Plant-Based on a Tuesday: Magical Chipotle Black Beans

No, I am not overselling this not-quite-really-even-a-recipe. Literally, I make this every week on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. One batch serves my voracious husband and me for dinner, with enough left over for the next day’s lunch. We tend to eat them by the bowl with avocado slices on top, but you could absolutely serve over rice or in a taco or whatever. I like them alongside some oven-roasted potatoes.

These beans happened about a month ago when I looked around the kitchen and was like, seriously, we have nothing to eat. I improvised and ended up with this, and it was amazing. Easy enough for a weeknight (one pan), crazy cheap, and all made out of things I have in the pantry and freezer.

Canned chipotles in adobo are in all grocery stores these days, and they’re definitely something you should just have on hand, like onions and garlic. You will never use the whole can at once, but these guys will keep in a sandwich bag in your freezer indefinitely. I use a whole pepper in this dish, but you don’t need to. I like it relatively spicy. If you have some mushrooms on hand, throw them in with the onions. Leftover corn kernels too. You could put some canned tomatoes in here, but I’m just as happy skipping them. This recipe is a springboard. A delicious stopgap. Cooking vegan dinners on weeknights is absolutely possible, and can even be easy, with a couple of recipes like this in your repertoire. (We have spaghetti every week too.)

Nooooom……….

Vegan Chipotle Black Beans

Printable Recipe

2 cans black beans

1 large onion

1 large chipotle pepper (or less–you could start with half a pepper and see what you think)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp dried oregano

1-2 tsp olive oil

salt to taste

Chop your onion and throw it in a big nonstick skillet with the oil. Turn the heat to about medium and let it brown as much as you like, stirring occasionally. Pull your chipotle pepper out of the freezer and dice it small, seeds and all. When your onions have a little color on them, throw in the pepper. Drain and rinse your beans and throw them in with your pepper and onion. Add the cumin, oregano, and salt (you shouldn’t need much salt– canned beans are pretty salty). Let it all cook together, stirring occasionally, till the beans look less shiny and get a starchy coating, and the mixture kind of tightens up.

Veganized Martha’s Banana Bread

Well, hello, beautiful…

When I was a kid, I never liked banana or zucchini bread. I’m still pretty picky about them, but I’ve found/created recipes for both that I like, a lot. I’ve already shared my veganized chocolate zucchini cake, but today I’m tackling banana bread.

In law school a few years ago, I stumbled on Martha Stewart’s banana bread recipe. It’s my favorite. I found this one and it was the only one I made for years, and it’s amazing. It’s dead simple, involves few ingredients, and comes together like a dream. Not that I’m advising this sort of behavior, but if you happened to switch out the nuts for chocolate chips, that’s delicious too. Also eminently suitable for muffins.

My boss had a birthday this week, and so I figured banana bread was just the thing. Vaguely suitable for breakfast or lunch, needs no frosting, and easy to transport. But could I veganize Martha’s recipe I loved so much?

Turns out I can! This was one I was a little intimidated to try, because as the only banana bread recipe I really like, the bar was set pretty high. But fear not, internet, I’ve got you covered. This one, in Martha’s tradition, comes together really quickly and is just as delicious as I’d hoped.

The magic in Martha’s recipe is the sour cream, and so I recreated that with tofu. There are scads of recipes online for tofu sour cream– you pretty much buzz a block of silken tofu in the food processor with a little lemon juice and/or vinegar, with maybe some sugar and/or salt, and use it like sour cream. Tofutti makes a vegan sour cream, but it’s a) full of stabilizers and science and b) I don’t have any on hand. So I got around this by putting some tofu in the blender with a little lemon juice, and the soy milk and flax meal for the flax eggs. You end up with a flax-tofu goop that will serve as both your eggs and sour cream.

The rest comes together in a totally predictable fashion–mash your bananas first (a potato masher is the perfect tool for this. A little lumpy is good. You want mashed, not smooth.) Then add your goop from the blender and your other liquids. Mix well, then add the dry stuff and fold in the nuts/chips.

I had carob chips on hand, and they’re just great in this banana bread. I don’t love them by themselves like chocolate chips, but they’re ok. I actually really like the carob chips for this banana bread, because when they melt they end up almost more butterscotchy than chocolatey, which in banana bread is really nice. And the carob chips I bought are smaller than most chocolate chips, which can sometimes kind of drift to the bottom of muffins and quickbreads. Jerks. All the same, I’ve made Martha’s recipe with chocolate chips rather than nuts, and it’s *amazing,* if you’re into that sort of thing.

