Category: Salad

Sesame Slaw with Warm Garlicky Seitan

It’s official: seitan is my favorite vegetarian protein. I’m such a sucker for any recipe that includes seitan. With the weather warming up, I was looking for a cold salad recipe that looked filling. And this slaw recipe from page 58 of Isa Does It fit the bill. This was fairly quick and easy to make. True to the weeknight billing of Isa Does It. Isa has you pan fry the seitan, which makes the seitan a bit tough and pretty crisp. Overall, this was tasty, but not amazing. The edamame were a nice addition. I ate it all week happily, so it couldn’t be too bad. I’d make it again if I found myself wanting to make a quick filling Asian-inspired slaw or I had the ingredients.

Vegan Quinoa Caesar

This recipe was next up on my list of salads to try from my new cookbook Isa Does It. I was really intrigued by the idea of a vegan caesar salad made heartier by some extra ingredients. In addition to lettuce and dressing, Isa adds tempeh croutons, avocado, and quinoa to make this salad not just a full meal, but truly indulgent. She also adds some arugula to make the salad a bit healthier.

I really really liked this salad. Once I made it, it was all I wanted to eat all week. I actually had it for lunch and dinner on the same day! The dressing was delicious and the smoky flavor of the tempeh was complex and satisfying.

I will definitely make this again. The only change I will make is to increase the romaine a bit. I thought the quinoa, romaine, arugula recipe was just a bit too heavy on the arugula and quinoa. I think I’d use 10 ounces of romaine instead of the 8 called for by the recipe and 5 cups of quinoa instead of 6.

This link is the same as far as the salad ingredients and dressing from the cookbook. But it exchanges the marinated tempeh for breaded tofu.

Quinoa Caesar Salad

Roasted Yellow Beet Salad with Warm Maple-Mustard Dressing

I very rarely make salad recipes from my cookbooks, but I’m trying to add more raw vegetables to my diet. My new cookbook Isa Does It includes a number of intriguing salad recipes. Since I love beets, I picked out this recipe for arugula salad with walnuts and beets as the first one to try.

I used red beets instead of golden beets since they’re easier to find and I think they taste better anyways. The dressing is literally just maple syrup and whole grain mustard, which seemed really strange to me. This is not the type of dressing I ever make. But I actually really enjoyed the dressing. My main issue with the salad was that there were so many red onions in it and the dressing alone wasn’t enough to break their sharpness. I added a 1/4 cup of halved green grapes, which successfully cut the sharpness of the onions and rounded out the flavor of the salad overall.

I ran out of dressing before I ran out of salad. Next time I’d make 1.5x the recipe. Also online she adds 1 tbsp of water to the dressing, which I’d try next time to thin it out a bit.