The captious vegetarian

We needed a quick meal for dinner tonight, and we had sweet potatoes, carrots, and broccoli in the fridge — exactly the vegetables called for in this recipe from Jill Nussinow’s cookbook Vegan Under Pressure (page 151).

I was a bit nervous about the peanut sauce recipe since it calls for balsamic vinegar, which seems odd, but it turned out well.

The recipe has you make the peanut sauce then prepare about 4 to 4.5 cups of veggies. (She says you can use seasonal veggies of your choice, but you may have to adjust the cooking times.) In this version of the recipe she calls for onion, sweet potatoe, carrot, and broccoli.

You prep one cup of sliced onion (cut from pole to pole — I used one medium onion), one cup of carrots (in 1/2-inch slices. — I used 2 medium carrots), and one cup of sweet potatoes (diced — I used one medium sweet potato, which yielded probably quite a bit more than one cup). The recipe doesn’t say how large the sweet potato dice should be. I cut into pretty large cubes.  Finally, you prepare 1.5 cups of broccoli florets. I chopped up more than one cup of broccoli florets and used the stems as well.

Once all your veggies are prepped, you dry sauté the onion in the instant pot (I added a bit of olive oil), then add the sweet potatoes and carrots with vegetable broth and cook on high pressure for 2 minutes. Then you do a quick release and add broccoli florets and a bit more vegetable broth as needed. (I added about 1/2 pound of cubed soft tofu as well.) You cook for 2 more minutes on low pressure, then another quick release. When I opened the instant pot the second time the sweet potato was falling apart and the broccoli was almost raw. Odd. I sautéed it a while until the broccoli was a bit softer. At that point the sweet potato was truly mush. I stirred in the peanut sauce and some chopped cilantro.

The dish looked a bit like dog food, but everyone seemed to like it. I especially liked the soft steamed tofu, although the tofu was a bit undersalted and required a bit of soy sauce.

I’ll definitely make this recipe again. The recipe says it serves 4 as a side dish (and as a main dish ir you add tofu, tempeh, or seitan and serve the veggies over rice or quinoa).

There is some super easy tiramisu / Japanese cheesecake recipe made from Biscoff (speculos) cookies and greek yogurt that’s going like wildfire around social media. I decided to try it. I started with this recipe, then adapted it a bit.

Ingredients:

1. 1 tub plain 5% greek yogurt, 750g — I used a 500g container of topfen magerquark, which is quite thick, and 250g of regular plain whole milk German yogurt, which is a bit runny.
2. 20-30 Biscoff cookies, the more the better — I used I think 22, which was not quite one roll of Biscoff
3. 2-3 tablespoon powdered Truvia, or sweetener of choice — I used one tablespoon of date syrup
4. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5. It wasn’t called for in this recipe, but I added 3 Tbs. of strong mocha pot coffee (it’s weaker than espresso, but much stronger than drip coffee)
6. Also not in the recipe, but I dusted the top with cocoa powder

I mixed together the quark, yogurt, date syrup, vanilla, and coffee in a glass tupperware, then added the cookies (so that they were standing up on their side), trying to get the cookies totally submerged. Chilled for 8 hours and topped with cocoa powder.

I liked it! It’s not quite tiramisu but it has a similar texture and the coffee flavor combined with the sourness of the quark/yogurt and the sweetness of the biscoff cookies is quite nice.

Topfen Magerquark has 70 kcal per 100g, 0.6g of fat, 3.6g of milk sugar, and 12g of protein. Our yogurt has 75 kcal per 100g, 3.5g of fat, 4.9g of milk sugar, and 5g of protein.

I’ve been experimenting with various yogurt fruit bowls and today I tried a recipe from Dominique Ludwig. She says this yogurt flax bowl is very tasty and a great way to start your day:

• 150g yogurt (The original recipe called for strained Greek yogurt with 10g protein / 100g, but I used skyr plus a dash of regular yogurt. I’ve seen other versions of her recipe where she calls for 200g.)
• 25g milled flaxseeds (The original recipe called for 2 Tbs | 25g. Other versions of her recipe calls for 30g.)
• milk and/or kefir (I used cow’s milk, didn’t measure, just added enough to get the flax seed to loosen and mix in.)
• 12g peanut butter (The original recipe suggested 10g, but my spoon was a bit bigger!)
• 1 half of an orange + a spoonful of frozen raspberries (The original recipe suggests a red kiwi, but I’ve never seen a red kiwi before! Another version of this recipe called for 1 fig and 20g pomegranate or 100g of frozen berries. I used the fruit I had on hand. I added the other half of the orange that I put in Alma’s lunchbox plus the rest of the frozen raspberries that Alma didn’t finish from her breakfast.)

