Freezer-friendly breakfast tacos or breakfast burritos
I really want to find a recipe for a breakfast taco or breakfast burrito that I can make in advance and freeze, then pull out on rushed mornings. I love the idea but I just never seem to get around to trying any recipes. But finally today I tried these vegetarian breakfast burritos from Cookie and Kate. I wanted to have enough to freeze so I bought ingredients for two whole batches. (Enough for 12 8″ tortillas.) We made the first batch for breakfast, but unfortunately, they weren’t a hit, and we didn’t bother to make the second batch. So I’m still on the hunt for a good freezable breakfast taco. Maybe next time I’ll try this Love and Lemons breakfast burrito recipe. Or if anyone has a recipe they love and can recommend, please post a comment! Read the rest of this entry »
Seitan porcini “beef” stew
My sister said I had to try this delicious recipe from Post Punk Kitchen. I followed the recipe pretty closely. The only change I made was using storebought vegetarian sausages instead of homemade. And I didn’t have any dried rosemary so I used fresh. But I didn’t really care for the stew. There was nothing wrong with it per se. It wasn’t offensive. But I just didn’t find it tasty. Maybe the sausages I used were part of the problem. I like them a lot plain, but they just didn’t work in this dish at all. I think it would have been better with seitan.
I ate the stew on day 1, day 2, and day 3 and it tasted the same to me on all three days. The potatoes are cut quite large and don’t really absorb much flavor. Derek didn’t like the recipe at all. He would only take a couple bites.
Overall, I found this recipe to be a waste of a lot of expensive dried porcinis. I wouldn’t make it again. If I want some kind of savory “meaty” stew like this I much prefer the mushroom stroganoff by the same cookbook author. Sorry Hanaleah!
Chanukah Cabbage and Kohlrabi Salad
I got a kohlrabi and a cabbage in my CSA box last week, and I was looking for something to make with them. I found this recipe in the cookbook Plenty. (It’s actually directly opposite the recipe for the Thai green curry that’s the last recipe I blogged.) Ottolenghi says it’s his favorite use of kohlrabi. It calls for alfalfa sprouts, which I can’t get here, so I soaked some seeds and sprouted them myself. When they were finally ready I made this salad out of my kohlrabi, cabbage, and sprouts, along with a large bunch of dill and a whole cup of dried sour cherries from my local Turkish store. The dressing is made out of a lot of lemon juice and olive oil, 1 garlic clove, the zest of 1 lemon, and lots of salt.
I made this salad on the first night of Hanukkah, and when Alma asked what I was making, I told her it was “Chanukah Salad.” We were on a Skype call with my family and everyone thought the idea of a Chanukah salad was very funny. But it does have a lot of olive oil, and you are supposed to eat a lot of oil on Chanukah, so I think it fits.
Alma didn’t like the salad at all. She took one bite and said “bäh“. I also wasn’t very excited by the combination. I felt like not only wasn’t it better than the sum of its parts–it was worse than the sum of its parts. But my big problem with the salad was that the dressing was so acidic it hurt my tongue badly. (I have geographic tongue syndrome, and certain acidic foods are highly problematic. Normally a little lemon juice doesn’t bother me, but I guess this was just too lemony.) Derek, however, loved the salad. He said it tasted like something he’d get in a 3-star Michelin restaurant in some nordic country.
If you choose to make this, I’d only add the sprouts to the portion you plan on eating in one sitting. After sitting overnight in the dressing they got rather limp and unappealing looking.
Instant Pot Saag Aloo with sweet potatoes and chard
I have been craving Indian food, and so I printed out a bunch of new Indian Instant Pot recipes to test. I gave Derek the stack of recipes and he picked this Vegan Richa recipe for Instant Pot Saag Aloo, which was convenient because I happened to have a lot of chard and sweet potatoes. Also, we really like Vegan Richa’s Instant Pot lasagne soup, so I was hoping for another great dish.
Unfortunately, it was not a success. Alma (at age five) took one bite and then wouldn’t touch it, and even Derek only ate a few spoonfuls. It ended up very watery, not sure why. Maybe I mis-measured the water? But even ignoring the wateriness, nobody liked the flavors. Too much cinnamon maybe? Derek said it was just too sweet tasting. Did I screw it up, or is it just not for us?
