This will make your friends want you to come over for dinner all the time.
First, make the crust: 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs 1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp. (that's 5 Tbsp.) vegan margarine 3 Tbsp. sugar
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Combine the sugar and cracker crumbs in a medium bowl. Pour the melted margarine over the crumbs and stir to combine. Press into a 9-inch pie plate. Bake the crust for 5-7 minutes.
Now make the filling: 1/2 cup key lime juice (I used one from a bottle, the brand is Nellie & Joe's.) 2 tbsp coconut cream (as in, the cream scraped from the top of a can of coconut milk. I had some left over from making thai green curry. If you don't feel like opening a can of coconut milk, you can just leave this out.) 3/4 cup sugar 2 Tbsp. almond milk 2 tsp. tapioca starch 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract 1/4 tsp. salt 1 package mori-nu firm silken tofu 1/4 cup soy cream cheese
In a blender or food processor, combine the key lime juice, sugar, salt, almond milk, vanilla and tapioca starch. Blend until smooth. Crumble in the tofu and blend until smooth, scraping down the sides. Add the soy cream cheese and blend some more. Taste it and see if it's good. If it's no good, give up now, 'cause it should already be delicious. Pour the filling into the pre-baked crumb crust. Bake for 1 hour. It should still be slightly jiggly in the center. Don't worry; it will set as the pie cools. The hard part: Let it cool before you slice it. Seriously, let it cool before you slice it!
There's nothing very exciting about lentil soup. Still, this is some goooood soup! Especially now, when there's a foot of snow on the ground here in Brooklyn. I decided to season the soup with smoked paprika and lemon zest, and I used some split red lentils for the sake of a) speed and b) prettiness. I got the idea to season lentil soup with smoked paprika from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything, whose The Minimalist column in the NY Times will be sorely missed, at least by me. (And please, please note that this dish is actually part of a healthy meal, and not a house made of cookies and candy! Don't accuse me of just wanting you to eat junk.)
You'll need:
1 lb. split red lentils 1 lemon 1 medium onion 1 large carrot (or two small) 2 stalk of celery--I know, I know, I really had a thing going with just one of everything! I guess you could use one if you wanted?) 2 bay leaves 1 Tbsp smoked paprika 1/4 cup oil (I used canola. Use whatever oil you like!) A handful of frozen spinach, thawed--I used about 3 ounces, which were left over from another dinner this week. Or, if you want to use fresh, that would be awesome, obviously.)
Heat the oil in a large pot with the bay leaf. Dice the carrots, onion, and celery and add them too. Saute these veggies together until the onion looks translucent and the carrot is starting to think about maybe getting tender some day. While this is going on, pour your lentils into shallow pan and sort through them. This way, if the package had any lentils or bugs or clumps of dirt or other kinds of legumes mixed in, you can avoid putting them in your soup. Once you are satisfied that your lentils are in fact lentils, dump them into a colander and give them a quick rinse. Then they go right into the pot with the veggies. Add enough water to cover everything, plus an inch. (Not a very precise measurement! I swear, it's really okay; you can add as you go.) Add the smoked paprika and stir it in. Bring the lentils to a boil, and then you can turn down the heat and let everything simmer on medium to low heat for about 40 minutes. The exact timing varies every time you cook dried beans. Just give them a stir every now and then. Add water periodically, so that the lentils always have some water covering them. While all that's going on, you need to drain your spinach. Once it has thawed, grab hold of it and squeeze all the water that you can out of it (hold it over a bowl or the sink.) Yes, you lose some vitamins this way, but you avoid turning your soup green. If you really really can't stand throwing out the baby with the bathwater (wait, I mean....) then it's really your call, cause it's your soup. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Plop the spinach down on a cutting board and chop it up. You don't want long stringy pieces of spinach falling out of your spoon and making you look like a fool when you eat. Now wash your lemon and, using a microplane or box grater, grate as much zest as you can from the skin of the lemon. (Keep in mind that with zest, you always want only the yellow part on the outermost layer of skin, not the white stuff underneath.) Put all your zest to the side--now comes the juicing part. Cut the lemon in half and squeeze as much juice as you can from each half into a bowl or cup. You can strain it to remove any seeds, or else you can fish them out with your fingers (or chopsticks if you're really, really good at chopsticks.) Once your lentils are soft, season to taste with salt and pepper. If you want, you can puree the soup in a blender (or with an immersion blender if you have one!) After pureeing, add in the spinach you've chopped. Immediately before serving, stir in the lemon juice and zest. It's pretty hearty, so it can be a meal on its own, especially with some whole-grain bread. Yum!
