9 posts tagged “one-pot meals”

One vegan cookbook is essential.  Two vegan cookbooks are fun.  Three vegan cookbooks are definitely the charm.  You've got a whole world to enjoy now.  I actually made three things out of three different cookcooks.  Well, be warned first: my sweet tooth kicked in when I was cooking.

 

Spanakopita In A Pie (VwaV, page 91).  I still didn't get any phyllo dough.  I made the pastry crusts (Veganomicon, so a 4th cookbook?) better this time and used a little less lemon juice.  My husband was very pleased with the result.  He said it was better than the first time I made it.

 

Hot Apple Turnovers (Cozy Inside, page 75).  This is the first time I have tried any recipe from this cookbook though I bought it like two months ago.  This is an excellent dessert choice after a hard day.  The turnover wasn't overly sweet or heavy.  A very gentle touch on your whole body.  I was really glad I tried it.

 

Mom's Chocolate Pudding (La Dolce Vegan!, page 207).  I didn't like this pudding as much as I thought I would.  It was very easy to make so I didn't mind it.  It's probably just not my type of chocolate pudding.  I was expecting something closer to the 75% dark chocolate, rich and velvety.  But it wasn't quite there.  A little too timid for my liking but it was still good enough to satisfy a chocolate craving.

 

I tried out my very first recipe from Vegan Express by Nava Atlas.  Paella Vegetariana was my choice.  It was a very easy dish to make.  I made some substitutions and added several ingredients to make the paella into a one-pot meal.  So here's my ingredient list.

 

2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

5 garlic cloves, minced

1 green bell pepper, cut into 2-inch strips

10 shiitake mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced

1 block of extra-firm tofu, cut into small triangles and pan-fried

2 cups diced tomatoes

1 can (15-ounce) vegetable broth

1 package (6 servings) of barley, cooked in advance

1 tsp. saffron threads, dissolved in a small amount of hot water

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 can (14-ounce) artichoke hearts, drained and roughly chopped

5 cups baby bok choy, chopped roughly

1 can (14-ounce) green peas, rinsed and drained

1 tsp. dried parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Today is the first day of my thing-a-day challenge.  I first saw this interesting challenge on Emily's blog.  The whole theme is to create something every day and share it online in February, which means I will have to create 29 things this month.  It sounds very interesting and challenging.  Unfortunately, my first creative endeavor is a little lame, just a dish I created out of my pantry and fridge, out of necessity.  It was a very yummy and comforting casserole but I had wanted to write something about a favorite book or author, but I was too busy to sit down for a couple of hours organizing my thoughts.  I will have to try harder next time.

 

The Really Everything Casserole
(serves 2-3)

3 Tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cups chopped celery
1 Granny Smith apple, diced
1 stale roll with sunflower seeds, cubed
1 small carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 zucchini, chopped
3/4 cup English peas (pea pods), ends discarded and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup quinoa
2/3 (14 ounce) can butter beans
1 tsp. sage
3/4 tsp. rosemary
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 1/2 cups vegetable broth
1/2 tsp. salt

1. Over medium-high heat, heat up the olive oil for a minute, then sauté garlic, onion, celery, and apple until everything is lightly caramelized.  Add zucchini and pea pods and sauté for a minute or two.
2. Add bread cubes, sage, rosemary, cinnamon and black pepper.  Cook for 3-4 minutes until bread gets toasty.  Add quinoa and mix well.  You should see most vegetables and bread get coated with quinoa.  Cook for 2 more minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 350F.
4. Pour in the vegetable broth and stir well.  Bring to a boil and then cover to simmer for 20 minutes.  When the quinoa is mostly cooked, add butter beans.  Cook for 5 more minutes.  Add salt to taste.
5. Bake in a deep casserole dish for 40-45 minutes.  Cool for 5 minutes and serve warm.

If you happen to have some leftover Mexican rice and beans, feel free to mix it with this casserole.  It will be a very nice combo.  My ingenious husband did this and thoroughly enjoyed it.

By the way, you can find my thing-a-day blog here.

When you don't have the delicate phyllo dough in the freezer, does that stop you from enjoying the wonderful Spanakopita (spinach pies)?  It did, for a long while.  I love spinach, tofu and walnuts.  With all these three ingredients in a pie, I would "kill" all the vegetables in the world to make one.  However, I don't have phyllo dough.  If I had some, I might still feel a little intimidated.  Anyhow, the Spanakopita recipe in Vegan with A Vengeance (pages 91-93) has been calling out to me.  So, one day, I saw Carla of "But did they EAT it?" made a Mexican-flavored pie out of this recipe, it suddenly occurred to me that I could do the same thing, make a spanakopita pie.  Luckily, I have been really enjoying making and eating my own pastry crust from Veganomicon (page 262).  "Just make two crusts at one time then," I thought.  That's how it all started.

