1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 yellow onion diced
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp curry powder
1 1/2 tsp fresh ginger (peeled and diced)
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cumin
2 lb potatoes
3/4 pound fresh or frozen peas (with the price of veggies these days? Frozen all the way)
3 cups water
14 oz coconut milk
8 oz chopped spinach
handful of cilantro chopped
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper
1 lime quartered (this is for garnish, so omit if you're not feeling fancy, just hungry)
Heat oil until very hot, add mustard seeds and cook until they begin to pop. Add diced onion and chili powder and cook until onions are soft. Add all the other spices and the potatoes and peas and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes. Add water an simmer until potatoes are soft. Add coconut milk, spinach, cilantro, and lemon juice. Simmer for another five minutes and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Now I just need to figure out how to adapt this to be even less labor intensive and to just involve pitching things into a crock pot at the beginning of the day. I do so love a good bowl of soup. It's generally healthy and lower in calories and fat than many things, and it fills you up quickly because of the high water content (this does not include any kind of cream soup or bisque obviously).
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One I can post here, because I more or less made it up. It's tofu pot pie, a recreation of that veritable bastion of hearty Americana dinners, chicken pot pie. In my version I am trying to approximate the taste of Chicken pot pie, more or less. Some meat eaters get a bit stupid and ask why vegetarians eat fake meat. Well, because we grew up eating meat and quit eating it not because it suddenly started tasting disgusting but because we decided we didn't want things to die for our dinner? Then they ask about the "death of the carrot" as if a carrot is exactly like a cow. I dunno. At this point I have been a vegetarian for so long I'm not what you would call an "activist," because I'm tired of rehashing the obvious reasons why not eating meat is better for the planet, ethics, and you. I'm tired of the stupid arguments made by meat eaters about protein (eat some quinoa), eye teeth (it's not easy to tear off hunks of bread without those teeth either), how it's "natural" (we have evolved past caveman status and have options now), etc. If you want to eat meat because you want to eat meat, then just do it and move on. I think it's like crystal meth, honestly. I don't care what you put in your body, but it's an expensive luxury and terrible for the environment. Hmm. It seems I'm cranky this morning and that the activist in me just lies dormant, too busy watching Project Runway to agitate. Anyway.
Tofu Pot Pie
Day 1: Make up some Frontier Veggie "Chicken flavored" broth. Make it very concentrated. Slice up a block of hard tofu and marinade it in the broth overnight.
Day 2: Microwave a baking potato in a bowl with a half inch of water and a towel covering it for 7 minutes (cooked but firm)
Saute some onions and garlic in a pot with a bit of olive oil. Remove when translucent (you don't have to do this if your stomach is not as sensitive to onions as mine is, you could just cook them with the other veggies). Put in bowl.
Put 2 tbsp margarine (Smart Balance as always) in the pan and melt. Add 3 tbsp flour and make a paste. Slowly add in 2 cups of "chicken" stock. Again, the more concentrated the better.
Bring almost to boil and then add in 2 cups frozen mixed veggies.
Allow to thaw, then add onions, chopped up potato, and chopped up tofu cubes (obviously you drain the broth from the tofu).
Cook until warm.
Put in large casserole dish and top with 1 cup milk (cow or soy), 1 egg, and 1 cup instant baking mix (we use a whole grain one). Alternatively top with a vegan biscuit type deal and the thing should be vegan. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes, until bubbling and crust is golden biscuity.
The other tofu recipe comes from Vegan with a Vengance, and thus I will not list it here, although I'm sure it's floating around on the internet somewhere. Basically it's a marinade with ginger and soy sauce and things, that hard tofu sits in over night (or all day) and then you cut the tofu into triangles and grill or cook in a wok. Eric used the extra marinade as a sauce for asparagus (although there is a separate recipe in the book for Sesame Asparagus, we are, as always, lazy), and then made wasabi mashed potatoes (this isn't even a recipe really, just a good idea. Add a few tsp of powdered wasabi to mashed potatoes). The marinade was awesome, as were the potatoes and the asparagus. It was a really good, really pretty quick dinner.
