Wehani and wild rice stew with cremini mushrooms, winter squash, and kale
The main seasonings in this stew are fresh ginger, sage, and soy sauce—an unusual combination. The recipe is from the winter section of Peter Berley’s cookbook Fresh Food Fast. The instructions say to cook the wehani (a dark red rice) and the wild rice in a pressure cooker. I don’t have apressure cooker so I just cooked them for longer in a regular pot. Otherwise I followed the recipe carefully, except I added my mushrooms much later than Berley suggests, since I wanted my mushrooms to be firmer. This stew has a lot of vegetables in it: onions, mushrooms, celery, a carrot, winter squash, and one bunch of kale. After sauteing all the aromatics you add the squash chunks and simmer them til almost tender, then the sauteed veggies and the raw kale are added to the pot with the rice, and simmered until the kale is tender. You’re supposed to garnish the stew with toasted pumpkin seeds.
My stew didn’t turn out very stew-like. I think of a stew as chunky soup with a really thick liquid base. But this stew was more like lots of veggies in a little bit of broth. I used butternut squash the pieces seemed to either alternately undercooked or totally following apart. Maybe it would have been more stew-like if I had cooked the squash longer, so all the squash pieces were falling apart? Certainly the rice didn’t add much of a stew-like quality. That said, I liked the recipe. It was a bit of a surprise (but not unpleasant) when I bit into a round of sliced ginger! (Berley never says to take the ginger out, so I imagine you’re supposed to eat it?) I added extra sage but didn’t really notice it in stew. The stew didn’t really have a distinctive flavor. It just tasted earthy and like vegetables. But it made a pleasant (if not very filling) dinner on a cold winter night. I wouldn’t rush to make it again, but if I had all the ingredients lying around, I would certainly consider it. But I’d probably add more liquid to make it more of a soup.
Berley pairs this recipe with a romaine salad, but I think it would be better paired with a dish with a bit more protein, to make the meal more filling.
Rating: B
Spicy coconut sweet potato soup with collard greens
This is another coconut curry with winter vegetables, but this one is from Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast, and I actually made it a few weeks before the recipe I just posted about. Unlike McDermott’s recipe, this one doesn’t call for curry paste. Instead you add the seasonings individually—garlic, jalapeno, ginger, ground coriander seeds, and turmeric. McDermott has you saute the curry paste and onion in some of the coconut milk, but Berley calls for 2 Tbs. of olive oil. Given that there’s a whole can of coconut milk in the recipe, I think I’d use McDermott’s method next time. The previous recipe called for mixed winter vegetables, but this one calls for only one large sweet potato, cut into 1-inch chunks. Berley doesn’t give a weight for the sweet potato, but he does say that once cut it’s supposed to make 4 cups. That seems like a large sweet potato! Towards the end of cooking Berley’s recipe calls for 1 small bunch of collards greens cut into strips. I can’t get collards here, so I subbed in curly kale. The final step in the recipe is to garnish the stew with cilantro and lime juice.
The soup was paired with a recipe for crispy tempeh strips. The combination sounds good but I couldn’t get myself to deep-fry tempeh. It just seems like such a waste of oil!
Neither Derek nor I cared for this dish very much. There wasn’t anything wrong with it per se—it just tasted underseasoned. And unfortunately the kale wasn’t a good substitute for the collards. I guess kale just doesn’t go with these southeast Asian flavors. Although we didn’t like the dish that much, we had a guest over for dinner who quite enjoyed it. He said he doesn’t normally like coconut curries, but this one was excellent!
