Beanball Sub Review

BEANBALL SUB

Source: Veganomicon Cookbook

Course: Main Course

Ingredients

• 1 (20-ounce) can kid­ney beans rinsed and drained about 3 cups
• 2 ta­ble­spoons soy sauce
• 2 ta­ble­spoons steak sauce or toma­to paste
• 2 ta­ble­spoons olive oil plus ad­di­tion­al for fry­ing or bak­ing
• 2 cloves gar­lic grat­ed or minced fine­ly
• ¼ tea­spoon grat­ed lemon zest
• ½ cup plain bread crumbs
• ¼ cup vi­tal wheat gluten
• ½ tea­spoon dried oregano
• ¼ tea­spoon dried thyme
• Marinara Sauce
• 2 cups fresh spinach leaves well washed
• 4 hoagie rolls split open
• 1 recipe pine nut cream

Directions

1. Mash the kid­ney beans in a mix­ing bowl un­til no whole beans are left. (We start with a pota­to mash­er and then use a fork to get any rebel beans that refuse to mash.) You don’t want them to be com­plete­ly smooth, you should still be able to rec­og­nize that they are kid­ney beans. Add the soy sauce, steak sauce, 2 ta­ble­spoons of the olive oil, the gar­lic, lemon zest, bread crumbs, wheat gluten, and herbs, and use a fork to mix ev­ery­thing to­geth­er. Use your hands to knead the mix­ture for about a minute, un­til ev­ery­thing is re­al­ly well com­bined and firm.
2. Roll the bean mix­ture in­to wal­nut-​size balls (you should have twelve to fif­teen of them).
3. Grease a rimmed bak­ing sheet with olive oil. Place the balls on the sheet and then driz­zle them with a lit­tle more oil, to coat. Bake for about 15 min­utes, un­til light­ly browned on the bot­tom, then flip them and bake for an­oth­er 10 min­utes.
4. PRE­PARE THE recipes of the first three com­po­nents. Pre­heat oven to 350º F. Place Bean­balls on a tray and top with about 1 cup of mari­nara and all of the pine nut cream. Bake for 20 to 25 min­utes, un­til pine nut cream is light­ly browned. Spread more mari­nara sauce on one side of each roll and dis­tribute the Bean­balls even­ly among the sam­mich­es, lay­er­ing the spinach leaves over them. Top lib­er­al­ly with more mari­nara sauce. Close your sammiches, slice in half on the diagonal, and serve.

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Notes: I skipped the pine nut cream to save time and I need to plan to make it when I can use the rest of the cream in something. I used Daiya mozzarella instead and it was great. The bean balls were so easy to make. Next time I'll double the recipe and freeze some. I left out the olive oil and just used olive oil cooking spray to coat the pan and they came out fine. I want to try them with spaghetti. The texture was very much like a meatball. Veganomicon is THE cookbook. Even non-vegans would love it.

Vegan Eggplant Subs

This eggplant sub was a variant from a recipe in Clean Eating Magazine.  It was super messy but really good.

Preheat your oven to broil. Take one eggplant and cut into thin slices.  Spray them with an olive oil cooking spray and sprinkle with a little salt. Spread the slices onto a baking sheet and broil them, 6 minutes, flipping them over half way.

Change the temp of the oven to 350.  (This would be a good time to put in some green beans to roast. Toss them with olive oil, garlic, and a little salt.)

While the eggplant is cooking, make the sauce. In a sauce pan heat up 2 cloves minced garlic in a splash of oil until garlic is cooked. Add tomato sauce (I like to use Pomi.) Season it with Italian Seasoning Herb Blend and 2 tbsp Vegan Parmesan Cheese. Let it simmer for a about 10 minutes.

Cut a whole grain french bread baguettes into sandwich sized pieces.  Split them open and assemble the sandwiches. Place sauce on bottom slices, top with eggplant, a bit more sauce, and sprinkle with vegan mozzarella cheese. Put the top slice on and place in oven for about 10 minutes.

Ingredients used:
Eggplant
Extra virgin olive oil, spray and oil
Salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced
Pomi tomato puree
Galaxy Foods Vegan Parmesan Cheese
Daiya Mozzarella shreds
1 teaspoon Italian Season Blend…..or thereabouts…..I didn't measure
Whole grain french bread baguette from grocery store bakery
Fresh green beans for roasting (an alternative to french fries)

Faux Tuna Salad….Really!

Have you heard of Happy Herbivore? She writes fantastic vegan recipes and here's one I was skeptical about. I love tuna fish salad. In fact, it was the hardest thing for me to give up when I transitioned to a vegan diet recently. Years ago, when I was a vegetarian, tuna salad was the one thing I craved the most and it started me back to eating meat, fish and poultry. So to find a recipe that claimed to taste like the real thing was promising but come on….how could chick peas really taste like tuna?  And then I noticed something for the first time. When I opened the can of chick peas, it actually smelled reminiscent of canned tuna!

Check out HH's site. Here's the recipe: Happy Herbivore Mock Tuna Salad

I am truly amazed. If I hadn't known, the first bite would have fooled me for sure. It's very tuna salad-like but doesn't have the "fishy" taste that some people dislike about tuna. There is also no fishy smell so it's perfect to take to work when you share an office.

Note: original recipe used kelp, which I didn't have. I'll have to acquire some soon!

