Leaning Vegetarian

Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category

This base noodle dough is also great for ravioli and pirogi. Posts on those to follow soon.

Ingredients

3 c. (or so) flour (all purpose works; semolina is probably more authentic)
2 eggs
1 tbsp salt
4-5 kale leaves (or spinach, chard, beet greens – pick your favorite sturdy green)

3/4 cup veggie sausage and/or ground beef for the meat eaters (more or less as you like; increase/decrease spices to match)
2 tbsp basil
2 tbsp oregano
1 tsp chopped garlic
bread crumbs

olive oil
sliced garlic and parmesan and/or sauce of your choice

Process

Mix the veggie sausage with half the basil, oregano, and garlic; roll into meatballs.

Fry these till browned in a bit of the olive oil. Mix the ground beef with the rest of the basil, oregano, and garlic and a little bit of bread crumbs to pick up just a bit of the moisture, but not enough that they feel dry. Fry these till browned as well.

Steam or saute the kale until it’s wilted. Put it in a food processor and chop into fine pieces (I like the speckled effect; if you’d prefer a more solid color, take it to a puree consistency).

You can use a food processor for this step, but I have warm fuzzy memories of my grandmother mixing noodles on the counter, so I do it there too.  Pile three cups of flour and the salt on a clean countertop, make a well, and crack your eggs into the center.

Use a fork to beat the eggs in the well, gradually pulling in more flour as you go.

While it’s still pretty wet, add the kale. Keep mixing until you have a sturdy dough that does not readily stick to the counter – you may not use all the flour, or you can add a bit more water as you prefer. Knead this until it feels smooth and mixed.

Roll this into a round, and let it rest.  Set up your boiling pot (I like a dutch oven with lots of water) and start warming any sauce you like. We tried this with thinly sliced garlic, browned lightly in some olive oil, with a bit of parmesan on top, and also with some store-bought red sauce.

Keep rolling the dough out until it’s quite thin – keep checking that it’s not sticking to the counter and sprinkle with flour and flip over as needed. If you’ve got a pasta maker, use that – I don’t, so we do this by hand. I like kind of chunky noodles so I take it down to about 1/16″ – they’ll get thicker as they cook, so take that into account.

I use a pizza cutter to slice thin strips – there’s no requirement that these be any particular length, and only need to be consistent enough in length and width to cook evenly. Also check that yours is as dull as ours is so you don’t cut up your countertop.

If you’re not cooking all the pasta now, you can dry these by draping them over a spoon handle propped between two pots, or bag them for the fridge if you’re using them within the week.

Once the water is at a full boil, add the noodles gradually and make sure they stay at a boil.  This will take around 5 minutes to cook, depending on the size of your noodle – check them often. Drain, flip with a bit of olive oil (or the sliced garlic/oil mix if you’ve done that), add sauce and parmesan to your taste, and top with the veggie or beef meatballs. This is also tasty if you swap out the kale and use roasted red peppers,  or sauteed mushrooms, or black pepper, and we’re going to try a toasted chile pasta here eventually.

Note to self: See ‘what we learned in the first month’, especially the ‘plan ahead’ part. I love baking potatoes then mashing them for the nicer roasty taste, but hey, it’s already 9 pm; boiling will have to do.

I think this dish was originally made using cabbage, but I love kale in it.  I found this recipe on Steph’s excellent blog Wasabimon (when all else fails, cook) (go see, we’ll be here when you get back) and remembered that I hadn’t had it in forever. It’s also pretty quick to fix, especially if you have (erm…) planned ahead and have some baked potatoes ready to go. The guys have this as a side dish with a bit of kielbasa or bratwurst.

[Side note: Colcannon is also a splendid Celtic band out of Boulder, Colorado - keep an eye out for them as they travel; definitely worth a pint and a listen.]

Cut up your potatoes, and put them on to boil while you chop onions and garlic. Set those on to saute with a healthy dollop of butter or olive oil.

Chop your kale finely, and add it in with the garlic and onion mix. Isn’t this an awesomely fabulous emerald green?

When the potatoes are soft enough, add them to the kale and mash with a bit of milk.

Add salt and pepper to your taste, and enjoy.

When my co-workers Verna and Marti Lea took me over to the Lotus Pond restaurant for a vegetarian lunch many years ago, I was most puzzled by one of the main ingredients in the buffet there: wheat glutens.

This turned out to be seitan, a cooked and flavored wheat gluten. It had a surprisingly sturdy, chewy texture reminiscent of chicken. Seitan is high in protein and very low in fat; some store varieties have a dab of iron as well.

