Tag Archives: vegetarian cooking

Umami tsunami: Three ingredients to try today

Posted on April 30, 2013 | 5 Comments

Over the past several months, I’ve enjoyed playing with some umami-boosting ingredients in various dishes.  Umami is sometimes described as a savory or meaty taste or, more simply, something that makes food taste good.

Despite its association with meat, it is quite possible to build umami flavor in vegetarian dishes — mushrooms or soy sauce are a quick and easy route (the title for this post popped into my head while eating a dish containing both mushrooms and soy sauce) — but there are other ingredients and methods.

1. Dal
I first started experimenting with dal (daal) back in August, when  my food swap with Nupur started an Indian cooking kick.  Dal describes any of a variety of split peas or beans.  I began my explorations with two four pound bags of dal: toor dal (split yellow pigeon peas) and moong dal (split mung beans).

I discovered that well-cooked dal, simmered with bay leaf and seasoned with various spices, makes a rich, savory vegetable stock.  I use the stock for a variety of soups and stews, and the dal provides a nice flavor and texture boost.  I also made one of my best batches of chili ever with a dal base.

Depending on the size of your soup recipe, and assuming you aren’t trying to make lentil stew, start with 1/4 to 1/2 cup dry toor or moong dal (or a combination).  Early in the day, cover the dal with water to soak.  When ready to use, rinse in a mesh colander, add a bay leaf, and cover with water to cook.  When tender, liquify with an immersion or traditional blender and incorporate into your soup recipe.

2. Nutritional yeast
Nutritional yeast is a fairly common ingredient in vegetarian cooking, providing a nutty or cheesy flavor.  As its name indicates, it’s also rather nutritious, a great source of B vitamins in addition to being a complete protein.

I add nutritional yeast to a variety of one-dish meals (grain + beans + veggies) to boost flavor and nutrients.

Look for nutritional yeast in the bulk bins at natural grocers or WF.  The price per pound (~$7-$8) seems high, but the yeast flakes are very light — one pound of nutritional yeast can enhance many meals.

To use, add directly to dishes, or mix with a small amount of hot water to make a sauce.  It also functions as a nice component of salad dressings.

3. Miso paste
Like soy sauce (another fermented soy product), miso paste possesses real umami-boosting power.  Think beyond miso soup and use this flavorful ingredient as part of a rich sauce:

Whisk two to three tablespoons miso paste with one cup of water and a tablespoon (or more, depending on desired thickness) of almond or cashew butter.

Serve sauce on top of a cooked quinoa or millet with sauteed or steamed vegetables for an easy, healthy lunch or dinner.

Mix and match
Try sauces, salad dressings, and soups that include a combination of two or more of these ingredients to really kick up the umami flavor in your cooking.

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Great eats

Posted on February 9, 2012 | 3 Comments

“Great eats” sounds a bit more descriptive, or at least more appetizing, than “Food dump” (the working title of this post), wouldn’t you agree?  We pretty much rocked the kitchen last weekend, yielding a week’s worth of delicious food along the way.

Eating well, especially with a baby in the picture, requires time and effort, I’m not gonna lie to you.*  It works, though, because we enjoy spending time cooking and baking — and the results are totally worth it (the resulting food, that is, NOT the resulting state of the kitchen)!

Friday
Anyhow, the great food parade began last Friday, when I whipped up a big pot of Easy Black Bean Soup to share with our special dinner guests — Gabriel’s great-grandparents — who drove all the way from Texas!  We served the soup with a side of wonderful bread.

How easy is “easy,” you ask?  Easy enough for me to make while home alone with The Dude all day and have dinner on the table before five-thirty.**

Saturday

  • Started the day by making some baked oatmeal, a favorite family recipe from my childhood.
  • Soon thereafter, Matthew started in on his almond croissant project.
  • Dinner = a tasty curry, featuring our garden potatoes and cabbage.

Sunday

  • The culmination of the almond croissant project provided our mid-morning snack.  Matthew’s first attempt at making croissants = huge success!  Watch out, Medici Bakery!
  • For lunch, we feasted on our first attempt of Pi-style deep-dish pizza.
  • Dinner brought a protein-packed Pad Thai.

Almond croissants, fresh out of the oven

Obviously I have some more recipes to post.  Look for those soon.  In the meantime, you can check out the current offerings on the updated and reorganized Green Recipes page.

Finally, you have five more days to vote for Her Green Life in the Circle of Moms Top Vegetarian and Vegan Moms, and you can vote once every 24 hours.  Thanks for your support!

*More on our evening/dinner routine in a coming post.
**A good two hours earlier than we usually eat these days, but it allowed Gabriel to sit at the table with us.

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Posted in Food, Garden

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Brine your beans

Posted on March 11, 2011 | 8 Comments

A couple years ago, I switched from canned beans to dried beans.

Advantages of dried over canned:

  • Cheaper — plain a simple.
  • Avoids BPA exposure from canned beans.
  • Avoids excess sodium in canned beans.
  • Less packaging waste.  I buy most of my beans from the bulk bins, reusing plastic bags.  Even if you buy prepackaged dry beans, it involves much less packaging per amount of beans.
  • Dry beans require less energy to transport because they lack the liquid weight.

