mixture and adjust spices as needed. Let sit for a couple hours before serving and the flavors will develop and the mixture will thicken further.
Some of the testers have found that this recipe does not hold up well overnight as it becomes more salty, but there’s been some debate about that. Also some of us preferred less salt and others preferred more. The recipe as written is using less salt.
This season seems to be full of tradition on so very many levels, including food, food, and food. I think this can make the holidays difficult for adults with newly diagnosed food allergies. This was me last year — going to holiday gatherings where I could not safely eat anything. Missing traditional foods, wanting to indulge, not wanting to ruin the holidays by eating the wrong thing and getting sick. ARGH.
Lucky for me, our only real family tradition is trying new things for the holidays. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss some of the traditional cookies, but it does mean that I don’t feel left out of the traditions — in fact I now get to drive them
How many foods are traditional celebratory foods that are also, in and of themselves, a reason for celebrating? Well, if potatoes are your personal proof that there is some order in the universe? Latkes are that food.
Also, they are amazing.
Traditionally served for Hanukkah, the symbolic importance of the latke is the oil in which the potatoes are fried, not the potatoes themselves. Also traditionally, the potatoes are mixed with onions, flour, and eggs (though the flour doesn’t appear in every recipe, so traditions vary. Here’s your primer, if you are interested in Chanukkah. (See, even the spellings differ!) Hanukkah is not as major of a holiday in the Jewish calendar as those who are not Jewish often think or assume, but it may have my favorite food traditions.
The substitutes for the allergenic ingredients in latkes are pretty easy. Instead of flour, potato starch works just fine. Instead of eggs, ground flax or ground chia seeds, mixed with water, make a good stand in. Ground flax gel will mix in easily. Ground chia seeds require a little extra work, as the gel is a bit stiffer; massage it in and around the potatoes and you’ll be fine.
Serve with applesauce, and you’re set. I know this should likely be considered a side dish, but I eat it as a main dish because that’s the way I roll.
This recipe is for a small batch, but double, triple, make as many as you can manage.
latkes
Latkes
2 medium baking potatoes potatoes
1 baseball-sized onion
3 Tablespoons potato starch
1 Tablespoon chia seeds or flax seeds, ground, and added to 3 Tablespoons water (4 if using chia)
1 teaspoon salt
canola oil, enough to thickly coat bottom of skillet
applesauce for serving
Shred potatoes and onion. The photo to the left includes the Sharpie for scale. I’d love to tell you how many pounds of potato to buy, but I hate those recipes as I never remember to weigh the potatoes and I don’t have a scale at home.
Shredded, you should have 4 cups of vegetable matter. If your food processor is like mine, pick out any big chunks of onion that somehow get through.
Place the shredded veg in a colander lined with a large, thin clean dish towel. This step is extremely annoying and extremely necessary. Fold the towel over the top of the potatoes in the colander and press down with as much force as you can muster, multiple times. When that seems to be done, twist the top of the towel and pick up the bundle and squeeze out more liquid. Do this until it’s not very effective anymore (or, in essence, until you’ve squeezed out as much water as your strength allows). I find that my hands aren’t extremely strong, so I push against the divider in my sink.
Put the oil in your skillet over medium heat about now. Also turn your oven on to 200F so that you can keep the whole batch warm.
Dump your well-squeezed shreds into a bowl, add the potato starch and chia egg (add a touch of water if you need to to get the chia gel mobile again), and salt. Mix this really really thoroughly, making sure the starch and chia are spread all throughout the veg shreds.
ground chia gelpotato and onion shreds
Now start making latkes. Taking about 2 Tablespoons, make patties in your hands, flattening them out, and not worrying about the raggedy edges. DO, however, worry about the tendency of hand-made patties to dome in the middle — work on making yours FLAT so they cook all the way through. The mound-shaped ones are still edible, but not as good. This does take practice, however, so be kind to yourself and remember that fried potatoes are fried potatoes and they are good.
