I make matzoh ball soup every year on Passover, and usually at least once or twice a year just because I like it. I made it this week and wanted to write down a few notes to remember what I did. Read the rest of this entry »
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I absolutely love this 101cookbooks recipe for hazelnut & chard ravioli salad. I adore the combination of the sweet caramelized onions, earthy slightly bitter chard, crunchy nutty hazelnuts, bright acidic lemon juice and zest, and creamy ravioli. I follow the recipe as written except that I use much more chard and I sauté my chard. Read the rest of this entry »
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I am a member of the Instant Pot Vegan Recipe group on Facebook, and almost every week someone raves about this recipe for Lasagna Soup from Vegan Richa. I like lasagna, but it always takes so long to make. A fast version in the pressure cooker? Sounds good to me!
I’ve made the recipe a couple of times now, with a few modifications (see below). The recipe is pretty fast. You basically just have to chop the onions and other veggies and measure out all the ingredients. Everyone liked it pretty well (even 4-year-old Alma who is normally very suspicious of new “mixed” dishes and Derek who typically disdains soup). It’s surprising how filling it is given that it only calls for 5 ounces of noodles for 2 to 3 servings. Normally Derek alone will eat at least 4 ounces of noodles! The first time I made it I think we even had a little bit of leftovers! I guess the lentils and veggies and broth make it filling. Read the rest of this entry »
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I was looking for a green cabbage recipe that a toddler would like, and I came across this pretty simple (albeit quite Americanized) vegetarian Okonomiyaki recipe on the 101 cookbooks blog. Alma generally likes pancakes, so I decided to give it a try. Below is a doubled version of the original recipe, with a few modifications. Derek and I like them a lot, and it’s a relatively quick recipe, so suitable for a weeknight dinner or a Sunday lunch.
One thing I was concerned about in terms of making this recipe kid friendly is the name. Luckily Alma doesn’t know the word “yucky” yet (she’s only learned the German “bäh” at daycare so far). But if she did I’d be worried about her thinking the name was Okonomi-yukky. Maybe if you’re serving this to kids for the first time you should call it Okonomi-yummy instead.
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I had a butternut squash that was starting to go bad, and I asked Derek to choose a recipe to use it up. He chose this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for roasted butternut squash and red onion with tahini and za’atar, which I was happy about, because it would allow me to use up some of the zaatar I bought to make the last Ottolenghi recipe we tried (this za’atar spiced beet dip). You can find more comments about the recipe (and a photo!) on this seriouseats page. Read the rest of this entry »
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It’s turnip time! My farmer’s market here in Saarbruecken is full of beautiful bunches of white turnip, with the greens still attached. The name for these turnips is Mairübchen, literally “little May root” or “May root-let.” But they’re not little. Each turnip is about 2 to 3.5 inches in diameter. I’ve been buying lots of turnips just so I can eat the greens, but I had to figure out what to do with the turnips themselves.