I made two loaves, and this recipe is for two. You  could absolutely halve it, but I find that banana bread is one of those things that you bake for people, so I tend to do the two–keep one and give the other away.

::drools::

Vegan Carob-Chip Banana Bread

(adapted from Martha Stewart’s Banana Bread)

Printable Recipe

 

6 oz. silken tofu
2/3 c nondairy milk
juice of 1/4 lemon
5 tbsp flax meal
4 very ripe large bananas
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 cup applesauce
1 tbsp vanilla
2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups AP flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups carob or chocolate chips, or chopped pecans or walnuts

First, put your tofu, milk, lemon juice, and flax in your blender and buzz till smooth. Mash your bananas in a large mixing bowl, and add the mixture from the blender. Then add the sugar, vanilla, oil, and applesauce and mix well. Sprinkle the salt and baking powder evenly over the mixture, then add the flours and fold the batter together. Fold the chips or nuts in last. Distribute the batter evenly between two large, well-greased loaf plans and bake at 350 for a good hour–test with a knife or toothpick. Mine probably took 70 minutes.

Vegan Blood Orange Upside Down Cake

Ehrmagerd. 

Pineapple upside down cake can be a little 1970s, especially with canned pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. But the fundamentals of upside down cake are strong–it’s simple to make, needs no frosting, is a perfect showstopping dessert, and, obvs, is delicious. Upside down cake is also more versatile than you might think.

I’ve seen upside down cakes made with plums, peaches, bananas, oranges, and, fabulously, cranberries. Take a cranberry upside down cake to a holiday party, and people will remember you for years. In a good way.

For this one, I riffed off of a non-vegan recipe in the New York Times for a blood orange upside down cake, and a vegan recipe for a cranberry one. My cake pans are 9″ rounds, so I used more flour and liquid than the vegan recipe, which is meant for an 8″ round pan.

I found that my oranges were smaller than the NYT called for, so I needed 3 1/2 oranges to make enough slices to cover the bottom of the pan. Probably the biggest rule of upside down cake is, use parchment paper. You won’t need it often, but buy it for this. If you use parchment paper, your cake will pop out beautifully, and if you don’t, it will likely come out in pieces and be much less cute than you wanted. Trace around the bottom of your cake pan with a pencil, cut out your parchment round, spray your cake pan well, and lay your parchment circle in the greased pan. Then arrange the orange slices. 

The cranberry cake called for cinnamon and allspice, which is nice and Christmassy, but it’s April. So I sprinkled 1/4 tsp each of allspice and cardamom (I love cardamom, but a little goes a long way) over my oranges, and drizzled them with 1/4 cup of honey. With most fruit, you want to add enough sugar or honey to the fruit layer to make a nice glazey topping, but the fruit is usually sweet already, so you generally don’t need to use loads. The exception here is cranberries. A cranberry upside down cake will take more sugar than other kinds.

Then you mix up the batter. As per usual, I throw together the dry stuff first, mix with my fingers, and make a well in the middle. Then I add the sugar, oil, applesauce, vanilla, flax eggs, and OJ, and fold it all together. Pour the batter over the oranges, spread it around evenly, and bake it off.

When your cake is done, let it cool before you flip it. Flipping a warm cake is okay, but if you can’t touch the pan comfortably, it’s still too hot to flip. Run a knife around the edge first to separate it, then place your serving plate over the cake and with one hand on the plate and one on the cake pan, flip it in one motion. Give the bottom of the cake pan a couple of thumps with the heel of your hand, and gently peek to see if it’s out. The parchment paper should work like a charm and let it pop right out.

And now you may admire your handiwork.

Vegan Blood Orange Upside Down Cake

Printable Recipe

2-4 blood oranges, depending on size

1/4 tsp cardamom

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 cup honey

1/2 cup nondairy milk

3 tbsp flax meal

1 1/2 cups AP flour

1/4 cup cornmeal

1/4 tsp salt

1 3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup applesauce

1/3 cup canola oil

1/4 cup + 1 tbsp orange juice

First, prepare your pan. Spray with cooking spray, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Then zest one of your oranges and put the zest in your mixing bowl. Cut the peel and white pith off the oranges by slicing the ends off and slicing down around the fruit in vertical strips. Slice the flesh of the oranges into ~1/4″ thick rounds, and arrange them in one layer on the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the oranges with the cardamom and allspice, and drizzle evenly with the honey.

