In Which I Make The Greatest Cream Pie Ever Eaten By Humansby Randi / November 16, 2013
Hey so apparently it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow! Did you know, because I kind of forgot. Hence I’m giving you my required Thanksgiving recipes and posts this late in the game. You have been looking at blogs for weeks now, inundated with recipes for stuffing, seitan roasts, pumpkin this and that. Bu if, like me, you are deciding today what to make for tomorrow, then make this! It’s easy and delicious and has pumpkin; what more could you ask for? Also, I’m pretty sure the Pilgrims didn’t eat it, which I think is a main criterion for Thanksgiving food.
Last week’s (ok, it might have been longer than that; I’m verrbizz) cookie pie crust was pretty amazing, so I decided to do the same sort of thing but with pumpkin pie. The proper cookie base for Thanksgiving/pumpkin is, of course, gingerbread, so that’s what we’re making here. If you don’t like gingerbread (because I know some people don’t, bless their hearts), you can easily and deliciously sub this cinnamon cookie crust in for this. If you don’t like pumpkin, I’m very sorry.
Last week’s (ok, it might have been longer than that; I’m verrbizz) cookie pie crust was pretty amazing, so I decided to do the same sort of thing but with pumpkin pie. The proper cookie base for Thanksgiving/pumpkin is, of course, gingerbread, so that’s what we’re making here. If you don’t like gingerbread (because I know some people don’t, bless their hearts), you can easily and deliciously sub this cinnamon cookie crust in for this. If you don’t like pumpkin, I’m very sorry.
PUMPKIN MOUSSE PIE
WITH GINGERBREAD COOKIE CRUST
WITH GINGERBREAD COOKIE CRUST
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For the gingerbread cookie crust:
Ingredients:
Directions:
For the pumpkin mousse:
Directions:
Assembly:
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Precooked coooookie crust (you know what I’m saying that like, right? Like a certain cereal). 
It’s super puffy at first, like level with the sides… 
…but then it falls a bit 
Using my London tube map dishcloth in honor of their lack of Thanksgiving over there. 
It’s starting to remind me of an egg yolk. Not my intention. |
It’s pretty pretty, yes? (I meant the first pretty like ‘somewhat’, not like an idiot.)
Side boob
I can’t share a picture of a piece of the pie, because I can’t touch it until tomorrow. Oh well. The mixture was delicious! Because of the simple components of the mousse, authentic pumpkin flavor comes through, not just the fall spices of ‘pumpkin-flavored’ stuff. If you like that sort of thing, this is for you! I don’t think you can go wrong with this combination of pumpkin and gingerbread. Happy Thanksgiving! Eat lots of vegan food, and good luck with anti-vegan comments from relatives. Or really any comments.
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The Green Roll at Chelsea Market, NYC: Sushi for Sushi Lovers
Before becoming a vegan, I fancied myself a sushi connoisseur. In high school, my brother and I would challenge each other to eat the craziest of the crazy rolls on offer at sushi restaurants. Once I went vegan, I didn’t really expect awesome sushi to be on my radar anymore. And for the first few years, I was right: My sushi travails always led to cucumber roll after cucumber roll after avocado roll after, if I was lucky, cucumber-avocado roll.
But lately, things seem to be changing for the better in the vegan sushi arena. I had the most incredible raw sushi ever in Croatia, and now every time I go to NYC, I get to eat at least once a day at The Green Roll. (Yes, I have gotten both lunch and dinner from here before.) This little sushi counter rivals The Cinnamon Snail truck for the food I’m most guaranteed to eat on my NYC weekends.
The Green Roll counter in Chelsea Market is an outpost of Beyond Sushi restaurant in the East Village. I’ve not been to the sit-down restaurant yet, but I’ve eaten everything on offer at The Green Roll at least twice. The only bad part about the sushi is, it’s so delicious that I rarely wait long enough to take pictures, let alone plate the food.
But lately, things seem to be changing for the better in the vegan sushi arena. I had the most incredible raw sushi ever in Croatia, and now every time I go to NYC, I get to eat at least once a day at The Green Roll. (Yes, I have gotten both lunch and dinner from here before.) This little sushi counter rivals The Cinnamon Snail truck for the food I’m most guaranteed to eat on my NYC weekends.
