Sweet & Sour Balti Vegetable Curry

During the winter, my favorite last-minute dinners involve throwing together whatever root vegetables I have around the house in a warm, comforting soup, stew or curry.  This recipe is an adaptation of a chicken curry dish I found in this Indian cookbook, which uses a yogurt, chutney and tomato base to create a creamy sauce that is, indeed, sweet & sour–and delicious.

Here’s how we did it: first, begin sauteing the vegetables, beginning with the cubed root vegetables–we used red potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots.   While these get going, mix together the following in a small bowl:

• 3 Tbsp. tomato paste
• 2 Tbsp. Greek yogurt
• 1/2 tsp. garam masala (or hot curry powder)
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1 tsp. crushed garlic
• 2 Tbsp. peach or mango chutney
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. sugar

Add a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil to the sauteing root vegetables, plus any other vegetables you want to add.  We used some red bell pepper and green chillies. Add the spice, tomato and yogurt mixture.  Allow to cook on medium-high for a couple of minutes, then add 2/3 cup water.  Return to a boil, then lower the heat and allow the entire thing to cook, covered, for 5-7 minutes, or until the root vegetables are tender.

Finally, stir in about 1/4 cup milk or cream.  When everything is hot, serve over white rice.  It would also be a great idea to garnish this with fresh cilantro, but we weren’t fortunate enough to have any lying around the house at the time.

I love this curry for a few reasons: one is that it can be assembled using things that I almost always have around in the pantry (though, of course, this means being the sort of person who keeps peach chutney on hand).  The other is that it’s incredibly tasty in virtue of its ability to hit all the satisfying tastes–sweet, sour, salty, and spicy–while also being creamy and rich-tasting (but secretly involves less fat than is apparent, especially if you use low-fat milk instead of heavy cream).  Perfect for winter days at home.

Not Your Mama’s Beans and Taters

When you grow up in the South, green beans are an unavoidable part of life.  As a kid, I remember being ordered to at least “try” my green beans, which invariably stared back at me on the plate longer than most of my meal–alone, and in true Southern style, a bit squishy from cooking long and low in a broth of bacon fat, butter and salt.  As I got older, I began to love these porky beans, despite the fact that they bore so little resemblance to the beautiful, slender haricots verts that I saw in the grocery store and the occasional salad Nicoise.  About 6 years ago, however, I stopped eating pigs and found myself in a little bit of a problem in the vegetation-consumption department.  I had become so accustomed to eating vegetables that tasted like meat that the elimination of meat from my diet became, for a time, quite depressing–as my diet descended into Blandsville (population More Than You’d Think).

Fortunately, my cooking has improved significantly since those terrible times, and I have made it my life’s mission to cook and eat vegetarian food that is as delicious as it is pork-(and chicken, and beef)free…and, here, to share it with you.  With that in mind, today’s recipes are veggie riffs on classic home-style/meat-and-three  sides, which I think are even better than the originals.

The green beans are from Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen, and despite the fact that they are decidedly Not My Mama’s Green Beans, they are incredibly good–and in fact, I can assure you that she approves (I fed them to her on Christmas Eve, in fact).  They’re topped with roasted shallots and walnuts, which add an extra pop of flavor with a satisfying crunch.  So, to start, preheat the oven to 425, and toss 4 big shallots in a bit of olive oil and lay them out on a baking sheet.  When the oven is ready, roast the shallots until the outer skin is blackened and the inside is tender (you may need to toss them a bit midway through to get an even char).

While this is happening, boil a pot of water with 1 tbsp. salt, and toss in 1 pound of green beans, with the stem ends snapped off.  Cook for 4-5 minutes until they’re tender, but still have a bit of crunch.  IMPORTANT: Don’t let them get much past bright green (they’ll turn Southern-style yellow-brown if you cook them too long.  Sorry, y’all, but brown beans are not cute!  Or tasty, for that matter).  When they’ve cooked long enough, drop them into cold water to stop the cooking, and then drain in a colander.

Finally, to make the dressing, whisk together the following in a large bowl:

• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 Tbsp. red wine or apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp. Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp. maple syrup (or honey)
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 Tbsp. fresh thyme (or 1 tsp. dry)
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• Black pepper to taste

When the dressing comes together, toss the beans in it.  Remove the shallots from the oven and (carefully!) cut off the tops, so that you can squeeze out the soft roasted-shallot-goodness.  Give the newly skinned roasted shallots a chop, and toss these in with the beans and dressing.  Finally, to serve, top with 1/4 cup toasted chopped walnuts.  Crunchy, tangy, sweet, savory, and all-around amazing.  I really, really love these green beans.

The complexity of flavor involved in the green beans went well with our fingerling potatoes, which were very simple.  Josh found this recipe on Ina Garten’s website–he’s a die hard Barefoot Contessa fan, and really, who can blame him?–and he prepared the potatoes while I took care of the beans.  You can read the recipe at the link above, but basically, it really only requires cooking the whole fingerlings in water, salt and butter, and then tossing them with fresh dill.  I’m less familiar with dill than many other herbs (since it doesn’t make much of an appearance in Southern or Louisiana cooking except in the form of pickles), but I was really pleased with how well these turned out.  I think the simple and comforting texture of the fingerlings was a nice compliment to the refreshing flavor of dill…and the whole thing felt very French, which was fun.

