I distinctly remember wishing when I was a teenager that I loved salad as much as I loved chocolate. Well, a couple of decades later I feel like they’re a lot closer in my heart than once they were, and Terry Hope Romero’s brand new cookbook Salad Samurai might just help push me over the edge! In her “New Salad Manifesto” introduction, Terry recounts a situation that ALL vegans have lived through at least once, and likely many times:
If you don’t eat meat (or any animal-derived food), ordering a meal in a nice, if not necessarily accommodating to a vegan palate, restaurant usually drifts to the inevitable rendevous with a salad. Everyone tucks into steak and potato-flavored mounds of butter. You, however, poke your fork into a morose pile of limp leaves. As a teen vegetarian (and later adult vegan), countless experiences like this one soured me on ever loving salad. Or actively seeking it out as a meal. Salads just sucked.
As I read this I can picture myself sitting in front of a plate of yellowed lettuce with a couple of sad looking mushrooms and tomatoes staring back at me. But this book aims to change the way we all look at salad and gives us 100 new recipes – ideas for making salads that are beautiful, hearty, delicious and fabulous!
This week on the Vegan Mainstream Cookbook Club we’re going to be featuring 3 different recipes from this book for members to try out. Join us, make the salads and help to complete this review!
Personally, flipping through the book, 5 things I love about it:
1) The photos. It’s visual – and I love visual to get me inspired to make a recipe.
2) The full meal salads. These are the ones I find most inspiring! What’s better than a delicious dinner that looks WOW and takes minutes to make? Lots of raw ingredients keep these salads healthy; lots of topping options keep them super interesting (see the Samurai Stylings throughout for variations to the recipes)
3) The innovation. These are not your average salads. Terry’s approach in this book really redefines our common notion of what a salad is – something to eat on the side of a main meal (although there are lots of great side salad ideas too). These salads include ingredients like soba noodles, tofu, tempeh, grains – all prepared in fabulous ways that will seriously contradict anyone who says all vegans can eat is lettuce.
4) Recipe reliability. I have long been a fan of Terry’s recipes, so I wasn’t surprised when I test-drove a couple of these recipes that they turned out great! To me, trust is an important factor in my cookbook relationships!!
5) Layout. The recipes in this book are laid out in such a way that they are easy to read at a glance. This is important to me when I’m looking for a quick dinner – I need to be able to scan the ingredients to see if I have most of the ingredients. All the ingredients are listed in a sidebar on the edge of the pages, so you really can scan them at a quick glance.
I hope this cookbook gets into the hands of lots of new vegans or veg-curious people – it really does challenge the idea of what veganism is all about – even though it’s a book all about salad! Terry shows us in this book that EVEN IF all vegans ate WAS salad, things would not be so bad. Salad no longer sucks.
Let’s get the party started with the first recipe of the week (and remember to tune in to the Vegan Mainstream Cookbook Club this week for more recipes from this book!)
Seitan Bacon Wedge Salad with Horseradish Dressing
SERVES: 4
TIME: 45 MINUTES
This is vegan revenge! Let’s take back that ridiculous lettuce-wedge-as-a-salad, the scourge of sports bars and steak houses, and make it the meatless triumph that omnivores everywhere will beg you for a taste. This assembly of smoky grilled seitan and zesty horseradish dressing is the best thing to ever happen to iceberg lettuce. You can smother crisp wedges of lettuce for a dramatic entrée (dust off the steak knives!), or replace the ’berg lettuce with heartier chopped romaine leaves or Relaxed Shredded Kale for no-fuss salad bowls.
HORSERADISH DRESSING
1 recipe Back at the Ranch Dressing (below)
2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
SMOKY MARINADE
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
. . . AND THE REST OF THE SALAD
2 Steamed or Baked Seitan Cutlets (below)
1 head iceberg lettuce
4 red ripe tomatoes, cored and diced
1 small sweet yellow onion (such as Vidalia), diced
1 cup pickled green beans or bread-and-butter pickle slices, diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
Freshly ground black pepper
1. Prepare the ranch dressing and blend in the horseradish. Cover and chill until ready to serve. Whisk the marinade ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
2. Slice the seitan on a diagonal into 1?2-inch strips. Add the seitan to the marinade, toss together, and set aside to marinate for 10 minutes.
3. Preheat a cast-iron grill pan over medium-high heat and brush or spray with a high-heat cooking oil (such as peanut oil). Grill the seitan strips in a single layer, cooking about 1 minute on each side to get those dark grill marks. Don’t overcook, or the seitan may dry out and that’s no fun. Transfer the grilled seitan to a cutting board. Once cool, chop the seitan into 1?4-inch pieces.
4. Remove the core from the lettuce head and slice into quarters right before it’s time to make the salad.
5. To serve, arrange a wedge of lettuce on four salad plates. Spoon the dressing down the center and sides of the wedge. Heap on the diced seitan, tomatoes, onions, and pickles and drizzle with any remaining dressing. Sprinkle with chives and a few twists of ground pepper and serve immediately.
