Holiday Eats & Mushroom-Pecan Pâté

The road trip theme is once again eclipsed by more local events. I hope to get one or two more road trip posts up, but today I'm talking family feasting. 

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my mom's place and shared dinner with her and one of my brothers. Mom and bro ate some unmentionables, but we brought our own main course, our own gravy, and the pies. My mom is such a sweetie, she made all the side dishes vegan.

The salad above was really lovely, mom made a raw cranberry salsa and stuffed some anjou pear halves with them, a nice dish. The sweet, soft pears went nicely with the crunchier, more tart cranberry salsa.

Our main course was based on the Portabella Wellington recipe from the Cafe Flora cookbook, which is a mushroom-pecan pâté, layered with braised leek and portabella mushrooms, then wrapped in puff pastry.

In my version, I used crimini mushrooms for the pâté, and instead of the portabellas, I used a layer of maple-cranberry sauce (find Laurie's delicious recipe here!) and maple-roasted kabocha squash. Ground flax and nutritional yeast  stood in for the eggs and cheese in the original recipe. The leeks are braised in white wine, and add a very nice mild allium dimension:

My brother said they looked like pop tarts, lol, and that's exactly what I thought of too as I put them together. These were about 6-inch pastries, and one of them is plenty for a meal. They are nice because everyone can eat one, or half of one, as an extra side dish. I have to say, these were delicious, and were also very popular with the non-vegans at the table.  

Here's the mushroom-pecan pâté after baking:

Not exactly eye candy, but it's rich and super tasty. And, as the cookbook guides, leftovers that don't go into the Wellingtons are excellent in sandwiches. The pâté can be made a day or two in advance. 

Pecan-Mushroom Pâté, based on Portabella Wellington recipe from Cafe Flora Cookbook, by Catherine Geier and Carol Brown

1/2 pound crimini mushrooms

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, finely diced,

2 cloves garlic, finely diced

1/4 cup dry sherry

1 tbsp chopped, fresh thyme / or use herbes de Provence (I used both, probably 1 tbsp fresh thyme and 1 teaspoon herbes de Provence)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1.5 cups lightly toasted pecans, chopped into small bits

3 tbsp ground flax + 3 tbsp water

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

Grease a bread loaf pan and line with parchment/baking paper. Preheat oven to 350 F. 

Pulse the mushrooms in a food processor, until finely chopped...maybe 4 or 5 pulses.

Saute the onion over medium heat until translucent, add the garlic and chopped mushrooms and saute for another ~8 - 10 minutes. Add the sherry and the herbs to deglaze the pan. Continue cooking until most of the sherry has evaporated, add salt and pepper to taste and fold in the chopped pecans, ground flax/water mixture, and the nutritional yeast. 

Put pâté into the lined loaf pan and bake for ~45 minutes. Allow to cool completely, then chill in the fridge for at least an hour before cutting pâté into slices. 

For the braised leek, just clean and chop one large leek and saute in olive oil until the leek begins to caramelize, then add 1/4 cup white wine and allow to cook for another ~ 10 minutes, or until most of the wine is evaporated. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

For the squash,  brush 1/2-inch slices of kabocha, or other winter squash of choice with maple syrup, salt and pepper to taste and roast in 350F oven until tender.

Here's another delicious side my mom put together, roasted yams with apples and pecans:

And mom's yummy rolls:

We did imbibe quite liberally, and I think I must have had a little too much wine, because all the photos of the plated dinner came out somewhat blurry:

Blurry or not, it was quite satisfactory. The gravy is a rich red wine gravy, but any kind of gravy that suits your fancy would be good with the Wellingtons in my opinion.

Road trip resumes soon, (hopefully).

Happy Weekend! 

Vegan SnoFo

Yaay, for snow days! I spent last weekend getting my garden winterized for the snow... and it's here. I haven't had to go into work, and that is good. We've been out playing and wanted to make a snow creature, but the snow is too dry and it won't pack, so we wrote messages instead.

Here's a little hummingbird at the feeder, which looks empty, but it's not.


Stay warm little hummingbird!

