Category Archives: Fried food

Vegan Air Fried Chickun and Waffles

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Air Fryer, Comfort foods, Cooking, Dinner, Dinners, eggless, Fried food, Meatless Meats, Nutritional Yeast, Other Vegan Food Blogs, Recipes, Sunday Brunch, Vegan Junk Food, veganism, Veganized Recipes and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Hey, so I wanted to make a fried chickun and waffles recipe using my air fryer. I based the recipe off of this and this, but made several big tweaks to them. For the chickun, I used Gardein chick’n scallopini, and I didn’t have the Follow Your Heart vegan egg so I used Ener-g and added more ingredients to make it taste better, among some other changes, such as using beer and changing the spices to suit my tastes better. For the waffles, I used less (not gluten free) flour, almond milk yogurt, avocado oil, and changed the method a bit.

It was SO AMAZINGLY GOOD! OMG.

I’m hoping to be back on my blog a lot more now that I’m in a good place with my humane education master’s degree program, so keep a look out for new posts! I know I often say I’ll be posting more frequently and then never end up doing so, but this time I think I mean it!

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

For the chickun:

  • 1 package of Gardein Chick’n Scallopini, slightly defrosted, just enough to be able to cut in half, not enough to be mushy.

Dry mix

  • 1 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/3 cup cornstarch
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp onion powder
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 1 tsp cayenne pepper

Wet Mix

  • 1 cup plain unsweetened almond milk
  • 1 tbsp Ener-g Egg Replacer + 4 tbsp water
  • 1/4 tsp Kala Namak (Indian Black Salt)
  • 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
  • 1/4 tsp turmeric
  • 1 tbsp hot sauce
  • 2 tbsp vegan beer

For the waffles:

  • 1 1/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk with 1 tsp apple cider vinegar added
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 1 1/2 cup flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp flax meal
  • 1/4 cup avocado oil
  • 1 small container Kite Hill almond vanilla yogurt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Toppings:

  • Maple syrup and vegan butter, as desired

Directions:

  1. Start by making the chickun first. In one bowl, mix together the dry ingredients.
  2. Mix together the egg replacer, water, black salt, nutritional yeast, and turmeric.
  3. In another bowl, add the egg replacer mixture into the rest of the ingredients for the wet mix.
  4. Slice each piece of scallopini in half vertically.
  5. Coat the scallopini pieces in the dry mix first, until each piece is coated. Place on a plate or tray.
  6. Add 3 tbsp of the liquid mix into the dry mix. Coat the floury scallopini pieces in the liquid, then place them into the wetted dry mix until covered. Put them back on the tray or plate and place in the fridge while you start preparing the waffles.
  7. Preheat your waffle iron.
  8. Add the apple cider vinegar to the almond milk, stir, and let sit for 5 minutes.
  9. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients.
  10. When the almond milk and vinegar is done, pour the mixture into the dry mix, along with the oil, yogurt, and vanilla. Stir well. The mixture will look clumpy, that’s totally okay.
  11. Place the coated chick’n scallopini into the air fryer basket in a single layer. Heat at 400 degrees 4, for a total of 10 minutes. Check on them and shake the basket after five minutes of cooking. You may need to cook in batches if your air fryer is small like mine is.
  12. While the chickun is cooking, place a good amount (depending on your waffle iron) of batter after spraying the iron with coconut oil. Cook according to the instructions for your waffle iron.
  13. Keep waffles in a pouch of aluminum foil until ready to serve.
  14. Serve with the chickun atop the waffles with maple syrup and vegan butter if you like.

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Bon Appetit, don’t eat your feet!

 

 

Hi! A recipe for the best vegan mashed potatoes ever and some soy curls.

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Air Fryer, Comfort foods, Dinner, Dinners, Fried food, Original Recipes, potatoes, Recipes, Soy Curls, veganism and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Okay, so I’ve been meaning to make mashed potatoes out of cashew cream, and finally did. The results are amazing. I need to share it with you, alongside an air fryer soy curl recipe. Put these two with some green veggies and maybe some cornbread if you want, and you have a whole meal!