I’ve never been a huge turnip fan, and I don’t have so many go-to recipe. I like them raw in salads, in soup (with leeks, potatoes, and chard), and in stews (like this tagine or Thai curry). But I had one last delicata squash from the fall that was turning soft and needed to get used up, and some leftover brown rice int the fridge, so rather than making an old recipe, I decided to try a new recipe for miso tahini soup from 101cookbooks. I love Peter Berley’s miso-based tortilla soup with avocados, so the addition of avocado didn’t seem that odd. But a miso soup with tahini and lemon? I could not imagine it. Read the rest of this entry »
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Derek always loves what he calls “harissa pasta“, so I figured I should try out the one other harissa recipe on the 101 cookbooks blog. This recipe was originally called roasted delicata squash salad, but that’s pretty boring so I re-dubbed it with a more descriptive name. The recipe has some problems, primarily that the ratio of vegetables to sauce seems way off. It calls for a pretty small (3/4 pound) delicata squash, 1/2 pound of potatoes, and just 1.5 ounces of kale. We prepped all the veggies and then just stared at them, amazed at how little food it was. So we added another 1/2 pound of potatoes and some more squash, a total of about 1 pound 2.5 ounces before removing the seeds. The only other change we made was steaming the kale briefly, because our German kale was extremely tough and very unpleasant to eat raw. Also, my harissa isn’t the best so I added some cumin to it. The final dish was very rich and very tasty, with strong salty, acidic, umami, and spicy notes, but all in perfect balance. The squash even contributed some sweetness, so it was really hitting all six tastes. Read the rest of this entry »
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This recipe from Alice Medrich’s Cookies and Brownies is actually titled “Robert’s Chocolate Cookies,” but I call them adult chocolate cookies because they’re supposed to be chocolate cookies for the “sophisticated palate.” Medrich describes these cookies as “only slightly sweet, but rich and gooey, and laced with the chunks of the finest unsweetened chocolate in the world.” Robert Steinberg created the recipe for his company, Scharffenberger, and thus they call for Scharffenberger unsweetened chocolate. Medrich says if you can’t find it then use bittersweet chocolate of another brand, as most brands of unsweetened chocolate are too harsh and bitter to enjoy as chunks. I first made these cookies in 2006, when I checked Cookies and Brownies out from the Pittsburgh library. I adored them, but didn’t make them again until now. Right before I moved to Germany, I toured the Scharffenberger factory in Berkeley, and bought a number of bars of their chocolate. The Berkeley factory is now sadly defunct. Hershey bought out the company, and closed down the factory, and consolidated Scharffen Berger production in Illinois with some of their other “gourmet” chocolate brands. I haven’t tried the chocolate since the buy-out. But I still had an (expired) bar of Berkeley-produced Scharffenberger unsweetened chocolate in the pantry, and I decided it was finally time to try these cookies again.
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This is the recipe that Peter Berley (in Fresh Food Fast) pairs with the baked escarole and eggs recipe that I blogged about yesterday. The potatoes are steamed briefly (to speed up the roasting time) and then tossed with crushed cumin, garlic, salt, chipotles in adobo sauce, olive oil, lemon juice, fresh thyme, and paprika. Then the potatoes are baked on a cookie sheet at a very high temperature until crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Berley warns in the headnotes that these are “some really spicy roasted potatoes,” but I chose small-ish chipotles, and our potatoes turned out spicy but not as fiery as I expected. I liked the potatoes a lot, and Derek loved them. There’s something about spicy, crispy roast potatoes that’s just very satisfying on a cold autumn day. And the lemon juice and garlic add a little acidity and bite, which contrast nicely with the dark, roasted, smoky flavors of the cumin, paprika, and adobo sauce. Read the rest of this entry »
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Derek loves Sally Sampson’s recipe for hot candied walnuts, but they call for a ton of sugar, and they’re kind of messy to make. So when I saw this recipe for bar nuts in the Union Square cookbook, I was intrigued. They call for only 2 tsp. of sugar per 1 1/4 pounds of nuts, and you just toast the nuts plain, then mix with the seasonings afterward. It looked much simpler, plus the nuts won the New York Press award for best bar nuts in New York. With that kind of pedigree, they had to be good! Read the rest of this entry »
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Derek and I used to love the escarole and beans appetizer at Girasole in Pittsburgh. It consisted of braised escarole and white beans in a rich tomato sauce. It was hearty, warming, and satisfying. I hadn’t thought about it for years, until this week I saw a green that looked a lot like escarole at the farmer’s market. I asked the farmer what it was and he called it Endivien—the German word for endive. I asked him if you could cook with it and he said Germans only ever eat it raw in salads. But it looked similar enough that I decided to try making escarole and beans with it. There are tons of recipes online for escarole and white bean soup, and a few for escarole and bean dishes, but none seem to call for tomato sauce. So I decided not to try to follow a recipe. Nonetheless, my beans and greens came out quite well. This is a relatively simple, one-pot supper. It’s reasonably fast to make, hearty and satisfying. Read the rest of this entry »
