Tag Archives: vegetarian recipe

Kale Chips

It’s November in Minnesota and it’s getting flipping cold outside.  (Highs in the 40’s Fahrenheit, that is.)  It makes me want to eat lots of hot soups, root vegetables … and kale.  Kale looks intimidating in the grocery store because the leaves feel like they’re as tough as a leather suitcase.  Not to fear!  If you bake kale in the oven, it will come out crispy and not tough at all.

You will need:

  • Two baking sheets.
  • One bunch of kale.
  • 3-4 tablespoons olive oil.
  • 3-4 teaspoons salt.
  • 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese.

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Grab the bunch of kale by the stem.

Rip pieces off of the leaves.  Keep going until you’re down to the midribs.

Rinse the kale pieces in a strainer and blot dry.  Add the oil, salt, and Parmesan and toss it like a salad.  Spread the mixture out evenly on the two baking sheets.

Bake the kale in the oven for 12 minutes.  They will come out looking like this:

The picture doesn’t really convey it, but these are delicious.  They taste like fresh, hot potato chips that happen to be green.

The Seitan Recipe o Greatness

Not original by me.  I picked this recipe up from a vegan blog, where it was already second-hand.  It seems that this recipe has been blazing through circles of seitan enthusiasts online.  I’m not vegan, but I love seitan.  The stuff is a little bit like tofu  – gluten, the proteinaceous part of wheat, molded and formed into chewy deliciousness.  It’s also hideously expensive.

Vital wheat gluten is not so cheap either ($2.50 for the 1 and a half cup it took to make this recipe), but it was still worth trying.  So, without further ado,

THE SEITAN RECIPE O GREATNESS

  • 1.5 c. vital wheat gluten
  • 1/4 c. nutritional yeast (Not sure what nutritional yeast is, actually.  I used 1/8 c. of baker’s yeast instead.)
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. paprika
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. cumin
  • 1/2 tsp. pepper
  • 1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 1/8 tsp. allspice
  • 3/4 c. cold water
  • 4 tbsp. tomato paste
  • 1 tbsp. ketchup
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce
  • 1-3 cloves garlic, crushed (Naturally, I opted to use 3.)

Assembly could not be simpler.  Preheat oven to 325º.  Mix together all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ingredients in another.  Then add the wet ingredients to the dry, stir it, then knead the heck out of the dough.  Form it into a log, wrap it in foil, then bake it for 90 minutes.  Let it cool down completely before you do anything with it.

Chewy, salty, savory, and great.  My seitan popped its foil wrapper, though, so it ended up looking like a turd in the oven.  Wrap it up in extra foil?  Or is it because I used baker’s yeast?

Wheat gluten, the hard-to-find main ingredient.

O Greatness?

The final product. Check out that texture!

Sweet Baked Tofu Stir Fry

Argh, I keep forgetting to take photos for these recipes.  I was all set to take photos for this one, and then kittens happened.

  • 2 tbsp. honey
  • 3 tbsp. soy sauce
  • dash of sesame oil
  • 1 package extra-firm tofu
  • 2 bell peppers
  • snow peas
  • 1/3 cabbage
  • 1 12-oz package soba noodles
  • 1/2 jar of salad olives

Baking tofu is a new technique to me.  The interesting thing about it is that it turns the tofu into an entirely different dish.  It gets chewy, a texture kind of reminiscent of oysters.  Anyway, the trick to baking tofu is to remove as much moisture from the tofu as possible.  Drain the tofu and cut it into long, thin strips with a knife (see?  Here’s where a photo would have been helpful.)  Block the heck out of them with a towel.  You might want to wrap them up in the towel, put a plate with a weight on it on top, and leave them there for a while.

Put the thoroughly blotted tofu strips onto a foil-lined baking pan.  Mixed together the soy sauce, honey, and oil, and sprinkle it on top.  Stir them around a bit to make sure they’re coated.  Or coat them with whatever sauce floats your boat – tofu will take on the flavor of whatever is around it.  Bake in the oven at 350º for 15 minutes, stir, then bake another 15 minutes.  Once the soy sauce becomes a gooey, chewy coating like road tar, you’ll see why you foil-lined the pan.

The rest of the recipe goes together like a regular stir fry.  Chop the peppers into long, thin strips and sauté on high heat along with the snow peas.  Chop the cabbage into long strips.  Once the peppers and peas are softened up a bit, throw in the cabbage.  Then throw in the soba noodles, olives, and baked tofu strips.  Fry that all up until it’s as brown as you like it.

Sweet and salty – great combination!

Avocado Salad

Trust me, you don’t want a photo of this dish.  Though it turned out tasty, it was butt ugly.

  • As many ripe avocados as you can obtain
  • Raisins
  • Pecans
  • Green salad olives
  • Tabasco sauce
  • Garlic powder
  • Salt
  • Balsamic vinegar

Peel the avocados and cut into chunks.  Then sort of throw all the ingredients together in a bowl and stir together.  Don’t stir too much, though, or you’ll get lumpy guacamole.  Enjoy.