To try to improve the texture, I pureed it all together and then served it with pan-fried paneer for breakfast this morning. That was okay, but we still didn’t like the sweet potato / chard / cinnamon combination very much.
Protein-powder free chocolate vegan protein smoothie
I am on the hunt for new smoothie recipes that everyone in my family likes. Ideally I am looking for a recipe that is filling, healthy, and easy to make. I found this chocolate shake recipe on the minimalist baker website, and decided to make it for breakfast this morning since Derek is out of town. He’s usually not into the chocolate smoothies, but Alma likes them. The author says the smoothie (she calls it a shake) is creamy, chocolaty, filling, and delicious. Sounded good! I followed the recipe carefully except I added a bit too much peanut butter and used 4 very small dates. I used 1.5 cups of almond milk and a bit more than 1.5 Tbsp. of cocoa powder.
The report. First of all, although it has no protein-powder in it it tasted to me like it did! The smoothie was powdery and dull tasting. (Maybe it would have been less powdery if I had a better blender? I have a good blender but it’s no Vitamix.) The taste wasn’t awful but it wasn’t great. Alma tasted it and agreed it needed something. She suggested lemon juice. I thought yogurt. We both seemed to think it needed some acid. We ended up adding some orange juice, which definitely helped. Then we added a big pinch of salt and a big spoonful of vanilla. Better, but it was still too one-note for me. And I didn’t like that there was no fruit or vegetables in it other than banana.
We ended up eating it as a smoothie bowl with raspberries and granola. That worked pretty well. The raspberries added some more sourness, which it needed, and the granola and raspberries both added some texture, which helped distract from the powdery texture. In the end it was fine, but I’m not sure I’d make it again.
The recipe says it serves 1. What? Alma and I both had seconds and we still had a ton leftover. I think the author says it serves 1 so that she could claim it has 23g of protein in it. Sneaky devil. I would say it serves 3, at least if you add OJ and eat it with raspberries and some granola on top, like we did.
I’m curious what made it powdery. I’m guessing it’s the oats and/or the cocoa powder. I’m curious to try a smoothie with hemp seeds and chia seeds and no oats or cocoa powder, and see if it ends up powdery.
Best Green Smoothie for Beginners
I make smoothies pretty often, but almost never green smoothies. The few times I’ve tried to improvise one Alma wouldn’t drink it. So I went looking for a kid-friendly green smoothie recipe. I found this Beginner’s Luck Green Smoothie recipe on the simplegreensmoothies.com website. It claims it tastes like a “tropical treat”. I happened to have all the ingredients, and Alma likes mango a lot, so I gave it a try.
I thought it was fine. I tasted a lot of pineapple. It wasn’t a very complex flavor, but it was pleasant enough. Alma drank a little of it, but wasn’t too into it. Derek said it was fine but not exciting. He thought it needed peanut butter, but I didn’t think that would really go with the pineapple. I then tried to jazz it up by adding some roasted sunflower seeds that I had lying around. That made it just taste like roasted sunflowers seeds.
The hunt continues.
Turmeric-Roasted Cauliflower with Pistachio Gremolata
I saw this recipe on food52 and was instantly sold. A “low-effort, high-impact dish” that’s suitable for weeknights and company? Sounds great. I’ve actually never used fresh turmeric before, but I was intrigued after reading reading “how the freshly grated bits of turmeric get deliciously caramelized on the hot sheet pan, and how its earthiness complements the mild sweetness of cauliflower.”
Unfortunately, the dish was only meh, and not as easy and fast as the author makes it out to be. I think I followed the directions pretty closely. It calls for one large head of cauliflower. I wasn’t sure how much that was, and ended up using 2 pounds of cauliflower. Later I noticed that one of the comments mentions a large head weighing 850g (exactly two pounds). I’m not sure if that was weighed before or after trimming, but I don’t think I was so far off. The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of olive oil, which seems like a lot, but the final dish didn’t actually seem that rich.
Even with all the olive oil, the fresh turmeric never seemed to get “deliciously caramelized”. I’m not sure why. I’ve never used fresh turmeric before, and was surprised at how mild it was. And how sticky. It’s been several days, and I still can’t get the yellow residue off of my microplane, or my fingernails.