 

Spanakopita Pie (based on Spanakopita, VwaV, pages 91-93)
(serves 4-5)

 

2 recipes of Single Pastry Crust (Veganomicon, page 262)

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 bunches fresh spinach, rinsed very well, long stems removed

1/2 large red onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 Tbsp. dried dill

2 pounds extra-firm tofu, drained and pressed

1/3 cup fresh lemon juice

2 tsp. dried oregano

Dash of freshly grated nutmeg

3/4 cup finely ground walnuts

1 tsp. salt

Several dashes fresh ground black pepper

 

1. First prepare your two pastry crusts, because you will need to refrigerate the crusts in plastic wrap for at least an hour before using them.  Keeping all the ingredients of the crusts and the crusts cold is key to have flaky crusts later.

 

2. Preheat your oven to 350F.

 

3. In a large heavy-bottomed pot warm 2 Tbsp. of olive oil over medium-low heat for a minute, then add onions and garlic to sauté for 2 minutes.  Add spinach in batches and cook until completely wilted and some liquid has been released.  Make sure that the spinach doesn't get too overcooked.  Quickly stir in dill and remove from heat.  Set aside.

 

4. Prebake your bottom crust (at least after an hour of refrigerating) in the oven, covered, for 15 minutes.  Set aside.

 

5. Pat the tofu dry after a couple hours of pressing.  Crumble the tofu to a smooth consistency with your hands in a large mixing bowl.  Don't use your fork because we want to keep the grainy quality.  When the spinach mixture is cool enough to handle by hand, squeeze as much liquid out as humanly possible and add to the tofu in batches.  Mix in very well.  Add ground walnuts, lemon juice, oregano, nutmeg, and finally salt and pepper to taste.  Taste your pie filling to adjust the seasoning.  It should taste pleasantly salty and a little tangy.

 

6. Pour the filling onto the bottom crust.  Even out the top.  I filled my pie to the rim as much as possible, because I really love all the ingredients.  Put the top crust on.  Tuck, seal, trim, and do whatever you need to do feel good about it.

 

7. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes.  Let cool a little before serving, unless you are too eager.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed this pie, our favorite pie so far.  I did a lot of kneading yesterday, besides this pie, but obviously it was worth all the effort.  I would gladly do it all over again.  My first Italian crusty bread came out just fine, 50% whole wheat (unbelievable!), after 7-8 hours of work and anxious waiting.  The Italians really know how to make a heavenly bread, with no sugar and no oil.  I gotta hand it to them.  I simply followed Bryanna's recipe in Nonna's Italian Kitchen: Delicious Home-Style Vegan Cuisine.

 

It's been cold and it's been snowing.  I'm not a big fan of very spicy food but even I was converted temporarily by this winter.  I actually was looking forward to making this chili - Kidney Bean and Quinoa Chili.  The original recipe is called Black Bean and Quinoa Chili by Melody Polakow of MELOMEALS.COM.  I only had red kidney beans and I love them so that's about the only thing I changed.  This chili was very easy to make, and it gave me the zap I needed for my tongue.  Oh, I made my chili a little more soupy because it's still snowing outside and I wish I could be warmed up by swimming in the chili.  By the way, why is it so cold this year?  The global warming apparently doesn't just make the summer hotter.

 

With the chili comes the cornbread.  In case you never knew of this super simple and awesome cornbread recipe by Isa Chandra, here it is again.

 

As if the chili is not enough, I made the Jerk Tofu and served it with steamed spinach on the side.  This wonderful recipe is also by Isa Chandra.  The tofu came out exactly like Isa's description, sort of like barbeque, sort of like curry, sort of sweet, and sort of savory.  It is absolutely satisfying!  This tofu has just become my favorite tofu dish.  And my take on the name of this dish: it's called jerk tofu because if anyone wants to steal my tofu, I'll definitely say "jerk off".

 

Is it a crime that I had the jerk tofu with spinach together with some vegan fluffy biscuits?  I saw a wonderful fluffy biscuit recipe on Elly's blog a few days ago.  I haven't been able to get it out of my head.  The photos looked really fantastic.  I had to make these biscuits.  I had no choice.  So I took the original recipe and veganized it.  My photos don't do justice to these biscuits (what's with the lighting anyway?) but rest assured they taste really good.  They are really fluffy too.

These are the few things I did to veganize this recipe:

1. Put 2 Tbsp. of cornstarch at the bottom of the measuring cup and continue to measure out 1 cup of all-purpose flour to make 1 cup plain cake flour.  This is for those of you, who are like me, who don't usually have cake flour around.
2. Use 1/2 cup of chilled vegan margarine (cubed 1/4-inch each) and about 2 Tbsp. canola oil to replace the butter.
3. Measure out 3/4 cup unsweetened soy milk and add 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar to curdle it for at least 2 minutes.  This is to replace the required buttermilk.
4. Brush the tops with soymilk.  You can also consider using a little melted margarine in the soy milk.