It can be prepared at home from flour and water, kneaded and run under water to remove the wheat starch, and marinated. There are recipes for simmering it, baking it, and frying it, all of which result in different textures.

What you see here is taken from the Post Punk Kitchen recipe (these amounts are halved – we didn’t have enough vital wheat gluten to make the full recipe).

Vital wheat gluten (the same gluten that bakers add to make bread chewier), nutritional yeast, garlic, soy sauce, and water are mixed to form a stretchy dough, and then boiled.

In this recipe, I’ve rolled it into sausages with the intention of slicing it later to incorporate into a stir fry or to pan fry the slices. I’ve also read preparations that form it into a cutlet shape for frying.

After the broth with the seitan is brought up to a boil, it’s simmered for an hour. The small sliceable shapes are, well,  a lot larger by this point:

I’ll store these in the fridge with some of the broth for use later in the week.

When we decide on a dish, I’ll post the recipe and our taste test in a few days.

It’s become a bit of a tradition when I travel to see my brother that we all get together and make these egg rolls.

Why Sloan’s Lake? When I was in my early teens, there was a flea market? food court (before there were food courts)? group of craft stalls? in a big building by Sloan’s Lake in Denver. (Yeah, I know.  It’s Sloan Lake. Whatever; I’ve never heard a native call it that.) One of the vendors was frying egg rolls on the spot, and they were fabulous. Mom and I went home and recreated the recipe as closely as we could, and they do indeed taste like I’ll just have maybe one more, thanks.

It’s also a recipe that lends itself well to variation and preferences – other than a lot of ginger and a good bit of garlic, I suspect you could swap out just about everything to your taste.

Before you start, be sure you have some time free since the assembly process does take a good chunk of time. The mixed veggies can marinate overnight without problem, but once they’re wrapped they should be fried right away – they get just a bit soggy and tend to develop holes if they’re filled and then frozen without cooking.  Also they stick together like a mofo if they’re touching while they sit.

Ingredients

The only required ingredients are pretty much the cabbage, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and green onions. Everything else is to taste or optional, and if you want to add chopped green pepper, go for it.

This makes about 40 egg rolls.

1 small/medium head of Napa cabbage or a medium Savoy cabbage
3 good-sized cloves of garlic
1 generous chunk of ginger (say an inch)
4-5 green onions
1-2 cups of whole mushrooms (something like a cup when chopped)
1 cup bean sprouts
1 8 oz. can bamboo shoots
1 8 oz. can water chestnuts
~3 Tbsp. soy sauce
Two packages egg roll wrappers
1 egg or cornstarch or flour for sealing

If you’re making it for both vegetarians and meat eaters, add

1 cup small shrimp, or
1 large chopped chicken breast or 1 cup ground chicken, or
1 cup sliced or ground pork

Preparation

To start, take a generous bit of ginger root. Now double that. Really. I use a chunk about the size of my thumb for a large mixing bowl’s worth of fillings.  Grate or finely chop this with the garlic, and add a generous splash of soy sauce. You’re aiming to get the flavor distributed without it being wet enough to cause the oil to spit at you unduly.

Chop the cabbage and green onions, slice the mushrooms, cut the bamboo shoots into small sticks, run your knife through the bean sprouts to get shorter segments. Mix this in gradually with the garlic, ginger and soy, taking care to distribute the flavors well.

If you find that the mixture isn’t fine enough to roll easily, run your knife through a few more times. I like a bit of texture to my egg roll contents; you can probably go so far as to buzz these all quickly in the food processor but I just chop roughly. Do take them down to small bits, though – rolling them is much easier if you don’t have crisp whole bean sprouts poking holes in the wrappers.

If you’re using egg to seal the wrappers, whisk an egg with a fork in a custard or teacup. If you’re using cornstarch or flour, mix a couple tablespoonsful in with the water. Use enough water to make a watery paste.

Open one package of wrappers and carefully peel one off. Cover or close the opened package – these dry out pretty quickly, so if you have extras when you’re done, seal it in something airtight.

Flip the square flat onto your work surface so the diagonal points toward you. Take a couple tablespoons of filling and place it on the corner nearest you.

Fold this corner over towards the center.

Holding that corner so it won’t unroll, tuck each side point in to the center, doing a bedsheet-hospital-corner tuck-in of the extra before those points come together.

Use your fingertips or a pastry brush (but I have filling and egg up to my elbows by the time I’m done, so why wash another implement) to smear the egg on the remaining corner, and roll up to that point. If there seem to be any gaps, dab a bit of paste on and squeeze the wrapper together. If you need to patch holes, use a bit of the final corner or a spare wrapper and some of the paste. The holes don’t really hurt anything if they’re small, but the cooking veggies will make the oil spit at you and the oil will be harder to drain.

