Low Fat Vegan Cooking

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

February 27, 2010

Vegetable Pizza

Filed under: Breads, Higher Calorie Density, Holidays, Italian Cuisine, Main Dishes — admin @ 1:05 am

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.

Mushroom Cheeze Sauce

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

Filed under: Gluten Free, Higher Calorie Density, Italian Cuisine, Salads — admin @ 1:03 am

Caesar Dressing on a Salad of Lettuce, Tomato, Carrot, and Cucumber

Recipe to follow, hopefully by tonight.

Chocolate Vanilla and Raspberry Parfait

Filed under: Desserts, Gluten Free, Higher Calorie Density — admin @ 1:01 am

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.

February 24, 2010

General Tso’s Sauce

Filed under: Chinese Cuisine, Gluten Free, Low Calorie Density, Main Dishes, Sauces — admin @ 1:05 am

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.

February 20, 2010

Dan Dan Mein

Filed under: Gluten Free, Higher Calorie Density, Main Dishes — admin @ 5:10 am

Dan Dan Mein with Kale on Brown Rice Noodles

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.  Next time i tried kale, and we really liked the juxtaposition of kale and peanut butter.

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

Makes 4 servings

Preparation about 20 minutes

Can be made ahead

Freezes well without the scallions

To begin:

16 ounces brown rice or whole wheat pasta

Chinese or other greens such as bok choy or kale

Sauce:

1/2 c. water

Vegan low fat bouillon for 2 c. liquid

2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

1 T. sake or mirin

1 T. peanut butter

1 T. tahini

2 T. rice vinegar

1 T. low sodium tamari

1 t. sesame oil (optional)

1 T. vegan sugar

1 – 2 T. chili-garlic sauce or chili paste

Juice from 2 limes, about 2 T.

Garnish:

4 scallions, thinly sliced

To make:

Cook pasta.  Chop and briefly cook greens, and drain.

Meanwhile, make the sauce:

Heat water, bouillon, garlic, and sake to boiling and reduce heat to medium and boil 5 minutes.  Stir in nut butters.  Add vinegar, tamari, optional sesame oil, sugar, and chili sauce, and heat about 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in lime juice.  Pour over pasta and add greens and mix.

Garnish with scallions.

Adapted from Vegan Appetite, although i looked at several recipes, both vegan and omni. 

Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:

Per serving – 520 calories/12.1 g protein (9.3%)/8.4 g fat (14.4%)

Vegan Chocolate Cherry Cordial

Filed under: Desserts, Gluten Free, Higher Calorie Density, Holidays — admin @ 1:01 am

Vegan Chocolate Cherry Cordial

Vegan Chocolate Cherry Cordial

When i was shopping for the meals i intended to make for Valentine’s Day, the stores were filled with red and white displays with every kind of disastrous goodie and treat that could be thought of.  I skirted around them and got my vegan low fat food and got out of there.  On Valentine’s Day i realized that i had always had one of the many vegan chocolate bars, and i didn’t think it would be Valentine’s Day without some kind of chocolate, so i set out to make a relatively low fat chocolate using some of the frozen cherries i had gotten for another dish, cherry almond cookies, which as of this writing i still haven’t concocted.  (When i say relatively low in fat, i just mean they don’t have margarine or oil in them.  Chocolate is high in fat all by itself, and these cordials are 41% fat.)

My daughter and son-in-law make wonderful chocolates, being very careful of tempering and so on, and using high-quality chocolate, but this was not to be so time consuming or careful.  I melted some chocolate chips and made a thick icing with cherry juice and stuck a cherry in the middle of a more or less ball of the icing.  Then i poured the chocolate over them. They were tasty and satisfied my sudden chocolate desire.

You can buy vegan chocolates.  They are very pretty and very expensive.  These cherry cordials feature fresh cherries and you can only make a couple so you don’t eat too many, unless you think that any chocolates are too many.  They last at least a couple of days in the refrigerator.