Rating: B-
Derek: B-
Red curry with winter vegetables and cashews
Back in Pittsburgh I used to make this recipe several times each winter. This dish has all four essential Thai tastes: sweet, salty, spicy, and sour. It tastes just like the curry you’d get in a restaurant, except the addition of vegetable broth results in a lighter dish that’s less overwhelmingly rich. The crunchy cashews make a nice textural contrast to the silky broth and creamy-soft vegetables. Based on a recipe from Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai. Read the rest of this entry »
Warm lentil salad with sun-dried tomatoes
This recipe (from Peter Berley’s cookbook The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen) is for a warm lentil salad with Mediterranean flavors. I was positive we made this recipe before (unsuccessfully), but I couldn’t find any post about it on my blog. So we decided to give it another try. Last time I think part of the problem was that the sundried tomatoes we used weren’t very good. This time I used tomatoes from my mother’s garden, that she dried herself! Read the rest of this entry »
Shiitakes, tofu, and miso
When I first moved to Saarbruecken there were no shiitakes to be found, but in the last three years they’ve started appearing at a few stores around town. They’re quite expensive, but at least they exist! I splurged on a bag of shiitakes the other day, and ended up throwing together a quick, tasty stir-fry with an onion, the shiitakes, some diced tofu, and miso. I sauteed the onion and shiitakes in just a touch of olive oil, then added the tofu and the miso at the end. I don’t have a recipe, but I loved the combination, and so I thought I’d record it here so I don’t forget it.
Roasted sweet potato wedges
I was in a rush to get some sweet potatoes roasted the other day, and so instead of baking them the usual way (stabbing them with a fork and roasting them whole), I cut them into long wedges (about 8 per sweet potato), and roasted them on a cookie sheet at 425 F. I didn’t add oil or salt, and I didn’t peel the sweet potatoes first, just gave them a quick scrub. They turned out really well, with a mixture of textures—some soft, moist parts like you’d get in a typical baked sweet potato, and some crunchier, more caramelized bits, like you’d get from a sweet potato fry. Both Derek and I really liked the texture of the roasted sweet potato skin. So don’t peel your sweet potatoes!
I made sweet potato wedges again a few days later, except that I sprinkled on a little salt and some olive oil. The wedges ended up both a bit more moist and a bit more crisp than the previous time. Delicious!
Savory Indian chickpea pudding
Even after my experiments with Socca I still had some chickpea flour left, so I decided to try this recipe from Maddhur Jaffrey’s World of the East. She calls it a savory chickpea flour “quiche,” but then goes on to say that it resembles a quiche only in that it’s like a set custard that can be cut and served in sections. Read the rest of this entry »
Red lentil soup with lemon and spinach
I already have two go-to red lentil soup recipes (Turkish and curried), but somehow I wasn’t in the mood for either of them, and I decided to try a new recipe instead. This recipe is from 101cookbooks, and based on a recipe from Deborah Madison. I followed the recipe closely except that instead of a bunch of spinach I used a bag of mixed greens (baby spinach, arugula, and baby chard). I didn’t chop the leaves, which was probably a mistake as they ended up a bit stringy. I didn’t serve the soup with brown rice, and we didn’t miss it. We did try it with yogurt, and it seemed good both with and without the yogurt.
I don’t know why the recipe calls for yellow mustard seeds instead of the black ones that most Indian recipes call for. And they’re not popped in hot oil. I’ve actually never cooked with whole yellow mustard seeds before. I had to go out and buy some!
I ended up using the juice of two lemons, which made the soup quite lemony. The first day it was perhaps a bit too much lemon, but as leftovers it was fine — the lemon seemed to mellow down.
This soup is more Indian tasting than my other two red lentil soup recipes. Derek said it tasted similar to other dals I’ve made in the past, but I thought all the lemon juice made it taste a bit unusual. This recipe has a lot of turmeric and salt! I used kosher salt but still I found the soup a tad too salty for my taste. Derek was happy though. He ate the soup for breakfast several days in a row.
I’ll definitely throw this recipe into my red lentil soup rotation.
