Brownies With Vegg Egg Substitute

 Baking in a vegan household is tough, especially when you can't use eggs. Yet there is a solution - an easy one Vegg Uncaged Baking Mix. This really is a godsend to bakers like myself that like using store bought mixes.

I've lately  had a craving for fresh from the oven brownies  and thought "It's time to make them". I bought my beloved Duncan Hines fudge brownie mix.

The mix requires two eggs for a thick cakey brownie. This is where Vegg comes in. It's mixing two teaspoons of the substitute in a cup of cold water. Half a teaspoon of sugar is added.

Then whipped into a yolk like liquid with a fork.

It was then added to the batter along with a third of a cup of water and a third of a cup of vegetable oil. The batter pretty well mixed up the same as it would have with two eggs. It was glossy, in the pan before baking.

The oven was set at 325 degrees Fareenheit because I used a darker surface pan and baked the brownies for forty minutes instead of the usual thirty. Vegg warns you that baking times will be longer when using the egg sub in. After forty minutes a tester came out clean.

This is just from the oven, perfectly baked and the cake pulling away from the sides of the pan.

As far as the taste,  they taste the same as the ones I've baked with eggs.(despite the addition of the extra sugar which is really only a teeny bit).

The crumb and mouth feel are a bit different. The crumb is denser. reminding me of a flourless cake. The mouth feel is that way too. Yet , the brownies are still delicious and I plan on trying the Vegg in other mixes as well as scratch recipes too.

The transition from regular to cruelty free baking is an easy one. Use Vegg Uncaged Baking Mix for any recipe that calls for eggs. It's perfect for any cake or cookie recipe and really not that much different form using actual hen eggs. Try it for your baked goodies and treats.

Gourmet Dining for One

 Many singles feel that they can't enjoy a good meal. Yet they can. Why deprive yourself because it's just you. You can splurge  because it's just dining for one.

There's nothing like a good steak for a treat. You don't have to make this a weekly thing. Twice a month is good enough. Again treat yourself to a top quality one at your local butcher or a specialty grocery store like Stew Leonard's which offers specialized cuts. The last can cut the meat into various thicknesses from half an inch to two inches.  You can also buy a good porterhouse from Stop & Shop too. Serve with a round of herbed butter on top. This is an easy make  taking butter and mixing it with dried thyme, lemon juice , rosemary,  sea salt and fresh ground pepper. What do you serve with this? A baked potato won't cut it for gourmet. Try a Hasselback potato. This is slicing  a Russet potato three quarters of the way down and then stuffing the slits with olive oil or melted butter along with chives. You could add cheddar strips and bacon crumbles too. If you want it to be truly gourmet, spoon caviar and sour cream. over it Another great and gourmet side is asparagus. Simply steam it and serve with a rich Hollandaise sauce. Again this is an easy cook, involving egg yolks melted butter and lemon juice. Dijon mustard is added for zing.It can also be used for Eggs Benedict or Eggs Florentine too.

Shrimp and lobster also make for lush gourmet dining for one. You can easily make a shrimp scampi witch peeled and deveined shriimp. The sauce is a rich mix of melted butter, garlic white wine and red pepper flakes. The shrimp are sauteed in this for two to four minutes and can be served over angel hair pasta or with crusty Italian bread to sop up the sauce. Pair with a green salad that can also have grape tomatoes along with crumbled feta and slivered almonds. Lobster tails may seem decadent but they are a great dinner for one.Best of all they can be made in the air fryer.They just have to be butterflied , and then brushed with a mix of melted butter, lemon zest and garlic. Cook only for seven minutes at 380 degrees Farenheit. What to serve with it? A fresh spinach salad or creamed spinach with butter, cream cheese and onions. Another fun gourmet dinner choice is  a plate of lobster fritters. This is lobster meat (Namely the tail) cut up and made into batter dipped fritters. Serve these with a plate of hand cut fries and a cup of homemade aioli or garlic sauce.

Eating single doesn't have to be dismal sandwiches or microwave dinners. Treat yourself to gourmet dining. Enjoy dining by yourself and eating lush meals.

Making The Most Of Lenten Fridays

 Lenten Fridays can be a bit of a cooking challenge for observant home chefs. Meat is off the table so what do you do?  Go meatless for one day. There's enough recipes out there that are perfect for the weeks leading up to Christian Easter.

Eating less meat is good anyway. It's a chance to infuse more veggies into the diet. A simple but flavorful meal is ratatouille. This is a classic French Provencale dish of eggplant, tomatoes and onions. It can be varied to include bell peppers and squash coins. Its zinged up with such herbs as thyme and basil. Garlic is a must because it amps up the flavor. What's great is that you can make a lot for a Friday dinner and have some left over for A Saturday or Sunday meal. Make it special with a just from the oven focaccio or a loaf of garlic bread. You could even make a ratatouille pizza for something different. It's putting  all the veggies on the dough and adding sauce and shredded mozzarella.Pizza is another tasty idea, even without the pepperoni. You can add shrimp or make it more luxe with lobster. Shred and put boiled tail meat on the dough along with the rest of the ingredients. Another way to go is healthy with spinach and kale. You could also have it with just onions and scallions for a different , more allium flavor.

