The Spicy Meatless Thread... (ya I went there)

I know going into this that this thread is going to get meat bombed... but there's gotta be at least a couple other people on this forum that have herbivore tendencies.  Lately almost everything I have been cooking has been meat-free unless its for the dogs.  I've been toying with recipes and finding ways to get the flavors of dishes that usually have animal muscle as the main feature.  Hopefully some of y'all do the same from time to time and we can swap and share some spicy veggie recipes. I've held off on making this thread for a while because I know the ridicule that will inevitably come, but I guess its better to clog my own thread with my hippy food rather than all the other cooking threads. 
 
So here goes, last night per request I made some arroz congri and tostones.  
 
For the rice and beans, I chop up a green and red bell pepper, 2 onions and about 4-5 cloves of garlic. Cook up that in the pot before adding the rice and beans and sufficient water.  Season it up, and pretty much just leave it on the stove for a while.  I don't have any fresh pods yet so I seasoned my batch up with some smoked naga powder for good measure.  The tostones start by cooking them a bit on each side before pulling them from the pan.

 
After the tostones are cooked and pulled from the pan you gotta squish em dip em in cold water and throw em back in the pan, for the second round of frying. When you pull them out you can season them with whatever you want, I like to make a garlicky spicy sauce concoction to dip them in.  Also, make yourself a guava-lime rum drink for good measure. 

 
Eventually, after a long long time (especially if you use brown rice), your arroz congri will be ready.  

 
 
Happy vegetarian eating! (I also ate left overs this morning covered in cheese and a fried egg)
 
Let's see what you got....

 

[The Hot Pepper]

 
Way to sneak bacon into the meatless thread. How many pages are you going to keep this up for?

 

[JoynersHotPeppers]

Spicy meatless cheese omelette this morning with Joyners Caribbean Blend. It was very spicy as I over did it with the powder but still delicious. 

Easy to get a little crazy with that blend, lots of heat in there!

 

[Weed]

 
Way to sneak bacon into the meatless thread. How many pages are you going to keep this up for?

 
dammit i knew it was going to look that way! I seriously wasnt even that time. But my cast stuff does not look that good.
 
Rawk knows I am pro vegetarian. And she snuck an egg right into her own meatless thread in the first post.
 
I guess I should have just said "Hey TB what do you use to season your pans cuz they look nice?"

 

[geeme]

I use Crisco for my CI, and it looks good. What do you use?
 
 
 
And it appears you missed my point. But I'll save that for another time, in another thread.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

 
dammit i knew it was going to look that way! I seriously wasnt even that time. But my cast stuff does not look that good.
 
Rawk knows I am pro vegetarian. And she snuck an egg right into her own meatless thread in the first post.
 
I guess I should have just said "Hey TB what do you use to season your pans cuz they look nice?"

 
I believe you. Grape seed oil. Neutral oil with high smoke point. You don't want a low smoke point oil, or if you cook something like a burger on high heat with no oil, the seasoning will start to smoke.
 
And no, it will not go rancid.

 

[Tinnie]

Lemon garlic chilli roast potatoes (theres more chilli than appears in the photo i swear  ) 
 

 

[Jeff H]

 
I believe you. Grape seed oil. Neutral oil with high smoke point. You don't want a low smoke point oil, or if you cook something like a burger on high heat with no oil, the seasoning will start to smoke.
 
And no, it will not go rancid.

 
Excellent point boss man. Next time I season a pan I will look for grape seed oil. I generally use canola because we always have it around. I had terrible luck with Crisco the couple of times I used it. For me it gets tacky not slick with Crisco and food sticks.  Anything I seasoned with Crisco has since been stripped and reseasoned with canola. But like Dan said, you have to keep the heat low with canola or it smokes.

 

[mecdave]

 
I believe you. Grape seed oil. Neutral oil with high smoke point. You don't want a low smoke point oil, or if you cook something like a burger on high heat with no oil, the seasoning will start to smoke.
 
And no, it will not go rancid.

Yep, higher smoke point than even peanut oil, and the best part is, it's virtually flavorless.
 
I marinate fruits and veggies with soy sauce and ginger for a couple hours, then drain off the juices and add a couple ounces of grapeseed oil to the bag to coat, then throw them on the grill.

