While my kitchen is quite equipped in terms of gadgets and ingredients, it doesn’t really have space going for it, so I find myself missing cooking large scale dinners for people. When I found out two days before Thanksgiving that a holiday that I could cook for would be hosted at my parent’s house for the first time in quite a while, I jumped on the opportunity to cook. My full day of class on Tuesday was seemingly neverending, but I spent the last couple hours researching menus, reading through books, and deciding on recipes. I was not going to settle for another holiday of bread, salad, and vegetables while staring longingly at all the delicious vegan feasts on the internet. I want to eat more than vegetables and bread, mofos! I don’t care if I have to eat leftovers for three days (actually I do care. very much. yum) or that there’s already two potato dishes planned (that I can’t eat…which is why I’m cooking more, duh!), I’m going all out!
Here is a teaser of the final vegan Thanksgiving feast:
It was too late to buy a pre-made roast or Tofurkey, so I was set on making my own seitan. Which I kind of wanted to do anyway. I’ve never had a not-turkey tofurky roast type thing for Thanksgiving, so I decided to stop being a masochist and make Joni’s Seitan en Croute. It was surprisingly very easy to make. The seitan dough mixed right up in the stand mixer and the puff pastry was ready to go. I’ll admit I had to google a refresher course on lattice pastry crust, but it turned out to be quite straightforward.
The only alteration I made to the recipe was the addition of apples and sage. I steered away from adding large apple slices to the dough or as a filling for the roast, fearful the cooked apple would create a texture akin to apple pie. Instead, I subbed spiced apple cider for some of the vegetable broth and chopped up an apple into very tiny pieces and kneaded them into the dough. Many of the pieces ended up falling out, so I sauteed those with onions and garlic and stuffed them in the center of the roast as a filling. The addition of sage was easy. I just added a few teaspoons into the dough with the other spices. The liquid smoke I used was also apple-flavored.
Verdict? Even with all the apple-y goodness, the other flavors overshadowed it and I didn’t really taste apple. I wasn’t complaining though because everything about this roast was delicious. It was the perfect texture, avoiding both extremities of gummy and dry, and the flaky pastry crust was the greatest. Now I would like to encase everything in pastry.
No plain steamed vegetables allowed. Ever. These are maple mustard potatoes and beans from Vegan with a Vengeance, with the addition of Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes.
I just received a copy of Dynise Balcavage‘s new book, Celebrate Vegan. This book is going to save holidays for me. Every holiday you can think of is represented in this book with a complete menu. I was going to make the Thanksgiving menu, but ended up mixing and matching from different menus of the book, and recipes all over the internet and other books. I’m definitely going to make a complete menu from this book soon though!
These are apple cider cranberry donut holes, a variation on a new recipe of mine, apple cider donuts!
Plated! I didn’t make the mashed potatoes, bread, or cranberry sauce, but they were all vegan-friendly. The gravy is the mushroom gravy from Celebrate Vegan!
Leftovers lasted forever and ever. I brought a bag of Dandie’s with me, so I made some marshmallow sweet potatoes because I was feeling gross and nostalgic for the non-vegan version from the previous day.
I first noticed Tami Noyes when she joined the PPK and began posting photos of the gorgeous entrees she creates. Just take a look at her blog, 
From cookbook testing to Food Network Fridays to her own creations, Tami does it all! She was a cookie tester for me, and has also tested for numerous other vegan cookbook authors. I was also able to meet Tami and her husband Jim at the Chicago Diner over the summer!
