Faux Indian Food

I've been craving Indian food lately. It's more the spices and the wonderful smells they bring into the house.

This was a simple meal I made that makes my mouth still water.

Potatoes coated in oil, mustard seed, cumin seed, cardamon seed, pepper, and probably some other spices. I then roasted them for about 30 minutes in the oven.

Pan fried brussel sprouts and onions with similar spices as the potatoes. They didn't taste the same though.

Chickpeas, spinach and a premade tandoori sauce.

Such a simple meal and full of so much flavor!

Soups

Since my bike accident, I've barely been cooking. I've been able to eat out more. My injuries were worse than I first thought - a sprain and possible hairline fracture in my arm bone - no wonder it hurts all the time! I am so glad that Bone Up now makes a vegan formula, too bad they haven't changed their name.

To comfort myself from the pain, the lack of riding my bike, the pain of paying for the bus and
the recent Portland Fall weather - I've been making soups. Soups are dishes that rarely require recipes. They are usually just lots of ingredients thrown together to make a delicious food I can spoon out of a bowl with one hand.

Black eyed Peas and Greens:
This was nice and smoky soup with the inclusion of liquid smoke. The caramelized onions helped make a great broth along with some blended roasted eggplant. I added a few ripped up pieces of field roast slices. Very filling.

Vegetable Soup:
Lots of zucchini, onions, garlic, carrots, cubes of eggplant and chickpeas.

Hearty Breakfast Mush:
Blended steel cut oats, cream of wheat, cashew milk and flax seed. All topped with a spoonful of peanut butter, brown sugar and dried blueberries.


Fall Cake:
My friend Joe just got back from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and he needs fattening up so I made a cake. One layer is chocolate chai and the other is a vanilla nut spice layer. In between in a sweet cashew fluff layer and topped with two layers of chocolate ganache.

Pesto and Hummus Sandwich Spreads

I told you my food processor would make my life exciting again!

Pesto and Hummus sandwich:

Webly's Pesto:
3 cloves of garlic
1 Tablespoons sun dried tomatoes
1/4 cup cashews
1 cup tightly packed basil
1 teaspoon lemon juice
3 Tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Throw it all in the food processor and blend until smooth.
The mixture will be a bit thick, like peanut butter.
I like to keep it this consistency until I know what I will be using it for. The thick consistency is good for a sandwich spread but if you're using it with pasta you'll want to add more oil to make it more like a sauce.

I didn't write down my ways of making hummus, but it's pretty straight forward with chickpeas, lemon, thanini, garlic, paprika and olive oil. The only thing I do different is cup the normal massive amounts of olive oil with some water.

More Simple Meals

Meals without recipes. That's how I normally cook - just throw stuff together that tastes good on it's own and hope it tastes good together with spices.

Buckwheat Noodle Soup:
With veggie broth base, leeks, onions, garlic, miso, chickpeas, buckwheat noodles and diced tomatoes.
Diced tomatoes are one of my new favorite things to add to soups. Drain the juice from a can and throw it in. I use to put the juice in there before but it always made it too tomato-y so just putting the fruit in there helps the other flavors sand out on their own.


Saturday Market Dinner:
Roasted fiddleheads, steamed asparagus, garden salad with purple cabbage.
Fiddleheads - I knew bringing these home was going to raise some eyebrows. I was cruious as well. They look a little too much like bugs to me. I saw them once on one of my blogs I read, so I picked them up. They are very expensive. One small handful for $1.50. I really wasn't excited about the taste. They weren't bad, what roasted with garlic can be bad?! but they just weren't $1.50/handful good. Interesting look though.



Cheesy Cauliflower and Greens with Almond Pate:
We eat a lot of vegetables, can you tell? Steamed cauliflower with that special cheesy sauce I have been trying to perfect. When I perfect it I'll share the recipe.
Steamed greens with a fun almond pate. I soaked almonds for awhile, added sun dried tomatoes, paprika, chili powder, lemon juice, miso, salt and garlic powder. Mixing this into the greens reminded me of a savory cottage cheese. It was very good.

Proper Plate

I've been busy so my cooking has been minimal. When I do cook it's about eating fast and I don't have time for photos. I am planning a wedding, working on a secret project with someone you may know, fixing a house to sell and buying my first house (well we bought it today but we don't get the keys until this weekend.)

I've been craving healthy, quick meals and came up with this weird variety of foods, called the Proper Plate because it tastes like something that would come out of this great vegan restaurant in Portland called Proper Eats. It's food that makes you feel good after eating there.


Proper Plate:
Mixed baby salad greens
1 handful carrots, steamed
1 large handful cauliflower, steamed
Lemon garlic hummus (oops, I added too much lemon while making it!)
1 Roma tomato sliced and deseeded
Sprinkling of Paprika
Sesame seeds

Laydown the salad, put the cooled steamed veggies on top and around the salad (in case you feel like dipping into the hummus.) Slather in hummus, a dip and a dressing in one. Place the tomatoes. Sprinkle with paprika, salt, pepper and sesame seeds. Add some nooch if you feel like going that way.

This was a great, filling, healthy meal with a lot of flavor.

