It's alive!
To be honest, I considered discontinuing this blog and letting it take up space on the Internet as a remembrance of my seven months in Ukraine. I recently realized, however, that my vegan take on regional cuisine is still very relevant as I settle back into life in the United States. After months of inactivity, I've decided to breathe new life into this old thing.
First, a little update on my life as of August. After a week in New York City visiting friends (and allowing my ears to adjust to the cacophony of English conversation all around me), I moved back to my hometown of Tampa, Florida, where I now live with my girlfriend Melissa. We recently found a cute apartment in Seminole Heights, an historic district full of 1920s bungalows and river parks. After many years of neglect, the area is experiencing a resurgence of independent restaurants, bars, and shops. Seminole heights also boasts a community garden which supplies produce to local restaurants and a monthly Sunday morning market (soon to be the subject of future posts).
Since I now call Tampa my home, this city on the water and its food will be the main focus of this blog for the time being. In order to talk about Tampa's unique local cuisine I should first give a little background about the history of the area. The city was officially organized under Florida legislature on July, 15 1887 (exactly 100 years before I was born!). During that time, the city experienced a boom in industry following Vincente Martinez Ybor moving his cigar manufacturing company to Tampa from Key West. As a result of this growing industry, a huge number of Cuban and Spanish cigar workers immigrated to the district now known as Ybor City, just east of downtown Tampa. These immigrants brought their native cuisine with them, a Latin and Caribbean flavor that heavily influences local Tampa fare to this day.
The city grew considerably after WWII and the construction of MacDill Air Force Base. In 1956, the University of South Florida was established north of downtown and suburban areas in North Tampa began developing. Nowadays, downtown Tampa and Ybor City are no longer the centers of commerce and culture they once were at the beginning of the 20th century. In the last fifty years, most of the businesses in Tampa have moved from the center of town to suburban shopping plazas and office parks that cover the county in all directions.
Though this suburban sprawl presents its fair share of problems, the current set-up of the city has allowed various neighborhoods and suburbs to take on their own regional feel and flavor. In under half an hour I can drive from my parents' house in Carrollwood to my grandparents' house in the South Tampa neighborhood of Sunset Park and pass through no less than ten neighborhoods with their own distinct feel and flavor. In this blog I will explore the cuisine of these neighborhoods, searching for hidden vegan gems or customizing recipes to make them vegan friendly while still preserving the integrity of these dishes. I'll include a true Tampa spread, from the fried yuca at West Tampa's La Teresita to monthly Vietnamese vegan buffets at Trang near USF.
I see blogging about my vegan journey in Tampa as a perfect continuation of my life in Eastern Europe. Like the city of Odessa, Ukraine, where I lived and blogged for seven months, Tampa, as a major port city, draws its cuisine from all over the world. Where Odessan food is influenced by Greek, Jewish, French, Russian and Georgian culture, Tampa draws its flavors from its neighbors Cuba and Mexico, as well as from more recent influxes of immigrants from as far away as Vietnam, India, Ethiopia and Lebanon.
As a third generation Tampanian (or as my Uncle Michael would call it, a full-blooded Tampon, yikes), some of my favorite meals growing up were fried plantains (or
platanos maduros), black bean soup and freshly pressed Cuban sandwiches. I still eat beans and plantains on a regular basis, as these foods call for fresh and basic animal-free ingredients, but for those of you who know what goes into an authentic
sandwich Cubano (a combination of ham, pork, salami and Swiss cheese that would make even the most secular Jews among us blush)
, I'm sure you aren't surprised that I had to take this item off my menu...
A rabbi's worst nightmareThat is, until last week!
That's right! Last Saturday I woke up with one goal in mind: build an authentic
vegan Cuban sandwich. It took three damn hours, but i did it!
Note the red face: three hours in a kitchen in Florida with no a/c.