The Green Roll counter in Chelsea Market is an outpost of Beyond Sushi restaurant in the East Village. I’ve not been to the sit-down restaurant yet, but I’ve eaten everything on offer at The Green Roll at least twice. The only bad part about the sushi is, it’s so delicious that I rarely wait long enough to take pictures, let alone plate the food.
I think this roll is the Spicy Mang, but who knows. It doesn’t even matter what you order. Everything is great and fresh and sometimes spicy and sometimes creamy and just man alive I want some now.
The two individual pieces are the enoki, long-stemmed and tiny-capped white mushrooms that kind of look like sprouts. I’m obsessed with mushrooms, and this fun-looking kind is now one of my favorites. The enoki individual pieces come with a dollop of mushroomy paste on top. As you can see, the extra sauces accompanying the sushi come in little plastic tubes, instead of the always messy little plastic tubs with click-lids that always get all over the place. Suffice it to say, these tubes are ingenious! You just squeeze the thick, creamy sauces out and they don’t spill out when you put them down.
The sauces really are the best part. Pictured above is a spicy mayo, reminiscent of the standard spicy orange mayo that comes with spicy tuna rolls in regular sushi places. But this is so much deeper a flavor, and the quality of all the ingredients comes through even in this simple sauce.
The two individual pieces are the enoki, long-stemmed and tiny-capped white mushrooms that kind of look like sprouts. I’m obsessed with mushrooms, and this fun-looking kind is now one of my favorites. The enoki individual pieces come with a dollop of mushroomy paste on top. As you can see, the extra sauces accompanying the sushi come in little plastic tubes, instead of the always messy little plastic tubs with click-lids that always get all over the place. Suffice it to say, these tubes are ingenious! You just squeeze the thick, creamy sauces out and they don’t spill out when you put them down.
The sauces really are the best part. Pictured above is a spicy mayo, reminiscent of the standard spicy orange mayo that comes with spicy tuna rolls in regular sushi places. But this is so much deeper a flavor, and the quality of all the ingredients comes through even in this simple sauce.
 Individual seaweed piece |
 Spicy Mang roll (I think) |
One of the many great things about The Green Roll is that they offer 7 individual pieces for only $1 each, an affordable way to try a bunch of different things. The seaweed roll, at left, was refreshing and light. I love seaweed so much. This piece came with a thickened kind of dark sauce (in the tube) that was so much more than soy sauce. The piece at right I think is another Spicy Mang, with mango, cucumber, avocado, spicy veggies, and black rice. All I know is that orange-y topping is superb. (My usual restaurant reviews are much more detailed, but 1) this isn’t a restaurant and B) the sushi is too fantastic to allow for the time it takes to photograph or take notes.)
My favorite part of The Green Roll’s menu is the assortment of rice paper wraps. I love rice paper wraps, any kind, anytime, anywhere, but these are beyond anything I can get elsewhere. Pictured is the spicy mushroom filled wrap, with spicy cashews, buckwheat noodles, romaine lettuce, sriracha (so spicy!), and three different kinds of braised, grilled, or spicy mushrooms. The sauce for this wrap is the best one – it’s a thick, creamy mushroom goop that is half raw foodie soup and half Thanksgiving mushroom gravy.
Also on offer are the nutty buddy, full of peanuts, noodles, cilantro, jalapeno peanut butter, tofu and more, and the sweet angel, filled with sweet potato, asparagus, chili flakes, noodles, and alfalfa. All of these wraps are fantastic. Everything at The Green Roll is fantastic. I go to NYC all the time for various reasons, and getting a quick and delicious bite from The Green Roll is now high on my list of reasons.
Also on offer are the nutty buddy, full of peanuts, noodles, cilantro, jalapeno peanut butter, tofu and more, and the sweet angel, filled with sweet potato, asparagus, chili flakes, noodles, and alfalfa. All of these wraps are fantastic. Everything at The Green Roll is fantastic. I go to NYC all the time for various reasons, and getting a quick and delicious bite from The Green Roll is now high on my list of reasons.
