They were gonna make fried calamari
just without the squid. Take a look.
Michael, it's so great to have you.
I've been a vegetarian for more
than a decade, and when a new place
opens up where I can like eat that
burger in front of you, I'm thrilled.
Tell us about your new place.
Well, yeah, how great is that
you'll be able to see everything
that's on the menu here,
so we're super excited to be here.
Thank you for having us.
My name is Michael.
I'm with DC vegan. We are in fact,
opening a vegan themed botantical
barn the first weekend of May,
so we're very excited about.
That and of course we brought
some food to show you,
and I brought a really great recipe
to share for meatless Monday.
Love
this. OK, I am not a vegetarian or a vegan,
but I am trying to incorporate it more in.
Ellen has been very educational for me,
so I'm excited to see what
you are going to make for us.
And some tips you have to make this food
tastes like what we expect it to taste like.
What are you making for us today, Michael?
The King Trumpet Calamari today and so so
the the thing with this dish is as the eater.
All you have to do is love great tasting
food and you'll be all set with this dish.
So yes, team Trump and mushroom calamari.
We start with these king trumpet mushrooms.
They're also called King oyster mushrooms
and we typically see these from China,
Japan and these work really good for.
Plant based food, because they're
obviously they're little larger in
size so they're easier to work with.
They have a very sort of meaty texture,
so we're going to take this mushroom
here and what I'm going to do.
Is I'm just going to slice it into about
1/4 inch half inch thick slices here.
So then this is what it looks
like before we slice it.
And then we're going to take.
You could take either a tomato core
or this is a tool from our kitchen
which essentially does the same thing,
but I'm going to go through here.
And I'm just going to pour out these centres,
but obviously the star of the show then
becomes our king trumpet mushroom,
so you could see it already is
starting to look like a column where
you know we all know and love.
OK, so Next up we're going to take this
mushroom and we're going to dredge
it and you could dredge it really,
in any liquid you want so you we could
use on our case we could use soy milk.
We could use almond milk,
oat milk.
Anything like that,
but actually we found that water
kind of works the best,
so it's just like just like your breading.
Any other products you just want to
get a little bit of moisture on it.
Dip it in the water and then we've
got our our battery here which is
a mixture of flour or cornstarch.
And of course some seasonings and
some special special magic in there.
And we've got to calamari and now it's
breaded and it's ready to go here.
Obviously you can do this with
at home without a deep fryer,
by the way,
you can just put some oil in a pan
and slice these up and you can just you know,
flash fry these at home.
We've got our flash fryer here on site,
so this is what we're going to look
like and you can see it really
does sort of look the texture,
so I'm going to go ahead and swap these
out here and finish up our fleeting.
We make our own marinara sauce in house.
This marinara sauce happens to be my
wife nanny sauce which is from goes
back to Italy about 150 years so so
obviously you need some sort of dip.
We make our own Parmesan and we
do this with cashews,
little nutritional yeast, salt,
a little garlic powder,
but essentially this is a Parmesan.
It gives it that Nice
finish a little bit nutty
flavor. A little bit of cheesy flavor.
Bit of garnish.
So we're going to put a little
bit of fresh parsley on there,
and then we're gonna garnish it with
the lemon on the side and then.
We take the lemon right,
get a nice squeeze here and I
have to take a bite. I have to.
I really want
to try it so
you all could live vicariously through my.
Yes.
Perfect.
Some Michael try for sure.
Yes, congratulations.
Thank you for bringing so many
options to those of us who are not
eating meat right now and helping
us out for Meatless Mondays.
Great to meet you and best of luck.
Thank you so much. Have a great day.
Thanks to all you folks at home.
So jealous as he took that bike.
Now you can stop by DC vegan.
Just go see them. They're on Peach
Street in Northwest DC or you can
order online at DC vegan.com.