Entries Tagged 'Recipes' ↓

Amy’s triumphant return from Budapest brought Grab ‘n’ Growl week to an end, as well as a large bag of authentic Hungarian paprika. Given these two fantastic new developments, it was time to cook it the hell down.

We’d been searching for a good recipe for Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup for quite some time, never really satisfied. I recently stumbled upon this one from Sweet Cheeks in the Kitchen, in turn nabbed from the Candle Cafe Cookbook. It was sufficiently awesome that it required almost no modification–we added half a cup of soy creamer; that’s it. I also learned something really interesting: when a recipe calls for a dry white wine, it’s acceptable–nay, preferable–to use a dry vermouth. It’s cheaper, dryer, and saves better than an average white wine.

Not surprisingly, we rounded the soup out with breadsticks and an amazing salad based on our recently acquired paprika.

The salad was inspired by VeganYumYum’s Avocado Wasabi Salad, with paprika taking the central role in place of wasabi.

Check it:

Paprika Cashew Chickpea Salad

Cashews & Chickpeas

• 1 cup raw cashews
• 2 tbsp paprika
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas
• 2 tsp sugar OR enough maple syrup to coat the cashews
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp soy sauce/tamari/shoyu
• salt & pepper, to taste

You can approach the cashews one of two ways: baking or sauteing. We sauteed them, but our friend Ryan has baked them with better results. So.

Baked Candied Cashews

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, coat the cashews in maple syrup. Once thoroughly coated, toss in 1 tbsp paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Bake until brown, stirring often.

Fried Candied Cashews

In a medium-sized pan over medium heat, saute the cashews in high heat oil, coating in sugar, 1 tbsp paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper. Cook until the spices and oil have congealed. Remove from heat. Note: they’ll seem soft at first, but they’ll firm up.

Paprika Chickpeas

In the same pan (if such a beast was used) as you cooked the cashews, saute the chickpeas in the soy sauce and remaining spices, until well coated and no liquid remains, salting and peppering to taste.

Salad Dressing

• 1/4 cup hummus
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp honey/agave
• water, to desired consistency

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

Finally, the salad

Toss the chickpeas, cashews, some diced purple onions, and cherry/grape tomatoes (optional) in with some fresh lettuce and enough dressing to coat lightly.

Growing up, I ate a lot of leftovers. My parents both worked two jobs so it was much more efficient to make a few big meals and then eat leftovers on off nights–especially since I could heat them up myself. Since you can’t always eke out a full meal from a single leftover, you often have to combine things or eat separate dishes. My mom referred to this as “Grab ‘n’ Growl”, a term passed down through the generations in my family’s unique (read: very bizarre) lexicon, which posits a family as a bunch of Neanderthals scavenging the fridge for food, battling over the best bits. Closer to the truth, perhaps, than we’d like to admit.

With Amy in Budapest, it’s officially grab ‘n growl week. This is sort of weird, since it’s just me, but I feel less lonely if I growl. Since I tend to do most of the cooking, the swingin’ bachelor life doesn’t necessitate eating cold beans out of cans, scratching my crotch, and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. I may prowl the house growling, but I can still drink whiskey from a glass. What the bachelor life does invoke, however, is my occasional need to purge the refrigerator of leftovers and about-to-go-bad food. On a small scale, this is best accomplished in a single meal. But with Amy gone–taking her need for delicious, inventive cuisine with her–I’m free to do a major purge, using up everything in strange and sometimes wonderful/sometimes not combinations.  In other words, this isn’t generally the kind of food I’d foist on other people.

But from the ashes doth arise the phoenix! Behold these Curried Potato Everything Cakes aka Poor Man’s Pakora:

These puppies used up mashed potatoes, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, kale, and a scosh of raw sushi filling, as well as some leftover Chik’n Almond Bake and crushed crackers for the breading. For combining so many different–and somewhat disparate–ingredients, these were actually pretty awesome. The cracker/Chik’n Almond Bake combo was the key.

I enjoyed this with leftover Avocado Wasabi Salad ala Vegan Yum Yum:

Remember that Roasted Poblano Chili? The leftover beans (I still haven’t mastered the exact yield of dry beans when you cook them) were a perfect base (along with rice, obviously) for beans and rice.

