Vegan

Beer Battered Kung Pao Cauliflower Tacos

I like to taco things that shouldn’t be tacoed. Speaking of, "tacoed" is another one of those words that Autocorrect and I disagree on the validity of, like beerified and hangry. 

And while we are on the topic of things people will disagree with me on, I’m fairly certain there is more than one person who would disagree with my decision to put all the things into tortillas and call them tacos. These are not my people. 

You’re on my side with this, I’m pretty sure. Because if I put anything in a homemade tortilla, hand it to you with a beer, you’ll eat it. And you’ll let me call it a taco even if it’s fairly ridiculous to do so. "You made me a cake taco!" you would say, and eat it even if it’s pretty insane. That’s why you’re my people, nothing is off-limits when it comes to handheld dinners and beer. 

These tacos do happen to be my new favorite accidentally vegan meal so anyone against my tacoing kung pao cauliflower doesn’t get any. It’s harsh but necessary, we need to have some limits with those people anyway. 

My recipe for Homemade Beer Tortillas 

Balsamic Stout Mushroom Sandwich with Chipotle Guac and Caramelized Leeks

It’s (almost) here. After more than 2 years in the making, it’s finally coming together. The cookbook that started with a vague idea and morphed into Lush: A Season-by-Season Celebration of Craft Beer and Produce is coming to life.   It’s up for pre-order on Amazon, and even though I have to wait a few more months before I get a physical copy in my grubby paws, I’m SO thrilled to see the cover come to life, see the design of the inside page, and have it available to order!

It’s a book full of the amazing craft beer I love, the seasonal produce I can’t get enough of, and the recipes I can’t wait to share with you. It’s by far my favorite thing I’ve ever done in my professional life.

You have been amazing through this process. From the first post when I was just starting to write Lush, to the encouragement you give me daily on Instagram.

So, thank you, this book is for you, for coming on this journey with me. I’m so excited to see what’s next.

Balsamic Stout Mushroom Sandwich with Chipotle Guac and Caramelized Leeks

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Servings 4 servings

Ingredients

  

For the mushrooms:

• 12 ounces stout beer
• ½ cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 4 large Portobello mushrooms stems removed

For the leeks:

• 2 large leeks
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon sugar
• 2 tablespoons stout beer

For the guacamole:

• 2 large avocados
• 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
• 1 chipotle pepper in adobo minced
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

For the sandwiches:

• 4 Kaiser rolls or burger buns split and toasted
• 2 large tomatoes sliced

Instructions

 

• In a large Ziplock bag add the beer, balsamic, salt, garlic powder, and pepper.

  Add the mushrooms, sealing the bag to remove as much air as possible.

  Allow to marinate at room temperature for one hour or in the fridge overnight.

  Remove mushrooms from marinade. 
• While the mushrooms marinate, make the leeks. Cut the root off and slice lengthwise to expose the inner layers where dirt hides. Wash well under cool water making sure to remove the grit between the leaves. Thinly slice the leeks, discarding the dark green portion. 
• Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the leeks, salt and sugar, cooking until the leeks have softened and are starting to brown. Add the beer. Cook until the leeks have turned a dark golden and the beer is gone. Make sure to cook over medium to medium-low heat, if the heat is too high the leeks will burn before they caramelize. 
• Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until very hot. Add the mushrooms, cooking on each side until seared and softened, about 3 minutes per side (mushrooms can also be cooked on a hot grill with oiled grates). 
• Add the flesh of the avocados, cilantro, chipotle peppers, salt, and lime juice to a bowl. Mash with a vegetable masher until well combined. 
• Add the mushrooms to the buns, top with guacamole and tomatoes. Serve immediately. 

Sweet Potato Stout Shepard’s Pie (Meatless). Vegan, full of warm deliciousness, and freezer friendly. 

Some days just making it to dinner feels like an accomplishment. After rage-cleaning your house because you spent too much time reading the news. After seriously considering faking an illness to stay in bed. After realizing that the hint of gray that’s peeking through the windows at noon is all the sun you’re gonna get today, and maybe for quite a while longer.

Baking helps, I promise. You get to feel like you did something, made something, provided something. You get to lose yourself in the task of it and force those other rage-inducing thoughts to the back of the shelf for a bit.

You also get to eat, and that’s always a win.

Today I decided to beer-ify a childhood favorite, that just seemed to be appropriate. I decided to make it vegan, because if I have beer, sweet potatoes, and caramelized leeks I don’t need much else. Also, it makes me feel healthy and that makes me less likely to want to stay in bed all day tomorrow.

This also freezes well, so that you can make a double batch and maybe bring it to someone who may need a little warm, beerified comfort. Because we’re all in this together.

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Sweet Potato Stout Shepard’s Pie (Meatless)

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

For the topping:
• 3 lbs sweet potatoes
• ¼ cup almond milk (or sour cream of choice)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
For the filling:
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 large leeks, sliced (white and light green parts only
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1 rib celery, diced
• 1 lbs (16 oz) sliced mushrooms
• 2 teaspoons sage leaf, minced
• 1 teaspoon rosemary, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 2 tablespoons flour
• ½ cup stout beer
• 1 cup corn kernels
• 1 cup vegetable broth

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into chunks, add to a large pot of salted boiling water. Cook until fork tender, drain and return to pot.
3. Add the almond milk, salt, and garlic powder. Mash until well combined.
4. Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large skillet. Add the leeks, carrots and celery, cooking until softened.
5. Add the mushrooms, cook until darkened and softened.
6. Stir in the sage, rosemary, salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder. Sprinkle with flour, stir until the flour has been moistened. Pour in the beer, scraping to deglaze the pan.
7. Stir in the corn and vegetable broth. Simmer until thickened.
8. Pour into am 8x8 pan. Spread the sweet potatoes over the top of the pan.
9. Bake until filling is bubbly, about 15 minutes.
10. Serve warm.