If you're tired of pizza then think vegan shepherd's pie. If you're wondering about the filling.don't. You can use the plant based Beyond Beef for the filling. Add some carrots and peas along with tomato sauce. The topping is mashed potatoes used as a crisp crust. Dot with butter for a more flavorful topping. You can also do a vegan beef or chicken pot pie. All it takes is Beyond Beef mixed with different veggies like tomatoes and zucchini , baking potatoes and white mushrooms. Tamari and rice wine vinegar give it zing. Veggie broth makes the gravy that is a pot pie's signature feature. Two sheets of Pillsbury Crescent dough rolls  create the flaky top. You can also make Beyond Burgers too. They're just as good as the real thing. You can go totally vegan by adding slices of vegan cheddar for a tasty cheeseburger. Make it a fun Friday night meal by adding French fries. Another vegan meat idea is Beyond Beef meatballs with spaghetti. It's an easy make because they come already made. You can also make them into tasty subs, another fun Friday night dinner.

Lenten Friday's don't have to be fraught. There are so many different veggie, fish and plant based meat recipes out there. You can choose any of these for a great and meatless way to end the week.

A Dinner Trip Italian Style

 Many of us are longing for a culinary trip to Italy or at least a good meal out  at our favorite Italian restaurant. However it's not happening soon enough and with that we have to look to our own kitchens for culinary travel. Any home chef can easily recreate a good Italian dinner from antipasto to dessert. It's having the right recipes with fresh ingredients.

David Tanis offered this in yesterday's New York Times Food section He has the perfect week night or Sunday meal, complete with home baked  Sicilian almond cookies. The meals starts with a mozzarella and charred radicchio. Salsa verde, the  classic Northern Italian sauce is drizzled on top for a sharp jolt of flavor. This is an easy antipasto which also can make for a light lunch too.Start with fior di latte or Italian mozzarella. You can use the American type if you can't find it. It's paired with charred radicchio, an easy cook. Cut it into wedges and grill under the broiler if you don''t have a cast iron pan to cook it in. The salsa verde is simple to create.Parsley, cilantro, chives  and capers are put into a small bowl with lemon zest,olive oil lemon juice and sumac. It's blended and then spooned over the mozzarella and radicchio. Another easy make are the Italian or Sicilian almond cookies. These are similar to macaroons , chewy on the inside and crunchy on the out. They made with egg whites (but you could use aqua faba here) along with granulated sugar and almond extract. They're finished with a dusting of confectioner's sugar and either a whole unblanched almond or Amarena cherry in the middle. These pretty cookies would be perfect for Easter too.

The star of this whole meal is the main course.It's rigatoni al forno with cauliflower and broccoli rabe. There's nothing like a baked pasta and add to that the healthy kick of cruciferous veggies. What makes this dish stand out is a creamy white bechamel sauce made with half and half and virgin olive oil along with nutmeg.Home made tomato sauce, is also added but at the table when it's being served. This is the classic recipe with tomatoes, onion garlic and basil cooked with olive oil and then blended down into a rich , thick sauce. The pasta and veggies are cooked in the same pot, with the rigatoni being boiled first then the cauliflower and broccoli rabe. These are mixed with the pasta and bechamel sauce along with garlic, rosemary and red pepper flakes. More olive oil is drizzled one. Pecorino and Provolone cheeses are added too and then all of this transferred to an oiled baking dish, It's baked in a 400 degree Farenheit oven for forty minutes until it's nicely browned and crisp on top. It's served in either bowls or plates, each serving should have a nice crispy top. The tomato sauce is spooned around the pasta and more cheese is sprinkled on top.

A trip to Italy is a long way off. Even visiting an Italian restaurant can be chancy. Yet we can recreate a three course meal with the flavors of both the North and South right in our kitchen. It's a fun culinary trip, that's easy to recreate.

The Cookbooks That Sustained Us

 The best sellers of 2020 were not thrillers or romance - although they certainly had thrills and love in them. They also had flavor. What sold during the pandemic year? Cookbooks. Thousands of them. They helped us get through some of the most difficult times.

Kim Severson wrote about this phenomena of sorts in today's New York Times Food section.Cookbooks were everyone's go to , starting almost exactly a year ago. They comforted us, taught us how to cook comfort food as well as exotic dishes,Best of all they were simply a friend to home chefs, looking for an escape from a scary new normal.It's no wonder that sales were up seventeen per cent from 2019. The stars were predictable. Joanna Gaines and Ina Garten were at the top. Samin Nosrat, a regular contributor to the New York Times Food section. Her Salt,Fat, Acid, Heat, (Simon and Schuster) was number five on The New York Times non fiction best sellers list. Others, like Claire Saffitz's Dessert Person: Recipes and Guidance for Baking with Confidence (Clarkson Potter) also rose to the top ten, speaking to our need for sweet comfort last year. Trends emerged too. Sales of vegan cookbooks soared as did  ones revolving around health. This was due to people concerned about the planet and their own Covid-19 threatened lives. Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes by San Francisco chef, Bryant Terry sold 30,000. African American cookbooks like   Toni Tipton -Martin's Jubilee Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking, a mix of history and cooking also sold.

