I made this recipe for Moroccan Raw Carrot Salad from page 94 of Olive Trees and Honey for our Passover Seder. The recipe calls for chili paste, minced green chilies, or cayenne. I used two sprinkles of cayenne. The dish was okay but was too spicy for everyone. I’m not sure the issue was that the levels were too spicy. I think it was more that we just didn’t like the combination of a raw carrot salad with spicy cayenne. The dish didn’t get finished.
The idea of this recipe for a risotto that mixed arborio rice and quinoa, was intriguing to me. I liked that the picture in the New York Times showed the dish with broth pooling in the bottom. I messed up the instructions on this dish. I made it like regular risotto, waiting until each 1/2 cup of broth was absorbed before adding another. The recipe instructions actually go by time instead of the traditional method. As a result, I didn’t end up with much broth at the end. The picture makes it look like this is mostly rice with a little quinoa. My dish ended up the other way around, I’m not sure why. The flavor of this was fine and I like the addition of the walnuts, but it wasn’t particularly exciting and I thought there was too much quinoa.
After 6 months had passed on my one-year lease of The Veggies Chinese Takeout Cookbook by Kwoklyn Wan without me trying a single recipe, I picked out this recipe for Chinese Broccoli in Garlic Ginger Sauce on page 40 to accompany Crispy Tofu with Spring Onions. The recipe is easy and super fast (20 minutes tops).
I used conventional American broccoli since I didn’t have any Chinese broccoli on hand and added some asparagus from my garden as well. The asparagus wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was fine in the dish. I’m sure Chinese broccoli would have been even better, but conventional broccoli was good too. If I hadn’t added the asparagus, the recipe would have been low fodmap since I swapped the garlic for garlic oil.
This dish is super flavorful and would be great if you have broccoli and ginger in the house and not much time or energy to make dinner. It would also be great when you were just in the mood for some great Chinese broccoli. My one complaint about the dish was that it didn’t make enough. I’d definitely double it next time at least. I could have eaten so much of this.
I love a sweet and savory salad combo. And I love fennel. So when someone gifted me Love Real Food, this was the first recipe I tried. I honestly wasn’t that excited by the cookbook, but was most inspired by this recipe. Despite all the yummy ingredients, I found this really underwhelming. It was actually pretty bland and the dried cherries were too sweet. Between my unexcited reaction to the recipes in the book and this disappointment, I ended up leaving this book on the shelf for several years before trying a cookie recipe from it this past week.
Several years ago someone gave me Love Real Food by Kathryne Taylor for my birthday. At first glance, I wasn’t very inspired by the recipes, which seemed pretty basic for a lifelong vegetarian. I made one underwhelming recipe and put it on the shelf, where it sat for the last few years. But lately, I’ve been trying to revisit old forgotten cookbooks instead of turning to the internet every time I want to find a new recipe. So I rescued Love Real Food from the bottom of the pile and started looking through it with a more receptive spirit. I was able to find several recipe I could try making, even if none of them seemed particularly original. This recipe for carrot cake breakfast cookies was my first attempt at a dessert recipe from the cookbook, but my second attempt at a carrot cake cookie. I embarked hoping this try would be more successful than my first disappointing version.
I was a bit skeptical of this recipe, since it contained neither eggs nor an ingredient that I consider an egg substitute (like apple sauce). Despite my misgivings, I followed the recipe to the letter (except for leaving out the raisins). This was a super simple recipe. I wasn’t sure whether to melt the coconut oil or not, but I followed my instincts I used it in its solid form. The recipe says to use a hand mixer to cream it with the maple syrup, which worked well. Using the solid coconut oil ended up working well, but the first batch of cookies didn’t spread out at all. For the second batch I smooshed down the dough balls and they came out perfect.
I was super impressed with these. The mixture of spices, maple syrup, and coconut oil made for a sweet and savory effect that leaves a great taste in your mouth. Without the raisins I wasn’t sure the cookies would be sweet enough; they only have 1/2 cup of sweetener. But the sweetness level was just right for me. Plus they’re pretty low calorie (less than 70 calories each by my calculation!). My only complain with these cookies was that they’re a bit crumbly (they’re basically carrot granola clumps). They came apart a bit when I took them off the baking sheet. With the second batch I let them cool for a minute or two before moving them off the sheet, which helped with the crumbling. I might try adding a single egg to these to help them stick together better, but otherwise I thought they were perfect.
