Feeding the Vegan in My Family

            My love for my family is an all encompassing sort of a thing. I would do pretty much anything for them. This year I went about cooking a family, holiday dinner. It was very non traditional and was a blast to do. I set to menu planning and came up with a fairly ambitious meal which included appetizers, salads, main courses, and with the help of my cousins, Zoe and Tea, dessert. As I was putting together my menu plan I received a call from my Grandfather informing me that my cousin Darby was now a Vegan. Now, for a self dubbed meat guy, this brought up a whole lot of issues. The most daunting of which was the fact that everything that I had planned to make had animal products laced through it.... even the salads had cheese and bacon and other wonderful animally goodness in them. Thus I was put to it. I had to feed the Vegan.

        

     Making the choice to be a vegan has got to be a tough one, I mean giving up bacon alone would kill me, so good on you for making a choice that you believe in. But what makes it even more difficult is that when you attend, let’s say a family meal, and you realize that you cannot eat anything that has been made for the meal because the peas have butter on them and even the salads have cheese and meat. So there you are eating a carrot that you found at the back of the fridge watching everyone else fill their faces. That sucks and it was not going to happen on my watch. So I got to work trying to figure out what to make and how to make it delicious without my usual bag of tricks. I will admit that I will never give up all things animal but it was a good bit of fun trying to solve the vegan puzzle. Any way here is what I came up with and it seemed to go over really well with Darby. So put away your butter and pork fat, arm yourselves with jokes about pig’s blood and the fact that bacon is you favorite veggie and let’s cook some vegan food.

Squash stuffed Portobello Mushrooms on a Bed of Zucchini Risotto to the tune of The Lemon Song by Led Zeppelin.

So there is a lot of roasting in this recipe but a lot of this stuff can be done in advance, even the day before. So let us start off with the squash filling and the mushrooms.

2 acorn squash cut in half and gutted (I had to throw in a butchery joke). You can use whatever squash is in season. Acorn is a good choice.

1 onion diced really fine

4 cloves of garlic

2-4 tbsp olive oil (the best that you got.)

4 portabella mushrooms

-Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees. Drizzle the squash with the olive oil and then fill the cavities with the 

onion and garlic. Put them in the oven and let them work for about 40 minutes or until they are really soft. Pull them out and let them cool.

-Once they cool scoop out all of the goodness and toss the rind. Throw all the good stuff into a food processor or a blender and blend until it is smooth, add more olive oil is you need to smooth it out. Put it aside.

-While the squash is cooling pull out the stems of the mushrooms and clean out the gills, rub them down with some olive oil and season them up. Spoon some of the cooled squash mixture into the hollowed out cap and set aside or in the fridge if you are doing them ahead of time.

-You will roast them for about 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven.

That is how the caps are done.

Now we move on to the risotto part. You can check out the risotto post if you have concerns about making this as I am going to do the bullet points.

1 cup of Arborio rice

1 liter of vegetable stock

1 cup of white wine

1 medium sized zucchini diced

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Rice wine vinegar

-Season your zucchini and in a pan over medium heat lightly fry it to get a little bit of colour going. Remove from heat and set aside.

-Toast your rice in a large frying pan over medium heat, while you are toasting heat up your stock and wine in a sauce pan. Do this gently, no boiling.

-Once your rice is toasted start adding your stock by the ladle full stirring constantly. As the rice absorbs keep adding more stock. Once you are about 2/3 of the way through your stock add in your zucchini. Keep stirring. Taste it constantly. Once your rice is done and tastes good you are pretty much done. Remember that you are making risotto and that it should be loose, meaning it should spread out on the plate.

  -Mix together equal parts vinegar and oil for your drizzle. Plate it up. Spoon some risotto onto a plate place a couple of the caps on top and drizzle with you drizzle. There you go, some vegan food from a meat guy. The pics come to you from my cousin Kate, and all my love to her for snapping them as I worked. Enjoy.