Saturday, February 12, 2011

Brussels Sprouts with Stuffed Mushrooms, Homemade Vegan Sushi, and "Ice Cream"

Today was quite the day for yummy homemade vegan meals. For lunch, my boyfriend, Mark, started with a few recipes online and improvised from there. He made steamed brussels sprouts and stuffed mushrooms, and then made some garlic toast with rosemary and oregano and roasted pumpkin seeds. The original mushroom recipe called for butter (for which he substituted Earth Balance), Worcestershire sauce (for which he substituted a mixture of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, 1 clove of garlic, and molasses), and 1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (for which he substituted about 1/3 cup Wayfare Foods We Can't Say It's Cheese Hickory-Smoked Cheddar-Style Spread.) He also added just a bit of fresh tomato, and put the stuffed mushrooms in the fridge for 20 minutes or so before cooking them. These mushrooms were absolutely AMAZING! Mark says that they were quite interesting to prepare, since stuffing them made them top heavy and they tended to try to escape. The brussels sprouts were steamed with a clove of garlic and some lemon juice in the water, and then drizzled with salted garlic Earth Balance. The pumpkin seeds were done using this recipe, although Mark added some Earth Balance to the canola oil, and decided after the fact that just Earth Balance would have been better. He also sprinkled a tiny bit of garlic salt on them before roasting them.

Brussels Sprouts, Stuffed Mushrooms, Garlic Toast, and Pumpkin Seeds
Brussels Sprouts, Stuffed Mushrooms, Garlic Toast, and Pumpkin Seeds

For dinner, it was my turn! I recently restocked on sushi rice from the bulk section of Wheatsville Co-Op, and still had a packet of nori. While the rice cooked, I shredded a carrot, chopped a handful of fresh spinach and a few pieces of Tofurky jerky (the "wishstix" from the Tofurky feast), and grabbed some avocado, soy sauce, and sesame seeds (as well as some chili sauce and the Wayfare Foods cheese that I ended up not using).

Homemade Vegan Sushi - Prep

My sushi roll contained spinach, carrot, avocado, and sesame seeds (sprinkled inside the roll since doing the rice on the outside makes a giant mess!)

Homemade Vegan Sushi - Prep

Mark's roll had spinach, carrot, Tofurky jerky, sesame seeds, and some leftover roasted pumpkin seeds with soy sauce squirted inside the roll on the carrot.

Homemade Vegan Sushi - Prep

We had enough rice left over for one more roll, so we decided to slice up half of a kiwi and about 1/3 of a banana and make a "desert" roll (we added sesame seeds to this as well). It wasn't as sweet as we'd hoped; some fresh strawberries would have gone well, but all we had were a few frozen ones).

Homemade Vegan Sushi - Prep

Mark got all mathematical and cut every piece in half, starting in the middle.

Mark Slices His Sushi

Here's Mark's finished roll -

Homemade Vegan Sushi

Here's mine -

Homemade Vegan Sushi

Since the "desert" roll really wasn't all that sweet, we decided to make a real desert, but we didn't quite know what we wanted. In the past, I've made "ice cream" by putting a frozen banana in the food processor with a tiny bit of sugar and a bit of soy milk. My current bunch of bananas isn't yet ripe, so I haven't frozen them. Mark suggested we slice up the remaining 2/3 of the banana we'd used for the sushi roll and top it with some form of homemade ice cream and chocolate sauce. While he sliced the banana, I improvised on the sauce and the ice cream. I put about 14 ounces of ice, 4 tablespoons of soymilk powder, about 2 tablespoons of evaporated cane juice, and a tiny splash of vanilla extract into my Blend-Tec blender. For the sauce, I put 3 wedges of Ibarra chocolate with just enough water and soymilk powder to cover the bottom of the pan. In order to thicken it up a bit, Mark added some extra soymilk powder, evaporated cane juice, and cocoa powder. When we put the "ice cream" over the bananas, it was a slightly soft, but overall very nice consistency. However, once we added the chocolate sauce (and a couple of thawed strawberries) to the dishes, the ice cream started to melt rapidly. By the time I sat down to eat mine, it was basically ice cream soup with bananas. *grin* This didn't stop it from tasting good, though!

Homemade Vegan Banana Split
Homemade Vegan Banana Split

6 comments:

  1. What a feast! I would love to try some of the stuffed mushrooms! I have never had a sushi (non-vegan or vegan) and I am scared to even try it since I hate sea vegetables and anything that tastes even slightly fishy :-) The ice cream looks great, too!

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  2. Thanks! You know, I'm not sure where one would buy it, but there's a sushi chain here in Austin called How Do You Roll that offers a "soy wrap" as well as the standard nori wrap. It's a thin green soy-based wrap, and has a very mild taste. Perhaps that would work for you? I've found that the main trick for a good sushi roll is to not put *too* much stuff in it, or else it gets hard to roll and things start shooting out the sides. *laugh* I've had all sorts of great vegan sushi - tofu makes a great filling, and I've even had one with strawberries and apples in it!

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  3. What a great idea, thanks! I will look for the soy wrap and try it.

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  4. On a lark, I did a quick Google search for "soy wrap", and found this one gal who makes REALLY nice-looking sushi with it. She says she buys it from here, and that it can also be found on Amazon. Looks like this is the main site - the wraps look so pretty, I might have to get some myself. Imagine - rainbow sushi!

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  5. Wow that all looks amazing!! I've never made sushi before and would never have thought of fruit sushi!

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  6. Kirsti, thanks! The fruit sushi is actually much better if you include strawberry and/or pineapple, since banana and kiwi are both such mild flavors. Desert sushi is also a bit better with the soy wrapper (mentioned in the above comment), though I've never had the chance to buy them and make them that way at home. If you go buy the bamboo rolling mat (I actually found mine at my local HEB [grocery store]), and make sure you've got sushi rice and nori sheets, sushi is actually pretty easy to make (and so much fun to play with the fillings!)

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