On Saturday, I made a green Thai curry out of a small smattering of frozen veggies (ack! I know), tofu, and the leftover raw Siamese Dream Soup.

And finally, last night I made a version of Zuppa Toscana, using up the rest of the mashed potatoes; some dilapidated turnips that didn’t make it into the Potato, Turnip, & Rosemary Soup; and the unused tempeh (we get it in bulk) from the Smoky Tempeh Hummus Wraps.

That’s a lot of food! As I’ve chiseled away at out leftovers (and this post), it’s become clear to me that we both cook and shop for our palettes, not from our resources. Forgive me if I’m stretching here, but this, in a general sense, is one the key problems with the American food industry. You can get as much of anything, from anywhere, at any time, as you want.  The variety comes from the store, not from your kitchen and brain.

Equally problematic is the amount of time between trips to the grocery store. Like most Americans, we tend to go once a week, if that. We task ourselves with predicting what our future selves will want to eat–based on what? How can we know what we’ll want to eat 3 days from now? This means that as the week wears on, we become less satisfied with our choices and less likely to cook with what we bought. Scanning our half-full fridge, nothing looks good. So we either (a) settle on something merely “acceptable” or (b) give up completely and go out for dinner. I’m not against going out to eat, but I think it should be a deliberate choice–because you want to, not because you need to. But (a) is a bit of a crapshoot; on nights when I’m feeling creative, it’s a fun challenge and usually turns out pretty tasty. On off nights, it’s a burden and “edible” suffices.

One solution to this is to shop more frequently and buy less. This also helps ensure the freshness of your food. The other solution, I’m afraid to say, may be getting comfortable with “pretty good” some of the time. Maybe it’s been a good week for culinary creativity, but I feel like I’ve eaten pretty well with nary a thought of hitting up the grocery store (okay…that’s not entirely true…when I ran out of soy sauce, I felt a ripple of panic). This may owe, in part, to the very fact that I’ve used up almost everything in the fridge; my choices have dwindled as the week wore on. While some choice is certainly good, a lot of choice, it turns out, is actually rather bad (think about your occasional trip to an all-vegan restaurant–it’s almost paralyzing; you’re not accustomed to so many choices). The problem with too many choices is our tendency to weigh any single choice against the combined best parts of all the other choices. While this doesn’t actually change how good any single choice is, it does change how satisfied we feel.

So my final thought, in this lazy cognitive meandering, is that our enjoyment of our food is often based on our frame of reference. Given my limited options, what I came up with seemed really good–as soon as I’d eliminated the other possibilities. This is the fulcrum on which “leftovers” become “leftover surprise”.

Rrrrrooaawww!

Since we’re just babies at raw, we’re still soliciting help. Our friends Danielle and Becky came to the rescue this week with info on raw sushi. This isn’t to be confused with eating raw fish, of course; rather, it’s about subbing (in this case) an almond carrot puree for the rice in standard sushi. In theory, you should really plan ahead and soak the almonds for 8 – 10 hours. Or, you can cheat like we did, as outlined below. We rounded the meal out with the Siamese Dream soup stolen from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? , in turn stolen from RAWvolution. Stealing from our favorite thieves.

Raw Sushi

We stayed pretty true to the sushi recipe, except I only soaked the almonds for about 30 minutes. To make up for this, you’ll want to add about 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup of olive oil. I’d recommend soaking…but that takes more foreknowledge than I usually have. You might also consider peeling the almonds, as that’s supposed to make them even tastier.

For veggies, we used spinach, cucumber, beet, and yellow pepper.

You’ll notice that we cut it like a wrap, rather than standard nori-roll style. These are quite a bit softer than rice-based sushi, so they’re a lot tougher to cut small. For the sake of your sushi’s dignity, stick with the deli cut.

Siamese Dream Soup

This was very much like a raw Tom Khai, and almost mindlessly simple to make. The recipe calls for coconut water, which we didn’t have handy, so we used 1 can of coconut milk and 1 cup of water. The recipe also calls for 3 cloves of garlic–which is way too much. We tend to double the garlic in most recipes, so don’t write this off. One clove of garlic will suffice.

