Asian Chik'n Salad with Scallion Pancake

Earlier this week, I made these delicious salads as part of my dad's birthday-father's day celebration. Having a nice big salad for dinner is pretty much his favorite thing, so I made these -- with some fabulous salad greens from the CSA, tangerine vinaigrette, and veggie chicken (Trader Joe's chicken-less strips -- my dad's favorite), garnished with sesame seeds. The chik'n was cooked up with some plum sauce, red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, and a little peanut oil.

As you can see from the picture, we also had some scallion pancakes with our salad -- made from the last of the spring onions from our CSA and whole wheat pastry flour. Overall, a tasty, satisfying, light summer meal -- and, most importantly, my dad loved it!

Curried Chick Peas & Kale on Potato Pancakes

One of our classic family favorites is curried chick peas and some kind of green vegetable -- with some potatoes thrown in if I have them. I've posted about it before, because we really do have it all the time! Last night, however, I made a slight variation on the classic garbanzo'n'green extravaganza.

The chick peas and chard were prepared as usual, but -- instead of having potatoes as part of the curried mixture -- it was served on top of potato pancakes. It was delicious -- and a fun twist on one of our standard dishes!

Despite the fact that the chick peas were quite spicy, Zelda ate a million of them -- and refused to eat any of the potato pancake. In the background, you can see a glass of homemade limeade that we had with the meal. Zelda was watching Yo Gabba Gabba -- and Plex taught us how to make lemonade (squeeze lemons, add water, add honey, stir). We didn't have any lemons, but we did have a couple of limes -- so we made our limeade with agave nectar. Yum!

Thai Enchiladas with Kale, Black Beans, and Sweet Potato

At long last, our CSA has started up again! This week, we got kale, spinach, lettuce, arugala, mustard greens, spring onions, sage, lemon balm, and radishes.

We had our official first CSA meal of the season last night at my dad's house, after picking up the vegetables. Last night I made a sweet and spicy stirfry with all of the mustard greens and some veggie chicken that my dad had (Trader Joe's chicken-less strips); the sauce was made from plum sauce, peanut oil, red pepper flakes, garlic, and some spices. We ate the stirfry over brown rice, garnished with some sesame seeds.

Alas, I don't have a picture of last night's meal (though I should have one whenever my dad e-mails it to me) -- so let's talk about tonight's meal, the second official meal of the season!

Tonight, we had thai enchiladas filled with kale, black beans, and sweet potato -- and they were awesome. The filling was creamy and delicious, and the various flavors blended really well to make an amazing meal. I considered keeping the secret of this complicated-sounding recipe classified -- but the best part of this super-tasty meal was how easy it was to throw together. This comes with a confession that I didn't make my enchilada sauce or most of this recipe from scratch; no, there was a very crucial assist from my friend carton of soup.

In our pantry, we had a box of Pacific Foods Thai Sweet Potato Soup. I strained out the liquid to be the base of the sauce and left the chunky sweet potato bits for filling. I added a can of drained black beans to the mostly sweet potato mixture, then added kale that had been chopped and sauteed.

The liquid from the soup is pretty thick to start, but needs a little bit of thickening to be really good as an enchilada sauce. I think coconut flour is a good thickener to use, since there is already coconut in the soup -- but really, any thickener will do. Whisk in a little bit of your thickener of choice until it is smooth, then heat gently until the sauce thickens up enough to pour over the enchiladas.

We only had small, taco-sized corn tortillas -- so these were really mini enchiladas. One container of soup and half of our part of the kale yielded nine small enchiladas. You'll want to drizzle a little bit of oil and sauce on the bottom of the baking pan so that the tortillas don't stick or get hard on the bottom. Roll up the tortillas with the filling and lay them in the baking pan; when they are all assembled and comfortably snuggled together into the pan, pour the sauce evenly over all of the enchiladas. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, covered in tin foil so your tortillas don't dry out.

When there was about five minutes left, I decided on a whim to sprinkle a bit of soy cheddar over the tops of the enchiladas to give them some cheeziness -- but that is definitely optional. The darker sauce on top of the cheese is a little bit of extra sauce drizzled over the top. You can see a bit of kale and black beans peeking out shyly at the end of the tortillas. Overall, not the most photogenic creation, but definitely super yummy -- and easy!

Layered Chocolate Pie

Yesterday, my family gathered at my grandmother's house to celebrate her life. My grandmother was an amazing woman -- super glamorous, highly opinionated, passionate activist, wonderful artist . . . and ultimate gourmand. Everyone who knew her knew that she loved a huge range of cuisines and was extremely vocal about her opinions on different foods or restaurants. In providing dessert for the event, I knew that I wanted to make something delicious that she'd be proud of. Since she loved chocolate, I decided that one of my desserts would definitely be a chocolate pie; for variety, I also made a berry tart. Since there are several steps to each dessert, I'll just post about the chocolate pie here and will save the berry tart for another later.

There were a couple of considerations in making these desserts other than just trying to make them tasty! Since this was a day for family, I wanted everyone to be able to participate -- so these pies reflect the various dietary restrictions present. As always, there are no eggs or milk, but there is also no wheat, no sugar, and the whole thing is low-carb* to be diabetic friendly.

When I was shopping for ingredients, I came across coconut flour, which I had never seen before -- but in addition to being gluten-free it is also low-carb, with most of the carbohydrates coming from fiber. Since it looked perfect for my needs, I decided to give it a try despite having never cooked with it before! Some quick googling didn't turn up any useful recipes, so I plunged in blind -- but fortune was on my side, and surprisingly the results were quite tasty! I actually made two of each kind of pie, but halved my recipe below so the proportions are right for one pie.

