Category — Vegan Recipes

The other night, my sister graciously invited me over for dinner and asked me to bring a salad. She told me she was making potato and chorizo tacos from this fantastic Tacolicious recipe featured in Food & Wine, and I hemmed and hawed over what kind of salad to make, since I can never figure out what salad goes with Mexican food. I decided to take a little creative license and throw a bunch of things in a blender to create something akin to a Mexican Green Goddess dressing–a tangy, creamy blend of pepitas (raw green pumpkin seeds) from the local Mexican market, coriander, cilantro, and lime.

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Have you ever heard of white soy sauce? I hadn’t, but when I saw this box at my local store I found myself shielding my eyes from the $18 price tag and bringing it home, eager for a soy sauce unboxing.

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I’ve been really into forbidden rice lately, because it’s actually a whole grain, it’s an exciting color to bring to the table, and it tastes great. Plus, forbidden = fun!

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Want to get rid of all that skanky produce in your CSA box or bottom fridge drawer? Want to get all your vitamins and minerals in one meal? Want to shrink your muffintop? Boy, have I got good news for you. Here’s how it works:

Heat your oven to 350. Put a piece of foil or parchment on a rimmed baking sheet. Add peeled and roughly chopped root vegetables like carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, potatoes, rutabagas, etc. They can be kind of gnarly and skanky and overripe–it’s OK! Drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour.

Now, add softer vegetables, like onions, tomatoes, leeks, and garlic cloves. (I used way overripe, mushy, squirty, bruised tomatoes, that I would otherwise have had to throw away.) Drizzle with oil again and salt and pepper again. Roast for another 30 minutes to an hour, until vegetables are soft and starting to brown.

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You know what makes a fig better? Dipping it in hot caramel and letting it harden and seeing how pretty it is and then eating it, all crunchy and soft and delicious.

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I generally feel that the butternut squash is over-represented in the soup world. What’s up with all the butternut squash soup? And why is it all so boring and bland? Why don’t we do other things with butternut squash? And yet… this recipe from Running with Tweezers caught my eye. The coconut milk and ginger add a welcome twist, and the recipe has very few ingredients and is pretty simple to make. I made it for someone who can’t eat dairy products- it’s an excellent and elegant choice for the lactose-free folks in your life.

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The last of the strawberries are in season, so I thought I would share this easy and delicious summer salad with you. It’s colorful, fresh, and always a crowd pleaser! The sweet strawberries, creamy avocados, salty feta, and earthy arugula are a great combination.

I like to make my balsamic vinaigrette with a creamier texture than I can get with just a whisk or a fork. To achieve that effect, I mix the dressing ingredients in a blender. The oil emulsifies and makes the dressing thicker and creamier. Delicious!

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I am in LOVE with cold peanut noodles, but they always have a ton of peanut butter and sesame oil in the sauce which is incredibly caloric, and noodles aren’t exactly low cal either. My muffin top is big enough already so if I want to eat these I feel I have to make them a slightly different way, wherein the noodles are augmented by lots of colorful vegetables and the caloric parts of the sauce are cut down a bit. After much experimentation, this is the happy medium I came up with!

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Last week, we had a terrific meal at Picán Restaurant in Oakland. One of the highlights was a seasonal tomato and peach panzanella (bread salad). I did my level best to re-create it at home and it made for a hearty, simple, summery side dish. Of course, the one at Picán had bacon in it, so that’s always an option…

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It’s probably not technically accurate to call this tasty soybean dip “hummus” but you should think of it as a descriptive, evocative name, not a culturally accurate one. (I’m not alone in this – for example, they’re pretty conflicted about this, among other aspects of edamame hummus, over at The Delicious Life.) But no matter what you want to call it, it turns out if you give soybeans a somewhat hummus-like treatment, you get a whole lotta tasty. Here’s my take on the meme.

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