Grilled Apple Bacon Cheese with Roasted Red Onion Mayo

Grilled Apple Bacon Cheese with Roasted Red Onion Mayo

This is a Paula Deen recipe that was too good for such a simple sandwich. It's the roasted red onion mayonnaise that does it.

Ingredients

Roasted Red Onion Mayo:

• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• 1 cup mayonnaise

Set oven to 375. On a rimmed baking sheet, place the chopped onions, olive oil and salt and pepper. Roast 20-25 minutes. Once done, let them cool. Add onions and mayonnaise to a food processor and chop until finely chopped. 

Sandwich (for one, double or triple as needed):

• 2 slices (1/2-inch-thick) sourdough, multigrain or another hearty bread (I used an Artisan Asiago Cheese Bread)
• 4 slices thick-cut bacon, cooked crisp
• 4 slices Cheddar
• 1/2 Granny Smith apple, cored, sliced thin (a mandoline helps)
• Roasted Red Onion Mayo

I only needed 2 slices of cheese per sandwich.  Assemble the sandwiches: mayo on top and bottom slices of bread. Cheese, apple, bacon and cheese. Once the cheese melts it helps keep everything sealed in.  The recipe says to grill on a pan on the oven but I used a panini press.  Therefore, I skipped the butter the bread stage. 

This was so delicious.  The mayo really does make it great.  I will make this again and again. 

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Chicken and Black Bean Grilled Sandwiches

This recipe came from my Clean Eating 2 cookbook. The only thing I changed was the bread because it said to slice a baguette into 32 slices and make 16 little sandwiches. I needed to be able to make something fast so I used whole grain sourdough bread slices and make 4 sandwiches.

Cooked chicken: I cooked 6 chicken cutlets on the stove top and cut them up into little pieces once they were done. What ever chicken didn't make it onto a sandwich can be used tomorrow for something else.  You could also use Rotisserie chicken that's already cooked. Any chicken will do is the point.

Heat a frying pan on medium heat.

1 cup cooked black beans (if canned make sure they are drained and rinsed.)
2 teaspoons dried cilantro. I had fresh so I tore off half a palmful.
1/4 c. water
salt
cayenne pepper (I used about a teaspoon of chili powder instead)

Blend the above 5 ingredients in a food processor until smooth.
Spread the black bean mix onto the bread slices, top with chicken and shredded cheddar cheese (about 1 tablespoon.) Top with another slice of bread.

Spray each side of the sandwich with olive oil cooking spray and place in pan. I put a press on top of the sandwiches so they would grill nicely.

Cook each side a few minutes or until the cheese is melted and the bread is toasty.

Now maybe it's because my blood sugar was low but these were excellent. I could have upped the chili powder so next time I'll add more.

Vegetarian panini

Original recipe site


This would have been a great sandwich if the avocado had been ripe. But the flavors were awesome.  And I don't even care for tomatoes! It's a bit time consuming for a sandwich, what with all the chopping and grilling.  And I had to alter mine a bit because I couldn't find focaccia bread at my grocery store. 


Ingredients:


focaccia bread (I used a 5 grain baguette)
tomatoes
avocado
red onion
mozzarella cheese
fresh basil
pesto


Slice baguette into sandwich portions. I made 4. Thinly slice tomatoes, avocado and red onion.  I cut all of the seeds out of the tomato to prevent the sandwich from getting too mushy. Chop the basil. Spread a thin layer of pesto on both top and bottom slices of bread. Add the cheese, tomato and basil. The original recipe says to season this with salt and pepper but I didn't and it wasn't missed at all. Add avocado and red onion slices. Add the top of the bread and cook on a grill, stove top grill pan (which I used), or whatever you have.  It's a panini so you want it to be pressed down. Note to self: get panini maker! I kept the oven on warm so that when one sandwich was done I could keep it warm while continuing to work. 


I made this for an easy supper and one sandwich was filling enough for me. Bobby had 2. So all in all very tasty. I look forward to trying it again with a ripe avocado.  

Turkey Panini with Sun-dried Tomato Spread

Original Recipe

Tonight I was faced with a cranky toddler who didn't want to be apart from me for more than a few minutes.  "Mommy! Hug!!"  Every time I plan my menu for the week, I try to include one or two really fast meals. Good thing. This sandwich was what I made.  I altered the recipe just a tad.  You can see the original recipe at Cleaneatingmagazine.com or click the link above. I tried to take pictures but the magazine did a much better job of it.

1 whole grain baguette, cut into 4 quarters (I found a 5 grain Italian baguette at Publix.)
low-sodium deli sliced turkey
mozzarella cheese, sliced (I have another recipe planned that calls for shredded mozzarella so I decided to buy it pre-shredded.  This turned out to be a mistake as it didn't melt very easily. Next time I'll get fresh mozzarella. It tastes better anyway.)
Sun-dried tomato spread. I used this:

Arugula 

To assemble: 

Spread sun-dried tomato spread on bread, add turkey and cheese.  You can either grill these, use a grill pan stovetop, or a skillet. You just need something to smoosh them down.  Cook for about 3 minutes per side, pressing down as needed.  Once nice and toasty and melty, open the bread and add the arugula. 

Eat! These were SO good. It reminded me of something and I can't put my finger on it, which is driving me crazy. A little like a pizza or like spaghetti I've had somewhere....  The sun-dried tomatoes makes this special.