What's On My Plate » Vegan

How To Quickly and Easily Dry Herbs

Tonya — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:10:38 +0000

This summer the herbs in my balcony garden thrived. Perhaps the most bountiful herb was oregano. Problem is that I RARELY use fresh oregano. Trust me when I say I tried integrating it into a bunch of recipes but I couldn’t keep up with how fast that stuff grew.

Now that it’s October (!) the days are cooler the days of my balcony garden are numbered. While I’m all for preserving fruit and vegetables I’ve never really preserved herbs. Sure I know that you can chop them up and put them in the freezer but my freezer is always full enough as it is.

Then I thought about drying. I mean EVERYONE has dried herbs in their cupboard so why not dry my own? I quickly learned that there are numerous ways to dry herbs. The most often recommended is hanging the herbs upside down somewhere and letting nature go to work. I honestly couldn’t think of a single place in my apartment to hang herbs so I passed on that.

Next was using a food dehydrator and while I’ve wanted this food dehydrator by Ron Popeil since I was about 10 I don’t have one, so I passed. Another option was turning the oven on the lowest setting and putting the herbs in there for a few hours. While I’m sure this is a good method I hate the idea of leaving the oven on for hours.

This led me to my least favourite appliance… the microwave. While I’m not a fan of microwaves I am a fan of quick. I put a few sprigs (does oregano have sprigs) of oregano on a paper towel in the microwave and microwaved them in 30 second increments until they were brittle… about a minute and a half to two minutes.

Once the herbs were brittle I pulled them off the stems and crumbled them. Super easy! I’ll have to play around and see what else this technique works on.

Preserving the Goodness

Tonya — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 11:50:02 +0000

When I moved back to Toronto 4 (eek!) years ago I decided to try canning. I liked the idea of controlling the amount of sugar in my jam as well as being able to use the freshest local produce and trying unique flavour combinations. Canning can be a lot of work but I find it almost therapeutic plus it’s nice to make something edible that will last for so long.

My initial forays into canning were strictly about jam but this year I was inspired by this article in Bon Appétit to do some pickling. Yes, pickling! I figured pickling would be even easier than jam making since you don’t have to worry about setting. I decided to devote a weekend day to my pickling adventures because it sounded likely a lovely way to spend an afternoon. I decided to make four types of pickles: corn relish, bread & butter pickles, zucchini dill pickles and pickled beets (I’ll list links at the end of this post).

The funny thing about canning is that I decided to can things that I never ever buy. Let’s take corn relish, for example. I’ve never ever bought a jar of corn relish and frankly I don’t think I’ve ever tasted it. But with corn being so delicious this year I decided to try my hand at preserving some. Plus I saw many a tweet from Darryl and Beth about their love of corn relish, so I was intrigued. I decided to use a basic recipe from Pick Your Own . I checked out a bunch of sites and there were so many variations. I figured this one would be a good start. Aside from the corn the recipe includes peppers, onions, sugar and a variety of spices. I let the preserves sit for a week or so and then I decided to buy some hotdogs to give the relish a test drive. Corn relish is such a great condiment! It was perfect on my hotdog. It really is like regular relish but with corn instead. I even put some on a chicken sandwich a few days later and it was a great addition.

Next up was to pickle some beets. I’ve made Easy Pickled Beets before and enjoyed so I thought I’d step it up a notch and make some real pickled beets. The Bon App article had a recipe for Picked Beets with Star Anise that I thought sounded interesting, so I made it. I enjoy the anise flavour for the most part and frankly I kind of wanted an excuse to buy star anise, it’s such a cute spice! The recipe also captured my attention because it involves red wine. Not only was this a super easy recipe but the results are quite lovely. When you open the jar you get a whiff of anise but the taste isn’t too heavy on the anise (I’m not a fan of black liquorice so too much anise could turn me off). You don’t really get much of the taste of wine but I appreciate that it’s in there.