On a day when my feet were hurting too much to go to the store or spend much time in the kitchen, I found this simple recipe for marinated tofu cabbage salad in my old copy of Diet for a New World. Except for the celery seed, everything in the recipe, which has a very limited list of ingredients, was a already in my kitchen. It came together super fast. The tofu is just marinated and added to the salad uncooked. I was a bit skeptical of this, but it came out really tasty. The soft texture of the tofu actually works really well in the coleslaw like salad. Instead of using all sunflower seeds, I used half sunflower seeds and half pumpkin seeds, which I think added some extra interest to the dish. I halved the oil called for in the recipe and thought there was definitely enough oil in it. Even Ian who adds extra oil to a lot of things I make ate it without any amendment. This is a fantastic weeknight dish. Easy, satisfying, and surprisingly tasty for something so simple.
Raita is one of my all time favorite foods. As a kid my parents used to take me to an Indian buffet, where I would proceed to only eat raita and naan. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the other dishes, but why eat other things when that would just take up precious raita storage space. As an adult I rarely (but not never) eat raita only meals. But adulthood hasn’t dampened my love of the dish at all. Sadly, eating seasonally means no cucumber raita in the winter. So I was intrigued when I found this recipe for spinach raita in Indian Vegetarian Cooking at Your House.
The recipe is described as a seasoned salad with yogurt and spinach, which is accurate. The veggie to yogurt ratio is much heavier on the veggie side than traditional raita. This recipe has about 3/4 cup of liquid to 1 cup of spinach plus extra veggies. I looked up other Palak Raita recipes and found they usually had a one to one ratio of raita to spinach with no extra veggies.
I really enjoyed the spices and the spinach went well with the yogurt. However, I thought the chopped carrots took away from the blended flavor of the dish. Next time I’d leave them out. I might also add an extra 2-3 tbsp of yogurt. Not as good as cucumber raita, but intriguing, healthy, and easy to make. I might make this again with a few tweaks. I’d like to try a different Palak Raita recipe first though.
I had half of a head of Chinese cabbage left over from another recipe and was looking for something interesting to do with it. I found this recipe for Chinese Cabbage Salad with Orange and Tahini Dressing on page 80 of the Tassajara Cookbook. The recipe was easy enough to make. My only problem was that the tahini clumped and didn’t blend well with the rest of the dressing. I think using a submersion blender would have solved this problem.
I didn’t love this recipe. I liked the combination of cabbage and orange, but the tahini dressing just kind of muted the flavors of the salad. The whole thing was kind of bland and unexciting.
I bought a large bag of Asian rice cakes for another recipe, but I only ended up using a third of the bag. While looking for something to do with the remainder, I found this New York times recipe for pan fried rice cakes and bok choy. The recipe is written for cylindrical rice sticks, but says you can slide rice cakes instead. Slicing these rice cakes was awful and took forever. I ended up resorting to a pizza roller after trying a few different knives.
I’m not sure if the rice cake/rice stick swap was the problem, but my dish did not look like the one in the picture. Instead of nicely browned individual rice sticks, the rice sticks kind of merged together and stuck both to each other and the pan. A cast iron pan or nonstick pan is a must for this dish. Instead of making the peanut sauce in the recipe, I just used leftover peanut sauce from gado gado that I had in the freezer.
The recipe had a great flavor and even though the rice cakes turned into a rice cake clump, I enjoyed their chewy texture. I thought the bok choy needed to be cooked for a minute or two longer. I also found the recipe really benefited from chopped peanuts on top to add a bit of crunch. This was unusual, but oddly good. And it seemed to get better with time. I’d make it again, but would try the rice sticks next time.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022726-rice-cakes-with-peanut-sauce-and-hoisin
I’ve been super busy for the past week and haven’t had much time to cook or menu plan. So I found myself super hungry at dinner time with nothing made. I made this pasta dish with things in my house. It took no more than 20 minutes to make and was pretty tasty for something I just threw together. All the kale made it more filling than most pasta dishes.
12 oz farfalle
1 large bunch of kale
1/4 cup Garlic oil (if you’re not eating low fodmap you can saute 3 cloves garlic in oil instead)
Zest one lemon
2 – 3 tbsp capers
2 – 3 tbsp pine nuts
1.5 – 2 tsp salt plus a couple pinches
1/2 cup grated parmesan
pepper to taste
Nimble Veggies 