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When I was in Austin visiting my family I spotted a new cookbook on my mom’s shelf: Vietnamese Fusion Vegetarian Cuisine by Chat Mingkwan. I’ve always wanted to learn how to make Vietnamese food, so I asked if I could borrow it. My mom had already flagged the recipe for Vietnamese Coleslaw, and so I decided to start there. Read the rest of this entry »
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I asked Derek to choose something to make for dinner, and he picked this menu out of the winter section of Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast. It was a big undertaking! The menus in this book usually take under an hour, but I had to first make my own seitan. Even after the seitan was made, this menu took longer than an hour, mostly because peeling the shallots took forever. Luckily Derek liked the dish a lot, and I enjoyed it as well, so all that effort wasn’t wasted. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’ve been making this gingerbread recipe for years, but somehow I never got around to blogging about it. But I made it last night to take to a holiday party, and someone explicitly asked me for the recipe. It seemed a good time to finally add it to the blog. I haven’t tried many different gingerbread recipes, so I can’t argue that this one is best. But it makes a dark, moist, deeply flavored, very gingery cake. The recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated, but note that it’s no longer on their website. They just published a new gingerbread recipe, which is totally different than this one. It calls for stout, oil instead of butter, and omits the crystallized ginger, the buttermilk, and most of the spices. The new recipe doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the old one, and the old one no longer seems to be available on their website. Read the rest of this entry »
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I don’t remember the last time I made a grilled cheese sandwich. But we finally found cheddar that we like here in Saarbruecken, and I decided to celebrate by making grilled cheese. I didn’t want to make just a regular old boring grilled cheese, though, so I pulled out various flavorful additions I had in the fridge: jalapeno, sage, garlic, and lime. Read the rest of this entry »
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This recipe happens to come from Alice Medrich’s low fat cookbook (Chocolate and the Art of Lowfat Desserts). But to my taste it makes the perfect brownie: intense chocolate flavor and a little gooey in the middle but with a perfectly textured brownie top. Read the rest of this entry »
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Most tofu enchiladas are awful. Normal tofu just doesn’t have the right texture for enchiladas. My mom’s enchiladas are different, however. They’re based on a recipe they used to make on the Farm, which uses frozen, marinated, and baked tofu that has a chewy texture and deep, umame flavor. When I was a kid and my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday dinner, I invariably requested tofu enchiladas. The enchiladas were simple, American-style enchiladas, made from flour tortillas filled with savory tofu chunks and then covered in a tomato, chili gravy and baked in the oven. They were simple, but amazingly delicious. More recently my mom has started adding vegetables to her enchiladas, and I’ve followed suit. I usually add some combination of spinach, corn, peppers, and onions, but I’m sure other veggies would also be good. (Last updated Jan 1, 2014.)
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I made this recipe tonight and liked it so much I decided to repost it. It was originally posted on August 17, 2006.
I’ve often tried to make this sort of light/summery pasta dish without a lot of success. Unless I use a large amount of olive oil or parmesan in the past the dish has always seemed rather bland. But this recipe is light and delicious! This is based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, but I cut down on oil and pasta, and increased the amounts of squash and seasonings. I give options for a number of ingredients depending on how rich, spicy, starchy etc. you want your dinner to be. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’ve tried to make vegetarian tortilla soup before, and although I don’t know exactly what the chicken-based version tastes like, I know that I’ve never achieved it. Recently, however, I tried a recipe for tortilla soup from Peter Berley’s cookbook “Fresh Food Fast.” The key innovation is that he uses a miso broth instead of a simple vegetable broth. I thought it would be strange—miso soup with lime in it?—but it was delicious, and tasted like (what I imagine) tortilla soup is supposed to taste like. It definitely tasted more Mexican than Japanese. Everyone in our family really likes this soup, including five-year-old Alma.
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I’ve been trying out recipes for Passover this month, and came across Marcy Goldman’s “Trademark, Most Requested, Absolutely Magnificent Matzoh Caramel Crunch“. Given the title, it was hard to resist. It was pretty easy to make, and came out well, except that the caramel ended up quite shiny and hard–more like a toffee than a caramel. Hence, Derek dubbed the dish “Toffikomen”, a play on toffee and afikomen. Read the rest of this entry »
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I threw together a burrito the other day with some frozen, marinated tofu that was leftover from the tofu I prepared for chili. Derek loved the burrito so much that he insisted I blog about it, even though it wasn’t particularly original.