And then, of course, we ate these delicacies with roasted tofu, which I love–but which I’ll leave out of the discussion for now.  Baby steps, I say.  Today: veggies without pork, perhaps tomorrow: the joys of soy.  You know what they say, about the building of Rome and whatnot…

Pub Grub at Home

I love a good (veggie) burger and fries–preferably with beer–but given the post-holiday pinch on both my wallet and my fat-consumption, I’ve avoided heading down to my favorite pub to indulge that love.  To make up for that sacrifice, Josh and I put together this tasty meal of mini veggie burgers on baguettes, spicy red-cabbage slaw and roasted potatoes.

The slaw is an adaptation of Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen recipe (see previous post for more info on that), and is truly amazing.  The original calls for green and red cabbage, but since 1) I love red cabbage and 2) the only head of it we could get in the store was huge, we just made the entire thing with red.  To that, we added shredded carrots, and a dressing made of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, horseradish mustard, honey, salt and cayenne.  After mixing the dressing thoroughly with the slaw, we let the whole thing hang out in the fridge for an hour or so, before topping it with sesame seeds.  (Tip: though this makes a crapload of slaw, it gets even better the longer you leave it in the fridge, so having it around for the next week is not a bad thing.)

The potatoes were simple: we just cut up yukon golds into bitesize pieces, tossed them in olive oil, salt, pepper and rosemary, and roasted them in the oven at 425 degrees till they were golden and delicious.

The burgers…well, I’d like to be able to tell you that we made them from scratch, but alas, they are store-bought.  We did, however, liven them up with baby spinach, old white cheddar and peach chutney (a combination reminiscent of one done by my favorite pub here in Guelph, The Woolwich.)

So, not quite your typical pub fare, but something that makes a great substitute in a pinch.  And bonus: no post-fry regrets.

Vegetarian Soul Dinner

I mentioned in an earlier post that we got several new and exciting cookbooks for Christmas–this meal is one of the first we made using our favorite of the bunch, Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen.  It’s full of really wonderful recipes (complete with soul soundtrack suggestions), which we tend to adapt to make them vegetarian, rather than strictly vegan.  This is partially because we don’t tend to keep things like rice milk on hand, and partially because we’ve never really gotten over our love of butter.

This particular night, we made our own version of Terry’s cumin-cayenne mashed potatoes, greens with lemon-tahini dressing, and rosemary roasted tofu.

I’ll start with the tofu, since it was the simplest.  We cut a package of tofu into large-ish bite size pieces–though, if I were doing this again, I’d recommend going with something a bit larger, since they got pretty crunchy–and gently tossed them in a mixture of olive oil, salt, paprika and rosemary.  We then roasted the tofu in a 450 degree oven for about half an hour.  When they came out, they were golden brown (thanks, Paprika!), with a nice texture and flavor.  Simple, but really good.

We served the tofu over the potatoes, which have quickly become one of my favorite things to make.  While I’m boiling the potatoes (I like yellow or red ones for this), I caramelize an entire yellow or Vidalia onion in olive oil mixed with a bit of salt, a couple of tablespoons of cumin and a little cayenne pepper.  When the potatoes are done, I mash them together with the onion mixture, plus butter and milk (sorry, Bryant Terry and vegans!), and a bit of black pepper for good measure.  The results are seriously amazing.  Your potatoes shall be revolutionized.

The greens we made were a combination of kale and spinach, though the recipe called for Swiss chard.  We started by sauteeing a sliced shallot in butter, then added the greens (minus the stalks) and cooked them for a few minutes.  While this was happening, we made a dressing by mixing tahini with lemon juice, salt, water, minced garlic and balsamic vinegar.  We finished the whole thing by tossing the warm greens in the dressing.  And when we were done?  Well, I really can’t say enough about the virtues of these greens.  Look, I know what you’re thinking:

“That woman is crazy if she thinks I’m putting hummus ingredients on my greens.”

Look, I get it.  I was skeptical too.  In fact, my actual words were, “this is going to taste like we dunked our greens in hummus, and then threw vinegar on them.”  But let me tell you: this is not a bad thing.  I am not going to sit here and claim that the greens didn’t bear a striking taste resemblance to hummus.  Here’s what I will say, though–what if they did? Would that be so bad?  Free your mind, people.  Let your greens be whoever they want to be.  We’ve been letting them be pork-y for years, and lord knows collards don’t taste like fatback in the wild.  Imagine a world in which kale can taste like hummus, tofu can be crunchy and satisfying, and mashed potatoes are earthy, spicy and sweet all at once.

Bryant Terry has seen that world.  I have glimpsed it.  And it is good.

American Thanksgiving

As you probably know, Thanksgiving happens much earlier in Canada (before Halloween, even!) than it does in the United States, which means that when American Thanksgiving rolls around, despite the fact that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is on television, life goes on as usual.  So, Josh and I decided to have our own Thanksgiving celebration and invite all our friends–though we did do it on the Friday following, since everyone still had work on the actual (American) holiday.