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Mashed potato recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 4-5 large potatoes of choice, peeled and chopped
  • 1 cup raw cashews, either soaked in water overnight or boiled with water covering them for 15 minutes
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp vegan margarine
  • 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
  • 1 tbsp dried or fresh chives
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

  1. Boil the cashews if necessary. Allow to cool.
  2. Boil the potatoes in a pot of water (just enough to cover them). I start a timer once the water boils for 15 minutes, and they’re almost always ready for me after that. If you’re not sure, test to make sure a fork can smoothly go into them before you stop boiling them.
  3. Blend the cashews, water, and salt in a blender while the potatoes are cooking. Set aside. You want the cream to be smooth, not chunky, so make sure you blend for long enough to achieve this. I do think it works better when you boil the cashews as opposed to soaking them.
  4. When the potatoes are cooked, drain the water.
  5. Place back in the pan. Mash together with the vegan margarine and cashew cream.
  6. Fold in the nutritional yeast, chives, and salt and pepper as desired.

Enjoy the delicious creaminess. They taste even better when you reheat them the next day.

For the air fried soy curls, here is what I did:

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups soy curls soaked in water with vegan chickun broth or veggie broth
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce or gluten free tamari, added to the soaking broth
  • 1 tbsp liquid smoke, also added to the soaking broth
  • 2 tsp oil
  • 1/2 cup gluten free Bisquick mix
  • Seasoning as desired, I sprinkled some cajun seasoning on top before placing them in the air fryer

Directions:

  1. Soak the soy curls for 15 minutes.
  2. Drain (but don’t rinse!)
  3. Coat the soy curls in the oil, then sprinkle on the Bisquick mix.
  4. Stir around a bit until the soy curls are completely coated.
  5. Place in the air fryer for 12 minutes at 350 degrees F.
  6. Enjoy along side the mashed potatoes with your favorite dipping sauces.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful February so far!

New Favorite Things

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Breakfast, Chocolate, Comfort foods, Cooking, Desserts, Favorite Vegan Products, Fried food, Gluten Free, Other Vegan Food Blogs, Pizza, Product Reviews, Recipe Reviews, Trends, Vegan Junk Food, veganism and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I want to post more often here, but am finding it hard right now to find time to create my own recipes due to a busy summer full of classes, volunteering, and other events.

So, I figure I might as well post some other vegan food related stuff, as I’ve always done, and not beat myself up for not creating new recipes as frequently.

I actually have a recipe I created awhile ago that I’ve been saving in hopes that I could use it for my youtube channel I want to start eventually. It was a cupcake recipe, that was not gluten free at the time, and now since I cannot eat it, it doesn’t make sense to hold onto for the video. So, keep an eye out for that.

For now, I want to make a post about some of my new favorite vegan food things.

Rice Paper Bacun:

Ohemgee, this is a life changer, and completely gluten free (although some brands of rice paper are not, so read the ingredients carefully!) If you follow vegan food trends at all, I’m sure you’ve heard of this somewhere. If not, here is the scoop: You cut rice paper (the stuff you use to make summer rolls) into strips, soak it quickly in warm water, dip it in a marinade (this is the marinade I use–warning, there are a lot of spelling errors but don’t let those annoy you too much, it’s delicious despite a bit of confusion), and then fry it in a pan with some coconut oil until crispy. You can apparently bake them too, but I don’t think the results would be as good.

Here are two pictures of it, one for breakfast and one used in a salad.

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Red Pepper Jelly:

Somewhere on the vast corners of the (vegan) internet, I got the idea to try red pepper jelly on gluten free toast with Kite Hill plain almond cream cheese.

It is too good for my own good.

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It’s the perfect ratio of spicy to sweet.

Fakemeats.com:

I discovered some amazing new products at fakemeats.com. You can get discounts when you order a certain amount of certain products, like Louisville Jerky. Including their limited edition pepperoni flavor!

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I have tried all but that sausage looking thing so far. All delicious. I proceeded to make a gluten free pepperoni cashew cheeze vegan pizza with the jerky. So good! (This picture is also missing the 6 bags of soy curls I purchased with free shipping at a really good price).

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Best for last:

Finally, and this is definitely a case of saving the best for last…*drumroll please* THERE NOW EXISTS A VEGAN PEANUT M&M ALTERNATIVE!!