The pickles I was most excited to make were the Zucchini Dill Pickles. I love dill pickles and I love zucchini and I’m not a fan of cucumbers so I was happy on all fronts. The process of making the dill pickles was perhaps the most lovely to look at of all the pickles I made that day. I loved filling the jars with the herbs, spices, garlic and peppers, it really made me feel like I was crafting or something. I deviated from the recipe a bit and used a combination of green zucchini and yellow squash, not a big deal at all. The pickles turned out well. They have the taste of dill pickles for the most part but have a slightly different texture. I find them a bit too spicy but I had others taste them and they didn’t feel the same way at all. Next time I’d love to figure out how to make half-sour pickles.

Last on my preserving adventures were bread and butter pickles. I’ve loved bread and butter pickles ever since I was little but I couldn’t tell you the last time I had them. These are the only pickles that I have yet to try but I’m excited to put them on a burger, in a grilled cheese or on a turkey sandwich!

I can’t write a post about preserving without giving a shout out to the lovely Sarah Hood who recently released a book all about canning (which I still have to buy!) called We Sure Can.

Here are the recipes that I used:

Corn Relish
Pickled Beets with Star Anise
Zucchini Dill Pickles
Bread & Butter Pickles

Spicy Channa

Tonya — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 13:41:06 +0000

I’m always on the hunt for great Indian recipes. I love Indian food and have dreams of recreating dishes that I enjoy at my usual Indian spots. Sometimes I get things right but oftentimes the results fall short. I’m guessing because I’m too lazy to grind my own spices and such or maybe my spices are just old.

Curried chickpeas are high on my list of dishes that I would like to successfully recreate. I’ve come close with some recipes but never can quite hit the nail on the head. Sometimes the curries are too dry, sometimes they are too tomatoey, and sometimes they aren’t spicy enough. Le sigh. A few months back I came across this recipe from the Toronto Star and filed it away for a rainy day.

There isn’t much to say about this recipe other than that it did not turn out well! For one thing, my results look TOTALLY different from the picture accompanying the article. I’m good at following directions so I’m a bit suspicious. The only way to describe this dish is sour. I don’t know if my canned tomatoes were wonky or what, but this tasted foul. I kind of nibbled around it for dinner and then brought the leftovers for lunch and couldn’t quite do it. This was a straight to the trash kind of dish.

I’m not quite sure where things went wrong but they definitely did go wrong.

Dave Carroll’s Spicy Channa

1/4 cup (60 mL) vegetable oil

3 tbsp (45 mL) cumin seeds

2 tbsp (30 mL) minced garlic (about 6 large cloves)

1-1/2 tbsp (22 mL) each: garam masala, ground cumin

1 tsp (5 mL) salt

Pinch pure chili powder

2 yellow onions, diced

28-oz (796-mL) can diced tomatoes (don’t drain)

Two 19-oz (540-mL) cans chickpeas, drained, rinsed

Steamed rice (optional), for serving

Heat oil in large saucepan over medium high. Add cumin seeds and garlic. Cook for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add garam masala, ground cumin, salt and chili powder to the saucepan. Cook, stirring for about a minute. Add onions; cover. Cook, stirring every minute, 3 minutes to soften. Add tomatoes with juices. Reduce heat to medium. Cover. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add chickpeas and reduce heat to low and cover. Simmer 20 minutes.

Serve over rice, if desired.

Makes 6 servings.

(Via The Toronto Star)

Roasted Garlic and Caraway No-Knead Bread

Tonya — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 13:18:50 +0000

It has been almost a year since I last blogged about No-Knead Bread. For awhile I was chronicling my every attempt to perfect my no-knead bread technique (click here for search results) but I honestly haven’t made the bread in awhile.

On a recent trip to Philadelphia I had this AMAZING roasted garlic bread at a restaurant called Supper. I knew that I had to recreate it when I returned home. And since the only bread that I make is no-knead bread I figured I would just adapt that recipe.

