vegan valentine

what better way to celebrate valentine's day than with a vegan feast. i guess you could also spend it with your significant other.. but hey, some of us don't have significant others and are doomed to die alone, eaten by our cats.

on that note... may as well eat a bunch before that happens! here's what we had for our vegan valentine's:

• roasted tomatoes
• roasted broccoli with tahini-miso sauce
• pasta with broccoli rabe & raisins
• artichokes in mmmm mega delicious vegetable broth

these recipes were, in fact, inspired by my favorite people.. camellia introduced me to slow-roasted tomatoes, and dorothy first showed me how to make tahini-miso sauce. of course, it's even better when they make it :-)

roasted tomatoes (the CT way)

• small tomatoes, cut in half
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt & pepper
• oregano
• brown sugar (optional)

1. arrange the tomatoes in a ceramic or metal dish.. drizzle olive oil on top. the sprinkle with salt & pepper, oregano, and brown sugar (optional if your tomatoes don't look so great)
2. roast in the oven at 200F for several hours... as slowly as possible! they'll come out delicious!

roasted broccoli with tahini-miso sauce (the DK way)

• 2 heads broccoli, cut into florets
• olive oil
• salt & pepper
• tahini
• white miso
• lemon juice
• 1 clove garlic

1. toss the broccoli with some olive oil, salt and pepper.
2. roast it in the oven at 400F, until tender.
3. meanwhile, prepare the sauce by blending the tahini, white miso, lemon juice, garlic, and water to desired consistency. here i leave out the proportions of tahini-miso-lemon and leave it up to you to decide; i used something like 1-1-1.
4. when the broccoli is done, serve it with the sauce!

pasta with broccoli rabe and raisins

• pasta of your choice
• extra virgin olive oil
• garlic, 1 clove, minced
• leeks, sliced
• broccoli rabe (cima di rapa), chopped
• raisins
• hot pepper
• salt & pepper

1. prepare a pot of boiling salt water. first, boil the broccoli rabe in the water for just a minute. do not overcook it!! (i hate overcooked anything...) then drain the broccoli rabe, but keeping the boiling water. prepare the pasta in this same water. usually when i cook pasta, i undercook it a little since i'll cook it again in the pan at the end.
2. sautee the leeks and garlic in olive oil. then add the broccoli rabe, and sautee until tender.
3. add the pasta and raisin, and heat through. season with salt, pepper, and hot pepper!

artichokes steamed in vegetable broth

• artichokes, 4
• olive oil
• garlic, minced
• leeks, sliced
• carrot, chopped
• celery, chopped
• celery root, chopped
• fresh thyme sprig
• fresh bay leaf
• salt & pepper

1. prepare the artichokes. in all honesty, i don't know how to do this myself.. you basically have to cut off all the outer layers and remove the central flower part. perhaps the intertubes would be useful here.
2. prepare the vegetable broth. sautee the garlic, onion, carrot, celery, and celery root briefly. then add some water and bring to a boil. lower the heat and simmer, with the fresh thyme and bay leaf, as well as the salt & pepper to taste.
3. steam the artichokes in the vegetable broth for about 10 minutes, or until the artichokes are sufficiently tender. be sure to keep that the artichokes are sufficiently covered in the broth and that the pot is covered while artichokes steam. just above, you can see a picture of what they looked like when they finished steaming!
4. not done yet! next bake them in the oven for 5 minutes, at 400F.
5. to serve, place one artichoke in a bowl, and ladle the vegetable broth over the artichoke.. and voila--super delicious awesomeness!

ribollita, here i come...!

SO...having been inspired by toyoko's recipe and the fact that ribollita just happens to be her androgenius twin dorothy's favorite soup, i was like, for sure, "i gotsta git me some o' dat." you'll see, though, that this entry follows more than a week after toyoko's posting because A) i am by no means an androgenius with the uncanny ability of cooking the same dish as either toyoko or dorothy on any given day; and B) i was out of potatoes.

russian butterball potatoes...check. laptop with toyoko's recipe handy...check. 

however, anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that no matter how hard i try, my ADD-ness makes it absolutely impossible for me to completely read--much less follow any one recipe ever. so here's what happened (working backwards with what i can recall of the recipe because it's the only way i'll ever be able to remember the ingredients):

disclaimer #1: yikes! i just realized that i neither measure nor time anything ever...sorry.

da recipe:

1. since i don't have a pressure cooker, i simmered the cannellini beans until just before they reached desired texture. be sure you remove them from heat even a little before that because you'll add them to the soup later, where they'll cook still further and soak up some o' dat soup-y good flava.

2. chop and sauté onions, followed by carrots and celery, in olive oil. 

3. add minced garlic (and this is where i first wandered away from toyoko's recipe because i accidentally threw in a chile de arbol out of habit) and cavolo nero. (next mishap: i forgot the potatoes.) then add the canned diced tomatoes (which i crushed with my manly fist because seeing perfectly machine-cut squares of tomatoes in food bothers me for some reason).

