Tag Archives: eggplant

Dec 24 2012
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Thoughts

Christmas Pasta

This holiday season hasn’t felt very holiday-ish. I definitely wasn’t feeling very festive until a couple of days ago. What happened? The weather got frigid, I walked into the State Street Marshall Field’s Macy’s and got overwhelmed by the decor and the crowds, was given a candy cane by a bartender, and then listened to some Christmas carolers over by Cloud Gate. Yay! Christmas! All that’s missing is snow!

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Now, whether or not you celebrate or care about Christmas, I’m willing to bet that you’re gathering with family or friends or, at the very least, getting inundated with baked goods by co-workers. It’s been a challenge for the past couple of weeks. I’ve given in to the cupcakes, the cheesecakes, the coffee cakes, the scrambled eggs. Today is Christmas Eve and it won’t get any easier — but I’ve planned ahead in order to avoid falling into traps. After all, there’s no excuse for me to break my vegan diet if I have perfectly delicious vegan food to eat instead.

I’m going to a gathering tonight and there will be plenty of food, none of which is vegan. So I made some pasta which I am calling Christmas Pasta! Next time, I’ll add spinach or some other green veggie so that it actually looks Christmas-y.

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It’s still in draft mode until I serve it tonight. I hope everyone at the party tries it and likes it! It’s penne in a marinara sauce with lots of garlic, sliced onion, and eggplant. I’m pretty excited about it. Everyone else can have their turkey or beef or whatever!

Happy celebrations, you guys! Stay safe and don’t eat cows. Santa said so. –Melissa

Don’t forget to enter our giveaway!

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Sep 21 2012
5 Comments
Main Dishes, Thoughts

Vegan Lasagna

I make a lot of vegan lasagnas because it’s what happens when I’ve got too many vegetables in the fridge that aren’t suitable for juicing, like mushrooms, zucchini and eggplant. It’s something I suspect a lot of vegans do and just don’t talk about… correct me if I’m wrong. (this is the eggplant version after baking, below)

We slice the zucchini or eggplant thin to use instead of noodles and go from there. Usually we line the baking dish with zucchini or eggplant, cover that with a layer of spinach and cover it in soaked lentils flavored with tomato and garlic and other spices plus whatever veggies we’ve got mixed in. (pre-baking, below)

I usually sneak in another layer of spinach if I’ve got it.Then we make tofu ricotta (tofu blended with a little arrowroot starch, onion and garlic powder, Italian seasoning, etc), pour that over the lentil veggie layer and make another layer of ‘noodles’ cover with some more tomato sauce, sprinkle with nut parmesan, Daiya, and/or nutritional yeast and bake 45 minutes to 1 hour at 350F/180C until it’s bubbly and the ‘noodles’ are tender. It’ll depend on the size as to how long it’ll need to cook. Usually when it’s bubbling up the sides, you’re set! (zucchini version below, after baking)

I’m not writing a recipe for this because I don’t want to box anyone in with specifics. I’d also love to hear your favorite vegan lasagna recipes or little tips and tricks you’d offer to others.

What’s great about vegan lasagna is that it affords the opportunity to eat the nutrients vegans sometimes have trouble getting without a lot of effort. B vitamins, iron and omega-3 and -6 fatty acids are among the nutrients that vegans sometimes miss out on due to eating a compassionate diet. Spinach (for iron), nutritional yeast (B-vitamins) and nuts (omega fatty acids) are my favorite sources of these nutrients.

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

These make great leftovers but don’t normally make it to that stage.

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Sep 19 2012
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Recipes

Korean BBQ and Mom’s Eggplant Salad

My Mom made an eggplant salad of sorts and I thought it would go really well with some korean bbq.

 

I previously posted a recipe for vegan korean bbq or kalbi. The original recipe works fine, but I made a few modifications:

1/2 cup soy curls
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
2-3 cloves garlic, coarsely minced (you can use garlic powder if you’re in a hurry)
sesame seeds
1 tbsp maple syrup

I set the soy curls in water to rehydrate. Then, I mixed the rest of the ingredients together. Once the soy curls were rehydrated and drained, I mixed everything together and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Then, I cooked the soy curls in a frying pan.

 

To make the eggplant salad, Mom started with eggplant that was already roasted and cooked it with garlic, onion, chili paste, sesame oil, and salt.