Make your flax eggs. Whisk the flax meal into the nondairy milk and let it sit a few minutes. Then add your dry ingredients to the mixing bowl with the orange zest, flour through sugar, and mix to distribute.

Make a well in the middle, and pour in your wet ingredients, vanilla through orange juice, and add the flax eggs you mixed up. Fold the batter together. Pour the batter over the oranges and spread it evenly. Pop your cake into a 350-degree oven and bake till the top begins to turn golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean (once again, I neglected to time this.)

When the cake is done, let it cool in the pan until you can touch it comfortably. Run a knife around the edge to loosen it, then place your serving plate on top of the cake pan and flip it. Thump the bottom a few times to pop it out, lift the cake pan off carefully, and marvel at your skillz.

A Plant-Based Dinner Party the Easy Way, and Sangria!

Hello again. I’ve unintentionally taken a few weeks’ hiatus from blogging, but I’m back. I had a busy couple of weekends and found myself spending all my spare energy on the self-care practices that I need to do just to feel good–exercising, yoga, meditating, practicing qigong. Not that all of it always happens, but I need to do some of these things every day. Anyway, I’ve got a blessedly relaxed weekend now, *with nice weather* to boot, and I’ve got a friend coming over for dinner, so things are looking good.

I like cooking, so whenever anyone comes over I get excited about what I can cook for new people. I’m going to hash out my plant-based dinner party menu, which is easy, largely do-ahead, and accessible to people who may not be as adventurous as I am about Weird Food. Of course, all these dishes are delicious on their own, and are in my somewhat-regular rotation.

Dinner Party Menu

Trendy Kale Salad

Spaghetti and Lentil-Mushroom Meatballs

Blood Orange Upside Down Cake (this will get its own post later this week)

White Sangria

So, let’s get cracking.

The easiest way to make a multicourse meal is to make stuff ahead. Last night I made my favorite lemon tahini dressing and massaged it into most of a big bag of pre-chopped raw kale. For a long time I was a kale salad skeptic. I grew up eating kale cooked. I thought it was to fibrous or something to eat raw. But then I read an old Serious Eats post about how oil gets into the waxy coating on the leaves, and it made a lot more sense. Bring on the kale salad! Leave your marinating kale in the fridge overnight.

The other thing I did last night was start on the lentil meatballs. I last made these guys for New Year’s Eve, and they were a big hit. They taste really meaty, but they’re super healthy (lentils are a good source of iron). I made some extra of these so I’ll have them to eat for lunch this week. This is my go-to recipe, from Oh My Veggies last December. I followed the instructions until the step before the rolling and baking part, and parked my lentil “meat” in the fridge overnight. All I have to do today is roll and bake them.

As an aside, I’ve learned that plant-based cooking often reverses the amount of time and effort it takes to cook things. Lasagna and enchiladas get easier and faster when you don’t have to brown meat, but on the flip side, when you want legumes and mushrooms to behave like meat, it takes a little more work than regular old meat would. Just, you know, cooking can be funny.

I use whole wheat spaghetti from a box, and marinara from a jar. I like to mince about 6 cloves of garlic and saute it in a tablespoon of olive oil and then put the jarred sauce in the pan with the garlic, which just makes jarred sauce more awesome. We add crushed red pepper too, because we’re like that.

This morning, I made the cake and the sangria, so all I have to do this evening is boil pasta, heat sauce, bake meatballs, and chop up some other veggies to throw on the kale salad. Probably a red bell pepper, a little onion, and some carrots.

Which brings us to the sangria. I’m in the mood for a white sangria, so I busted out my finest Charles Shaw Pinot Grigio. In your pitcher goes about 1 1/2 cups chopped fruit. I’m still on a blood orange kick, so I used one blood orange and about 8 big strawberries from the big container I bought the other day. Throw in 1/4 cup of triple sec and 1/4 cup of pineapple juice (other kinds of juice would be nice too–mango? pomegranate?) and upend your whole bottle of wine into the pitcher as well. Give it a stir and park it in the fridge. Sangria gets better when you give it a few hours in the fridge.