My original notes: I quite liked the orange and peanut butter flavor combination.  The raspberries were fine but not quite as tasty as the orange. The flax seed didn’t bother me, but I was running low so I used only 10g—less than half the called-for amount. I’m curious what it will taste like with the full 25 to 30g! Will it have a powdery texture? I will grind some more flax seeds and try again.

Update Feb 17: I tried this again using the full 25g of (freshly ground) flax seed and half an orange (my half after peeling weighed 125g). I still liked it but I could definitely taste the flax seed more than before. The 10g of peanut butter I added helped a lot with the flavor. Next time I would add a bit more fruit. I like having fruit in every bite, otherwise it’s a bit textureless.

Nutritional content: Dominique Ludwig talks up the nutritional value of this breakfast bowl, saying it has 30g of protein (but no protein powder) and 11g of fiber per bowl–1/3 of our recommended fiber for the day. But does this bowl really contain 30g of protein? If I had followed the original recipe the yogurt would have 15g of protein, the flax seeds about 4.5g, the peanut butter about 2.5g, the kiwi almost 1g, and the soymilk at most half a gram. That’s only about 23 to 24g of protein. How did she calculate 30g? I guess if you used 200g of yogurt and a full 30g of flax seed you’d just about get to 30g of protein.

Other additions: Some commenters say they like to mix in 1 Tbs. of rolled oats or hemp hearts. Others say they sprinkle on a tablespoon of granola for crunch.

Other breakfast ideas from Dominique:

Dominique says another (more time-consuming) breakfast she likes is scrambled eggs on toast with minty cottage cheese peas. Recording the recipe here to try:

• 75g frozen peas, cooked
• 75 g cottage cheese
• Chopped mint leaves
• Sea salt and pepper
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon milled flaxseeds
• salt and pepper
• 50g slice of sourdough or chickpea loaf

You make the scrambled egg just like normal, toast the bread, smash the cottage cheese and peas together with the mint, salt and pepper, spread it on the toast, and top with the scrambled eggs.

• 25g chia seeds (2 Tbs.)
• 150g high-protein yogurt
• 150g kefir

In the morning if necessary add more kefir or milk to thin it down. She says she likes to layer the chia pudding with fresh raspberries.

Here’s another recipe of hers, for a warm chia pudding:

Soak 25g chia seeds in 100g milk of your choice overnight, or for at least 30 minutes. Heat the chia seeds and milk in a small pan, throw in 100g frozen blueberries or blackberries, and warm through until thick and creamy. Pour into a bowl and top with 100g greek yogurt and 20g hemp hearts.

She also has a chocolate chia pudding on her website.

I have blogged three different versions of vegan meatballs. One was made with tempeh, the second with soybeans, and the third with tofu. None were quite what I was looking for, so I decided to try again with this recipe from this vegan meatballs recipe from Love and Lemons. They look gorgeous in the photos and I was excited about eating them, but boy did the recipe feel long!

First you slice and roast the mushrooms, then you pulse them in a food processor along with a long list of ingredients (black beans, oats, flax seeds, onions, garlic, walnuts, various spices, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, tomato sauce …). Once everything is chopped up you pour the mixture into a large bowl and fold in panko breadcrumbs. Then you have to form the mixture into balls and fry the balls in a cast iron skillet, after which you put the skillet filled with veggie balls in the oven to bake.  Plus I made spaghetti and tomato sauce to go with the balls, so altogether I used one baking sheet, my food processor, a large bowl, my largest cast iron skillet, my 4-quart pot for the pasta sauce and my 5-quart pot for the spaghetti, a cookie scoop, a rubber spatula, a metal spatula, various measuring cups and spoons, plus a colander to drain the black beans. Yikes. That’s a lot of dishes to wash! Was it worth it?

No, I don’t think so.

The recipe worked. The balls had a pretty good texture and a reasonable flavor, but I didn’t really enjoy them with the spaghetti and tomato sauce. It was too starchy and the flavor of the balls somehow got lost (except when I bit into a fennel seed, when I got a strong hit of fennel flavor). I think I will try some of the leftover balls with just some tomato sauce (no pasta) and see if I like them better.  But I suspect that I’d like them better served with a different sauce. Maybe a carrot sauce? Or zucchini sauce? I’ll need to ponder it.

Alma was not super enthusiastic about this recipe, but that’s maybe just because it’s new. It usually takes her a while to get used to new flavors.

Derek quite liked these balls. He thought they added a lot of flavor and texture to an otherwise boring pasta and tomato sauce meal.

