Zucchini skillet cakes with capers and pine nuts
This recipe is from the cookbook Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen. Madison says that any kind of herbs can be used, but she particularly likes marjoram. I couldn’t find fresh marjoram so used oregano instead. The recipe calls for 2 pounds of zucchini, grated, salted and squeezed to remove as much moisture as possible. Then the zucchini is tossed with 2 eggs (or 1/2 cup pureed tofu), chives, garlic, 1/2 cup fresh parsley, 3 Tbs. chopped fresh marjoram, zest of 1 lemon, 1 cup dry bread crumbs, 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts, and 1/4 cup capers. You then make use half the mix to make one large pancake (filling the bottom of a large skillet).
I tried to use some stale bread to make my own breadcrumbs, but it didn’t work out that well, and I ended up with large, rather hard pieces of crust in my pancakes. Overall Derek and I liked the general flavor combination, but found the pancake texture somewhat odd and floppy. Alma didn’t like them at all, even with ketchup. Maybe if I had better breadcrumbs the texture would have been firmer? Somehow I doubt it.
Vegetarian Ukrainian Borscht
Alma likes beets, as do Derek and I, but I don’t actually make that many dishes with them. I make a beet and lentil salad pretty often, and I occasionally make a beet and potato walnut gratin. And sometimes we just have plain beets as a side. But other than that I don’t use beets that often. I was trying to think of other things to do with beets, and a friend suggested making borscht. Given that we are smack in the middle of winter, I liked the idea of adding another soup to the rotation, so I decided to give it a try. I don’t have a recipe for borscht so I started looking on the internet. Many of the recipes I found call for meat (like this one from Serious Eats). But I found a recipe for a Ukrainian Vegetarian Borscht that looked good to me. I served it for dinner tonight with extra white beans on the side and with dark 100% rye bread from our local farmer’s market. Read the rest of this entry »
Roasted Eggplant and Black Pepper Tofu
This is Smitten Kitchen’s riff on Ottolenghi’s black pepper tofu recipe. You roast the eggplant and tofu in the oven, then toss them with a sauce made from shallots, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, lots of butter and black pepper. Smitten Kitchen reduced Ottolenghi’s original 11 tablespoons of butter down to what seemed a more reasonable 3 to 4 Tablespoons. Well, so I thought until I realized that the recipe calls for another 4 tablespoons of oil to cook the tofu and eggplant! It seemed way too rich for my taste, so I only used 1 tablespoon of butter to cook the onion in. (I was out of shallots.) I didn’t have any low-sodium soy sauce so I added 1 tablespoon of regular soy sauce (instead of the 8 Tbs. low-sodium soy sauce) and it tasted plenty salty to me. The tofu and eggplant cooked pretty well in the oven, but some of the smaller eggplant pieces ended up burnt and some of the tofu on the outside of the pan was a bit too dry.
I liked the dish, but even cutting down the butter I found it way too greasy. It tasted like restaurant food, which to Derek was a very good thing, but is not really what I want from home cooking. I think I will try to make this dish again, but I suspect that I can use just 2 Tbs. of oil to roast the eggplant and tofu in (1 for the pan and 1 to toss the eggplant with), and 1 Tbs. of butter for the sauce. The trick will be getting the eggplant nicely cooked without it burning or getting greasy. If anyone has any tips, let me know.
Even though I left the black pepper off, Alma didn’t like this dish at all (too much garlic and ginger and onions I guess). She ate some of the roasted eggplant and tofu plain without the sauce. Derek and I ended up adding a lot of black pepper to our own bowls. Yum.
Super Simple Quick Zucchini and Almond Saute
Last week I tried this quick zucchini saute with sliced almonds from Smitten Kitchen. It’s a super simple recipe. I julienned the zucchini quickly using my mandoline, toasted the sliced almonds, and then cooked the zucchini for 1 minute. I wonder if my heat was too high, because my zucchini released a lot of water. In any case, I enjoyed the dish, but found it just a tad boring. It was better after I added some fresh basil. I would say B+.
Alma had a few bites then said she didn’t like it. Derek said it was fine but he wasn’t excited about it. Given how easy it was, I will definitely try it again.
Last month we also tried Smitten Kitchen’s zucchini fritter recipe. I don’t remember the details, but I think I had trouble figuring out the right heat level, and I probably didn’t use enough oil, so they ended up a little dry. But still we enjoyed them. Derek liked them a lot and I thought they were fine. Alma wouldn’t eat them.
