I am a friend of the footless,
I am a friend of all bipeds,
I am a friend of those with four feet,
I am a friend of the many footed!
Anguttara Nikaya IV 67
Hi. There are three additions to previous posts. You might want to take a look:
Chocolate Mint Brownies:
http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?p=2046
Pad Thai photograph:
http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?p=2005
Chocolate Cherry Cordial:
http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?p=2042
See, i do eventually get things done!
And there is more to come!
Have a nice day!
Raven
Baked White and Sweet Potato Fries with Spinach and Roasted Garlic
Baked Potato and Sweet Potato Fries with Roasted Garlic
Sometimes i can see that i am not going to have much time to cook supper in time to put some potatoes and/or sweet potatoes in the oven about an hour before we want to eat. I start preparing them about an hour and a half before we want to eat, as the preparation takes a little time, and the cooking varies a bit. I also keep veggies in the freezer, both from leftovers and just bags from the store, for quick meals. With catsup, kim chee, or other condiments, this meal takes 20 minutes or less to prepare, and we enjoy it frequently.
For those of you who do not know about baked fries, here is the simple recipe:
Scrub about 2 potatoes and/or sweet potatoes per serving. Peel if you like and have time. Slice into eighths or smaller if you want them to cook faster or to be crisper. (Parchment paper on the baking sheet makes clean-up easier, though if you don’t use it, all you have to do is soak the pan about 45 minutes and lightly scrub off the potato bits.) Bake at 350° about 45 to 60 minutes if peeled and 60 to 75 minutes if unpeeled eights of large potatoes. Watch the last 15 minutes or so and poke them to see if they are cooked the way you like them. Some of us prefer them brown and crispy, others like them just cooked but still white. These are edible the next day, but not as good as fresh out of the oven.
It is very simple to set some garlic in with the potatoes or any other meal you’re baking, either to eat with that meal or another meal. Roasted garlic is good spread on bread, crackers, potatoes, veggies of all descriptions, or used in salad dressing or any sauce calling for garlic. You need to adjust the salty flavors in any sauce if you use the roasted garlic in them. I try to cook the garlic ahead so i don’t have to deal with a piping hot garlic head.
Cut off the top of a head of garlic so that the bulb tops are exposed. Look carefully for any rotten pieces and remove. Mix 2 T. low sodium tamari (or low sodium vegan bouillon for ½ c. liquid) with ½ c. water. Put the garlic head in a casserole with a cover or a small baking dish. Pour the tamari mix over the garlic. It should come up about 2/3rds of the garlic. Cover with a top or aluminum foil. You may want to put a piece of parchment paper between the garlic and the aluminum foil to keep the aluminum from leaching into the broth. Bake the garlic in 350° oven about 1 hour or until the garlic is very soft and medium brown. Cool if you have time or carefully squeeze the garlic out of the skin with thick heat proof gloves.
The garlic will keep refrigerated a day or two.
A small potato is about 134 calories, 3.6 g protein (10.7%), and .1 g fat (.7%) That’s about a cup of cooked potato.
A medium potato is about 168 calories/4.6 g protein/.2 g fat
A large potato is about 292 calories/ 7.9 g protein/.3 g fat
A two inch long sweet potato is about 103 calories/2.3 g protein (8.9%)/.2 g fat (.2%) That’s about 2/3 c. cooked sweet potato. A cup of cooked sweet potato is about 158 calories/2 g protein/.2 g fat.
Garlic is about 4 calories per clove, so 4 cloves would be about 16 calories, plus about 7 calories for 1 ½ t. tamari.
Hello. I have been working on this recipe, but i need one more time to be sure i have gotten it right. I did not find that time this week. We have been putting in a new floor as well as getting ready for my husband to start a new job. I hope to get back to cooking and writing things up for LFVC early next week. Please be patient until then.
Raven
Chocolate Mint Brownie
Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate or Chocolate Mint Brownies
I have been making some version of this recipe for decades.
When i went away to college, the first two quarters i ate in the college cafeteria. The food was not as abysmal as some cafeterias, and i must have gained about 30 pounds the first quarter, and began my long battle with overweight, which i still have not completely won. One of the contributors was the chocolate chocolate chocolate brownies: chocolate brownies with chocolate chips and chocolate icing. So i am not telling you to add all the optional chocolate in this recipe. I am just saying it is really tasty.
I actually prefer the mint version, without the cocoa in the icing.