Quick and easy meals

Boxed Dinner: Thai Peanut:
These Thai Kitchen boxes are a staple in our house when we don't want to cook. Brian even gets fancy and adds some stir-fried tofu to the dish.

Indian Inspired Dish:
I don't know what to call this, but it is really quick and simple.

Saute 1/2 chopped onion, a few cloves of chopped garlic.
When the onions are clear add some cumin and mustard seeds. Cook for about 1 min, or until they pop and the kitchen smells wonderful.
Add 1 1/2 cup chickpeas and 1 can fire roasted tomatoes, drained. Mix together. Add a few cups chopped leafy greens and cover until steamed.
Serve warm.

Snacks!

I've been thinking of some of the snacks I've made in the past and I've been thinking of making Bluepeas and Chickberies again. Since many people probably didn't read my previous food blog I thought I'd post some old snack recipes here.

Curry-Flowers:
These will disappear!

cauliflower
curry powder
olive oil
sugar
your favorite spices.

Heat oven to 400F
Chop the cauliflower into bite sized pieces. Place in a bowl, drizzle with some olive oil and spices. Add a few pinches of sugar and toss.
Spread out on cookie sheet and cook until slightly browned, about 10-15 minutes.


Orange Gel:
Idea from Yogurt Land.
This is a great way to use up oranges. Blood oranges make a beautiful presentation.

Juice the oranges. Carefully pull the extra stuff out. Bring the juice to a boil, along with 1/3 cup suagr and 1 1/2 tsp. agar-agar powder.
Then pour the juice into the orange rinds and let cool in muffin tins to keep them up right.


Bluepeas and Chickberries:
1 cup frozen blueberries
1 1/2 cup chickpeas
2 Tbl. sugar
2 Tbl. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. dried dill

Boil blueberries, cooked chickpeas and sugar until all water is absorbed and the chick peas turn blue, about 15 min.
Coat with oil, salt and dill and bake at 425F for about 30 min, tossing often.
Mix with non-blueberry treated roasted chickpeas and coat with a sprinkling of salt and sugar before serving as a snack.

These were wonderfully salty and sweet, just the way I like my snacks. They were crunchy, but not tooth breaking.


Chocolate Coconut Blueberries:
Inspired by Jess's sister.
Blueberries coated in melted chocolate ad rolled in coconut before freezing.

Pumpkin Muffins and Snacks

Pumpkin Muffins
From Vegan with a VengaenceThese are the best pumpkin muffins I've ever had.

Yesterday I went to Herbivore to be one of the first to get my copy of Jennifer McCann's new cookboook: Vegan Lunchbox. I wasn't sure if I wanted it or not, but after thumbing through it and thinking of all the food I had seen on her blog and wanted to make but never did - I bought it.

Buying a new cookbook right before leaving town is annoying. I want to make so many things but I just don't have the time. I decided to make some of the more snack-like foods for my up coming trip to Green Build in Denver.

Perfect Pepitas

I'm not sure if is okay posting her recipes on the web, other than her own blog, so I am leaving it out. But basically it's cayenne pepper, liquid smoke and Braggs.
I made another batch with garlic powder. YUM! I did have an asthma attack after adding the cayenne pepper, so I'll have to alter this in the future.

Roasted Chickpeas

These were so yummy before baking them that I barely had any left by the time the oven warmed up! Just simple chickpeas with nut. yeast and salt. The nut. yeast was really subtle when they were done so I tossed with more when they got out of the oven.

_______
Side Note:
If you're in Portland and wondering where to eat out, I have some photos to help. In my photo gallery I have one set aside for Portland Food. I also post these photos on my other blog, if you're interested.

Chick Chicken Soup

Is it clear yet what my favorite bean is?
This wasn't a good summer soup, more of a hearty winter soup, but very tastey.


2 Cups Veggie broth
1 Cup chickpeas
4 Cloves garlic
1 cup chopped Wheat Meat
1 Head broccoli
2 Tbl. nut. yeast
1/2 tsp. mustard powder
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the garlic with some olive oil, when clear add veggie broth and cooked chickpeas and wheat meat and bring to a boil.
Add nutritional yeast, mustard powder and other spices.
Cook on high for another 10 minutes. The soup should start to thicken.
Add chopped broccoli and serve when broccoli is bring green in color.

Pesto Chickpeas

As you may know, I am not a fan on pasta, but once again I found myself wanting pesto pasta. After figuring out it was really just the pesto I wanted, this is what I came up with:

Pesto Chickpeas:

1 cup cooked chickpeas
2 cloves garlic
olive oil
1/2 bunch basil
2 Tbl. chopped sun dried tomatoes
2 Tbl. pine nuts
salt and pepper to taste

1. Saute the chickpeas with some garlic and olive oil until the chickpeas are cooked all the way through.
2. Prepare the pesto. Food processors are best for this job, blenders second best, and mincing with a knife is third. My food processor left, the blender broke and I was left with a good sharp knife (I could write a country song!) Basically, process, blend, mince, everything together. Add some olive oil and mix until pasty.
3. Mix together and serve warm.