Category Archives: Vegan or Would-Be-Just-As-Good-Vegan

A Gardener’s Garden Salad for Springtime

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I love green salads.  A crisp, lemony romaine salad?  Smoked salmon and tomatoes nestled into creamy, dill-dressed greens?  An arugula salad with grilled potatoes and blue cheese?  Yes, please.

You know what I don’t love?  The ubiquitous “garden salad” on restaurant menus.  You know the one: wilted (if not decaying) “spring mix,” a few grated carrots, hard cherry tomatoes.  That’s it.  It’s bound to be a disapointment to anyone who’s ever seen an actual garden.

I’m out to redeem the name.  This is a gardener’s garden salad.  Luckily, you can also put together a reasonable version of it if you have access to a farmer’s market, or if you have a few herbs growing on your windowsill and the good sense to buy a gorgeous, tender head of lettuce.

It’s easy to get complacent about the garden when you live in Seattle.  It rains, then it’s sunny, then it rains, so I tend to assume that everything is going ok out there without me.  Today was the first day in a while that I really poked around, and I was pleased to find that it’s time to start making salads that grew in the backyard.  (You may be lucky enough to live in a climate where your garden and farmers market have advanced beyond arugula and radishes.  Rest assured, it’s never too late to make a great salad.)

The basic equation is this: some lettuce or baby kale, some soft herbs, some edible flowers, and a light coating of chive vinaigrette.  Beyond that, it’s up to you.  Today, our salad was baby leaves of lettuce, arugula, kale, and ruby chard, a few sorrel leaves cut into ribbons, parsley, cilantro, arugula flowers, kale flowers, chive flowers, and a couple of sliced radishes.  Tomorrow, who knows?

Continue reading A Gardener’s Garden Salad for Springtime (click for recipe)

Sauteed Mushrooms with White Wine and Thyme

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I enjoy food blogs a great deal.  Partly because I love cooking and recipes, and partly because I find them (us) to be endlessly amusing.  So many elegant little nibbles, such perfect photography, such stylized food.  There is a reason I take such close-up photos, people: it’s so you can’t see the rest of my kitchen.  Which is usually a total disaster.  So, just so you know, when I see your photos on your blog, I imagine that the rest of your kitchen looks just like mine.  Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but imagining that you also have dishes piled all over the OTHER counter amuses me every time.

It’s partly because of the perpetual chaos in my house (need I remind you that my girls are 1, 3 and 5?) that I enjoy creating a separate, peaceful plane in my life by writing this blog.  Taking photos with the mess cropped out.  And eating a little better than I might if I weren’t thinking of sharing my recipes with all of you.  So thank you!

Take these mushrooms, for instance.  It’s plenty tasty to toss mushrooms in a pan, sear them brown, and season them well with salt and pepper.  But it’s just one smidge more delicious, and hardly more effort, to splash a bit of white wine into the pan and finish them with a pinch of thyme leaves.  And suddenly, thanks to your presence in the kitchen with me, I’m making a dish fit for company.

A spoonful of these mushrooms will dress up any dish (try heaping the chopped mushrooms onto an egg and toast for breakfast, or spooning them into a panini with some melty cheese, or piling them onto a pizza).  Sauteed sliced mushrooms alone also make an elegant side dish on a dinner (or breakfast!) plate.  Remember that mushrooms are mostly water and will cook down quite a bit.  I’d allow a pound to serve four people.

Continue reading Sauteed Mushrooms with White Wine and Thyme (click for recipe)

Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Tomatoes, and Olives

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When I first meet J, in college, I was wowed by his prowess in the kitchen.  He had two specialties: one was a fried egg sandwich, and the other a box of Spanish rice to which he added a can of black beans and shredded cheddar cheese.  He made it look so easy.  I was smitten.

Later our shared cooking repertoire expanded quite significantly, but J remains a man with a specialty.  These days it’s a perfectly grilled side of salmon or an impeccable vinaigrette, but for a few years (about a decade ago) J’s claim to fame in the kitchen was pasta puttanesca.  He’d whip up a pan on nights when we both worked late and were too tired to deal with the CSA vegetables or walk three blocks to the nearest restaurant.

We were pleasantly reminded of those pasta puttanesca days tonight with this dish from the NY Times Recipes for Health series.  The genius improvement, though, is that this recipe incorporates another family favorite: roasted cauliflower.  We used whole wheat pasta because we’re crunchy like that (and it was great), but you do what you like.

