Today is Vegetaruary Day 28, the last day of a Vegetarian February Challenge issued by our daughter. And we celebrated with a light lunch of muffin tin eggplant parmesan stacks. It has been a fun adventure trying out new recipes and revisiting old favorites. Early on, we relied more heavily on cheese, but as our cooking vista expanded, we found ourselves eating vegan dishes more and more frequently. Among the new discoveries are a super easy, super fast browned butter radish couscous, tofu sofritas tacos, and a hearty two-bean loaf with homemade tomato jam. We also enjoyed standbys such as silken tofu spinach soup with Sichuan chili crisp (instead of prosciutto bits), vegetarian spring rolls, vegetarian chili and a spiced lentil curry topped with yogurt. Although the challenge is over, I suspect we will be eating similarly on most days going forward. There are so many more recipes we want to try!
Eggplant Parmesan Stacks |
Eggplant Parmesan Stacks
This is my second time making individual Eggplant Parmesan entrees from the Muffin Tin Chef cookbook by Matt Kadey. His technique of oven baking the breaded parmesan slices results in a completely non-greasy dish where the sauce, cheese and eggplant melds into rich, satisfying stacks. I also like the addition of broccoli rabe (although I used regular broccoli). Best of all, as with many of my Asian eggplant recipes, there is no time-consuming and messy salting of the eggplant slices required.
Spiced Braised Lentils, a Food52 Genius Recipe (vegan-friendly)
Hot and Sour Soup (vegan-friendly)
We love this warm and cozy soup, which uses pantry staples to create a rich and hearty sensory experience. In another post, I covered my odyssey of trying multiple recipes for hot and sour soup to arrive at the perfect texture and flavor. In the process, we decided that we liked the soup better vegetarian as the pork slivers could end up tough and did not add much in the way of flavor. The best part of this recipe is that it relies heavily on dried mushrooms and long-storing pantry staples such as eggs and tofu.
Bean Loaves with Tomato Jam (vegan)
This was another recipe from The Muffin Tin Chef cookbook. The homemade tomato jam made from red Roma tomatoes was fabulous (next time double or even triple the jam)! The mixture of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), pinto beans, pecans (I did not have sunflower seeds) and the seasonings yielded a very meaty aroma and appearance. My husband thought I was making beef stew when he walked in the door!
Vegetable Spring Rolls and Celebration Rice Cake (vegan)
Savory Sticky Rice Celebration Bundt Cake |
Silken Tofu and Spinach Soup (vegan)
Silken tofu with spinach soup - vegan version garnished with Sichuan Chili Crisp |
Hot and sour soup with cubes of clean-out-the-fridge zucchini. |
Brown Butter Couscous with Spring Vegetables
This recipe by "EmilyC" on the Food52 site is a true winner! As I put in my review, "Fantastic, quick and easy! This is a great weekday meal with wonderful flavors, colors and textures. Will definitely be used a lot. I kept the radish greens and added them with the spinach. It all disappeared with no leftovers."
A wok-fried vegetarian spring roll with homemade wrapper. Filling recipe from The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young: the Sept. 2020 Wok Wednesday recipe of the month. |
Left: Spring rolls from Spicies in Cambridge, MA; Upper right: Huge egg roll from the Moonlight Express food truck in the Pittsburgh Strip District. Lower right: Homemade summer rolls or goi cuon. |
Recipes from Seventeen magazine and Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen.
I loved spring rolls so much that I clipped a recipe from the April 1976 issue of Seventeen. This magazine had a section called "Now You're Cooking" that featured delicious and approachable recipes from all over the world. But it would take another 44 years, and a global coronavirus pandemic, before I worked up the courage to try making my own spring roll wrappers from scratch.New Year 2021 started off rainy, but with high hopes for a better year, and perhaps by summer, a chance to reconnect with family and friends. I wanted our New Year dinner to link future hopes back to childhood memories. This delicious, stunning centerpiece entrée based on a recipe by Chef Yotam Ottolenghi fit the bill perfectly. It combines elements of several traditional Chinese sticky rice treats, both savory and sweet, into a new vegan interpretation redolent with the flavors of mushrooms, maple syrup-sweetened soy sauce and warming spices. I took it a few steps farther by substituting several of the ingredients in a nod to the Eight Treasure Rice dessert traditionally served at New Year, and cooked it quickly in an Instant Pot Bundt cake pan for a stunning and delicious meal.