Enjoy with white or brown rice! –Melissa

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Aug 10 2012
2 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Daal Biryani

Bryani is a dish that’s a regional specialty in one of my co-workers’ home town, Hyderabad, India. She gave me her recipe which calls for lamb and asked me to know how the vegan version pans out. I told her I planned to use lentils and she corrected me, “daal” so that’s what I’m calling it. We used the following:

1 cup of lentils or black-eyed peas, soaked and drained
1 cup split lentils, washed and drained
2-3 chili peppers (we’re using 2 jalapeños)
1 big toe sized piece of ginger, sliced
1 thumb sized piece of turmeric, sliced

some curry leaves if you’ve got them
2-3 teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 carton of silken tofu
juice from 1 lemon

2 medium onions, sliced into strips
4 smallish tomatoes, chopped into bite sized pieces
4 medium white mushrooms, chopped into bite sized pieces
1 pinch of cumin seeds
3 bay leaves

corn oil

1 cup of basmati rice

Put a tablespoon or so of corn oil into a large pan and add the cumin seeds. Heat it until they start to sputter, then add the onion, peppers, ginger, turmeric, garam masala, coriander, cumin, tofu and lemon juice into a large pot, add a little corn oil and stir fry. Add about 1.5 liters of water and use a hand blender to mix everything into a smooth creamy broth.

Chop your veggies while that heats to a simmer.

Now mix in the veggies, legumes and rice.

We added eggplant in addition to mushrooms. They’ll float to the top, this isn’t a problem; it means you won’t need a lid.. Cook until all the water is absorbed and the rice and legumes are tender. This will take about 1 hour give or take 15 minutes on low heat. You can also bake it at 350F/180C in your favorite baking dish for about an hour.

This is a great meal for hungry people who like curry. I don’t know how it measures up to the carnist version, but we managed to eat all of it within 2 days and considering it was almost too big for the pot I was using, this is really saying something. Brent wanted to add some chopped green peppers to the mix immediately before serving next time for a sweet crisp crunch and I agree that would add something. If you try it, let me know. Enjoy!

This is Christie, signing off!

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Jul 27 2012
1 Comment
Cooking, Main Dishes

Soy Curl Adobo with Eggplant Salad

Adobo is a quintessential Filipino dish and cooking method. Pork or chicken are usually used, however, seafood and even vegetables can be cooked adobo-style. Clearly, soy curls are a great substitute. I’m still amazed by what a great meat substitute they are. I’m also amazed that it took me so long to try making soy curl adobo because it’s so quick and easy. Special shout-out to my cousin Dulce for motivating me!

Here’s what you’ll need for soy curl adobo:

soy curls
soy sauce
white vinegar
garlic cloves, very coarsely minced
black peppercorns
bay leaf
Butler Chik-Style Seasoning (optional)
turbinado (optional)

I’m not listing measurements because all you need to know is this: use equal parts soy sauce and vinegar and use more if you want the adobo to be soupy and less if you don’t. The amount of garlic is your call, too, but adobo is meant to be garlicky. With about 1 cup of soy curls, I used 2 tbsp each of soy sauce and vinegar and two garlic cloves.

I put the soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and peppercorns in a small bowl (I didn’t have a bay leaf). Then, I fired up a small frying pan (you can also use a saucepan or pot), heated some olive oil in it, threw in my rehydrated soy curls and some Chik-Style seasoning, and mixed it all together.

Immediately after that, I added in the soy sauce-vinegar mixture. I mixed it again and let it cook. Optional: once the liquid starts cooling off a bit, you can add some turbinado (I did not).

I didn’t use a lot of liquid, so I ended up with some dry adobo, which suits me just fine.

To accompany the adobo, I made an eggplant salad using one roasted eggplant, diced tomato, and minced shallot. My dad pickles his pepper surplus, so I took one of these little chili peppers, minced it, and threw it in the salad along with some salt.

So yummy! The best part is, this dish can last for several days. It’s a road trip favorite for Filipinos for this very reason. I hope you’ll try it. Oh! I made another great discovery today. My sister usually has an allergic reaction to soy milk and tofu. She tried this and so far, no reaction. Yay! –Melissa

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Jul 25 2012
4 Comments
Recipes

Easy Eggplant Sandwich

I’m weirded out by eggplant that I see in grocery stores. They never look as pretty or feel as nice as the ones that grow in my Dad’s garden. I took this photo about three weeks ago; we have a mess of eggplants now.

Eggplant is superb. You can use it in a variety of ways and in a variety of styles (Asian, Mediterranean, Italian, etc.). We “roasted” some eggplant by broiling them whole until they were soft and then peeled the skins. You can refrigerate the roasted eggplant for use later, which is what we did in this case.