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Yes, this is a picture of an empty package. Yes, my mom (who hasn’t had peanut M&Ms for over 20 years because she is lactose intolerant…longer than I can say…) and I ate these all in the car ride home from the grocery. They are that amazing. They taste best when you eat them one after the other…;)

Anyways, there’s the vegan food stuff I’ve been most excited about lately. Let me know if there’s something else I should investigate like these that would be up my alley!

Take care and have a fun week!

 

 

 

To-fu Young Recipe

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Asian Foods, Fried food, Gluten Free, Nut free, Original Recipes, Veganized Recipes and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh man, I messed up this time on Vegan MoFo towards the end. Just wasn’t feeling it as much. I think I would have preferred a theme I had chosen and developed a bit more.

But, onward and upwards, so the saying goes?

I have a new recipe to share. Also, I’m very tired from not sleeping well and having run a 5k race today.

The other day I remembered egg fu young, and was like, “why haven’t I made this vegan yet?” so…I did.

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To-fu Young with gravy recipe

Gravy ingredients:

  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 2 tbsp Bragg’s liquid aminos
  • 1 tbsp mirin
  • 1 tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 3 tbsp water
  • 1 tsp sesame oil

To-fu Young Ingredients:

  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1/4 cup water chestnuts
  • 1/2 cup bean sprouts
  • 1/2 cup shredded celery
  • 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil (optional if allergic, use another oil or no oil at all)
  • 1 package firm tofu
  • 1/2 tsp Indian black salt (the kind that smells like eggs)
  • 1 tsp turmeric
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • dash white pepper
  • 1/3 cup chickpea flour
  • 1/2 tbsp egg replacer powder (I use Ener-g)
  • 3 tbsp water
  • Peanut oil (or canola if you’re allergic to nuts) for frying

Directions for gravy:

  1. Mix all ingredients except cornstarch and water in a small saucepan over medium heat.
  2. Heat until bubbling.
  3. Add cornstarch and water mix while whisking constantly.
  4. Continue to whisk until the gravy thickens.
  5. Serve on top of To-fu Young when ready

Directions for To-fu Young

  1. Cook all veggies all together with the sesame oil in a large frying pan over medium heat until soft and the mushrooms have become darker.
  2. Turn off heat.
  3. Break the tofu block in half. Crumble one half into small pieces into the pan with the vegetables are in. Stir well.
  4. Place the rest of the ingredients in a food processor and blend well until it becomes a thick liquid batter.
  5. Fold into the vegetables and tofu, stirring well.
  6. To fry them up, I used an electric fryer that we use for making potato latkes because I thought it would work better than doing it in a frying pan. You can definitely do it in a frying pan though if you have one that doesn’t stick too much with this sort of stuff (I don’t).
  7. Heat the oil (you want about a half inch of oil or more) until some of the batter begins to sizzle when flicked in.
  8. Place large spoonfuls of the batter into the oil. Cook on one side and then flip when the side is browned. If not ready yet keep frying it on the side until it becomes crispy and brown. I would have tried to be more mindful of time, but it can vary so much depending on your equipment and your ability to keep the temperature of the oil stable.
  9. When both sides are sufficiently browned and crispy, place on a paper towel on a plate to soak up some of the oil and cool.
  10. Serve with rice and the brown gravy.IMG_5449

Happy Hanukkah! My recipe for vegan latkes

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Fried food, Hanukkah, Holiday Food, Jewish Vegan Food, Original Recipes, Recipes and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate!

I am working on my cookbook zine quite a bit and wanted to share a recipe I created for it because it is relevant! I also recently veganized kugel, which I was quite surprised by, but you’ll have to wait for the zine to come out for that one 😉

My family has a tradition for the first night of Hanukkah to make latkes. Unfortunately, the recipe we’ve always used calls for eggs. This is the first time I experimented with egg replacer, and it actually turned out better than my mom’s she made that were not vegan.