The ultimate comfort food is the dish your mother makes when you return home from semesters away. For me, this was a version of the famous soy sauce chicken or 紅燒雞, translated literally as "red-cooked chicken." My mother perfected this recipe in my later college years, dispensing with fussy, unnecessary steps to arrive at such an easy and carefree procedure that she called it 懶人雞, which translates to "lazy person's chicken". I further adapted it by adding vegetables to create a one-dish meal that had my own children fighting over the flavor-drenched cabbage.
Lazy chicken with cabbage |
Although generally playing a supportive "side-dish" role, potatoes and other underground treasures are so comforting and delicious that they are frequently the first to disappear in any holiday spread. Here are some of our family favorites.
Country-style mashed potatoes (recipe below) |
Who doesn't love a steaming plate of mashed potatoes, ready to absorb and deliver all those fabulous oils and juices emanating from well-seasoned vegetables and roasted meats? At our large Thanksgiving gatherings, we find ourselves tripling, then quadrupling recipes -- and still running out.
Cottage Pie - using Elise Bauer's recipe |
And potatoes are so inexpensive, you don't have to confine your enjoyment to the holidays. Mashed potatoes form an admirable base for all sorts of savory comfort foods such as Shepherd's pie (which happens to be gluten-free) and Mennonite chicken and noodles (served with buttered corn over mashed potatoes).
A brief primer on foods hidden underground
Not all underground plant-based foods are root vegetables. Some, such as potatoes and ginger, derive from specialized stems or runners. Others are bulbs and still others represent true root vegetables.
Modified Stems
Although they grow underground, some starchy vegetables originate from modified stems. These all have "eyes," which are tiny buds, each with a scale leaf, which can develop into a new plant.
Rhizomes are fleshy underground stems with eyes from which either stems or roots can grow. Rhizomes are connected to the main stems of these upright plants. Examples: ginger, tumeric, galangal, lotus, bamboo
Tubers are specialized bulbous stems emanating from branches of stolons (runners) that extend horizontally just above or under the ground level, although the tuber is always underground. Examples: potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, jicama, taro, yams
Then there is the celeriac or celery root, which has a bulbous hypocotyl or lower stem from which roots arise at the base.
Cider Mashed Yams |
Bulbs
A true bulb contains a miniature sprout surrounded by layers of modified leaves. Examples: garlic, onion, daylily bulbs.
Then there is the delicious bulb-like fennel. A member of the carrot family, the "bulb" is formed by swollen layers of the stem base with its slightly sweet, anise flavor. The feathery leaves are reminiscent of dill and the entire plant is edible. Other bulb-like vegetables such as artichokes are actually flowers.
True Roots
Tap root vegetables exhibit swelling of the main root. These include carrots, radishes, beets, horseradish, Daikon, parsnip, turnips. Like parsley, another tap root plant, the leaves of many of these plants are also delicious. Beet greens are particularly tasty in my opinion, carrot tops less so.
Tuberous roots are modified secondary roots with enlargements involving the entire storage root or along the ends or middle of the branch. These include sweet potatoes (morning glory family) and cassavas.
Pork ramen dinner#1 with marinated eggs, pickled ginger, crispy button mushrooms, zucchini/onions and Shanghai bok choy sum |
Ramen Dinner 2. Freshly fried pork cracklings, mushrooms, chashu pork, pickled ginger and leftover vegetables from the night before. |
Wok-roasted Basil Eggplant |
Basil Eggplant with Szechuan-spiced ground pork |
Love2Chow General Tso's Cauliflower |
On Independence Day a year ago, the Love2Chow blog began with these words "One of the most popular Chinese-American dishes, General Tso's chicken with its spicy, sweet-tart umami-laden bites is in many ways emblematic of the American experience." It somehow seems fitting to celebrate its 1 year birthday with a revised version. General Tso's cauliflower is just as satisfying as the spicy, sweet-tart original, but with added dimensions of texture -- crisp caramelizing edges melting into a creamy-soft interior.