Happy new year! Maybe in 2011 I will make some things that are actually healthy, but I spent December making sweets, sweets and more sweets.
But first things first, Whaz in da bag???
This is my sister's dog, Remy.
Ok, so gingerbread houses are nice. For the dough, I used Mark Bittman's recipe for gingersnaps, which are delicious, but I added some finely ground black pepper and a pinch of cayenne to make it extra-spicy. For icing, I melted some corn syrup with confectioners' sugar until it made a thick paste, and used a spoon to drip the "glue" wherever i needed it. The results were very messy, but I like to think that adds charm.I had some dough left over, which I shaped into balls and rolled in sugar for some sparkly gingerbread cookies. I guess if I wanted to be really ambitious, I could have made gingerbread people like I did last year, but they still tasted good!
Another thing that had been bothering me was a complete lack of non-marshmallow rice crispy treats in my life, as I was having a bit of a jonesing for them. I found a recipe on VegWeb.com that was really fantastically easy, and which turned out great. I doubled the vanilla, and I didn't regret it. Let them cool for a couple of hours before you cut into them to get neat little squares. If you felt like mixing in some chocolate chips or something in there, that would be ok, too, but I like them plain. And if corn syrup freaks you out, use brown rice syrup instead. Yummeh!
I know I haven't posted any tasty things in months. MONTHS!
But yesterday I made butternut sqash ravioli and I want to tell you all about it.
Did it take about three hours? Yes, it did. Was it totally worth it? Yes, it was.
Did I do that totally lame thing I do and not take any pictures, even though everyone knows that's the whole point of a food blog? Ummm..... maybe. But I'll tell you how to make ravioli! That should count for something, right?
You'll need:
One butternut squash
One box firm silken tofu (such as Mori-Nu)
One medium onion
Dried sage
Garlic powder
1/2 lemon
2 tsp white miso paste
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
2 cups flour--I used 1 cup each of semilina and whole grain spelt. I don't necessarily recommend using the spelt, since it's rather low-gluten and therefore a little hard to handle in the dough. That said, I did it and it turned out fine.
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
First, make the squash: Use a big sharp kitchen knife to cut the very top and bottom off the squash. Use a vegetable peeler or paring knife to peel off the skin, and scoop the seeds out of the middle. Cut the squash into 1-inch cubes, coat with a little oil, and bake at 400 degrees until they're very tender. (This will take about 20 minutes.)
For the dough: Combine 1/4 of the tofu, 1 tsp. of sage, 1 tsp. salt, 2 Tbsp. olive oil, and 3 Tbsp. water in a blender. Puree until smooth. Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl or onto a large clean surface, like a cutting board. Make a well in the center of the flour, and pour the tofu mixture into the middle. Using your fingers or a fork, incorporate the dry stuff into the wet stuff. If it's really too dry, you can add a little more water, one tablespoon at a time. You need to really knead this dough a lot before it will come together, so don't get discouraged! Once the dough finally comes together, knead it for about five minutes so that it can get nice and stretchy. Wrap it up tightly in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for an hour.
While the dough is resting, combine the miso, juice of half a lemon, and a drizzle of olive oil. Mix until it's all incorporated. Add the rest of the package of tofu, and mash it all together. It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth, but you want the tofu to absorb all the flavors. Add salt and pepper and garlic powder to taste.
Next, cut the onion in half, and slice thinly. Heat 2 Tbsp. olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat, and add the onion to it. Add 1 tbsp of dried sage. Stir occasionally until the onion is nice and brown and caramelized. (This part makes the whole house smell yummy.)
