IMBB 19: Eat Vegan

By Staximo - settembre 26, 2005

imbb 19: Vegan

This month IMBB is hosted by Becks and Posh. Sam has launched a very difficult theme for me: make something Vegan for someone who will say "I Can't Belive I Ate Vegan!" at the end of the meal.

I could say with any doubt that I'm not vegan. I love meat: tagliatelle al ragù, roast chicken, braised meat with polenta, fried eggs... I love cheese: Stilton, pecorino, brie, mozzarella...
Before this blog event I haven't ever thought about my "secret" vegan life. While I was wandering about the recipes for a vegan meal I realized that, sometimes, I really eat vegan. It's more frequent during summer because there is a great variety of vegetables. In winter, due to cold weather, I follow my animal instinct and I usually cook more caloric and fat meal with meat, cheese and eggs.
The most difficult vegan dish to realize has been the dessert. For me a dessert is usually a cake or is custard based or use puff pastry. The olnly vegan dessert that comes to my mind was a fruit salad with soy ice cream but i don't like it and my mother is allergic to it.

After a lot of day spent thinking about vegan recipe this was the menu of saturday lunch:

Pinzimonio
Pinzimonio (Raw Vegetables with salt and olive oil)

Pomodori Ripieni di Riso
Pomodori ripieni di riso con patate (Tomatoes stuffed with rice and Potatoes)

Calzone alle Mele
Calzone alle mele (Pizza dough filled with apples)

Pinzimonio is just vegetables (carrots, fennels, cherry tomatoes...) served with individual bowls of salt and olive oil. For the presentation I used a big wine bowl filled with yellow and white polenta.

Olio e Pinzimonio

Tomatoes stuffed with rice and Potatoes


This recipe doesn't come from my grandparents, I've seen it on some Italian Forum. In particolar this one is taken from Gennarino. I've changed a little the method of preparation but it is very similar.
Quantities are not very precise because they depends on personal preferences. The only rule is to use 1 Tsp of rice for each tomato and the rice must NOT be parboiled. I've used carnaroli rice.

2 tomatoes for each person
1 table spoon of rice for each tomato
2 cloves garlig
basil leaves (a lot, for 8 tomatoes I used 15-20 big leaves)
1 Tspoon miced parsley (or the equivalent fresh)
1 tsp olive oil for each tomato
salt
Potatoes: 1 for each person or more if you like


Cut the top of the tomatoes and set aside: they will be used as lid.
Carve out the center of each tomato to obtain "tomato bowls". Put the center and the juice of the tomatoes in the food processor. Put inside it also the garlic, the basil leaves, the parsley. Grind everything adding olive oil and salt. The result will be very liquid. Put the tomato mix in a bowl, add the rice and mix well. Cover with plastic paper and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
Peel the potatoes, cut them in slice and, in a bowl, season them with olive oil, salt and rosemary.
After 1 our the rice will have absorbed a lot of tomatoes liquid.
Prehat oven at 200°C. Salt each tomato, stuff with the rice and a little of liquid, cover with the tomato lid and set them in a roasting pan. Set the potatoes beween the tomatoes.

Pomodori ripieni di riso da cuocere

Cover with foil and cook 30 min. Remove the foil, check if the potatoes are quite tender. If so cook withot the foil until the potatoes became light brown. Oterwhise cover the pan with foil and cook until the potatoes are tender.

Calzone alle mele

For each person put an half apple sliced on a disk (15 cm of diameter) of pizza dough.
Add 1 Tsp of brown sugar and a big pinch of cinnamon.
Close the dough like "half moon" and bake at 200°C until the dough is light brown.
Next time I've to put more apple slices inside the "calzone"!!!

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3 Commenti

  1. Simona
    I love your italiano take on this Vegan IMBB. Especially the apple calzone - that sounds just the thing for chilly October nights.
    I used to be a vegan back in the lat 80s actually, and then one of my favourite dishes was 'spaghetti aglio, olio e pepperoncino' (not sure about my Italian spelling there), and it never failed to satisfy me, even though I omitted the parmigiano from the top.
    thanks so much for taking part,
    Sam

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  2. Thanks to you for hosting this event.
    Being vegan for a day has been very funny and also a little bit difficult. But I think that could be very useful: I will try to be more "vegan" in the future, it's a healthy way of life! And it is also tasty :o)

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  3. What a beautiful post. When I was a kid, I used to use leftover pizza dough to make apple "pizzas", but I like the apple pockets so much more!

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