Here is the recipe for Vegan Biscuits and Gravy that I made for the Synesthete’s Brunch. It’s easy, it’s an indulgence…it’s homemade biscuits straight from the oven for Pete’s sake! Obviously this recipe is perfect for brunch but it would good for dinner too with a side of sautéed spinach to round out the meal. You could also eat any leftover biscuits for dessert - they’d be yum with sliced strawberries and honey.

Time: 45 minutes
Serves: 4

Vegan Baking Powder Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour + more for flouring your surface
3 tsp baking powder
scant ¾ tsp salt
6 Tbsp soy margarine, kept quite cold but not frozen
¾ cup soymilk
spray oil

Gameplan: Make the biscuits dough and get the biscuits set out on the baking sheet ready to go in the oven.  When veggie gravy is almost done you can pop the biscuits in.  They take about 10 minutes.

Remember – keep a light hand. If in doubt, add/do less.  Also, when you roll out the dough it should be ONE INCH THICK.  We’re not making sugar cookies here.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
In a large bowl: sift or mix together flour, baking powder and salt.

Drop the 6 tablespoons of margarine into the flour mix and start rubbing it together. When the margarine chunks are the size of large peas, stop.

Add the soymilk to the flour, work the mix into a ball and kneed 5 times against a floured surface.

To make your biscuits, roll your dough out (by hand or with a rolling pin) until 1 to 1.5 inches thick. Cut into 2.5″ squares.

Place the squares on an oiled baking sheet and cook for about 11 minutes, checking around 9 minutes for golden corners.

 

Vegan Gravy

1 14.5 oz tube of veggie sausage (I used Gimme Lean brand)
olive oil
1 jalapeno, deseeded and minced
1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ tsp rubbed sage
¼ tsp fennel seed, optional
scant ¼ cup of all-purpose flour
1 - 2 cups soymilk
salt and lots of freshly cracked black pepper to taste

Add the veggie sausage, jalapeno, onions, and garlic to a skillet with a little olive oil heating in it. Cook the veggie sausage, breaking it up as you go along. Add the sage and fennel seed.

When the sausage is done and the onions are wilted, sprinkle the flour over the sausage and mix until incorporated so it’s no longer white.

Slowly add the soymilk, starting with about 1 cup. Depending on how you like your gravy you can add more soymilk, keeping in mind that the gravy will thicken while heating for few more minutes on the stove. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To Serve:

Plate 2 biscuits on a plate and pour some gravy over the biscuits or on the side.  Add some hash brown, and perhaps some sliced tomatoes and you’re all set for brunch.

Here’s the recipe for the Spinach and Grapefruit Salad. I described it thusly on my brunch menu:

“A light but wild salad - snappy spinach and grapefruit gets mellowed with avocado. Pistachios and Parm… Ginger Vinaigrette.”

Anyway, it’s a late winter-into-spring salad that can be served as a first course for dinner (yum with some steamed veggies and lemon-pepper tofu) or by itself for a light lunch.

Time: 25 minutes
Serves: 5

Spinach and Grapefruit Salad

2 grapefruits
2 avocados
1 bag baby spinach
1 head Boston lettuce, washed and torn into bite-sized pieces
¾ cup pistachios
approx. 1/3 cup parmesan cheese

Prepare the grapefruit: Segment the grapefruit and remove the skin and white membranes of each segment by slicing down each side of the segment. I first cut the white rind off the center curl of the segment, shimmied the skin off the sides, then sheered off the outside membrane. It’s ok if the segments break into halves or thirds; perfection is overrated.

Prepare the avocados: Cut the avocado into half lengthwise and into halves again. Remove the pit and peel off the skin. Slice each quarter into thirds or quarters lengthwise. Halve these slices widthwise so you’ve something more like a cube.

Ginger Vinaigrette

2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp white wine vinegar or champagne vinegar
1 Tbsp honey
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1 small clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper

Shake up all the dressing ingredients in a Tupperware or jar.

To assemble the salad, toss the lettuce, spinach, and grapefruit segments with the dressing. Distribute evenly on 5 plates or large salad bowls. Top each pile of salad with the avocado pieces, pistachios, and curls of parmesan cheese.

Thanks to the forty-five+ Brunchers who braved the cold last Saturday to participate in my first commercial food endeavor and first multimedia collaboration with the folks at LondonParisNewYork. Hurrah! Three Cheers! Hope you had a great time - I certainly did. Please post or send me your comments and criticisms of the event. I’d love to hear feedback and ideas on what sort of thing you’d like to see in the future. i.e: more samurai centerpieces, more sitar, or more salads?

I’ll be posting food photos and recipes for the Spinach & Grapefruit Salad as well as the best darn Vegan Biscuits and Gravy soon but email me if you’re looking for the recipe for the Breakx-Mex Casserole… it’s a special favorite of mine and I’m not quite ready to go public with the recipe yet.

Thanks to the ladies and dudes at LondonParisNewYork for making the space-, land- and sound- scapes so amazing. Also, a hearty “couldn’t have done it without you” to the sisters who always impress me with their can-do attitude and ability to just plain get it done.
The Lil Sis endured a hangover and The Sistaster made the pastries:

A guest enjoys a vegan treat

And of course a special thanks to Z for turning 27 with progressively more style than when he turned 24, 25 and 26. Can’t wait to 28.

Happy Saturday!

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who made it out the Synesthete’s Bunch earlier today. I loved cooking for ya’ll and hope you enjoyed the show, the ambiance and the food. For those of you who missed it, it was hard to describe - sort of like dining in one of those cheesy/luxe jewelry boxes with a spinning ballerina, but the ballerina was a handsome young man with a strawberry oil-cloth apron and the music was tinkles and wails and sitars and the walls looked like an Applebee’s art collection curated by Dr. Seuss. We’ll do it again soon, but right now I’m very very tired.

Stay tuned for photos and recipes later this week.

The following photos are a week late, seven bucks short, and have very little to do with vegetarian recipes. Here’s my half-hearted tie-in: I dressed as the “Veggieburgler” to promote vegetarianism at the Idiotarod.
One conversation I had went something like this:

Guy Dressed in Green: Hey, you’re the Hamburgler!
Me: (Showing him the detail on my tie that said “Soy Power”) Well, actually, I’m the Veggieburgler.
Guy: Oh. (pause) I’m a snake!

A cold Fry Guy and the Veggieburgler

People were pretty tickled to see someone wearing a giant hamburger on their head and though we didn’t win we got a shout out from the judges here, though they incorrectly identifed us from being from DC (only Ronald, Grimace, and the cart are DC based.)

Enjoy.

More Flickr Idiotarod 2007 Hoopla here.