What’s really interesting about this soup, is that you almost don’t notice it’s raw. Cooking only tends to mellow the flavor in garlic, ginger, and coconut milk. So you can get away with using less, without losing any flavor. In a lot of ways, this is one of the key points of eating raw. Humans picked up cooking largely as a way of killing the harmful bacteria in meat. As vegans, we don’t really need to cook…though now that we’ve picked up the habit, it would be a tough one to kick without major motivation.

Since cats don’t cook, Wobbly Bob (AKA The Beast) decided he had some useful skills to lend:

It’s funny–those brief moments of cooking genius never occur when you think they will; and they’re never associated with a complicated multi-course meal. It’s always when you’re hungry and improvising.

In southeast Michigan, you can get tempeh everywhere. So it’s no surprise that a few different restaurants have tempeh wraps–the TLT at Seva, the lemon tempeh hummus wrap at Aut Bar, tempeh burgers at just about every bar…. Having made a giant batch of hummus for VeganYumYum’s Avocado Wasabi Salad, I was itching to make something with hummus. About two weeks ago, I made a salad with smokey tempeh, so I got the notion to combine to the two.  This recipe is super simple–make a batch of hummus (or buy it, if you want to kick it really easy), saute a little tempeh, chop some lettuce and/or spinach, and you’re set.

Smokey Tempeh Hummus Wrap

• 1 pkg tempeh. cut into strips
• 1/4 purple onion
• 1/2 bag spinach (1/4 lb?)
• 3 large leaves or 6 small-medium leaves of lettuce, cut into strips
• 3 large whole wheat wraps
• 1/4 batch of hummus
  
• ~ 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 capful Liquid Smoke ™
• ~ 2 tbsp peanut oil
• salt & pepper, to taste

For brevity’s sake, I’ll assume you’ve made/bought the hummus already. This may be foolish. But.

Saute the tempeh strips in peanut oil, soy sauce, and Liquid Smoke ™ in a large-ish frying pan over medium heat. Don’t use all of the liquids right away; start with a little peanut oil, then douse the tempeh with about half the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke ™. Once the tempeh is nicely browned on one side, flip and pour in a little more peanut oil and the rest of the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke ™. Salt and pepper to taste.

When the tempeh is browned on several sides, remove from heat.

Slather hummus on one half of a wrap. Place a row of spinach down the center, then a row of lettuce on top of that. Run a row of tempeh down the the center, then garnish with onions and salt/pepper.

Roll the dry half tightly into the hummus-slathered half. Cut the wrap in half on a diagonal.

Wrap extra wraps in plastic wrap for lunches!

Welcome to yet another iteration in our quest for the perfect chili.

One of our favorite local restaurants, Beezy’s, serves an amazing Pinto Poblano soup; it combines the best aspects of chili, black bean soup, and refried beans–with zang! The poblano features heavily in a lot of their scrambles as well. I was familiar with the poblano in its dried (ancho) form, but had never really paid this superlative pepper much heed. So I got to thinking: Why not switch things up a little and use roasted poblanos in my usual chili? And while I’m at it, why not ditch the carrots and celery and use red and green bell peppers? With the poblanos in action, I was able to tone down the spices, relying more on the fresh peppers for zest. The poblanos, along with a dash of smoked chili powder and a splash of red wine, made this a much richer, smokier chili. Best served with cornbread made in your grandma’s skillet.

Roasted Poblano Chili

• 1 large white onion, diced
• 1/2 large green bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 1/2 large red bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 3 medium – large poblano peppers; roasted, peeled, seeded, and diced
• 6 cups (1.5 large cans) cooked tomatoes, peeled
• 2 cups cooked red kidney beans (~3/4 cup dry)
• 2 cups cooked black beans (~3/4 cup dry)
• 1 cup cooked pinto beans (~1/4 cup dry)
• 2 – 3 cups liquid from beans and/or water
• 4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 1 tsp smoked chili powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/4 cup of red wine (we used a zinfandel [Paul Dolan is vegan])
• salt, to taste

If you’re using dried beans, start them first. They’ll be just about ready when you need them (if you’re pressure cooking them), as the poblanos will take a while too.

For the most part, this is a pretty easy recipe. It’s roasting the poblano’s that’s a bit tricky. Everyone has a different story about how this is best done. Some folks like roasting directly on an oven burner, some like cooking directly in a skillet, some like broiling in the oven, others like using a toaster oven. We have an electric stove, so the range (first) method was right out. And the toaster oven is just a smaller, more concentrated oven, right? So toaster oven it was. Pop the poblanos in on the toaster oven’s highest setting. When the tops start to bubble and turn black, flip them. Bake until both sides have bubbled up.