Use the best cocoa and chocolate you can afford.
Makes 8 servings
Preparation about 45 minutes
Can be made ahead
Freezes well
1 ½ c. whole wheat flour
1 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt (optional)
½ c. unsweetened cocoa
¾ c. vegan sugar
1/3 c. cashew, walnut, or other nut butter (not peanut butter)
1 c. vegan milk
1 t. vanilla extract
1 t. peppermint extract (optional)
½ c. chopped walnuts (optional)
½ c. vegan chocolate chips or chopped chocolate bar
Preheat the oven to 350°.
Mix the dry ingredients. Mix in the nut butter. A mixer makes this easy.
Add the wet ingredients.
Mix in the optional chocolate and walnuts.
Bake in a lightly oiled 8 x 8 inch square baking pan for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Be sure you haven’t stuck the toothpick in a chocolate chip.
Cool slightly.
Ice with:
1 c. powdered sugar
6 t. unsweetened cocoa or 1 c. chocolate chips or chocolate bar, melted (optional)
1 t. vanilla extract
½ t. peppermint extract (optional)
1 T. vegan milk
Mix the chocolate and the sugar, add the rest. Add a little more vegan milk if you want the icing thinner.
Spread on the cooled brownies and cut into eighths.
This version was adapted from the incomparable Sarah Kramer’s Garden of Vegan.
Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:
Oil to grease pan was not included.
Per serving – without chocolate, walnuts or chocolate in the icing: 302 calories/7.8 g protein (10.3%)/6.4 g fat (19.1%)
Per serving – with walnuts and chocolate chips: 421 calories/9.9 g protein (9.4%)/15.2 g fat (32.5%)
Per serving – with all the options: 429 calories/10.6 g protein (9.9%)/15.6 g fat (32.7%)
Pad Thai with Brown Rice Noodles, Carrot, Broccoli, Bok Choy, Red Cabbage, Mung Bean Sprouts, and Cilantro
Pad Thai
Here’s a frequent quick supper at our house:
16 oz. brown rice noodles, preferably flat pad Thai noodles
Sauce:
2 T. tamarind paste or sauce
¼ c. hot water
2 T. low sodium tamari
1 – 2 T. chili paste
4 t. sugar
2 small limes, juiced
4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
Vegetables:
4 shallots or 1 red onion and/or 8 scallions
4 large bok choy
¼ red or green cabbage
2 heads broccoli
1 c. mung sprouts
4 carrots
1 c. cilantro
Additions (optional):
7 – 16 oz. tofu, extra firm or baked
¼ c. chopped roasted peanuts
Prepare tamarind, if necessary, following the instructions for dried tamarind in the link. Or you may use a bottled tamarind sauce or a jar of prepared tamarind paste.
Cook noodles. Drain and set aside.
Dissolve tamarind paste in water, if necessary. Add the rest of the ingredients for the sauce and mix well or heat to dissolve sugar.
Slice or chop vegetables and grate carrots. Sauté shallots or onions, if using, bok choy, cabbage, and broccoli, about 5 minutes. Add carrots, mung sprouts, and scallions and tofu, if using, and heat briefly, about 2 minutes.
Mix noodles and sauce and add vegetables.
Sprinkle with chopped cilantro, and optional tofu and/or peanuts.
Mung sprouts do not keep well. Use within a day of purchase or freeze, unwashed. When you are ready to cook, wash the frozen sprouts and add them to the dish in time to thaw them, but they do not need to be cooked, just heated. I like mung sprouts chopped, so they are bite sized, but they are traditionally left whole.
Use any chili paste you can find without added oil. I like Thai Kitchen red curry paste.
Pizza with Red Pepper, Broccoli, Zucchini, And Portabella Mushrooms on a Whole Wheat Herb Crust
Vegetable Pizza
It is possible to make a totally low fat pizza. If the crust is good, you hardly need a cheeze substitute. However, i offer one if you want it. You might want to mix in some crumbled tofu to make it even cheezier.
Almost any veggie combination is good for pizza. For this one, i choose something green (broccoli), plus red peppers, zucchini (which after all is an Italian vegetable, at least in name), and onions (in this case portabella), and mushrooms. In my vegetarian days, we usually ordered a mushroom and black olive pizza.
