Tuscan White Beans with Sun-dried Tomatoes

This is such a hearty delicious dish. I decided to throw in some spaghetti but once I tried it, I realized that the vegetables are great enough to stand on their own. The recipe comes from The Vegan Table and the author says that this dish and variations of it can be found in restaurants in and around Florence. Now I don't remember seeing anything similar to this dish when I was in Tuscany last summer, but we didn't look at a lot of menus, I suppose.

Veggies not included in the title but also in the dish are zucchini and spinach. Sauteeing all the vegetables with some herbs in olive oil fills them with so much flavor. This recipe feels so summery, perfect for ushering in the new season and the not-so-welcome humid heat that comes with it.

Broccoli Stir-fry with Rice Noodles

Another adventure in quick vegan cooking. I really am liking Short-Cut Vegan for easy meals when I don't feel like waiting an hour or more for dinner. This recipe provided two different options for sauces, included in the front of the book. I chose the maple and mustard sauce, very light and very tasty. The stir-fry itself had red pepper and water chestnuts along with the broccoli. Water chestnuts remind me of getting Chinese take-out as a kid. I was an even pickier eater then than now but I did love water chestnuts.

Baked Vegan Donuts

When I went vegan, I never imagined ever eating a donut again. But vegans can make donuts too! And these donuts can be just as delicious as typical donuts! The best proof of vegan donut awesomeness is Voodoo Doughnut in Portland. They bake so many varieties of vegan donuts daily, 24 hours a day. It's incredible. The absolute best one I tried there (I think I ate 6 total in my few days in Portland) was a donut topped with oreo crumbles and peanut butter.

I'll never be able to make donuts as great as those, but I did attempt some today. I found the recipe through The Urban Housewife's blog. The original recipe is from VeganYumYum, which is probably the ultimate vegan cooking blog. her photographs are stunning.

I don't have a donut pan so I had to use a muffin pan and have holeless donuts. Not having the proper baking tools also meant the texture of these isn't perfect. Not quite dense enough to be a true donut but denser than a cupcake or muffin. The taste is spot on, though, especially once I made the simple glaze to dip them in.

I'll definitely be attempting to make more donuts soon. The only way to perfect the texture is to keep making...and eating more of them.

(Note: the picture is of the donuts still on my version of a wire rack (there is none in this kitchen!) and there is extra glaze pooling around each donut.)

Tempeh and Sweetcorn Roast with Tahini-Mushroom Sauce

Okay, I'll admit that I didn't know exactly what I was making when I started this recipe. It comes from Vegan Cooking for One by Leah Leneman and since she is a Brit, some of the terminology is different than what we use in the United States. Soya milk rather than soy milk, for example. Well, I now know that this roast means basically the vegan equivalent of meatloaf.

This is a Sunday Dinner recipe in the book, which lists recipes for 9 weeks using spring/summer produce and 9 using fall/winter produce. Sunday dinners are generally a little more complex than the weeknight recipes and this one did take awhile. First the tempeh must be sauteed, then the loaf made, then the loaf baked, the sauce made, and once the loaf is out of the oven, everything can be put together and dinner served.

The loaf had a really lovely flavor. Tempeh is a great protein for a meatloaf alternative because of its texture. The tahini mushroom sauce is very savory. I also sliced up some red pepper with the dish.

Aztec Couscous

What a great book Short-Cut Vegan is, by Lorna Sass. I don't mind spending a long time cooking but it sure is nice sometimes to be able to throw things together quickly. Most of the recipes in the book take under 30 minutes to make. The estimated time for the couscous was 25.

I chose to make the recipe using Israeli couscous rather than regular couscous. Israeli couscous is wonderful. It's a larger grain than the typical version and I think it's much more fun. This recipe is so fast and so easy. Cook the couscous, open a can of black beans, throw in some thawed frozen corn, and whip up the spice mixture. Voila, dinner super fast.

I added a lot of extra spice since I didn't have jalapeno peppers. The spice mixed with fresh lime juice gave the dish quite a bite.

Butternut Squash, White Bean, and Kale Ragout

This is a wonderful veggie-heavy dish. I love grains but it is nice every once in awhile to have a dinner that stands by itself as veggies alone. The recipe comes from The Best of Vegan Cooking by Priscilla Feral. Well, she says it's actually adapted from a New York Times recipe. Either way, it's completely delicious.

Any dish with butternut squash takes some time to make. First is the task of actually having to cut the squash open. I use a gigantic knife meant for slicing crusty bread, I think. Amazingly so far no injuries. This recipe calls for cubes of squash so it takes only half as long as baking a full squash does. Creating a maple syrupy/margariney/apple-cider-vinegary glaze for the squash makes it even sweeter. The baked squash as well as dried cranberries compliment the kale and white beans nicely and almost made me feel like I was eating dessert. But I guess I have a unique concept of what counts as dessert.

