Category Archives: Main Dishes

Dec 27 2011
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Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Chili and Cornbread: the Vegan/ Gluten-Free Way.

This is how most of my cooking adventures with my best travel buddy begin.

We didn’t actually leave the kitchen… except in our mouths… MINDS! I mean our minds. We made chili this particular evening. This recipe includes winter squash. We decided to use canned pumpkin but an equal volume of roasted butternut squash, acorn squash, or whatever you can get your hands on should work perfectly. The squash adds its own unique flavor and balances the acid from the tomato with the heat from the peppers. Normally the lard from ground meat would do that job but this way you don’t have to add a lot of grease to get a delicious bowl of chili. To start, you’ll want to assemble the following ingredients.

3 tins of beans (any variety), include the liquid when you add them to the recipe

28 oz tin crushed tomatoes

1 15 oz tin pumpkin

2 chiles, minced (we used jalapeno)

3 chipotle chiles in adobo, minced

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced (we used 6 but we love garlic)

1 tsp cumin

pinch of cinnamon

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp chili powder

salt to taste

hot sauce to taste

Add the onion and a dash of olive oil to a large pot.  Stir on medium/high heat until the onions begin to turn translucent. Combine the rest of the ingredients except for the beans and liquid. Heat to boiling. Add the beans (we used white, black and kidney but any mix would do) and adjust liquids to desired consistency with bean liquid and possibly water. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary. Garnish with cilantro. If you like your chili really spicy, include the seeds from the peppers, otherwise, discard them and add a little hot sauce for pep. Wear gloves when mincing the peppers to prevent an evening of burning fingers (sorry, Brent).

3 cups almond flour

1 tsp baking soda

big pinch of salt

1 generous handful of shredded Daiya cheddar cheese

2 peppers, minced (again, we used jalapeno)

3 tbsp starch

1/5 cup almond milk

Preheat oven to 325F/160C. Combine almond flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Mix in grated cheese and serranos. In a separate bowl, mix the starch, almond milk, and water. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until they just come together. Drop batter in large spoonfuls onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until slightly browned on top. If you’re allergic to nuts, try this with ready-made polenta and skip the almond milk and starch.

This recipe (as written) is perfect for 3-4 people to have a generous serving. Brent and I were both stuffed and the floor also had some. Oops. I hope you get to try it!

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Dec 20 2011
1 Comment
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Butternut squash: that’s what she said!

Butternut squash is so easy to prepare and so delicious you might punch yourself for not having prepared it for yourself and your family sooner. It’s loaded with vitamin A and C and is also a great source of calcium and iron. All you have to do is slice it into bite sized pieces, coat the pieces lightly with olive oil and space them out on a metal baking sheet lined with wax paper. Bake them at 375F/190C for 40 minutes, turning them at 2 or three times. They should begin to caramelize around the edges. Sprinkle with a little salt and serve.

I ate mine with my variant of bachelor chow which I prefer to prepare in the microwave. I add 1/4 cup of French lentils to 1 cup of water, microwave it for 2 minutes and add another 1/4 cup of red quinoa. I microwave it 2 minutes at a time until all the liquid is absorbed. I season it with the following.
1 teaspoon of onion salt
1 teaspoon of garlic salt
a few dashes of hot sauce
a 1 inch cube of Teese mozzarella cheese (this makes it sticky enough to eat with chopsticks)
and salt to taste


You might also have noticed some Brussels sprouts on my plate too. I cut a cross into the top of each one, drizzeld a little balsamic vinegar over it and placed them on the baking sheet with the squash for the last 15 minutes of the bake. I like my green veggies pretty crispy, if you’re used to softer vegetables, cook them 25 minutes and turn them once.

This is Christie, signing off… to go bake the seeds from the squash!

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Dec 19 2011
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Main Dishes, Recipes

Raw Manicotti: Effing Delicious!