I sliced my veggies to make them look pretty, but they are easier to eat if they are chopped. I sautéed the mushrooms and onions for about 4 minutes in ¼ c. water, then added the rest all at the same time and cooked another about 4 minutes. You definitely don’t want your veggies soggy, and they will cook more in the oven. In fact, you don’t need to put them in the oven, but i like the browned taste, especially without sauce on top.
A few olives make this pizza festive. They dry in the oven, so put them on just 5 minutes before you take the pizza out of the oven, just to warm them.
The tomato sauce is here, but cooked a little longer to make it thicker. And yes, i put mushrooms both in the sauce and on top of the pizza. But you don’t need to. I usually make more tomato sauce for a recipe than i need and freeze some. It takes no noticeably longer amount of time to do this, and then you have homemade (cheap) tomato sauce ready to go. If you have tomato sauce made for pasta, you can cook it about 45 minutes longer when you take it out of the freezer, or a little longer if it is still frozen when you start. Stir it frequently at the end, when the sauce starts getting as thick as you want.
I tried a slice of pizza without the tomato sauce, which you may know by now is not my most favorite food. I liked it quite a bit.
Yeast-free Pizza Crust
Makes 4 large servings
Preparation about 15 minutes
Can be made ahead
Freezes well
3 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1 t. baking powder
6 t. mixed dried or ¼ c. fresh Italian herbs (sage, oregano, marjoram, basil, and/or thyme)
½ t. salt (optional)
1 T. Ener-G egg replacer or other egg replacer such as ground flax seed to equal 2 eggs
1 c. vegan milk
2 – 8 T. water
Preheat the oven to 425°. It is important to have it hot when you put the pizza dough in. Line a large baking sheet (or two for a thinner crust) with parchment paper.
Mix the dry ingredients together. I just mix the egg replacer in with the flour, but you get a slightly different consistency if you mix the egg replacer with 2 T. of the water until frothy, and add with the wet ingredients.
Add the milk, and stir. Add a little more water at a time until the dough can be gathered into a ball and is not too sticky.
Roll out on a lightly floured board. I have just patted the dough onto the pan, but i like the smoother surface of the rolled dough.
Bake 10 minutes until lightly browned around the edges. You can poke the center with a toothpick to be sure it is not doughy.
At this point, you can add the topping(s) and eat, or bake now or later for about 20 minutes, also at 425°.
Pizza is to my mind also good cold or room temperature.
I also use this dough to make a vegetable pie with a creamy sauce for Frodo and Bilbo’s Birthday September 22nd.
A salad with an Italian vinegary dressing goes well with pizza.
Adapted from La Dolce Vegan by the cook whose recipes most closely resemble my own combinations of flavors, Sarah Kramer.
Caesar Dressing on a Salad of Lettuce, Tomato, Carrot, and Cucumber
Recipe to follow, hopefully by tonight.
Chocolate and Vanilla Tofu Pudding with Fresh Raspberries
Chocolate Vanilla and Raspberry Parfait
In years past, my Valentine’s Day dessert was coconut cookies from a recipe my Great Aunt found long ago in a Parade Sunday newspaper supplement. Since coconut is high in fat and saturated fat, i thought i would try a cherry cookie instead. But Valentine’s Day while i was thinking about how i was going to do that, and thawing some frozen cherries, my husband and i decided we had better get the new flooring down on the floor while we had a few sunny days for the furniture to be outside. So i postponed my Valentine’s feast, and a few days later when i had a little time, i made a quick but pretty dessert to have as my Valentine’s Day treat. I ate it and watched Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown, and went back to work on the floors. I will make those cherry cookies someday – i have all the ingredients, all i need is time.
Meanwhile, here’s the parfait.
I call it chocolate tofu pudding to differentiate it from a pudding made with vegan milk. Some of the people you feed might not like the name, so you can just call it chocolate pudding. Make the Vanilla Pudding first, so you don’t have to clean out the blender so well – the vanilla pudding will blend in with the chocolate and disappear, but the chocolate makes the vanilla pudding an unappetizing beige. I washed out the container and dried it, but i’m rather fastidious about such things. You don’t need to be.
I am always looking around for interesting ingredients, and i found some raspberry extract at Safeway. I didn’t know what i was going to do with it when i got it. I have tried it in tea and frozen banana ice cream too.
