Falafel!!

Over the years, I've found myself going through phases of cooking. These are inspired by different things - reading books, studies or articles, learning about new places like Asian markets, obtaining new skills, ingredients or equipment and the changing seasons influencing what's available at the farmers market or on sale. Some phases are temporary while others morph into staples. Soups and salads usually come and go according to the seasons. I generally try to only use the oven in the winter/when it's cool. I've been cooking primarily vegetarian foods outside of the occasional bit of fish or turkey for at least 6 years. I love going to the farmers market and my Sunday mornings usually include a bike ride to the market to pick up fresh foods for the week.

Mediterranean patterns of eating are often recommended to people as a healthy choice. The main ingredients consist of vegetables and fruits, healthy proteins like beans and fish and healthy oils from nuts and olive oil. Without any modifications or sometimes-bizarre fake meat substitutes, many wonderful vegetarian dishes can be made using Mediterranean recipes, so it's something I've gladly adapted to my kitchen over the years. I've made all sorts of little salads and dips and used to make falafel from a box mix, but for whatever reason, falafel from scratch seemed a little out of my range of abilities. We sometimes would just pick up falafel balls from Zankou and make our own meals around them........Then!!!!

A few months ago I discovered garbanzo bean flour, which has quickly become a staple in my home. So far I've gone through at least 4 bags of it cooking only 2 different recipes with it - falafel and flat bread, but mostly falafel.

$2.17/lb @ Whole Foods and $1/lb in bulk online!

When I picked up my first bag of Bob's Red Mill Garbanzo Bean flour, I decided to try out the falafel recipe on the side of the bag (minus corriander because I don't like it.) Amazingly, I pretty much use that recipe every single time with few modifications - it's that good. I also love the recipe because outside of the fresh lemon, I have everything I need to make falafel on hand ALL of the time! The recipe is relatively quick - it does require boiling water and letting the mix sit for 10 min before cooking, but that time is easily used for other prep work. I love the bean flour since it doesn't have the weird texture that turns me off of garbanzo beans some of the time, it takes up less space, is cheaper than canned garbanzo beans/chick peas and there's no waste since I can measure out exactly what I need vs. having a discrete "can of beans" measurement and it's faster than cooking dried garbanzo beans from scratch each time.

I sometimes make a large batch of tabouli salad on the weekend, which is a good pairing for a fast meal with the falafel during the week. The falafel's also good with some pita, tahini, romaine lettuce, salad, tomatoes, tzatziki, sandwiches with grilled veggies.... essentially it's endlessly easy to incorporate it into a meal. It's also awesome since you can easily make the resulting meal accommodate a variety of food restrictions including vegetarian or vegan and gluten-free. You could also adapt the side dishes to fit your restrictions by making a vegan tzatziki with non-dairy yogurt or a gluten-free tabouli with quinoa.

Garbanzo Bean Falafel (from Bob's Red Mill with my personal modifications): serves 2 to 3 as a main dish

-1 cup garbanzo bean flour
-1/2 tsp sea salt
-1/4 tsp baking soda
-1-2 tsp parsley flakes
-1/2 tsp ground cumin
-1/2 tsp garlic powder
-1/4 tsp dried diced onions
-2 tsp fresh lemon juice
-1/2 cup hot water
-2-3 tbs olive oil for frying

Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and blend. Add liquids (lemon juice & hot water) to the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Let the mixture rest for 10 minutes.

Heat oil in pan. Add the falafel batter by the tablespoon and flatten slightly. Fry on both sides until golden brown. Place on paper towel to drain & serve warm

falafel & tabouli - a past dinner I shall recreate tonight!

 

Thanksgiving Dinner

Last year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. The meal was small, just my sister and myself, but it was a fun, long and busy day. When I heard that a few people in my life were possibly going out to eat for Thanksgiving this year, I decided I was up for cooking for a few more. Four people ended up coming for dinner besides myself, including my roommate from college and her boyfriend and my boyfriend and his brother. Woo! This group included one vegetarian and one vegan, so I decided to make most dishes vegan, which is to say, turkey was not part of the plan. Unfortunately because I was busy cooking, cleaning and having people over, I forgot to take pictures of most things. Ooops. Anway this was the menu:

• Whole wheat crockpot bread - I used something like this recipe, cooking the bread in the crockpot on high for 3 hours. I'm not sure if my yeast was bad or what, but it didn't rise as much as I expected, and as a result the bread was a little more dense than I hoped. It was still ok with the soup and cut very thinly for grilled cheese sandwiches. I want to try this technique again at some later point I think.
• Tomato & Delicata squash soup - I didn't really follow a recipe for this soup, but it was similar to this soup. I used fresh tomatoes and delicate squash instead of the butternut squash called for. I also used more veggies and spices in it since I didn't use the cheese or chicken stock. My trusty vitamix made the soup nice and smooth.
• Israeli Cous Cous salad - This has become my go-to recipe for Thanksgiving potlucks since it's easy, can be made the day before, doesn't require any reheating and includes some fruits and veggies and the ever favorite carbs. I used dried rosemary and thyme, adding it when cooking the couscous, which seems to add more flavor than adding once it's cooked. I also added in some quinoa instead of all of the couscous (like Trader Joe's Israeli Cous Cous pilaf mixture.) Sometimes I also add some orange zest as well as pink lady apples instead of green, green onions and cucumber if it's on hand. If I have it around I also will use fresh squeezed orange juice instead of some of the apple cider vinegar. I usually forget the almonds. I really like this as a fresher, vegan version of stuffing/filling.
• Green salad - Nothing crazy here. Just a green salad with strawberries, Asian pear, green onions and maybe some other stuff I'm forgetting with a vinaigrette.
• Green Bean Casserole - The first and only time I had made green bean casserole before this was a few years ago with my cousin and sister for Christmas with a recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook. It turned out well, but I don't have the cookbook, so I found this recipe online instead. I took a shortcut, using the harcot verts from trader joes, which I steamed and didn't bother cutting any smaller. I also used 4 largish portabella mushrooms instead of the wild mushroom mix. I was so happy how this worked because the mushrooms added so much flavor to the dish and I wanted to make the dish a little more substantial. I also didn't use the veggie bullion cube, instead opting to use some dried thyme, sage, rosemary and a little nutmeg for seasoning instead. I also added some leek into the mix for more depth of flavor in conjunction with the onion and garlic. Finally, I made my own "fried" onions, gently frying some onions mixed with whole wheat flour and light seasoning in olive oil.
• Sweet Potatoes - I pretty much used this recipe, except I used 2lbs of sweet potatoes and not as much topping as mentioned in the recipe. I also used a mixture of pecans and walnuts on top.
• Baked Salmon with herbs -  I vaguely used a recipe similar to this for the salmon. For the herbs, I layered roughly chopped parsley, green onions and very thinly sliced lemon on the salmon. I was surprised at how much flavor these brought to the salmon.
• Vegan almond Cream with fresh fruit & my friend brought a pumpkin pie! - I vaguely used this recipe for vegan almond cream. I had made it before without the agar, which was still tasty, but I wanted to see how it would change the texture. So I ventured into Little Tokyo to pick a few packets of agar agar powder at a fraction of the price of what Whole Food's had. I used already blanched almonds from Trader Joe's, which I soaked a little bit and then blended into an smooth cream with my Vitamix. I didn't bother straining the mixture before boiling it with the agar and sugar. After letting the mixture firm overnight in the fridge, I added a bit of lemon juice, lemon zest and apple cider vinegar for an extra level of tangy flavor and to losen the mixture (from what I've read, acids can cause the agar to not set if added in excess) a dash of cardamom while breaking up the mixture into a smooth cream after it set. It was delicious with both the cut strawberries and persimmon as well as the pumpkin pie.

Overall, I think things went well and I didn't have any major disasters. It was relatively easy to make nearly the whole meal vegan and I enjoyed making dishes from scratch since I like adding more fruits & veggies, cut down on the excess fat and enhance the spices. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal and I enjoyed the company and having the chance to cook for people since that's definitely a way I like showing my love (especially when it's foods I know are healthy!) I wanted to make sure I made some of the traditional Thanksgiving dishes while still remaining true to some of the concepts and cooking techniques I usually utilize. I experimented with some techniques and recipes that I want to continue using going forward (like the green bean casserole! That was my favorite leftover!) Overall, a Thanksgiving day success!

aww. and a sweet little rat to be thankful for.

