Bitching about food and Thanksgiving

[rthstewart]

I've included vegetarians, nut free and gluten-free in my menu planning for decades.  Switch to flavorful vegetable stock?  No problem!  Go flourless in baking?!  No problem!  Provide an au jus rather than just a roux-based gravy?  No problem!  Deathly allergies or sensitivities to red meat, nuts, fish, shellfish, melon (we've got all of these in the family) -- no problem -- you just keep them out of the kitchen.  I've scrounged substitutes for gelatin when making mousse-related desserts.  I can do it all.  My typical approach when accomodating a guest who has a serious allergy is that I just don't bring the offending item into the kitchen at all. 

Granted, the time I hosted a dinner party for vegetarians AND those who didn't eat eggs, nuts, or gluten was... challenging as many of these things substituted one for another.  It was so stressful I wrote about it in Culinary Diplomacy.  For dessert I made something from chickpea paste and a vegan chocolate fondue. 

But... this time... I have a vegan coming to Thanksgiving and I'm deeply resentful.  It's my niece and she's a moron who thinks everything she reads on the Internet is TRUE.  Last year I gave her a huge box of baking supplies -- many of which had significant emotional significance to me --  because she was super interested in learning baking from me.  I printed up a dozen of my favorite recipes and offered to teach her how to make them.  And then she became vegan and this amazing gift I gave her mostly sits gathering dust and when she does try to make something, it is really gross or has an overwhelming flavor of coconut or vegetable shortening.   

So, I'm trying to be less resentful and more philosophical.  Really!  I'm trying to find things that don't all taste like coconut.  I'm trying to not spend a fortune on weird, fake food and manufactured alternatives. So please share your favorite vegan dishes or dessert.  I do not, as far as I know, have any nut or gluten allergies coming, so BRING IT ON.  I have a couple of GF desserts from King Arthur Flour, the one pan chocolate cake, and peanut butter chocolate layer cake, and can do an all shortening pie crust.  Let me know if you've got something else!

Also, the person who usually comes and brings an amazing pork sausage stuffing is not coming this year so HIT ME UP.  Please share your favorite stuffing recipes!!

Comments

[branchandroot]

Oh no! Oh, how distressing, to have that kind of gift ignored. [offers hugs and tea]

My mother is much more the veg-option cook than my carnivorous self. I'll ask her.

[branchandroot]

All right, here we go. The Mom suggests "Mashed potatoes can be made with vegetable stock instead of milk and butter, too. Sweet potatoes or butternut squash can be roasted and tossed with a mixture of honey and hot sauce for a great side that everyone will like." For the protein/not-bird, I'd suggest gently oven-roasting thickly sliced portabella mushrooms brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt/pepper/rosemary/thyme.

And she sent recipes for gravy and stuffing:

Vegan Gravy

Coconut Oil 3 T
Vegetable Oil 1T
AP Flour ¼ c
Vegetable stock 2 c
Salt ¼ t
Pepper ¼ t
Celery salt ¼ t
Poultry seasoning or ground sage ½ t

Melt butter in small saucepan over medium heat. Stir in vegetable oil and flour with a whisk. Stir constantly until the mixture is the color of peanut butter.

Slowly whisk in stock and bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and cook until thickened.

Remove from heat and stir in salt, pepper and spices. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Gravy can be served immediately or chilled in the refrigerator for up to 2 days and reheated.

Yield: 2 cups

Note: This recipe was created for my nephew, Eli, for our Thanksgiving dinner, but it will work any time you need rich, brown gravy.

---

Vegan Herb and Onion Stuffing

French bread, cut into cubes, 2 loaves

Leave bread out to dry on cookie sheets the night before making.

Coconut oil 2/3 c
Celery, diced 1 ½ c
Onion, diced 2 c
Sage, fresh, chopped 2T (or dried 1 ½ T)
Parsley, fresh, chopped 2 T
Thyme, dried 2 T
Poultry seasoning 2 t
Salt 1 ½ t
Pepper 1 t
Vegetable Stock 4 c

Melt oil in large skillet. Stir in celery and onion and cook over medium heat until softened. Stir in herbs and salt and pepper.

Allow mixture to cool.

Preheat oven to 350˚F.

Add onion herb mixture to bowl with bread and mix well.

Add stock and mix well.

Mixture should be dampened but not soggy.

Transfer to well oiled baking dish and bake in oven for 40 min covered. Remove cover and bake for 10-15 min longer until browned on top.

For variations you could add mushrooms, or cranberries or roasted walnuts.

[rthstewart]

Thanks so much, Branch. And thank your mom, too!! I especially appreciate the advice about the mashed potatoes and the different side dishes.

[writerkit]

So, I do a *lot* of vegan baking because my now-ex is allergic to eggs and cow-dairy. There's no reason it has to taste like coconut or shortening! (I'm still not sure I can have coconut; I don't use it at all.) There is a lovely product in the grocery store called Earth Balance that's basically vegan margarine and it one-to-one substitutes for butter beautifully and doesn't cost significantly more than butter.

Homemade egg substitute, also works beautifully: Two tablespoons of flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder, half a teaspoon olive oil, two tablespoons liquid (I usually use rice milk). Mix together in a separate bowl; you now have one egg. I don't think it works in mousses (I have never tried) but it's great in cakes and breads!

Take that and some rice milk to substitute one-to-one for milk and you can now make any dessert you want from your normal cookbooks.

It's important to pay attention to texture when you're doing this; you may have to add more liquid at the end, or possibly less, if the texture of the dough or batter is not what you're expecting; the egg substitute isn't always as liquid as an actual egg. But if you know what texture you're trying to achieve it's just a matter of adding liquid until it looks right. But I have a massive collection of cookbooks, none of which are vegan, and I regularly use these tools to make their recipes into vegan ones.