Of course books about baking bread soared. People wanted to join the sourdough trend. Yet other trends emerged too. There was a run on canning and preserving books because many home chefs went out and bought canning equipment. The same was true for grilling. The sales of pellet grills and smoking cookbooks were simultaneous. That's why Franklin Manifesto : A Meat Smoking Manifesto written by Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mckay was a breakout hit. The book sold a whopping 360,000 copies with 500,000 in print.Pizza cookbooks were other big sellers. Flour,Water, Salt, Yeast : The Fundamentals  Of Artisan Bread and Pizza written by Ken Forkish and published by the food centric Ten Speed Press became the top selling baking book on Amazon with 600,000 books in print. Home chefs wanted to travel too and they did it through cookbooks.In Bibi's Kitchen: The Recipes and Stories of Grandmothers From the Eight African Countries That Touch The Indian Ocean shows  the different comfort recipes from Eastern Africa along with Dan Buettner's The Blue Zones Kitchen which combines lush photography from around the world with international recipes.

Cookbooks will always be a source of comfort. They not only teach us but take us away from what had been the scary normal. They were godsends in a truly turbulent year.

Away From The Sauce

 A homemade tomato sauce is many a home chef's go to. It's an easy make and cook. Yet it can be too much , especially if it's made often. I had to break away with a mushroom. sauce that works perfect with polenta or pasta. I decided to go with the polenta  - again because sometimes too much pasta is just that - too much.

I started out with sixteen ounces of spinach and two pounds of chopped baby bellas.

I added Morningstar Farms soy chicken strips for protein and flavor.

The sauce was going to be served  with grilled polenta slices.

The sauce was an easy make. The mushrooms and spinach were washed and put into a mix of simmering olive oil and tablespoons of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. 

Use about three glugs of olive oil and about three to four generous tablespoons of I Cant' Believe It's Not Butter. I also added a Not Chick'n bouillon cube and half a cup of water to make it more gravy like.

Try to get fat cloves of garlic I used two for optimum flavor. They're then chopped.

The chicken was cooked separately in the microwave for about three minutes

Then as all these components were cooking I sliced and fried the polenta.

They were fried in olive oil for a few minutes.

The finished product was a tasty light sauce that was chock full of flavor. The mushrooms and spinach  are a perfect marriage and adding the fake chicken broth was inspiring. I even dunked some Italian bread into the sauce.It was that good. I plan on making this with fettuccine the next time around.

If you're tired of tomato sauce, then try this tasty mushroom, spinach and chicken sauce. It's a nice departure from the usual tomato sauce. It's refreshing and light, perfect for pasta or polenta.s

The Versatile Vegetable Garden

 It is March and that means Spring planting is just around the corner. Yet what to plant? The answer is simple - veggies  that will be the most versatile and the most useful. Plant produce that can be used in several different recipes - not just one.

You can start your versatile garden right away and expect crops in late April or early May. One of the best to plant relatively soon is lettuce. Try Romaine and butterhead because they're the most hardiest right now, Romaine lettuce is the base of Caesar salad but it's also good grilled and then tossed for a different spin. Lettuce can be used for Asian style wraps and cups along with gracing BLT's and any cold hero. Another early and versatile veggie you can plant in a few weeks is spinach. This is a home chef's best friend.It's perfect giving color and flavor to soups such as the Italian classic stratticiella  but it also is great filling a crepe or omelet. The leaves can also be wrapped in a buttery dough for spinach tart or turned into a filling but delicious salad. Just add hard boiled eggs and bacon along with a tangy vinaigrette to the last.Keep in mind that spinach can be added to smoothies  and juiced on its' own for extra iron. Beets are another versatile veggie that can be planted right now. They can be transformed into a tasty borscht or be served cold in a mouth watering salad.

Of course the garden stars, peppers and tomatoes should be planted by mid April or early May. These are definite garden musts.Any color of bell pepper can be stuffed with any kind of ground meat and breadcrumbs for a tasty main course. Of course pepper strips are a wonderful snack with seasoned Greek yogurt and they add color and sweetness to any salad. They are wonderful charred on the grill with only a drizzle of olive oil and sea salt. Everyone should plant tomatoes. They are vital to any home chef's repertoire.A bumper crop is useful in making a winter's worth of freezable sauces. You can also turn them into homemade salsas and ketchup.Grow a variety.That way you have them for different dishes. Have one corner of the garden dedicated to grape or jelly bean tomatoes. These are perfect in summer salads and just good snacks on their own. Another patch can be staked out for Opalka or Black Prince varieties. These produce tomatoes with a deep rich flavor perfect for making tomato paste. The best of these tomatoes is , of course, the San Marzano. The ruby red gems can be eaten fresh from the vine or cooked into a mouth watering sauce. Then there's everybody's favorite  - the beefsteak. These are just the thing for that classic summer sandwich - sliced beeksteaks on mayo slicked ,salted and peppered white bread.

Now is the time to start planning your versatile vegetable garden. Pick kinds that you'll use in a variety of different recipes. Doing such is a great way of making that garden grow!!!