You want the chocolate flavor to really shine, so use the best cocoa you can afford. Right now my favorite is Rapunzel Organic Cocoa Powder which is non-alkaline and unsweetened, and Fair Trade. Did you know that chocolate is sometimes picked by very down-trodden people without fair treatment or wages? Fair Trade chocolate is usually more expensive but assures you that the laborers who produce it are treated fairly. I haven’t been able to find Fair Trade chocolate chips yet, but i have used dark chocolate bars in place of them.
Chocolate Vanilla Raspberry Parfait
Makes 2 large servings
Preparation about 20 minutes
Can be made ahead, in fact best cold
Chocolate Tofu Pudding (see recipe below)
Vanilla Tofu Pudding (see recipe below)
1 – 2 c. fresh or frozen raspberries
Powdered sugar (optional)
Parfait or tall glasses or several smaller glasses
You can sweeten the raspberries with about 2 T. powdered sugar. You can mix the powdered sugar more gently into the berries so they don’t smoosh as much. Save a couple of nice looking raspberries for the top of the parfait.
Vanilla Tofu Pudding
14 ounces or 1 package silken tofu (fresh is best)
¼ c. powdered sugar
1 ½ t. vanilla and/or raspberry extract
A blender works better than a food processor to make the tofu really smooth. Just blenderize the ingredients together, put the pudding in a bowl, and clean out the blender.
Chocolate Tofu Pudding
1/3 c. good quality unsweetened cocoa
½ c. sugar
14 ounces or 1 package silken tofu (fresh is better)
2 t. vanilla and/or raspberry extract
Heat the cocoa, sugar, and water in a small pan, stirring constantly and watching carefully. In about two minutes, the sugar will dissolve and the mixture will bubble. Turn off the heat, and if you have time, cool slightly. You might want to do this step before you make the vanilla pudding to give it more of a chance to cool.
Mix the cocoa mixture with the tofu and extract(s) in a blender and blenderize about 1 minute, until well mixed and smooth. You may have to scrape down the sides a time or two.
Layer your parfait. Carefully spoon in a couple of tablespoons of chocolate pudding into your parfait or other tall glasses. You can also use small glasses for a lot of tiny parfaits. An iced tea spoon works best. Have a thin cloth or paper towel ready to clean any pudding off the sides of the glasses. I slopped my first spoonful, but then i figured out how to reach the spoon down into the glass without touching the sides.
Next put a couple of tablespoons of vanilla pudding. Work slowly so the pudding layers nicely. It tastes just as good if you flub it, though.
Top with a few raspberries.
Repeat the process once or twice, depending on the size of your glasses. Try to end with at least a little of the vanilla pudding and top with your nicest raspberries.
Chill until ready to serve.
I looked all over to find where i first learned about using tofu for pudding in a very rich pie. It was years before i found Mary McDougall’s recipe for a chocolate tofu pudding, in which she melts chocolate chips. But good ideas are born spontaneously in many minds. I am grateful to whoever introduced me to tofu pudding. It is a very quick and easy way to make pudding, and more luxuriously thick than vegan milk pudding.
General Tso’s Sauce
The other day i thought of another Chinese dish that i’d heard of that maybe my husband would like. I’m trying to find tasty vegan food that he will gladly eat, and there isn’t much so far. He likes Chinese, so i am trying a lot of Chinese dishes right now. I’ve never had either a chicken or a vegan version of this recipe, so i have nothing to go on but what other people tell me.
I looked at recipes both with chicken and vegan, and a vegan version sounded pretty good to me, but my husband said he’d pass. But i already wanted to try it. At first i thought i would try to do the batter on seitan or tofu, and bake it, but today it seemed too distressfully iffy to attempt, so i just made the sauce.
But it’s raining, and i’m not happy with indoors pictures, even though i have a special expensive light, so i put some in the refrigerator, hoping i can find a few minutes tomorrow with no rain to take a picture. If not, i’ll eat it and make it again when there’s no rain predicted. Or, who knows, maybe i’ll get around to reading about my light and use that.
I cut the soy sauce (i always use wheat free low sodium tamari) and sugar, but it is good with all that sugar, so you might want to make it a feast day and have the extra sugar for a more authentic dish.
Well, it depends on what you mean by authentic. According to Wikipedia, the dish isn’t really associated with any General Tso, who did exist. Most likely the dish was invented for American tastes in New York by a Taiwanese chef. Hence, the sugar.
This is one Chinese dish that doesn’t have chilies in it!
