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

Sweet and Spicy Tomato Jam

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your own reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Are you a condiment person?  Here’s an easy test: is there a shelf of your fridge (or three or four) jammed with little bottles and jars of sauces and oils and pickles and mustards and relishes and jams and chutneys and maybe, way at the back, an unopened jar of truffle butter that came from Italy, ahem, years ago?

Or is that just me?

I love all those delicacies in little jars, so it’s no surprise that I’m a fan of Marisa McClellan’s Food in Jars website.  I bought the Food in Jars cookbook as soon as I saw it appear at Book Larder, and it has been a big part of my summer.  First off, there was that Maple-Roasted Almond Butter we all loved, and then I consulted with Marisa (I mean her book) about jams all summer long–for the record, we see eye to eye.  Marisa (I mean her book) even deserves the thanks for those candied cherries that I couldn’t bear to puree into cherry butter.  See why I like her (I mean her book) so much?And that was before I made this tomato jam.  Continue reading →

15-Minute Pasta e Fagioli

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I want you to know something.  Just now, at 11 pm, I got up off the couch, poured leftover soup into a bowl, and garnished it with parsley to take the photo below.  Because the photo I had planned to use was admittedly drab, and because I want you to want to make this soup.  I’ve never done that before; I usually just snap a photo as I go.  Is that too ridiculous?  Is it better or worse if I tell you?

But here’s the thing: I want to you to put this recipe in your mental recipe file.  It’s an easy fix when dinner needs to be on the table in 15 minutes, and it’s a bowlful of soup when you need it most.  (I, for one, always need soup most when I’m in such a rush that I only have 15 minutes to make dinner.)

This is peasant food, which means it’s all the best things: thrifty, filling, comforting.   The name translates to “Pasta and Beans,” and those are the only essential ingredients.  I never like to pass up the chance to add vegetables to things, though, so I included my beet greens and a couple of tomatoes.  You can certainly select your own vegetables, or skip them all together.  If you’ve already got cooked chickpeas or white beans handy, you’ll be glad; otherwise just open a can and you’re ready to go.

Continue reading →

How to Caramelize Onions

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Or maybe I should have titled this post, “How to Caramelize Onions and Why You Don’t Usually Have To.”  Because nine times out of ten, when you want your onions soft and sweet, you can just cook ’em like crazy over high heat and end up with a sweet, jammy mess that will do the trick nicely.  There, I just saved you hours of standing over a hot stove.  Now you have time to read a good book.  You’re welcome.

But, ok, sometimes you want the real thing.  You want a more refined result, a whisper-soft bowl of yielding allium nectar.  Caramelizing onions is transformative, like grilling broccoli or roasting cauliflower or shaving raw brussels sprouts for a salad.  And once you make your first batch and see how little hands-on time it takes, there will be nothing to stop you from making the occasional batch to add to eggs and soups and fancy little toasts and all manner of things.

Make a big batch while you’re at it, of course, and freeze leftover caramelized onions for an easy flavor boost another day. Continue reading →

Grilled Broccoli

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your own reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

I’m starting to feel rushed now that summer’s days are numbered.  I never told you about my favorite summer cocktails!  We haven’t even talked yet about whether to drench tomatoes in brown butter!  We’ve hardly grilled together at all, except for a lonely piece of fish and those eggplants.  Tune in next summer, friends, because some of those may have to wait.

But this broccoli can’t wait.  Besides, broccoli is a vegetable that will come along right into fall with us.  And once you taste this grilled broccoli, you’ll be firing up the grill every chance you get, even after summer’s gone. Continue reading →

Spicy Pickled Peppers

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While we’re enjoying September’s fine harvest of assorted spicy peppers, why not preserve a few to enjoy when the season is over?

Honestly, my standard method for preserving peppers (of any kind) is to slice or chop them, pile them into a freezer bag, and put them in the freezer.  But you don’t need a recipe for that, do you?

You don’t need much of a recipe for this, either, but I always like to pickle a jar or two of mildly spicy peppers to enjoy in the fall.  This a a quick refrigerator pickle, which takes little time beyond slicing the peppers and simmering a simple brine for five minutes.  The investment will pay off many times over, since it only takes a few of these pickled pepper rings to spice up any meal. Continue reading →

Watermelon Sorbet

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Avert your eyes from the pumpkin spice recipes.  Don’t speak of apple cider or fall sweaters.  It’s still the height of the summer fruit season, peaches tapering into plums.  And melons.  The melons have hardly begun, here in the Northwest.