So how did I do it? Well, It had actually never crossed my mind to make a vegan Cuban. I just assumed that, like Snickers bars and turkey legs, Cuban sandwiches were a thing of the past, its flavor fading like an old photograph on the tip of my tongue. All that changed the day I ordered
¡Viva Vegan! from amazon.com on a whim. Flipping through this glorious cookbook (my new fave), I stumbled upon a vegan Cuban sandwich recipe and FLIPPED out. I made some the very next day. Here's how:
Most of the three hours were spent making mojo seitan (in place of the pork on a Cuban) from scratch. For all those unfamiliar, seitan is a protein-packed meat substitute made from vital wheat gluten and chickpea flour. Unlike tofu and tempeh, seitan stretches and shreds just like chicken or pork and holds up to boiling, baking or mixed with veggies for a hearty stir-fry. For this particular sandwich, Terry Hope Romero of ¡Viva Vegan! gives this recipe:
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups cold vegetable broth
4 cloves garlic, grated
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups vital wheat gluten flour
1/4 cup chickpea (garbanzo) flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
In a measuring cup, whisk together all the wet ingredients and set aside. In a large mixing bowl (or wok, if you just paid the rent and spent the last of your money on vital wheat gluten), combine dry ingredients and slowly mix in wet ingredients. Once everything is combined well, knead for 2-3 minutes then let rest for 10 minutes. Knead for 30 more seconds then place mixture on a cutting board and cut into 4 loaves. 
Wrap each loaf in a 12" square of aluminum foil and steam for 30 minutes.
Unwrap and let each loaf cool in the fridge for about an hour to seal the deal.
While the seitan is cooling off, you can get the mojo ready. In an 11" x 9" Pyrex baking dish, whisk together 1 cup of sour orange juice (or 2/3 cup oj and 1/3 cup lemon juice) , 6-8 garlic cloves (chopped), 1/3 cup olive oil, 1/2 tsp cumin and salt & pepper to taste. Take two of the seitan loaves from the fridge (and save the other for more recipes like stir-fry!) and slice them into 1/4 inch slices. Line the baking dish with the seitan, making sure to cover each piece with mojo before baking at 375 for 15-17 minutes.
Flip seitan periodically to prevent burning. Mojo sauce should be mostly evaporated and seitan should be sizzling but MOIST! Do not overcook or seitan will be gummy as hell.
To assemble sandwich, start with an 8" piece of (lard-free!) Cuban bread and slice down the middle. If no Cuban bread is available, a hoagie roll or large baguette works in a pinch.
Or if you're lucky like me, walk half a block to your neighborhood Cuban bakery!
Layer mustard, pickles, packaged vegan ham slices, seitan, tomatoes if you want, and vegan cheese (I use Daiya here).
Close sandwich and put Earth Balance spread (or similar) on the outsides of the bread halves. If you don't have a sandwich press (who does?) you can place the sandwich on a large frying pan at low/medium heat and press down with another pan or a brick covered in tin foil for three minutes on each side.
yyyyuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Cut the sandwich into two triangle-shaped halves and EAT!
It had been so long since my last Cuban that I experienced temporary bliss, like running through a cool water fountain on a hot summer afternoon before realizing you don't have a change of clothes.
This sandwich inspired the continuation of this blog, so stay tuned for the next installment of Tampa flavor, vegan style.
Here's a picture of the counter where you order your AMAZING food. You can also get a 2-liter of Faygo if you nasty.
The owners are actually vegetarian. I got to talking with one woman who said that she'd like to serve vegetarian food only but she would lose too much business. She tries to keep it as veg-friendly as possible, though, so all the side dishes are completely vegan and along with a list of different meat and chicken dishes, the menu features items like tofu, seitan and even "tofu fish bites." She told me that some people order collard greens and ask, "Why isn't there any meat in these greens?" Shaking her head and smirking she said it was something else that most people can't even eat meat-free vegetables.
The last time Melissa and went to Island Cuisine we ordered a mix of jerk tofu and spicy seitan with bow tie pasta. All the dinners come with two sides so we got red beans with rice and collard greens. We also got a side of plantains because I have never left a restaurant that serves plantains without them.
Before finding Island Cuisine, I assumed that Jerk food and especially greens from Jamaican restaurants (almost always cooked with chunks of meat) was a thing of the past. Not so!
They know how to cook a meal. The saltiness of the greens brought out the spicy-sweet marinade on the tofu and the beans and rice were perfectly seasoned. I'm always completely stuffed after eating only half of this meal, as it's FULL of protein and fiber.
Hands down one of the best vegan takeout places in Tampa.