If you use fresh cherries, you could put about 6 in a small pan over low heat, maybe with a teaspoon or two of sugar, to get the juice, or squeeze or press them.  If the cherries are frozen, there should be plenty of juice after they thaw.  You can hurry the thawing along by putting them on the stove for a minute, and stirring them, but you don’t want them to actually cook.

The “cor” part of the word cordial means heart, so cherry cordials are hearts of cherry.

Chocolate Cherry Cordials

Makes 6 cordials

Preparation about 20 minutes

Refrigerate if you don’t eat them right away

Probably freezes well

1 c. vegan chocolate chips or a bar of plain vegan chocolate

6 cherries and juice

½ c. powdered sugar

½ t. vanilla extract

Optional:  1 T. almond or other nut butter

Prepare the icing first.  Sift the powdered sugar into a small bowl.  Mix in the almond or other nut butter, if you are using it.  Add 1 t. cherry juice and vanilla.  Stir well and add more juice is needed. The icing should be very thick though.  Add more powdered sugar if it is too thin.  Set aside.

Melt chocolate in a small pan, stirring constantly, about 3 minutes.  Ideally, you should heat them over boiling water in a double boiler.  But if you want them fast and watch the chocolate, it should be okay.

When the chocolate is melted, pour 6 small discs on a plate or other smooth surface.  Working quickly, form two half circles of icing with your fingers.  You will find that the icing doesn’t stick to the cherries.  Press a half circle of icing on either side of a cherry as best you can and lay the result on one of the chocolate discs, which will be cooling and so not too soft.  It doesn’t matter if the cherry is completely covered by the icing. 

Repeat with the other six cherries.  Pour a little chocolate on top of each cherry and smooth the edges as necessary to cover the cherry and icing.  You probably want to be conservative with the chocolate so that each cherry is more or less covered, and then go back and finish the cordials with the remaining chocolate.

Wait a few minutes for the chocolate to harden.  You can stick the whole thing in the freezer if you’re in a hurry.  Scrape the finished cordial off the plate with a steel spatula and eat or store in a covered container in the refrigerator.

By the way, there is about 20 mg. of caffeine in each cordial, which is about as much caffeine as a cup of green tea.

Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:

Per serving without the nut butter – 232 calories/2.6 g protein (4.5%)/10.6 g fat (41.1%)

Per serving with the nut butter – 248 calories/3.3 g protein (5.3%)/12 g fat (43.5%)

February 17, 2010

Roasted Peppers, Sautéed Onions and Vegetables

Filed under: Gluten Free, Low Calorie Density, Main Dishes, Sauces — admin @ 1:05 am

Roasted Red Peppers, Sautéed Onions, Carrot, Celery, Zucchini, Rutabaga, Radish, and Fresh Garbanzos on Sweet Potatoes

Roasted Peppers, Sautéed Onions and Vegetables

I was going to make something else, but i forgot the key ingredient, so i cleaned out the refrigerator and tried a couple of new things i’d been wanting to try.

Roasted Peppers

It turns out roasted peppers are really simple, and to me much better than the canned ones that have citric acid in them.

http://veganyumyum.com/2007/03/how-to-roast-a-pepper/

Sautéed Onions

I have read about this technique for years, but have not had success, probably because i didn’t patiently follow the instructions of Mary McDougall in The New McDougall Cookbook for Barbecued Onions. Here’s what i found out:

You start with 2 large onions and slice them thin. Slices are easier to move around in the pan, and you will be doing that a lot.

Use a large non-stick pan so the onions have a lot of space to spread out. Spread the onions out and pour a cup of water over them. Next time i plan to try bouillon or tamari in the water.

Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the water is absorbed, about ten minutes. Let them brown as long as you can stand it, stirring frequently. Add a little more water, about ¼ c. Let that cook down and again let the onions brown. Do this a couple more times.

Fresh Garbanzos

The fresh garbanzos were something i had found and cooked once before. They are very different than cooked dry garbanzos. After Googling it and getting no clear answer, i took the pods off the beans and covered them with water and simmered them about ten minutes. They are good raw although maybe too green for some, but if you can find them, try a few raw ones with a salad.