Continue reading Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Tomatoes, and Olives (click for recipe)

Roll-Your-Own Vegetarian Brown Rice Sushi

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Welcome the Virtual Vegan Potluck!  I’m happy to be joining so many other cooks today in serving up a bountiful vegan feast.  Warm thanks to An Unrefined Vegan for planning our party.  At the bottom of this post you will find links to take you forward and backward through the offerings, or you can start at the beginning and see all your choices right here.

If this is your first time visiting emmycooks, welcome!  Pull up a chair, or do as I do and haul your computer into the kitchen and perch it up out of harm’s way as you cook along.  You can browse the recipes via the sidebar links, or visit some of my recent favorites right here.  If you like what you see, you can subscribe via RSS or follow emmycooks on FaceBook or Twitter.

If you’ve been here before, you won’t be surprised to find that this recipe is full of shortcuts to make it easy to cook a dish that might seem daunting at first.  For starters, this is unabashedly a cheater’s sushi rice: you just cook a pot of short-grain brown rice and stir in rice vinegar, sugar and salt.  It isn’t the rice that sushi masters spend years perfecting, but it tastes great and suits our needs nicely.  Second, don’t worry for a moment about how to roll your sushi.  You’re not going to impress anyone here–you’re just going to pile nori, rice, and assorted toppings on the table and let your dining companions impress you instead.  J & I used to throw parties where we’d roll and slice a gajillion sushi rolls–so much work!  And then we were guests in a home in Japan where everyone selected their own fillings and rolled their own sushi at the table.  We’ve never looked back, and neither will you. Continue reading Vegetarian Brown Rice Sushi (click for recipe)

Blueberry Lemon Cornmeal Pancakes (Vegan)

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Let’s just get something out of the way: I am not posting this recipe because these pancakes are the easiest-to-flip pancakes in the world.  (They’re not.)  I’m posting it because they’re some of the more delicious pancakes I’ve ever eaten.  (They are.)  And with Mothers Day coming up on Sunday, you just might want a special pancake recipe up your sleeve.  Sweet with juicy blueberries, a bit of crunch from the cornmeal and crispy edge, lemon zest singing the high note.  You can make them even if you’re not brunching with your mom, you know.

A word about vegan pancakes, and vegan baking in general, really: I used to always think in terms of how to “replace” the eggs in recipes, but Isa Chandra Moskowitz & her Post Punk Kitchen empire have changed that for me.  I don’t get the science, I just follow the recipes, but hey, they work.  (Have you baked out of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World?)  This recipe is from her book Veganomicon.

Back to the pancakes.  Give them room, people.  The batter is thin, and it spreads quite a bit. If I had a nonstick pan, I would have used it here, but I don’t.  Instead, I oiled my seasoned cast iron griddle well and waited until the pancakes were well-browned and released (more) easily with the help of a thin metal spatula.  It’s a fine line between well-browned and burnt, however, so keep a close eye as that pivotal moment approaches.  And if a pancake buckles as you scoop it up, just flip it and smooth it back out on the other side.

Continue reading Blueberry Lemon Cornmeal Pancakes (click for recipe)

Buckwheat Soba Salad with Spicy Almond Sauce

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What kind of dinner party do you like to throw? What is your ideal number of guests? Do you have a few go-to dinner party dishes?

I like a big, casual potluck, myself.  (Or a casual dinner for a few close friends.  Notice the theme here?  Casual.)  We don’t throw nearly enough big parties these days, but I’d like to change that. The beauty of a summer potluck is the ease: clear off the counters, park a big bucket of ice or a keg in the back yard, ask a few neighbors to contribute lawn chairs.  I’m ready.  All we need now are some warm, sunny evenings.

I’m happy to announce that I’m gearing up for my real-life party plans by attending a Virtual Vegan Potluck this Saturday.  Tune in for my contribution (we’ll be rolling brown rice sushi, speaking of fun dinner party ideas), then hop around the table to see what else is cooking.  I can promise that we will all come away with enough recipe inspiration to get us through a summer’s worth of potlucks.