Chocolate Pie

The chocolate pie consists of three layers -- the chocolate crust on the bottom, a layer of chocolate ganache, and a layer of chocolate custard.

Chocolate Crust

• 6 tbsp coconut flour
• 2 tbsp melted earth balance
• 1 1/2 tbsp ener-g
• 6 tbsp cocoa powder
• 6 tbsp water
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp agave nectar

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together dry ingredients, then mix in the wet ingredients until well-mixed. The dough will still be fairly wet, so use a rubber spatula to spread it on the bottom of a nine inch pan. I used a cake pan with flat sides for one (with crust only on the bottom) and a pie dish with sloped sides for the other (with crust up the sides); the cake pan is pictured above. Bake for 18 - 20 minutes.

Chocolate Ganache

Full disclosure: I was running out of earth balance when I made this, so I might have made more or used other proportions otherwise -- but this is the amount I made yesterday, and it worked fine. Feel free to make more though! Additionally, to keep it sugar-free I used grain-sweetened chocolate chips; if you don't care about the sugar but want to keep it gluten-free, use regular dairy-free chocolate chips.

• 1/2 c soy milk
• 1 tbsp earth balance
• 2 tbsp chocolate chips

Place s'milk and earth balance in a saucepot, then bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. As soon as it boils, take it off the heat and stir in the chocolate chips until they are well-melted and thoroughly combined. Pour the ganache into the prepared pie crust and place in fridge to cool.

Chocolate Custard

This is also great by itself as chocolate pudding, though it needs a touch less tapioca starch if you intend to eat it plain instead of as part of a pie.

• 1 can coconut milk
• 1/2 c cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp tapioca starch
• 3 packets of truvia stevia
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 tbsp agave nectar

Whisk all ingredients together in a saucepot before turning on heat. Once the mixture is well-combined, turn the heat on medium and continue to whisk. The mixture will thicken as it heats; once it is evenly thickened, pour the custard over the cooled ganache and refrigerate for a few hours. You may want to smooth the top with a rubber spatula before placing it in the fridge.

* With the ingredients I used, there were 13 carbs for a slice (1/12) of the chocolate pie.

Pumpkin Cutlets & Solstice Dinner

At the end of last week, I revisited my squash nuggets recipe -- this time, making cutlets instead of nuggets! I also didn't have any squash handy, so I used a 15 oz can of pureed pumpkin instead of the mashed squash. I used thyme, oregano, sage, marjoram, garlic powder, and a bit of salt to season them. They were superterrific this way! We ate them with brown gravy and cranberry relish, with some lovely green beans in a dijon vinaigrette made by our friend Jimmy on the side.

Then on Tuesday night, we had dinner with my dad and brother to celebrate winter solstice! This picture is a bit dark because we were dining by candlelight, but the meal was amazing. We had a celebration roast with a pomegranate glaze and extra pomegranate jelly on the side, some roasted root vegetables, a lovely salad with chunks of oranges and an orange vinaigrette, and rolls like my dad's grandmother used to make for the holidays. Delicious! The pomegranate glaze and jelly were made from squeezing the juice from pomegranate seeds, whisking that together with a bit of cornstarch and a bit of agave nectar, and then continuing to whisk as it heated and thickened! P did all the juice squeezing, so he really did all the hard work -- and the end result tasted amazing.

For dessert, there were chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, an eggnog cake, and plenty of soy eggnog. Zelda chowed down on the pomegranate jelly, the rolls, and some cake for dessert; based on her reactions, I'd say her first solstice was a success!

Vegan Sufganiyot!

A little more appropriate for Hanukkah, tonight I made sufganiyot -- sponge-y doughnuts filled with jam and covered with powdered sugar. In fact, the word 'sufganiyot' comes from 'sfog,' the Hebrew word for sponge. Slightly healthier than the normal variety, these little guys were baked instead of fried.

They came out great! Perfect sponge-y texture, filled with a dollop of raspberry jam. Zelda is not to be trusted with sticky jam, but she chowed down on plain doughnuts -- while P and I ate the gussied up ones. I modified the recipe from here, but the most important modification was making doughnuts that were fillable instead of doughnuts that already have holes all the way through! I've made those doughnuts about a million times and they are awesome, so do yourself a favor and try them out!

Vegan Matzo Brie

Sure, it's the wrong holiday for matzo, but I haven't had matzo brie in forever -- and P has never had it! -- so I decided it was as good a time as any to whip some up.

with powdered sugar

There are lots of parameters for matzo brie: is it matzo or matzah? is it brie or brei? it is more like scrambled eggs or more like french toast or a fritatta? is it sweet or savory?

The variety I'm used to from my childhood is the sweet, french toast-like version -- and so that's what I made! Not the most photogenic, but totally delicious -- topped with maple syrup, jam, or powdered sugar. Even Zelda devoured the matzo brie!

with raspberry jam

Matzo Brie

• 12 unsalted matzo (one box)
• 1 box silken tofu (I used firm, but it doesn't really matter)
• 1/2 c non-dairy milk of your choice (I used rice milk)
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 tsp black salt
• 1 tbsp maple syrup

Break the matzo into pieces that are about two inches on each side and run the pieces under cold water. Drain them in a colander, and set aside -- the matzo should soften up quite a bit.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth.

Place the softened matzo in a large pan and cover thoroughly with the tofu mixture. The matzo should be totally coated in the tofu mixture throughout, so make sure it gets evenly distributed! A rubber spatula can help with the spreading.

Cook for about seven to ten minutes on one side, then flip the mixture over so it can brown a bit more on the other side -- about five more minutes. You may want to cut the matzo brie into a couple of big pieces to flip it more easily.

Serve with jam or maple syrup!