We did the dinner as a potluck, so Josh and I each made our own contributions.  Here are his: (fake) bacon-and-corn cornbread, and Southern-style buttermilk biscuits.  The cornbread was adapted from a recipe that called for real bacon (drippings plus crispy bits on top), but he put together this pork-free version by sauteing the fake bacon in a butter and oil (to give it the smoky flavor and crisp up the faux meat), and used this in place of the drippings.

I made cornbread dressing, which was surprisingly more complicated than I anticipated.  It seems that (perhaps because cornbread isn’t something that people eat regularly here–or maybe it has more to do with the lack of Grits-eating) it is almost impossible to get coarsely ground cornmeal in this area.  Everywhere I went, I found finely ground cornmeal, which is great for polenta, but not so awesome for cornbread (as I found out with the first batch).  After finding some coarsely ground stuff in the organics section, I made the cornbread and turned it into dressing by mixing it up with vegetable broth, eggs, onions, celery and butter, and then baking the entire thing in the same iron skillet I used for the cornbread itself.  In the background of this picture is a lovely roasted vegetable flatbread dish made by our friend, Philippe.

I also made this Tofurkey (!), which was great–though less exciting, because it mainly cooks according to the package instructions–as well as some killer mashed potatoes, which I sadly did not get to photograph.  The potatoes were made exciting by the addition of caramelized onions, cumin and cayenne pepper.  Very, very tasty.  And speaking of tasty, in this photo we also have sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole, courtesy of our friends Kelly and Drew.  Mmmm, marshmallows.

And, as my inner Southern Lady kicked in, I became obsessed with properly setting the table.  In the end, though I thought it looked cute, my attempts at propriety were cruelly thwarted by the fact that 1) we only own 6 matching napkins and 2) we have only 8 chairs, which meant that I tragically forced several of my friends to eat at the “kid’s table”–which is to say, the living room.  Of course, if they’re anything like my dad, they might just think that this was something of a coup, given its closer proximity to the television.

Vegetable Pot Pie

There are moments during the fall and winter months when I want comfort food, but all of my stand-by items like macaroni or soup sound either too heavy or too boring.  I was in just such a mood this week (having just returned from Louisiana, the fattening delicious food capital of the world), so it was with great excitement that I read this new recipe in Vegetarian Times.  It wasn’t quick, but it wasn’t particularly difficult either, which turned out to be fine for a cozy night at home.

I got started by boiling chopped potatoes and carrots in a pot of salty water, and sauteing cubed tofu in canola oil, soy sauce and Tony’s.  After these were done, I set them aside and sauteed the mushrooms, onion and garlic that Josh cut up, and then added some chopped broccoli as well.

When these started to get soft, I pushed them to the side of the giant pot and made a roux in the bottom with oil and flour.  After this came together, I stirred in the vegetables that were already in the pot, plus some veggie stock, soy and hoisin sauces, Worcestershire sauce, sage, thyme, and more Tony’s.  To that I added the tofu, potatoes and carrots I’d previously set aside, and let the whole thing simmer and thicken up a bit.

Meanwhile, Josh was making the crust, which involved cutting butter into flour, adding water, salt, thyme and rosemary (can you tell I don’t bake?).  There was likely something else that happened before he rolled it out, but I leave all bread-like items to him.*

We then put the cooked veggies and their gravy-like sauce into a big baking dish and topped it with the crust, cutting holes to vent it.  After 45 minutes in the oven at 375, it was amazingly tasty–as good as any Chicken Pot Pie I had in my former meat-eating life, I’d venture to say–and certainly worth all the effort.  And as an added bonus, it was definitely cheap to make (when tofu is the priciest single ingredient, I feel that I’m doing pretty well).  So, to sum up: cheap, satisfying, and full of veggies = an unmitigated success.

*If you want more details on this, feel free to pick up this month’s edition of Vegetarian Times; it’s a good one and includes an entire vegan Soul Food meal!

Balti Curry Vegetables

I am a huge fan of store-bought curry pastes.  They provide a really wonderful depth of flavor without requiring the significant labor that goes into putting together a great sauce from scratch.  At the same time, however, the fact that they aren’t finished in the way that a pre-made jar of sauce is makes them both more versatile and potentially more tasty.  My own experience with pre-made Indian simmer sauces, for example, is decent–but basically ‘meh.’  But with curry paste?  It’s a whole different story.

Here I used a Balti curry paste, which is a good bit less spicy than some Indian curry pastes on the market–but which can still get pretty hot if you use too much (I speak from experience!).  After sauteing diced carrots, sweet potatoes, and new potatoes in a little oil to get their cooking started, I added some onion and bell pepper, plus a few tablespoons of the curry paste.  When the veggies were basically cooked, I added a little water, some diced tomatoes and–my favorite addition to Indian curry–some plain yogurt.  I love the creaminess the yogurt gives, and I really love that it’s achieved without using a ton of fat, as Indian curries made with heavy cream or butter (or Thai curries made with coconut milk) do.  The resulting curry was spicy, tangy, sweet and savory, with a satisfying combination of classic Indian spices.  How often do simple vegetables get to be such a treat?