Tea, tea, tea. I cannot get enough tea. Everything about it delights me: the wares, the process, the associated foods…not that I’m even very knowledgeable about tea, as became clear to me when I looked at a few tea blogs. But anyway, I decided that for my first foray into ice cream-making I should attempt not vanilla or chocolate but green tea. I had the matcha powder, I now had the ice cream maker, so I had no excuse not to make it.

For ideas about how to proceed I started with Veganomicon. Its one ice cream recipe is based on coconut milk, however, and I wanted to avoid a strong coconut taste in this case. So I turned to the internet, recalling that I’d come across a vegan ice cream blog once before. It’s not too good to be true! I used a template from the extremely useful A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise, with my own add-ins. So while the recipe is mine, the credit is not.

Onto the verdict. The ice cream was really good—the ingredients were well-balanced, the tea came through nicely, it wasn’t too sweet, and (paramount for me) it was satisfyingly creamy. It fulfilled my ice cream needs and I would definitely make it again.

But.

It’s not perfect. The texture is not quite right. It’s not sorbet, which I’ve never cared for much; it is creamy. Yet it’s not quite ice cream either—not full-fledged, silky-smooth ice cream, anyway. It’s sort of 85% ice cream, 15% sorbet. This may be an issue of veganness, but I doubt it: I have had both store-bought and homemade (well, restaurant-made) vegan ice cream that did not suffer from this flaw. My mom also said she remembers having this problem with dairy ice cream, and that the solution was to make a custard first. So I don’t know if cooking it longer would help, or increasing the creamer-to-milk ratio, or what. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Still, I’m posting the recipe because I’m mostly happy with it and I still recommend it to other vegans craving ice cream. I used an ice cream maker, but apparently there are other methods.

Green Tea Ice Cream
Makes about 1 quart

2 tablespoons arrowroot
2 cups soymilk
2 cups soy creamer
¾ cup sugar
2 tablespoons matcha (green tea powder), sifted to remove lumps
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract

1. Stir the arrowroot into ¼ cup of the soymilk until dissolved. Set aside.

2. Heat the remaining soymilk and creamer in a saucepan on medium heat, stirring occasionally. Stir more frequently as the mixture approaches a boil.

3. When the liquid is gently bubbling, whisk in sugar until dissolved, then matcha until dissolved (it will not actually dissolve, but will be in suspension).

4. Remove saucepan from heat and whisk in arrowroot mixture until dissolved. Then stir in the extracts.

5. Chill for several hours to overnight, then make according your ice cream maker’s directions. You may need to freeze it for two hours after it comes out of the ice cream maker if you desire a thicker texture. Store unused ice cream in an airtight container in the freezer; it will be very hard right out of the freezer, but microwaving it for 15 seconds will soften it.

Have you ever had panzanella? I hadn’t until a month ago. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it, though I guess it’s standard fare for Italian restaurants. What can I say? My restaurant attendance skews heavily toward Asian.

But there I was, at Bar Toto in Brooklyn, desiring lighter fare than a generously oiled panino with a huge plate of fries. And panzanella—bread salad, so said the menu—caught my eye. It was delicious. It didn’t seem complicated. I had to make it.

This dish centers around stale bread, dressing, and tomatoes, and I gather that beyond that anything (or at least a great deal) goes. I made this for the Fourth of July (which, I feel compelled to state, I celebrate purely for celebration’s sake) and it was a hit. It beat the green tea cupcakes! And they’re cupcakes! Perhaps, however, the market for vegan green tea cupcakes is limited. But I digress. My panzanella is inspired by Bar Toto’s, hence the olives. Plus I really like olives. But consider this recipe a guide; feel free to add whatever you have on hand that seems appealing—or subtract whatever you don’t, that doesn’t. Although it looks complicated, it’s really quite simple and could be made even simpler by not roasting the tomatoes.

A note on the bread: ideally it should be stale, but in a tropical D.C. summer leaving it out overnight barely toughens the crust. If it’s still soft, toasting works fine (toast the slices, then break them into strips).

Panzanella
Makes a Big Old Salad Bowlful (Serves Eight?)

1 small-medium loaf stale/toasted Italian or other crusty bread, sliced and torn into strips
1 box cherry tomatoes, roasted (see below)
1 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and halved (measure after pitting)
2 tablespoons capers
¼ cup basil, chopped
½-¾ cup vinaigrette (see below)
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

For the tomatoes
To roast tomatoes, preheat oven to 400˚F. Toss washed and dried tomatoes with olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper. Place on a baking sheet and cook 10-15 minutes, until tomatoes are wrinkled and slightly collapsed.

For the vinaigrette
½ cup olive oil
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard
a few dashes salt

Place all ingredients in a jar. Shake vigorously.