So, there you go! Complete dinner party without animal products! What do you like to cook for guests?

Plant-Based on a Wednesday

Recipes are wonderful and all, but cooking food for yourself and your family on a close-to-daily basis is where the rubber meets the road, and that’s where the prospect of serious dietary change starts to hit some snags. This picture is what I had for dinner today. We have meant to go to the grocery store since Monday and it hasn’t happened yet. So dinner today was Stuff We Have. The trick to making plant-based meals easy is the same as the trick to making cooking easy in any style–have pantry staples on hand to throw together a few things you like. All the time.

Last night we had spaghetti and marinara, with the last of the fresh spinach wilted with some garlic. It was delicious. In lieu of parmesan, I throw a tablespoon of nutritional yeast on my pasta. Don’t knock it till you try it. Also, nutritional yeast will never get moldy on you.

So, today I had leftover pasta and…nothing…in the fridge. This clearly calls for peanut sauce. Peanut sauce is easy. And vegan. Perfect on yesterday’s noodles. And, really, anything else. I also had an uninspiring block of tofu and a bag of frozen kale. Boring. Barfs.

So, today’s dinner is just an illustration that with a few things on hand, you can always create dinner. Here’s how.

• Cut two slices of tofu for each person who will eat it. Heat a teaspoon of canola oil in a nonstick skillet, and fry the tofu in the oil until golden on each side. It’ll take longer than you think. There’s a lot of water in tofu. The crunchiness is nice, but no, it doesn’t really taste like anything. But who cares? We’re making peanut sauce.
• Pull out your bag of frozen kale or spinach or broccoli or whatever and steam it on another burner while your tofu is frying.
• Pull out your leftover noodles or boil up some new ones. Any kind will do–spaghetti, wheat spaghetti, rice noodles, soba, whatever.
• Make your peanut sauce. Mince about an inch of fresh ginger (dried is okay. Fresh is better, but dried will still be good.) and throw it into a microwave-safe bowl. Add about 1/2 cup of peanut butter, smooth, chunky, whatever, and throw it on top of the ginger. Nuke your peanut butter and ginger for about 30 seconds to make the peanut butter easier to work with. Now, add a tablespoon each of soy sauce (or tamari), water, and rice vinegar, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, and a little sriracha to kick it up a nudge. Mix with a fork, and taste. Add a glug at a time of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and water, until the flavor and consistency are to your liking. Squirt in all the sriracha you like. 😉
• Put your noodles in your serving bowl first, and mix with about a tablespoon of your delicious peanut sauce. Then throw on your greens and fried tofu and top with some more peanut sauce. It makes all kinds of boring food awesome.

You can, of course, just make peanut sauce, throw it on old noodles, nuke it and call it dinner. I just felt duty-bound to add a vegetable and I like tofu.

Peanut sauce is really delicious and has the magical ability to make all kinds of boring food awesome, so it’s a really good trick to have up your sleeve, whether you’re plant-based or not. But if you’re thinking about going plant-based, bookmark this page, because peanut noodles are going to rescue your evening in a couple of weeks. All you need is a few easy go-to dinner tricks, and eating plant-based will quickly become even easier than being an omnivore. No kidding. Vegan enchiladas are a weeknight meal. They’re quick because there’s no meat to brown.

My other current favorite goes-on-anything, makes-all-food-delicious sauce is Angela’s Lightened Up Tahini-Lemon Dressing, from Oh She Glows. I never make fancy salads with it, I just throw it on raw or cooked kale, mostly. Or sandwiches. Or…anything. My husband now *asks for kale* so he can get this stuff on it. That’s how good it is. It’s worth buying nutritional yeast and tahini just to make this stuff with them.

The Preachy Lecture Part

I guess, in a roundabout way, I’m trying to make two points. One, cooking for yourself can be easy, tasty, healthy, and doable, it just takes practice. And two, I think it’s incorrect to think of veganism or plant-basedness as a diet of restriction. It’s really a diet of abundance. For purposes of ordering food in restaurants, we find ourselves listing the things we don’t eat, but it’s important to see it for yourself as an addition of all kinds of new things you do eat, or eat more. People who call themselves omnivores because they don’t have a “restrictive” diet usually eat a smaller variety of foods than plant-based eaters do, because pizza, burgers, chicken, etc., figure so prominently. I eat a lot of kale. And rice, and noodles, and once-weekly salmon, and broccoli, and mushrooms, and beans. And all kinds of other things.