 

I had a few large eggplants in my refrigerator as if I had planned out this way on the last shopping day.  No, the truth is that I grabbed everything without planning.  So the result was a very nice eggplant-y stew: Tomato and Roasted Eggplant Stew with Chickpeas (Veganomicon, page 179).  I felt like I was roasting vegetables for hours.  The first batch of eggplant slices got burnt because I was a little careless.  Those slices were already browned before I flipped them so I should have skipped the flipping and another 15 minutes of roasting.  But I still don't know why the eggplant slices completely turned into charcoal.  It took forever to get rid of the smoke in the kitchen too.  But the final verdict is that it is so worthwhile.  You have to try roasted eggplants, roasted peppers and roasted garlic together, for once.  For any eggplant lover, this is the eggplant paradise!

 

Yesterday I made a loaf of Lower-Fat Banana Bread (Veganomicon, page 228) so now I'm stuck with a big jar of applesauce that I have to use up within 10 days.  Therefore, I'm seeking recipes that require a lot of applesauce, like applesauce muffins, applesauce cookies, applesauce whatever, at this point. 

First of all, I wish all of you in the bloggerland a Merry Christmas, or Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, or Happy December!

 

Now on to what we cooked.  I failed to make the crispy peanut butter cookies (from VwaV).  I don't know why the cookies didn't become crispy at all.  I will have to try some other cookies to see if my cookie dough is just not right.  The scrambled tofu I made with loads of mushrooms and some zucchini worked out really well.  We just love mushrooms and zucchini.

 

With scrambled tofu, we need some nice rice dish to serve with the tofu.  So I made the Lentils and Rice with Caramelized Onions and Spiced Pita Crisps (Veganomicon, page 177).  This deceivingly simple rice dish was so comforting and satisfying that I couldn't believe it was just made of brown Basmati rice and lentils.  Well, roasted onion rings and the remaining olive oil in the baking dish really infused the rice with a wonderful flavor.  And one thing lead to another.  Once I made the lentils and rice, I had to make the spiced pita crisps too since i had two pita breads laying around waiting to be thrown out as usual.  I made use of them this time and I was really grateful that I did.

 

It's cold outside so we desperately need comfort food.  Besides, I'm staying away from all sweet food now (at least trying).  I need a really comforting and satisfying meal to kill the sugar addiction.  This is what I just took out of the oven.  My photo really sucks.  I think I seriously need to sit down and study my camera manual carefully.  Ah, maybe tomorrow.

 

We have done quite a bit of cooking in the past few days.  Therefore, I've got no time for blogging the experience.  But now I have some nice photos to share.

 

I made a new type of vegan pancakes.  The batter only contains Japanese hot cake mix (vegan), Soy Dream vanilla soymilk (vegan), 100% organic coconut cream (vegan), a splash of Canadian 100% maple syrup (medium grade), a tiny bit of natural blueberry jam, and a couple drops of extra-virgin olive oil.  Before pouring the batter into the pan, wipe the pan with some olive oil and basically leave a very thin coat of oil.  Use no more oil afterwards.

 

I tried the same batter twice.  The first time I observed the same consistency as I had always done in the past, which gave me thin pancakes.  The second time I made the batter a little thicker.  It was a risky experiment because I wasn't sure if the pancakes would turn out cooked inside.  But I got those fabulously thick and fluffy pancakes (see the picture above) that were very cakey.  The best pancakes ever!

 

The verdict is that the Soy Dream chocolate soymilk I used before in the batter was a great twist but the chocolate pancakes just won't be as fluffy or cakey as the vanilla pancakes.  It's probably just the difference between two soymilk flavors - different ingredients apparently.

 

Enough about pancakes.  We also made a wonderful millet dish full of vegetables and goodies.  The main ingredients are millet, fried tofu, button mushrooms, sweet corn, carrots, and bok choy.

 

 

1. Boil sweet corn, bok choy, carrots, and fried tofu* to desired texture.

2. Saute fresh garlic separately.

3. Add mushrooms about half-way through and saute together with garlic on high heat.

4. Cut corn off the cob.

5. Cook millet separately (prepared in advance)**.

6. Stir all the ingredients together with veggie mushroom paste (or Porcini Mushroom Paste), hot chili sauce, paprika, coriander, sea salt, black pepper, a dash of curry and Mexican spice.

 

7. Mix well and serve immediately.  This is definitely one of the richest rice dishes you can make.  Enjoy!

 

 

* If you cannot get fried tofu, don't fret.  You can simply get the regular extra-firm tofu.  Cut it into medium-sized pieces and slightly dry them in a cheese cloth.  Fry up the tofu pieces yourself.  If you do so, you don't have to boil the fried tofu afterwards.

 

** We often prepare millet or buckwheat in advance.  You can just cook millet like rice.  Two things to remember: (1) use more water than you would when you cook rice (almost twice as much); (2) once the water boils, use low heat to simmer until the millet is properly cooked.  Adjust the amount of water according to your own preference.  You either get fluffy millet or sticky and soft millet.

 

By the way, millet is one of the healthiest whole-grains around, if you want to improve upon your current diet.  Yes, even better than brown rice.