Melissa has set me on a raw bonanza! If you want to be really simplistic, you could call raw food “complicated salad”. Considering how little time it takes to make a salad… this should be appealing to busy people. Complicated salads only take a little longer than simple salads. It’s also a great alternative to the same boring salad you’ve been trying to eat meal after meal in order to avoid getting new pants after all those rich holiday meals. I love shopping but I’d rather spend my money on farmer’s market veggies than pants.
Start out with 2 medium zucchini. These are your “noodles”. For the noodles, cut off both ends of each zucchini. Slice the zucchini the long way so that you have long, wide noodles. Use a knife, cutting as thinly as possible and be really careful. Set them aside. Now it’s time for the creamy filling.  You’ll need the following ingredients:
1 block of Mori-Nu silken tofu
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tsp tablespoons Italian seasoning
4 cups spinach

Combine all the ingredients except for the spinach in a food processor or blender. Blend until smooth. Scrape into a large bowl. If you want to be extra raw or soy free, substitute a cup and a half of soaked cashews for the tofu. Chop the spinach finely by hand and set it aside.

Now it’s time for the tomato topping. You’ll need to get all of these ingredients.
1 cup of sun-dried tomatoes (pre-soaked or not, just you’ll need more water for the latter)
1/4 cup water
1 medium tomato, chopped
3 cloves of garlic
1 handfull of fresh basil
salt to taste
Combine the ingredients in the food processor and blend until slightly coarse.

To assemble the manicotti, arrange 3 or 4 zucchini strips on a cutting board, slightly overlapping one over the next by about 1/2 inch as in the photograph. Add a handful of chopped spinach, as shown. If you’re feeling less adventurous, layer the ingredients to make “lasagna” instead.

Place 1/4 cup of the creamy filling in the center and spread about an inch thick. Add some more spinach.

Roll the zucchini up to make “manicotti”. Place two manicotti on a plate and top with a few tablespoons of the tomato sauce. Garnish with a sprinkling of raw parmesan and/or chopped basil. I also sliced up some black olives. I love olives.

This is Christie, signing off… food coma.

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Dec 14 2011
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Main Dishes, Recipes

Raw sushi… wait, isn’t sushi raw anyways?

A dude at my farmer’s market sold me some parsnips and told me they make great raw sushi. I had to think about it. I don’t make a lot of raw food except for salads, guacamole and salsa. This is one of the reasons I’m fascinated by Melissa’s raw cheesecake.

I’m a little lazy so I skipped Stan’s advice (my farmer’s market friend). He told me to chop these roots coarsely. I put two of them into my food processor with the shredding blade. They’re pretty big, I’m not even sure they’re really parsnips since the ones I grew up with were small, pointy and a little sweet and these weren’t so much. Who knows. I’m not a rocket scientist. They worked fine for what I was using them for. I suspect cauliflower would work well too. I showed the picture to my cousin who is a real farmer and he suggested that they might be a kind of Japanese radish called “Daikon”. Wow, he’s smart. The flavor of the plain root was crisp and clean with a very mild spice. This recipe is loaded with fiber, vitamin A, C, E, omega fatty acids, and essential amino acids to name a few. It’s low in fat, has no cholesterol, no hormones, and no synthetic antibiotics.

I dumped this into a large bowl, added a tablespoon of tahini, half a teaspoon of maple syrup (if you use parsnip, you probably won’t have to add a sweetener), a dash of ponzu sauce and a few dashes of rice wine vinegar. I mixed it with my hands… if you’ve got little kids I bet they’d like that part. I tasted it until it was slightly sweet and slightly salty and with just a hint of tartness, like regular sushi rice. After that, I spread out about 3/4 cup onto a sheet of nori and added the fillings. In this case – carrot, mustard greens (stems removed) and avocado.

I used moisture from the bottom of the “rice” bowl to seal the edges. The first roll of these fell apart while I was trying to cut it. I started wrapping them up in 2 sheets of nori. I realize my rice was too wet. By the third try, they were pretty enough to get a picture. They took very little time to prepare: no waiting for things to heat or cook. They were also exquisitely tasty with soy sauce.

This is Christie, signing off… to attack that last “parsnip”.

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Dec 07 2011
4 Comments
Main Dishes

WTF is moussaka!? (kinda like lasagna but not…)

The final product in this recipe fell apart and wasn’t ready for it’s close-up, Mr. DeMille. I thought about scrapping it and waiting until the next time I made it but then I put it in my mouth and realized it would be criminal not to share.

I bought this bad boy at my farmer’s market. It’s an “heirloom zebra eggplant” or so the sign said. For this recipe, any eggplant will do. Moussaka is a dish I was introduced to by a Greek friend. She’s from Cyprus so my recipe might have a different flare than you’re used to. I learned to make this dish with cream and lamb. There’ll be none of that today. Moussaka is kind of like lasagna: it’s comfort food layered with eggplant (or zucchini), meat, potatos, and mushrooms and then smothered with a bechamel cream sauce. But like I said… no meat or cream. This recipe is comfort food with fiber, protein, lutein, vitamin C, and enough other nutrients to make your mom proud. Okay, get a load of this.

1 eggplant, sliced longwise, 1/4-1/3 inch thick and soaked at least 4 hours in lightly salted water (zucchini also works and you don’t have to soak it)
1/4 cup bread-crumbs or blanched almond flour
For the filling…
1 cup chopped mushrooms
1-2 chopped soy sausages (optional, or you can use my black-eyed pea burger *winkyface*)
1/2 onion, diced
1 chopped tomato or 1/3 cup canned diced tomato
2-3 tbsp tomato paste
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 tsp sage
salt and pepper to taste
Combine the onion and garlic in a medium frying pan. Sautee over medium-high heat until the onions begin to become tranlucent. Then astir in the sage.
Add the rest of the ingredients and set heat to medium-low, stirring occasionally while the mushrooms cook down and get tender and allowing some of the moisture to evaporate.
Make the bechamel sauce while this happens. No pictures… it just looks like ranch dressing.
‘bechamel’ sauce
1 box silken tofu
1 tbsp onion salt
1 tbsp garlic salt
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 tbsp nutritional yeast (optional)
1 dash of lemon juice
1 pinch of nutmeg
salt to taste
Combine all the ingredients for the bechamel sauce in a blender or food processor. Mix until smooth and creamy.
Preaheat the oven to 350C/175F. Coat your pan lightly with olive oil. Cover the bottom of the dish with half the bread-crumbs or almond flour (I used almond flour). Add a layer of eggplant, overlapping if necessary (you can sautee it lightly first if you want it extra tender but it can make them harder to work with and I like mine a little chewier), the mushroom/soy sausage filling, another layer of eggplant and top with the bechamel sauce and the rest of the almond flour or bread-crumbs.
Bake for 30 minutes or until the moussaka begins to bubble.
EAT IT!
This is Christie, signing off. I’m full.
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Dec 07 2011
3 Comments
Main Dishes, Recipes

Delicious/Disgusting Bachelor Chow

Here’s the deal : I like mixing different food together to make something new. Ultimately, it looks unappetizing, inedible. I don’t care because it’s me eating it.

This is why writing for this blog is going to be decidedly difficult.

When I first started going vegan with by better half, I hit the same wall all soon-to-be-vegans do : WTF can you eat that doesn’t have meat or dairy in it? My go-to was rice.

Rice is deceptively easy to cook if you treat it tenderly and with respect. I prefer brown rice which is harder to cook for some, mostly because it takes longer to cook. And I must admit that it took (and is taking) a lot of trial and error to get the texture right. But the result is healthier than white rice.

Regardless of which kind of rice you choose to cook, rice by itself is pretty effing dull. Granted, you’ll get some basic nutrition out of it, but without loading up on soy sauce it can pretty much suck. Especially when you eat it every. night. like I did when I was first going vegan.

My solution to the boring rice problem was Bachelor Chow.

No, it’s not the dog food you see on Futurama. Rather, it’s a mix of things that can be super easy to cook, and winds up giving you an extraordinary amount of nutrition. Then I proceed to make it into junkfood with the things I add to it.

Let’s begin with the ground-level edition of BachChow, shall we?

BACHELOR CHOW

~6 Cups Water
1 Cup Brown Rice
1 Cup Quinoa
1/2 Cup Lentils

Estimated prep/cooking time ~50 minutes

Get a pot big enough to furnish ~7-8 Cups of material. Drop your water in there, and bring it to a full boil. Dump the rice, quinoa, and lentils all into the boiling water. Wait until the water starts to act all uppity and try to boil over, and drop the burner head down to medium heat (a little above medium is sufficient). Now, you play the waiting game.