- 1 Tbs. olive oil
- 2 lbs tofu, frozen, thawed, and torn into bite-sized pieces
- 2 Tbs. peanut butter
- 3 Tbs. soy sauce
- 1/4 cup tomato sauce (from a 14 ounce can)
- 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
- 2 avocados, sliced or diced
- 6-8? ounces cheddar cheese, grated
- about 1 cup smoky chipotle salsa or salsa verde from Frontera Grill
- 6-8 leaves Romaine lettuce
- 6-8 regular-size flour tortillas
For the tofu:
Preheat the oven to 350. Add 1 Tbs. of oil to a cookie sheet. Mix together peanut butter, garlic powder, soy sauce, and tomato sauce. Work the marinade mixture thoroughly into the tofu crumbles, using your hands. Pour the tofu onto the cookie sheet and cook for about 15 minutes per side, until crispy but still moist in the middle.
Makes 6-8 small (but filling) burritos.
Although the combination is not particularly novel or healthy, I agree with Derek that the burrito was certainly very tasty.
Derek Rating: A
Rating: A-
On a second attempt I cut the avocado into slices and sprinkled on top fresh minced garlic, salt, and lots of lime juice. We ate it with a salsa verde, and the sour tomatillos and lime juice went great together. Delicious. I just need to record the amounts and make this a real recipe now!
Update May 15, 2010: I made 2 pounds of tofu and it made about 7 small burritos. I served them with 2 avocados that had been sliced, doused in lime juice, and sprinkled with salt and fresh garlic. Two avocados was just about right for 6-7 burritos. The main problem was the burritos looked really tiny. So although they’re high calorie and quite filling, Derek thought I should have made two burritos for everyone. I’ve got to figure out a way to make them look as large as they actually are! We ate the burritos with Frontera Grill green salsa and lettuce. They were yummy. Some raw onions might have been a nice garnish.
I served everyone one burrito, a small side of roasted carrots, a bowl of Locro, and for dessert a small bowl of vanilla ice cream with salted caramel sauce. I was very full by the end of dinner! Derek, however, ate two burritos.
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Both Derek and I love Annie’s goddess dressing. It’s a tahini-based dressing that’s savory and rich, and very satisfying. Annie’s is not sold in Germany, so I’ve decided to try to figure out how to make something similar myself. I searched around on the web for a while, and came across this taste test from the San Francisco Chronicle that shows that Annie’s Goddess dressing is indeed better than knockoffs by other companies. The result of the taste test didn’t surprise me, but it did worry me a bit—if big food companies can’t replicate Annie’s dressing, why do I think I have a shot?
I looked around some more on the web, trying to find a copycat recipe. Although I found tons of posts where people were asking for the recipe, I could find only one post on recipezaar where someone actually attempted to replicate the original. Although the recipe is rated well, it doesn’t seem to follow the constraints given by the Annie’s ingredient list; I decided not to follow this recipe, but rather to try to figure it out on my own. I looked at the order of ingredients in the ingredient list (ordered by weight) and the nutritional information to try to figure out how much of each ingredient to use. My first few tries were pretty awful, but after ten attempts, I think I finally nailed it! Now we can have Annie’s goddess dressing in Saarbruecken whenever we like. Or maybe I should call it Fannie’s (Fake-Annie’s).