If I make these balls again I think I will try to think about how to streamline it a bit so I don’t get quite so many dishes dirty.

I am looking for some new make-ahead breakfast ideas and wanted to make something with beans. I decided to try this pretty simple instant pot khichdi recipe from v8well.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup [135g] basmati rice [I would try a bit less next time, maybe 2/3 cup | 120g]
• 1 cup [120g] yellow moong dal
• 1 tsp. ground turmeric
• 1/3 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 3/4 tsp. ground cumin [I accidentally used 1 tsp., but it didn’t taste very cumin-y.]
• 2/3 tsp. [Originally 3 tsp. fine sea salt. I used 1/2 tsp. table salt, and it wasn’t quite enough.]
• 1 Tbsp. freshly grated ginger [I used 1 Tbs. chopped ginger, but it wasn’t very ginger-y]
• 7 cups |1680g water
• 1 Tbs. ghee or olive oil [Originally 3-4 Tbsp grass-fed ghee]

Directions:

1. Rinse the rice and dal together in a fine sieve. Add the rinsed rice and dal with the rest of the ingredients to the Instant Pot. Mix well. Set the timer to start cooking 1 hour 15 minutes before you want to eat in the morning. Set the pressure cook time to 15 minutes. In the morning, the instant pot should cook at high pressure for 15 minutes and release pressure naturally.
2. If you want, you can add extra ghee when serving.
3. If you refrigerate the leftovers, they will thicken and turn solid and gelatinous. You’ll have to add some hot water and mix well to thin it back down.

My notes:

Derek thought the dish was a bit boring. He liked it better when I grated some extra fresh ginger into his bowl. (Probably the porridge would have had more ginger flavor if I had grated the ginger instead of mincing it.) Derek ate the khichdi for breakfast but had no interest in the leftovers. Alma was disturbed by the miniscule chunks of ginger. I guess I should have followed the directions and grated the ginger! She ate half of a bowl of khichdi for breakfast then asked for something else. I probably liked it the best of the three of us, but I agree it could use a bit more flavor.  I’m going to look around for some other recipes and see what they add to the khichdi.

I didn’t have any plans for dinner tonight, so I pulled out what was in the fridge: a piece of celeriac, a third a head of escarole, a mostly full jar of white beans, and 2 zucchini. I decided to make a kind of escarole and white bean soup, but inspired a bit by the pasta e ceci recipe I’ve made a couple times.

1. I minced 6 cloves of garlic and 2 large shallots. (I was out of onions.)
2. Next I sautéed the shallots in a bit of olive oil. While the shallots softened, I diced my celeriac pretty small and threw it in the pot with the shallots and a couple pinches of salt. I didn’t measure, but I think it was maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of a cup of diced celeriac?
3. While the celeriac cooked, I minced the leaves from one large stalk of rosemary. Once the celeriac was softened and the shallots a bit caramelized, I added the minced garlic and rosemary and sautéed them briefly, then added maybe 2 Tbs. of tomato paste. When the paste had browned a bit, I added 1/2 cup of white wine and let it cook down until all the wine seemed to have evaporated.
4. I poured in the jar of white beans (with their goo) and added 2 cups of leftover water from steaming vegetables plus another 2 cups or so of boiling water, maybe 1/2 tsp. salt and about 1/2 cup of barley. I brought everything to a boil, then turned the heat down to a simmer, covered, and simmered for about 24 minutes.
5. While the barley was cooking I sliced my 2 zucchini thinly. When the barley was almost done (after 24 minutes of cooking), I added maybe 1/2 cup of very small pasta and cooked another 5 minutes.
6. While the pasta was cooking I roughly chopped my 1/3 head of escarole. When the pasta was just about al dente (after 5 minutes) I threw in the zucchini and escarole and cooked everything for another minute or so, then turned off the heat.

Derek really loved the soup. He said he liked that the texture was thicker/creamier than my typical escarole and white bean soup (more like pasta e ceci), but that he liked it better than my typical pasta e ceci. (I’m guessing he liked that it had more textural contrast and color, from the barley and escarole. Alma didn’t say much, but she ate the soup happily.

This is another recipe inspired by one in the cookbook “Fix it with Food: Every Meal Easy” by Michael Symon. The original recipe is for baked sweet potatoes with a vegan kale and walnut pesto. We couldn’t get kale so we made up our own (non-vegan) pesto out of what we had around. And then Derek didn’t realize that the 1 cup of roasted walnuts in the recipe were supposed to go in the pesto so we just served them on top of the baked sweet potatoes. I enjoyed the combination of the sweet potatoes, pesto and walnuts, but I was still hungry after finishing my sweet potato. Next time I would definitely add some more protein-rich component to the meal. Maybe black beans or beluga lentils? Or eggs? (I could see this recipe working well as a weekend brunch.)