You’ll need the following for the Easy Eggplant Sandwich:

roasted eggplant
sliced tomato
vegan pesto
toasted bread

Another garden goody is fresh basil. Here’s a pic of my Dad picking some basil for me for this recipe. I needed it for the pesto!

To make the pesto, put the following into a food processor and combine:

1 1/2 cups fresh basil
4-5 garlic cloves
1/3 c olive oil
1/3 c almonds or pine nuts
1/4-1/3 c nutritional yeast
salt, to taste
crushed red pepper (optional but highly recommended by me)

Look at this beautiful pesto! The non-vegans in the house thoroughly enjoyed it so I am extra proud of it.

Get all your ingredients together on the table.

To construct the sandwich, take your toast, spread pesto on it (it’s okay to be liberal with the amount you use–go crazy!), mash some eggplant on that (no need to reheat if it’s chilled), and top with tomato.

Well, I could write some more about this, but I would like to be alone with my sandwich now… –Melissa

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Jul 12 2012
2 Comments
Main Dishes, Thoughts

A Salute to Saluyot

I’m extra excited about my Dad’s garden this summer! I have always felt like his garden was really unique because of the weird veggies he grows. I distinctly remember a science project where we had to bring different leaves from around our neighborhood to school. I’m the kid who brought eggplant and bitter melon leaves.

Saluyot is one of the plants that my Dad basically farms every summer.

Saluyot should be cooked; I’ve never eaten it raw or heard of it being prepared raw. It’s slimy when cooked, similar to okra, and will slime-ify the liquid that it’s cooked in. Any online information on the nutritional benefits of saluyot are kind of sketchy, but I can tell you that this plant is good for you along with being filling.

One of the many ways that we prepare saluyot is by cooking it in coconut milk with bamboo shoots.

We usually add shrimp to this, but my Mom set aside a vegan version for me. The bamboo shoots were super fresh so this tasted great — no salt or other embellishment needed. Another dish we recently had with saluyot involved squash, long beans, and eggplant (the first eggplant from our garden this season).

My Mom was the mastermind behind these dishes, so I’m sorry that I don’t have more pics or a real recipe to share. It’s only just begun, though, so you can expect more fresh veggie dishes using items picked from my parents’ backyard!

Are you growing veggies this summer? –Melissa

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Jul 04 2012
4 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Kare Kare

Kare Kare is a Filipino dish that is usually made up of oxtail and vegetables in a peanut butter sauce. It’s also one of my favorite things to eat, like, ever. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present: Easy Vegan Kare Kare.

1 cup soy curls
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 a big eggplant, cut into about 2 inch chunks (approx. 2 cups)
1 cup sitaw (Chinese long beans), cut into about 2 inch pieces — regular green beans are fine, too
2 tbsp peanut butter
1/2 tsp achiote powder (optional)
olive oil
salt

First, take your one cup of soy curls and rehydrate them. While that’s happening, prepare your veggies. Any type of eggplant will do. You can put in as much veggies as you would like and even drop the soy curls altogether if you’d like. Eggplant and sitaw are the usual veggies we use; we also use bok choy most of the time. The sitaw came from the freezer… I can’t wait to show you guys the fresh ones once they start to pop up in my Dad’s garden.

When the soy curls are ready, drain the water. In a medium pot, heat up the olive oil and brown the garlic and onions. When it stats to get fragrant (and before the garlic starts to burn), toss in the soy curls and saute them with the onions and garlic. Once they’ve dried out a little, it will be time to add your veggies.

Toss the eggplant in first as they will take a bit longer than the beans to cook. Then, add about a cup of water to the pot. Cover and let the eggplants cook for about 5 minutes.

Add in the beans and then cover it again for a few minutes.

Once the veggies are cooked, stir things up a bit. Then, make a well in the center of the pot and put in the peanut butter. The PB should melt completely and acts as both a flavor and thickening agent.

Taste the sauce and add some salt to taste. Add the achiote powder as the final step. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but this gives the kare kare its reddish color.

You can eat the kare kare on its own, but I prefer to have it with white rice. The soy curls are a good protein to use, particularly because it is reminiscent of tripe (I know… gross) which is also used a lot in kare kare. What’s the green stuff, you ask? Kare kare is nothing without some bagoong or salted shrimp paste. I was so super jazzed when I found this recipe for raw vegan bagoong on ASTIG Vegan. I couldn’t follow it exactly because I don’t have any dulse, so I improvised and crushed up about 4 sheets of salted seaweed snack instead. It’s wacky, but it actually worked really nicely as a bagoong substitute.