No bathroom/water review for this one because it’s a to-go counter! However, you can usually find a table in the main part of the market. Also, be warned that it can take a short while for the few people working to finish your order. It’s fast, but not ‘fast-food’ fast. Just be patient. It’s amazing!
Veganizing “Friends”: It’s Pronounced ‘Nes-LAY Too-LOUSuh’
COOOOOKIES!
Oh, I KNOW you know this one! It’s “The One With Phoebe’s Cookies”!! We’ve got everyone exactly in their element: Phoebe being silly and a bit ignorant, Monica absolutely obsessing over getting something perfect, Ross making everything about him (remember “IT’S BATCH 16! BATCH 16 PEOPLE! GET OUT OF THE WAY!”). This episode also has a fantastic Joey & Rachel storyline on Joey’s new boat*, and one of my favorite cold opens EVER. But back to the most important issue – cookies! So, Phoebe’s grandmother had the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, and Monica wants it as her engagement present, so she can one day be the mother who makes the best chocolate chip cookies:
Monica: Hey, I know I what I want!
Chandler: What we want honey.
Monica: No, you don’t want this. I want to have your grandmother’s cookie recipe.
Phoebe: You mean the chocolate chip cookie recipe?
Monica: Uh-huh, yeah.
Phoebe: You mean the one that my grandmother made me swear on her deathbed that I would never let out of our family?
Chandler: Dying people say the craziest things.
Monica: I wanted it for years! I was gonna make cookies for my children.
Phoebe: Break my heart—Oh, all right.
BUT SACRE BLEU!!! Phoebe lost the recipe in the fire*!! She does, however, have a few cookies frozen that were made from that recipe. Monica, the amazing chef she is, is determined to reverse-engineer the recipe from the few finished cookies. She spends dayyyys working and reworking various methods of CCC construction, with dozens of batches both good and, like Batch 16, terrible! And then…and then…and gentlemen, and then…this happens:
All this time, this miraculous recipe was the one ON THE BACK OF THE BAG OF NESTLE TOLL HOUSE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!! (It warrants all caps.) My anger on Monica’s behalf is only lessened by the subtitles in the above video. (I love subtitles; I don’t know why.) To honor our dear Friends, we’re going to make the famous Nestle Toll House chocolate chip recipe found on the back of the chips! And we’re going to veganize it! Since I don’t buy NTH chips (do they even make any that are vegan?) I found the recipe online here. It’s pretty easy to veganize – vegan butter for the butter, and egg subs (I chose flax eggs) for the eggs! Let’s see if they are really the best. Do you think they could actually be better than Dreena’s Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookie? Or Isa’s, or Kelly Peloza’s? SUSPENSE.
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VEGANIZED NESTLE TOLL HOUSE COOKIE RECIPE
INGREDIENTS:
DIRECTIONS:
Finished ball
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Making the flax egg
Man alive that’s a lot of butter!
Creaming the butter and sugars
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So wow, these puffed up like whoa! I think from the egg! Can you believe, the vegan version of the Nestle Toll House cookies are TOO EGGY! They were of course really good, and I particularly enjoyed how slightly salty they were. If you like your cookies puffy and almost cakey, you will love these!! I prefer mine a bit crunchier, so if I made them again, I would cut the egg in half at least. Also, wow they use a lot of butter for my tastes. Wow! So, they are really good, but I don’t think they are better than the above-mentioned 3 stars of vegan chocolate chip cookies. It’s too bad these other recipes didn’t exist 10 or so years ago, because Monica would have flipped out over them and avoided all of these dramazz. Oh well! If cakey and buttery is your thing, go make these yummy cookies!
Editor’s edit: These may be the only cookies that are 100x better hours after baking than they are straight out of the oven! So good, actually! Go make them!
Congratulations on reaching the end of VeganMoFo, for all of my fellow participants! Don’t worry, I will still be Veganizing “Friends” recipes – just not everyday! And if you have any requests, please let me know in the comments.
Giveaway Trivia: Last Chance!!!
Giveaway Trivia: Last Chance!!!
- What was the name of Joey’s boat?
- When out on the water, who does Joey yell at and call a jackass?
- What caused the fire in Phoebe’s apartment?
- In Chandler’s hilarious side-plot, what happens when he plays racquetball with Monica & Ross’s dad?