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The photo of the harissa spaghettini on 101cookbooks is enticing. Moreover, the recipe includes both greens and plenty of spice, so I immediately added it to my “to try” list. I can’t find that lovely tender dinosaur kale shown in the photo here in Germany, so I used chard instead. I made a few other adjustments as well, transforming this recipe from a Moroccan recipe to a trans-Mediterranean one. The pasta and chard and parmigiano represent Italy, the kalamata olives come from Greece, and the harissa paste represents North Africa. Read the rest of this entry »
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When Derek went to Cambridge last month, I asked him to bring back some H
obnob’s, the delicious oaty, not too sweet British “biscuits.” He couldn’t find Hobnob’s but brought back a similar oaty biscuit made by Mark and Spencer. These oat cookies have a certain similarity to graham crackers: a crumbly, almost flaky texture, with just a touch of sweetness. I love the graham cracker and chocolate part of Smore’s, but I was never too fond of the marshmallow component. Besides, most marshmallows aren’t really vegetarian. Despite its failings, the marshmallow does fill an essential S’mores role: you need something ooey gooey to hold the biscuit and chocolate together. Instead of marshmallows, I suggest peanut butter: it’s less artificial, contains less sugar, more protein, and is much, much tastier. Smear one Hobnob biscuit with a thin layer of all-natural, salted peanut butter, and top with a square of dark chocolate. Please, use a good quality dark chocolate, not a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar; that stuff is just sugar and paraffin wax. I recommend Scharffenberger’s nibby dark chocolate. If you want the chocolate a bit soft and melted, give it a second in the microwave or a hot oven, or (my preferred, all-natural method) just leave your better than S’mores sitting in a sunny window for 10 minutes. These peanut better than s’mores are probably the simplest, tastiest, most satisfying desserts / snacks I’ve had in a long time. Plus, each one is only slightly over 150 calories (hobnob = 60, 1/2 Tbs. peanut butter = 50, one large square of dark chocolate = 50).
Rating: A-
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This is currently my favorite way to eat Thai roasted chili paste. This recipe from Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancie McDermott is simple and satisfying. For more color, use half yellow squash, but add it slightly before the zucchini as it’s slower to cook. Alternatively, throw in a handful of halved cherry tomatoes when you add the tofu.
- 10 – 14 ounces medium-firm tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 tsp. – 3 Tbs. vegetable oil
- 1 Tbs. coarsely chopped garlic (4 to 6 cloves)
- 1 large onion (about 10? ounces), cut lengthwise into thick strips
- 3 medium or 2 large zucchini, cut into 1/4 inch rounds (about 1.5 pounds?)
- 3 Tbs. roasted chili paste
- 1/4 cup vegetable stock
- 2 tsp. soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt (omit or reduce if your vegetable stock is salted)
- Heat a wok or a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the pan. Add the garlic and onion and cook until shiny, fragrant, and softened, about 1 minute. Add the zucchini and cook, tossing occasionally, until shiny, tender, and a brilliant green, about 2 minutes.
- Reduce the heat to medium and add the chili paste, vegetable stock, soy sauce, and salt. Toss well. Add the tofu and cook, giving it an occasional gentle toss, until it is heated through and evenly coated with the sauce, about 1 minute. Transfer to a serving dish and serve hot or warm.
Serves 4.
