Jamie Thingelstad

I seem to have a food, movie, food, movie, food, movie stream going here so why not add one more food. 😀 Last night we turned to the Veganomicon for dinner inspiration again. You may be thinking that we only have one vegan cookbook, we don’t. We have a handful and actually the Veganomicon hasn’t been the dominant one. But it’s been my favorite since it was so highly recommended by my friend John. I decided to make Chile Cornmeal Crusted Tofu with Southwestern Corn Pudding.

The tofu was easy to prepare and really all about technique. It came out okay, but I think I could do better. I don’t think I got the tofu pressed enough, and the cornmeal I used was really coarse, too coarse. There were little hard bits in the crust of the tofu that were distracting. I also wanted some sort of sauce of the tofu. As a bonus there was extra tofu left and I think it will go great on a sandwich.

The Southwestern Corn Pudding was a star! It’s in the picture above in the casserole dish behind the wok. It tasted really good, had jalapeño to give some nice flavor and color. The sweetness of the corn was great. This is the kind of dish you could make for anyone and they wouldn’t miss the cream and butter typical in corn preparations. It was also pretty easy. I used a bag of frozen corn and the whole preparation only took about 15 minutes and then baking time. I missed an opportunity to use some of my New Mexican smoked chiles too. Next time I’ll bake this on the Big Green Egg to impart so smokey richness to it and use the premium chiles. My mouth is watering just typing that.

Our month of eating vegan has gone really well. Tammy has tried all sorts of new recipe and made some really great meals. This past weekend I wanted to cook something but I wanted something specific. I wanted to use my Big Green Egg and I wanted something spicy. For some reason eating vegan has resulted in me seeking out spicy food more than ever. The flavors are just awesome.

I paged through the Veganomicon and found the recipe for Hot-Sauce Glazed Tempeh. We had some tempeh that we didn’t have plans for so I went for it. It had the promised spice, and the preferred method of cooking it is on a grill.

I made the marinade which was really easy. Boiled the tempeh for 10 minutes and then let it soak for an hour. I fired up the Big Green Egg and got it up to 450 °F with the cast iron grid and cooked the tempeh with some nice searing and caramelization. I served it with a side of Messsy Rice (vegan alternative to Dirty Rice). The result looked nice and had great flavor. There wasn’t a lot of “glaze” to it though, so I think the next time I may add a little extra pepper and a touch of sugar to the marinade for basting on the grill.

Our month of eating vegan has a lot of new challenges. One of the biggest is what to do with my cherished Big Green Egg’s. I liked that ratatouille is naturally vegan, and it seemed that cooking it on the Big Green Egg would be really good. I followed the Ratatouille’s Ratatouille recipe on Smitten Kitchen and instead of putting it in the oven I put it on the large Big Green Egg set up for indirect cooking.

It came out really good with a nice, light smoke flavor infused as well. I served it on a bed of couscous.

Vegan? Check. Grill? Check. Delicious? Check.

When it comes to grills and eating vegan there isn’t much overlap. However, the Big Green Egg is unique since it can do anything an oven can do, but better.