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Vegan Potato Latkes

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups grated raw potatoes
  • 1/2 chopped onion
  • 1 tbsp egg replacer powder
  • 4 tbsp warm water
  • 2 tbsp flour or matzo meal
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • oil for frying
  • vegan sour cream or applesauce for dipping

Directions:

  1. In a large bowl, fill with freezing cold water and ice.
  2. Grate potatoes and put the potatoes into the ice bath while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. This prevents discoloration of the potatoes and reduces the sogginess.
  3. Chop onion and whisk together the egg replacer and warm water in a small bowl.
  4. Drain the potatoes in a strainer. Be sure to get all the ice out.
  5. In a kitchen/ tea towel, place the drained potatoes in the middle, and squeeze out any excess moisture.
  6. Place into a large mixing bowl, mix in all ingredients except oil.
  7. Cover a frying pan with about an inch of oil. Heat on high until a piece of potato bubbles and sizzles immediately upon placing in the oil.
  8. Place a wooden spoonful of the potato mixture in the oil. With the back of the spoon, press down to flatten in the oil.
  9. Use a slotted spoon to flip them after they have browned on the bottom side. Keep in the oil until both sides are browned.
  10. Place onto a plate with paper towels to drain.
  11. Continue to fry until you have used up the batter. You will probably need to turn down the heat a bit to allow them to cook a bit more slowly at some point.
  12. Enjoy! Have a happy holiday!

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Foodie (Photo) Friday-Vegan “crab” cakes, jalapeno popper wrap, swedish meatballs, cauliflower

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Foodie Friday, Fried food, Other Vegan Food Blogs, Pasta, Recipe Reviews, Sandwiches and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(I just realized I need to make an illustration to go along with Foodie (Photo) Friday but I have no ideas and no energy at the moment. Maybe I’ll come up with something later and use it regularly, maybe not.)

Yay it’s Friday! And you know what that means? I share all the recipes I made this week (besides my own) and review them and show the evidence.

First I made Tempeh Scramble, Jalapeno Popper Dip, Broccoli wraps from Vegan Richa.

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Basically, I’ve got no complaints about this recipe. It was really good. I used lavash bread for the wrap. It tasted good when I had just made everything hot, and also when I brought it to school for lunch cold. It tastes really good with extra pickled jalapeno slices put into the wrap though, because the popper dip isn’t quite enough. (I didn’t want to use too much of it because it’s sort of high calorie).

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Here’s the popper wrap open with all the goodies inside!

I give these wraps the best rating of all. So,

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Next were the vegan hearts of palm crab cakes from Olives for Dinner which I’ve been seeing posted online everywhere basically.

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These were a bit of a challenge to make like most kinds of pan fried cake type things, except these really didn’t have any binding material whatsoever. However, they totally make up for them in taste. I don’t know what it is about hearts of palm that makes me think it’s like seafood, but yeah. The old bay seasoning probably doesn’t hurt either to give it that kind of a taste. And the scallions and corn pair really well together and make it that much more delicious. The scallions get crispy. The corn flour on the edges gives it an amazing cake-y texture and a sort of tangy buttery flavor? I don’t know but all I know is that I loved the taste of these.

Even my mom who is not a vegan (but is allergic to all sorts of products, some vegan, some not) loved them, and couldn’t believe they were fake. The good thing (for her) is that these are pretty allergy friendly (although I don’t know if they make gluten free panko?) All I know is that I was happy my mom could try them because they didn’t have soy protein, vinegar, regular onions, etc in them.

Also, I didn’t try to make the sauce, and I really don’t think they need any. They’re that tasty without it. I think the sauce would over power some of the amazing flavors.

One banana is lost because of the lack of binding. All but one of these were able to stay fully in tact when cooked. Most of them were more like crab cake crumbles 😦

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That same night I made some curried cauliflower recipe I found on pinterest. I don’t want to post the recipe, because I was not impressed whatsoever. It had way too much pepper in it (which I should have realized and adjusted, I’ll give them that), but otherwise it was nothing like it was described. It used light coconut milk which I thought might get thick and creamy like in the picture I saw of it, but it never did. Here’s a picture of it, but I’m not going to bother rating it because I’m not sharing the recipe (and I feel bad linking to something with a 4 bad banana rating haha).

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Finally, tonight I made Swedish Meatballs from the Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick Goudreau. They looked and tasted pretty authentic from what I remember. I used lightlife gimme lean sausage style as suggested for the “meat” in the ball (teehee). I didn’t have any ground allspice, only whole, so I went outside and basically hammered all the whole allspice I had in a ziplock bag and voila! there was my ground allspice! It worked out pretty well.