(Meanwhile, start the onions, red and green bell peppers, and garlic [in that order] cooking in a large pot over medium heat, in high heat oil of your choice.)

When they’re done, put them in a ziploc bag for 15 minutes. This allows them to sweat (which allegedly makes them less bitter and makes them easier to peel). For peeling and seeding, you want to wear latex gloves. These aren’t as bad as jalapenos or habaneros, but you still don’t want their juice in your eye. Unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case you should invest in some Pukka Sauce ™ and be done with it. The skin should peel off pretty easily. The poblanos will be a bit soft, so you’ll want to be fairly careful. Once you’ve gotten the skin off, remove the seeds. You should be able to tear them open and just pull the seeds out. Now you’re ready to dice them up, which you should do.

Throw them in with the onions, peppers, and garlic.

Once the onions and pepper are soft, add in the herbs and spices, then the tomatoes. Next, add in the beans, along with 2 – 3 cups of bean liquid or water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for at least 30 minutes, ideally longer. Add in the wine if you’re using it and salt to taste.

Serve with cornbread.

Cornbread

We used this cornbread recipe. Secrets two, there are, spake thusly: (1) use your grandma’s cast-iron skillet to bake in, and (2) flip the pan upside down to dump out the cornbread cake, then flip it again so it’s right side up. Marvelous!

Amy decreed yesterday that today would be Raw Food Tuesday (stolen shamelessly from What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway), which probably means that we shouldn’t have had that Chik’n Club Sammich for lunch…we did, however blaze a new trail in raw food dinners. Well, a new trail for us: rawsage & pesto-laden zucchini-based pasta with mushrooms.

Eating raw is something you hear about or read about and know that it has to be awesome, that you’d feel like a new person if could get over your need for hot things; if you didn’t love cooking; if bread weren’t so tasty. You even know that you don’t have to always eat raw, just that now and again it’d probably be really good for you. But when it comes time to dig in, you give in to the temptation of cooking. Well, if you’re anything like us you do.

Not that we’ve never eaten raw–just had a big ol’ salad for dinner or gone to a raw restaurant–we just don’t tend to “cook” raw.

This recipe is from The Complete Book of Raw Food, a book we’ve owned for years and scarcely cracked open. The results from our first foray were largely good, with a few minor caveats. The rawsage, while delicious, was pretty much just a zesty pesto. It wasn’t at all solid and tasted closer to pesto than to sausage. The zucchini turned out pretty tasty, and worked fairly well just using a grater. It probably would have been fluffier–and thus more enjoyable–if we had one of those spiral-y duders. I halved both recipes (since they were supposed to serve 4) and was surprised at how little there was. I thought we’d be scavenging for more food within minutes of completing the meal, but it was astonishingly filling. One small plateful and we were both very satisfied. In general, I hear that raw food is more filling (since none of the nutrients have been cooked out), so you typically don’t need to eat as much of it.

We made a few modifications, so check it:

Pesto Pasta & Rawsage

Rawsage (aka Zesty Pesto…errr…Zesto!)

• 3/4 cup raw, shelled pumpkin seeds
• small handful of fresh basil
• 1/4 head of lettuce
• 2 – 3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup onion powder
• 1/4 cup olive oil (less if you’re going for something more solid)
• 1.5 tsp dried sage
• 1/2 tsp fennel or caraway seed
• 1/2 tsp salt (optional)

Grind everything together in a food processor. Try it without the olive oil if you want to get these into proper patties. Just add it little by little to get the desired consistency. For this recipe, you’ll use half of it in the pasta; so if you’re going for patties, start with no olive oil and use half of ground mix to make patties. Then add 1/8 cup of olive oil and grind some more for the pesto part.