And now, the panzanella
In a large salad bowl, combine bread strips, roasted tomatoes, olives, capers, and basil. Toss. Add vinaigrette to taste, a little at a time and tossing in between since the bread will absorb it quickly; you have ¾ cup and may use up to all of it (I recommend ½ cup as a minimum). Add salt and pepper to taste. Dress (the salad, that is) a half hour before you plan to eat it.

My girlfriend and I both celebrated our 21st birthdays this summer, two days apart. (I’m older. Ha!) Two birthdays means two parties in our book, and that, in turn, means cupcakes. Lots of cupcakes. Say, five batches of cupcakes.

All of these came from trusty Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is now so well-loved that the pages are falling out. (Advice, anyone?) I’ve made many a cupcake from this book before, but these ones revealed new favorites. Actually, one them is a new/old favorite—the Green Tea Cupcakes, pictured above. I’d made and liked them before, but lacked pure green tea powder (matcha); mine was mixed with dextrin. I finally found the good stuff at a small Asian grocery in Ohio. And look at the difference!

Here are the ones I made last winter with the compromised matcha. Pretty, yes, but…

…these ones are, you know, green. Rich, dark green. And they actually taste like green tea, instead of generic yumminess. Now that look at these together I realize the pale ones are prettier, but that can be attributed to my laziness in making the second batch. (Marzipan and I don’t get along.)

While I made the Green Tea Cupcakes my girlfriend made these Margarita Cupcakes. I mean, I’d take tea over tequila any day, but we were turning 21, after all. And these dolls were good. I think the fresh lime juice really makes them, and if you’ve read this blog with any frequency you know there are few things I love more than beverage-themed cupcakes (two so far this post, one to go).

For a pre-birthday celebration we made the Hazelnut Cupcakes with Hazelnut Mocha Creme. I haven’t been able to hunt down hazelnut extract, so we made these with almond extract instead; it also calls of hazelnut liqueur, which we omitted. They were good but not my favorite, though I bet the hazelnut extract and liqueur would make a difference.

I’d been eyeing the Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes for months, but the rosewater I had is kind of tasteless. As birthdays provide a great excuse for extravagance, we got superior rosewater and beautiful pistachios and set to baking. These are my new favorite cupcakes. The rosewater is delicate and fragrant and complements the pistachios superbly. The only other spice is a bit of cardamom—no vanilla or other flavorings. The texture is perfect, light and moist. These feel far fancier than I thought a cupcake could and they aren’t even hard to make. I made these again yesterday and I’m resisting sneaking into the kitchen right now. (A few tips for those planning to make these: buying shelled pistachios and putting them in a spice grinder or food processor, rather than shelling and chopping them by hand, will cut out the only labor-intensive parts of this recipe. Also, the recipe doesn’t actually say when to add the pistachios to the batter, but putting them in with the rest of the dry ingredients works fine.)

And last, the Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes. I can’t take credit for these, either, as I was busy making the ones above, but I will make them in the future. (With even more cayenne. I like a kick.) The spices in these cupcakes make them more complicated than the basic chocolate ones. Next time I’m in the mood for chocolate, I’d make the Mexican variety first.

Hi there. Remember me? I enthusiastically reported a Wheeler’s tasting in March, then mysteriously disappeared. Sorry! In truth, my disappearance was not so mysterious; it can be summed up in the word “college.” College has a tendency to swallow people whole and only spit them back out come summer. Summer came, and then I traveled here and there, but I’m finally back home and I’ve been itching to blog.

Please know that during my hiatus I continued to read my beloved vegan food blogs—I was too ashamed to comment—and I continued to cook and photograph the results. So I have a handful of posts for you, and I plan to cook the rest of the summer and even in the fall (with more success, I hope, than I had last semester). Without further ado, onto the three-and-a-half-month-old Wheeler’s tasting.

Although I could only stay long enough to try four flavors of the much-blogged-about vegan ice cream, it was enough to convince me that Wheeler’s is for real. Meaning, as delicious as I’d heard. Pictured above is peanut butter.

This one, peanut butter banana, was my favorite. It was creamy and thick, plus I’m a sucker for ribbons of peanut butter in ice cream. God, how I wanted to ask for another sample, but the Wheeler’s representatives knew my face.

Here’s pink champagne sorbet. It’s made with real champagne and you can definitely taste it.

The last one I had, chocolate baby coconut, is not pictured (it was rather unphotogenic, and I got some weird looks diving under tables in search of decent lighting). It was more sorbet-ish than the other ice creams, which I wasn’t wild about, but it was satisfyingly rich and well-flavored. Asylum, where the tasting was held, is pretty cool, too—I had home fries and vegan sausage and met some great people, including a woman from Compassion Over Killing, the DC-based organization the event benefited.