As with most habit change, it’s a good idea to start small, and vegan peanut noodles are a delicious, omnivore- and kid-friendly addition to your weeknight dinner rotation. Just don’t be like my husband and eat all the peanut sauce yourself. Seriously. I made it four hours ago and it’s gone now.

Vegetarian Matzo Ball Soup, and What’s So Bad About Eggs, Anyway?

Passover begins next week, and so this is the time of year when my husband requests matzo ball soup on a biweekly basis. Matzo ball soup is easy and really comforting and delicious, but not normally vegan. Matzo balls usually have eggs and, often, chicken fat in them, and the soup is usually a chicken stock.

So, what’s a shiksa to do? Subbing canola oil for chicken fat is easy enough in the dumplings, but I learned a few weeks ago that flax meal does not sub well for eggs in this context. My dumplings wouldn’t hold together in the boiling water they cook in.

 

Which brings me to the eggs. In the 9 months since I swore off all non-water-dwelling animal products, I’ve been pretty clear on the problems with eating meat and dairy. (That’s another post. Maybe more.) But my conviction has wavered with regard to eggs. They have a lot of cholesterol, sure. If your cholesterol isn’t good, then avoiding eggs is probably a good idea. But my cholesterol is low. One large egg has 71 calories and 2 grams of saturated fat. I am trying to minimize the amount of saturated fat I eat, but 2 grams isn’t much, and I’m not considering eating eggs every day. Maybe the equivalent of one in a week. So, I’m just really not convinced that the occasional egg here and there is a major problem.

Also, I don’t do absolutes very well generally.

Although, if you’re looking for reasons to strictly avoid eggs, Dr. McDougall has some. Personally, it sounds like a stretch to me. Dr. Wahls says we should be loading up on sulfur-rich vegetables. Why is it so bad in eggs?

I don’t use eggs much these days, but for now, they’re staying in my matzo balls. I use a Smitten Kitchen recipe for matzo balls, and it’s never failed me.

 

I mix the ingredients together with my fingers, and pop it in the fridge while I make the soup and boil the water.

The balls cook separately from the soup, in boiling water. They puff up nicely over about half an hour. Be sure to fish them out and put them on a plate to cool when they’re done, or they’ll get all waterlogged if you leave them in the cooking water.

 

Traditionally, the soup is a homemade chicken stock with a few flecks of carrot and dill or parsley. Of course, making your own chicken stock takes all day. That is, if you even eat chicken. I’ve been making a vegetarian soup for the matzo balls. It’s not a super quick process, but it’s a lot faster than making chicken stock. And, I would argue, every bit as tasty.

It’s a very normal vegetable soup process–sweat your onions, carrots, celery, and garlic together, add whatever other veggies you’re using, throw in all the liquid, bring it to a boil, and lower to a simmer and adjust the seasoning while the matzo balls cook. I like mushrooms in this–they add a nice meat-ish note. Last time I used fresh, but this time I only had dried, and it’s great both ways. I used half a bag of frozen leeks too. Parsnips would be good here as well. Any kind of subtle-flavored soupy veggies would be welcome.

If you’re using dry mushrooms, be sure to measure the water you soak them in, so you can add it to the soup pot and have an idea of how much you’re adding. I used the medium handful of mixed dried shrooms and 2 cups of warm water.

 

Last pro tip–vegan bouillon. This stuff is delicious. And cheaper than buying cartons of broth. Get it and use it.

Same-Day, Marginally Quick, Vegetarian Matzo Ball Soup

Matzo ball recipe from Smitten Kitchen, soup recipe my own

Printable Recipe

Matzo balls

3/4 cup matzo meal (or crushed matzo crackers, if you can’t find matzo meal in the store)

3 eggs, lightly beaten

3 tbsp canola oil

3 tbsp seltzer water

1 1/2 tsp salt

generous freshly ground black pepper

Veggie Soup

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large or 2 small onions

6 cloves garlic

3 big carrots

3 big ribs of celery

8 oz fresh mushrooms or a handful of dried

3-4 vegan bouillon cubes or 6-8 cups veggie broth

1/2, or up to 1 tsp dried dill

optional: leeks, parsnips, other mildly flavored, non-starchy soup veggies

fresh parsley to garnish

salt and pepper to taste

 

First, mix up your matzo balls. Beat the eggs and throw all the ingredients together in a small bowl. I find it simplest to mix with my fingers, till incorporated. Park your matzo goo in the fridge for about half an hour.