Lay patties down in the oil carefully. If you’ve squeezed well, there won’t be a splatter of oil caused by water meeting the hot oil. Watch the edges and when one side is browned, flip ’em. Rinse and repeat. When you get to the last batch or so, the mix will be wet. Take your patty scoops and squeeze the water out before throwing them in the oil.
Latkes
Put the cooked latkes on a sheet pan and throw them in the oven until you’re done. Serve with applesauce.
Honestly, each time you make these, they get better. The ingredients are so simple that their awesomeness is based on your technique, so keep practicing! Only about a third of my latkes come out awesomely golden brown all over, evenly. I blame my stove, but likely it’s at least partially my fault. Guess I’ll have to keep practicing. OH THE HARDSHIP! (This is where a sarcasm font would come in handy).
Thanksgiving makes me slightly insane. Somehow I channel my grandmother, who is still among the living so I’m not even sure if that’s possible metaphysically speaking, and I make vast quantities of food that bear no rational relation to the actual number of people for whom I am cooking. Our Thanksgiving dinners when I was a kid could have anywhere from 30 to 50 people attending, and I apparently cook for that many people for Thanksgiving no matter what. I’ve been known to do a turkey and a ham for 4-5 people, not to mention several appetizers, squash, turnip, mashed potatoes, my grandmother’s meat stuffing, boiled onions, a couple of kinds of cranberry sauce, gravy and several desserts. This always results in boatloads of leftovers, obviously. I will pack up full meals in containers and freeze them for later, but that doesn’t take care of all of it. So I always make a vat of soup, using the turkey carcass to make stock. This recipe is a bit involved. But you’ll get a good amount of soup that you can put in individual containers and freeze, and nuke later when it’s convenient.
First things first. You have to make the turkey. I use Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey recipe with some modifications. You can follow his ingredients if you like his flavor profile better. Rather than me repeating his directions, please go to the link to read how to actually brine, stuff the cavity with the aromatics, and then cook the turkey. If you want to follow my modifications, I’ve listed the changes in the ingredients below:
For the brine:
1 cup of kosher salt
1/2 cup of light brown sugar
1 gallon of chicken stock (glutenfree and dairyfree)
1 1/2 Tablespoons of black peppercorns
1 1/2 Tablespoons of white peppercorns
1 1/2 teaspoons of allspice berries
1 1/2 teaspoons of chopped candied ginger
1 teaspoon of rubbed sage
1 gallon of heavily iced water
Completed Brine in Container to CoolTurkey in Brine, Breast DownTurkey in Brine after Adding Iced Water
For the aromatics:
2 small onions, quartered
1 celery stalk, cut into 4 pieces
4-5 fresh garlic cloves, sliced in half
4 springs of fresh rosemary
6-8 fresh sage leaves
Turkey Cavity Aromatics in Bowl Before Steeping
Another way in which I deviate from Alton Brown’s recipe is that I baste my turkey every half hour as it cooks. My basting method uses the giblets and is somewhat old fashioned, but it makes wonderful drippings for soup and for gravy.
For the basting liquid:
Giblets from cavity of turkey (take out of the paper or plastic wrapping)
1 onion, minced as finely as possible
1 celery stalk, minced as finely as possible
3 cups of chicken stock (glutenfree and dairyfree)
2 Tablespoons of Earth Balance Soy Free Vegan margarine
1/2 teaspoon of crushed garlic (crush it yourself with a mortar and pestle, or buy some)
1/2 teaspoon of rubbed sage
1/2 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon cracked rosemary
several shakes or grinds of pepper
Basting Liquid and Giblets Simmering
Place all basting ingredients in a small sauce pan. It should be of a size that the chicken stock covers the giblets. Bring to a low boil and then turn the heat down to simmer. Every half hour, use a turkey baster to baste the turkey. As liquid/drippings build up in the bottom of the turkey roasting pan, you may be able to use those to baste the turkey as well. If you do not use all the basting liquid, you can use this to build up your stock later as well. Drain out the solids and reserve the liquid. (I grew up in Maine on a farm, so I generally eat the giblets. They need to have been simmered for quite some time to be tender, so I leave them on the stove simmering in the liquid while my turkey cooks.)
