Tag: potatoes

Vegan MoFo 2018 – Potato Pancakes

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In the last few days, I’ve made three different types of pancakes. On Friday, our son asked for pancakes for breakfast, so I made a few. One of our favourite recipes for regular pancakes is the “Perfect Pancakes” from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Brunch. After finding it online a few times, we eventually had to pick it up, as it’s full of wonderful ideas for breakfast. These pancakes are fool proof, straightforward, and I suspect anyone can make them and have them turn out incredible. Since I was making pancakes anyway, I decided it was the perfect time to make potato pancakes while I was at it. So I grated a few potatoes, rinsed and pressed them to reduce moisture, and put them in a bowl. One of the things I like to do with potatoes for pancakes is to grate them in two different ways – because potatoes are great at binding themselves together (heyo starch) – so I use the biggest side on a box grater for three potatoes and then the finest side for one. Then I add about 1/4-1/2 cup of chickpea flour, salt, pepper, and a touch of garlic or onion powder – followed by a 1/8 of a cup of the pancake batter put into a hot pan. And voila, we’re in potato pancake town. BONUS I have been reading No Kimchi For Me by Aram Kim to our son quite often lately, and at the back of the book there is a recipe…

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VeganMoFo 2018 – Macaroni and Potato cheese

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Have vegans gone too far? Cheese made from potatoes? It’s clearly mayhem over here you know. Last night our son pulled a package of twirly pasta out of the cupboard and asked us to make something with it – so we did. I’ve been thinking about this cheesy sauce for a while so while we were talking about dinner ideas, I sent over this recipe from Veggie on a Penny to our family slack channel and voila, we had dinner in progress. (made by JC) It’s pretty incredible what textures are possible with the help of the very humble potato, and the texture you don’t necessarily want in a soup, lends itself quite well to something like a cheese analogue. I wouldn’t say this is cheesy in a share with all the non-vegans and new-vegans you know immediately, but it’s a nutritional yeast based cheese, and our toddler was very enthusiastic about the flavour (and I really liked it too.) It is easy to just throw the potatoes and carrots in a pressure cooker, if you have one, it will just take a bit more time, but it will still turn out great. You could also try this variation with sweet potatoes and cashews from Dr Pamela Fergusson, an RD that used to live in Toronto. The one thing I would like to experiment with with this recipe in the future is adding some pureed white beans to the sauce to increase the protein and nutrients, ideally without changing the…

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Vegan MoFo – Spicy and Sour Shredded Potatoes (Tu Do Si)

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Many years ago, I stayed in the student residence a few semesters of my university studies, and one of my roommates was an international masters student from northern China – she was studying chemistry and taking English, and we would talk about food when we’d run into each other in the common area. Eventually we got more intentional about it and decided to share meals – when she found out I was vegan, she made this spicy and sour shredded potato dish. It was one I had never had before, and it would start an obsession with this one dish I didn’t know I needed in my life. I’d sit with her in the kitchen while she hand julienned potatoes, and then soaked them in cold water, followed by stir frying them with oil and chilis. The most complicated part was the julienning and I don’t think I even knew what a mandolin was back then. I wish I had taken a picture of what she made, but eventually years later, I bought myself a mandolin and I started making this dish at home myself. Then more recently, we were travelling in PEI, and we went to Noodle House, a restaurant in Charlottetown and they had hot and spicy shredded potatoes right on the menu(along with several other vegetarian options), and you better believe I was jumping up and down about it. (and of course I ordered it.) Every one is different, but it still filled me with nostalgia, and brought…

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VeganMoFo – Potato Lasagna

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There are a couple of things I’ve been especially looking forward to making this month, and one of those things was a potato lasagna. But not one where it just happens to be an ingredient, but one where the potato is really centred in the dish – where you take slices of potatoes, and pretend they are noodles. Maybe that’s just a potato casserole, but I’m going to call it lasagna anyway. JC once made an incredible rustic bread lasagna from a recipe on Vegan Yum Yum and ever since my lasagna definition has expanded to include zucchini noodles and beyond. Having access to a mandolin makes this dish easier, but you can definitely just thinly slice up potatoes – but the thickness is important because the potatoes have to be around 2.5 mm or less to properly cook through once you’ve got several layers going. We picked up a 10 pound bag of potatoes when we were in Prince Edward Island last month, which I consider the home of excellent Canadian potatoes, and I was excited to use them in this tasty dish. The nice thing is that if you cut up too many slices for your pan size, you can always just mix the potato slices with some garlic salt, oil, and roast on a flat sheet with the lasagna, and everyone is a winner. This lasagna is topped off with Somer McCowans wonderful cashew mozzarella, which you can find on her recipe for individual pizzas – but you…

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