Here's a kitty paw:

Here's a kitty:

The hoop house, housing what are surely frozen veggies by now:

We walked down to the lake and saw that someone else was one his way down there too:

Some pretty flowers along the way:

The lake is lovely in the snow, especially on a sunny afternoon:

Bottoms up:

Two bottoms up:

I guess it was rude of me to take pics of their hineys...they swam off in a huff...who can blame them?

A pretty tree, who likes to grow sideways into the lake:

These guys are Canada geese. If you look closely in the background, you'll see the Seattle Space Needle.

Icicles:

If you're in the US, happy holiday weekend, if you're not, then just happy happy.  

Everything's Coming up Green Mangoes

Aamer Ombol and Aam Porar Sharbat: green mango refreshers

**Post Factum:** 

This is one of a series of posts for Vegan MoFo 2010; my theme was a 'Virtual Random Road Trip', where I used random.org's random geographic location generator to select locations around the globe, I then attempted to cook a few dishes from the traditional cuisine of that place. I didn't have a lot of time between generating the locations and coming up with recipes (~ 1 day). So, lacking time to do proper research, I can't vouch for the authenticity of anything I came up with. However, they are what they are, and it was a fun theme. 

This post couldn't be less appropriate to the local weather here at the moment. Both of the recipes are cooling summer treats, while here in the Pacific Northwest, we're having our first snow of the season.

Yet, the roadtrip happened upon Bangladesh and while searching for recipe ideas, these two caught my eye. I'm not trying to imply that the weather in Bangladesh is terribly warm at the moment. From what I can gather, April tends to be the hottest month there, while January is the coolest month with temperatures averaging in the mid-70's F. According to an online weather site, it's 84F and clear in Dhaka today. But, I digress.

I was a bit befuddled over the weekend, trying to figure out what to make for this destination...I quickly came to find that there are many regions, so many dishes: some sort of familiar, others completely new to me...Where to begin? What to do? How to begin on the path of the unititiated?

After all that, I decided to try a beverage and a cold soup, both made with green (unripe) mango. I have a confession about these recipes: I believe they are common in West Bengal, but I do not know for sure whether they are also common in Bangladesh. I'm hoping that they are...as I say, befuddled.

I'll begin with the chilled soup: Aamer Ombol – Chilled Green Mango Soup

This was my favorite of the two items. A thin, cooling soup, usually eaten as part of a meal during hot summer months, it consists of green mango, dusted with turmeric and then simmered with chili, mustard seeds, and some sugar.  If you're interested, I highly recommend reading the engaging post (with full recipe).

Note: In the recipe link above, I think she leaves out the turmeric on the ingredient list, but mentions it in the directions. I just sprinkled the fruit with a light dusting of  turmeric before adding it to the pot to simmer.

Not surprisingly, it tastes like stewed fruit, pleasantly settling on the tastebuds somewhere between sweet and slightly savory. The chili in my batch (I used 1 small chili)  was not too strong; I think I would have preferred it a little hotter. The turmeric and the mustard seeds add a mellow dimension and it turns into a mild soup with sort of a deep undertone (if that makes sense). It's easy to imagine this being very suitable and welcome in hot weather. As it was, I was happy to eat it for breakfast, amidst the snow.

The next item is called Aam Panna, or Aam Porar Sharbat (in West Bengal)

I forgot to save some mint for a garnish, (darn it), but this is a beverage made with roasted unripe mangoes, mint, cumin, black salt, and green chilis. (In case you haven't guessed, aam = mango.) It's a cool beverage, meant to be the consistentcy of orange juice rather than a thicker shake-like drink. Again, I encourage you to read through the delightful post where I found the full recipe.

After you roast the mangoes, you remove the skins, collect the pulp and blend it with the mint and other spices, along with enough water to acheive the correct consistency. It was a fun process, and the drink is wonderfully minty. I have to say, the cumin was a bit strong for my tastes, and making this again, would reduce the amount by half. According to the recipe, using the kala namak, or black salt, is essential to the flavor.

Post scriptum: I used the wrong kind of salt! The salt I used is indeed black, but it was black lava salt, the Hawaiian kind. Oh well, next time I'll try it with real kala namak! Thanks to Laurie for pointing me in the right direction.

...Looking in on the colorful world of aam from the snow: