Category Archives: Main Dishes

Jul 10 2012
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Main Dishes, Recipes

Lentil Mushroom Loaf

This particular experiment will have to have another go. I wanted to make a lentil loaf in the spirit of meat loaf. Meat loaf always concerned me as a kid because I couldn’t tell what it was made of except that I always saw cousin Mary dumping crackers and meat that had been into the refrigerator long enough that not really be called meat anymore into a bowl and later, meatloaf would appear. Hmmm… I wonder if I should talk to a therapist about that. Anyways, my experiment involved the following:

1 carton of silken tofu

2 cups of mushrooms

1 1/2 cups of lentils

3 cups water

2 cubes of ‘beef’ bouillon

1 tsp sage

1 tsp thyme

1 pinch nutmeg

6 cloves of garlic

1/2 cup of flax meal

salt and pepper to taste

I cooked the lentils with the water in my microwave with the bouillon. I heated them at 2 minute intervals until the water was all absorbed.

When they were ready I put them into my food processor with the rest of the ingredients.

I mixed it until relatively smooth and then put it into my loaf pan. I baked it at 350F/175C until a toothpick came out clean – about 45 minutes. We sliced it up and made it into sandwiches that were hearty, savory and aromatic. The sage and thyme definitely made a great combo with the mushrooms and lentils.

I think that the flavors were good but I might add some cumin and coriander along with soy sauce instead of salt. It developed a nice firm crust but I think that more flax meal would make it stick together better. I might also not blend up the mushrooms I think the presence of whole mushrooms will make this more visually attractive. A diced onion might help that too. This was delightfully moist but the texture was more like paté than loaf. There will definitely be a next time.

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Jul 04 2012
5 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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Jun 26 2012
9 Comments
Main Dishes

Wild Morel and Fiddlehead Risotto!

I love foraged foods. Mushrooms are one of those things that I can’t trust myself to do so I left this to the professionals and got some excellent results.

Be really careful if you decide to forage for yourself: poisonous mushrooms are everywhere and usually they don’t cause anything more serious than some heinous stomach upset but even that isn’t worth it. Morels have a very distinctive features: a hollow core, stem attached at the rim of the cap and a honeycombed cap surface.

Whether you forage yourself or not, clean your morels carefully. Because they’re hollow inside and intricate on the outside, it’s not uncommon for them to be gritty before washing and to harbor… surprises… inside. Slugs, spiders and other critters might be taking a nap, so be careful to cut each one open before cooking.

My next caveat about morels is that they need to be cooked thoroughly. They do contain compounds that can cause gastric upset if they’re not cooked well enough or you might have an unpleasant evening. That being said, some people are just sensitive to the compounds in morels, especially if they are trying them for the first time so consider using them sparingly and using conventional mushrooms for the bulk of the dish. I sauteed mine in some olive oil with a chopped onion, 4 minced cloves of garlic and after the morels started t reduce, I added a cup of frozen edamame, peas are a great alternative if you’ve got a soy allergy.

The risotto was prepared by putting a half cup of arborio rice into a saucepan along with a teaspoon of herbes de provence and a cup of white wine. I’m using chardonnay in this batch because I think the oak and vanilla flavors in the wine will bring out the earthy flavors in the morels.I added some whole Japanese hot red peppers to the broth I used to prepare the risotto. I combined a liter of water with a veggie bouillon cube and brought it to a boil. I added it one ladle at a time until I liked the texture. I fished the peppers out of the remaining broth and mixed in 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast and a tablespoon of Eat in the Raw vegan parmesan (omit this if you’re sensitive to nuts, it won’t affect the outcome of the dish significantly). This makes the risotto creamy and cheesy… like you’d expect comfort food to be… just without the fat and cholesterol.

When that was done, I stirred the veggies into the risotto including the fiddleheads, which I sauteed lightly along with the morels and the edamame.

This was delicious nutritious comfort food. Usually thost words don’t go together but when you’re vegan, they do.

Here is Brent… showing off his bowl. He’s also wearing a super-ultra-mega-awesome shirt with a unicorn, a rainbow, a castle and a waterfall on it. RECOGNIZE!

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Jun 24 2012
3 Comments
Main Dishes

Hearty Blackeyed Pea Stew!

Step over Fergie, turnips are here!

This was an incredibly simple stew. I add a lot of extras because lately I’m obsessed with having as much variety in my diet as possible. I used dried black eyed peas because I find their texture is similar to canned beans and not unpalatable to people who prefer the texture of canned.

1 lb. dry black-eyed peas
1 large turnip, cubed
1 large sweet potato, cubed
1 large celery root, skinned and cubed
1 finger sized piece of turmeric, grated
1 tsp cumin seeds (optional)
1 tsp fenugreek seeds (optional)
5-6 cloves of garlic, minced
juice from 1 lemon
1 tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp olive oil
salt and chili paste to taste
 
Soak the peas in filtered water for 4 hours, overnight if possible but it’s not necessary. Rinse them thoroughly. In a pot add 1 tsp olive oil, garlic and turmeric and heat until the garlic and turmeric become fragrant. I also added some cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds but they’re not necessary. Add the peas and 1 liter of filtered water. Bring to a boil. Let it cook on low heat for about 15 minutes or till the peas are halfway done. Add more water if required. Add the coriander, turnip, sweet potato, and celeriac (celery root) and cook for another 30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. Remove from heat, add lime juice. Garnish with cilantro if you like.
If you want, you can substitute 4-5 stalks of chopped celery for the celery root, 4-5 chopped carrots instead of sweet potato and potato for turnip. Celeriac or celery root can be hard to find so regular stalk celery is fine. I am digging the unusual veggies lately. It’s also been raining sideways thanks to our first notable tropical storm of the season so we’re having our equivalent of a snowy winter day… at 80 degrees F. This was a hearty stew that kept both of us fed for a day and I kept sneaking spoonfuls between meals. Don’t tell Brent.
This is Christie, signing off.
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Jun 21 2012
2 Comments
Main Dishes

Tofu Makeover

Tonight is a leftover night! I have some fried tofu chunks leftover that were meant to be served in a sweet and sour sauce with crushed peanuts. I couldn’t save the sauce yesterday, but I didn’t mind because I knew I would want to re-work the tofu.

Before

Tofu Makeover (this will work with fresh tofu as well, and will probably bake well)

About 2 blocks fried tofu
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp soy sauce
juice of 1/2 lime
olive oil

I minced the garlic and cut the tofu into smaller chunks and put it into a bowl. Then, I added the soy sauce and lime, and mixed it all in a bowl. I fired up a pan, heated up some olive oil, and then heated the tofu for about 3-5 minutes until the tofu was heated through.

I also had leftover spicy vegetables, so I served the tofu with that and white rice. Easy and yummy recipe!

Mmmmm…. veggies!!! –Melissa

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Jun 20 2012
4 Comments
Main Dishes

Channa Masala

Brent and I love Indian food so we’re trying to reproduce favorites like tofu and peas makhani and veggie pakora. This post is about my personal favorite, chickpeas masala. I’ve been working on this for a while and it’s still not quite right but it’s definitely good enough to share.
You’ll need the following.
2 cups of dry chickpeas, soaked OR 1 28 ounce tin of chickpeas, drained
 1 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes
1 large onion chopped into long thin strips
3 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite-sized chunks (or other vegetables; mushrooms, kale, etc. We’re adding broccoli and mushrooms.)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp minced ginger
1/4 cup tamarind or equal volume of reconstituted soup base (juice from a lime and the zest also works but I recommend tamarind)
1 tbsp chopped hot pepper (more if you want, we used jalapeño)
1 heaping tablespoon cumin powder
2 heaping tablespoons coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 pinch nutmeg
1 pinch of cinnamon
1 pinch of crushed fennel seeds
1 pinch cumin seeds
1 pinch fenugreek seeds ( optional)
corn or safflower oil
salt, pepper
In a very large pot, add 2 or 3 teaspoons of corn or safflower oil. Once the oil is hot, add the seeds and stir lightly for half a minute, until they begin to sputter. Add the onion and stir until they’re lightly browned, add ginger, garlic and pepper.
Mix well and add the tomato, tamarind and paste. Stir over heat until the oil starts to separate from the mixture and form a sheen of bubbles on he surface. If you’ve got a hand blender, now is the time to use it. Blend until the larger chunks have been broken down. This step isn’t necessary but I like my channa sauce smooth. Then add the spices and stir them into the sauce, adjusting as necessary. If you don’t feel like adding all those spices individually, you can use your favorite curry powder and salt to taste but I can’t guarantee you it’ll taste like you might expect.
Once the sauce tastes like you want it to, stir in the chickpeas. Depending on your vegetables, stir them in so they’ll be tender but not overcooked when you serve them. Alternatively, you can steam or saute them and stir them into the chickpeas and sauce before serving.
Fresh mint and/or cilantro make a great garnish. We served this over quinoa but jasmine rice also makes a great starch to eat all this deliciousness with. It’s also awesome stuffed into a pita and will make a mess all over your face. This recipe is getting closer to what I expect from an Indian restaurant but it’s not quite there yet. I suspect it might be mint and lemon zest. If you figure out what we’re missing, let me know!
This is Christie and Brent, signing off!
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Jun 17 2012
4 Comments
Main Dishes

Cucumber and Dill Salad with Cashew Cheese

This was a simple afternoon snack for me and Brent. We’ve tried a lot of commercially available vegan cheeses and our next challenge was to make our own so we did, using a recipe introduced to me by Luminous Vegans and you can find it on the Mighty Vegan’s blog.