Well, wouldn't you know? 2 cups is the exact amount called for in Pumpkin Cream Cheese bread!
First, cream together 8 oz cream cheese (I use half full fat and half fat free), 2 1/2 cups sugar, and 1/2 margarine (smart balance).
Then add 4 eggs (or a cup of egg substitute), 1 by 1. Then add your 2 cups of pumpkin.
In a separate bowl whisk together 3 1/2 cups flour (you choose the white and whole wheat blend), 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp cloves, and 1 tsp salt.
Add dry to wet and mix.
(if you don't have a toddler, you can add nuts, 1 cup)
Put in two greased loaf pans and cook at 350 for 70 minutes or so.
So yummy. We eat one loaf and freeze one for the future.
The time of the CSA experiment has ended for the year. Almost. It lives on in the form of a 30 pound pumpkin we are currently butchering downstairs. I say butchering because 30 pounds is heavy. And big. And packed full of pumpkin. We made Black Bean, Chipotle, and Pumpkin Soup tonight (from Hot, Spice, and Meatless II), which called for a pound of pumpkin. It was not discernable that the pumpkin had suffered. "It's only a flesh wound!" It called out while lounging on the counter. Meanwhile, the soup had three chipotles in it and made both of our noses run. In a good way. I think it could have used some elbow macaroni, however.
After Ollie went to bed we got down to business, cutting it into chunks, removing the inner bits (with far less seeds than we expected or hoped for, not enough to even bother roasting them), peeling the outside, dicing, and steaming. We have three big bowls full of steamed pumpkin and another to go. This is how we got the 30 pound pumpkin. The lovely woman from Tecolote said, "Well, you can steam it and then freeze it." I began envisioning pumpkin cream cheese bread galore, pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream, and the next thing you know we have a veritable canning factory running in our kitchen.
Which is not to say all the pumpkin bread won't be delicious.
We were at a loss at the end of the CSA how to proceed. It provided such a framework to our meals. The basket showed up, we made a menu, we bought the few things extra we needed, we cooked away. Now we have to proceed without guidance. So in order to keep experimenting we got two cookbooks my friend Meghan is always referring to on her menu blog, Veganomicon and Vegan with a Vengence. We are lacto-ovo vegetarians, and though we've talked about going vegan, don't think it's for us. But we would like to cut down on our dairy, as it is costly for the earth's resources. So we are going to try to incorporate much more vegan eating in our household. Plus, new recipes are fun.
Hopefully this blog will pick back up with reports on how the new recipes go. I'm most excited about Samosa Baked Potatoes, the recipe of which I think could be modified to resemble the AMAZING samosa soup I had at Foodheads awhile back.
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Yesterday we used the last of our veggies, some zucchini and an acorn squash. We used one of the squash in the roasted veggie lasagna, but it had the wrong texture for it. It was more the texture of a butternut squash than of a yellow squash. It seemed more soup like. So I found a recipe n recipezaar for a Zucchini Cheese Soup, or, as the recipe explains Vache Qui Rit Soup, as it is apparently a traditional French recipe beloved by kids. Our kid certainly loved it.
1 onion
2 lbs Zucchini (or squash)
2 cups stock
salt and pepper
1 pinch cumin
4 oz cream cheese mixed with herbs
1. Dice the zucchini and onion into a saucepan and add stock, salt, pepper, and cumin.
2. Bring to boil and then lower heat and simmer until veggies are tender
3. remove from heat and add cheese and puree.
4. Gently reheat to appropriate temperature.
This recipe was pretty good. I think a better cheese (we used fat free plain cream cheese) would have made it even tastier. On the plus side we got to use our new immersion blender we bought at Linens and Things going out of business sale for $30. At Bristol my roommate Allison used to buy appliances that all had names. Her sandwich maker was named Daisy and looked like a cow. Her immersion blender was named Billy. She didn't name them. They came with these names, and their purchase was a coincidence. Allison wasn't very imaginative. She's now a lawyer. Anyway, even though our immersion blender is as of yet, unnamed, it still worked pretty great and spared us the hassle of transferring it all to the blender to puree.