Also this: https://www.thespruceeats.com/vegan-pralines-3371667

This is delicious.

[rthstewart]

I saw your post the other day about the many many cookbooks and the Yockelson Baking By Flavor. I don't have any of hers. I have 4 Rose books, a Flo Barker, a Dorie Greenspan, 2 Patricia Welles, Marcella Hazan (3), King Arthur Cookie, years worth of Bon Appetit and Cooks Illustrated magazines, and a huge file of print outs. I may have a slight problem... I'd not seen that egg substitute before. I've seen the use of flax seed, and actually have some. And I saw a recipe for a vegan chocolate buttercream using the Earth Balance product and thought of pairing that with one of the vegan chocolate cakes on the KA website.
Thanks so much for the good advice!

[writerkit]

I think the person who gave me that egg substitute had invented it herself-- I've never seen it appear anywhere else in discussions of vegan cooking.

[watersword]

Oh my god I would be so distressed about that gift going to waste. That was so kind of you!

Serious Eats has a vegan dessert list, which looks like mostly ice creams, but some baked fruit things too; most of my vegan dishes are not Thanksgiving-y, alas (pasta e fagioli with a mushroom broth, chana masala, that kind of thing), but maybe a miso risotto?

[rthstewart]

Thanks so much! I'm just bitter. My friend, Knitress, one of the 2 economists in my life just keeps telling me that, like Elsa, I have to LET IT GOOOOOOOOOOO. Bah. My son love to bake and I could have given him all this stuff or kept those extra cake pans for myself.

[musesfool]

I love this vegan orange sticky cake, which pleases vegans and non-vegans alike.

[rthstewart]

Thank you! Given all the time I've spent in WW2 rationing research, I was super intrigued by the report of this cake dating from the time of rationed dairy. Of course it would! I bet a lot of things being updated to modern tastes and dietary needs have corollaries in the 1940s.

[sylvaine]

That's such an annoying/upsetting situation. :( *hugs* Baking ingredients! :(

I was going to say I don't have any vegan ideas for you but then I realized that's almost certainly not true, I just don't think of my cooking repertoire in those terms.

Hmmm, let's see. (I can give you the recipe for any of these, I just didn't want to clog up the comment with unnecessary ones xD) I don't know if any of these are Thanksgiving-y though because I don't know Thanksgiving beyond "turkey and probably pumpkin?" :P

- I have a recipe for banana cashew slices but there's coconut in there (though I will say that I've never really noticed, and I am not the biggest fan of coconut normally)
- carrot, orange and ginger soup
- couscous with bell pepper (also with chickpeas and raisins)
- I've got a rather tasty recipe for Syrian-style green beans, although that's definitely a side dish
- lemon dahl
- anything that's raw (or grilled!) veg with a hummus dip and bread with baba ganoush just makes my heart happy with how delicious it is.

(Also, as I learned from my Egyptian cooking teacher that one time, put parsley and pomegranate seeds as garnish on *everything*. That makes it fancy! XD)

[rthstewart]

I LOVE carrot orange ginger soup -- I'm also very fond of squash and mushroom as well, all very vegan friendly. Penzey's spice makes a vegetable concentrate soup base that gives a lovely umphf to my vegetarian dishes -- and actually improves commercially prepared chicken stock as well. I like the idea of the couscous dish. I was thinking of squash boats with a mix of grain of some sort and dried fruit and nuts, so a very similar idea. And I'm going not to look up Syrian green beans -- that's a classic holiday dish here but I usually dress it with butter and a bread crumb/garlic/parm topping. Thank you!

[autumnia]

The wife of a former coworker and friend has a blog with a bunch of recipes that might work for you. She has a strict diet after suffering from an auto-immune disease so she cut out a lot of stuff and most of her recipes are gluten, nut, dairy, soy, etc. free.

https://www.50shadesofavocado.com/category/recipes/dessert/

Coworker brought in the gingerbread last year for a cookie swap and it was delicious:
https://www.50shadesofavocado.com/recipes/gingerbread-squares/

She also has a bunch of savory recipes on the blog that may be helpful for your dinner if you want to check them out as well. There's a post about healthy holiday recipes :-)
https://www.50shadesofavocado.com/best-healthy-holiday-recipes/

[rthstewart]

You always have such GREAT links. Than you so much.

[autumnia]

Let me know if you end up making any of her recipes! I haven't tried but everything looks really delicious.

[autumnia]

One more link I just came across that might be useful (they have some links to vegan recipes):
https://food52.com/blog/24765-how-to-deal-with-dietary-restrictions-on-thanksgiving

[adaeze]

Banana ice cream - works for anyone who can eat bananas, as the only ingredient is banana. Take one very, very ripe banana per person (I do mean very ripe - almost black). Cut into slices and freeze. Zap in a blender (you do need quite a powerful blender for this trick to work). At first you get little bits of frozen banana flying around, then suddenly it turns into the texture of ice cream.

Brown Betty - works for any kind of fruit you would make a crumble out of. Slices of apple or pear or whatever, topped with a mixture of breadcrumbs and sugar (and anything else you fancy that assorted diets allow). Bake as you would a crumble - 20 to 30 minutes in a medium oven or until golden brown.

[anirt]

Ooh! Can we post photos in comments here? I have to pack so no time to type, but can snap a few.

[anirt]

This is pretty close to my grandmother’s — vegan, delicious:

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8109/shoo-fly-cake/

Close to the secret recipe on the other side. Just give her slices without frosting. Plenty rich by itself.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8109/shoo-fly-cake/