Roast 1 cup of walnuts at 350 F for about 8 hours, until fragrant and lightly toasted.

Symon bakes the sweet potatoes at 425 F for an hour, but I prefer to bake sweet potatoes at 350 or even 325 for a longer time period.

This is roughly what we did to make our mixed-herb pesto:

In a mini-food processor add

• ~50 grams of herbs and/or leafy greens (we used a mix of sage, basil, spinach, and cilantro)
• ~25 grams of pine nuts (not toasted)
• 3/16 tsp. fine sea salt
• 1 clove of garlic, whole

Blend well, then add

• 1 oz | 28 grams of grated parmesan (about 1/4 cup packed)
• ~50 grams of olive oil (~3.75 Tbs.)
• 1.5 tsp. of lemon juice (~7.5g)

Scrape down the sides and blend one more time.

We ate all three sweet potatoes that we baked, but we had lots of pesto and walnuts left over. Alma said she prefers sweet potato oven fries, but this dish was fine.

This recipe is from the cookbook “Fix it with Food: Every Meal Easy” by Michael Symon. It’s a cookbook offering easy, weekday meals for those with autoimmune issues and inflammation. (The author has arthritis and external lupus. Apparently he’s some Iron Chef / Food TV celebrity, but I’d never heard of him.) I picked the cookbook somewhat randomly from the anti-inflammations section of the library and asked Derek to choose a few recipes to try. This was his first choice.

Derek dubbed it the “ATM” stew because the recipe intermixes what seem to be African/Moroccan flavors (carrot, parsnip, tomato paste, cumin, sliced almonds), Thai/asian flavors (coconut milk, cilantro, lime), Mexican flavors (black beans, cumin, jalapeno, cilantro, lime), and even some Mediterranean flavors. (The dish calls for a mushroom broth with dried mushrooms and lots of thyme and sage.)

I found the mix of flavors somewhat odd, but tasty. I enjoyed the texture as well as the combination of the sweet veggies with the cilantro/coconut/lime sauce. And I appreciated that the dish incorporated beans for some extra protein and fiber. The roasted almonds added a pleasant nuttiness that I quite enjoyed, but Derek said he could have easily skipped the almonds. When asked for an opinion, Alma first said the dish was “Interesting.” Then she added “I liked it.” Derek thought that the recipe was reasonably tasty but missing something. I gave him some chipotle peppers and he said “That’s exactly what it was missing!!!” Then he served himself another big bowl.

The original recipe says it serves only 1. Derek doubled it and between the three of us we polished off the whole thing. I think if we had served it with rice it might have stretched to a fourth person. Next time I’d like to triple the recipe, but Derek thinks it won’t fit in our 12-inch skillet and we’ll have to cook it in a larger pan. I’m not convinced. I think it might fit.

Ingredients (for the doubled recipe):

• 2 small yellow onions, diced
• 2 jalapeños, seeded and finely diced (we used only one but it wasn’t spicy at all)
• 2 Tbs. olive oil (originally 4 tablespoons)
• 2 medium parsnips, peeled and sliced (Derek used 3)
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 4 tsp. tomato paste
• 2 (15-ounce) cans of black beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 cups mushroom broth
• 1/2 cup unsweetened full-fat coconut broth
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup slivered or sliced almonds
• 4 Tbs. finely chopped cilantro
• juice of 1 lime
• add chipotle chilies if desired (not in original recipe)
• 1 cup cooked brown rice (optional, we left it out)

Instructions:

1. Dice your onion and mince your jalapeño. Prep your parsnips and carrots. Preheat the oven to 350 F | 175 C.
2. Set a 12-inch stainless steel skillet over medium heat. Add the olive oil and heat until shimmering, then add the onion, jalapeño, and a pinch of salt. Cook until the onion is aromatic and soft, about 3 minutes. Add the parsnips and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to brown, about 3 minutes. Add the cumin and cook for 30 seconds. Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring occasionally, until the paste begins to darken, about 1 minute. Add the drained and rinsed black beans, mushroom broth, and coconut milk and season with a few pinches of salt and some freshly ground black pepper. Cook, partially covered, until the vegetables are fully cooked and the stew has thickened, about 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, chop your cilantro and juice your lime. When the stew is ready, remove it from the heat. Stir in the cilantro and lime juice. Garnish with almonds. Serve as is or over brown rice.

Notes: We made a half recipe of the mushroom broth from the cookbook, but we aren’t sure whether it added much flavor. I certainly couldn’t taste any mushroom-y tastes in the final dish. Perhaps any vegetable broth would work.