We ate the soup with homemade whole wheat cibatta bread. Earlier this week we took the leftover roasted veggies that exceeded the capacity of the lasagna, marinaded them in olive oil, balsamic vinager, and herbs, and put them on cibatta bread. We took that to a picnic with gazpacho and had a very good meal indeed.
Upcoming possibilities: we have a lot of limes left over from the cookout. I'm thinking of making a Persian Lime pie with homemade whipped cream. We also have some carrots to roast. This week we're getting eggplant, another acorn squash, a few tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, red onions, and best of all Hungarian medium-hot peppers which apparently make fabulous chile rellenos. We made chile rellenos with the peppers we got last week and both of us agreed we could have eaten three times as many as we had.
Also, I recently discovered that my friend and great vegan cook/baker Meghan uses her livejournal to keep track of their weekly menu and shares recipes. Here is a link to her journal I hope she doesn't mind sharing, in case people need more vegetarian and vegan recipes. She also regularly uses some cookbooks we don't own but need to check out.
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So we've been revisiting some greatest hits. We've made potato and rosemary pizza, roasted veggie lasagna, fajitas, veggie shish-ka-bobs on the grill with corn, gazpacho.
Here are a couple of things we've done:
Potato Salad
I got this recipe from my friend Christin, who knows how to cook for a party. It's a potato salad with no mayo. I freaking hate mayo and will never eat it, but this is just as good as a picnic and will not possibly kill you if left in the sun. We used up a bunch of potatoes we had gotten, some new potatoes, some purple potatoes, and some red potatoes.
2 lbs small potatoes boiled, cooled, and then cut up
1 cucumber peeled and diced
1 red pepper diced
1 bunch spring onions diced
4 oz feta cheese
3 tbsp dill
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/3 olive oil
1/3 red wine vinager
Last night we used the last of our beets up, along with some left over corn on the cob and potato salad from a barbeque we held Sunday. We made beet burgers. They sound funny, but are yummy.
The original recipe is from recipezaar:
1/2 grated beets
1/2 grated carrots
1/8 grated onion
1/4 cooked brown rice
1/4 roasted sunflower seeds
1/8 cup toasted sesame seeds
1 egg white
1/2 tsp soy sauce
3/4 tbsp flour
Preheat oven to 350
mix ingredients in large bowl and chill for 30 minutes
form into patties 1/2 inch thick
bake on cookie sheet covered with cooking spray for 30 minutes (no turning necessary)
Here are the changes we made (besides scaling down the recipe)
We used quinoa instead of brown rice and sun butter instead of sunflower seeds. We didn't have sunflower seeds on hand, but the one review of the recipe said that the patties didn't come together very well. Since the sunbutter has the sticky consistancy of peanut butter, this was not a problem for us. The quinoa was delicious, nutty, and FULL of protein.
All in all, very tasty.
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So here's a good long update of recipes/dinners past:
In what is quickly becoming a house favorite we made Wolfie's beet salad again with the correct dressing (though far less effort on presentation). Still yummy. Had it with barbeque Veat shishkabobs and roasted green beans (trim ends, place on cookie sheet or dish thinly, use 2 tbsp olive oil and roll them until coated, roast at 350 for 15-30 minutes until nicely browned).
Mother's Day brunch the men in the house made me peach pancakes with ripe fresh Fredricksburg Peaches, hashbrowns, bacon, and Peach Bellinis.
Here's another favorite pizza, bleu cheese and red onion. It looks super greasy, but it's... ok, this time it turned out a little greasy. Something went wonky. It's usually not that shiny. Saute red onion and garlic in some olive oil, put on pizza crust and sprinkle with 4 oz of bleu cheese. We also had stuffed mushrooms (we've found excellent mushrooms at the farmers market down south... they actually have flavor and taste good, proving that I just hate store mushrooms not all mushrooms). These were bases brushed with olive oil, cream cheese mixed with herbs and the chopped up stems, and then some bread crumbs on top (Ollie likes to sprinkle the bread crumbs).