The best pesto, and sore arms
I got a ton of fresh basil from my CSA this week, so I decided to make pesto. I followed this “best pesto” recipe from Serious Eats. Wow was it hard work! I like that it gives the amount of basil leaves by weight, but the recipe did not prepare me for how much work it would be. It took a huge amount of effort to grind all those basil leaves down by hand. Maybe it was because I was using a big thai mortar and pestle instead of the little white (marble?) one they show in the video? By the end I could barely grip the mortar any more. And I never did get my basil leaves as fine as they show in their photos. The pesto did taste really good though (even though I didn’t have any Fiore Sardo, and used all parmesan, and left out the final 2 tablespoons of olive oil).
Alma tasted the pesto but wouldn’t eat it. I froze the bulk of it in two small glass jars.
I have more basil. I might try making the same recipe in the food processor, and see how different it tastes to me. Maybe I’ll even freeze my basil overnight first.
I’m out of pine nuts though. Maybe I’ll try making the next batch of pesto with sunflower seeds instead? Or maybe I’ll just freeze my basil (in oil?) and save it in the freezer for some other recipe.
Sautéed shredded zucchini with lemon and thyme
For my next zucchini recipe, I chose this simple recipe from Sara Moulton Cooks at Home. Jack Bishop has similar recipes in his Italian Vegetarian cookbook. The idea is to concentrate the zucchini flavor by tossing the grated zucchini with salt and letting it drain, then squeezing out a lot of the moisture. Read the rest of this entry »
Almond meal and zucchini falafel
Even after making two zucchini breads, I still had a ton of zucchini left. I cooked some up with carrots and onions and used it as a topping for pasta along with fresh tomatoes and basil. It was tasty but for my next recipe I wanted to try something a little bit different. When I was looking for recipes that call for coconut flour, I had bookmarked this recipe for almond meal and zucchini falafel from the divaliciousrecipesinthecity.com blog. Unfortunately, I didn’t go back and re-read the head notes before making the recipe, I just started with the ingredient list. I saw “almond meal” and thought it was supposed to be ground almonds, but it turns out the recipe is actually calling for the fibrous, low-fat almond meal leftover from making homemade almond milk. Whoops! Maybe that’s why my falafel were such a disaster. But a surprisingly tasty disaster… Read the rest of this entry »
Zucchini bread two ways
A friend gave me a ton of zucchini from her garden, and I had to figure out what to do with it. I’d never made zucchini bread before, but I was in the mood for something sweet, so I found two recipes online for zucchini bread. One is for a “regular” zucchini bread. The second is for a chocolate zucchini bread. Read the rest of this entry »
Saucy Italian baked eggs
I came across this recipe for saucy Italian baked eggs on a random blog, and immediately started drooling. I’ve been craving tomato sauce lately and this recipe is basically an egg baked in a big ramekin of marinara sauce with a little mozzarella and basil for garnish. It even looked easy enough that Derek could make it himself. Read the rest of this entry »
Raw zucchini, carrot, kohlrabi, and arugula salad with a cashew, tomato, basil dressing
Diana Dammann (the founder and organizer of our local Saarbruecken vegetarian society) brought this dish to a barbecue this summer, and I really liked it. It’s supposed to be a raw “spaghetti and tomato sauce”, but to me it just seemed like a very tasty salad. The zucchini, carrot, and kohlrabi all add a different type of crunch, and the dressing is creamy and satisfying without feeling too heavy. Diana came over yesterday and showed me how to make it. The recipe is originally from the book “Vegan lecker lecker!” by Marc Pierschel, and according to Diana, it was the first vegan cookbook published in Germany. Read the rest of this entry »
Skillet-seared tofu with tomato and thai basil relish
Back in September I wanted to use up the last of the summer tomatoes and Derek picked this recipe to try out of Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Suppers cookbook. It’s a pretty simple pan-fried tofu recipe topped with a fresh relish made from tomatoes, lime juice, ginger, mint, basil, shallot, garlic, and soy sauce. Read the rest of this entry »
Tunisian chickpea and eggplant stew
This stew from the AMA cookbook is vaguely similar to the Moroccan-style tagine recipe I posted earlier this year. Like that tagine, the recipe calls for vegetables and chickpeas and sweet spices like cinnamon and ginger, but unlike the tagine recipe the ingredient list isn’t a mile long. And yes, I did notice that the recipe calls for eggplant. I decided to step outside my comfort zone, as well as the season. Read the rest of this entry »
Mango quasi-lassi with cucumber, mint, and almond milk
It’s really too cold here for smoothies, but I bought some almond milk that I don’t care for in coffee, and was trying to figure out ways to use it up. I also had some mint that needed to get eaten (from the escarole, sweet pea, and mint dish) and some homemade yogurt that was becoming rather sour. I thought I’d try making a smoothie kind of reminiscent of the “Vitality” smoothie they serve here at Dean and David, which has cucumber, yogurt, basil, mango, honey, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. But the container of frozen orange juice that I pulled out of the freezer turned out not to be orange juice, but rather mango puree. So this quasi-lassi was born. Read the rest of this entry »
Ciambotta, Italian Ratatouille
My main failing as a vegetarian is that I’ve never been able to abide eggplant. But recently I’ve eaten it a few times without minding it so much. I ate a very tasty tiny roasted eggplant in Tokyo, and when Derek and I went to Copenhagen recently a friend of his invited us for dinner and served not one but two dishes with eggplant in them. I ate both and didn’t even really mind the eggplant! So I decided to be brave recently and added a small eggplant to a lasagne I was making. I used Cook’s Illustrated suggested cooking method of dicing it, sprinkling it with salt, placing it on a plate with coffee filters (except I didn’t have any so used a paper towel) and microwaving it until it’s slightly shriveled and dried out. I didn’t even notice it in the lasagne, so I decided to push the limits a bit more and try this Cook’s Illustrated recipe for Ciambotta, which they say is an Italian ratatouille-like stew. 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 »
Melon jalapeno “salsa” salad
Despite the last disaster, I decided to try another melon recipe from the Vegetarian Table: Mexico cookbook by Victoria Wise. The author says that melons are an old world ingredient (originally cultivated in Persia), but that they’re extremely popular in Mexico. She uses the melon as the basis for a fruity, tropical salsa.