4. add the beans and (ideally) their soaking water (<--i accidentally threw this out and realized as my liquid gold was rushing down the drain) because you want those good starches to add body to your soup. then add however much more water you want...i brought the water level maybe about 2" above the ingredients?

note: i can't leave anything i cook alone and am, therefore, constantly adjusting flavors, adding more stuff, covering up mistakes, etc...repeat, repeat.

5. in goes a vegetable bouillon cube...it was even an italian one!


6. next, two sprigs of thyme and one bay leaf (but i removed the bay leaf after about 15mins because bay leaf overkill drives me nuts).


7. (toyoko and dorothy, don't read this part!!) remembering that my italian friend angela told me that she often simmers a parmesan rind in her soups for that extra oomph, i thought, "that still technically falls within the definition of VEGfriends, right?" however, i just noticed that the heading on this Blogger site reads "androgeniuses... cook... VEGAN... science!" ...whoOps! ...okay, so parmesan rind--optional. :p


8. add a bit of salt and pepper--not the full amount, maybe just a tad shy of how salty you ultimately want it to be, remembering that it still needs to simmer further. i tend to pre-season on the early side to ensure that tough ingredients like beans get to absorb some o' dat salty goodness. mmHMM.


9. in a blender,  first add toasted bread (mine needed no toasting since it was a super-stale, rock hard baguette leftover from december...or was it november? hahaha...i learned how not to waste bread from toyoko!), followed by whatever portion of ribollita ingredients and liquid you want to purée.


10. return puréed contents in blender to pot and mix evenly.


11. season with salt and pepper as you like, simmering for a bit longer until ribollita is where you want it to be. 


12. finally, ladle soup into a bowl and drizzle with a pepper-y olive oil. oh! and some parsley.

question: it just occured to me--was i supposed to put more toasted bread into the bottom of the bowl??? if so, oops again...

ingredientz: i have a small appetite and get bored of eating too much of any one thing, so i adjusted the ingredients to make a smaller batch of ribollita.


1c - cannellini beans


1 - spanish onion, finely chopped (i'm not 100% over my onion phobia, so i chop them smaller, in hopes that they'll melt and just disappear)
2 - carrots, chopped into 1/2" wedges
1 - celery stalk, chopped into 1/2" pieces
1 - chile de arbol, crumbled with seeds included
3 - garlic cloves, minced
3/4 of a bunch - cavolo nero, chopped into 1" pieces
1 - bouillon cube
2 - thyme sprigs--next time, i'll just add them earlier along with the chile de arbol before step 2, like normal cooks.
1 - parmesan rind (like i said, totally optional!)

salt and pepper to taste
pepper-y olive oil for drizzling
chopped parsley

disclaimer #2: i cannot honestly say that no organisms were harmed in the making of this soup because the super-organic cavolo nero i bought from the farmers market had hell-of tiny silver bugs (those aren't aphids, are they?) on it, and though i tried to wash the leaves off as best as i could but......more protein anyone?





 

magical bean salad

i'm only calling this "magical bean salad" because "bean salad" doesn't seem to do these beans justice.. NC just introduced me to the idea of a simple bean salad, and it has stuck... maybe these beans are magical, after all; i can't stop eating them! i've been eating beans every day for almost a week!

as with the other dishes i've been cooking, simplicity is key.. also, i think the truly magical ingredient is good olive oil. NC has graciously endowed me with the remains of this giant bottle of olive oil. i think this bottle of olive oil and i are going to be making beautiful music together...

• chickpeas or cannellini beans, either dried or canned
• carrots, chopped
• celery, chopped
• garlic, minced
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt & pepper
• fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

1. cook the beans until tender. i cooked my chickpeas for about 40 minutes in my magical pressure cooker!
2. mix the beans with the rest of the ingredients. salt & pepper to taste.

a tale of two pastas

in true freakish wondertwin spirit, dorothy and i both happened to have similar pasta dinners last night. below you find a tale of two pastas: one a simple tale of pasta with just zucchini, the other a recipe with more flair! enjoy!

• toyo's recipe for pasta with zucchini
• dorothy & melissa's for extra special pasta with zucchini

"the other pasta with zucchini" OR "pasta with zucchini, with gay flair" (by dorothy)

For the gritter, dirtier more low-brow version of "pasta with zucchini", look here! Melissa made a delicious red sauce last nite, chock full of veggies and highlighted with zucchini and veggie sausage for some protein punch. This is especially suitable for the cold winter nights in Brooklyn.

ingredients:

cellentani pasta (or whatever you want)

onion

garlic

zucchini

veg sausage (optional)

canned tomatoes - whole peeled, fire roasted!

canned crushed tomatoes (optional, for thicker sauce)

oregano

thyme

salt/pepper

kalamata olives

1. Boil pasta water. Throw salt in after it boils! Raoult's law! Add pasta after boil!

2. Sautee onion til translucent, throw in sausage and brown (or you can brown sausage first, set aside, then add back after onions are cooked.)

3. Add zucchini, garlic, and herbs. Sautee 1-2 min.

4. Add tomatoes, let simmer til zukes are softened. If you want to add some pasta water, be my guest.

5. Throw in some olives at the end.

6. Top some pasta with some sauce and enjoy with some red wine and some Downton Abbey! Or talk to your dinner companion.