Pumpkin pie

Most of my friends (mainly the vegan ones) love to cook and this is great. From time to time we exchange recipes, tips and even products (I enjoy sending food gifts). Cinthia is one of these friends. She lives in Brazil and I sent her a while ago a box that had, between other stuff, nutritional yeast (we can't find it in Brazil). She made a recipe called "Escondidinho de abobora e PVT" (it's really hard to translate this cause "esconder" means "hide" but "escondidinho" has nothing close to it in English as far as I know... but "abobora" means pumpkin and "PVT" is  "TVP", texturized vegetable protein). A few weeks ago Matteo got me a huge pumpking and I really wanted to try some new recipe and I went for this one. It looks like a pie but it also sounds like a potato/pumpkin pure.


Well, let's get down to the recipe so you can figure it out what it is! And thank you Cinthia for it ;)

"Escondidinho de abobora e PVT"

Ingredients:

 

- 1 kg pumpkin

- 2 medium potatoes

- 1 tablespoon vegetal margarine

- water

- 180g of fine texturized vegetable protein (TVP)

- 2 tablespoon olive oil

- 1 small onion

- 1 teaspoon minced garlic

- 340g ready tomato sauce

- Salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, fresh basil, fresh oregano to taste.

 Preparation:
 Peel the potatoes and pumpkin and cut into cubes. Cook them separately in water, because they have different cooking times. When they are really soft, remove from heat. Squeeze the potatoes with a masher (or a fork). Try to dry the pumpkin first with your fingers to squeeze out excess water. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes and pumpkin,  add the margarine and salt to taste (and if necessary water). The puree can not be too much soft (got to have a firmer consistency). Keep stirring it constantly until the desired point. Remove from heat and set aside. Meanwhile, soak the soy protein (with warm water). In a heated pan add the olive voil and fry the onion and garlic. Add the TVP. Lower the heat and add the tomato sauce and a cup of water. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, fresh basil, fresh oregano, and with the pot half-covered, let the sauce ascertain. Once you are done, remove from heat. Take a rectangular bowl. Place a first layer of puree, then the protein with the sauce and, finally, another layer of puree. Sprinkle nutritional yeast on top and bake in the oven temperature to 200 ° C from 20 to 30 minutes.
 PS. I've added a layer of spinach leaves between the sauce and the second puree and it tasted delicious.

Live for better days *

I will be so busy this August that I have no idea about when and how often I will be able to write here! But this is great! I got an amazing project to do in my professional area (journalism) and I'm also baking more vegan cupcakes (this will be the second week with the vegan cupcakes being sold at the other Govinda's branch and I'm really excited!). And in the end of the month we're going to Ieper Fest, my favorite hardcore festival ever. Hope I can find some free time to cook and post here, but if I don't, I have good reasons, haven't I?!

Last week I decided to try a recipe of the Brazil Nut blog. Andrea has always great vegan recipes (in Portuguese) there. I wanted to use things I had at home, so my choice was the potatoes + mushrooms fried balls. I changed her recipe a little bit, so I decided to post it here. It's easy, fast and delicious!


Ingredients:

* 450 grams of potatoes cut into cubes (I used 5 medium potatoes)
* 2 tablespoons vegan margarine
* 170g of mushrooms, chopped
* 4 garlic cloves, crushed (we love garlic too, so I also used 4, but you can use less if you want)
* Wheat flour
* Salt, pepper and other herbs that you like

Place the sliced potatoes in a pan with boiling water and a little salt and let them cook for 10 minutes, until they are soft. Drain well the potatoes and mash them, in the same way to make smashed potatoes (or potatoes puree).


Meanwhile, melt the margarine in a frying pan. Add the mushrooms and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and the garlic at the smashed potatoes (I used the liquid sauce instead of water to mix everything).

Make the balls (or small burgers) with your hands. Roll the balls/burgers in wheat flour and into bread crumbs to get a thick coating. I fried them in a non-stick frying pan without no oil for 5/7 minutes. You can also roast them instead of frying.



(* Ignite – Our Darkest Days)