Awesome Molasses Wheat Bread

How do I describe the flavor of this bread?  Something along the lines of OMG I never want to buy store-bought wheat bread again.  The flavor is nutty and sweet and strongly of molasses, the texture’s nice and dense, the aroma is so, well, bready.  This bread is so substantial, just a little butter on it and an apple to the side, and you’ve got a lovely meal.  (And if you opt to add the nuts, it provides a complete protein.  Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox now.)  Adapted from James Beard.

  • 1 package yeast
  • 2 cups warm water
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup oatmeal
  • 3 cups all-purpose baking flour
  • (optional) 1 handful of raisins and 1 handful of nuts

Stir together the yeast and 1/2 cup of the warm water in a little bowl and set aside.  In a large bowl, mix the rest of the water, molasses, salt, oil, and whole-wheat flour.  Add the yeast mixture and stir again.  Slowly add the white flour until it looks like bread dough.  Put it on a floured surface and knead until everything is nicely mixed.  Put in an oiled bowl, cover with a slightly damp towel, and let sit for 1 1/2 hour.

Take the dough out and punch it down.  If you like, make a dent in the middle, throw in the nuts and raisins, and knead them in.  Once it’s nice and mixed, put the dough onto an oiled baking sheet.  Or you can split it in half and put it into two oiled 8 1/2 by 4/12 loaf pans.  Cover with a slightly damp towel again and let sit for 1 1/2 hour.

Uncover, bake at 375 for 40 minutes.  The bread’s done when you knock it and it sounds hollow.

Yellow Cake and Beefless Stroganoff

Just a couple of new culinary experiments.  Four-egg yellow cake is from Allrecipes.com with pretty much no modification.  I tried sprinkling M&Ms on top 10 minutes into the baking time, but they still sank to the bottom.  They still tasted good, though.  The cake has an excellent texture, bland, but you want that in a cake.

Beefless stroganoff I made up.

Beefless Stroganoff

  • Whole-wheat pasta
  • 1 can pinto beans
  • 1 can navy beans
  • 1 large onion
  • Plenty of garlic
  • Dash of half & half
  • Dash of white wine

Chop the onion so the slices are going to be in long strips.  Sauté that with the garlic in butter until caramelized.  While it’s going, boil pasta.  Stir beans into onion mixture, then cooked pasta, then salt & pepper.  Add half & half until texture is the way you like it, then add white wine to taste.

Baked Beans Enhanced

This is kind of like a Hamburger Helper for a can of baked beans.  And it’s dead easy.

  • Boil some barley, rice, pasta, or grain of your choice up in some stock.
  • Throw in a can of baked beans (get a kind with a tomato-flavored sauce, like Bush’s Homestyle beans).  Also throw in a can of diced tomatoes.
  • Bring back to a boil.  Salt and pepper to taste.

You’ve got a lovely stew that’s fancier than just a can of baked beans.  Good served with cheese on top.

Lentil Curry

I discovered that this recipe works quite well.

LENTIL CURRY

1 package (1lb) lentils
2 onions
4-5 cloves garlic
1 package (1lb) tofu
10 cups broth
handful of dark green leafies
curry powder to taste
half & half to taste

Rinse lentils, then cover in broth and simmer ~30 mins. Meanwhile, cube the tofu and sauté on high heat. You want the outside of the cubes to get nice and crispy. Caramelize the onions and garlic in the same pan. Add dark green leafies of your choice – I used the green tops of leeks because that’s what I had, but it should be very tasty with collards. Once those are wilted, add the whole caboodle to the lentils. Season with curry powder (maybe also some salt and pepper) to taste, then add half & half until it’s creamy. Serve on rice.

This makes a ton, probably enough for about 6 people.

Fritter Thingies

Happy Bodies, a new blog on campus.

Jill and the people who commented on the post bring up some interesting points.

Food is a really emotional issue. It’s an extremely old issue. Try to think of anything that’s been part of the human condition for just as long, and probably the only answer is sex. It’s so important to survival, and so much of our culture revolves around it. That’s why people get so angry.

It can lead to some pretty amusing clashes, too. Now, I’m not all that vegetarian; I probably eat meat about once or twice a week because it happens to be in some soup I wanted at the dining hall.  The best part is when people wonder if I’m getting enough protein.  I feel fine, everybody. I’m not dead yet! I think I’ll go for a walk…

Perhaps the best way to lure others to the dark side is with delicious, delicious meatless recipes.

Fritter thingies

  • 4 slices of bread (for best results, leave them uncovered for 24 hours)
  • 5 or 6 nice mushrooms
  • 1/2 can black beans
  • 2 eggs
  • Tabasco
  • spices you enjoy (I recommend lots of black pepper)

Mash the beans slightly with a potato masher or fork. Dice the mushrooms small and combine with the beans in big bowl. Toast the bread pretty dark, then crumble into the bowl. Blend. Add spices to taste (the more the better, the bread soaks it up a lot).

Beat the eggs separately. Add to the dry ingredients. Next comes the fun part: heat up a little oil in the bottom of a pan. Mix the goo, then form into patties with your hands. Sauté on both sides until the egg is cooked, and voilá! Crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside, with mushroomy chewy bits.

Try them, you’ll like them.