Rating: B+
Derek: A-
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A few years ago I made the Roasted Chili Paste (Nahm prik pao) from Nancie McDermott’s cookbook Real Vegetarian Thai. We used it in a recipe with butternut squash and spinach, and everyone enjoyed it. For some reason, however, I never made it again, until this summer. I gave my mom my big Kitchenaid spice grinder with the washable bowl, since it won’t work in Germany, but she didn’t know what to do with it, since she already had a normal coffee grinder. I suggested she make Thai roasted chili paste in it, and she wanted me to show her how, so we cracked open her pristine copy of Real Vegetarian Thai, and made half a batch of Roasted Chili Paste. After tasting it and discovering how utterly delicious it is, we felt foolish for only making half a batch! Read the rest of this entry »
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I wanted to use up some of the 10 jars of nut butters languishing in the fridge, so I decided to make peanut butter hazelnut cookies, which would use up the peanut butter, the hazelnut butter, and the peanut hazelnut butter. Heidi Swanson raves about the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for peanut butter cookies, so I used that as my base, subbing out some of the flour for wheat germ, because I wanted to use it up. The recipe calls for roasted, salted peanuts, which I didn’t have. It was either use unroasted, unsalted peanuts, or… the Trader Joe’s Thai Lime and Chili peanuts I’d been happily snacking on since my friend Robbie introduced them to me a few years ago. I decided to give the Thai cookies a chance. I used the peanuts as they were, bits of kaffir lime leaves, red chilies, and all. If you can’t get Trader Joe’s lime and chili peanuts, then you could try just adding in ground up chili peppers, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves. Read the rest of this entry »
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This is based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. The addition of raw garlic and fresh oregano give these potatoes a full flavor with plenty of bite. This is a great recipe for late winter, when you’re desperate for something fresh tasting, but none of the springtime veggies have arrived yet. Read the rest of this entry »
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Every vegetarian cookbook has a chili recipe. Some are interesting, some are bland, some are just weird. I’ve tried recipes with exotic ingredients like dried peaches, cinnamon, and peanuts. This recipe, however, makes a very traditional chili (ignoring the fact that it has tofu instead of meat). Maybe I’m biased because this is based on my mom’s recipe, but I like it better than any of the other chili recipes I’ve tried, including various recipes claiming to be the “best ever vegetarian chili.” Read the rest of this entry »
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We love this recipe from Peter Berley’s cookbook The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. It has a great nutty yet fresh flavor, and it’s so colorful it makes a lovely salad for a potluck or a picnic. The prep work is substantial, but it makes a lot of food. We try to make it at least once or twice every summer. We would make it more often but it just takes too long. Read the rest of this entry »
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Pasta puttanesca makes a great pantry-only dinner, when you have nothing fresh in the fridge, but want a delicious homemade dinner. Derek claims that the tastiness to work ratio is unusually high. Below I’ve included our current version of this recipe, which is based on a recipe from Jack Bishop’s The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook. Read the rest of this entry »
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My mom came to visit and we made these vegan brownies together. I asked her to write up the blog entry for me:
They came out great with a crispy outside and chewy inside. The recipe originated from Peter Berley’s Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, but we made some adjustments before even starting.. We halved the recipe since we were making a new recipe and didn’t want to have too much of something we didn’t like. We left out the walnuts because we didn’t have any at 10pm and didn’t want to go to the store. And we used white flour instead of half whole wheat pastry flour again because we didn’t have any available. Here is the recipe.
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 1/4 cup soymilk
- 1.5 tsp vanilla
- 1 cup unbleached white flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa powder
- 6 Tablespoons sugar
- 1/4 cup Sucanat
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup semi/sweet chocolate chips
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly oil an 8 inch square pan.
- Put the oil, maple syrup , soy milk and vanilla in a medium bowl and whisk to combine.
- In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa, sugar, sucanat , baking powder and salt.
- Fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture with a rubber spatula. Don’t overmix.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Put the batter in the pan and spread it out evenly. Bake for 35 minutes.
- Do not overbake.
- Cool before cutting.
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This recipe is not authentic as it is made with pre-ground rice flour, and no lentils, but it is fast and super tasty. It’s based on a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East cookbook.
Makes eight 6- to 7-inch pancakes, each using 1/3 cup of batter.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup rice flour (also called rice powder)
- 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. cayenne
- 1/2 cup chopped onion (or just quarter it)
- 1/4 cup freshly grated coconut
- 1 1/4 tsp salt (fine salt?)
- 1 cup plain yogurt (the sourer the better)
- 3/4 cup water
- 1 Tbs. veg oil (plus more for cooking)
- 3/4 to 1 tsp. coarsely crushed or very coarsely ground black pepper
- Put the onion in the bowl of a food processor and chop finely. Add the white flour, rice flour, cayenne, coconut, salt, yogurt, and water. Blend until smooth and pour into a bowl.
- Heat 1 Tbs. of oil in a very small skillet or pot over a medium flame. When hot, put in the mustard seeds. As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop (almost immediately), pour the seeds and oil over the batter. Add the black pepper and mix thoroughly.