Turkey in Pan with Drippings
Once your turkey is cooked, a la Alton Brown’s instructions, have at it. Eat some turkey, have dinner, have a great time!
Make sure you reserve the turkey drippings, or leave half of them if you’re making gravy. Remove the turkey from the pan, placing it on a platter or cutting board (both should be able to catch drippings).
Turkey on Cutting Board
Once you’re ready to think about making turkey stock, you need to strip the turkey meat from the carcass. Save some breast meat and some dark meat aside to put in the soup, cubing it.
Turkey Meat Removed from Carcass
Take all the bones, any fat and skin remaining, and the aromatics from the turkey cavity (onion, celery, garlic, sage and rosemary) and put them in a 9″ x 13″ roasting pan, along with:
1 onion, sliced
4-5 cloves of garlic, sliced in half
2 carrot, cut in one inch pieces
3 stalks of celery, cut in one inch pieces
Turkey Bones and Veggies
Roast these ingredients in the oven at 375° until the bones brown a bit and the vegetables are roasted. (This will vary depending on the size of the turkey and the size of the pan, but it took about an hour or so for the remains of my 21 pound turkey this year).
Roasted Turkey Bones and Veggies
Now you have two choices, which will depend on the size of the turkey. You can do this on a stove top, or you can do it in a 7 quart Crock-Pot over night. I wanted do this in a Crock-Pot because it’s easier and I think you get better stock, but I’m the idiot that bought a 21 pound turkey.
If using stove top:Put the contents of your roasting pan into a stock pot that’s large enough (I’m using a 20-quart because, again, I’m the idiot that bought a 21 pound turkey) that you can cover the bones and roasted vegetables with the drippings, the leftover basting liquid, and any additional water needed. Add the drippings, leftover basting liquid, and enough water to cover. Bring to a medium boil over medium-high heat and then once you’ve reached boiling, turn the heat down to medium-low. This needs to simmer for at least two hours, but preferably three.
Roasted Bones and Veggies with Drippings in Stock Pot
If using a Crock-Pot: Even if you had the world’s smallest turkey, you’re going to need the 7 quart Crock-Pot. Put the contents of the roasting pan into the Crock-Pot, add your drippings, leftover basting liquid, and any additional water. Do not overfill the Crock-Pot. If using the low heat setting, cook for 8-10 hours. If using the high heat setting, cook for 4-5 hours. (I like to do this late evening so I can just leave it on overnight).
Once your stock mixture has simmered for the right amount of time, regardless of your method of cooking, you will need to strain out the bones and vegetables. I like to use a spider cooking utensil to get all the large pieces out. Then I strain through a colander, and then through a fine mesh strainer until I have nothing but stock left. Now on top of that stock you’re going to have a nice thick layer of fat, I know, I can hear you saying “Is it supposed to look like that?” The answer is yes. But we don’t want that fat (or at least most of it) in our soup. So put the stock in a lidded container in the fridge over night. The next morning you can take a spoon and peel the congealed layer of fat off and put it in the garbage. Now you just have lovely turkey stock. Yay! Sometimes I end up with so much that I freeze half of it so I can use it later when I don’t want to make a whole turkey again.
Strained Turkey Stock in container to cool
Now for the actual soup! Yay!The amounts of ingredients will depend on how much stock you’re using and whether you prefer a thicker soup with more stuff in it, or a soup with more broth. Also, if you want to skip the whole making stock from scratch thing, buy chicken stock at the store that’s dairy and gluten free, or get some Better than Bouillon in the chicken and vegetable flavors and mix them in equal proportions according to the amount of stock you need. I measure all my ingredients so you can get a sense of proportions to change yours up based on what you have.