And we were a bit mystified by the dates. They are nice and soft and sweet, but they didn’t really meld with the dish. When you got a date it was very sweet and date-y, but when you didn’t get a date you didn’t taste it. I felt like if you’re going to put in super sweet dates you need something salty and briny to counteract all that sweetness.
Then there’s the gremolata. It was fine, but expensive. (1/3 cup of shelled pistachios cost quite a bit.) And I’m not sure the pistachios added all that much. I think just lemon zest, parsley, and garlic would have been just as good. The pomegranate didn’t add much either, in my opinion.
Alma wouldn’t taste the dish at all. She was scared of the fresh turmeric. Derek said that the flavors didn’t really meld and was missing something. All in all we were quite disappointed.
Chickpea Stew with Saffron, Yogurt, and Egg
This is another recipe featured on Food52’s Genius Recipes page. It’s from Heidi Swanson’s cookbook Super Natural Every Day. I chose it because I had some chickpeas and homemade vegetable broth to use up, and a student of mine from Iran got me a boatload of saffron as a gift. Also, it looked pretty easy, and I needed to make a quick lunch that was suitable for both Alma and me. Read the rest of this entry »
Brown rice supper with tofu, peanut sauce, and stir-fried carrots
In the 70s and 80s many vegetarian restaurants offered some kind of brown rice bowl, which consisted of some combination of borwn rice, tofu, beans, veggies, and a sauce. In NYC in Angelica Kitchen they called it the Dragon Bowl. It’s simple, hearty, co-op food—nothing fancy, but tasty and filling. So when I asked Derek to pick a recipe for dinner last night, he picked this “brown rice supper” menu from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Suppers cookbook. Read the rest of this entry »
Za’atar-Spiced Beet Dip with Goat Cheese and Hazelnuts
I’ve seen this Yotam Ottolenghi beet dip recipe show up on several blogs lately, and although beets and goat cheese is a standard combination, I’ve never tried beets and goat cheese with Zaatar before. It sounded interesting, so I thought I’d give it a try.
I used pre-cooked, pre-peeled beets, and so the recipe was pretty easy—just put everything but the garnishes in the food processor and blend. The puree tasted okay, but I could barely taste the za’atar, which was the reason I had picked the recipe in the first place. I ended up adding quite a bit more as a garnish on top of the puree. as well as more hazelnuts and goat cheese and scallions. (The garnishes seemed to disappear much faster than the beet dip.)
We ate the dip with pita bread, but it seemed to last an awful long time, given that it was only made from 6 beets. (Normally Derek and I could polish off 6 small beets in one or maybe two sittings.) Derek liked the dish more than me, but after we finally finished it I asked him if we should make it again, and he said no.
I think my main problem with the recipe is that it’s a dip. I just didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t figure out what to dip into it other than pita bread, and I didn’t really want to eat a massive amount of pita bread. I think I would have liked it better as a salad with sliced beets.
Chilean cabbage and avocado slaw
I needed to bring a salad to an Argentinian barbecue, but I wasn’t feeling so well, and wanted something quick and easy. I settled on this recipe for Chilean cabbage and avocado slaw by Martha Rose Shulman. Read the rest of this entry »
Immunity soup with a garlic, ginger, pepper broth
I liked the miso tahini turnip soup from 101cookbooks so much I decided to try another soup recipe from her blog, this time for “immunity soup,” built on a garlic, ginger, pepper broth. The recipe calls for white pepper but I didn’t have any, so I just used black pepper. I assumed the only difference was cosmetic, but maybe white pepper actually tastes different, because this recipe was a let down. I thought the soup would be wasabi-up-your-sinuses intense, but we found it bland, even after adding more black pepper. I really like clean, brothy soups in general, but this one was unsatisfying. It didn’t taste bad, it was just boring and a bit bland. Maybe if I’d been able to find some pea shoots they would have brought the whole dish together? I doubt it.