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Back at the Ranch Dressing
Gluten-Free
MAKES: About 1 ½ cups
TIME: Less than 10 minutes, not including soaking the cashews
Hands down, my top easy, all-around-delicious creamy salad dressing. It’s ridiculously simple to transform this versatile dressing with endless herbs, spices, and condiments to garnish any salad you can imagine. Best of all, you’ll never open up a jar of mayonnaise (vegan or otherwise) again, when this luscious cashew-based dressing can be made to order in minutes.
You should only make a batch when you need it, and eat within 2 days for the freshest flavor and best consistency. For everyday salads you can skip the small addition of olive oil (though it adds lovely lushness and flavor), but the addition of both garlic powder and fresh garlic adds a complexity that neither can pull off alone!
½ cup unroasted cashews
¾ cup hot water
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled
2 teaspoons white (shiro) miso
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
3 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs, such as dill, basil, or tarragon
1. Soak the cashews in the hot water for 30 minutes. Then pour into a blender (including the soaking water) and blend until very smooth. Alternatively, if you have a high-powered blender (like a Vitamix or Blendtec), no soaking is required: just pulse the cashews into a fi ne powder, add the hot water, and pulse again until very smooth.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and pulse until smooth. Chill the dressing in a tightly covered container until ready to use, or at least 20 minutes for the flavors to blend. Store chilled and use within 2 days.
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Steamed or Baked Seitan Cutlets
MAKES: 4 PORTIONS OF SEITAN
TIME: ABOUT 45 MINUTES
Seitan, that clever “meat from wheat” still ushers in questions from newbies: what is it, what do you do with it, and how do you pronounce it? Let it be a mystery no longer! If you can knead dough, you can make say-tan (and it’s easier than making bread).
These rustic cutlets are the easiest version of the ultra-simple steamed seitan I’ve been making for years, but you can also bake them for a dense, chewy texture. Either way, just mix, wrap, and cook for a succulent, handmade veggie protein that loves marinades and is great on the grill for a “meaty” salad topping. Note: I’ve provided the option of grating the garlic with a microplane grater; if you prefer your garlic flavor evenly distributed throughout the seitan (rather than tasting flecks of garlic), please try this method!
1 ½ cups cold, richly flavored vegetable broth
2 cloves garlic, minced or grated with a microplane grater
3 tablespoons soy sauce or liquid aminos (such as Bragg’s)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 ¾ cups vital wheat gluten flour (one 10-ounce package)
1?4 cup nutritional yeast
1?4 cup chickpea flour
1?2 teaspoon ground cumin
1. In a 1-quart glass measuring cup or bowl, whisk together the vegetable broth, garlic, soy sauce, and olive oil. In a separate bowl, stir together the vital wheat gluten flour, nutritional yeast, chickpea flour, and cumin. Form a well in the center and pour in the broth mixture.
2. Stir with a rubber spatula; when all of the broth has been absorbed and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl, use both hands and knead the dough for a minute. For the best texture results, knead the dough in one direction, using a folding and pressing motion with your palms. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes and then slice it into four equal pieces.
3. Tear off four 10-inch-long pieces of aluminum foil. In the center of each piece of foil, pat each piece of dough into a thin oval less than 1?2 inch thick. Now seal each packet for steaming: bring the long edges of the foil together and fold together with a seam about 1?4 inch wide, then fold another seam, and press together to tightly seal; there should be some space between this little foil tent and the seitan inside. Tightly crimp the opposite ends; the result should be a loose foil pouch with tightly sealed seams. The seitan will expand as it steams, so make sure you have some room left over in the foil pouch! Repeat with the remaining seitan portions.
4. Set up your steamer and steam the seitan for 25 minutes. Take care that the seitan does not touch the water. The loaves will expand and feel firm when done; if not, continue to steam for another 5 minutes. Remove the seitan from the steamer, don’t unwrap yet, and cool on the kitchen counter for 20 minutes before using. For best fl avor and texture, cool the seitan to room temperature, then chill overnight. Store chilled in a tightly covered container and consume within 7 days for best flavor. If desired, wrap and freeze the seitan and use within 2 months; to defrost, leave it in the refrigerator overnight.
5. Alternatively, you can bake the seitan in a preheated 350°F oven for 30 minutes. Make sure to leave room in the foil pouches even if you’re baking the seitan; it will expand during baking too! Cool and store as directed.
From Salad Samurai by Terry Hope Romero. Reprinted with permission from Da Capo Lifelong, © 2014
Terry is the author of several bestselling and award-winning cookbooks. In 2011 she was named Favorite Cookbook Author by Vegnews. Terry lives, cooks, and eats in Queens, NYC. For more information about Terry and her work visit her website: http://veganlatina.com/ or find her on Facebook: Terry Hope Romero, Vegan Nerdista Cookbookista or Twitter: terryhope