Melon and potato soup
This recipe’s combination of melon and potato is unusual, and I was curious what it would taste like. Victoria Wise, the author of the Mexican Vegetarian Table cookbook, says the flavors “meld together in a delectable, smooth soup that stands out as an example of how the old and the new merge in a surprising and pleasing way, as they so often do in Mexico.” Sounds appealing, right? 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 »
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 »
Carrot mint salad
This recipe is quite simple but extremely tasty, and quite refreshing. The vibrant orange of the salad adds some loveliness brightness to our otherwise grey European winter days. The recipe is based on a recipe in Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast, but I’ve modified it a bit to suit my own tastes. Here’s my in-progress version of the recipe. I’ve doubled the amount of carrots because carrot salad makes such nice leftovers, and I can eat it days on end without getting tired of it. If you don’t have a food processor and don’t feel like grating 2 pounds of carrots by hand, by all means cut the recipe back down. Read the rest of this entry »
Pasta Estate
Yeah, I know. Pasta Estate (pronounced eh-STAH-tay) doesn’t roll off the tongue quite like Pasta Primavera. But it’s Summer, not Spring. What can I do?
My memories of pasta primavera are extremely positive. I don’t actually have any specific memories of eating pasta primavera in my youth, but nonetheless I associate it with culinary perfection. My memories (despite being hazy) tell me that pasta primavera is rich and delicious and satisfying, and a real treat. Every couple years I try making it, and it never lives up to my memories, but I keep trying. This weekend I had some leftover cream, and in trying to figure out what to do with it I thought of pasta primavera. But it’s summer not spring, so I decided to make Pasta Estate instead. I found two primavera recipes on the Cook’s Illustrated website. Both recipes called for the same vegetables: asparagus, frozen peas, mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, and basil. All of those vegetables are common in late summer except for asparagus. I thought about using frozen asparagus but decided to sub in broccoli instead. I bet cauliflower would also be nice. I also added in two grated carrots, for color, and because my memories of pasta primavera always include grated carrots. Read the rest of this entry »
Zucchini “carpaccio” with feta and pine nuts
I made this no-cooking-required zucchini salad from chow.com in August when I had a ton of zucchini lying around. It made a huge bowl of salad, but between Derek and I we ate it all in one sitting! Read the rest of this entry »
Hungarian sour cherry soup
When I was in Israel last summer my friend made her Hungarian grandmother’s cold fruit soup. It was definitely quite different than any soup I’ve ever made. The soup was refreshing, with a nice balance of sweet and sour, but with some heft from the yogurt and eggs. I wanted to make it this summer and so I emailed her and asked her for the recipe. Read the rest of this entry »
Artisanal balsamic vinegar… not
We had friends over for dinner the other night, and Derek wanted to make a summery dessert. He decided on panna cotta. He considered making green tea or earl grey panna cotta, but in the end he decided that he shouldn’t mess around on his first attempt, and made plain vanilla panna cotta. He thought it sounded a bit boring though, and so he decided to top the panna cotta with fresh strawberries and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. I only had cheap supermarket balsamic vinegar though, and so we decided to reduce it to make it sweeter, less harsh, and more syrupy. Read the rest of this entry »
Six summer recipes from Fresh Food Fast
I’m on a quest to try all the recipes in the summer section of Fresh Food Fast. In the past few weeks I tried five new recipes:
- Pan-seared summer squash with garlic and mint
- White bean and arugula salad with lemon dill vinaigrette
- Chilled soba noodles in dashi with tofu and shredded romaine
- Warm green beans and new potatoes with sliced eggs and grilled onions
- Chilled tomato soup with shallots, cucumbers, and corn.