Raw Pesto Pasta

• 1 medium-sized zucchini, spiraled or grated
• ~ 6 small-medium-sized mushrooms, sliced very thinly (optional)
• sun-dried tomatoes, soaked until soft and sliced (optional; we didn’t use these this time)
• 2 large handfuls of spinach
• Zesto! from above, or perhaps a few frozen pesto cubes
• olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or pepper to dress

In a medium-large-ish bowl, mix the zucchini, mushrooms, and Zesto!/pesto. When the zucchini-noodles are nicely coated, toss a handful of spinach into a plate, bowl, or, ideally, bowlplate. Spread the pesto pasta over the spinach. Garnish with sun-dried tomato strips, rawsage patties, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and/or pepper. Be forewarned: this is really filling!

After making an Olive Garden-style minestrone, it seemed only natural to make the zuppa toscana as well. Since we had leftover breadsticks, it was another awesome replica. This soup is very much like the Spicy Potato & Kale Soup, but less spicy and much richer. I used a modified version of our tempeh soyrizo, and the leftover fakin crumblins from Tofu MarkMuffins. You’re always stuck with those crumblins, too thrifty to throw them out, but at a loss as to what to do with them. This soup is the answer!

Zuppa Toscana

• 1 large white onion, diced
• 1 package (1/2 lb) tempeh
• 4 tbsp fakin bits
• 3 medium-large potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 4 large stalks (half a bunch) of curly kale
• 6 large cloves garlic
• 2 tbsp oregano
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 4 cups water
• 1.5 cups soy creamer
• salt & pepper, to taste

Soysage

Tear the tempeh into pieces, leaving some larger chunks. In a small-medium-sized bowl, mix the soy sauce, oregano, cumin, 2 cloves of garlic, and crushed red pepper. Put the tempeh into a large bowl, then stir in the mixture, coating all of the tempeh evenly. Let this sit for for 15 minutes or more before using–it lets everything soak in.

In a large pot, saute fakin bits in oil, over medium heat. When they’ve browned and are starting to get crips, add in the onion, tempeh, and garlic. When the onions are soft, add in the potatoes, veggie stock, and water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer. When the potatoes are soft, add in the soy creamer and kale, salting and peppering to taste.

Serve with breadsticks!

If you’re like us, you often feel nostalgic for things that maybe aren’t that awesome. But there’s a context, a larger experience that imbues them with something better, gives them a prominent place in our happy memories. The Olive Garden is one of those for us. For both of our families, it was one of the “going out to eat someplace ‘fancy’” defaults. When we (independently of each other) became vegetarian, it became an even better option, since there were still many things on the menu we could eat. Once we became vegan, though, things got a little dicier. Depending on who you ask, the minestrone, breadsticks, capellini pomodoro, and salad are or aren’t vegan. The pasta may or may not have eggs. The marinara may or may not have meat broth. The salad dressing definitely has cheese in it–there are no vegan dressings.

Since (a) we’ve never been able to get a straight answer and (b) we now live in an area with other family-suitable options (namely, Chinese), we don’t eat at the Olive Garden any more. But every once in a while, we get the hankering for the enveloping warmth of minestrone and hot fresh breadsticks–and a big ol’ vegan salad. So last night, we created some real “hospitaliano”–vegan style.

The minestrone was only slightly modified from this excellent recipe.

Olive Garden-style Minestrone

• 1 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 4 – 6 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 stalk of celery, diced finely
• 1/2 medium-sized zucchini, cut into small one-inch pieces or half-moons
• 1 small carrot (or half of a large carrot), grated
• a large handful of Italian/Spanish-style green beans (the flat ones–you can sub normal green beans in a pinch), cut into one-inch pieces
• 4 large stalks of kale (the curly kind), cut from the stalk and chopped coarsely
• 4 cups (2 cans) of cooked kidney beans
• 2 cups (1 can) cooked cannellini beans or white beans
• 4 cups (1 large can or 1 large jar) cooked tomatoes, with their juice
• 4 cups veggie broth
• 3 cups water
• 1/2 cup small shell pasta
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, minced
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano (1.5 tbsp fresh, minced)
• 1/2 tsp dried basil (1.5 tsp fresh, minced)
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme (1 tsp  fresh, minced)
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup red wine (optional)

As you’d expect, saute the onion, garlic, and celery in a large pot over medium heat–in the oil of your choice (I recommend choosing safflower). When the onion has gotten soft, add in the broth, water, tomatoes, carrots, and herbs/spices. Bring it to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. In a separate pot, cook the shells. When they’re done–but al dente–remove from heat, strain, and blanch with cold water. This will help prevent them from getting as bloated and mushy in the soup. A lazier person may decided to add the shells directly to the soup. But you wouldn’t do that. This is hospitaliano.