With rice, you shouldn’t have to stir it to make it do its thing. Just let the boiling water do the work. Wait a half hour, and then return to the pot. If it still has water, let it boil another 5 minutes or so. But once holes start appearing in the mixture, that’s when it’s go time (Read : Get ready to make sure you don’t lose your batch of Bach to the burn deities).

Get your wooden spoon and go around the edges of the mixture to keep it from sticking. Then go from the outside of the pan in, so you scrape the bottom of the pot. If you feel resistance or a bumpy texture at the bottom of the pan, quickly go around the pot outside-inning until you ensure there is no stickage at the bottom of the pot. Turn off the heat. Note that there may be a little teensy-weensy bit of water left in the bottom of the pot. That’s totally cool. Just let the rice absorb what’s left of it.

Now you should have baseline BachChow. It has some fiber, some carbs, some aminos, some iron.  The rice should be soft, the lentils should be squishy, and the quinoa should make the dish look like a bunch of tiny sperm and egg exploded. It’s pretty damn good as it is. But you may want to add some flavor.

Below are some suggestions on how to spice up your BachChow to make it look horrific, and make it taste amazing.

Things you may want :
Daiya grated cheese (Mozzarella and Cheddar)
Garlic salt
Liquid Aminos
Hot Sauce (Tapatio, Cholula, Sriracha)
Tempeh

I’m not saying you need to mix all of the above into the BachChow. But I’m not saying you can’t, either. I like to add Liquid Aminos, hot sauce, and Daiya at the minimum. If you want to add some meaty texture, make some tempeh strips and drop them in there. Garlic salt can be a gangster addition, but some freshly diced garlic is a healthier choice.

Frankly, BachChow is something you should experiment with. Add veggies, add other sauces, add tomato sauce. Do what feels right. You may end up making an earth shattering mixture that is deceptively easy to make and reproduce.

Good luck with your BachChow.

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Dec 03 2011
11 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Who can live without burgers? Not this girl.

Okay, I love sausage and burgers. I just hate that they’re full of stuff that’s not very good for you like cholesterol and lots of fat and that animals have to die to make them. This is a recipe I’m still working on but it’s more than good enough to share. To make my black-eyed pea burgers (taste better than they sound, promise) you’ll need to combine the following in a large bowl.

2 cups/15.5 oz tin of black-eyed peas (field peas also work), drained and set the liquid aside
2 tbsp tapioca, potato, or arrowroot starch
2 tbsp flour (I use oat but whatever kind you like)
2 tbsp rolled oats or quinoa
2 tbsp flax meal (optional)
1/4 very finely chopped mushrooms
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
1.5 tbsp Italian seasoning (if you don’t like your sausages spicy, I recommend herbes de Provence instead)
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp coriander seeds
garlic salt to taste
hot sauce to taste
oil for frying

Once everything is in the bowl except for the garlic salt and hot sauce, start mooshing. This might be a great job for any children in the house, it’s fun and can be done with your hands. Add the liquid from the canned peas until the mixture is doughy and somewhat dry but not crumbly. You shouldn’t have to add very much.

When it starts to look uniform (as above ) take a taste. Don’t worry, there’s no risk of E. coli or Salmonella, it’s not meat! Start adding hot sauce and garlic salt and continue mooshing until it tastes right to you. When you like the flavor and texture, pick up a good handful of the mixture and form it into a patty shape. This recipe should make 3 generous patties for a regular sized bun. They won’t shrink much during cooking because there’s no lard to dribble off into the pan leaving you with an emaciated burger.

I prefer to bake mine at 350F/175C for 25 minutes or until crispy outside and still mooshy inside but you can pan fry them in olive oil to the same effect if you’re feeling decadent. I like that these are fat and cholesterol free but mostly because my Dad and sister have high cholesterol and I’m sure they’re not alone.

I toasted my buns and melted my cheese for the last 2-3 minutes of the bake. This cheese is Daiya. They sell 5 lb. blocks and shreds. Yeah, I admit it. I have a 5 lb. block of non-dairy cheese in my fridge. I’m not ashamed of my 5 lb. block of non-dairy cheese. Daiya is the best cheese substitute I’ve found for cooking. It’s great in quesadillas, on ‘burgers’, for mac and cheese, pretty much anything you can think of… okay, that’s my Daiya plug. There are other non-dairy cheese that I like but that’s another blog post.