As it happens, a cold soba noodle salad is one of the dishes I like to take to potlucks now and then.  It’s easy to make, you can toss in whatever veggies you have handy, and the pasta easily stretches it to feed a crowd.  Maybe you toss in some tofu, maybe not.  I haven’t had a go-to dressing for my salad, though; sometimes I just did rice vinegar and sesame oil, other times a so-so peanut sauce.  That all changed this week.I love An Unrefined Vegan’s spicy almond sauce, and I hereby declare it the dressing that shall adorn my soba salads all summer long.  It was great to start with, but I doubled the almond butter and the spice because I am decadent like that, and the resulting dressing is even more creamy, spicy, and rich.  You won’t be sorry if you invite me to your potluck this summer.  Feel free to request this dish; I’ll be making it a lot, it keeps and travels well, and it’s as good cold as it is warm.  Continue reading Buckwheat Soba Salad with Spicy Almond Sauce (click for recipe)

Make-it-a- Meal Hearty Miso Soup with Ginger, Corn, and Tofu

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This recipe was featured in an Eating Well Magazine piece about how to layer on the umami flavors in vegetarian cooking.  Which is never a bad idea.  Did you know that corn is considered a source of umami flavor?  I didn’t, but I can attest that the sweet kernels were welcome in this dish.  Miso, soy sauce, tofu, and eggs also play into the deep flavor, and you might even consider adding some thinly-sliced shiitake mushrooms if you come across them.

I’ll be adding this meal to our dinner rotation as we lighten up our cooking for spring.  It’s full of flavor, quick to make, and can easily be adapted to accommodate the contents of your fridge.  It’s also kid-friendly, which is no small consideration around here.  In fact, this “Tofu and Vegetable Stew,” as it was stodgily named in my magazine, is really just a beefed-up (well, tofu’d-up) miso soup with a nice kick of ginger.  We made a meal of it by serving it over rice. Continue Reading Hearty Miso Soup with Ginger, Corn, and Tofu (click for recipe)

Rye Soda Bread

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I like breads that are quick to make and bake.  A homemade bread can be assembled and baked in the time that it takes to toss together a pot of soup or a nice salad, and that small amount of additional effort brings so much to the meal.

Some yeast-leavened breads can be made quickly; I mean, check out this oaty little number.  And the speed of a beer bread is hard to beat–just stir, dump, bake–but then, of course, it tastes like a beer bread.  Enter soda bread, the dowdy but delicious ready-in-an-hour bread of choice in our house.  Or ready-even-sooner if you follow the method I used to make these whole wheat soda bread rolls.

This rye version comes from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day, and it has many redeeming qualities.  It’s made with lots of whole grain rye flour, which gives the bread a dark, attractive color, in addition to providing flavor and health benefits.  More importantly, though, it truly is a stellar vehicle for the herby mash of dilled butter and goat cheese with which Swanson pairs the recipe in her book.  Or, you know, just butter.  Or soup.  Like split pea soup.  Or (what?  It’s not raining anymore where you are?) a brothy springtime soup with fresh peas and asparagus. Continue reading Rye Soda Bread (click for recipe)

Homemade Vegan Pasta

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It turns out that it’s no big deal to make homemade vegan pasta.  No eggs?  No problem.  You can apparently even make pasta with just flour and water alone, but I fancied things up with a splash of olive oil to replace the richness of the eggs and a spoonful of turmeric for color.

I made these noodles to serve in my zippy noodle curry, but they would certainly stand up well to other sauces.  They are a bit less sturdy than the egg noodles, so I would advise letting them dry out for a little while before you cook them so they don’t end up mushy.  We draped towels over all the kitchen cabinets and hung noodles everywhere while I was cooking dinner, and that seemed like plenty of drying time.

You can vary this recipe, of course, to change the flavor or color of the pasta.  I’m thinking of making pink pasta by adding some of my beet powder, and of course we love spinach pasta (you can blend the 2 c. spinach as I did in that recipe with your liquid ingredients, reducing the water in the recipe below by about 3 Tbsp.). Continue reading Homemade Vegan Pasta (click for recipe)

Triple-Green Pasta: Spinach Ravioli with Swiss Chard and Arugula Pesto

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You can’t go wrong sauteing a mess of greens with an onion as the starting point for a meal.  Greens, pasta, pesto, done.

This dish would also be delicious with our easy homemade spinach pasta (here’s a vegan version).  And I know I said you need a pasta roller to make homemade pasta, but look at this!  Cooks Illustrated had yet another good idea and a published a pasta recipe that is apparently a dream to roll out by hand.  Let me know if you try that, will you?

Rainbow chard is so pretty.  My five year old picked this bunch out, enraptured by the colors, but declined to eat more than a bite.  Her loss. Continue reading Triple-Green Pasta (click for recipe)