While your matzo goo is setting up in the fridge, start on the soup. Throw the dried mushrooms in a bowl and cover with 2 cups warm water, if using dried. Add the oil to your soup pot over medium heat, and chop your veggies and add them to the oil, stirring to sweat, in this order–onions, garlic, carrots and parsnips (if using), celery, mushrooms. Onions get better the longer they cook, and carrots take longer than celery. Let them sweat together for a few minutes, and fill another big pot 3/4 full of water, salt well, and bring to a boil, for the matzo balls.

Chop and add the rest of the veggies (dried mushrooms, leeks, whatever) to your soup pot, and throw in a total of 8 cups of water/broth. If you have 2 cups of mushroom broth from reconstituting dried shrooms, pour that in, being careful not to add any dirt at the bottom of your shroom water. Then add another 6 cups of water/broth, or 8, if you weren’t reconstituting shrooms. Kick up the heat to medium high and bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and add the dried dill and taste, then add salt and pepper.

When your salted water is boiling, knock it down to a low boil and pull your matzo goo out of the fridge. Rinse your hands and roll your goo into balls, 1″ to 1 1/2″ in diameter. You should have about 15 balls. Gently drop your balls into the boiling water and cook, covered, for 30-40 minutes.

When the balls are done, fish them out and put them on a plate so they won’t get all waterlogged. Throw 2-3 balls into a bowl, ladle soup over top, and go to town. Store any leftover balls in the fridge for a day or two, separate from any leftover soup. I’ve got about a quart of soup left in the fridge–it’s good over noodles, rice, leftover kale, you name it.

 

 

Perfect, Amazing, Marginally Healthy Vegan Brownies

Yeah, man. You need these. 

As much as I’ve documented my deep and abiding affection for muffins, I also love brownies. Deep, dark, fudgey, chewy, brownies. For years, my all-time favorite go-to brownie recipe was Alton Brown’s Cocoa Brownies. They’ve got a deep chocolate flavor from all the cocoa, but they are on the cakey side of the cakey-fudgey brownie continuum. They’re also really easy to throw together, that is, if butter and eggs are your thing.

Since giving up eggs and dairy, I’ve been on the hunt for vegan, low saturated fat, kind of healthy brownies that taste good. This, apparently, is some sort of holy grail, because for the life of me, I couldn’t find any. I tried brownies involving tofu that had a weird texture, and brownies with black beans that were a dud all around. I had some trepidation about adapting a brownie recipe of my own, since it seemed like making good brownies vegan was somehow difficult. Otherwise, why were people putting out all these bad brownie recipes?

The other day I was craving brownies, and I poked through my cookbooks again. I have several vegan cookbooks with no brownie recipes whatsoever. Who are these people? So I threw caution to the wind, and did some veganizing and healthying-up (but not a whole lot) of my old favorite brownies of Alton’s.

Here’s the thing, you guys–I like these better than his. I’m so not kidding. I don’t miss the butter at all. The flax eggs or the applesauce or something makes them fudgier than Alton’s cocoa brownies, and the espresso adds a little extra pop to the cocoa flavor. You know, as though 1 1/4 cups of cocoa needs a little help.

I would say maybe you shouldn’t make these–they might ruin you for all other brownies. But you know what? With half the usual fat and extra fiber and omega-3’s rather than the eggy cholesterol, maybe we’re all better off with these little guys.

In my defense, I did give about 1/3 of the batch away. That’s why they’re half gone. We only ate about 4 the first afternoon.

You could put nuts in these. Or coconut. Or bits of dried fruit. But, really, why? Seriously, honest-to-jeebus, these are The Best brownies I have ever made. And the easiest. Ever.