I just got an ice cream-maker for my birthday, so you’ll be seeing my creations on here, too! Tips welcome; I think I’ll start with the Veganomicon recipes.

Something is going to happen. Something wonderful. Something delicious. Something sure to be amazing.

Something that can only be…A WHEELER’S TASTING IN DC. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you obviously haven’t been keeping up on your vegan blogs for the past few months. Wheeler’s Black Label Vegan Ice Cream is pretty much the talk of the town. It’s vegan ice cream that (word on the street has it) blows every other vegan ice cream on the market away. And it’s about time, isn’t it? I prefer Tofutti to the other brands available, but it’s not sensational. Still, I’m withholding judgment until I taste this upstart myself.

And it’s a big deal for DC that we’ll be able to. Toward the end of January, Wheeler’s had a big tasting weekend that included Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Snubbed for Philly? I was not pleased. I mean, we are the capital of the United States. But our day has come, so let me tell all you Washingtonians (and suburbonians) exactly what day it is. Here’s the information—hope I’ll see you there!

WHAT, PRECISELY: “A fun-filled COK (Compassion Over Killing) benefit bash! We’ll be serving free samples of premium vegan ice cream, courtesy of Wheeler’s Black Label Vegan Ice Cream, plus ten percent of sales from Asylum’s vegan menu will be donated to COK.”
WHEN: This Saturday, March 22, 2 - 4 p.m.
WHERE: Asylum Lounge at 2471 18th St., N.W., Washington, D.C.
METRO: Adams Morgan Metro station on the red line
RSVP: info@cok.net or 301-891-2458

Yes, these would be Beverage-Themed Cupcakes #4. And there are still more I want to make (Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes, Margarita Cupcakes). Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World has not yet failed me. I made these for last weekend’s dinner party and they went fast. Even the leftover Cappuccino Creme filling went fast. For the record: my agar-agar flakes mysteriously disappeared, but the filling worked just fine without them (I increased the arrowroot powder to make sure it got firm enough). Here’s the cupcake-filling saga; it begins with the unadorned cupcakes above.

First you stick your (clean) finger in the cupcakes, hollowing out a little reservoir by pushing around the sides of the hole. In my first attempts, the holes weren’t big enough—that means less Cappuccino Creme. No. You want lots of Cappuccino Creme. Make a big hole.

Then you use a pastry bag (or, in my case, a Ziploc-knockoff resealable bag, the poor man’s pastry bag) and fill those cupcakes. This part is a lot of fun. You’d be surprised how much creme can fit in those nice holes you’ve made.

Et voila! Your filled cupcakes, dinner party-ready. If you like you can spread more of the creme on top—I had plenty left over. Or you can let your cupcake eaters spread their own. Either way, you are sure to win friends and influence people with these cute caffeinated cupcakes.

Oh yeah. An all-vegan dinner party. Whose chefs, with the exception of me, are not vegan. Aren’t my friends great?

What was most impressive about this dinner party was not its veganness, however—that accomplishment may have impressed my lacto-ovo and omni friends, but most of you know that’s no problem. The feat lay in cooking all our dishes in a tiny, dirty dorm kitchen with a stove that only has the strength to heat two burners at a time, a considerable shortage of pots and utensils, an oversensitive fire alarm, and a handful of neighbors trying to make their own dinners. Sure, I broke my blender. Sure, we had to waft smoke out the windows with plastic bags. But the food was excellent. And for managing as successfully as we did despite the circumstances, I am particularly proud of us.

On to the fare. What you see above is a vegetable stir fry with fried tofu and a most delectable peanut sauce (not pictured). I’m not responsible for any of that, although I did graciously offer my taste-testing services to its cooks.

At first I was just going to make dessert (more on that later), but we thought we might not have enough food (ha!), so I decided to make a double recipe of my easy-delicious staple, Mac and Cheese from FatFree Vegan Kitchen:

Good as always. Below you see a full plate, which has both of the above dishes plus “Mullatkes”: potato-sweet potato latkes, loosely based on the Potato Latke recipe in Veganomicon. There were about ten gazillion of these, the majority of which we ate while we cooked. I think they might have been the best latkes I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lotta latkes in my day. (Sorry, I just can’t resist the opportunity to make latke puns.) And we even had vegan sour cream on the side! It was practically Channukah.

Not pictured are the tasty but unphotogenic Tom Yum Soup, Amy Winehouse, eighty-three dirty dishes, and Cappuccino Cupcakes. The cupcakes are my babies and thus get their own post. So stay tuned…and throw a dinner party this weekend.

My room is a sty. I haven’t had clean socks in days. I have three loads of laundry, 150 pages of reading, and a fearsome paper to do this weekend. But there’s always dinner.