Broccoli salad with ginger vinaigrette
Derek loves broccoli, but I have surprisingly few easy broccoli recipes. My two standbys are sesame broccoli and pan-fried broccoli with garlic, but I’d love a nice easy recipe for broccoli salad. I still remember a delicious salad made from grated broccoli stems from the buffet at Whole Foods in Pittsburgh years ago. This recipe, from Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast, looked like just what I was looking for. Read the rest of this entry »
Whole wheat penne with masses of broccoli, green olives, and pine nuts
One of my students recently visited Russia and brought me back a beautiful box of pine nuts. We were trying to decide what to make with them when I found this recipe in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Suppers. I was excited because it calls for either oregano or marjoram. I really like marjoram, but have almost no recipes that use it.
Buckwheat vegetable pancakes with spicy yogurt sauce
Derek and I picked this recipe from the winter section of Fresh Food Fast for dinner last night. The pancakes are supposed to be chock full of shredded cabbage, grated carrot, scallions, and dill. Instead of adding the shredded green cabbage, however, I used some of my homemade sauerkraut. Read the rest of this entry »
Roasted delicata squash with quinoa salad
I saw delicata squash in Saarbruecken for the first time this year, and was so excited I bought all of them. But my mom told me that they don’t last as long as other winter squashes with harder skins, so I asked Derek to choose a recipe to use up some of them. He chose this recipe from a “lighter cooking” section of Food and Wine magazine. Read the rest of this entry »
Chipotle-braised pinto beans with delicata squash
I made this recipe for “braised pinto beans with delicata squash, red wine, and tomatoes” a few years ago when I was visiting Derek’s parents in New York. My mom joined us for dinner. Since Derek’s father can’t eat much salt, I cut the salt back substantially, and just let each person salt the dish to taste. At the time, my mom really liked the dish, but no one seemed to want to eat the leftovers, but maybe it was just because I cut out the salt. Adding salt at the table doesn’t get the salt into the center of the beans and squash, where it’s needed. I do remember being impressed that the delicata squash skin really wasn’t tough at all. But overall I just found the stew a bit boring. But I finally found delicata here in small-city Germany, and decided to give it another try. Read the rest of this entry »
Seitan and vegetables with mole sauce
Years ago I ordered the OLÉ MAN SEITAN at Angelica Kitchen in New York City, and loved it. It was a whole wheat tortilla stuffed with seitan and roasted vegetables and topped with mole sauce. It was huge, but so tasty I finished the whole thing. Afterwards, however, I regretted it, as I went into one of the worst salt comas of my life. Still, I have fond memories of that mole sauce. The recipe for the dish is in the Angelica Kitchen cookbook, and I tried making it once many years ago, without success. I no longer remember the details, but I remember it didn’t taste nearly as good as at the restaurant. But I had some homemade seitan to use up, and decided to give it another shot last night. Read the rest of this entry »
Vegetable, lentil, and grain croquettes
I really like the five-grain croquettes in Peter Berley’s cookbook Modern Vegetarian Kitchen (especially the amaranth), but Derek was never a big fan of them. Since he’s out of town this week, I thought it would be a good chance to finally try Berley’s other croquette recipe from the same cookbook. This recipe is a bit different in that it uses fewer grains (only white rice, quinoa, and millet), but adds in red lentils, sesame seeds, and chopped sweet potato, plus the seasoning is a little different (garlic, ginger, celery, scallions, and parsley). Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tofu swiss steak, or tofu smothered in tomato sauce
I have no idea why Ron Pickarski names this “Swiss Steak”. It’s basically tofu smothered in a vegetably tomato sauce. Is that how the Swiss eat their steaks? It seems more Italian. In any case, Pickarski says that this is one of his favorite everyday foods, so I thought it was worth a try. Read the rest of this entry »
Quinoa and pinto bean loaf
I have recently acquired a new cookbook, and so according to my one in, one out policy, one of my old cookbooks has got to go. Scanning the shelf, Ron Pickarski’s book Friendly Foods caught my eye. It’s a vegan cookbook published in 1991, and written by a Franciscan monk. It includes quite a few seitan, tempeh, and tofu recipes, and a whole section on recipes for which the author won a medal in the Culinary Olympics! I used Friendly Foods a few times in college, but (as far as I recall) not since then. It seemed a good choice to pass on. But I couldn’t get rid of it without giving it at least one last chance to wow me. So Derek and I sat down and picked a few recipes to try. The first one I made was this quinoa loaf. It’s mostly quinoa mixed with celery, pinto beans, some other veggies, and seasonings. It sounded a bit strange but I like quinoa a lot and I had just made a pot of pinto beans, so I decided I’d give it a try. Read the rest of this entry »