I adore the recipe but I do have a complaint. Someone didn't edit the book very well. One sentence from this recipe is "Cook, stirring, over medium-high heat until margarine;..." and that's it. It's obvious that it means stir until the margarine melts. But if I were ever lucky enough to have a book published of any kind, I would pay close attention to make sure there are no errors like that.

Pad Thai

I frequent Thai restaurants a lot. They're a really easy option to please the sometimes difficult couple composed of one vegan and one pescaterian. The fantastic May cross-country road trip taught me that when you are desperate for food in sole bit of civilization amongst wilderness, the best option is to look for the one Thai place in town. Yes, even in Twin Falls, Idaho, there is a Thai restaurant! And I love sampling the vegetarian Pad Thai (sans eggs) at every place I've stumbled upon.

Tonight (now that I have bean sprouts in my possession; neither of the two grocery stores in walking distance of my apartment had any in stock) I gave cooking Pad Thai a try. This recipe comes from The Vegan Table as part of the Eastern Glow menu in the Romantic Dinners for Two chapter. Since I am just one, I get dinner and a lunch out of it, which I suppose isn't that romantic.

It's a delicious dish but it just didn't taste like Pad Thai. I think the problem is that the recipe calls for peanut butter in the sauce so the peanut flavor overwhelms all others. It was more like rice noodle/broccoli/bean sprout/tofu in a peanut sauce rather than true Pad Thai. I'll have to look at some authentic recipes and see how I can adjust the one in Vegan Table.

A wonderful new discovery that came in very handy for this dish is cubed tofu. I saved so much time being able to quickly press the cubed tofu in a paper towel to get the moisture out and throw it on the stove rather than having to drain the water out of a thick block of tofu and then chopping it up. Thanks, Nasoya!

Marvelous Mushroom Risotto

This recipe comes from The Vegan Table, another book by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. It's a beautiful cookbook, though the format is bizarre, set up by menus rather than an appetizer section, entrees, sides, etc. But that's nothing that post-it notes can't handle.

I love risotto. Love love love it. Sure it's a pain to make, stirring rice for a half hour straight. But it's pretty awesome when all of a sudden in all that stirring the rice becomes incredibly creamy. Risotto is a labor of love. The shiitake mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes make such a great combination. The dish is bursting with flavor and so rich. Give your wrist a work out and make more risotto.

Cinnamon Coffee Cake

I've actually made this recipe twice in the past few days. The recipe comes from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, a really wonderful book which is yet more proof that great desserts do not need to be packed with milk/butter/cream/eggs to taste good.

I chose to make coffee cake because I wanted something sweet that I already had all the ingredients to make. This recipe uses basic ingredients that are already in the fridge/pantry (or fridge/bookshelf, in my case) so it's very easy. These basic ingredients can also be a problem because it's too easy to make and eat this tasty dessert too often. Not only are the ingredients basic, but it's such an easy cake to make. Prep is maybe 10 minutes and it only takes 35 minutes to bake. So it is tempting to do a little baking all the time.

I first made the cake last Tuesday night on a whim. The problem was that I didn't have a proper cake pan so I had to make only half the recipe and use a tiny pan. Of course it still tasted great, just looks a bit sad in the picture.

When my parents came to visit on Saturday, I baked it again for them for their anniversary. This time I had a proper cake pan (thanks to them!) but I did get distracted talking to them and combined the crumb part too much so it no longer appeared crumbly. It was more like pouring strands of the topping on the cake rather than crumbs but still tasted just fine. I always know that a vegan recipe is good if my dad enjoys it and he did indeed like the cake.

Spicy Tempeh and Brocolli with Pasta

I'm fairly new to tempeh. I had never tried it until this past winter at Weird Fish in San Fransisco. I had not had it since but I've had a craving for it recently and looked for a good tempeh recipe. This recipe is from Veganomicon and is actually "Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe with Rotelle" but I'm more of a broccoli person. I'm not even sure if the groceries around here carry broccoli rabe anyway.

This dish is absolutely delicious. I made the full recipe so I could bring the leftovers for lunch the next day and I even had some leftover for dinner the next night. It was that good. The dish is a bit complicated to make and does take some time because there are three different parts of the cooking process: boiling the pasta, steaming the tempeh in a marinade of sorts and then stirfrying it, and also stirfrying the broccoli. The tempeh is so flavorful as a result of the marinade with the right amount of bite from red pepper flakes. I love tempeh because of its nuttiness. Tofu can be bland and its texture uninspiring but tempeh is just great.

Once the three components are cooked, all are tossed into a large bowl and mixed together. The spiral of the pasta catches crumbles of the tempeh. There is no real sauce for the dish. Rather, the tempeh and broccoli are strong enough to stand on their own and a bit of red wine vinegar and salt and pepper is sprinkled over the mixture. The lack of heavy sauce is refreshing and again, the tempeh is just so good. I will definitely be making this dish again.