While the bread at Supper was pretty much just garlic I decided to throw in some caraway seeds to make it more reminiscent of a garlic rye bread.. The great thing about the no-knead bread recipe is that it can be so easily adapted. I just mixed in the roasted garlic and caraway seeds during the initial mixing and I was good to go.

The bread turned out fantastic. Next time I would use more than a head of garlic and maybe leave some more chunks in it. The combination of garlic and caraway worked really well together and made some great sandwiches later in the week.

Roasted Garlic and Caraway No-Knead Bread

3 cups (430 grams) all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1 5/8 cups (345 grams) water
¼ teaspoon (1 gram) instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons (8 grams) salt
1 head roasted garlic (cloves removed and mashed)
1 tbsp caraways seeds, plus more for sprinkling
Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Mix in the roasted garlic and 1 tbsp caraway seeds. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest between 12 and 18 hours at room temperature.

2. When the dough surface is dotted with bubbles the dough is ready. Place dough on lightly floured work surface, sprinkle with flour and fold it over itself once or twice. Cover with plastic wrap (loosely) and let rest for 15 minutes.

3. Place a sheet of parchment paper in a skillet (approx 10-12 inches). Dust lightly with flour. Transfer dough to parchment in skillet, cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rise for another two hours. The dough is ready when it has almost doubled in size and it does not readily spring back when poked. Sprinkle top of dough with caraway seeds and sea salt and cut a 2-inch slash across the top.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 4- to 6-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Transfer dough on the parchment into the pot and cover with lid and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 15 to 30 minutes until the loaf has browned. Cool on a rack.

Kale Chips

Tonya — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 12:48:36 +0000

I’ve been hearing about kale chips for months but never got around to making them. A lot of people say that they’re “as good as regular chips”. Now, I LOVE LOVE LOVE me some potato chips so I just had to give them a try. I just so happened to have some kale in my fridge that I picked up randomly at Loblaws (it was on sale for $0.99 a bunch) and had no plans for so when I heard some kale chip talk on the Twitters I had to go for it.

This winter I’ve been finding it hard to eat produce. I’m kind of root vegetabled-out, the imported stuff isn’t so inspiring and when it comes to fruits I’m getting tired of citrus fruits and cellared apples. As a result I’ve been feeling not 100% because I’m pretty sure I’m missing out on all sorts of vitamins and minerals. So anyway to consume more produce is looking extra appealing to me right now.

Kale chips are ridiculously easy to make. You pretty much just wash and dry the kale and tear it into bite-sized pieces. Then you toss it with some olive oil and spices and cook in the oven for about 10-15 minutes. Done. The biggest stress is making sure the kale doesn’t burn. You want the kale to be crunchy but it can go from crunchy to burned very quickly.

So are kale chips like potato chips? Not really. BUT kale chips are a great alternative as they fulfill that salty, crunchy craving that often creeps up on me. They are best out of the oven but if you store them in a plastic bag they should keep for another day or two. Also, you can experiment with all sorts of flavours. I kept it simple this time and just did olive oil, crushed red pepper flakes and salt.

Kale Chips

A bunch of kale
Olive oil
Salt
Crushed red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 350F.

Wash and dry the kale in a salad spinner. Remove the ribs and tear leaves into bite-sized pieces.

Toss leaves with a bit of olive oil (you don’t want to drown the leaves) and sprinkle with crushed red pepper and a salt.

Place leaves on a baking sheet and pop into the oven for about 10-15 minutes, turning halfway through. Remove pan from oven when kale leaves are crispy but have not started to brown.

How To Make Homemade Corn Tortillas

Tonya — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 12:42:54 +0000

I’ve been having a craving for Mexican food as of late. It was likely spurred by my recent trip to Chicago where I dined at Rick Bayless’ Xoco twice. Toronto isn’t known for its Mexican food so when I have a craving I usually crack open my cookbooks.