Heat a generous half-inch of oil in a skillet (I like my cast iron pan, or a saucepan works too) until a corner of one of the egg rolls dipped in bubbles nicely.

Use a slotted spoon or tongs to place a few in the oil. Let the first side cook for a couple of minutes.

They’ll cook quickly, so be prepared to check the bottom and turn when they brown. Take them out when browned on both sides, and drain as upright as possible on a plate lined with several paper towels.

These are best hot but they freeze well – reheat in a 400° oven for crispness; they’re fine in the microwave too though they lose the crunch.

I prefer these with a bit of soy sauce and some dried yellow mustard mixed with water and a couple drops of vinegar to a thin paste. Wasabi is pretty good too. If I’m feeling particularly elegant, I’ll set up tiny sauce dishes for dipping.

This is another recipe from the terrific Veganomicon.

The version Rachelle made a couple weeks ago is here on the Quinoa page – it has plain quinoa; today’s is made with red quinoa.

I was tickled to be able to go out and pick some of the coriander seed from our garden – there’s one advantage to being slow on the cilantro harvest; you get coriander seed.

After starting off by sauteeing the onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil, we added a couple tablespoons of tomato paste, cumin, coriander (crushed), salt, and pepper, and then the red quinoa. When that had cooked a bit we added the broth and chickpeas and set that to boil.

The recipe calls for 18 minutes to simmer/steam while the quinoa absorbs the liquid – I found it took much longer. Just keep an eye on it, stir it every few minutes, and wait until the texture is to your liking. It’ll gradually get fluffy.

Our meat-eaters have this as a side dish, and it’s our main course. I’m tempted to add a bit of chile to add a little bit of heat as well (yes, I am a hot food fan), but cooking the quinoa in the spices gives it a nice depth of flavor.

Hummus is a great snack or mayonnaise substitute, and I like it with all sorts of flavors. This lemon/garlic is a start, but do try roasted red peppers, or chiles, or dill and green herbs. It’s great in a sandwich, or on top of naan. Alton Brown uses peanut butter in his version instead of the tahini, and there’s a version with artichoke hearts at Pinch My Salt (great picture, too).

Soak your chickpeas overnight in a bowl with a generous amount of water – they’ll absorb a lot. Drain them and put them on the stove to boil until tender. This does take a while – I’ve tried grinding them when they’re soft enough to pierce with a fork, and I should have let them cook a bit longer.The shells will start to come off on their own – you can rub them when they’re cooled and remove them if you like; I don’t notice any ill effect or texture from a few left on.

For a couple of cups of dried chickpeas to start (the top photo shows chickpeas that have already soaked overnight), I used two big cloves of garlic, about three tablespoons of tahini, something like a quarter cup of lemon  juice, plus some water from the chickpeas.  I know, this is hopelessly vague – but hummus is ideal for adding the flavors that you want in just the proportions that you like. For a point of reference, the girls thought ‘Wow! Garlic!’, so you may want to start with one clove, chopped, and add more to your taste. I’m also fond of the citrus bite, so you may want to go lighter on the juice. I’ve seen recipes that add good olive oil as well, though I’d used only water.

Grind the chickpeas, chopped garlic, lemon juice, tahini, and a small splash of water in a food processor. (I suspect a blender works just fine, though I haven’t made it that way.) Check the texture, and add more water as needed – you can err just a dab on the thin side since it will thicken as it sits, too. I add about a teaspoon of salt at the end.  I’m really wanting to add some cumin and peppers at this point, but I’ll keep it plain for this batch and add an update with the pepper hummus. This is still a little grainy – it’s still good, but I’d like the texture to be smoother.

Serve on your favorite bread/cracker or dip vegetables in it (I’m having the leftovers with snow peas and yellow squash as I type), or use it as a spread on a sandwich.  I couldn’t resist a dusting of chile powder on here.

Pizza is one of the easiest things to make for a combined vegetarian/meat meal without having to cook or prepare anything separately – the guys can have their ham or pepperoni, and we can have our cheese and veggies.

This pizza dough that can be kept in the refrigerator for a few days, and in the freezer for up to 3 months.  Once again, I’m pulling the recipe from thefreshloaf.com though this one originated in Peter Reinhart’s American Pie as the Neo-Neapolitan.