General Tso’s Sauce
Makes 4 servings
Preparation about 10 minutes
Can be made ahead
Can be frozen but will keep in the refrigerator for several days
2 T. low sodium tamari or 1 T. tamari and bouillon for 1 c. liquid
6 T. rice vinegar
6 T. water
4 t. – 6 T. sugar
4 t. cornstarch
Mix the sauce in a medium pan, being sure the cornstarch is all dissolved. Heat the sauce, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens, about 7 minutes.
I served this over brown rice with Choy Sum. It is in the bok choy family, but with a more delicate flavor. Sum means heart, and this choy is considered one of the finest choys. I washed it and took off a few of the outer leaves which had yellowed, and a couple of the stems, which were mushy. I sliced the rest, much like you would celery. I think a professional chef would discard the chewier but quite edible middle stem and just use the stem of each leaf, but i sliced it all up.
With this, i had lotus root. It has a mild flavor that gets starchier if you cook it for long. If you can find it fresh, it should be beige. The darker brown lotus root is older. Even though we shop at a large, very active Asian market, the lotus root we got this week was not very fresh, and three of the package of four were dark brown and had mushy, rotten spots on them. I just used the light beige root. It is very pretty sliced, with all the holes. I peeled it and sliced it and covered it in a pan with water and cooked it about 5 minutes, until it was slightly easier to poke with a fork. I’ve read that it comes canned, too. However, no one seemed to be buying it. It was the week after Chinese New Year, i wonder if that had anything to do with it.
I tried the sauce with some seitan. It was delightful, but it’s not really necessary to enjoy it.
The recipe that was most helpful to me was by Eat Air.
Dan Dan Mein
I had intended to post a recipe for pizza today, but we got flooring on sale for the living room of our unfinished house, and it took all week to work on it and we’re still not done! It started raining Friday and we moved all the furniture that was out on the deck back inside, wiping it off as we set it down. So now we have a living room full of stacked boxes with the couch and dining room table accessible. It is hard to find things.
I cooked a lot of low fat vegan fast food this week. Mostly we had a vegetable, usually a green, with a starch, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, or brown rice. We used bottled sauces, and had fruit for dessert. Meanwhile the ingredients for more complicated recipes passed their prime, and then became unsavory.
At least they will do some good for us eventually in the compost pile.
One day i made Dan Dan Mein for the first time. It is pretty fast. You can finish the greens and make the sauce while the pasta is cooking and still have time for some dishes or other kitchen tasks. I will share that recipe with you, but i don’t have a picture. I didn’t think it would come out well enough the first time, and we ate the whole thing in one sitting.
My husband figured out how to make his version of Dan Dan Mein many years ago and shared his discovery with several of us, none of whom was impressed. He boiled refined wheat pasta, and stirred peanut butter into it! He figured those were the key ingredients.
This recipe is a little more complicated. Many of the dan dan recipes called for “Chinese Black Mushrooms.” I didn’t see any fresh or dried in our large Asian Market. Maybe they are called something else. I used cremini mushrooms but they didn’t make a happy addition. I cooked them separately, and ate a couple of bites with the noodles and sauce, but no. We had A Choy, in the bok choy family. This was a little old, and had blossomed with the characteristic broccoli type yellow small flowers. I cut off the soft spots, and a few outer yellow leaves, and the rest was still crisp and white or green. This went really well with the rest of the dish.
I found a chili garlic sauce without oil (it took a lot of label reading) but when it came time to cook, i forgot i had it, and used Thai Kitchen red curry paste.
Although Dan Dan Mein is higher in fat, i will be making it regularly, as my husband will gladly eat it. At this point, i am just happy if he eats something vegan.
Dan Dan Mein
16 ounces brown rice or whole wheat pasta
Chinese or other greens such as bok choy
Sauce:
1 c. water
Vegan low fat bouillon for 2 c. liquid
1 T. peanut butter
1 T. tahini
2 T. rice vinegar
1 T. low sodium tamari
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 t. sesame oil (optional)
1 T. vegan sugar
1 t. – 2 T. chili-garlic sauce or chili paste
Garnish:
Juice from 1 lime
4 scallions, thinly sliced
To make:
Cook pasta. Chop and briefly cook greens.
Make sauce:
Heat water and bouillon. Stir in nut butters. Add the rest of the ingredients and heat a few minutes. Pour over pasta and add greens and mix.
Garnish with lime juice and scallions.
Adapted from:
http://www.veganappetite.com/2008/10/dan-dan-noodles-with-seitan-veganmofo-8.html
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