If you’re like me and crave sweets everyday, you might be looking for a great weeknight cookie that can satisfy your cravings without going overboard on the butter and sugar. These zucchini chocolate chip cookies really fit the bill. The zucchini provides moisture so that you don’t have to add much extra fat. And the cookie is slightly sweet rather than super sweet. I’ve used vegan yogurt and found that work fine. The extra moisture from the zucchini causes the cookie to puff up, so the texture is a bit cakier than your average chocolate chip cookie. But I really enjoy them. And I find one is satisfying. This will be a staple for me anytime I have zucchini in the garden.
I picked one enormous zucchini at the end of our unexpectedly warm early fall. So I’ve continued to have zucchini as we teetered toward winter. I made these fritters, which include carrots, as a summer-fall transition recipe. They’re very good. And the mint yogurt sauce that goes with them is very very good. The batter looks a little soupy, but they come out just right. Make sure you get them as thin in the pan as possible to avoid mushiness in the center. I’ll make these again for sure. And I want to try making them gluten free as well.
I had bought some pappardelle at the store and came up with this recipe to use it with some items I had in the fridge. It came out so tasty I had to record the recipe. If you aren’t eating low fodmap, you can chop the garlic and leave it in the sauce.
1 lb pappardelle
1-3 cloves garlic
3 tbsp butter
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
1-3 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 medium zucchini
2 medium eggs
4 oz arugula
Boil the water for the past
While the water is heating, melt the butter in a skillet on low heat. Add the garlic cloves whole. Leave the butter and garlic to cook on low.
Slice the zucchini lengthwise into very thin strips, halve the strips horizontally, then cut the strips lengthwise into thin ribbons.
Add the pasta to the boiling water. Cook for 10 minutes.
Remove the garlic cloves.
Add the zucchini and salt to the pan. Let cook for 3 minutes.
Turn off the heat on the pan. Let cool for a couple minutes.
Add the lemon juice and eggs to the pan, whisk together.
Reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water.
Drain the pasta. Let sit for 30 seconds
Returns the pasta to the pot and immediately stir in the sauce.
I had a great harvest of beets at the end of the summer and needed to use up the last cucumber of the season. I found this salad recipe on page 40 of The Vegetarian Bistro. The salad uses lots of veggies, including beets, cucumber, carrot, green beans, and endive. The beets and green beans are cooked, while the rest of the veggies are raw. I enjoyed the mix of veggies, but didn’t like the creme mustard dressing. I also found the salad was missing some heft. I ended up adding pumpkin seeds, which improved it a bit.
I’ve been sick a lot lately, so last week I decided just to make some simple carb dishes that would be easy on my digestion. The weather has been so weird this fall that I still had tomatoes ripening into mid October. I found this recipe for a raw tomato sauce on page 86 of Nonna’s Italian Kitchen. This was a really interesting concept and super easy. You just put all the ingredients in the blender and then add the sauce to the still hot pasta.
In order to make this low fodmap, I use wild garlic instead of fresh garlic, so the taste was definitely different than it would have been otherwise. But it wasn’t bad. The main issue with the sauce was that it was too liquidy. But after I refrigerated the dish, the issue was resolved. So this was much better the second day. I liked this but didn’t love it. Might try making it again once (if) I can eat garlic again.
I hadn’t made Indian food in a while, since I can’t eat beans or spicy food at the moment. But I’d read that sprouted mung beans were low fodmap and found a recipe for spiced sprouted mung beans in the Indian Vegetarian Cookbook. I wanted to make a vegetable to go with them, so I made this eggplant dish. This is an unusual preparation, as you first steam the eggplant before incorporating it into the rest of the dish. I didn’t like the result. The eggplant tasted watery and didn’t incorporate the flavor of the rest of the dish. I ended up adding some half and half, which improved the taste, but I wouldn’t make this again.