We started the ‘cheese’ the evening before and after a visit to the farmers’ market I knew what we had to do. We had the following veggies:

2 cucumbers, chopped into bite sized pieces

1 pint of cherry tomatoes

2-3 sprigs of dill, chopped

1/2 purple onion, chopped into large squares

1 tsp maple syrup

1 pinch of salt

cracked black pepper to taste

juice from 1 lemon

We tossed the ingredients together in a large bowl and set it aside to allow the flavors to blend.

Meanwhile we finished making the cashew cheese. The Mighty Vegan’s recipe is incredible. It’s goat cheese. It’s cheaper than any variety we’ve bought at the store. It’s free of preservatives and you can flavor t however you like. We rolled ours in flake red pepper and sweet paprika. We made the cheese into balls and served it with our cucumber salad.

This salad was a perfect complement to the cheese: creamy and buttery cashews brought out the herbal and vegetal flavors in the salad. I also love when I can identify all of the ingredients, their flavors and their beautiful colors in my meal. Nature makes the most beautiful fruits, herbs and vegetables! Then I eat them.

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Jun 15 2012
4 Comments
Main Dishes

Veggie Hash with Spicy Lime Peanut Sauce!

This was another experiment. I’m capricious and easily influenced by how pretty things look. Fortunately, vegetables are also delicious so it has been working in my favor more often than not. To make the hash, assemble the following:
1 generous pinch of chili powder
Earth Balance butter as needed
chipotle pepper as needed
1 1/2 cup corn (frozen is fine)
1 sweet potato, peeled, diced
2-3 tomatillos, diced
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
garlic salt to taste
chipotle pepper to taste
14 ounce can blackeyed peas OR 1 cup of blackeyed peas, soaked
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
Heat a large skillet on medium-high with 1-2 tbsp Earth Balance until it melts. Swirl to coat the pan. Add the corn, sweet potato, scallion, paprika, garlic salt. Stir occasionally until the sweet potato is soft.
Add blackeyed peas and stir to mix well; cook 1 more minute or until sweet potato are soft and blackeyed peas are warm through. Transfer mixture to a casserole dish.
 
To make the spicy lime peanut sauce, combine the following:
 1/2 cup almond milk
juice from 1 lime (use a fork to get more of the juice out as shown)
zest from the lime
2 tsp peanut butter

Mix well and adjust the seasonings to taste.

 
I served mine with spinach that I prepared with garlic and jalapeño. I plated the spinach and add the roasted corn, yam, and blackeyed peas mixture to the center of the spinach. Add the spicy peanut lime sauce as desired, sprinkle with cilantro and serve.
We hope you enjoy it!
This is Christie and Brent, signing off!
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Jun 12 2012
2 Comments
Main Dishes

Chocolate Rosepetal Chipotle Tofu!

This was definitely an experiment. I love rose and I’ve got an abundance of rose petals so I decided to give them a go in something savory instead of sweet for a change. You’ll need the following:

4 tbsp rose petals
1 carton of water packed tofu, cut into slabs
1-2 tablespoons Earthbalance or other vegan butter
1 large pinch of chipotle pepper or to taste
salt to taste
4 tbsp slivered almonds, toasted
1 tsp agave or rice nectar
1 generous pinch of chocolate powder
1/2 cup almond or soy milk (more if needed)
a dry white wine to deglaze your pan and that will also compliment your meal, you’ll need about half a cup

I started with some frozen tofu that I sliced into 2 slabs. I covered each side of each slab lightly in Butler’s Chik-Style Seasoning and a gentle sprinkle of cracked black pepper and sauteed them in 1-2 tablespoons of Earth Balance butter until they were lovely golden brown. I set them aside while I began to deglaze the pan.

I added 1 cup of white wine, the rose petals and almonds and swirled it until the almonds started to soften. Then I added the chipotle and chocolate powder. and waited until most of the wine had burned off before adding the almond milk. If it starts to curdle, don’t worry, just add more milk. The almond milk helped to keep the spice of the chipotle from overpowering the rose petals. When it has heated through and you’ve had a chance to adjust the salt pepper and agave nectar, it’s ready.

Pour it over the tofu. Brent made some mushroom wild rice and we steamed some asparagus and had an exotic dinner with some interesting flavors.  Still, something was missing (maybe shallots) and I might leave out the almonds next time (and put them in the rice instead). I’ll let you know what happens if we make this again.

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

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