Mix everything together in a large bowl – I’m adding a dab of milk and slightly more oil than it calls for since I like chewy crusts.  Proof the yeast if you prefer; I’ve had fine luck with adding it directly to the liquid and mixing the flour in right away.  Turn out on to your favorite kneading surface and knead (or use your dough hook) – this will be sticky; a dough scraper/spatula is useful.

I’ve had some requests for pizza this afternoon, so I’m going to leave half the dough to rise for an hour or so at room temperature. I cut the other half in two pieces, slathered them with olive oil, and I’ll put those in the fridge for later this week.  (I should’ve made more so I could put some in the freezer and I wouldn’t have to make any next weekend.)

I like the rustic type crust, so I’m just going to stretch and pat it by hand. Feel free to use a rolling pin if you’d prefer a thinner or more uniform crust.  Rolling and filling it on parchment paper makes the transfer to the oven a lot less precarious – I’ve had breads fold over into disappointing shapes when they stick to the pan I’d been finishing them on, even with cornmeal.  One of these days I’ll practice enough to be able to toss it into a round, but today’s attempt resulted in a lot of fingers poked through the dough or shapes that could not even charitably be called round.

Hopefully this summer I’ll have tomatoes (or, failing that, I’ll hit the farmers’ markets for some local Grainger county tomatoes) and can work on a good pizza sauce recipe.  For now, I’m going to (mumble) cheat and use store-bought sauce and cheese, and some sliced ham for our meat-eaters.

I still don’t have a pizza stone or tiles, so I flip our largest cookie sheet over and use it in the oven on the next-to-lowest rack setting, letting it preheat with the oven.  I’ve got the oven at its highest setting but if yours will go to 500°, great. I pull the far corner of the parchment into the oven to slide it from my working pan onto the hot pan.  The cooking time will vary depending on the size and thickness of your pizza and toppings, so watch it after about five minutes and go from there.  I pulled this out at seven minutes to check, and the bottom was still too pale for my taste, so I removed it from the pan and parchment and set it directly on the rack.

A word of warning: at least two of us burned our mouth when this came out of the oven; be more patient than we were and let it cool a bit.  I’m going to try this dough with a topping of olive oil and a dusting of parmesan for bread sticks as well. I’ll post an update when I do.

Naan is a flatbread that is delicious as a base for beans, sliced grilled meats, or vegetables (or Nutella, for that matter). I like gothicgirl’s recipe from the Fresh Loaf a lot.

It takes about three and a half hours from start to finish, but you only need to be present for about 20 minutes of mixing, 15 minutes of kneading/dividing, and 40 minutes of patting flat and baking (less time if you’ve got a big baking stone or a larger oven than I have so you can cook more than two at once).

Put the milk on the stove and heat it slowly to 110°F to scald it. I’ve also used the first appearance of small bubbles around the edge to know when it reaches this stage.

I understand that there’s an enzyme in milk that interferes with yeast development, and that scalding breaks it down. Someday I’ll look it up.

Dissolve the sugar in the milk and let it cool til just warm.

Mix the flour, yeast, and salt together.
Add the milk and mix – you’ll wind up with a stiff but sticky dough.

If you’ve got a mixer, do use it if you like – I don’t have one so all my recipes are kneaded by hand.

Turn it out onto a clean floured counter and knead for a few minutes until it’s quite smooth.  It’s sticky enough that a dough scraper is very handy.  I’ve made a homemade scraper by cutting down the top of a yogurt container to a rounded square; here I use a spatula which does the trick too. 

Put it back in the bowl to raise for a couple of hours. The original recipe calls for two hours; I’ve left it for three with no ill effects.

Turn it out and give it a couple quick kneads, and then divide it into 12 (if you like rounds you can fit in your hand) or fewer if you’d like something more pizza-sized.  Let these rest for 20 minutes or so while you heat the oven.

If you have a baking stone, you can cook these directly on the stone; I use two cast-iron pans, I suspect a sturdy baking sheet would work too but I’ve not tried it.  Turn the oven up very high – mine doesn’t go to 500°F, so I set it at its max – and put the pans in the oven to heat on the bottom rack.

Pat or roll each dough ball quite thin.

When the oven is heated, flip a naan onto the hot ungreased pan, close the door, and cook for about 2 minutes. Turn with tongs and cook another minute and a half. These should be browned a bit on both sides and quite puffy.  Take them out of the oven, and I like to run a stick of butter lightly over the top.

These are delicious warm but reheat well for 10 sec in the microwave. I can’t testify to how long they keep, since ours never make it more than 2 or 3 days for this dozen.

Next investigations: adding garlic or onion or sesame seeds.