For Soup:
14 cups of turkey stock
1 1/2 cups of brown rice (My husband is diabetic so we use brown rice, but you could use white or wild rice, or if you can have gluten, you could use pasta. If you use pasta add it much later in the cooking process about 10 minutes before you add the kale and peas.)
2 medium onions, diced
5-6 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
5-6 stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 teaspoon rubbed sage
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
2 bay leaves
5 cups of chopped turkey (bite size pieces of white and dark meat)
4 cups of kale leaves, stems removed and broken into bite size pieces
1 cup frozen peas
Salt and pepper to taste
3 shakes of Tabasco sauce (You won’t be able to taste it, but it brightens up the other flavors)
Put turkey stock, rice, onions, carrots, celery, sage, thyme, rosemary and bay leaves in stockpot. Bring to a boil and then turn down to simmer until rice is cooked and onions, carrots and celery are tender.
Turkey in bite size pieces
Add turkey, frozen peas, and kale. Continue to simmer until kale and peas are cooked. Add 3 shakes of Tabasco sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!
This past summer, one of my co-workers went through a phase of making Thanksgiving dinners — I don’t think she was cooking a whole turkey, but part of it, plus dressing and cranberries. I think it happened more than once, and the craving turned out to be transferable.
But for me? Turkey, eh, whatever. I don’t like it or dislike it, but I don’t feel excited enough to cook one if I don’t have to. What I love about Thanksgiving are the side dishes, and while most of my family’s traditional foods are not allergen-free in their original formats, it is truly easy to make most of them safe with dairy alternatives (although, personally, I prefer vegetable broth to most non-dairy milks in mashed potatoes — less chance for an odd sweet flavor to happen).
For my mid-summer Thanksgiving, I decided to do a casserole of all my favorite flavors, and since there is just one of me, I did individual casseroles so that I could freeze some of them. If you wanted turkey, you could make it on the side. If you wanted a full vegan meal and you’re not gluten-free, add diced seitan with the mushrooms in the gravy portion, but be sure to leave some extra room for it at the top of your casseroles. Some sort of cranberries on the side? Why not? This can be the main dish, the centerpiece, the only dish, or a side. Nothing but versatile, right?
This casserole has a base of mashed rutabaga, a center of vegan, gluten-free chestnut and celery dressing, and a rich mushroom gravy, all baked in one lovely personal-sized casserole. I’ve never made this as one large casserole, but I think doubling each layer and increasing the cooking time would work.
Mini-Thanksgiving, Casserole Style
3 servings
Pre-heat oven to 350F, and spray three 1/2 cup mini-casserole dishes with cooking spray (note on cooking spray — the only one I’ve found free of all allergens including soy is Pam for Grilling).
First, make the rutabaga:
2 cups stock (veg or chicken) or 2 cups water and 2 bouillon cubes (watch for hidden gluten and soy in stock and especially bouillon — look for natural brands for boxed stock for the best selection of options)
about 2 cups of cubed rutabaga (look for it frozen and bagged)
Boil rutabaga in stock until cooked through. Takes 20-30 minutes for fresh rutabaga, but 10 or so for frozen.
Drain rutabaga, and mash with:
1+ Tablespoon soy-free Earth Balance
salt and pepper to taste — be generous with the pepper here.
Spoon into bottom of dishes and press down with the back of the spoon. Should be about 1/4 to 1/3 an inch at the bottom of each dish. If you have leftovers, pack them in or eat them.
Rutabaga base
Next, make the dressing. In large skillet, over medium heat, heat
1 Tablespoon olive oil. When shimmery hot,
Add:
1 cup of diced onion. Cook until translucent.