Let’s not hurry things along.  Let’s enjoy this final week of summer.

And by “enjoy summer,” I mean “make more ice cream.”  Sorbet.  Clean, summery, refreshing.  Just the thing to cap off the feast that this season has been. Continue reading →

Roasted Cauliflower and Chickpea Salad

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Although our Dinner in White has come and gone, this salad endures.  And no, by that I don’t mean that I have week-old leftovers in my fridge.  (I mean, I might, but let’s not speak of that.)  I mean that I already had to make this salad again, and I am looking forward to having it on our table often throughout the winter.  Along with that smoky cauliflower frittata, of course, and the cheddar and dijon cauliflower soup and that whole roasted cauliflower and…I might almost be looking forward to fall.

Unlike most of the recipes I post here, let me warn you, this one takes an hour.  An hour!  But it’s mostly hands-off time in the oven, and it’s worth it.  The cauliflower emerges limp and tender, the chickpeas crisp-edged and meaty.  The pine nuts add crunch and the raisins sweetness and the whole thing will leave you actually happy that it’s cool enough to turn your oven on for an hour.  We most recently ate this dish with a grated carrot salad, baked orzo with tomatoes, and a piece of grilled fish.  It was certainly a feast befitting the harvest season. Continue reading →

How to Cook Chickpeas

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Last night it rained, an honest, garden-soaking, puddle-making rain.  It hadn’t rained in 48 days.  (Seattle’s record dry spell, set in 1951, was 51 days.)  On the way out the door this morning, wrapped in coats against the newly-brisk air, my four-year-old cheerfully sang out our family’s frequent admonishment to her toddling little sister: “No boots, no puddles!”  It suddenly felt like fall.

It’s as good a day as any to put on a pot of beans. Continue reading →

Bok Choy Slaw with Radishes

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Emmy Cooks is Foodista’s Food Blog of the Day today!  What a nice compliment.  If you’ve made your way here from there, welcome.  We’re glad to have you.  Grab a fork and come dig in!

I’ve had a bok choy and radish slaw rattling around in my brain ever since I saw this recipe on another beautiful Northwest blog (did you check out yesterday’s?), The Plum Palate.  I had in mind a radish slaw that gave me the first hope that I could ever love radishes, and I envisioned the pungent flavors of raw bok choy and spicy radishes tamed with a bit of sweetness and the acid bite of vinegar.  Do you do that too, imagine how things should taste and then tweak until you get them there?  I was happy with how this turned out, and even happier after the flavors had the chance to blend for an hour or so. Continue reading →

Healthy Cookies

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks! You can see some of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are June, July, and August). If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Yes, I like vegetables, but I also like cookies.  And let me tell you, having three little girls is a good excuse to make cookies.  Lots of cookies. Chocolate Chocolate Cookies.  Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Bittersweet Chocolate Dried Apricot Cookies.  Hazelnut Tea Cookies.  Savory Oatmeal Cookies with Rosemary and Black Pepper.  Butterscotch cookies (go ahead, sandwich them with Nutella).

Those cookies above, as you may notice, do not fall into the health food category.  And that’s ok.  But these cookies below?  They come awfully close.  And they’re lovely.  And I will be making them often.  And I will let my kids eat them for breakfast.

The original recipe comes from Hannah, a fellow Seattleite, chef, and writer of Blue Kale Road.  You should go read her post, a sweet reflection on enjoying the ordinary moments in life, and then you should go to the kitchen and make these cookies.

It’s almost a granola recipe, maple-sweetened with oats and salt and cinnamon.  And since I love my olive-oil granola so much, I figured that olive oil would work perfectly here as well.  And it does.  Did I mention that these cookies are vegan?This batch was filled with fig jam, since I had two open jars in the fridge.  (How does that happen?)  Tomorrow maybe I’ll try raspberry.  Hannah says the cookies freeze nicely, assuming you have any left over for long enough to freeze.  We didn’t. Continue reading →