I knew that I wanted to make something involving tortillas which is when I got the idea to make them myself. The whole thing didn’t seem to daunting because my friend Shea over at Hungry in Brooklyn made them and pretty much said they totally change your tortilla game. Sold.

I did some research to see if I really needed to buy a tortilla press. I was reluctant at first to buy a tortilla press because really it only has one use and I hate buying kitchen gadgets that only do one job. The Kitchn had a good post about alternatives to using a tortilla press. I ended up deciding in favour of a tortilla press thinking that once I bought a big bag of Maseca (masa harina) I would need an excuse to use it up.

For those of you that have no clue what I’m talking about, here’s a link to a tortilla press.

I honestly had never really thought about what goes into making corn tortillas. Sure I knew there was some sort of corn floury stuff and water. I assumed there would be lard or salt or something else. Nope. This is a two ingredient thing – just water and masa harina.

The process to make them isn’t that complicated either. You mix the masa harina with water and let it sit for 15 minutes. Then you grab clumps of the mixture and roll into balls. From there you take out your handy dandy tortilla press and flatten the balls. All you do from there is throw them onto a hot griddle or pan and cook them for a few minutes. As Ina would say, “how easy is that?”

I still need some practice making tortillas because as you can see they are on the thick side but regardless these were delicious. Whenever I buy packaged tortillas they are always so mediocre and they end up sitting in the back of my fridge. By making my own I can make a few at a time for literally pennies.

So now that I’ve realized that making tortillas is so easy I’ve been looking for excuses to make them all the time. I think I may just make some quesadillas in the next few days.

For detailed instructions on how to make tortillas click here.

Ribollita Soup (Tuscan Bean Soup)

Tonya — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 15:41:13 +0000

I’m looking out the window and watching the snow and thinking that this would be the perfect time to talk soup. Soup is one of my favourite things to eat when the thermometer starts to head south. Soup is easy to make and rarely requires crazy ingredients. A bonus is that depending on the type of soup you can use it as an excuse to clean out your fridge.

For whatever reason the other day I had a crazy craving for Tuscan Bean Soup. I don’t even remember what prompted that craving but I just had to have the soup. My best memories of Tuscan Bean Soup are from when I interned at NBC. For almost two years I spent about 3 days at NBC during school semesters. This of course meant that I became intimate with the various lunch options in and around Rockefeller Centre.

One of my favourite lunch spots was Cucina & Co. in the basement of 30 Rock. Cucina is a sort of Mediterranean marketplace where you can grab lunch or sit down. I’d often go there for soup and these really good white chocolate and cherry cookies. I could be making up the white chocolate part but these cookies definitely had sour cherries in them. SO GOOD.

I don’t really have a flavour memory for the Cucina & Co. bean soup but I have a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart about it. So I decided to try to make some Tuscan bean soup that would recreate that warm and fuzzy feeling. I started scouring my cookbooks looking for a recipe and settled on Mario Batali’s Ribollita recipe on the Food Network site and also in his book Molto Italiano.

The soup was easy enough to make although there was a fair amount of chopping involved. I used kale instead of black cabbage. The results were okay to good. I found the flavours a bit flat and the soup a bit thinner than I would’ve liked. This was easily remedied by finishing each bowl of soup with a splash of olive oil. Next time I’d probably start the soup with some sauteed bacon to add another layer of flavours. While generally good I think I’ll continue on my search for the perfect Tuscan Bean Soup.

This soup is definitely vegetarian and can be vegan if you omit the sprinkling of cheese.

Ribollita

Ingredients

* 3/4 cup dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight and drained
* 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 Spanish onion, thinly sliced
* 1 leek, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced
* 1 carrot, cut into 1/4-inch dice
* 1 celery stalk, cut into 1/4-inch dice
* 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced, plus 1 whole garlic clove
* 2 sprigs fresh thyme
* 1 bay leaf
* 1 pound chopped cavolo nero (black cabbage), roughly chopped
* 1/2 pound chopped white cabbage, roughly chopped
* 2 scant tablespoons tomato paste
* 3 cups water
* 4 (1/2-inch) slices Italian peasant bread
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper
* Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Directions

Place the presoaked cannellini beans in a medium stockpot. Add water to just cover the beans and bring the water to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat and let the beans simmer until tender, about 1 hour.