Rating: B
Derek: B+
Autumn Soup of Wild Rice, White Beans, and Olives
It seems to be soup season around here. I picked this recipe (from Rebecca Wood’s cookbook The Splendid Grain) because it called for wild rice, which I almost never use. Wood says that the flavors in this soup are from the mountains of central Greece, and that the soup has “stellar colors and flavors…. a fantastic play of sweet, sour, salty, and pungent”. It’s not Autumn any more, but I had a jar of roasted bell peppers in the pantry, and all the other ingredients are reasonably wintery. If you’re not using jarred bell peppers then you should prepare the peppers a day in advance to give them time to marinate. Read the rest of this entry »
Leek and turnip soup with potatoes and chard
This is a pretty simple soup recipe from the winter section of Peter Berley’s cookbook Fresh Food Fast. The unusual addition is 1 tsp. of whole caraway seeds, which are sauteed with butter, garlic, and two leeks. Then you add turnips, potatoes, water, and salt. The final step is to add a bunch of roughly chopped Swiss chard and lots of pepper. Read the rest of this entry »
Socca (chickpea flour flatbread)
I bought a big bag of chickpea flour (called besan in India) over a year ago, used it once in a recipe, and then didn’t touch it again. I decided it’s been sitting long enough, so I went searching for recipes that called for chickpea flour. The obvious first recipe to try was socca, a simple flatbread made from chickpea flour, olive oil, and liberal amounts of salt and pepper. I actually had a version of socca a few years ago at a bakery in Florence, but there they call it Torta di Ceci. (In other parts of Italy they often call it Farinata). Whatever the name, despite the rave reviews online, the version I got at the bakery in Florence had a somewhat odd texture (more creamy than crisp) and not all that much flavor. Maybe a homemade version would be better. I used Mark Bittman’s recipe on the New York Times website. Read the rest of this entry »
Pumpkin, pear, and fennel soup
I could have sworn I blogged about this recipe before, but I can’t find any post about it, so here it is again. This is a recipe from the fall section of Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast. Despite the name, the recipe doesn’t actually call for any fennel. At least, not the vegetable. Rather, it calls for fennel seed, which Berley says brings out the natural sweetness in other ingredients. I can’t vouch for that, but I really like fennel seed in savory dishes. I was very excited to try the combination of squash, pear, leeks, ginger, and fennel seeds. Read the rest of this entry »
Pumpkin and feta muffins
I wanted to use up some feta and milk and found this interesting looking recipe for a savory muffin on 101cookbooks.com. It seemed a nice recipe for the cool fall (almost Winter) weather. Read the rest of this entry »
Quinoa and winter squash potage
Butternut squash season is short-lived here in Germany. It seems to be available only for about six weeks, starting in early October. I bought a bunch of butternut squashes, but somehow managed to use them all, save one, by early December! I decided to use my last half of a butternut squash to try this simple soup recipe from the quinoa chapter in Rebecca Wood’s cookbook the Splendid Grain. Wood is an expert on quinoa. She was travelling around Peru and Bolivia researching her book Quinoa: The Supergrain in the mid 80′s, long before almost anyone else in the States had even heard of quinoa.
Trip report: Vegetarian Tokyo September 2011
I’ve waited so long to write about my Tokyo trip that my recollection of the details has mostly faded. The main thing that I remember is that food in Tokyo is extremely expensive. Everything is about twice as much as you would pay in Europe or the U.S., and some things (like fruit and nuts) are even more expensive. Ignoring the prices, though, I had a lot of very tasty food. Here are the food memories have persisted: Read the rest of this entry »
Vegan banana bread with peanut butter frosting
I used to make banana bread all the time in Pittsburgh, but for some reason I stopped making it once I moved to Germany. But yesterday I had five over-ripe bananas gracing my windowsill, and so I decided to resurrect my old recipe. We were having guests for dinner, however, and Derek thought that plain banana bread was a little homely to serve for dessert, so he decided to dress the bread up a little with a peanut butter icing. Banana and peanut butter is a ubiquitous combination, but somehow I’ve never had banana bread with a peanut butter icing. But a quick internet search reveals quite a few recipes for banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, so clearly others have trod this path before us. I even found one recipe for banana bread that calls for mini Reese’s peanut butter cups in the batter. Wow. Our banana bread wasn’t quite that decadent, but the peanut butter / banana bread combination was definitely a winner.