I’m not sure how anti-inflammatory the recipes are. They look like pretty standard recipes to me. They don’t seem to use a huge amount of “superfoods” and they certainly call for plenty of oil. And there’s a chapter on sweets where the author talks about avoiding refined sugars, but then the recipe on the next page calls for light brown sugar and the one after that for nutella! Also, it’s not clear to me that honey and other “natural” sweeteners are that much less inflammatory than refined sguars.

Michael Symon’s black bean soup: Since we liked this stew quite a bit I tried another recipe from the same cookbook that also calls for black beans, coconut milk, lime, and cilantro. It’s a black bean soup recipe that calls for only one can of black beans (drained), and a whole can of coconut milk. I didn’t have a whole can of coconut milk, so I just used the coconut milk left from our last recipe, plus the black beans and juice from 1.5 cans of black beans. Along with typical black bean soup ingredients (onions, bell pepper, jalapeno, cilantro, lime, garlic), the recipe calls for a number of more Asian ingredients. The recipe calls for a lot of ginger — 2 Tbs. finely chopped ginger. It also calls for 1 Tbs. of white miso and 1 Tbs. of toasted sesame oil. Alma found the soup way too gingery. (She’s as of yet not a big ginger fan.) I also didn’t love the combination. Maybe I would have liked the recipe better if I had followed the ratios and it had been essentially a pot of coconut milk with a few black beans floating in it. But with my modifications (more beans, less coconut milk) it was a bit odd tasting. I found the miso to be especially odd. The soup was edible, but I didn’t love it. Derek liked it quite a bit more than me (he claimed), but then he had no interest in eating the leftovers.

On Facebook I keep seeing people posting about how much they love these simple red lentil wraps (some people call them red lentil tortillas), and I’d been meaning to try them. I finally got a chance to try them when I was in Texas this summer, and everyone seemed to enjoy them. We served them with guacamole, hummus, sautéed mushrooms, and some other things that I no longer remember. It’s a nice way to add some lentils to your meal with a bit more texture than just a pot of soup or dal.

I’m not sure exactly what recipe I used, but it might have been one of these:

• https://everydaynourishingfoods.com/lentil-wraps-protein-tortillas/
• https://elavegan.com/lentil-wraps/#recipe

I love sheet pan dinners, but have very few in rotation. I recently came across a couple of different recipes for sheet pan fajitas, and thought it sounded good. Tonight I made a version inspired by a mix of this recipe on the Pinch of Yum blog. and this recipe on the It doesn’t taste like chicken blog.

On my sheet pan I put

• four smallish red/orange/yellow bell peppers, sliced (about 12 oz of sliced bell pepper)
• about 10 ounces of crimini mushrooms, sliced
• one medium red onion, cut into rings (maybe 4? ounces)
• about 1/3 a block (maybe a 6 ounce piece?) of frozen tofu, defrosted, squeezed out, and mixed  with a marinade made from some leftover homemade enchilada sauce, a spoonful of peanut butter, and a bit of soy sauce.

I was worried that Alma wouldn’t like so many spices on the veggies, so I made only half the spice mixture from the Pinch of Yum blog, then only used about 3/4 of it on the veggies. Finally, I drizzled a little olive oil over the tofu and veggies, tossed well, and baked it in the oven at 425 for about 20 minutes. At that point the bell peppers seemed cooked but the tofu and mushrooms were still quite soft, so I picked out the bell peppers, turned on the oven fan, and roasted the tofu and mushrooms and onions a bit longer until they looked more crisp.

I made the cashew chipotle “queso” sauce as specified, except I had to get more water to get it to blend (maybe because I was using my stick blender instead of a proper blender). The sauce was not so chipotle-y tasting with just one chipotle, so I reserved a little sauce for Alma and added two more chipotles to the rest. But it turned out even the “mild” version was too spicy for Alma. Derek and I liked the sauce, but I wouldn’t say it tasted like queso. It has more of a “chipotle mayo” vibe.

Derek ate his fajitas just as a bowl, over a cup of black beans, topped off with a bit of sliced cabbage, cilantro, homemade guacamole, and the chipotle “queso.” Alma and I ate our fajitas with black beans in tortillas that I warmed in the still hot oven. Derek said he liked the meal a lot, especially the tofu. Alma didn’t care for the bell peppers or sauce, but enjoyed the beans and tofu and mushrooms with guacamole in a tortilla. I also didn’t love the bell peppers. Not sure why. Maybe they were underseasoned. Or I didn’t like them with the spice mixture on them? I have to figure out how to make grilled bell pepper strips that taste like the ones you get when you order fajitas.