Dairy-free Cream of Mushroom Soup (vegan alternatives)

WINNER of the least photogenic food ever!

Is there anything better than cream of mushroom soup? My mom was a big fan of condensed cream of mushroom soup. Like boxes of cans in the basement before Costco existed, even though everything else she made was made from scratch. Look up "canned cream of mushroom soup with chicken recipes" online. That's just one taste of my childhood.

Seeing as it's mid-April and winter still doesn't want to leave us here in Toronto, I find myself craving cream of mushroom soup. But they don't sell ready-made dairy-free cream of mushroom soup at my usual grocery store. I'm not entirely sure they sell it anywhere. Which means that I'm going to spend the better part of an hour making it. I don't really truly remember what canned chicken soup tastes like exactly, but I know that this version has a stronger mushroom flavour and doesn't have that particular sweetness that real dairy tends to have when cooked. But frankly, that sweetness isn't worth a two-day tummy ache, so here we are.

Ingredients

• About 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 1 garlic head
• 250g sliced white button mushrooms
• 250g sliced cremini mushrooms
• 1 can coconut milk
• 2 cups chicken stock (or veggie stock)
• 3 tbsp butter (or vegan butter)
• 3 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1.5 tsp salt, more to taste

Let's do it!

1. Turn on the toaster oven to bake mode and set at 400ºF. Cut the top off the garlic head, drizzle some olive oil over it and wrap up in foil. Throw that in the toaster oven until your kitchen starts smelling super good. About 20 minutes.
2. In a medium sized soup pot, heat up the oil on medium. Add diced onions and sauté until translucent. About 3 minutes.
3. Throw in the mushrooms and stir until the mushrooms have reduced their size by half and let out a good amount of tasty mushroom juice. This took maybe 10 minutes which I mostly spent playing around on my computer and only stirring the mushrooms every couple of minutes. Use your ears, people. If the frying gets louder, that means you're losing liquid. Which means things are going to start burning!
4. Take out half the onions and mushrooms and put them in a blender with the coconut milk. My coconut milk was separated, so the water went into the blender and the cream/fat went into the pot. 
5. Squeeze out the roasted garlic from the skin (careful! It's hot!) and add to the blender. Liquify it all!
6. Add this back to the pot along with half the chicken stock and thyme. Keep this at a low simmer with the lid on.
7. Now to make a roux to thicken the soup up and add some extra rich, fatty flavour. Heat up the butter and flour on medium in a separate small pot. Keep stirring and moving it around so it doesn't burn, breaking it up as it turns into a big ball. Once the mixture turns golden and starts to smell a little toasty, slowly pour in the stock while stirring quickly to break up any clumps.
8. Add this mixture to the soup and bring to a boil for at least a couple of minutes. Add salt to taste.

Vegan enchilladas

Alright, the way I did this wasn't vegan, but it can easily be vegan. These are nowhere near authentic, it's just how I make them. They are stuffed with refried beans and rice, and covered with a spicy tomato sauce.

Ingredients

• 1 can black beans
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• Salt to taste
• Water

• 1/2 cup rice
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• Enough broth to cook the rice (sorry, I don't measure when I cook rice. I just let my Chinese ancestry guide me. Maybe there's directions in the package or something.)

• 1/2 can crushed tomatoes
• 3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced

• Flour tortillas
• Cheese (vegan or otherwise)
• Avocado

Let's do it!

1. In a small sauce pot, heat up the cooking oil (I used bacon grease, but you can use whatever you like.) Drain and rinse the black beans and add to the pot. Stir often. Mash with a potato masher. If it starts sticking to the bottom, add a bit of water. I find that I need to add water quite a bit during the process.
2. Add cumin and salt to taste. Stir until the consistency is like very creamy mashed potatoes. Refried beans: DONE
3. Rinse the rice very well in a sieve to get rid of the starch, otherwise, you won't have the nice, separated grains that I like.
4. Put the rice, broth and garlic in a rice cooker. If you don't have a rice cooker, do whatever it is you do to make rice. Honestly, I can't make rice without a rice cooker. Rice: DONE!
5. Put the crushed tomatoes in a small sauce pot with the chipotle peppers. If you don't like spice, add less peppers. Then.. give the rest of them to a friend? I don't know.
6. Simmer this while the rice is cooking. Sauce: DONE!
7. Put this all in the fridge if you're like me and prefer to assemble the next day

Lunch it up!

1. I didn't want this to be soggy, so I assembled it before work.
2. On a flour tortilla, lay down some refried beans, then rice. 
3. Roll it up and place in a microwavable lunch container, seam side down.
4. Repeat for as many as you'd like.
5. Cover with as much sauce as you'd like and sprinkle with cheese.
6. Take it to work with an avocado and try not to let either get bashed up too much.
7. At work, heat this up in a microwave until hot. Cut up the avocado and place on top (Avocados get brown really easily, which is why I prefer to take them to work whole.)
8. Enjoy!

I ended up with a lot of leftover rice and beans. This is probably good for a maybe 3 or four meals. If you're not into eating the same thing every day, you can place the beans in a freezer bag, squeeze out the air and place it in the freezer. Same thing with the sauce. I've heard that you can freeze rice, but I've never tried it. It's a pretty mild flavour, though, so you can use it as a side in another dish.

Pasta with bacon and brussel sprouts

If you don't like brussel sprouts, this dish is not likely to change your mind. But if you LOVE brussel sprouts, then hurray! I really enjoyed this dish, but it's not the best thing I've ever made. Oddly enough, the Hubster is NOT a fan of brussel sprouts, but still really enjoyed this pasta. Probably because the sauce is basically bacon grease.

Ingredients

• 4 servings of dry pasta
• 4 slices thick cut bacon
• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 cups brussel sprouts, washed and cut in half lengthwise (or in 1/4s. I wish I did this)
• Salt
• Olive oil

Let's do it!

1. Boil the pasta according to directions, but for 1 minute less than specified. When it's done, take the pasta out with a strainer/pasta ladle and put aside. Keep the pasta water. While that's going on, do the rest of the steps.
2. Cut bacon widthwise into thin strips. Fry in a pan until almost crispy. Pour out all but 1 tbsp of the bacon grease and put the bacon in a dish for later. If you're me, you'll be pouring the bacon grease into a mason jar to put in the fridge for later. It's great for making greens taste (and be) less healthy.
3. Throw the brussel sprouts in the pan and stir to coat. Then leave them alone so that they can brown for a few minutes. Stir every few minutes so that every surface is browned, but nothing burns. 
4. Add 2 tbsp or so of olive oil, bacon and pasta. Add one or two ladles of the pasta water, which is full of starch and will help the pasta absorb the flavour. 
5. Stir this around until the pasta is cooked and the water is absorbed.
6. Season with salt (I added a LOT of salt), or parmesan cheese, which will probably mean you can use less salt.

Lunch it up!

I know I have strict rules about not microwaving pasta, but this is all mixed together, and it's really not as good cold. I just put this on a dish and nuked it, and it tasted just as good as the night before. Maybe even better!