My recipe makes a basic banana bread with deep banana flavor, a moist, crumbly interior, and a golden, crisp top. Use older, more darkly speckled bananas because they are sweeter, more moist, and give more banana flavor than less ripe bananas.
Vegetarian Berlin 2011 Trip Report
I know I haven’t yet posted anything about Japan, but I just got back from my second annual October trip to Berlin, and I want to write reviews of the restaurants we tried before the details fade away. Compared to our 2010 Berlin trip, this time Derek and I veered towards fewer Asian restaurants and a few more American and European places. Read the rest of this entry »
Five days (almost) in vegetarian Seoul
I just got back from a two week trip to Seoul and Tokyo. I’m going to write a little (okay, a lot) about the Korean food here, and reserve Japan for a second post.
My previous experience with Korean food was limited to a few visits to Korean restaurants in Pittsburgh. I remember trying some kind of ice cold noodle and (another time) a Korean hot pot. Both times I found the food completely foreign and unappealing, and I couldn’t get myself to eat much of either dish. So I was quite apprehensive about the food in Korea. Luckily, my friend Ahra was kind enough to take four entire days just to show me around Seoul, acting as both tour guide and interpreter. Ahra was a great guide, especially of the food. She’s not only a local but a chef, so she could answer all kinds of food questions. Read the rest of this entry »
Roasted portobello mushrooms with balsamic vinegar glaze
I can’t normally find portobello mushrooms in Germany, but this week I got some from the American store in Ramstein. (Thanks Rowena!) I wanted to make something simple that really showcased the mushrooms, so I decided on this recipe from The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen by Peter Berley. The top side of the mushrooms are brushed with olive oil and then roasted at 400 F for 30 minutes. Then the mushrooms are sliced and tossed with a “vinaigrette” made from olive oil, garlic, reduced balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and fresh parsley. Read the rest of this entry »
Dr. Weil’s tofu veggie burgers
I returned from my trip to Asia to a totally empty fridge. So I decided to scavenge whatever I could from the freezer. One of the things I defrosted was 4 pounds of frozen tofu. I decided to use half of the tofu to make my mom’s barbecued tofu recipe, but I wanted to find a new recipe for the rest of the tofu. There aren’t a whole lot of recipes on the internet that call for frozen tofu, but I found this “veggie burger” recipe on the ultimateveggieburgers blog. (By the way, I love the clean look of the blog and the fact that the author is quite critical about the recipes tried.) It’s not so much a veggie burger as a big hunk of marinated tofu. Either way, the blogger raves about it, so I figured it was worth a try. Apparently, although the recipe comes via Dr. Weil’s website, it’s originally from Bryanna Clark Grogan’s The ( Almost ) No Fat Cookbook
Cuban black beans
My sister told me she has a recipe for Cuban black beans that are out of this world. Unfortunately she still hasn’t sent me the recipe, so I found one on the internet instead. The author of the Eat, Live, Run blog says she was a black bean virgin until she tried Cuban black beans, “inky beans simmered with garlic and spices that literally melt in your mouth.” She says that the recipe is lifechanging.
