colman’s english mustard is my absolute favorite condiment ever. it knocks me to the ground and leaves me crying when i eat too much of it, but at the same time, i can never really get enough. i’ve been known to sit in pubs and unload an entire bottle onto an order of chips, until i am streaming tears and red in the face. what can i say…i am addicted to the heat. so naturally when i came across a tasty-sounding recipe for a portobello salad with spicy mustard dressing in veganomicon, i had to give it a whirl with colman’s. the result was deadly & delicious.

veganomicon's portobello salad with spicy mustard dressing, using colman's english mustard.

the only adjustments that i made to the salad recipe were: 1.) of course, subbing hot english mustard for the prepared spicy mustard, and 2.) using normal wine instead of cooking wine (cooking wine tastes like crap, and if it ain’t good enough for me, it ain’t good enough for my salad!). other than that, i went by the book, and the dish came out great. if you aren’t into really hot food though, and you still want that kick that colman provides, you may want to use half english mustard and half spicy mustard. seriously, i had to stop every once in a while and get water while eating because it was so fucking brutal.

the best things about this salad though, were the juicy and succulent portobellos. after marinating and baking, they tasted soooo flavorful, kind of like the mushrooms from m café that come in the bi-bim bop. i will definitely be cooking these again and throwing them on a sandwich or burger.

there ya have it, just another great tried and tested recipe from veganomicon. i would give it to you, but that would be cheating. definitely worth buying the book. everything i’ve tried has been awesome, except for the seitan, which come out quite right. i guess i will give it another shot. if any of you have some veganomicon seitan success stories, please let me know.

until then, spice it up with this salad! it will hurt so good.

so i finally got around to making a meal from the much raved about cookbook, veganomicon. i picked what appeared to be the easiest recipe in the book (i cannot cook), did some ingredient hunting at the local health food store, and i was in business. special thanks to your vegan mom for pointing me in the direction of nature mart for their bulk bins of vital wheat gluten.

veganomicon’s black bean burger with sautéed mushrooms, sprouts, tomato, onion, avocado, vegenaise and colman’s english mustard.

in the end, these burgers turned out great…although i was a little worried during the process. after i had done all my fancy ingredient shopping at nature mart and whole foods, while in ralphs i realized i’d forgotten to buy bread crumbs. argh!!—all the varieties they offered contained whey, nonfat dry milk, or (shudder) egg whites. i decided it wasn’t worth the trip in la traffic to the nearest health food store just for one ingredient, so i used crumbled up hamburger buns instead. i think this resulted in my patties falling apart a little bit, but i just kept cooking them (longer than the recipe suggested) and they turned out just dandy.

more pix after the jump.

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