On the harrowing quest to cook things that both Ian and I can eat, I found this salad, which could be made low fodmap and would use up my summer squash. I couldn’t find red rice so I used regular jasmine rice. I think I either mismeasured the dry rice or the picture for this recipe is quite dishonest. The picture shows a dish of mostly squash with a sprinkling of rice. As you can see from my photo, my dish was mostly rice with a smattering of squash. Despite this and my failure to find red rice, we enjoyed this recipe. It was super easy to make and would make a good weeknight dish when you already have summer squash or zucchini in the fridge.
I left out the garlic since Ian isn’t eating garlic. It only called for one clove so I can’t imagine it would have changed the dish a ton. I thought the 1/4 cup of olive oil called for was absurd and halve it. Without knowing this, Ian complained that the dish needed more olive oil and added more. I’m sure it would have tasted better with more, but I didn’t mind it as is. He also thought it needed more pine nuts. I would probably use 3 tbsp instead of 2 tbsp as called for, but I suspect he would still end up adding more. My main issue with the dish was that I thought it needed more dill and chives. I’d double those next time.
Apparently I’ve been on a bit of a noodle kick lately. This recipe was appealing since it offers a non-salad way to use fresh cucumber from my garden. This dish was alright, but I’m not sure if I liked it enough to make it again. I halved the sugar, but still found it a bit too sweet. The only thing spicy in the dish was red pepper flakes. I left those out since I’m avoiding spice. Maybe they would have balanced the sweetness a bit more. I also added pan fried tofu for protein.
Finding a recipe that both Ian and I can eat right now is nearly impossible, since we are both dealing with very restrictive medically prescribed diets. Add my vegetarian diet, his gluten free diet, plus both of our lactose intolerance, and there’s nearly nothing we can both eat. I was intrigued by this dish since it uses rice noodles instead of flour noodles, but incorporates Italian flavors rather than the usual Asian flavors I associate with rice noodles.
I’ve made it twice now. The first time I did quite a bit of tweaking based on what we had in the house and Ian’s restrictions. The second time I stuck to the recipe. I liked my first version much better. Both Ian and I really loved it and had multiple additional helpings. I think the original recipe is too low on veggies and I like a basil/mint mixture better than mint alone. I’ve also found it’s much better with cherry tomatoes than with large tomatoes or canned. Whatever version you make, this is a simple, quick, weeknight dish. I made simple pan fried tofu for a protein on the side and Ian ate it with chicken. Here’s my adjusted version:
2tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 to 2garlic cloves (to taste), minced (optional)
1.5 pound zucchini, cut in ΒΌ-inch dice
1.5 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
Salt to taste (I use about 1.5 tsp)
freshly ground pepper to taste
7 to 8ounces thin rice sticks
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
2 tablespoons of fresh basil, torn
I follow the instructions from the original recipe. If I leave out the garlic for Ian, I just skip that step. I honestly didn’t notice a big flavor difference between having the garlic and not having it. I think the key to the flavor of this recipe is really high quality ingredients, since it’s so simple. Great olive oil and sweet cherry tomatoes really make the dish. I also like spaghetti style rice noodles better than the fettuccine ones for this dish because they have more bite.
I went to Texas to visit family in August and came back with four of my siblings’ cookbooks on loan. After a barely getting five green beans from my garden all summer, I’ve had a miraculous end-of-season glut of green beans this year. So this recipe for jackfruit biryani was the first from the group I decided to try. It’s from East Meets Vegan by Shasha Gill.
I had to do quite a bit of modification since I’m avoiding many types of nuts and all fruit at the moment. I replaced the cashews with 1/2 and 1/2 pine nuts and walnuts. Both were good. I left out the raisins and instead added a tsp of sugar to the cooking onions. That worked out really well and I didn’t really miss the dried fruit. I also used regular yogurt instead of vegan yogurt and swapped out bell pepper for the carrot, since that’s what I had.
The flavor of the dish was good and the jackfruit was a very unique aspect. But the consistency was wrong. The picture from the cookbook shoes a nice fluffy biryani with individuated pieces of rice. But my version came out very wet and mushy. More like a sticky rice compote than a biryani. I’m not sure why this happened, but next time I’d halve the vegetable stock. Also, next time I’d pull the cardamom pods out of the rice before combining it with the curry. Worth trying again with some tweaking I think.
Nimble Veggies 