If, like me, you like some kind of sauce on your vegetables, give these a try. Then see if, like me, you think of a bunch more uses for them.

February 15, 2010

Valentine’s Breakfast

Filed under: Breakfast, Feasts, Higher Calorie Density, Holidays — admin @ 9:28 am

Strawberry Scones, Strawberry Smoothie, and Strawberry Tea

Here’s what i had for Valentine’s Day breakfast:

Strawberry Scones with my Mom’s Strawberry Jam and Soy Yogurt
Strawberry Smoothie with Banana and Soymilk
Strawberries, Banana, and Clementines
Tropic of Strawberry Tea by Celestial Sseasonings

Hope you had a good day!
Raven

Strawberry Scones 2/15/10

Makes about 15 medium scones, depending on the cooky cutter

Preparation about 40 minutes

Can be made ahead, but best fresh out of the oven

Freezes well for about two months

1 ¾ c. whole wheat flour

3 T. – ½ c. vegan sugar

2 ½ t. baking powder

½ t. salt (optional)

3 T. – 1/3 c. cashew or almond butter

1 ½ c. strawberries, chopped

4 – 6 T. vegan milk

Toppings:

Strawberry jam

6 – 12 ounces soy yogurt – plain, vanilla, or strawberry

1 – 2 T. sugar to sweeten the soygurt if plain

Mix dry ingredients.  Incorporate the nut butter – an electric mixer makes this easy.  Add the vegan milk until you can gather the mixture into a ball.  Mix in the strawberries carefully so as not to crush them, not that this affects the flavor.

Roll out about ½ inch thick on a lightly floured board and cut with any cooky cutter(s) you like.  Or you can pat the scones into shape or drop them by the tablespoon onto a parchment lined cooky sheet.  If you use a cooky cutter, the scones will rise more.

Bake about 10 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the scones, until lightly browned.  They will brown first on the bottom, so you might want to check there at about 8 minutes and then again every 2 minutes.

Theoretically, smaller scones should cook faster, but with such a fast baking time, i didn’t have any trouble with different sized scones on the same baking sheet.  I would watch if you have different sized scones though to be sure the smaller ones don’t get overly brown.

You may wish to top with strawberry jam and sweetened soy yogurt (1 T. sugar in a 6 ounce container of plain soygurt, or you can use vanilla or even strawberry soygurt).

You can use practically any fruit in scones, and they are also good just plain.  You might try:  blueberry, peach, banana, banana-strawberry, pineapple, kiwi, orange (use orange zest too and top with marmalade), lemon, blackberry, or raspberry, or a combination of these.

February 13, 2010

Gado Gado – Peanut Sauce and Vegetable Salad

Filed under: Gluten Free, Higher Calorie Density, Main Dishes, Salads, Thai Cuisine — admin @ 1:05 am

Gado Gado - Peanut Sauce on Salad of Broccoli Red Cabbage Carrot Lettuce and Cucumber

Gado Gado – Peanut Sauce and Vegetable Salad

There are many recipes for a spicy peanut sauce. This one is a Thai version.
You might be able to find tamarind in a bottled sauce with tomato in it. This works okay. If you want to be more authentic, try to find tamarind paste or make it yourself from dried tamarind, if you can find that. Here are the instructions on how to make tamarind paste from dried tamarind:

http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?s=tamarind

I had Gado Gado over the years, but hadn’t realized it was Thai until I started cooking other Thai dishes.

http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?cat=31

When i made this for my daughter and son-in-law, my husband ate it but it didn’t really register with him. When i made it this week, he said he really liked it, so that makes three vegan dishes that i make that he really likes (the other two are hot and sour soup and vegetable sushi), and even though it is higher in fat than i would like him to eat most of the time, i will make it regularly as long as he likes it.

http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?s=chinese+hot+and+sour+soup

http://www.lowfatvegancooking.org/?s=sushi

This is another of my special dishes for company, especially non-vegan company. The sauce recipe is generous for people not used to low fat eating. I assemble the salad with a moderate amount of the peanut sauce, and then put a creamer of extra sauce on the table for those who want it.