I served it over egg free ribbon noodles.

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Yum! This gets a perfect rating yay:

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Well, that’s all for tonight’s edition of Food Porn Friday! Hope you enjoyed this edition, and also I hope you enjoyed my other recipes I posted this week. I’ll be finishing my pumpkin ice cream later on, and I think my brother’s belly is still happy from all the wasabi pea crusted tofu he ate! Check out those recipes below if you haven’t already!

World Peas Wasabi Crusted Tofu with Avocado Ginger Cream Sauce

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Fried food, Original Recipes, Recipes, Tofu and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Okay, so I was eating some Wasabi peas I got from Trader Joe’s and was thinking “hmm, this would make an awesome type of bread crumb!” So after I continued to eat them, I started to become obsessed with the idea of making tofu recipe with them.

I wasn’t sure if I actually liked it at first…the heat of the wasabi wanes considerably when cooked this way. I also didn’t get a chance to try it until it was cool. However, after seeing my adult brother devour the rest of the batch, and tell me he loved it, I figured it was worth sharing.

For the Avocado Ginger cream sauce,  I was inspired by sushi. Avocado sushi is my favorite, and I guess I’m weird but I love to eat the ginger slices along with it in the same mouthful. I also got the idea of using vegan cream cheese because non-vegan sushi uses cream cheese sometimes, and thought it’d be good veganized. The added vegan mayo was mostly to make it a better consistency, but I was also thinking of the spicy mayo I’ve seen on sushi before as well.

I ate it with cooked brown rice, but it might be cool to form into onigiri and place the tofu on top, or put it in a hand roll (the rice, tofu, avocado sauce wrapped in a nori sheet).

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Wasabi Crusted Tofu with Avocado Ginger Cream Sauce

Recipe

Ingredients:

For the tofu:

1/2 cup wasabi peas

2 tbsp cornstarch or arrowroot

1 cup water

1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour (more as needed)

1 1 lb container of extra firm tofu (I used firm black tofu plus by nasoya and it didn’t hold together all that great, so I think extra firm tofu would work MUCH better) sliced into 8 equally sized slices width wise

canola oil, enough to cover a large frying pan/skillet and a little extra

For the Avocado Ginger Cream Sauce

1/2 an avocado

2 1/2 tbsp vegan cream cheese (I used Trader Joe’s brand)

2 tbsp vegan mayo (I used Nasoya Nayonaise but Vegenaise would be better)

1 tsp lime juice

1 tsp grated fresh ginger root

1/2 tsp vegan sugar

Directions:

To make the tofu:

  1. In a food processor or blender, crush wasabi peas until mostly into a powder but with some pieces of peas still partially in tact.
  2. Place wasabi pea powder in a bowl and mix with 2 tbsp cornstarch or arrowroot.
  3. Place water in a separate bowl, and flour in another.
  4. Drain the the tofu and lightly pat dry. Cut width wise into 8 evenly sized (as close as you can) pieces.
  5. Heat oil in pan at medium heat. You’ll know when it’s ready to put the tofu in it when you place a smidge of the pea mixture in the oil and it sizzles and fries up instantly.
  6. In the meantime, begin to prepare the tofu. Dip each slice in the flour on both sides, then place in water, and then coat into the pea-cornstarch mixture. Place on a plate until oil is ready.
  7. Prepare a plate with a paper towel next to the frying pan to absorb the oil of the tofu once they’re done cooking.
  8. When the oil is heated enough, place each tofu slice in the oil. Cook on each side until golden brown and crispy.
  9. Take out carefully with a spatula or tongs and place on prepared paper towel plate.
  10. Let cool until an edible temperature, and then eat along with the Avocado Ginger Cream Sauce and rice or whatever you like.

To make the Avocado Ginger Cream Sauce:

  1. Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth and creamy but not too thin.

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My results! If you make it, lemme know what you think, yeah?

Thanks for reading as always! Like my facebook page if you are enjoying the blog so you can keep in the loop of new entries, or follow me on twitter! I also have a board on pinterest devoted to the blog if that’s your thing, as well!