New Mexico Red Chile Beans

During my recent trip to New Mexico I tried the famous New Mexico green chile in a few places and definitely understood why it was so popular. I didn't go as far as to order it at every single opportunity since that included Sonic's Drive In or on Frozen Custard, but I did want to bring some New Mexico flavors home with me. I also really enjoy the connection you get with a place by eating food that comes from and grows natively and better in certain environments and New Mexico holds a special place in my heart, so I picked up some dried green and mild red chile powder and some Anasazi beans while there.  I hadn't tasted them, but the Anasazi beans caught my eye as something I hadn't seen before, so I decided to try them (If you're in Taos visiting the Rio Grande Gorge bridge, visit the guy selling beans there! He's an experienced salesman but his beans are good, so I kinda don't mind. Otherwise, you can also get them online or from Arrowhead Mills at some natural food or Whole Foods stores and in other places throughout the Southwest.) It turns out there's competing stories over whether Anasazi (or the ancient ones) really were "discovered" in a cave in the 1900's and sold as a touristy thing or were grown by Native Americans for a while. Even if they were a touristy things, they're good beans, so I can live with it! They were cultivated in the Navajo area of New Mexico/Arizona/Colorado/Utah where the plants thrive in the dry environment. Some people like them because they supposedly are less-fart inducing than other beans.

I've been sprinkling the red chile in all sorts of dishes the last few weeks (scrambled eggs, soup, veggies, mixed with cocoa powder on popcorn! Yum!) I've really been enjoying the complexity of the sweet and slightly spicy flavor. Last weekend I let myself experiment with the beans as well and although my recipe isn't based on anything in particular, they're pretty delicious. I'm not sure if anasazi beans always turn out so creamy or if they were just extra fresh, but they were by far some of the best beans I've ever tried. The recipes's vegan, but incredibly flavorful and filling. Served with guacamole on tortillas or fresh tortillas makes for a super yummy, satisfying meal. I use no canned ingredients if you're worried about additives (canned tomatoes seem to be really bad when it comes to BPA leaching) or cost (a few cans of this and that adds up! I picked up "soft" tomatoes at the farmers market that still taste fantastic if used the same day and had no pesticides used on them, for only 75 cents a lb!)

Anasazi beans are such pretty beans!

New Mexico Red Chile Beans - 3 servings for main dish, more if served as a side dish

• ~1 cup dried Anasazi beans (or pinto or whatever else you want to use, just note you might need to soak/cook longer), rinsed and picked through for rocks
• 1 large onion
• 1/2 bell pepper/anaheim chile/poblano - whatever you have on hand!
• 2 carrots
• 2 stalks celery
• 4 medium-large tomatoes
• few teaspoons olive oil
• bay leaf
• dried garlic powder or a few fresh garlic cloves
• dried oregeno
• salt and pepper
• couple tablespoons of New Mexico Red Chile, or to taste

-Rinse and pick through dried anasazi beans. Put them in a pot and cover with water and let them sit about 4 hours.
-Wash tomatoes and puree in blender or some other device of your choice. Add a little water if needed. I also added a sprinkle of oregano here
-Drain the beans. Add the pureed tomatoes to the beans along with at least enough water to cover all the beans with bay leaf. Allow everything to simmer and check periodically to make sure there's enough water covering everything.
-Start chopping the onion, carrot and celery
-Warm up olive oil in a pan. Once warm, sautee onion, pepper, carrot and celery until soft. Add fresh garlic towards end if using it.
-Add the sauteed veggies to the beans. By this time, the beans have probably been cooking 30 mins or so and should be getting soft if using anasazi beans. Other varieties might need to cook for a bit longer.
-Add a few teaspoons of oregeno, the red chile, dried garlic (if using), and salt and pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning.
-Continue to allow cooking until beans are soft. They can continue cooking after that point and they will likely continue to fall apart and make a yummy sauce if the beans are fresh. I think these beans taste even better after cooling and being reheated. Yuuuum.

 

I served these beans with some guacamole (avocado, salt, lime juice mashed together) and home-fried tortilla chips (corn tortillas, cut and cooked in a very shallow layer of olive oil and then drained on a paper towel)

Yummy Kale & veggies

I've made this dish of kale and veggies probably 7 or 8 times in the last few weeks. To say the least, it's one of my favorite meals recently. It's pretty filling and a super fast recipe, especially if you cheat and clean the kale ahead of time or get the pre-washed and chopped kale from trader joe's ($2 for about 3 meals worth!)