Add 1 cup celery, chopped, cook until hot, 3-4 minutes
Add one package of chestnuts, chopped (my package was 5.2 oz, and was about 15 chestnuts)
Heaping 1/2 teaspoon thyme, crushed as you add it.
Chestnut-Celery Dressing
Cook everything about 5 minutes. Onions should be entirely clear, celery should still retain a bit of crisp, the chestnuts don’t appear to change.
Stir in 1/3 cup gluten-free bread crumbs (I make my own from the leftover pieces of bread from each loaf, but if you need to buy some, the Ener-G loaves make good bread crumbs).
Spoon over rutabaga, leaving just a bit of room (1/4 inch or so) at the top. Scrape all the bits out of the skillet.
Chestnut-Celery Dressing, stage 2
Finally, make the gravy. Into the same skillet you just used (really no need to wash it out), still over medium heat, add
2 Tablespoons olive oil. When shimmery hot,
Add 1/4 cup onion, diced small. Cook until translucent.
Add 1 3.5 oz package of shitaki mushrooms, washed, stemmed, and diced. Cook until the liquid comes out of the mushrooms (watch, if you don’t know what I’m talking about — you’ll see it). 2-5 minutes. Then add
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 Tablespoons garbanzo bean flour
2 Tablespoons of soy sauce, gluten-free tamari, or coconut aminos
Whisk these until you’ve made a slurry, good and thick. Let it cook for a minute. Begin to slowly drizzle in water, about 1 Tablespoon at a time, stirring and letting each addition thicken before adding the next drizzle. Add at least 1 cup of water, and not more than 1.5 cups.
Spoon gravy over casseroles. At this point, you can cover the casseroles and refrigerate overnight, or you can bake them immediately. If immediately, cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. If you are taking them out of the fridge, let them sit 15 minutes or so to come up towards room temperature, and then bake 25-30 minutes. These freeze okay, but let them thaw thoroughly and then bake.
2 cups stock (veg or chicken) or 2 cups water and 2 bouillon cubes
about 2 cups of cubed rutabaga
1+ Tablespoon soy-free Earth Balance
salt and pepper to taste — be generous with the pepper here.
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 cup of diced onion
1 cup celery, chopped
1 5.2 oz package of chestnuts, chopped (15 chestnuts)
Heaping 1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/3 cup gluten-free bread crumbs
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup onion, diced small
1 3.5 oz package of shitaki mushrooms, washed, stemmed, and diced
2 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 Tablespoons garbanzo bean flour
2 Tablespoons of soy sauce, gluten-free tamari, or coconut aminos
(Final note — it seems to me that chestnuts are tree nuts, but did not confirm this. Assuming this is so, this recipe is not nut-free. MK, and readers, I checked this morning and confirmed they are tree nuts -Denise)
I think you’re an apple crisp person or an apple pie person. Or at least I am, and I fall squarely into the apple crisp camp. I can pass up apple pie anytime because unless the crust is perfect and amazing, which it rarely is, I don’t want it. It just seems like a waste of space in my stomach when I could be using that space for the good stuff. And a fruit crisp is all good stuff. And it’s a lot easier to make a crisp than a pie. So since it’s that time of year when you can get both cranberries, and lovely apples, I decided this would be a great time to post this recipe. This is also a lovely alternative to pie at Thanksgiving if you’re in a time squeeze or you just haven’t managed to perfect your pie crust technique yet, gluten free or otherwise.
Cortland Apples
As a side note, I have a problem with believing that 4 cups of cored, peeled and sliced apples can possibly equal 3-4 real apples. For some reason when I’m at the grocery store, I am compelled to buy twice as many apples as I need. So although there are 5 apples in this picture, it’s because I already cut up the 3 apples (three, count them, three) I needed to make this recipe, because I bought eight. (Eight!! What was I thinking?) So when I say 3-4 apples below, I really mean it. Good thing we like to just eat apples.