There's always room for Vegan Wiggly Dessert Food Product! Found this on the shelf at Whole Foods while looking for Sugar Free Pectin. Raspberry flavored. We added the homemade whipped cream. SO GOOD.
Another pizza. We love pizza. This one was a new way to use up Raddichio. We liked this better than the pasta, partially because Eric grilled the raddichio first and direct heat is supposed to be a way to sweeten bitter greens.
Treviso, Sundried Tomato & Goat Cheese Pizza
(From the Royal Rose Raddichio website, Treviso is a type of Raddichio)
Marinade:
1/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes in oil plus 1 Tablespoon oil from tomatoes
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
Pizza:
1 - 12 inch pizza crust
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1/4 cup yellow bell peppers, cut into strips
1/4 cup red bell peppers, cut into strips
2 tablespoons diced green peppers
6 to 8 Treviso leaves
10 cloves of garlic sautéed until golden
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
Preheat oven to 400° F. Whisk first six ingredients in a bowl. Brush crust generously with marinade, sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and peppers. Bake until cheese bubbles, about 10 minutes. Remove pizza from oven. Brush leaves generously with remaining marinade. Fan treviso around pizza. (Jenny note: this looks good but is harder to eat than if you say, chopped the leaves up. Beauty or ease of stuffing in your mouth? You decide). Sprinkle with garlic, and goat cheese. Return pizza to oven and bake until treviso softens, about 10 minutes.
Another brunch. We do brunch on Sundays right around here. This time we had Spanish Tortilla, Apple Streusel muffins, and faux bacon.
Spanish Tortilla
3 tbsp olive oil
1 md potato
4 eggs (1 1/4 cup eggbeaters)
herbs
salt
pepper
whatever else you want to add
heat olive oil, add diced potatoes, salt and pepper and saute
remove potatoes, drain, stir into eggs. Saute anything else you're adding and add it to the eggs as well.
With your still well oiled pan, add everything to a hot pan and distribute evenly. Lower heat to medium and cook until the bottom of the tortilla is light gold.
Try to flip it without fucking it up. Fail. Do your best. Cook the other side.
Apple Nut Oatmeal Muffins (no nuts, nuts are bad for toddlers)
Streusel topping:
2 tbsp oats
2 tbsps flour
1 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
Muffins:
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp flour
1/4 cup oats
3 tbsp light brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup applesauce
yolk of egg (I used some eggbeaters, 1/8 cup?)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla
Mix streusel stuff with your fingers until it's all crumbly. They combine dry muffin ingredients in one bowl, then wet ingredients into another. Add wet to dry. Grease muffin cups, distribute muffin mix, put streusel stuff on top. Bake 18-20 minutes in oven pre-heated at 400.
Small Batch Brownie with Homemade Ice Cream
1 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
3/4 chopped chocolate (calls for unsweetened, we just used chocolate chips)
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar (want to cut this down if you've just used chocolate chips)
1 tbsp plus 2 1/4 egg substitute
1/2 tsp vanilla
3 tbsp plus 2 tsp flour
1/8 salt
Put butter and chocolate chips in a bowl and microwave until it's all melted. Add egg and vanilla and stir. Then the flour and salt and stir more. Put in mini dishes and cook for 28-30 min in preheated oven at 350.
Bon Appétit | August 2007
Jimmy Bradley
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Well, guess what? Nothing good.
Tonight's failure was Apple Sorrel Sorbet. 2 cups peeled chopped up apples cooked to a boil in 2 cups apple juice until mushy. Puree in blender with 2 cups sorrel. Chill. Put in ice cream maker.
Get salad ice cream.
Throw away.
