Category Archives: Main Dishes

Jun 08 2012
3 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Vegan Rainbow Bake!

I was feeling adventurous today so we made something a little different. I picked my ingredients based on an inexplicable urge to eat more colorful foods: orange sweet potato, indigo blue potato, and vivid green Brussel’s sprouts.

This is what we used:

1 sweet potato, cut into bite sized pieces

8 small blue potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces

1 lb Brussel’s sprouts, cleaned and cut in half

1 tbsp fresh chili paste

2 tbsp capers (optional)

juice from 1 lemon

1/3 cup of veganaise

I put the vegenaise, capers, lemon juice, and chili paste into a bowl and mixed it.

Then I added the potatoes and sprouts and mixed them until everything was evenly coated with veganaise sauce.

I put everything onto a foil lined baking sheet and baked it 45 minutes at 350F/175C.

It came out moist and flavorful and crisp and caramelized around the edges.

We will probably do this again: the spicy lemony sauce went well with the herbal flavors in the sprouts, the creamy sweetness of the sweet potato and the starchy comfort of he blue potato. It was filling and full of vitamins and minerals.

 

This is Christie, signing off!

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Jun 07 2012
10 Comments
Main Dishes

Saag with Sweet Potato

Brent and I really love Indian food. We make several versions of Americanized favorites including saag. Typically saag is a spinach based sauce flavored with cilantro, chili and turmeric and usually includes chunks of potato, mushroom, and/or paneer. Paneer is a bland home-made cheese so we use tofu that we’ve marinated in lime juice instead. Today, however, we’re using cubes of sweet potato because we had a random sweet potato floating around the apartment (I just had a funny mental image). We put the following into the blender for a creamy base:

1 box of MoriNu soft silken tofu (If you’ve got a soy allergy, soak 1/2 cup of cashews overnight, drain them and add to your blender. This actually tastes marginally better but adds a lot of fat)

1 thumb sized piece of turmeric or 1 tsp powdered turmeric

5-7 cloves of garlic

a generous pinch of cinnamon

1 onion, diced

1 jalapeño pepper or generous spoon of chili paste

1 tablespoon of coconut sugar

This mixture was blended until creamy. Then I added the following greens in the following order, blending thoroughly between:

1 bunch cilantro (stems and leaves)

1 bunch of Swiss chard or mustard greens

1 bunch of spinach

The cilantro goes in first because the stems need to get cut finely. The stems have a lot of flavor. Swiss chard will make a milder saag, mustard greens will make it spicier. Spinach is just a wondrous vegetable. EAT IT!!! Frozen greens work fine for this recipe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I transferred the contents of the blender to my big pan and rinsed out the blender with almond milk (use soy if you’ve got a nut allergy) and put the milk into the pan. I started to heat it and added 1 sweet potato cut into bite sized pieces. A carton of water packed tofu or a few handfuls of mushrooms are great veggies to add to your saag.

Heat the saag through and stir frequently until the potato is cooked. It should be thick and make giant messy bubbles if unattended (hence the stirring).

This will take about half an hour. Add water, salt, spices, and pepper as needed. I also use a garam masala spice mix  that an Indian colleague brought me from his home Hyderabad instead of pepper. Cracked black pepper is better for most tastes. It looks like sewage but tastes like awesome!

We served this with quinoa that we prepared in the microwave with several green cardamom pods. I love saag and know it’s not for everyone. It’s very herbal and spicy and is too vegetal for some. That being said, We ate the whole pan and all the quinoa too… I’ve got a blood donation coming up and I need the iron and vitamin K!

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

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Jun 05 2012
5 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Vegan Breakfast Burritos!

I like breakfast. I also like burritos. Whoever thought of the breakfast burrito is on my “AWESOME” list. The word “burrito” means, “little donkey”. I like to make my burritos about the size of a small donkey. Do you see where I’m going with this?

We had some more chili tortillas and decided, “what the heck.” We made a tofu scramble. I prefer silken tofu but otherwise this recipe is pretty standard.
1 box of soft silken tofu

1 tbsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 pinch of sun dried tomato flakes

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 pinch paprika

1 pinch turmeric

salt and pepper to taste

Stir that up in your non-stick skillet until it’s hot and awesome. More importantly…

We cooked up some black beans. What breakfast burrito would be right without beans? We used the following:

1 onion, diced

6-8 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup of dry black beans, soaked overnight in an excess of water OR 1 can of beans, drained

salt and chili to taste

We heated the onions until they started to turn translucent. Then we added the beans and a jalapeño and just waited until they were hot and tender.