I pried myself out from under the crushing pile of obligations long enough to make said dinner, as dining hall vegan hot dogs seemed somehow less than appealing. Good meals to good think!

My mom sent me a veganized recipe from the New York Times Bread and Soup Cookbook which she figured would be simple and quick enough for a college vegan to make. I had most of the ingredients on hand and a grocery store run covered the rest.

I further adapted my mom’s adaptation by adding spinach and cayenne to the recipe, so I figure it’s different enough from the original to reproduce here. Oatmeal soup sounded a little strange to me initially, but it was quite tasty. The oatmeal gives it a nice texture and substance, and, well, I always like spinach. I eat cayenne on everything these day; you probably should too. The soup was indeed fast enough for a busy college student to make. On a crusty dorm stove, to boot.

(Sort of) Mexican Oatmeal Soup
Serves Six…or one, with five days of leftovers!

1 1/3 cups rolled oats
4 Tbs olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 medium (15 oz.) can diced tomatoes, or 2 large fresh tomatoes
6 cups vegetable broth*
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne (or more, to taste)
3-4 cups loosely packed spinach
black pepper, to taste

1. Toast the rolled oats in a large heavy skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they are brown but not burned. Set them aside in a bowl.

2. Heat the oil in the skillet; add the onion and garlic and sauté briefly.

3. Add the tomatoes, broth, salt, cayenne, and oats. Simmer for 6 minutes over medium heat.

4. Add the spinach and stir in until wilted. Grind pepper liberally over soup and serve immediately.

*Because this soup is simple and barely spiced, the quality of the soup will depend largely on the quality of the vegetable broth. Homemade broth is ideal, but I know I don’t have time for that. Make sure the ingredients don’t include too many things that aren’t vegetables; you might need to try a few brands before you find one you like.

I was hoping to make these lemon bars from Veganomicon before I came back to school, but life (and packing) took over and I never got the chance. When I got here one of my (omnivorous) friends raved about them to me. That was all the motivation I needed to make them.

I had never made anything with either agar flakes or arrowroot before. Thickeners are crazy! The bars weren’t hard to make, but I wasn’t sure whether I was handling the thickeners properly. A word of advice: don’t get boiling agar on your hands. Not only will it burn, it will stick to you most persistently. Eventually everything mixed smoothly and I filled the crust and set the bars out to cool.

Having had a half dozen tasters for these, I can say confidently that they’re a hit. Whatever reservations my friends had about the lemon bars’ radioactive hue (hard to detect in this picture) disappeared after the first bite. Want testimonials? “Oh my god, I’m majoring in lemon bar eating.” Fact: making these lemon bars has been proven to increase your popularity by at least 46%.

That said, I should point out that their texture is different from that of the lemon bars I used to eat. The agar makes it quite gelatinous, smooth, and firm (”like a petri dish,” said the lemon bar majorer, and with good reason: most petri dishes are made of agar). The lemon bars I remember from my pre-vegan days were basically thick lemon custard over shortbread. I might try to recreate them someday. Please don’t let that turn you off, though—the only reason we have one lemon bar left is that I’m saving it for the friend who recommended them.

Yikes. Is it Sunday? How did that happen?

Well, I kind of know how it happened. My lovely long winter break ended and I went back to college. In other words, my free time suddenly disappeared and my kitchen became a filthy stove and a clogged sink. So, unfortunately, I won’t be updating (or cooking) as frequently as I have been. I will make my best effort to keep posting regularly, though—but now regularly will probably be a couple times a week. Yesterday I drove to Cleveland to stock up at Whole Foods, so now I can actually get back to cooking. (I’m planning to make lemon bars. Oh yeah.)

In the meantime, here’s a recipe for my favorite dish ever. My parents make it whenever I come home because it’s always the first thing I want to eat. I think it came from my dad’s grad school days, but it’s been substantially adapted to our tastes since then.

Chickpea Curry
serves six to seven

vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, chopped
1 large (28-oz.) can diced tomatoes
(or about 4 large fresh tomatoes)
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp or more cayenne
at least 2 tsp salt
pinch (or more) cinnamon
pinch (or more) cloves
pinch (or more) black pepper
2 large (25-oz.) cans chickpeas, plus at least some of the liquid
olive oil
2-3 Tbs lemon juice
chopped cilantro (or parsley) to taste

1. Sauté onion in oil until translucent.

2. Add garlic and green pepper. Continue to sauté until the pepper is softened.

3. Add tomatoes, turmeric, cumin, cayenne, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper. Cook 5 minutes.

4. Add chickpeas with quite a bit of the liquid. Simmer for a half hour or more.

5. Stir in lemon juice and garnish with cilantro or parsley just before serving. Serve over rice.