While I was happy enough with my bean-cooking method (quick soak or an overnight soak, drain and rinse, boil for about an hour), we recently discovered a new method that yields delicious, lightly salted cooked beans, reminiscent of the canned variety in a good way.

We happened across the idea of brining beans while flipping through an old edition of America’s Test Kitchen.  Basically, it’s a modified version of the quick soak, with salt added to the cooking water.

I initially reacted with skepticism, since the number one rule of cooking dried beans is “don’t add salt until the beans are fully cooked — it will make the beans tough and increase the cooking time.”  However, something about this method totally works.

How to brine beans

  1. Put desired quantity of dried beans in a pan.
  2. Add water to cover the beans, plus 1/2 to 1 inch on top — keep track of how much water you add.
  3. For every quart of water, add 2 generous teaspoons of salt.
  4. Cover and bring to a boil.
  5. Boil 3-5 minutes, then remove from heat.
  6. Let stand at least one hour (I’ve let mine stand for up to 8 hours — time over one hour neither helps nor hurts).
  7. Drain and rinse beans.
  8. Return to pot and cover with fresh water.
  9. Bring to a boil and cook 40 minutes to an hour, or until beans reach desired tenderness.
  10. Alternate cooking method: place in crock pot with enough water to cover.  Turn to low, and cook for 8-10 hours.

I’ve used this method successfully with black beans, pinto beans, and garbanzo beans thus far.  It should work for almost any kind of dried bean.

For ultimate convenience, follow the brining steps in the evening, letting the beans soak overnight, rinse them in the morning, and place in a crock pot to cook while you’re gone during the day.  You’ll return home to fabulous beans just waiting to be incorporated in your dinner — almost as convenient as the canned variety!

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Spank it oh pita

Posted on February 17, 2011 | 6 Comments

Huh?  Oh, right, that’s supposed to be “spanakopita,” as in the delicious Greek spinach and phyllo concoction, but my mind tends to twist the word in a creative way.  I can’t see or say the word without “spank it oh pita” popping into my head, and now I’ve corrupted you, too.  (You can thank me later.)

Anyhow, with only a bit of help from yours truly, Matthew made spanakopita on Saturday night, using the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe.  This recipe yields a delicious spinach pie, which of course we double (after baking and cooling, we cut one pie into wedges and pop it in the freezer for future meals).  For a double recipe, we go a little light on the feta cheese (we used about 3/4 lb instead of 1 lb for the double), and the 1/4 lb (1 stick) of melted butter for the phyllo in a single recipe is plenty for a double recipe.

The finished product, golden & flaky

The directions say to “cool completely and serve at room temperature,” but we never wait that long.  We can always eat the leftovers at room temperature ;)

Steaming spanakopita

We enjoyed our distinctly not cool spanakopita with a side of the most delicious oranges ever.  Local Harvest had a limited quantity of citrus that someone brought directly from California after a trip — not at all local, but perhaps the freshest and most truly ripe oranges I’ve had the pleasure to eat.  They were also organic and unwaxed, so I zested each and every one before eating.

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Retrospective menu

Posted on December 14, 2010 | 3 Comments

I fell off the cooking wagon for a couple of weeks, but I got back in the swing of things last Thursday night with — hmm, now I can’t quite remember.  Ah, right, lentil sloppy joes.  And I roasted some broccoli and cauliflower for a side dish — delicious fresh out of the oven, but not so great as leftovers.

I opened a jar of our canned tomatoes for the sloppy joes.  I saved some of the tomatoes and used them to make County Vegetable Soup with Pasta on Friday night.  This recipe comes pretty close to what I made — the main difference is that my recipe calls for pesto as a garnish.  Also, I used whole wheat shells for the pasta, which I cooked separately and added to the bowls when serving to keep them from getting mushy.

I love sitting down to dinner and doing a tally of all the garden and local produce in the meal.  The soup was a great one for this: the leeks, carrots, zucchini, green beans, tomatoes, and basil for the pesto came from our garden, and the cabbage was locally grown (we didn’t have much luck growing cabbage this fall).  This is a wonderful soup — really hearty and flavorful — perfect for these frigid days.

On Saturday night, I found my cheesy side with a baked macaroni and cheese dish (recipe from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes, our go-to cookbook).  On the side, a serving of steamed, grated beets with butter and salt, as well as a small roasted beet salad.

I finished my cooking spree with Swiss Chard risotto on Sunday night.  Instead of arborio rice, I used oat groats.  Instead of the normal time-intensive risotto procedure of adding small amounts of broth at a time while stirring almost continuously for an hour, I added the liquid in two installments and simmered it with minimal stirring.  The oat groats produced a creamy, hearty risotto, which I paired with roasted root vegetables (garden potatoes and beets, plus local sweet potatoes).  Risotto recipe coming soon, once I get it out of my head and into the computer — which I hope occurs before I forget what I did ;)

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