The beans and scramble made their way into the tortilla along with some salsa and cilantro. This was one of the better breakfasts we’ve had in a while. It was savory, spicy and loaded with delicious garlic and cilantro. We forgot the Daiya but neither of us missed it.

This breakfast is loaded with balanced protein to keep you going and a good serving of carbs to get your started. There’s virtually no fat and no cholesterol which is great because the fiber will help you digest all the other deliciousness for a strong body. Happy breakfast!

This is Brent and Christie, signing off!

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Jun 04 2012
9 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Rice Cooker Cuisine: Arroz con Gandules

Arroz gon gandules has always been an exotic dish to me. I imagined that in order to cook it well, you needed someone’s abuela to teach you. Therefore, I never tried making it. Ever. Until yesterday. I found myself craving it and also wanting to cook something that was easy to bring for lunch and reheat at work.

Ingredients:
4oz dried gandules
1 cup rice, uncooked
1 packet Sazon Con Culantro Achiote
3 clove garlic, minced
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 tomato, diced and crushed
olive oil
salt and pepper

I went to the store looking for frozen green gandules but settled for dry non-green ones. I took the beans beans and left them to soak for about 6.5 hours. I literally left them: I left the house and wore myself out doing stuff, so believe me when I say that the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was slave over a stove. So, I decided to use a rice cooker.

In a perfect world, I would have boiled the beans a little bit at this point. But, I didn’t. And things still turned out OK. Here’s what I did do: I rinsed and drained the beans and added them along with the rice and the seasoning packet to the rice cooker pot. Then, I heated up the onions, garlic, and tomato in a pan with some olive oil. I first let the garlic and onion heat up. Then I added the tomato, crushing them with my hand before while adding them to the pan. When the tomato was soft, the onion was translucent, and there was some nice liquid in the pan, I added all the pan contents to the pot with the rice and beans.

Now, here is where I get really scientific. I added enough water to the pot to hit the 3 cup line. This doesn’t mean three cups of water. I don’t know what it means. You’ll have to ask my rice cooker. My rice cooker doesn’t talk. I’m sorry! I mixed the ingredients and then turned on the rice cooker.

Here’s what it looked like about 10-15 minutes in. Now, even though my intent was to let this dish cook itself without me having to supervise, I should have stirred things every 7-10 minutes to prevent sticking. Of course, I kind of enjoy sticky rice, so it ended up OK. After the rice cooker declared things finished, I stirred up the rice again and pressed the cook button again. It went for at least another 5 minutes. Here’s how it looked:

I was worried my rice would be too mushy. It ended up perfect. I was worried my beans wouldn’t cook all the way through. They weren’t as soft as I would have hoped, but they turned out okay. Boiling the beans beforehand would have helped. I’m actually surprised that this didn’t turn into a soupy mess.

I’m really happy with how this turned out and I know my next attempt at making it will be even better! Things I will do next time is throw in some minced fresh cilantro, more garlic, more salt, maybe some spice, and some chopped olives. Yummm….

Not bad for a “lazy” dish! –Melissa

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May 30 2012
4 Comments
Main Dishes, Thoughts

Kadios and Langka!

Full disclosure: My dinner wasn’t totally vegan because it was cooked with pork, which I did not eat. I could not resist being a vegetarian for one meal because this is one of my favorite dishes that I don’t often get to have (maraming salamat to my Aunt who brought it over). I’m extra excited because it’s a dish that can easily be veganized simply by not cooking it with meat.

The beans are kadios or pigeon peas. The meaty-lookimg stuff is langka or jackfruit. For real! I’ve seen jackfruit used in many interesting ways in the vegan blogosphere. This jackfruit is unripe. You should be able to find it in an Asian grocery store labeled as “young green jackfruit.” It’s hearty, picks up flavors nicely, and has a good texture to it. (In case you’re wondering, the green stuff is bok choy. My mom added it so there was more non-meaty stuff.)

What’s great about this dish is that the meat is almost an accessory. This is in comparison to other Filipino dishes where meat takes center stage and the veggies are for decoration. The flavor and color comes in large part from the kadios, which is the real star of the dish.