Gado Gado

Makes 4 servings, although the sauce might be 8 servings if you prefer to eat less fat
Preparation about 45 minutes
Can be made ahead, but keep the sauce separate to add at the last minute
Freezes well as separate veggies and sauce

Sauce:
2 small white onions, 3 medium red onions, or 4 shallots, chopped fine
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 inches fresh ginger or galangal, peeled and grated
1 – 2 T. Thai chili paste or pureed Thai or other chilies, hot or mild
1 T. tamarind paste or sauce
2 t. vegan sugar
½ c. peanut butter, smooth or chunky
2 T. lime juice

Garnishes:
Lime zest
Scallions
Peanuts
Mint

Sauté the onion and garlic in ½ c. water. Add the rest except the lime juice, and stir well, and heat until it is warm, if desired. We prefer everything more or less room temperature. Add the lime juice when it’s finished cooking.

Chop or slice and cook until just tender or three more vegetables such as:

Broccoli
Red cabbage
Carrots
Green beans
Zucchini
Cauliflower

Cool at least 20 minutes so the lettuce doesn’t wilt.

Chop fresh vegetables such as:
Lettuce
Cucumber
Mung sprouts – chopped
Basil – Thai or European, chopped
Mint, chopped

To assemble, put the raw vegetables either mixed or on top of each other on a large plate. Top with the cooked vegetables, then the sauce. Garnish with one or all of the listed garnishes.
One recipe i used when i first made this was from The Complete Vegetarian, which is not a vegan cookbook.

Green Papaya and Carrot Salad

Filed under: Gluten Free, Low Calorie Density, Salads — admin @ 1:03 am

Green Papaya and Carrot with Scallion Chili and Lime Dressing

Green Papaya and Carrot Salad

We shop at an Asian market every couple of weeks, and there i found julienned papaya. I had loved the movie The Scent of Green Papaya, which shows a woman making green papaya salad. I jumped at the chance to make it myself. I brought it home and Googled several recipes. The green papaya salad in the movie was Vietnamese, and that is the recipe i followed most closely, but there are many more recipes for Thai green papaya salad than Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese green papaya salad is called Goi Du Du. The Thai green papaya salad is called Som Tum.

Green papaya is altogether a different creature than ripe papaya. It is light green and tastes slightly bitter, more like a vegetable than a fruit. It keeps in the refrigerator several days. Unfortunately i didn’t go to the Asian market last week, so the papaya i got was not really an unripe green, and in the picture you can see that it is already fairly orange. It also didn’t julienne quite right. It still tasted good, so you can try the salad even if you can’t find green papaya, although it is not exactly the same.

The texture of the salad is better if you julienne the papaya, but you can shred it if you don’t want to take the time.

I used Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste for the chilies. You can use fresh Thai chilies, or other hot or mild chilies. Chop them up and put them in a blender, food processor, or motar and pestle.

Gai Du Du – Green Papaya Salad

Makes 4 servings
Preparation about 20 minutes if you julienne the papaya
Best served immediately, but you do everything but put it together ahead if you want

1 green papaya
2 carrots
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
2 scallions
Zest of 1 lime
½ c. lime juice – about 5 limes
½ t. – 1 T. chili paste
¼ c. Thai or European fresh basil
1 T. low sodium tamari (optional)
2 T. roasted peanuts (optional)

Julienne the papaya into thin 1/8 x 2 inch matchsticks. Grate the carrots. Slice the scallions into thin rounds.

Make the dressing: Zest the lime and then juice it and enough limes to make ½ c. juice. Mince the garlic and add to the ½ c. juice and zest. Add the sugar and tamari. Stir in the chili paste.

Chop the basil into fine pieces and add to the dressing with the scallions.

Mix the papaya and carrot. Top with dressing and garnish with a few peanuts on top.

If you can, serve immediately. Otherwise, the tamari will color the dressing as it is in the photo.

Adapted from Green Papaya Salad at the Passionate Eater.

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