Roasted butternut squash with coriander seeds
This was the first recipe I made from Veganomicon. I used the peel and guts of a butternut squash to make vegetable broth, and then I had a whole squash waiting to be cooked. I found this very simple recipe, and was intrigued by the addition of 2 Tbs. of coriander seeds. I love roasted butternut sqush, and I quite liked all the coriander seeds in this recipe, and so I decided to give this one a try. Read the rest of this entry »
Mattar Tofu
This recipe from Friendly Foods (by Brother Ron Pickarski) was originally titled “Paneer Tofu”, but it’s really a vegan version of Mattar Paneer (peas and paneer in a creamy tomato sauce), which uses tofu instead of paneer cheese. Read the rest of this entry »
Seitanic red and white bean jambalaya
This is actually the second recipe I tried from Veganomicon. (I’m blogging in reverse order today.) It’s a mix of veggies (the cajun holy trinity–onions, celery, and bell pepper), rice, kidney beans, seitan, tomato sauce, and spices. Read the rest of this entry »
Cornmeal-masala roasted brussels sprouts
My Mom gave me a copy of Veganomicon in January, but I didn’t get a chance to make anything out of it until this week. I saw some beautiful first-of-the-season brussels sprouts at the store and brought them home, then went looking for a recipe. The Indian-spiced crumbly cornmeal-chickpea coating appealed to Derek, and I had all the ingredients, so I decided to make it for dinner. Read the rest of this entry »
Faux pho
Derek’s student Scott is always raving about Phở, a vietnamese noodle soup. Since it’s never vegetarian, I’ve never really tried the real thing. Wikipedia says that one of the techniques that distinguishes it from other Asian noodle soups is that charred onions are added to the broth for color and flavor. It also says that the broth is typically made with charred ginger and spices including cinnamon, star anise, black cardamom, coriander seed, fennel seed, and cloves. The soup is also typically served with lots of fresh garnishes, including scallions, white onions, cilantro, Thai basil, fresh Thai chili peppers, lemon or lime wedges, and bean sprouts. Some people also add hoisin sauce or chili sauce. Although traditional Pho is not vegetarian, I found a recipe for it in the Vietnamese Fusion book (by Chat Mingkwan) I borrowed from my mom, and I also found a recipe in a Vegetarian Resource Group article on vegetarian travel in Vietnam. Oddly, though, the recipe in the Vietnamese Fusion book didn’t include any dried spices in the broth–just ginger and charred shallots. So I made a mix of the two recipes. My soup came out okay, but the broth needed a lot more spice. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomato-tarragon soup with fennel croutons
The summertime soup recipe is from Georgeanne Brennan’s “France: The Vegetarian Table.” Brennan says that tarragon gives this soup a surprise finish that is heightened by the crunch of toasted fennel seeds. Read the rest of this entry »
Whole grain pasta with salsa cruda
It’s finally gotten hot in Saarbruecken, so I decided to make this uncooked pasta sauce from the Summer section of Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast. The sauce is made of raw, chopped tomatoes, olive oil, parsley, basil, chives, balsamic vinegar, and minced garlic. Read the rest of this entry »
Indian rice pudding
I was making an Indian dinner for company, and Derek decided that he needed to make rice pudding for dessert. He used this recipe from Alton Brown. The recipe has received excellent reviews. I’ve never had a rice pudding I’ve loved, so I had pretty low expectations. But I enjoyed it. The raisins and pistachios were tasty, and I liked the freshly ground cardamom. (I’d probably add even more if we ever make rice pudding again.) That said, given all the wonderful desserts in the world, I don’t think this one is worth the calories.
Derek had higher expectations than me, and ended up a bit disappointed. He thought there was too much rice and in general just too much “stuff.”
Rating: B-
Derek: B-
Mexican rice pudding (November 2011)
- 1 3/4 inch lime zest
- 1-inch piece cinnamon stick
- scant 1/8 tsp. salt
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup medium-grain or short-grain white rice
- 1 egg
- 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 cups lowfat (1%) milk
- 6 Tbs. sugar
- 1/4 cup raisins
I wanted to make a light dessert to go with a tex-mex meal, and I picked this recipe from Alice Medrich’s cookbook Chocolate and the Art of Lowfat Dessert. The rice is cooked with lime zest, a cinnamon stick, and salt. Once it’s tender, you add milk and sugar to the rice and cook until it thickens. You then slowly mix the pudding with one beaten egg, then stir in raisins, and allow the pudding to cool to room temperature.
