Vegan Hardcore!

Misleading title, I'm not going to be talking about vegan hardcore music, it's sad for all of us really. 

Yesterday I took everybody on a trip to the vegan mini-mall on Stark but we delayed a look at my favorite part, Food Fight!

 
Described in their own words as, "a vegan convenience store," there's a lot more going on than just convenient vegan food. Although, the convenient vegan food does bring me back to spend more money than I should.

They offer all kinds of food; from frozen and pre-packaged, to fresh produce, and even supplements! You're bound to find everything I listed in my first post, plus so much more! They carry a pretty good selection of vegan cheese too! Oh vegan cheese, we will talk about you again soon... 

But they have more than just food! There are DVDs, buttons, patches, clothing, and even vegan condoms! Dairy-free condoms, odd to say, who knew latex wasn't usually vegan, but it's a reality!

Head on over to the PDX Vegan Guide on their site, it's an amazingly well rounded list of businesses that are vegan, or vegan friendly. I mean sure, you could head over to HappyCow and get similar information, but that site is nationwide, and this one's all PDX!!!

Want to get more involved on a personal level around the Portland veg scene? Go here!

So please stop by Food Fight! Support an awesome local company! And be sure to grab a branded pin or a sticker, they're free!!!

Mini-mall Madness!

There is an oasis out in Southeast Portland where everything is vegan, and it's at 12th and Stark! The neighborhood already has a lot of vegan juice bars and cafes, but these shops don't stop with food. It's a pretty interesting ideal binding these companies together in this space since 2007!

Are you familiar with the film, Repo Man? It stars the Mighty Duck man himself, Emilio Estevez, as a white suburban punk coming to terms with the life around him, and some other craziness going on. But this feels like Portland to me, and there's nothing more suburban punk than a vegan mini-mall. It's a strip mall!   

In yesterday's post I mentioned a tattoo shop, Scapegoat Tattoo, and guess where they live? That's right, the mini-mall! Opened in 2005 off Division in SE Portland, and at the mini mall since 2007, the owner is vegan, inks are vegan, all the care products are vegan, and they do incredible work!

So who else occupies this suburban wonder?

Herbivore Clothing

Clothing company that started out online and opened a brick and mortar in 2007 as a part of the vegan mini-mall! They have all kinds of products; from belts and wallets, to clothing and stickers, books, and other odds and ends. They really have a wide selection of items, all cruelty-free, and many sporting a vegan message. Some very entertaining stuff going on in this shop, check it out! 

Sweet Pea Bakery

Awesome bakery offering tons of sweets with a few savory options as well. Founded in 2004 as a wholesaler, they opened this brick and mortar location in 2008. They even offer gluten-free options, as that's a pretty big trend, and vegans love trends! 

Food Fight! Grocery 

This store is going to get it's own blog post, should be tomorrow. I'm a very big fan of this store, you will love it too!  

Cruelty-Free Tattoos

This might surprise you, but if you've got tattoos, you might be rocking charred animal bone and animal fat. It surprised me, but I hadn't ever given the thought necessary to know. Convenience and ignorance are such easy traps to fall into. And while I don't have a ton of tattoos, I've always planned on having quite a bit more work done. So what do you need to know?

Got to ask the questions! And if your artist hasn't asked them, walk away! 

It's all about the source of inks, and the care products promoted and offered at the shop. Luckily, this is Portland and there are plenty of options!

Find an all vegan tattoo shop. Here in Portland, Scapegoat Tattoo, in the vegan mini-mall is quite popular, it's all vegan so you know your tattoo is cruelty-free. If not, have a talk with your artist about what inks are care products are going to be used. You need to avoid certain razors due to gel strips, or certain soaps and ointments due to animal products. The after care is up to you, there are vegan options, use them!

Downsides to a vegan tattoo?

There technically are some negative aspects to getting a tattoo with vegan commercial inks.

• The blacks just aren't as black. Without the carbon from the charred bones the ink just doesn't set into the skin as dark in color, and will fade faster. 
• To replace the organic compounds, they're using things like plastics. And that's getting put under your skin! How vegan is plastic?

The choice is yours, people! If your body's not a graveyard, don't make your skin one! 

Day Of The Dumpling

Welcome, welcome! It's like Xmas, if you're into that, but with dumplings!

These aren't just any dumplings, they're southern-style, so they're really just fat noodles. My wife had been making this recipe for a good while now, but we were also still eating meat for a good portion of that time. So it was disappointing to think that we couldn't enjoy this meal anymore. Fear not, we found a great combination of vegetables that fit with the recipe great, so let's do this thing!

Roasted Carrots

Basic stuff here, rough dice carrots; toss with oil, dried herbs, garlic, chili flakes, salt and pepper. Cook in your oven set at 350 degrees for an hour and a half or so.