Yummy Kale and Veggies (1 serving)

1/2 to 1 whole onion, depending on your mood
handful of mushrooms of any type you want or have
1/2 cup of frozen or fresh peas
4 cloves of garlic
a few leaves of kale or about 4 ounces of chopped kale
pepper
olive oil
soy sauce/salt
optional:
sesame seeds
sesame oil

Heat a cast iron pan. While warming, begin cutting onion (I usually just slice it into long thin slices, but do whatever you want!) Once the pan is warm, add a little bit of olive oil. After a few seconds, add the onions into the pan and stir. Begin cutting the washed mushrooms into slices of semi-uniform thickness so they cook evenly. Add to pan whenever they are cut. Let the mushrooms and onions cook for a few minutes until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms cook down. Add the peas and stir.

While that's cooking, crush garlic & prep the kale. When the veggies in the pan are almost done, add the kale and garlic. Especially if you used pre-washed kale, add a little bit of water to the pan to keep things from getting to dry. Cover the pan to let the kale steam for 30 seconds or so. Remove the cover, add a few splashes of soy sauce or salt to your taste & pepper at this time along with sesame oil if you want and stir. If I am adding sesame seeds (recommended!), I make a little hole in the middle of all the food where I drop the sesame seeds to let them toast a little.

I let everything cook for about 30-60 more seconds until it looks good to you. Stir in the sesame seeds and serve! I find this meal very filling, but if you want, you can also add in something like bread, crackers or rice. You can also easily add in cooked chicken, salmon or tofu. It's infinite recipes! In one!!! Feel free to tweak the veggies to what you have on hand or prefer! This would be good with most any type of mushrooms, spinach, red & yellow bell peppers, leeks and beans.

Cucumber Sesame Salad

Ever since Lemonade opened up near my work, we've made it a semi-regular lunch spot. Essentially they have a lot of items to select from that you pick and choose to make up a meal. I almost always go for the salads. Most are pretty simple, without too many ingredients, but they are very fresh. There's lot of citrus flavors, crunch, a variety of vegetables and no creamy ranchy-sauces. Inspired by my lunches of little piles and a variety of salads, I started doing this at home. I find the process of making salads for dinner to be relatively fast since you aren't cooking much, nice in the summer when you don't feel like turning on the stove, refreshing and a good way to highlight flavors. There are a few salads from this particular photo, but I am just going to talk about the cucumber salad today (the green & orange one on the left).



Cucumber Sesame Salad; a few servings depending on appetite and number of veggies included
Crunchy, light. versatile and a perfect snack, none of this salad has ever gone to waste in my home. All quantities are approximate and should be adjusted according to taste and the ingredients you have on hand.

3 medium Japanese cucumbers (or probably at least 6 Persian cucumbers or English cucumber with the seeds removed)
1/4 a cabbage
AND/OR
2 large carrots
sea salt
agave syrup
~2 tsps rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon sesame seeds (black or white)
additions: green onion, garlic powder, ginger powder, soy sauce

Peel the cucumbers and deseed it, if using English cucumbers. Cut in half or quarters length-wise. Slice the cucumber into very thin semi-circle shaped slices, pretty much as thin as you can. Toss in a large bowl with a generous amount of salt (at least a teaspoon). If using cabbage, slice leaves as thinly as possible & toss with cucumber and a little more salt. Put a plate on top of the cucumbers and cabbage and place a heavy jar filled with water, canned goods, etc. on top to press the cabbage and cucumbers. Let it sit at least 30 min, but preferably an hour or more, stirring a couple times along the way and draining water from the bowl.

Towards the end of the pressing time, warm a cast iron pan and lightly toast sesame seeds. In a small bowl, prepare the salad dressing (if you are using cucumber, carrot & cabbage, I recommend making a bit more dressing than what is described, but adjust to your tastes.) Add a few teaspoons of the rice vinegar to sesame oil. Mix in agave syrup & spices like garlic or ginger powder to taste. If adding green onions or carrots, prepare them at this time. You can use a box grater or even just a peeler to shred the carrots and just cut the green onions into rings. Drain off all of the water from the cucumbers and cabbage. Add the additional veggies and the dressing to the cucumbers, mixing well. Taste the mixture, adding soy sauce if any additional salt is needed. Serve with sesame seeds sprinkled on top.

This salad keeps in the fridge well. Just make sure to stir before serving. It will still be crunchy and flavorful after a few days!

Vegan Lentil Soup

the leeks disintegrate after cooking for a while....