The recipe worked fine, but I couldn’t really detect any flavor from the lime or cinnamon stick. I’ve never had mexican rice pudding before, but I never would have guessed that this pudding was supposed to have Mexican flavors. Maybe I needed to use Mexican cinnamon and vanilla?
Nonetheless, I thought this was an okay recipe. It was certainly much lighter than the Indian rice pudding recipe above.
Nutrition info from the cookbook: Serves 6. 172 calories, 1.8g fat, 5.2g protein, 34.3g carbs.
A lasagna for every season
In updating a recipe on this blog I noticed that I have quite a few lasagna recipes, all of which are vegetarian (of course), but quite different from one another. I also noticed that in the various recipes I tend to spell lasagna two different ways (either with an “a” or with an “e” at the end). I looked it up and apparently “lasagna” is the singular, but in Italy only the plural “lasagne” is used. But I think I prefer the American spelling, which allows you to distinguish between one lasagna and multiple lasagnas. Read the rest of this entry »
Cherry clafoutis
It’s cherry season here in Germany, and wow are they good. I don’t know if this year is unusual, but almost all the cherries I’ve bought have been big, juicy, and extremely flavorful. Martha Rose Shulman recently did a whole set of recipes featuring the cherry, including a recipe for a cherry soup (which I’d like to try), one for a cherry smoothie (which I blogged about on my smoothies post), and one for a cherry clafouti made with yogurt and no butter or cream. Many years ago in Pittsburgh Derek and I used to make a cherry clafoutis recipe, which was also from the New York Times (posted below). For reasons best left unexplained, he had dubbed it “floor cake”. But we decided to try neither of these recipes. Instead we ended up making Julia Child’s recipe for cherry clafoutis. Read the rest of this entry »
Mushroom, barley, white bean soup
I felt like beans and had some mushrooms in the fridge, so figured I’d try making a mushroom white bean soup. I also added some barley because I wanted to use up the end of it. So I cooked about 1 cup of (dry) white beans and 1/4-1/3 cup of (hulled, not pearled) barley together until soft. I’m not sure what kind of white beans they were–maybe great northern? The label on the bag just said “white beans,” but in German 
Silken chocolate tofu pie
One of the desserts I remember best form childhood is silken chocolate tofu pie. I know, it doesn’t sound that great, but it was creamy and rich and chocolately and sweet… I loved it. My mom used to bake it in a graham cracker crust which made it even better. But I also loved it uncooked right out of the food processor. When I lived in the co-op I used to make the pudding with lemon juice or grapefruit juice for a little extra bite. I liked the stark contrast between the sweet pudding and the sour juice. Other co-op denizens didn’t like the combination of citrus and chocolate and soy as much as I did. I didn’t mind though, because that way there was more for me. I tried making the pudding for Derek long ago, but he was disturbed by the strong underlying soy flavor, so I stopped making it. But last month I had a few boxes of silken tofu lying around that needed to get used up, and so I decided to try making tofu chocolate pudding again. Read the rest of this entry »
No-onion curry sauce with cauliflower, chickpeas, and seitan
This is another recipe that I made last year when I was visiting my friend Sarah in Israel. The original recipe is from the cookbook The Indian Vegetarian by Neelam Batra. Although I have nothing against onions, I like the idea that I can make a delicious, authentic curry sauce even if I’m all out of onions. Batra says that no-onion curry sauce needs extra tomatoes, yogurt, and spices. Note that the sauce as written is quite thin. Batra says it makes a lovely base for a vegetable soup, or you can add 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes to make it thicker. Read the rest of this entry »
Cafe Gratitude Sushi Rice Bowl
I had a delicious smoothie at Cafe Gratitude in Berkeley right before I moved to Germany. I never got a chance to try their food though, so when I saw this recipe for a sushi rice bowl based on Cafe Gratitude’s “I Am Accepting” I decided to give it a try. The recipe says it serves 2-3, depending on how hungry you are. Read the rest of this entry »