 Noodle prep

 Here's the recipe for the noodles, they're a flat noodle that starts out like biscuit dough!

2 C AP Flour

3 T Non dairy butter
1 tsp Salt
1/4 - 1/2 C Water

Combine the flour, salt, and butter in a bowl to combine. Once the butter is combined begin to add water little bits at a time until all flour is incorporated and you have a ball of dough. Knead and roll out on a cutting board until 1/4" thick. Cut into desired shapes/sizes.

 Now add the noodles to the veloute sauce while stirring to prevent the noodles clumping together. 

Cook for 10 minutes uncovered, and then 15 minutes covered until done. Then you can add whatever you want! We used the roasted carrots, peas, and corn kernels. Oh, and we added a fair amount of cayenne pepper, everything is better when it's spicy!!!

   
        

                    NEXT WEEK MORE THINGS!!!!!!

Let's Talk Sauce

 Veloute made vegan

Aside from stock and butter, it shouldn't be as difficult to translate sauces. If you went to culinary school you learned the classical French mother sauces, and some minor sauces as well. I'm going to show you how to make a dairy-free roux, and then a veloute sauce using the stock from yesterday. 

Roux, it's not as common to use this culinary napalm anymore. You'll more commonly see reductions to make a sauce. But I grew up with roux in sauce, and I have no plans to conform. You just need butter, right? Nope! This is vegan, remember? You can use Earth Balance if you want to avoid dairy and get the visual cues of butter, but it's far easier to simply use oil.

 Equal parts fat and flour in the pan and cook until your desired state of done. It's easy to overcook roux, but it's criminal to under cook it! So keep it on the heat until it gets nutty!

With our roux cooled down and solid, we can measure out how much we will need based on how much stock we're going to use. You need about 1 T of roux per cup of stock. Bring stock to a simmer, whisk in our roux, and simmer for 20 minutes or so to cook out any raw flavors of raw flour. You're looking for a consistency of a thin creamy soup, if you're not there you can add a little more roux, or just simmer to reduce.

Now we have the building blocks for tomorrow's exercise in actually cooking a meal! Southern-style dumplings, by far one of my favorite meals, and we're gonna make it vegan!  

Make That Flavor Water

I promised you a fun day of stock, and now I deliver!

I'm going to share a basic vegetable stock recipe, this particular version is a great replacement for chicken stock. So here we go!

Ingredients:
Onion                  2#
Celery                 1#
Carrot                 1#
Mushrooms         1#              
Leek                   1 EA
Green Onion        1 Bunch      
Garlic                  1/2 Head
Lemon                 3 Slices
Rosemary            1 Sprig
Thyme                 4 Sprigs
Bay Leaf             1 EA
S & P                  TT

A smaller dice is important to draw more flavor in to the stock. I sweated the mirepoix, leek, and garlic that I had diced. Then added the rest of the ingredients, covered with water and placed on the stove top to simmer for 4 hours. Skim while it cooks! Then strain and you've got stock! It should make about 4 quarts.

So making stock is kind of boring, but it's also a chance to develop some serious depth of flavor. This recipe is being used for a southern-style dumplings recipe on Thursday. This is far from the only recipe you should settle on, add more mushrooms and keep out the lemon and you can start to get a darker, more earthy stock. Especially true if the recipe calls for something that can be made into a demiglace. We'll talk more about that later though. Foreshadowing...

So tomorrow we're going to do a non-dairy roux and veloute! Almost time for our dumplings!

The Veggie Arsenal

Big question for you here: what's in your kitchen? 

For our purposes, we're going to need to make some changes to what's in your kitchen. Most of the basics you can keep using without trouble, but there are a few things that are specific to the vegan kitchen, and some general exclusions.

What should I avoid?

 Bad news, you're going to have to read the label! Good news, now you're reading more!

So we want to avoid anything with animal by-products. So no gelatin, milk proteins, or egg powders. And those are the easy ones to spot; there are a lot of vitamins and other products that contain traces of animals and are not listed as such.

Oh, and honey, honey is not vegan, sorry.

So what is totally veg? 

Here's the fun part, getting to know new things! You can't get these things at QFC or Safeway, but New Seasons and Whole Foods should have everything you need. I recommend People's or Alberta Coops. 

Egg replacer (Not a replacement for a fried egg, it's powder.)
Nutritional Yeast
Vital Wheat Gluten
Wheat Gluten (Hail Seitan!)
Cashews and/or other raw nuts
Tofu and Tempeh
Non-dairy milk (Coconut wins!)
Agar Agar (Kind of gelatin... kind of.)
Nondairy Butter (There are options! I swear!)
Agave Syrup (If you bake?)

And it's always advisable to have plenty of grains, dried beans, and the myriad of other things a cook wants to keep on hand in their kitchen.

This is just a list, and maybe a bit of a letdown, so get excited about tomorrow! We're gonna make stock! Oh boy!!!