Full breakfast, vegan style

I am not one of those vegetarians who gave up eating meat because I just didn't care for the taste. Prior to my conversion to herbivory, I was absolutely a fan of the stuff. When I decided to make the switch, some types of meat were definitely easier to forgo than others. Chicken, for example, was not really missed all that much. One of the things I did miss were all those delicious fried pork products: bacon, sausage links, sausage patties, etc. Some of the meat facsimiles out there are decent, but I don't really like to eat commercially processed fake meats that often. So my life became pork-product free and, I admit, sometimes at family breakfasts I would stare wistfully at the plate of sausages.

Well, no more! One of the most exciting (to me, anyway) sections of Vegan Brunch is, you guessed it, sausage! It is a little time consuming to make (40 minutes of steaming, anyone?), but the results are so worth it. Nobody who eats actual meat will mistake these for genuine pork sausages, but they are still very tasty and the texture is quite meaty in nature.

There are a couple of sausage recipes in the book, the ones I tried were the chorizo flavor. A few of the ingredients proved difficult to find--namely, smoked paprika and dry rubbed sage. I used regular paprika and regular sage, then tossed in about a half a teaspoon of liquid smoke.

The majority of the sausages were consumed at a brunch party, but I did manage to have a few leftovers, which I did homage to by preparing a full breakfast:



Toast, scrambled tofu, sausage, and some sauteed tomatoes. Mmmmmmm.

more waffling: apple cinnamon!

My adventures in Vegan Brunch continue with some delicious apple cinnamon waffles:



I made a batch of these and froze most of them to have on hand for quick breakfasts during the week (they reheat really well!).

Apple cinnamon is one of the suggested variants on the plain raised waffles recipe. I added about a teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 c. chopped dried apples to the batter (the cookbook suggests fresh apples, but dried were convenient at the time, so I went with that). The result was waffles with a little bit of tart sweetness--they taste delicious totally plain, or with a generous dollop of apple butter, as shown above.

In the last post I wrote about this waffle recipe I mentioned that I thought the recipe called for a lot of sugar. This time around I cut sugar down to 1 tablespoon and I think it definitely improved things. The waffles themselves had a more "neutral" flavor and I also didn't have any problems with the outsides browning too fast or sticking to the waffle iron, both of which had happened with the first batch. The browning/sticking issues may, of course, depend somewhat on your waffle iron, but if you're finding it's a problem, try reducing the sugar. As an added bonus, you can then allow yourself to load on more syrup later!

waffling: non-political variety

I don't know about you, but I love waffles. When I was little, waffles were a pretty big deal in our house. We usually did a big breakfast on Saturday mornings, and while most weeks that meant pancakes, periodically my parents would break out an enormous mixing bowl and the waffle iron. We did not use mixes. No way! My father was the proud owner of a genuine Belgian waffle recipe, given to him by a Real Live Belgian. Waffles with this recipe required some advance planning, because the primary raising agent was yeast and it needed a while to work. But the results were worth it--using yeast instead of baking powder/soda gives a totally different texture and flavor.

Unfortunately this amazing recipe was....you guessed it, not vegan. I snagged a copy from my dad and thought about veganizing it but never quite got around to figuring out how to get the effect of whipped egg whites without actually whipping any egg whites.

Then I picked up Vegan Brunch, and what was there a recipe for?


Raised waffles! Made with yeast! Naturally I had to try it. I whipped up some batter, let it sit for the recommended hour, and then cranked up the waffle iron. I also made some strawberry rosewater sauce to go along with the waffles:



They make an attractive pairing, no?



Overall, I was pretty happy with the results of this recipe. The results were crisp, delicious waffles that were a perfect vehicle for maple syrup or fruit sauce. My only issue with this recipe is that there is a lot of sugar. There are a couple of reasons I wasn't too psyched about that. First, the waffles had a definite sweet flavor, which I admit I'm not used to. I generally think of waffles as a relatively neutral sweet/savory taste that is then sweetened with toppings. The other issue with the sugar is that it makes the outsides of the waffles brown VERY quickly, and they also had a tendency to stick to my (nonstick) waffle iron. Next time I make these I will probably cut the sugar down to 1 or 2 tablespoons instead of the 1/4 c. the recipe calls for.

Let the brunch odyssey begin!

Last weekend I finally got around to picking up a copy of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's latest offering to the cookbook world, Vegan Brunch. As is the case with her previous works, it did not disappoint. I think I'm going to have a lot more fancy breakfasts in my future. The cooking kicked off with this lovely scrambled tempeh:


The tempeh is sauteed with a few vegetables and a nice big dose of kale. I love tempeh, but somehow I don't seem to eat it that often. My primary protein source most days is just straight beans, and then if I start getting into soy products tofu is kind of my default. I suppose it's that it's more widely available (not that tempeh is all that hard to find--I got this stuff at Trader Joe's). So I was pretty excited to have an excuse to work more tempeh into my repertoire, in the interests of culinary variety.


This dish pretty much typifies why I like Moskowitz's cookbooks so much. They're just full of good food that is fun to make and eat. My experience with vegan cookbooks is that they often fall into two categories: way too simple and repetitive (twenty recipes for lentil loaf!), or incredibly complex recipes that require days of advance planning, special trips to ten different grocery stores, and then five or six hours of preparation to top it all off (vegan haute cuisine). These recipes strike a nice balance in between--the food is fresh and different, but the ingredient lists tend to be fairly straightforward and the preparation is not rocket science either. If you don't have a Moskowitz book on your cooking shelf, you should!