In a 12-inch saute pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the onion, leek, carrot, celery, sliced garlic, and herbs. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the black and white cabbages and cook until the cabbage has softened and the flavors have blended, about 10 minutes. Salt and pepper, to taste. Remove the sprigs of rosemary and thyme and the bay leaf. Add the tomato paste, and stir until the tomato paste is well distributed throughout the vegetable mixture.

Preheat the grill or broiler.

Add the vegetable mixture to the pot with beans and water and let simmer until the flavors are well blended, about 30 minutes more. When the soup is close to being done, toast or grill the bread until both sides are browned. Cut the remaining garlic clove in half, and rub the toasted bread with the cut end of the garlic. Discard the garlic.

Serve the soup hot in 4 warmed bowls with the garlic bruschetta on the side. Garnish with a sprinkling of Parmigiano, to taste.

(Recipe via Food Network)

Easy Oven Fries

Tonya — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 11:00:52 +0000

My dear friend Shea posted this recipe for Oven Fries on her fabulous blog, Hungry in Brooklyn that I couldn’t resist trying. I mean I love fries (I always have a bag of frozen ones in the freezer, guilty pleasure) and never feel like heating up oil to fry them. So oven fries are always the way to go. I don’t have a killer recipe for oven fries though, they always come out like… potatoes cooked in the oven. Needless to say I’m on a constant quest to step up my oven fry game.

What makes this recipe unique is that you sautee the fries in oil on the stove before combining them with herbs and popping them in the oven. The sauteeing step is brilliant, brilliant I tell you! You allow the fries to soften and then they get some colour in the oven.

Now this is a BIT more time consuming than just throwing the fries in the oven but it’s definitely worth it. I also appreciated the dash of herbs in there as well. To be extra fancy I sprinkled some grated Parmesan on the top. Delicious. In a future post I’ll let you know what I served these babies with…

Easy Oven Fries

3-4 Russet potatoes, sliced into fry shapes
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
salt and pepper
1 tsp rosemary, chopped
1 tsp thyme, chopped
1 tsp chives, chopped

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Heat the oil to about 300 degrees in a sautee pan. Add the sliced potatoes and cook until they begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Spread them onto a sheet pan and allow to cool completely. Top with the herbs, salt and pepper to taste, and pop them in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until they’re golden brown and crispy.

(From Hungry in Brooklyn)

One Love Vegetarian : Corn Soup

Tonya — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:28:11 +0000

A few months ago I posted about my trip to One Love Vegetarian restaurant where I finally got to try their famous corn soup. It was delicious and I could totally eat that all the time.

Since corn has been so fantastic this summer I decided to make the soup at home using this recipe from the Food Network which comes from the folks at the restaurant.

The soup is a mix of corn, pumpkin (or squash), split peas, carrots and other vegetables. Nothing is too hard to track down although I used a blend of spices instead of Mrs. Dash. I also didn’t have frozen vegetable mix on hand and was going to use peas instead but then I realized that my peas were past their prime. Next time I’ll definitely get the frozen vegetables.

This turned out pretty good but not as good as a the restaurant. I think they definitely had put a few more dashes of love in their soup than I did. I also thought my soup was on the thin side and could haven used more body. I think some more split pea would have solved that and quickly blending them with an immersion blender would help more. Also using a starchier potato would be a nice touch. Overall it was delicious and a nice filling soup.