Perfect, Amazing, Marginally Healthy Vegan Brownies

Adapted, loosely, from Alton Brown

Printable Recipe

4 tbsp. flax meal

1/2 cup nondairy milk

3/4 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 cup applesauce

1 1/4 cups cocoa

1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp instant espresso

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat your oven to 325 and spray a 9″ square baking dish with cooking spray. Whisk flax meal into nondairy milk in a measuring cup, then add dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl–cocoa, flour, salt, baking powder, espresso. Mix to distribute. Make a well in the middle and add the sugars, oil, applesauce, vanilla, and flax-milk slurry. Stir to combine. Pour batter into prepared dish and bake at 325 till a toothpick in the middle comes out clean. These will be fudgey. I want to say mine took every bit of an hour to bake. Cut into 16 squares, and try not to gobble them all up at once.

Plant-Based Breakfasts: Nearly Fat-Free Blood Orange Poppyseed Muffins

This is my third muffin recipe in six weeks of blogging. I realized this week that I must really have a thing for muffins. Maybe I do. But you know what? I think if you give these suckers a try, you might have a thing for muffins too. They’re easier and so much less fussy than cake, and they’re healthier. If you make them yourself, anyway–commercial muffins often have crazy amounts of calories, and besides, this week the FDA shut down a New Jersey bakery for putting sugar in baked goods labeled “sugar free.” Yikes. 

This is just to say, muffins are easy. Make them yourself. The ratio of effort to feeling of accomplishment is hard to beat.

So, this week I was thinking about lemon poppyseed muffins. But I was drawn in by these lovelies:

Blood oranges are just so pretty. And I was off. This recipe is a veganized riff on Deb Perelman’s lemon yogurt anything cake, which itself is adapted from a recipe of Ina Garten’s, which I’ve made many times, and can tell you is delicious, you know, for non-vegan food. 😉

I wasn’t sure how well this would work, since the base recipes call for 3 eggs, and I still don’t quite understand how flax eggs work, but they do. These muffins didn’t get tall and lofty like the goji ones did, but they’re more moist, and perhaps even more delicious.

Gratuitous, I know. Still. Make these. The blood oranges are wonderful, but you can absolutely use other citrus you have. Navels, sundry other oranges, or grapefruit. Because I used the orange juice for the flax eggs, you can’t sub lemons or limes here exactly. Using the zest and juice of two lemons/limes, top the juice up with water to make 1/2 cup, and then add the flax meal, and it should work for you. By adding the flax meal to the juice, I’m obviating the need for the glaze that both the source recipes make with their lemon juice. Tricky!

I used a cup of sugar like she called for, but because the orange juice is sweet and the plain soy yogurt is a little sweetened too, I wish I’d knocked it down to 2/3 or 3/4 of a cup, which is noted below.

I love citrus-poppyseed things. I just do.

Vegan, Nearly Fat-Free Blood Orange Poppyseed Muffins

adapted, loosely, from Smitten Kitchen

Printable Recipe

1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or white whole wheat, or half AP and half whole wheat)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup plain nondairy yogurt (I used soy, I’ve never actually seen plain almond yogurt)
2/3-3/4 cup sugar
4 tbsp flax meal
grated or minced zest of 2 small or 1 large orange
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup applesauce
1/3 cup poppyseeds
1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

Preheat your oven to 350, and spray your muffin tin with cooking spray.

First, wash, zest, and juice your oranges. Two blood oranges made me 3 tsp of zest and 1/2 cup of juice, which made for a satisfying orangey flavor. I wouldn’t use more than 3 tsp of zest here. Add your flax meal to your orange juice (orange flax eggs!)  and whisk to make a weird slurry.

In a big mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder, and stir to distribute. Make a well in the middle, and throw in the sugar, yogurt, zest, vanilla, applesauce, poppyseeds, and your flax-orange slurry. Fold batter together with a rubber spatula. This recipe made 12 standard muffins, plus a little extra, which I baked in another small dish–it was like a misshapen muffin top. Still completely delicious. Bake at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Recipes from My Mom: Olive Tapenade

Olive tapenade is delicious. You can buy the jarred stuff at the store, which is pretty tasty.

But sometimes I go to the fancy grocery store and get taken in by the olive bar. There are so many kinds, and they’re so pretty. So I come home with 3 kinds of olives and a few days later, they’re still in the fridge. Because olives are wonderful, but they’re so salty that we don’t eat heaps of them at a time. This is the time to make your own olive tapenade, which we did last month on a visit with my parents.

Making your own olive tapenade is very much a matter of collecting your ingredients, throwing them in the food processor, and beating the stuffins out of them until you have a chunky tapenade. You can add some extra complexity to your tapenade like we did by throwing in a few sundried tomatoes and capers. Fresh parsley is a great addition too, but really, whatever fresh herbs you picked up along with your olive collection would be lovely here.

