Mushroom-Onion Tart

I wanted to make something special with the chanterelles and hedgehogs I brought back from Mt. Hood (I figure tofu scramble is not exactly their best and highest use), so I made this tart.



I used a cornmeal crust, and got the recipe from here, with earth balance in place of the butter, and it turned out well even though my cornmeal:flour ratio was a bit off (I was running low on cornmeal). It was just the tiniest bit crumbly.

For the filling, first I caramelized one medium-large yellow onion and about half a red onion, sliced thin with a mix of olive oil and EB and a teaspoon or so raw sugar.

Then I sauteed about a cup and a half of mushrooms (chopped pretty small) with probably 6 cloves of chopped garlic for 15 minutes or so, added thyme, salt, pepper, and a couple splashes of white wine and a couple of handfuls of spinach once it was all cooked.

Once the spinach was wilted and the wine cooked off, I mixed about half the onions in, spread this over the par-baked crust (baked acc to the crust recipe linked above), then added the rest of the onions on top. Baked for about 30 minutes at 350.



So good! Would also have been good with tomatoes, other greens, etc. Next time I plan to try a creamy layer - seasoned silken tofu or something with beans - under the vegetables.

Lazy Saturdays

The last couple weekends I've done some fun cooking and baking with local fruits and veggies. I made some cute tiny blueberry-peach pies in muffin tins, but didn't take a picture. I also made this tart with the same filling and crust. The peaches were from the farmers market, and the blueberries were frozen from picking a couple months ago.





The other weekend I made a really good tempeh scramble for breakfast. I steamed the tempeh to make it less dry and take away the bitterness, and steamed some chopped potatoes along with. Then I browned the potatoes in a little oil, added the tempeh, garlic, and onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, thyme, and sesame oil. Then I added zucchini, tomatoes, and scallions, and when they were cooked and the potatoes and tempeh were brown, I added some soy sauce and nutritional yeast. I ate it with some salsa and spinach salad. And probably coffee.

More pies, and a correctly oriented picture

This seems like a good time to rehash some pies I made last Summer. Oregon is as good for berry picking as Minnesota is cold in Winter, so I picked a lot of berries last Summer. Then I had to move, so freezing them wasn't an option. They ended up dried, infused in vodka, and baked into pies instead.

U-pick blueberry farms are great, and I picked a ton of them, but wild huckleberries are amazing. This pie had both. It was really good despite the fuzzy dim pictures.
For real though, if you're in the Northwest, go huckleberry picking. Even if you can find them at the farmer's market they cost about $8 for a pint. We picked about 3 gallons in a day. Take that, farmer's market!





There's a magic place with a grove of unsprayed cherry trees near Portland, and if you're in the know you can pick buckets and buckets of rainier and bing cherries for free. It's even legal! If anyone knows where that happens in Minnesota, let me know and I'll meet you there. Usually I thicken fruit pies with arrowroot, just a few tablespoons for a pretty big pie. This was mostly rainier, because we picked more of those than bing. I know sweet cherries aren't traditional for pie, but I just used less sugar and it turned out great.



Look! I figured out how to turn pictures! Just to show I'm not totally inept. I promise once I run out of old pictures this blog will be less about how great Portland is. Minnesota has berries too, and it will have pies of its own.

I'm starting a blog!

I'm starting a vegan cooking and food blog, so I thought I'd start with some pictures of food I've made recently. This Fall my family had its first vegan Thanksgiving, and they were all troopers. Even the seitan roast was a hit. Luckily the Madison farmers market goes year-round, so we were able to get our veggies and some fancy oyster mushrooms from a variety of Wisconsin farms.



We ended up making seitan, potatoes with cashew-mushroom gravy, brussels sprouts, roasted root vegetables (those didn't make the picture, unfortunately, because they took forever and were still in the oven), sweet potatoes, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. It was pretty standard for a vegan thanksgiving, but everything turned out well.



I think this was my brother's plate, because we all agreed it was the most orderly.
The pie had a caramel pecan topping, and the recipe's from the Voluptuous Vegan.



I have a better picture, but it's sideways and I don't know how to turn it. So much to learn:



I have a lot of more recent food experiments and pictures, but since no one will likely be seeing them until I figure out a few more things about having a blog, I'll hold off on posting more. Thanks for stopping by!