Eating Malaysian is like having all of your favorite Asian cuisines rolled up into one. Whether it is Indian curries, Chinese vegetables or noodles, or hot Indonesian sambals that you desire, you can have all that and more with additional influences from the Middle East and several European countries including Portugal (source of the egg custard tarts enjoyed in Hong Kong).
Malaysian-Style Turmeric Salmon with Crispy Skin. |
Four dishes from one batch of Chinese barbecue pork. Jump to the descriptions. |
While I am willing to take extra steps if it noticeably affects the outcome of the dish, caramelizing vegetable toppings for pizza, for example, I am all for simplicity. That is one great feature to Grace's recipe -- the ingredients in the marinade are all measured as 2 Tablespoons, except the sesame oil, which is 2 teaspoons. This means it is easy to remember, and there are fewer measuring spoons to wash afterwards. Since I skip the sugar rub step in the beginning, I use 2 Tbs for the sugar, same as all of the other sauce ingredients except the sesame oil and white pepper. I have also found that this marinade amount can easily support double the amount of meat, perfect for a 4-5 pound shoulder, plus generate enough sauce to serve with it.
African-American Cookbooks to Explore
Beef burger stuffed with bacon and white cheddar |
Veggie walnut-brown rice-pea burger, topped with mushroom crisps, greens and flowering chives |
Jump to the Stuffed Beef Burger Recipe.
Jump to the Walnut-Rice-Pea Burger Recipe.Jump to gallery of Favorite Restaurant BurgersJump to Exploring Vegetarian Burgers
Easy Burgers for Home or Camping
Bacon-Cheese Stuffed Beef Burgers
The front piece of this 5 pound half-shoulder yielded 14 oz after trimming off the thicker areas of fat. |
My dad always served this with a pork, cabbage, bean sprouts stirfry, as the soft centers of the noodle cakes soak up the sauce even as the golden outer crusts remain crisp and crunchy. This give rise to a delectable eating experience: something that neither deep fried ultra thin egg noodles nor oil-tossed lo mein noodles can do. I, however, had pretty slim pickings for vegetables -- I had used up all the broccoli, cauliflower, leafy green beet tops, the rest of the cabbage, all of the mushrooms, baby bok choy, spinach. So inspired by the photo of Helen Chen's pork and cucumber stir-fry in Breath of a Wok by Grace Young, I figured I could at least make the zucchini look like cucumber slices.
Marinating pork, sliced zucchini, purple carrot and garlic, rinsed and smashed Chinese fermented black beans. |
I was completely floored by how delicious the stir-fry came out. The pork was unbelievably tender -- I've made lots of pork stir-fries over the years but the flavor and texture was truly superior even in just an ad hoc stir-fry using ingredients at hand. I now get what Michael Pollan said, that once you have tasted "better-raised" meats, it actually makes you want to eat meat less often. When the pandemic is over, I will no longer be buying grocery store meats raised in factory farms. Not sure why it took me so long, given that my kids had long been able to recognize when the chicken that I cooked came from the local farm instead of the supermarket...
After dinner, the shoulder was thawed enough to be broken down. The majority of the meat was cut into 1 inch thick strips and marinated overnight to make Chinese barbecue pork - another Grace Young recipe, this time from Stir-frying to the Sky's Edge. I was not too concerned with getting everything off the bone, as that would be frozen to make future homemade ramen. The fat trimmed from the meat was rendered slowly with the assistance of some water to make tasty cracklings, which we immediately ate before I could take any photos, and lard, frozen for future pastries.
Love2Chow Pork Slivers & Vegetables in Black Bean Sauce
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