It’s important to note that this recipe is not only vegetarian but vegan and probably (correct me if I’m wrong) gluten-free. But of course can be modified to be none of those things

The recipe makes A LOT of soup. I just about halved it and still had to freeze some. When I froze the soup I removed the corn cobs (wasn’t sure how they would hold up) so I think when I defrost the soup I might throw in some shredded chicken and maybe a bit more coconut milk and maybe even a dash of curry. I’m getting hungry just thinking about this.

One Love Corn Soup

Ingredients

* 24 cups spring water
* 2 cups yellow split peas
* 1/2 cup coconut milk
* 3 vegetable bouillon, cubes
* 6 Yukon Gold or red medium potato, washed, peeled, and, quartered
* 2 cups Jamaican pumpkin or 2 cups butternut squash
* 2 cups frozen vegetable mix
* 3 cobs fresh corn
* 3 carrot, peeled, and, diced
* 1 scotch bonnet pepper, whole
* 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, preferably Jamaican Bird Pepper
* 1 clove fresh garlic, finely, minced
* seasoning salt, (Mrs. Dash), to taste
* 1 sprig fresh Jamaican thyme

Directions
In a large pot bring the water to a rolling boil. Add split peas and cook until soft. Add coconut milk and vegetable bouillon cubes. Allow liquid to boil again. Peel and cut pumpkin into large cubes. Put potatoes, pumpkin and frozen mixed vegetables in the pot. Cut up 2 cobs of corn into wheels and shave the kernels off of the remaining cob. Add the corn and diced carrots to the pot. Simmer soup on medium heat for approximately 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add Scotch bonnet pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic, seasoning salt and thyme. Stir until seasoning is mixed through. Simmer for 5 more minutes to allow the flavour of the seasoning to be released into the soup.

Mandy’s Granola

Tonya — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:00:44 +0000

It’s not surprise that I love granola. I’ve blogged about it a bunch of times (just type in granola in the search field at the top). Granola is one of those things that I can never find just right in the packaged version. As someone with a serious aversion to raisins I’m forever disappointed that the makers of granola continue to put those vile little nuggets in their product. Le sigh. Luckily, granola is easy enough to make and is significantly cheaper than the packaged stuff AND you get to fill it with whatever goodies your heart desires.

Recently I’ve been making this granola recipe from my friend Bonita and love it. The other day I was on my friend Amanda’s site and saw this post about granola. What caught my eye was that the recipe included steelcut oats. I was a bit apprehensive at first, I just didn’t get how those hard, crunch little oats would develop into the perfect granola but I decided to forge ahead.

A quick stop to the local Bulk Barn and I was armed with the necessary ingredients for granola. This time around I figured I’d go with apricots, cranberries, almonds and walnuts. There is nothing particularly different or fancy when it comes to the preparation of the granola. For sweeteners you use maple syrup and agave nectar. The oil in this case is coconut although I used vegetable oil because I was out of coconut oil.

The results were nothing short of AMAZING. The granola has a subtle sweetness with a nice depth of flavour. I didn’t stir it as often as I was supposed to and as a result I ended up with nice clumps of granola throughout. As for the steelcut oats, they toast up nicely and have a nice nutty flavour and a sharp little crunch. A really great addition.

This is officially my go-to granola recipe.

Coconut-Almond Granola
Recipe adapted from The Candle Cafe Cookbook

Via Amanda Skrip

Ingredients:

1 cup steel cut oats
½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
¼ cup raw almonds, rough chopped
¼ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup pumpkin seeds
¼ cup pure maple syrup
3 tablespoons agave nectar
¼ cup coconut oil (in liquid form)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup dried figs, chopped
¼ cup dried currants
¼ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 300. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine both oat varieties, almonds, seeds, maple syrup, agave, coconut oil, vanilla, and salt. Evenly spread mixture on baking sheet and bake for 30-40 minutes stirring every 10 minutes. Once golden and toasted, Remove from the oven and sprinkle dried fruit and coconut on top of warm sheets. Let cool before serving or storing.

Granola will keep in an air-tight container for up to a month.