For dessert, I had ripe jackfruit, which was bought frozen:

This is a definite notch above the canned ripe jackfruit that I’m used to. Hmm… if only I could travel to a place where I can get fresh jackfruit… I will say that jackfruit is not for everyone. When I was little, the smell was a turnoff. It still is a bit of a turnoff, but the taste of the fruit more than makes up for it. Take this with a grain of salt; no one else I know has an issue with how jackfruit smells.

In other news, I just took some vegan spinach artichoke dip out of the oven. I followed Christie’s recipe. Yay! Time to nosh! –Melissa

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May 26 2012
6 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Vegan Kalbi with Mustard Salad

I miss Korean BBQ. A lot. So I veganized it using soy curls.

Traditional Kalbi uses short ribs. The meat is thinly sliced, quite fatty, and can take a lot of work to get “right” because the meat will need to be tenderized quite a bit lest it end up tough. Soy curls are a lot easier to prepare. Soak them in some water for ten minutes, drain, and… well, that’s it. As a bonus, you don’t have to worry about icky stuff like e. coli. For this batch, I used about 3/4 cup of dried soy curls.

Kalbi marinade

1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
2-3 cloves garlic, coarsely minced
sesame seeds
1 tsp turbinado sugar (optional)

I mixed everything but the sesame seeds in a plastic container and then added the soy curls. I mixed it around so the soy curls were covered. After I mixed it around, I sprinkled some sesame seeds on top.

Here are before and after shots of the soy curls. The photo on the right was taken about an hour after I added the curls to the marinade. My advice: don’t let them marinade for much longer than that. I baked the soy curls for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Okay, I totally burned them, but they still turned out yummy!

I had planned to go to the store to pick up veggies and seaweed salad to accompany the kalbi, but the store was CRAZY. If you’re in the Chicago area, I’m talking about Jerry’s. Oh, Jerry’s. Prices and product are so good, but I feel like I die a little every time I go there because it’s so crowded. Anyway, I asked my Dad to pick some fresh mustasa (mustard greens) from the garden for me and made it into a little side salad with lemon, olive oil, salt, and freshly ground pepper. The mustasa was in prime form and gave a serious mustard kick to the kalbi. It was delicious.

Here’s my niece, granting peace to all of you and posing with the food. She didn’t try the kalbi and opted to have cereal for dinner. I was glad I didn’t have to share.

It’s Memorial Day weekend and I’m spending it hanging out with family. I’ll be away from home most of the weekend, so I cooked the rest of my soy curls this morning so I would have something vegan to eat. I opted to cook them in a pan this time, mostly because I didn’t want to burn them again. It ended up looking more like bulgogi than kalbi, but regardless — this wins out over meat versions because look at the lack of fat and oil on the plate! Soy curls have the perfect texture for this. This is also where I learned that marinading soy curls overnight in soy sauce is probably not the best idea. It’s still good, though, and I am still amazed by the soy curl.

I am so happy that I can still have Korean BBQ! All that’s missing is one of those little grills that I can put in the middle of my kitchen table… Have a lovely Saturday! –Melissa

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May 25 2012
5 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Thoughts

WTFennel!?

Fennel is something I periodically see at my farmer’s market and when I made daikon a week or so ago, I mused about adding the anise flavors in fennel to the turmeric and paprika infused radish. Well, I went and did it.

We separated the bulbs, stems and leaves. I froze the leaves for later and put the stems and bulbs into a bamboo steamer.

I cooked my daikon as before, adding a few chopped leaves to  the reduction I made while deglazing the pan with a crisp pinot gris diluted.with water. This works without the wine too but I dig wine. I poured it over the fennel before serving it.

We also steamed some rutabaga. When it was soft we mashed it and mixed in some Daiya and Earth Balance buttery spread. I would do it again, It was a weird alternative to mashed potato. I like weird, especially when it involves buttery dairy-free cheese. Next time that I mash rutabaga I plan to make 2 changes: substitute nutmeg for Daiya and use a food processor instead of my favorite mashing man for a more even texture. They’re kind of fibrous.

This was definitely an experiment. Overall I was pleased with how it worked out, especially using so many ingredients that aren’t common in my kitchen.

This is Christie and Brent, signing off!

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May 16 2012
2 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Mustard Greens and Tofu

Mustard greens or mustasa are not my favorite, but they symbolize the start of summer and my Dad’s garden. We end up with a mess of mustasa when the weather warms up, and we prepare it in many different ways. As Filipinos, we put it in some soupy dishes such as sinigang, and it’s traditionally eaten raw with fish, rice, and buro. Fresh mustasa almost looks like loose romaine leaves, but it has a slightly bitter taste.