Once the 20 minutes is up, add in the remaining ingredients and cook until the zucchini and green beans are tender. It’s this crucial step that allows you to trump the Olive Garden–you can add veggies in at the end, ensuring their crispness, a paean to non-flaccid vegetables.

Now let’s trump their bread.

We used this recipe, unmodified, but reposted here for your convenience.

Breadsticks

• 1 1/3 cups of water
• 4 tsp melted Earth Balance ™
• 4 cups of flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yeast
• additional melted Earth Balance ™, for brushing on top
• additional salt, for sprinkling on top
• granulated garlic, for sprinkling on top

Combine all of the dry ingredients, minus 1 cup of flour, ideally in a mixer, using the bread hook attachment.

(We like to keep a giant thing of flour on hand so we can make bread any time we want.)

If you don’t have a mixer, you can theoretically mix by hand and then knead (we just got one for christmas and this was it’s maiden voyage–it was awesome). Combine the wet ingredients in a separate bowl/cup and then add slowly to the dry, while mixing. Now add in the remaining flour. Once the dough is mixed well (about 2 minutes in the mixer), roll out in to 16 long pieces. (We made about 12 and they were slightly fatter than the Olive Garden’s, but still awesome.)  Cover them and let them rise for at least 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees, Fahrenheit. Brush the bread with Earth Balance ™ and sprinkle salt on top.  Bake for 15 minutes. When you take them out, brush with Earth Balance ™ again and then sprinkle with granulated garlic.

And finally, the salad.

The salad, to be faithful to the OG original, should have lettuce (obviously), croutons, purple onion, roma tomatoes, black olives, peppers, and shredded carrots. We didn’t have any fresh tomatoes or black olives (which I don’t like) on hand, so we had to make due with some sliced zucchini instead. We made the croutons fresh, from a piece of bread cut into squares, lightly doused on olive oil, salt/pepper/garlic-ed, and toasted. The original salad should also have some sort of cheesy mayonnaise vinaigrette dressing, which we didn’t deign to copy. Instead, we made this vinaigrette, slightly modified.

Italian Vinaigrette Dressing

• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp fresh dill
• 1/4 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp dried basil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• pepper to taste

Combine ingredients in a cruet and shake well.

When you’re vegan, you’re family!

There are two popular types of yellow dal–the heavily-spiced, tomato-y Indian version and the subtle, lemon-y Middle Eastern variety. At home, we tend toward making the Middle Eastern version–especially since our favorite Middle Eastern place Al Noor went out of business.

With the soup in mind, I need something else to round the meal out. Traditionally, this would be falafel or hummus & pita, but I’d just made hummus two nights ago and require substantial motivation to bust out the falafel. I was hankering, instead, for something more like pakora. I didn’t have any chickpea flour on hand, though, so I had to rethink things a bit. I came up with lightly breaded spinach-potato dumplings–to be eaten in the dal. Traditional? Nope. Delicious? Indubitably.

Middle Eastern Yellow Dal

• 1 large white onion, diced
• 4 – 6 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 cups yellow lentils OR yellow split peas (not quite the same, but either will work; yellow lentils can be tough to find)
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander seed
• juice from 1/2 lemon (or more, to taste)
• 9 cups of water
• olive oil
• salt & pepper, to taste

As you can see from the ingredients, this is a pretty simple recipe. I’ve of the school that a dal should generally be simple, letting the flavor of lentils or split peas really come through.  All you want to do is accent this flavor, not cook on top of it.

In a large pot, saute the onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat. When the onions are soft, add in the lentils/peas, stirring well. Let the lentils/peas cook for a few minutes, then add in the water. I like to add the water piecemeal–just enough to cover everything–and cover. This allows you to control exactly how thick or thin your dal is, but also requires a little babysitting. You can probably just add all of the water, cover, and occupy yourself with something else for a good 2 hours. Lentils/split peas take a while to cook.

When the lentils/peas finally get soft and are breaking apart, add in the spices and lemon. Cook for another 15 minutes or so.