Hearty Ground Beef Vegetable Soup
1½ hours | 25 min prep | SERVES 6 -8
1 | pckg Morningstar Farms Crumbles or TVP |
1 | tablespoon olive oil |
2 | medium white onions, chopped |
2 | stalks celery, chopped |
2 (14 1/2 | ounce) veggie broth |
3 | carrots, chopped |
2 | tomatoes, chopped |
6 | new white potatoes, quartered |
2 | cups water |
1/2 | cup dry lentils, rinsed |
1 (14 1/2 | ounce) can green beans, undrained |
2 | tablespoons fennel bulbs, chopped |
1/2 | teaspoon red pepper flakes |
1 | teaspoon salt (or to taste) |
1/2 | teaspoon oregano |
1/2 | teaspoon basil |
Caramelized Chicory with Rustic Tomato Sauce
ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
230 g can chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp sugar
salt and freshly ground black pepper
25 g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
160 g pack chicory, cut into wedges
15 g soft brown sugar
method
For the rustic tomato sauce
1. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, then add the garlic and chilli and saute for 1 minute, add the remaining ingredients and heat for a further 2-3 mintues. Put to one side.
2. In the meantime prepare the caramelised chicory:
3. Heat the butter and oil in a frying pan then add the chicory and sugar, cooking for 4 - 5 minutes or until caramelised.
To serve
Pile the caramelised chicory into a serving dish, spoon over the rustic tomato sauce and serve immediately.
Yuck. To be fair the tomato sauce was quite tasty, just not the chicory. Oh, and we used a jalepeno instead of a red chile.
On the plus side, I made the soba soup again today and emended it a little. I cut up half a container of hard tofu and through it in the sesame oil after the garlic, ginger, and onion. With the addition of the tofu it was very filling. I also used veggie stock instead of no-chicken stock. It was fine to me, but Eric preferred the no-chicken stock, which I think was a litle lighter in taste.
Finally, in what will hopefully be the plus side, I made small batch chocolate cake with peanut butter icing. We didn't have some of the ingredients, so I substituted.
Chocolate Cocoa Cake
Mix:
1/4 cup boiling water
1 oz chocolate (I had chocolate chips on hand)
1 tbsp espresso powder (didn't have, used cocoa trio mix)
stir til all melted together
Mix:
1/4 cup eggbeaters
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp sour cream (didn't have so I used cream and just beat longer)
Add chocolate mix in with this mix.
Mix:
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar (I used less what with the sweet chocolate and the cocoa instead of coffee)
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
Add liquids to dry. Mix.
Put in cake pans (I got a 4.5 and a 4 inch spring form at Sur La Table today for super cheap. It would have been better, however, if I'd gotten two 4 inch, as you will see from the pictures).
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
Peanut Butter Frosting
1 tbsp softened butter
2 tbsp peanut butter
1/4 cup confectioner sugar
cream as needed
Mix first three ingredients together, start blending with mixer. Add cream as needed until it his spreadable fluffy texture.
Frost cake. As you can see, frosting a cake where the bottom is wider than the top layer is difficult and stupid. Get two pans of the same size. :)
Finally,
Whole Wheat Bread
No recipe for this, cause it wouldn't work without the breadmaker and it's in the cookbook that comes with the breadmaker. Thus, if you could use it, you would already have it. But... the new breadmaker made the most delicious loaf of whole wheat bread for us. It came out perfectly. We ate hot fresh bread with butter and honey for snack today. Yum.
Red flannel hash recipe
information
Thrifty New Englanders serve this dish as a way to ''stretch' the leftovers from their classic New England Boiled Dinner
ingredients
1/2 kg (1 lb) fake smoked turkey cut into pieces
4 Medium potatoes, cut into cubes
225 g (8 oz) Cooked beetroots (beets), cubed
1 Medium onion, chopped
175 ml (6 fl oz) 3/4 cup Double (heavy) cream
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
method
1. Combine the corned beef, potatoes, beetroots (beets) and onion.
2. Combine the cream, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and cayenne together. Pour over the turkey mixture and toss well.
3. Since you roasted the veggies first, presumably in olive oil, you shouldn't need (or WANT) any more oil. Add the mixture to a big frying pan and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, pressing down on the mixture occasionally or until a crust has formed on the base. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully invert the hash so that the crust is now on the top. Cook for a further 10 minutes or until a crust has formed on the other side. Serve at once.