Apple Cranberry Crisp
12 oz bag of fresh cranberries (or frozen, I often pop a bag or two in the freezer at this time of year to have on hand later when you can’t get them)
4 cups of cored, peeled, and sliced apples (3-4 apples depending on size, I used Cortlands, but any baking apple will do. )
1 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon of lemon juice
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup quick cooking oats
½ cup of oat flour (you may need additional flour depending on humidity and whether your crumble stays together, add it 1 Tablespoon at a time until it holds together)
6 Tablespoons of Earth Balance soy free margarine
1 teaspoon of Earth Balance soy free margarine
Quartered, Cored and Peeled ApplesCored, Peeled and Sliced Apples
When peeling apples, I prefer to use a vegetable peeler rather than a knife because it cuts a thinner peel off and I lose less apple to the garbage can. I like to do varying size pieces so that some get more mushy and some are larger so you get a varying mouth feel.
Rinse the cranberries and pick out any mushy, squashed, or icky-looking berries, as well as any leaves and stems left in the package.
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
Cranberries, Apples, Sugar, Salt and Lemon in BowlCranberry and Apple Mixture after mixing
Once all your apples are peeled and your cranberries are clean, combine the cranberries, apples, sugar, lemon juice and salt in a bowl. Mix the contents of the bowl well.
Cranberry Apple Mixture in Baking Dish
Grease the bottom and sides of an 8” x 8” baking dish with 1 teaspoon of Earth Balance soy free margarine. After greasing is complete, place place the cranberry apple mixture into the baking dish.
Brown Sugar, Oats, Oat Flour and Earth BalanceCutting in Earth Balance
In another bowl, combine the brown sugar, oats, and oat flour. Mix well, and then cut in the Earth Balance soy free margarine. I used a pastry blender, but you could use a fork if you don’t have one.
Apple Cranberry Crisp after baking
Cover the cranberry apple mixture in the baking pan with the brown sugar mixture. Bake at 325 degrees for 60 minutes (70-75 minutes if your cranberries are frozen) or until topping is crispy and fruit tender.
Serve with your favorite vanilla dairy free ice cream or dairy free whipped topping. Enjoy!
This recipe featuring lovely tasty kale is posted, in part, in honor of the last day of G.I.S.H.W.H.E.S. (the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen), which everyone who knows me has heard way too much about (and has likely been asked to participate in). I am not sure why GISHWHES is obsessed with kale, except that kale is truly wonderful and tasty if you cook it right. I think this one is pretty good.
Our friend Mary has, this year, become the Great Kale Whisperer, and has been providing bags and bags of kale to any takers. Now that I know you can freeze kale, I’ve stocked up, but this recipe is rapidly depleting my stash. This is so warming and tasty that the Starks could find comfort in it (and go read or watch Game of Thrones if you want to get the reference. Everyone else is doing it.).
A note on cleaning kale — I wash kale, especially if not from the supermarket (i.e. there may be bugs) in the manner I learned from my friend Linda a few years ago for broccoli — run a sink full of cold water, add a handful of salt, soak veg for about 10 minutes, then drain. The salt shrivels any cling-on creatures, and you’re good to go.
More Chicken and Kale!
Winter Is Coming Chicken and Kale
2 T olive oil
1 baseball-sized onion, chopped
1/2 t salt
pepper to taste
3 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized chunks
2 t dried thyme, crushed
16 oz. (1 large) package baby bella mushrooms, washed, de-stemmed*, and broken into 2 or 4 pieces each — breaking mushrooms rather than chopping them seems to make them shrink less, and I like the size better for this dish.
3 cloves garlic, minced (is best to mince fresh, not use jarred, here)
3-4 cups kale, washed, stemmed, and chopped finely
1 t shallot pepper blend
1 tube of prepared polenta (sundried-tomato and garlic is nice for this)
Heat olive oil over medium heat in large skillet with cover (or large soup pot, if you don’t have a covered skillet). When shiny and hot, add chopped onion, salt and pepper. Cook until onion is translucent.