- The instructions for cooking the dosas is quite complicated and I’m not going to copy it here since I haven’t yet mastered the instructions anyhow. Jaffrey says to use a 7- to 8-inch nonstick pan, but I use my 12-inch pan since that’s the only nonstick one I have. She also says to use a spoon to spread the batter but I’m not skilled enough to make that work. Instead, I thin down my batter with water, and then just tilt the pan to get the batter to cover the bottom, as you do when making crepes. Note that you want the skillet to be hot, lightly oiled, and the dosa to be as thin as possible. Make sure to cover your skillet after placing 1/3 cup of batter in the pan, and cook until the dosas is no longer white in the center. Flip and leave uncovered when cooking the second side.
- To make these ahead of time you can wrap them in tin foil then reheat them later in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes (I haven’t tried this yet).
My Notes
I often add a bit more water to this recipe to thin the batter down and make it easier to spread in the pan, maybe 1 cup? The thickness of your yogurt will affect how much water you need. Since I add more water I usually get out more dosas, or bigger dosas, than the headnotes indicate. Last time I made them I was able to make a total of nine 8- to 9-inch dosas in my 12-inch skillet.
Note that it’s essential to blend the batter in the food processor or blender to achieve the proper consistency. (A stick blender will work as well, but definitely don’t skip the blending step, even if you dice your onions very fine.) These dosas end up thicker than traditional dosas, but they have great flavor. The sourness and onion flavor are most noticeable. I like the onion so much I may try increasing the amount to a whole cup of onions.
I often serve these some subset of: coconut chutney, raita, samosa potatoes, garlic/ginger greens, and dal or sambar.
The recipe calls for using 6 Tbs. of vegetable oil when cooking the dosas, about 2 tsp. per dosa–1/2 tsp. in the pan before the batter, 1/2 tsp. drizzled over the pancake and 1 tsp. around the pancakes edges. I sometimes just oil the pan for the first dosa. They don’t turn out quite as crisp but they’re still very tasty.
Rating: A-
Derek: A
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This recipe is a long-time favorite. We often make these burritos for company. We serve them with salsa and a salad and either guacamole or diced avocado. It makes a great autumn or winter meal. This recipe is adapted from a recipe from the cookbook Sara Moulton Cooks At Home. The burritos freeze well, so we usually make a quadruple recipe and freeze a bunch of burritos.
Alma as a toddler loved these burritos, and now at almost 6 she still loves them! But she still asks us to leave the scallions out of hers. Read the rest of this entry »
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Sambar is a traditional soup that is eaten daily in South Indian, although the vegetables vary. It has a dark, dusky, roasted flavor that is very satisfying on a cold winter day. Read the rest of this entry »
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obnob’s, the delicious oaty, not too sweet British “biscuits.” He couldn’t find Hobnob’s but brought back a similar oaty biscuit made by Mark and Spencer. These oat cookies have a certain similarity to graham crackers: a crumbly, almost flaky texture, with just a touch of sweetness. I love the graham cracker and chocolate part of Smore’s, but I was never too fond of the marshmallow component. Besides, most marshmallows aren’t really vegetarian. Despite its failings, the marshmallow does fill an essential S’mores role: you need something ooey gooey to hold the biscuit and chocolate together. Instead of marshmallows, I suggest peanut butter: it’s less artificial, contains less sugar, more protein, and is much, much tastier. Smear one Hobnob biscuit with a thin layer of all-natural, salted peanut butter, and top with a square of dark chocolate. Please, use a good quality dark chocolate, not a Hershey’s milk chocolate bar; that stuff is just sugar and paraffin wax. I recommend Scharffenberger’s nibby dark chocolate. If you want the chocolate a bit soft and melted, give it a second in the microwave or a hot oven, or (my preferred, all-natural method) just leave your better than S’mores sitting in a sunny window for 10 minutes. These peanut better than s’mores are probably the simplest, tastiest, most satisfying desserts / snacks I’ve had in a long time. Plus, each one is only slightly over 150 calories (hobnob = 60, 1/2 Tbs. peanut butter = 50, one large square of dark chocolate = 50).
The captious vegetarian 