One very easy way to cook mustasa is to gisa or sautee it with scrambled egg, onions, garlic, crushed fresh tomatoes and fish sauce, and then serve with rice. My Mom did just that today.

Since Mom is awesome, she also made a vegan version. She dropped the egg and fish sauce, and added tofu:

I added some Sriracha and it was a yummy way to enjoy mustasa! Now that I’m turning veganese, I’m curious about how else I can cook mustasa.

Do you have any suggestions for vegan dishes using mustard greens? Let me know! –Melissa

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May 04 2012
5 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes, Recipes

Sea Scallops, BEGONE!

I love sea scallops. Brent does not. Fortunately we both like daikon radish and we had a giant one hanging out in our fridge like a pale behemoth obscenity. I decided to cook it the same way I used to prepare sea scallops.You’ll need the following:

1 daikon radish, sliced thick

1 pinch turmeric

1 pinch sweet red paprika

juice from 1 lemon

olive oil

1/2 cup of veggie broth

additional water as needed

If you want to deglaze the pan after for a delightful sauce, I recommend using a cup of veggie broth and white wine with a pinch of herbes de provence, but that’s optional.

I sliced my daikon into 1-1.5 inch thick slices, they really look like sea scallops to me. That’s what inspired me. You don’t need to remove the skin.

I put the rest of the ingredients (only half the lemon juice) into my sauce pan and heated to a simmer. Then I put my daikon slices into the pan.

I turned them periodically with some awesome bamboo tongs that my sister got me for my birthday. They have been indispensable in my kitchen since I got them. The daikon slices will start to take on the color of the turmeric and soften.

When they’re suitably soft, let the water evaporate and allow the daikon slices to brown around the edges. The awesome thing about daikon is that they get more tender the longer you cook them. Sea scallops become tough and rubbery, bordering on inedible and approaching unpalatable if you cook them too long and that’s just sad. Also, all seafood contains cholesterol. Daikon has none and will keep in your refrigerator for longer than 2 days. WIN!

Serve them up with a sprinkle of sea salt and the rest of the lemon juice. The sweetness of the tender daikon balances beautifully with the tart lemon and herbal flavors the sea salt brings out, all without any of the fishy smells that make me think twice about putting something in my mouth. If I had this dish to do over, I would use the fond made from deglazing the pan over some steamed fennel and mashed potato.

This is Brent, jealously guarding the plate of daikon. Don’t worry; he shared.

This is Christie, signing off.

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Apr 26 2012
7 Comments
Cooking, Main Dishes

Butternut Squash Ribs or: How I Learned to Stop Hating and Love the Squash

Before becoming vegan, I wasn’t a huge fan of gourds. I wasn’t a fan of the texture or the flavor of those I sampled. But as I say about tofu, I probably didn’t like it because it hadn’t been prepared properly.

The butternut squash we used for this culinary experiment sat in our veggie bowl for well over a week. I’d venture to say more than two, even. What I’m trying to say is it kept really well in spite of our best efforts to ignore it. When it finally came time to disguise the gourd as something delicious, a simple and elegant plan formed in Christie’s brain : enter butternut squash ribs.

Prep for these badboys is deceptively simple:

  1. Cut the squash  into rib-like shapes
  2. Coat in barbecue sauce
  3. Toss in the oven
  4. Wait.

That being said, the star of the show will be the sauce (pronounced sow-suh). We’d encourage you to make your own. We cheated. We got two sauces from OrganicVille; a tangy and a regular variety. This particular brand’s sauces are tasty. Tasty and gluten-free, that is.

Preheat your oven to 400ºF, and once you have properly covered the ‘ribs’ in sauce, arrange them on a baking sheet and toss them in. The objective here is to heat up the ‘ribs’ so the sauce caramelizes a bit and helps soften up the squash, as this variety is decidedly hard uncooked. So, leave it in there for a half hour or until you are satisfied with the softness as gauged by stabbing it with a fork.

Finally, enjoy dem ‘ribs’. The texture for ours was slightly chewy, but harder approaching the rind. Add more sauce as necessary, of course, and don’t be afraid to spice it up if it doesn’t meet your oral expectations.

Peace out, my vegans.

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