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A few weeks ago I stopped a radio interview, mid-conversation, to correct the interviewer.

I don’t ever do this. I love talking to people who don’t know beer, who want to ask questions. People who have genuine interest in learning about a subject they have only scratched the surface of. Sometimes I get someone who just pretends to know about beer. It makes things awkward. I’ll let a few things slide, like the radio guy I adore who keeps referring to all beer as "lagers" even when he’s actually talking about ales. We’ll just move forward, no need to correct. But then sometimes it’s just too much and I have to shut things down for a 30 second beer-geek rant. It started a bit like this:

Interviewer: "So this is a big season for beer people, right?! I mean harvest beer! I love harvest beer, you know, because I can’t get enough pumpkin. I love anything that tastes like pumpkins!"

So we stopped to talk about harvest beers. The fact that "harvest" actually refers to hop harvest and beers made with freshly harvested hops. Hops are only harvested once a year making the beer made that special time of year—that small window of time when you can use freshly harvested hops—incredibly rare and sought after. But only if your brewery is within driving distance of the farm, hops start to go bad fairly quickly. The rest of the year you can only use dried hops in one form or another. Harvest is a big deal for us. No matter where we are, it’s the first beer we want to try if we see it on tap. After all, it’s only a matter of time before all the wet hopped kegs are dry and the moment has passed.

The good news is that I got to talk about hop harvest and what a huge deal it is, especially in the Pacific Northwest where 80% of the hops in the USA are grown. I also got to talk about how beer people will push a case of pumpkin beer down the stairs just to get to a fresh hop beer. I was nice, because we’ve all been there. We’ve all been in a situation when we though we knew what we were talking about, but really had no idea. I thanked the interviewer for letting me talk about fresh hop beers, they are my favorite right now. And I hope fresh hop beer sales went up just a tick in that broadcast network. Even if it meant that pumpkin beer sales went down.

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Slow Cooker Gojuchang Stout Black Bean Soup

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

• 1 lbs dried black beans
• ½ sweet white onion, diced
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 tbs tomato paste
• 12 ounces smoked stout or porter
• 4 cups broth (vegetable or beef)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• ½ tsp cumin
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 2 tbs Gochujang Korean hot sauce*
• 1 large avocado, diced
• ½ cup cilantro, chopped

Instructions

1. Add the beans, onions, carrots, bell pepper, tomato paste, beer, broth, salt, pepper, cumin, garlic powder, smoked paprika and hot sauce to a slow cooker, stir to combine.
2. Cook on low for 10 hours or high for 6 hours, stir occasionally if possible.
3. Ladle into bowls, top with avocado and cilantro before serving.

Notes

--Gojuchang is a Korean hot sauce that is easy to find in the Asian section of most major super markets, even Target. It's sweet, spicy and smokey. --You don't need to pre soak the beans, the beer does a great job of breaking them down and making them creamy inside. -- If you have time, sautéing the onions, carrots and bell peppers for 10 minutes before adding to the slow cooker will improve the final flavor.

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I use this slow cooker (affiliate link).

Corn and Black Bean Enchiladas with Chipotle Stout Red Sauce

Let’s say you had someone coming over for dinner.

This is a person you like, a person that happened to be vegan. But for you, that’s not a big deal. You’ve got this. Except you don’t. Because salad is boring, and pasta is predictable. You don’t want anything complicated, you want the "this old thing?" version of a meal.

But then you freeze up. It’s a simple dinner, a "I hardly have more than 20 minutes to throw this together" meal, but it still has to be great. So you go back to your childhood comfort foods. And although what your mom made was less "enchiladas" and more of a "burrito casserole," it was still one of your favorites.

Tortillas are vegan. So is corn and beans and avocados. Beer is vegan, for the most part. And even though you still put cotija cheese on half of it, it’s still a damn good meal, vegan or not. Because produce is amazing and celebrating it in a big 'ol pan of spicy sauce will a malty stout should be something that everyone does more often.

Because plants are awesome.

This is how I make corn tortillas, once you start, you’ll never go back to store bought.

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Corn and Black Bean Enchiladas with Chipotle Stout Red Sauce

Yield: 2-4 servings

Ingredients

Sauce:
• 2 tbs cornstarch
• 2 tbs tomato paste
• ½ cup tomato sauce
• 1 chipotle chili in adobo, finely minced
• 2 tbs adobo sauce
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• ½ tsp onion powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp cumin
• ¾ cup stout
Enchiladas:
• 2 large avocados
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp pepper
• 8-10 homemade or good quality corn tortillas
• 1 can (425g) black beans, rinsed and drained
• kernels from one ear of corn
• ¼ cup cotija cheese (optional. Omit for vegan)
• ¼ cup chopped cilantro

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Add the cornstarch, tomato paste and tomato sauce to a pot, whisk until well combined. Add to medium heat, stir in the chipotles, adobo sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, cumin and stout.
3. Allow to simmer until slightly thickened, about five minutes.
4. In a small bowl mash together the avocados, salt and pepper.
5. Heat the tortillas slightly to make them more pliable.
6. One at a time spread tortillas with avocado, fill with black beans and corn, roll tightly.
7. Place into an 8X8 pan in a tight row.
8. Pour the sauce evenly over the pan.
9. Bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes or until warm and bubbly.
10. Top with remaining ingredients, serve warm.

Notes

*For an 9x13 pan, double the recipe

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