Add chicken and stir every few minutes until chicken starts to brown at the edges.
In separate skillet, heat just a sheen of olive oil over medium heat for the polenta. Slice polenta into slightly smaller than 1/2″ rounds, and pan fry. If you heat your polenta through and leave it soft, the juices of the dish will soak into it. My personal preference is to cook it until golden brown on either side, giving it a crunchy edge.
Add thyme, mushrooms, and garlic to large pot, and cook, stirring often, until mushrooms have shrunk and given off most their moisture.
Add kale, sprinkle with shallot pepper and cover, without stirring for 2-3 minutes, until kale has wilted. Then stir, cooking 3-5 minutes more. Turn off heat and cover if polenta isn’t done yet. Serve chicken mixture over polenta.
*If you ever make your own soup stock — veg or meat — it’s useful to throw things like mushroom stems in a container in the freezer to use for stock. The mushroom stems add a nice depth to stock.
(P.S. Thanks to my mother’s friend Barb for being a test cook for this recipe and helping me to improve it!)
So, one of the major bummers about a milk allergy is no more caramel. Or at least no more store bought candy with caramel. And I miss that. So by adapting a recipe that was used to make sticky buns, we developed this caramel. The first thing we used it for was to dump over a cake as shown above. (We’re not giving you the recipe for the cake because it wasn’t very good cake. Although I’m convinced that I could eat cardboard if this sauce was on it.)
It’s also very good on fruit. And might have been prettier to show you if I had remembered to pick up apples, but that didn’t happen.
Caramel Sauce over Fruit
I tried to be artistic with the fruit photo but it didn’t work out. Don’t shoot me, I’m an adult coping with food allergies, not a photographer Jim! (Yes, that was a gratuitous Star Trek reference, I’m ashamed of myself as well.) But back to the subject at hand, this freaking unbelievable caramel sauce. So in trying to figure out what I could use it for to take pretty pictures for you guys, and after Mary Kate and I had fun playing with the Vegan Creme Filled Chocolate Egg recipe a couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on some skull molds. Halloween is coming, people. And if I could have a caramel filled candy, (miss MISS Rolos) then all would be right with the world. Sort of. In an overblown and dramatic first world way. So *drumroll*, I made myself some skulls filled with caramel.
So to begin, first the sauce. (Although if you’re going to use this for the skulls and/or other molded chocolate, do the skulls first and get them all ready. It’ll make it much easier.)
Stir ingredients over low-medium heat and stir until all ingredients dissolve.
Caramel Sauce when ready
Sauce will thicken and it is ready when it coats the back of a metal spoon and drips off it in long slow drips. Do not let it get too hot or have it on the heat for too long or it will begin to sugar back out. Ask me how I know.
1 2/3 cup(s) of Vegan chocolate chips, more or less depending on size and thickness of chocolate shells
Chips and Shortening in Double BoilerMelted Chocolate
Place chocolate chips and shortening in double boiler. Melt over low to medium heat and mix thoroughly.
Painting Molds with ChocolatePainted Molds
You then paint the molds with the chocolate, place them in the freezer until hard and repeat until you have a thick enough chocolate layer. To do these skulls, I repeated the process 4-5 times.
Large Skull Half filled with caramel
Once the molds are complete and the caramel is cool enough, you need to fill the cavities with caramel. Place the molds back in the freezer until they are completely cold.
Skull Halves removed from Mold
Once they are completely cold remove them from the molds. I used chocolate as glue to stick the skull halves together and then put them back in the molds in the freezer until they cemented together. Voila!
Completed SkullCaramel Sauce on Apples – MK made the sauce and took a photo after I drafted the post 🙂
onion. The photo to the left includes the Sharpie for scale. I’d love to tell you how many pounds of potato to buy, but I hate those recipes as I never remember to weigh the potatoes and I don’t have a scale at home.
