Vegan Southern Feast: Sausage Okra Gumbo, Bacon Cornbread, Maple Bourbon Sweet Potatoes, Perfect Brussels Sprouts

August 14, 2015

The Green Roll at Chelsea Market, NYC: Sushi for Sushi Lovers

September 11, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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!

Yummy Pasta Alert! Apple-Sage Sausage, Chard, & Cashew-Pistachio Cream

July 29, 2014

I only made this because I like using hyphens. And because it’s uhhhmazing! This is rapidly becoming my favorite pasta dish. It’s really easy but it tastes like it’s difficult. You cook the best type of Field Roast sausage, the apple sage kind, with its perfectly paired green – rainbow swiss chard – and put it over fusilli. Then, you whip up this amazing creamy cheesy sauce in two seconds in your blender, and voila! Breakfast! No that’s from “Rookie of the Year”! I mean dinner! Or breakfast! Whatever you want dude!

I like to pair this pasta with a simple green salad without dressing, because I’ll inevitably wipe up the remaining sauce with the leaves, as I do with any salad and any sauce. Also, I used quinoa-brown rice pasta (from Trader Joe’s) for this, so it can be easily made gluten-free. Of course, I’m not sure about any of the sauce ingredients being gluten-free. And, of courser, the Field Roast sausage is made of gluten, I’m pretty sure. But then even more of courser, most punks nowadays claiming they are gluten-free only mean they don’t want to eat pasta and bread because scary carbs/they don’t understand nutrition and people with real gluten allergies already know what they can and can’t eat so I don’t have to worry about it. So!

Gluten-Free (or Not! Probably Not!) Pasta with Apple-Sage Sausage, Swiss Chard, & Cashew-Pistachio Cream

The foods
Ingredients:

1 pound fusilli pasta (make sure it’s gluten-free because carbs and idiots)
2T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped small
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound Swiss Chard (I love getting the pre-washed bag of rainbow chard from Trader Joe’s), chopped
1 package Field Roast Apple Sage Sausages (4 little wieners), diced in small half-moons

Directions:

Cook the pasta according to package directions and set aside. Don’t leave in the colander in the sink where people might wash dog food off their hands because then you will have to repeat this instruction.
Heat the onion in the oil in a large pot on medium-high heat and cook for about 5 minutes until browning.
Add the garlic and cook for another 2 minutes.
Add the sausage and cook through for about 5 minutes, adding a little water if it sticks too much.
Pour the chard on top of the cooking sausage, adding a tiny bit of water (like less than 1/4C), and cover to let it cook down. The moisture from the chard will help the sausage cook and not stick so don’t add too much water.
When everything is cooked, pour the pasta into the pot and stir everything through.

Cream sauce
Ingredients:

1/2 C raw cashews (buy the pieces; they are cheaper!)
1/3 C raw pistachios
2 cloves garlic
1/2 C unsweetened original almond milk
2t dijon mustard
2t miso
2t tamari
lots and lots of black pepper
1/2C nutritional yeast (NOOCH)
1-2 handfuls of fresh parsley

Directions:

Dump everything in a high-speed blender. (If you only have a regular blender, you’ll prob have to pre-soak your nuts.)
Blend until smooth.
Pour over the pasta.
Enjoy!!!!

Party girls don’t get hurt

Can’t feel anything, when will I learn

I push it down, push it downnnn

123 123 drink, throw em back till I lose count

IIIIII’M GONNA SWIIIIIIING FROM THE CHANDELIEEEERRRR

FROM THE CHANDELIEEEEEERRRR

Yuuummm! You should eat with a fork because it is pasta (and maybe salad). I used a spoon because I don’t like dirtying extra things. Also I usually just use my fingers. And my face.

I really loved the fresh parsley as an addition to an otherwise heavy cream. You can use this sauce in so many ways: over tofu or tempeh, in mashed potatoes (ERMA P. GERD), over pretty much anything you want except ice cream. I hope you enjoy!