Breaded Spinach-Potato Dumplings

• 3 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cut into large pieces
• 1/2 lb spinach
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3 tbsp cornmeal/corn flour
• 2 tbsp almond meal
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander seed
• safflower oil
• salt & pepper, to taste

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a medium-sized saucepan, boil the potatoes until they are soft–almost as soft as if you were making mashed potatoes. If you are using fresh spinach, steam it until it’s soft, then cut it into shreds. If you’re using frozen, you can boil it for a few minutes in the same water you used for the potatoes. I used frozen, but almost always prefer fresh. In a large bowl, mash up the potatoes with the spinach. Stir in the flour. You want the mixture to be thick enough to form balls. Add more flour if needed.

In a small bowl, mix the remaining dry ingredients. Form spinach-potato mixture into balls, roll in the oil, roll in the breading, then place on a baking sheet. This should make around 18 – 20 dumplings.

Bake 20 minutes to a side, or until nicely browned and somewhat crisp.

Serve in the soup:

Every once in a while, “Use whatever is about to go bad” isn’t an act of desperation, a culinary hail mary; it’s a reminder to your current self that your past self had BIG plans. Stop cooking like a jerk and use those Brussels sprouts, green and red peppers, onions, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, tofu, and quinoa. So maybe this is a little extreme in that I used everything–but the result was a pleasantly awesome surprise: Roasted Veggies, Quinoa, & Teriyaki-Glazed Tofu.

We’ve had roasted vegetables on the brain since Amy’s birthday dinner at Eve and only now just got around to trying our hand at them post-Eve. We used a greater variety of veggies than she did, so ours turned out pretty different, but were still pretty tasty.

Roasted Veggies & Quinoa

Veggies

• 1/2 large green bell pepper, cut into bit-size pieces
• 1/2 large red bell pepper, cut into bit-size pieces
• 1/2 large white onion, cut into petals
• 1/2 large purple onion, cut into petals
• 1.5 heads of garlic, minced coarsely
• 4 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into disks
• 1 bag  (~4 cups) of Brussels sprouts, cut in half

Quinoa

• 2 cups quinoa
• 4 cups veggie stock

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss the veggies in a high-heat oil in a 13″ x 9″  baking pan/casserole dish. Salt and pepper. Toss some more. Salt and pepper some more. Pop it in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove and stir, adding oil if things seem dry. Pop it back in the oven for another 15 minutes and stir again. Finally, bake for a paltry additional 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your quinoa. Bring the veggie stock to a boil (or bring water to a boil and toss in your bouillon). Add in the quinoa. Cook until the broth has boiled off and the quinoa is soft enough to eat, but still a tad crisp (unless like it mushy, in which case you can cook it as long as you like). Salt it, if need be.

Serve the veggies on or adjacent to the quinoa. Fantastic!

For some reason, I’ve also had a wild hare to make baked glazed tofu. I was finally spurred into action by Zoa at The Airy Way, who in turn was inspired by this recipe from Vegan Planet. I followed the marinade recipe exactly, but the tofu just didn’t have the zang I was hoping for when it was done. Maybe I didn’t marinade it long enough? Is 2 hours sufficient? So I decided to augment the remaining marinade and create a drizzly/dipping glaze, which did the trick nicely.

Teriyaki-Glazed Tofu

• 1 lb tofu, pressed and cut into thin triangles
• 6 tbsp soy sauce
• 6 tbsp orange juice
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tbsp peanut oil
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp soybean paste

Marinade

Combine half of all of the above ingredients, except the soybean paste, cornstarch, and peanut oil. Marinade the tofu in this. For a long time. 2 hours didn’t seem like enough to me. I’d recommend overnight, if you’re the kind of person that can start preparing a meal that far in advance (which I am not). Bake the tofu at 425 degrees, 15 – 20 minutes to a side–flipping when nicely browned. Like cookies, these will firm up once they sit out for a few minutes, so try not to overcook them (though even overdone, they’re still delicious).

Meanwhile, combine the remaining ingredients, except the soybean paste and cornstarch in a small saucepan over medium heat. Slowly whisk in the cornstarch, thickening. You can use a little less if you like the sauce more drizzly. Finally, stir in the soybean paste. Remove from heat and either drizzle on the tofu or pour into small dipping vessels.

Magnifico!