Sunday Night Dinner

Seitan and Asparagus w/ Vegan Hollandaise
Originally uploaded by Marni Molina

Sunday dinners are usually special in our home. I absolutely love to cook and one of my favorite parts of the weekend is drinking my morning coffee while flipping through my various cookbooks, planning meals, and making my shopping list for the week. Sundays typically afford me some extra time to prepare something special. I'm hoping to add a "Sunday Night Dinner" feature to this blog, to share with you what I've made for my family each Sunday.

Tonight it was garlic roasted seitan and lentil loaf from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian with steamed asparagus and vegan hollandaise sauce. Yum! I'll post the seitan recipe tomorrow but the asparagus with vegan hollandaise is from the April 2008 issue of Vegetarian Times. To make things easy, I'll post it here, too.

Asparagus with Vegan Hollandaise
Vegetarian Times Issue: April 1, 2008 p.42
Serves 6

Classic hollandaise sauce is mostly egg yolks and butter (with a few seasonings thrown in), making it one of the worst offenders for saturated fat. Steamed silken tofu gives you the same creamy consistency and there’s no worry about the sauce curdling or turning. This version can be made ahead and reheated by stirring over low heat just until warm.

• 1/2 cup silken tofu
  
• 2 Tbs. lemon juice
  
• 1 Tbs. nutritional yeast
  
• 1/2 tsp. salt
  
• 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
  
• 1/8 tsp. turmeric
  
• 2 Tbs. corn oil
  
• 2 lb. asparagus, trimmed

1. Heat tofu on plate in microwave 30 to 45 seconds, or until warmed through. Transfer to food processor, and purée until smooth. Add lemon juice, nutritional yeast, salt, cayenne, and turmeric; pulse until well combined. With food processor running, add oil in steady stream to finish sauce.
   
2. Steam asparagus 2 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Drain, and serve with sauce.

The hollandaise was more tangy than I remember traditional hollandaise being, but we still liked it a lot. It's a happy-tasting sauce with bright flavors. Perfect on asparagus and probably other spring or summer veggies. I also think it'd make a great addition to an english muffin sammie. Yum.

Hope you had a great weekend!