- Spicy corn frittata with tomatoes and scallions
Read the rest of this entry »
Chilled cucumber soup with mint
I wanted to make a soup for the first course of my dinner last night, but it was too hot to make a normal soup, so I went looking for a cold soup. I would have liked to make the Hungarian fruit soup that my friend Sarah made for me last time I visited her in Israel, but I forgot to ask her for the recipe. So I made the chilled cucumber soup with mint recipe from Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast instead. Read the rest of this entry »
Mashed celery root and potatoes
I bought a big celery root to make Locro last week, but I only used a small fraction of it. I decided to use the rest of it to make another recipe out of The Vegetarian Table: France by Georgeann Brennan. The recipe is titled “celery root and potato puree”, and for some reason I thought it was going to be a soup. But it turned out with a consistency more like mashed potatoes. Read the rest of this entry »
Fusion chipotle salsa soy stir-fry
Last night I was emptying out my fridge in preparation for my upcoming trip to Scotland, and I was trying to figure out what to do with about 1/3 cup of leftover chipotle salsa. Good salsa is rare around here, so I didn’t want to just toss it. But good salsa doesn’t seem to last that long, and I was pretty sure it would be moldy by the time I got back from my trip. The salsa was a quite thick, cooked-style salsa, and visually it reminded me a little of a Thai chile sauce. Derek was making sesame noodles with broccoli and cucumber for dinner, so I decided to make a stirfry with the salsa and what I found in the fridge: 4 ounces of tempeh, 2 small zucchinis, and a big bag of green beans. I made a stir-fry sauce out of the chipotle salsa, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, and a spoonful of maple syrup. It was really tasty! It didn’t really taste fusion–the Mexican flavors in the salsa faded away in comparison to the Asian kick from the soy sauce. But everyone seemed to like it a lot, and it was an easy way to make a tasty stir fry sauce.
I used a still-oily non-stick skillet to crisp up the tempeh and green beans. (I julienned the tempeh first.) Then when the tempeh and green beans started to brown I poured in the stir-fry sauce, which I had watered down so that the tempeh would have some liquid to cook in. I added the zucchini, which I had cut into thin planks, and covered to cook everything through. When the green beans were tender-crisp I took off the lid and led the sauce cook down until it was more of a glaze. I sprinkled the dish with fresh cilantro before serving. Delicious. I’d definitely make this “recipe” again.
Summer corn and zucchini lasagna
When I saw corn at the market I felt a sudden desire to make a light, summery, white lasagna. Rather than use tomato sauce, I thought I could top the lasagna with the slightly caramelized and jewel-like tomatoes that crown Cook’s Illustrated’s summer gratin recipe (recipe here). This was a great idea–it made a beautiful presentation and the tomatoes were delicious. The rest of the lasagna turned out great as well–it held together perfectly, was very flavorful, and looked gorgeous. Read the rest of this entry »
Summer rice salad
I was looking for something to do with some yellow and red bell peppers, and I found a recipe in Jack Bishop’s Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook for a summer salad made with arborio rice. I normally just use arborio rice for risotto, so I was excited about trying something new with it. The rice is boiled in salted water like pasta, until al dente (about 16 minutes), and then mixed with a vinaigrette and allowed to cool before the vegetables and herbs are mixed in.
Bishop says to peel and seeds the tomatoes and cucumber, but I just seeded the tomatoes, and peeled neither. If I made this again, I wouldn’t even bother to seed the tomatoes. I think the pulpy parts would add more tomato flavor. My cucumbers were the little tiny ones that have small seeds–maybe if you have big, waxy American cucumbers it would be worth seeding and peeling them. I didn’t have fresh parsley, but I doubled the basil to two tablespoons. I also forgot to add the one garlic clove that Bishop calls for. The salad tasted okay, but was a bit boring, and the ratio of rice to vegetables seemed too high. I added one red bell pepper, another kirby cucumber, and two more small tomatoes to the salad. The extra veggies helped, but it was still a little boring. Derek thought it needed pesto, and I agree that it definitely needed more than 2 Tbs. of herbs. After my tweaks the salad was pleasant eaten with scrambled eggs and garlicky chard for lunch, but I wouldn’t make it again without making some additional changes.
Here are the ingredients, with my suggested changes:
- 1.5 cups Arborio rice
- salt
- 1 Tbs. white wine vinegar
- 1 medium garlic clove, minced
- fresh ground black pepper
- 3 Tbs. olive oil
- 4 small, ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound)
- 1 medium yellow bell pepper, diced
- 1 medium red bell pepper, diced
- 3 small kirby cucumbers, diced
- 10 kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
- 2 Tbs. minced parsley
- 2 Tbs. minced basil leaves
Rating: B-
The captious vegetarian 