Don’t beat the tapenade till smooth– chunks are good. This formula makes a wonderful dip.

It’s salty and tangy and went perfectly with a mild potato leek soup. You could beat the tapenade a little more than we did, and add some extra olive oil, and end up with a thinner tapenade. This thinner version would be fabulous as a pizza sauce, which is what my local Whole Foods uses on their vegan pizza. It has a thin tapenade rather than a tomato pizza sauce, and roasted veggies, like mushrooms, artichokes, zucchini, eggplant, etc.

This is all to say, olive tapenade is delicious, easy, and versatile, so maybe next time you’re at the olive bar, get a few extra. 😉

Mom’s Olive Tapenade

Printable Recipe

2 cups mixed pitted olives

1 tbsp sundried tomatoes

1 tbsp drained capers

1 tsp (or 1 big clove) minced garlic

handful of parsley

1 tbsp lime juice (about half a lime)

Throw all the ingredients in the food processor and beat till chunky, scraping the sides as necessary. Serve as a dip, spread, or by the, uh, spoonful.

Plant-Based Breakfasts: Vegan Broccoli Quiche

The other day, I was here pitching the idea of adding more plant-based food to our diets one meal at a time. In a lot of ways, breakfast is the easiest way to start. It can be as simple as finding a nondairy milk you like to pour over your cereal.

But what if you’re not a cereal person? What if you’re a savory-breakfast person? Or it’s, say, Sunday, and your weekday cereal routine just isn’t going to cut it?

Well, friends, this is the quiche for you. It is *gasp!* tofu-based, but bear with me. This is an excellent recipe for avowed tofu skeptics. The texture is quichey, not tofuey, and the flavor is herby and savory, just like you expect, especially with the addition of whatever stray veggies and things you decide to throw in. And with the most ingenious quiche crust I’ve ever heard of, this one is easier and less fussy than any quiche you’ve ever made.

Here’s the thing about the crust–it’s tortillas. I know, right? I saw this quiche on another blog and had to try it. Turns out, tortillas are just perfect. They brown a little in the pie pan, you don’t have to roll them out or mix them up, and they’re healthier than actual piecrust. I’m going to make tortilla-crust quiches all the time now. Maybe next time I’ll try it with the smaller corn ones.

You can, of course, skip the crust and have it as a frittata. This weekend I had a lot of steamed broccoli from earlier in the week, so in it went, after I chopped it up a little smaller.

Yeah, I went there. You’re welcome.

Use your quiche as a vehicle for whatever odds and ends of leftovers you’ve got. Any assortment of cooked or raw veggies, vegan “meats,” whatever.

And, of course, since when is quiche only for breakfast?

See? It browns on top and holds up just like you expect it to.

Vegan Broccoli Quiche

Adapted from Everyday Happy Herbivore frittata

Printable Recipe

To make this quiche gluten-free, use gf tortillas and mix-ins. 

2 12-oz packages silken tofu

1/4 cup cornstarch or potato starch, whatever you’ve got

1/3 cup nutritional yeast

1 tsp each: basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, salt, crushed red pepper (optional)

2 cloves garlic

1 small onion

2-3 tortillas, depending on size of tortillas and pie plate

mix-ins: about 2 cups of cooked or raw veggies, vegan “meats,” whatever you’ve got that would be tasty

Preheat your oven to 350. Spray a pie plate with cooking spray (this is likely unnecessary, but I think it made my tortillas brown nicely.) and place tortillas in pie plate, one whole and another in halves. I needed half of a third tortilla to cover my big pie plate. The whole one goes in first, going up one side and covering a lot of the bottom. Use the halves to cover the rest of the real estate, round sides climbing the sides of the pie plate. Pierce the tortillas in a few places with a fork and parbake them for a few minutes while the oven’s heating and you’re making the filling.

Chop your onions and garlic and whatever fillings you’re using. Throw your tofu, starch, yeast, salt, and spices in the food processor and beat the stuffins out of them until you’ve got a smooth batter. Pull the tortilla crust out of the oven, throw your fillings in, and pour the batter over the fillings, folding gently with a spatula to combine. Bake at 350 for about an hour, till the top is golden brown and the filling is set.