Savory zucchini dill cheesecake
I bought a ton of ricotta to make a recipe (I no longer remember which one), then changed my mind and needed to do something with all the ricotta. I thought about making lasagna but wanted something a little less time-consuming, and Derek found this recipe for a savory zucchini ricotta cheesecake on 101 cookbooks. Read the rest of this entry »
Spring vegetable pasta
It’s unusual to find a light, vegetable-inspired recipe on the Cook’s Illustrated website, so I was intrigued when I saw their recent recipe for a spring pasta dish with leeks, asparagus, peas, mint, chive, and lemon. The ingredient list sounded delicious, and the technique was interesting as well. They toast the pasta in the oil and then cook it in a small amount of liquid, like risotto. The sauce is made from just vegetable broth, a moderate amount of olive oil, and white wine, and they claim it is “light but lustrous and creamy”. Supposedly the starch from the pasta helps it thicken up. Read the rest of this entry »
Light cranberry orange muffins
I have a recipe for pumpkin cranberry bread that I just adore. I wanted to try making it into muffins, but I couldn’t find any more fresh cranberries. So instead I found this recipe in Cook’s Illustrated’s The Best Light Recipe. The basic recipe is for blueberry muffins, and then they offer variations for bran muffins, corn muffins, raspberry almond muffins, and cranberry orange muffins (which call for dried not fresh cranberries). Alex and I made the cranberry orange muffins for breakfast last Sunday, along with these two ginger muffins. Read the rest of this entry »
Black bean patties with dill and scallions
This recipe from the AMA cookbook combines black beans and what I think of as traditional Greek flavorings (garlic, scallions, dill, and yogurt). I couldn’t quite imagine the combination, so I decided to give it a try. Read the rest of this entry »
Green curry with zucchini and bamboo shoots
We’ve been eating the green curry I made last weekend all week. First we ate it on roasted veggies, then I improvised a green curry with chard and tofu. It came out okay but not great, so I decided to actually follow a recipe the next time! This recipe for green curry with zucchini and bamboo shoots from Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai. Read the rest of this entry »
Broccoli Pie a la Grecque
This is another new recipe from the AMA Family Health Cookbook. I had a bunch of fresh mint and dill to use up, and went searching for a recipe. This one, which combines broccoli, eggs, and cheese with fresh herbs and cubed bread, looked perfect. Read the rest of this entry »
Tofu burgers
I saw the recent post on 101 cookbooks for tofu burgers, and I figured I had to try them. I still don’t have a food-processor, so I made only half the recipe in my mini-processor. I laughed when I went to put in the mushrooms and discovered that 27 grams of mushroom is only one large mushroom! The recipe calls for 1/4 cup bread crumbs, but my 1/4 cup of panko only weighed about 14 grams, so I doubled the amount. Other than that, I made the burgers exactly as the recipe described, but my burgers weren’t nearly as brown as the one in the photo. It looked more like tofu with brown speckles on it. It was definitely cooked through though. The flavor wasn’t bad–a little nutty, but ultimately rather bland. We ate our burgers with tomato and red onion, but the burger couldn’t really stand up to the intense onion flavor. The burgers did hold together quite well though. The texture was certainly better than the texture of other tofu burgers I’ve made in the past. I might use this recipe as a base recipe, and add more seasonings next time. But I don’t think I’d make this exactly recipe as written again. Rating: somewhere between a B and a B-.
Roasted vegetable tamale pie
Unlike the typical tamale pie recipe, this recipe from Rancho la Puerta does not call for beans. Instead, sliced potatoes are layered on the bottom of a casserole dish, and veggies are mixed with egg whites, cornmeal, pureed corn kernels, yogurt, and a little cheese. Read the rest of this entry »
Mushroom, celery root, potato burgers
I had leftover mashed potato/celery root, and Derek and although we really liked it when I first made it, we were both getting a bit sick of it. Then I came across a veggie burger recipe in the Rancho la Puerta cookbook that calls for mashed potatoes. I figured I could use up the rest of the mashed potato/ celery root in these burgers. Read the rest of this entry »
The captious vegetarian 