OMG, you guys. You have no idea how excited I am that this recipe worked. BTW – Happy Independence Day. Be safe! –Melissa

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Jul 02 2012
7 Comments
Main Dishes, Recipes

Eggplant Parmesan for Dummies

My sister and I decided to have another one of our cooking challenges where we take a dish and make traditional and vegan versions of it. Our next dish was eggplant parmesan. I looked at several vegan recipes and decided that I was going to follow this one from Oh She Glows. It was a good plan until I botched a critical step (thus the ‘dummies’ part of the title). It doesn’t matter because I ended up with a great version of vegan eggplant parmesan anyway!

Vegan (and Soy-Free) Eggplant Parmesan

1 fat eggplant (I paid an arm and a leg for an eggplant from a place that rhymes with Shmole Broods and then saw prettier looking ones for $2 at a farmers market the next day. BLAST!)
1 c unsweetened and unflavored almond milk
3/4 c whole wheat pastry flour (use a gluten-free flour for a GF version)
1 tsp white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp Italian seasoning
2 c breadcrumbs
1 jar pasta sauce (I used Organicville Italian Herb pasta sauce)
1 pkg Daiya shredded mozzarella or other vegan mozzarella cheese

I cut my eggplant into 1cm slices and ended up with 14 slices. I then sprinkled some salt on the slices to draw out some of the water –I’m afraid I may have drawn out some of the flavor as well– and let it sit for about 30 minutes.

Okay, now here’s where I screwed things up. While the eggplant was chilling out, I was supposed to mix together the milk, flour, vinegar, and spices. Instead, I mixed all that and the bread crumbs. Um. Yeah. Dummy. Oh She Glows calls for the eggplant slices to be dipped in the batter and then coated with the bread crumbs. There was no turning back once I added the bread crumbs, but I will say that it all smelled very good and mixed together nicely.

I had to get over my mentally challenged moment and work with what I had (big thanks to my sis for calming me down). First, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees. Then, I grabbed a deep roasting pan, sprinkled the bottom with the bread crumb mixture, laid the eggplant on the crumbs, and then topped it off with the rest of the bread crumbs. I stuck it in the oven and let it bake for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, I put a pot on the stove to cook pasta to go with the eggplant parmesan, cursing myself the entire time for being unable to follow a brilliant and simple recipe. I chose this spinach spaghetti from Shmole Broods. I tossed it in olive oil and freshly minced garlic.

After the eggplant had been baking for 20 minutes, I poured the entire jar of pasta sauce into the pan, sprinkled some more Italian seasoning on top, and baked for another 15 minutes. Then, I topped it off with the shredded Daiya (I didn’t use the entire package but you can) and baked for another 5 minutes.

It tastes as good as it looks, and I hope it looks good to you. Wondering how the traditional version turned out? We didn’t make one — this version worked for everyone, including my Italian brother-in-law.

I can now say that I’m pleasantly happy with how this turned out. I undoubtedly would have found a way to screw up the breading of the eggplant, and I probably would have ended up with a lot of unused breadcrumbs. This worked out quite well and is how I plan to make this dish in the future. –Melissa

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May 07 2012
2 Comments
Dining Out

Vegan Goodies at O’Hare Part 2: Eggplant Parmesan

Last week, I wrote about how I stumbled upon a great spot for vegans at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and reviewed the Grilled Southwest Tofu Wrap. Today, I’d like to tell you about the other prepared food that I purchased: Vegan Eggplant Parmesan.

It wasn’t the most photogenic food, but goodness it was delicious — “gross-looking but tasty” has been a theme this week. I have to admit that I was skeptical. I have had vegan pasta dishes before where tofu subbed in for cheese, but I hadn’t had any worth blogging about.

As you can see, there aren’t that many ingredients. My first bite served as an acclimation to the non-cheese taste. My second bite was better. By my third, I was in love with it. Unlike traditional parmesan dishes, it wasn’t bready, greasy or saucy. It was almost like a light and creamy vegan cake with soft layers of fresh eggplant and perfectly made vegan cheese. It had a great texture to it, and I would have sworn that the cheese was tofu-based if I didn’t see in the ingredients list that it was soy milk-based.

I got three meals out of the 10oz container, which made it worth the price. As a reminder, I found this in the AIRPORT! Unbelievable. I am actually sad to know that my next planned flight will be out of a different terminal, so I won’t be visiting Cibo Express.

There are still more goodies from the airport and Toronto that I’ll tell you about soon, and they’re all snack items. Yay! –Melissa

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