I love beans, but for a while, I just couldn't find it in myself to cook and eat lentils. Every time I cooked them, they just seemed too dry, gritty and just generally unpleasant in texture. After trying some canned vegan lentil soup from Trader Joe's and realizing that I could like lentils, I decided I needed to figure out how to make lentils work. So far, I've made this lentil soup a few times and none of it has gone to waste. I like that lentils don't require the soaking of dried beans, which makes this a more spontaneous meal & still keeps it pretty cheap (dried pulses are usually cheaper than pre-cooked canned...) They also have the bonus of less associated trash and no potential chemicals leaching from the can lining. This recipe was inspired by the ingredient list on the Trade Joe's soup, but I generally like more veggies in mine. The recipe is super flexible and you can add, remove and replace items according to what you have on hand or don't like.



Vegan Lentil Soup (~4 meal sized servings); ~2-3 hours

1 cup dry black lentils (or whatever kind you have)
3 carrots
3 stalks of celery
a few mushrooms
1 small onion
1 leek (or, if you have no leeks, use 1 large onion instead of a small one)
2 medium tomatoes (or substitute sun dried tomatoes or tomato paste)
frozen or fresh chopped spinach
tablespoon olive oil
1 bay leaf
salt & pepper
garlic/garlic powder
other desired spices like: thyme, paprika, cayanne, basil, rosemary
garnishes (I used green onions and pan-toasted croutons from stale whole wheat bread)

 Warm oil in a soup pot. As it is warming, begin chopping onion and leek. Once warm, add the onion and leek to the pot. Continue chopping items in this order, adding & stirring them in the pot as you go: carrot, celery, mushroom, tomato. Finally, dump in the lentils. Add at least 5 cups of filtered water & the bay leaf, cover and allow the pot to simmer for at least 1.5 hours. Keep stirring it every 10-15 min, making sure there is still enough liquid and adding more as necessary.

Once it simmers for 1.5 hours, check the lentils for doneness. I like them kinda mushy, so I usually keep on cooking for a while, but I'll start adding in spices at this time to desired taste. If you are adding fresh garlic, I'd recommend cooking it just until fragrant in a pan in a little oil (I've learned a key to cooking garlic is to not overcook it!) and adding it to the soup. Keep adjusting the water according to desired consistency. This is also when I usually add the spinach -add as much as you want. Keep monitoring the taste and liquid amount until things taste and smell good to you!

Remove bay leaf. If you used sundried tomatoes that couldn't be cut before adding to the soup, I fish them out now, chop them and add them back to the soup. Serve with croutons, crusty bread, green onion, cheese (vegan or not) & whatever else you want. This makes a filling meal on it's own!

a batch of soup without leeks and with more tomatoes and paprika

Vegan, Raw taco filling

I recently finally came into possession a VitaMix... one of those things I've been looking at for years, but couldn't quite justify. Now that I have it, I'm eager to try out all sorts of things, like this raw, vegan taco "meat" filling.

Inspired by these two recipes (http://www.loveveggiesandyoga.com/2010/05/raw-vegan-taco-nut-meat-raw-vegan-taco.html
and
http://therawtarian.com/raw-taco-meat-recipe/ ) and the raw tacos at Sun Cafe, this is what I pulled together. I've had it as a wrap with lavish bread, lettuce and salsa, as lettuce tacos with tomatoes, salsa, green onion and avocado and also just on something like crackers. It's super tasty and flexible and the leftovers can easily be stored in the fridge and eaten at a later time.

Vegan Raw Taco Filling

-1 cup of nuts (I've use 50% almond/50% walnut and 50% sprouted sunflower seeds/25% walnut/25% almond. both were pretty good. use what you have/like)
-~10 sun dried tomato halves (mine we dried/not in oil from Whole Foods. Super good and a decent price and no sulfer dioxide, which tastes gross to me) soaked in a little bowl of warm water, enough to cover, for at least 30 min
-splash of olive oil
-soy sauce, to taste (not necessary, but adds a nice flavor component)
-desired spices. I used: cumin, dried garlic, ancho chile powder, cayenne and oregano
-salt and pepper to taste

Soak the tomatoes for at least 30 min. I also add in the oil, soy sauce and spices, but these can be added later on. Once the tomatoes are soft, add the nuts (and other stuff if you didn't add it earlier). Grind in blender or food processor with tomato soaking water until blended and at desired consistency. Some chunks are ok in this. Add extra water or oil if needed. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Serve in tacos, wraps, veggies, etc.