Add the squash to the onion and smush with the back of a fork and comine the squash and onions into a nice little filling for your ravioli.
Now, tear off a small hunk of dough--more or less 1/3 cup. Place it on top of a piece of wax paper and pat it out into a flat round disc. Use a rolling pin to roll it out (very gently) until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Now, do exactly the same thing to another piece of dough so that you have two pasta sheets of about the same size. Lay one sheet on a flat surface and scoop teaspoonfuls of the tofu mixture about 3 inches apart. Scoop the squash in the same way right on top of the tofu. Use your finger or a pastry brush to brush some water around all the little mounds of filling. Lay the second sheet of dough on top of this and gently press the dough down around the scoops of filling so that it will stick. Use a knife or cookie cutter to cut out the raviolis, and place them on a plate dusted with cornmeal or flour. Continue to do this until all your dough is gone--you can re-roll the scraps of dough until you run out.
Now just boil them in salted water until they float! Now you are an accomplished ravioli chef. (Just like Chef Boyardee?)
Pesto is one of those foods that I could eat every day. For a long time I would just follow a traditional pesto recipe and omit the cheese, but something seemed to be missing. Then one day I had the idea to try adding some miso. It turns out I'm not the first person to have thought of this (not by a long shot, it's all over the internet) but it's a good trick! I find that it gives the whole thing a little bit of a salty kick, sort of how parmesan cheese would. And the only real work involved is cleaning the blender at the end!
Ingredients: 1 bunch of basil (about two cups) 1 clove of garlic--(Seriously, you don't need a lot! It tastes stronger when it's raw!) juice of 1 lemon 1/4 cup walnuts or pine nuts 1 Tbsp. miso paste (you'll need more or less depending on what kind of miso you used, since some are mild and some are pretty sharp. I used white miso, which is pretty mild.) olive oil
1.Wash the basil and remove the stems. Put the basil leaves in the blender, along with the walnuts, lemon juice, and miso. Smush the garlic with the side of your knife, give it a very rough chop, and add that too. Give everything a whirl until all the ingredients are pretty evenly mixed. 2. Now you can start adding olive oil through the hole in the lid of the blender! (Oh, is that what that thing is for???) Drizzle the oil in a little at a time until the mixture is relatively smooth enough for you--this is kind of a matter of taste so you'll have to judge for yourself. 3. This is the most important step: taste it! Add more miso if you want, and season with black pepper. (The miso is salty, so you probably won't need to add extra salt to this.) 4. Spread it on your sandwiches, toss your pasta and veggies in it, cry when it runs out...
There's something about fennel that seems to just scream, "fancy!" It's fragrant and dainty and my parents never fed it to me, which I guess just adds to the mystique. But what should I do with it now that I've brought it home from the store?
Here's what: put it in everything! Especially pasta salad. I know, I know, everyone is so sick of pasta salad (or is it just me?) Well, no more!
Pasta salad with fennel (Or maybe I should call it, fennel salad with pasta.)
Cook and drain one pound of whole wheat rotini. Toss with just enough olive oil to coat while its still hot--this will prevent sticking. Chop 1/2 cup of fresh basil leaves (Got more? Good, add them too!) Add this to the pasta. Cut 2-3 large ripe tomatoes and add to the pasta. Finely chop a quarter of a vidalia onion and add this to the pasta, too. In a small bowl, gently smush 1 can of white beans with the back of a fork. Add salt and pepper to taste, and a nice healthy squeeze of lemon juice. Add 1/4 cup of nutritional yeast if you have some lying around. Wash and thinly slice 1/3 of a bulb of fennel, and add to the salad. If it has the little leaves on it still, you can roughly chop those and add them, too. (If you feel like it, you could roast the fennel before putting it in here, but it was way too hot to turn on the oven when I made this!) Add the beans to the pasta and toss everything around. It's best if you let it sit overnight so the flavors really have a chance to meld. Take it out of the fridge about 40 minutes before serving so that it can come to room temperature. EAT IT! You can serve it over salad greens or next to just about anything.
This will make your friends want you to come over for dinner all the time.