 

[SavinaRed]

My Poblano Peppers are almost ready to pick and I will be posting some nice Spicy Chili Rellenos 

 

[spysee]

I have a couple good dishes I'll get around to posting
 
Mx5, stop acting like you don't know some people are fine with "symbiotic" relationships with animals. But before you do, please defend your argument that hair is meat. Certainly if milk and eggs are hair must be too, right?

 

[Rawkstah]

Pulled out the grill, filled it with hardwood lump charcoal and some mesquite chips... roasted red peppers, leeks, marinated mushrooms, garlic, and some olive oil and seasoned eggplant.  Had some french bread baking, so I made sandwiches with provolone, fresh shaved Parmesan, and marinara sauce.  Spiced up the marinara sauce with some smoked powder from JustAGuy and also dusted some of that on top too.  It was amazing.  
 

 

[texas blues]

My kine'o eats Rawk.
 
Save me some.

 

[SavinaRed]

Pulled out the grill, filled it with hardwood lump charcoal and some mesquite chips... roasted red peppers, leeks, marinated mushrooms, garlic, and some olive oil and seasoned eggplant.  Had some french bread baking, so I made sandwiches with provolone, fresh shaved Parmesan, and marinara sauce.  Spiced up the marinara sauce with some smoked powder from JustAGuy and also dusted some of that on top too.  It was amazing.  
 

Nice job with the meatless !!

 

[JayT]

That sure is pretty.

 

[SavinaRed]

Garden fresh basil,tomato jalapeno,serrano and pablano peppers

 

[Rawkstah]

Garden fresh tomatoes are where its at.  And the poblanos, can't go wrong there! I usually pick those up when i'm at the produce market.  I did one of those juice cleanse things before and I would throw a poblano in the juice for a little spice.  
 
Last night I made a smoked alfredo sauce with smoked gouda, smoked yellow 7 pot powder, a ton of parmesan, garlic and cream.  I tossed it over raw zucchini, no pics, but I did have extra sauce so this morning I made my dude some breakfast while he got ready for work.  MX is gunna love all the cheese and egg up in this meatless dish.  English muffin, layer of smoked gouda, poached egg, nutritional yeast flakes, and asparagus tossed in the left over alfredo sauce.  Topped with some left over bruschetta tomatoes and an extra pinch of powder.  
 

 
 

 

[Weed]

Garden fresh tomatoes are where its at.  And the poblanos, can't go wrong there! I usually pick those up when i'm at the produce market.  I did one of those juice cleanse things before and I would throw a poblano in the juice for a little spice.  
 
Last night I made a smoked alfredo sauce with smoked gouda, smoked yellow 7 pot powder, a ton of parmesan, garlic and cream.  I tossed it over raw zucchini, no pics, but I did have extra sauce so this morning I made my dude some breakfast while he got ready for work.  MX is gunna love all the cheese and egg up in this meatless dish.  English muffin, layer of smoked gouda, poached egg, nutritional yeast flakes, and asparagus tossed in the left over alfredo sauce.  Topped with some left over bruschetta tomatoes and an extra pinch of powder.  
 

 
 

 
You tryina troll me? Well the dirty dish worked.

 

[Pepperjack91]

MX, tell us why hair is meat.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

Please stay on topic, thank you.

 

[Rawkstah]

Dinner last night was seitan gyros. I never think to take photos of the whole process, but last night was quite the process.  I started by making the dough for the pita bread, I just looked up a recipe on google for that.  While the dough was rising I made the stock and dough for the seitan.  Seitan is wheat meat, if you've never heard of it.  I loosely follow this recipe http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/homemade-seitan/ but I doctor up the seasoning part to my liking, aka add in some powders, and I use more of the nutritional yeast flakes because I think they taste kinda like cheese.  
 
The tzatziki sauce came next, and after that the pita dough was ready to hit the griddle pan.  The last step to this ordeal was to cut up the now done and rested seitan and pan fry it a bit with more typical gyro seasonings.  I used cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, smoked paprika, smoked bhut powder, oregano, garlic, and some onion powder.  
 
Load up the pita with the wheatmeat, tomatoes, onion, cucumbers, and tzatziki and nom away!
 

(the things in the background are more wheatmeat pieces, I keep them in the stock in the fridge until the next time I am going to use it)