Did I mention that you can refrigerate these burgers for 2-3 days until your ready to cook them up or freeze them for up to 3 weeks? Yeah. You can. Also, the buns came from the Zen Cat Bakery (http://zencatbakery.com/) a gluten-free and vegan bakery. They are also awesome and make gluten-free vegan brownies that can defeat my PMS with a single bite!

This didn’t last long. If you try it, would you let me know how it goes? Here’s to your healthy burger!!!

this is Christie, signing off.. to eat another guilt free burger.

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Dec 01 2011
3 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Penne with Portobello Mushrooms, Artichokes, & Spinach

I enjoy cooking, but I don’t do it very often. My parents always make plenty of food for the entire family. Therefore, I tend to eat a lot of Filipino food, which I LOVE, but Filipino food can be hard to vegetarianize, let alone veganize. Clealy, I need to start cooking to minimize cheating on my vegan diet. I can only eat so much tofu, so I decided to cook some pasta for dinner. I had portobello mushroom caps and a can of artichokes, so I thought about those two ingredients for a bit, and then went online searching for “penne portobello artichoke recipes.”

I don’t often impress myself when it comes to cooking, but I will happily brag that I knocked this out of the park! First, I need to give credit where credit is due, and tell you that I found the original recipe on Tastebook by way of Google.

Ingredients:
8 oz of your favorite penne pasta: I used whole wheat
1 can artichokes in water, drained
2 portobello mushroom caps
handful of walnuts
a bunch of spinach
“balsamic vinegar”: I didn’t have balsamic vinegar so I mixed together 1 tbsp red wine vinegar and 1 tsp sugar and used about half of the mixture
olive oil
minced garlic: I ended up using about 4 cloves
red pepper flakes (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta and drain. Clean and de-rib the mushroom caps and chop (I went to YouTube for a tutorial on cleaning and de-ribbing the mushrooms.) Saute the mushrooms and garlic in olive oil. Add the artichokes, spinach, and walnuts and stir gently until the spinach is wilted. Add the balsamic vinegar and red pepper flakes. Gently mix everything. Add the pasta and stir until it’s heated through. Put some on a plate or in a bowl and pig out.

Some notes: I added a bit of olive oil to the mix two or three times from start to finish, and threw in more garlic after adding the pasta to the sauce. The red pepper flakes actually infused their spicyness into the veggies while cooking, so every bite had a kick. I absolutely LOVED it, but you may want to consider adding at the very end or simply putting it on the table to add as you eat the dish.

I’m really happy because, not only was the end result delicious, I had a LOT of fun cooking this. I had a really good rhythm in the kitchen with this one. Yay!

xoxo and happy cooking… melissa

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Nov 21 2011
1 Comment
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes, Thoughts

Tofu and Mushrooms in Green Curry

For dinner last night, I was in the mood for something with a kick, so I decided to cook some tofu with Trader Joe’s Thai Green Curry Simmer Sauce.

I minced 2 large garlic cloves, threw it in a pan with some canola oil (I would have used sesame oil if I had some), and then browned firm tofu cubes. I added some mushrooms and salt, and let it sautee for a bit. When the mushrooms were about halfway where I wanted them to be, I added about a half cup of the curry sauce and coated the tofu and mushrooms. Then, I added about a cup of frozen peas, covered the pan, and let it all simmer. I served it to myself with some white jasmine rice.

I give this dish a B. The sauce does have a kick but is otherwise pretty bland; I had to add more salt as I was eating. The mushrooms took over the dish. I’m thinking that it may work out better if I sautee them a bit in garlic first, drain any liquid, and then add the tofu and more garlic. Fresh chili peppers would have done wonders for the dish, too, as well as some fresh ginger.

The challenge going forward will be to find non-Asian ways to cook tofu. I’m Asian myself, so I can do Asian everyday, but I know tofu is versatile and I’d love to cook it in pesto or something.

Another note on tofu: my sister has a soy allergy and so she avoids tofu, soy bean sprouts, soy milk, and even edamame. So I’d love to find non-tofu and non-meat protein sources so that we can enjoy vegan and vegetarian meals together.

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