Vegetarian Moussaka

I saw a very appetizing recipe in Weight Watcher’s Magazine for what looked like a vegetarian moussaka (Creamy Greek Veggie Bake). I changed around the recipe, changing the filling into more of a veggie chili (I added beans, lots of tomato paste and seasoned with oregano and cumin instead of cinnamon and allspice). I also added some olive oil into the bechamel sauce that goes on top of the dish.

I love the contrast of the chunky filling with the creamy eggplant, but the filling can be made and served on its own as a vegetarian chili (perhaps in little filo shells with a dollop of sour cream as an appetizer, like the Susie Fishbein Chili Bites KBD Short on Time).

I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet the moussaka could be made dairy-free (speaking of Susie Fishbein, see this dairy-free moussaka topping).
UPDATE: I made this dairy-free just by leaving out the bechamel, and it is excellent that way. What makes the dish is the contrast of the creamy smooth eggplant with the chunky veggie chili.

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Vindaloo

I was served this delicious, super healthy vegan curry at a friend’s house and was thrilled to find out how incredibly easy it is to make. All you do is dump chopped vegetables into a slow cooker and let it simmer away. You can also make this on the stove top, which is what I did when I recreated it at my house. With some brown rice, it is a complete meal.

Slow Cooker Vegetarian Vindalo
Adapted from Vegetarian Times Everything Vegan.

Dump everything in a crock pot or a large pot:
1 medium cauliflower, cut into florets
(4-5 red skinned potatoes, peeled and diced, optional)
29 ounces canned chick peas, drained
2 large leeks, white and light green part sliced
1-2 cups tomato sauce
1 Tbl. vinegar
2 Tbl. fresh ginger, minced
2 Tbl. curry powder
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. cinnamon or a cinnamon stick
1 tsp. hot sauce
1/4-1/2 cup water

Cook for 3 hours on high in a crock pot or 1 1/2 hours on a medium simmer in a stove top pot. Can add 3 Tbl. cilantro before serving. Serve over basmati rice.

Tempeh Quinoa Burgers and Stuffed Eggplant

The recipe from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health for tempeh-quinoa burgers (which you can see here at The Golden Yolk) sounds more complicated to make than it is. You need cooked quinoa, cooked sweet potato and a sauteed mixture of tempeh and vegetables. I was putting off making them, and then realized that I usually make quinoa and roast sweet potatoes anyway.

Here is what you do: combine cooked quinoa (1/2 cup raw cooked with 1 cup water) and cooked sweet potato (1/2-2/3 large, roasted or boiled with the quinoa) with a sauteed mixture of 1 cup diced onion, 2 cloves minced garlic,  1 cup minced red pepper and 8 ounces diced tempeh, plus some seasonings. In terms of the seasonings, I thought that the mixture tasted delicious with just the 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. oregano, 1/4 tsp. pepper and 4 tsp. soy sauce added. The 2 Tbl. ketchup (or tomato paste or salsa) and 2 tsp. Dijon mustard made the mixture more burger-ish, but wasn’t crucial. I skipped the cilantro, sesame oil and sesame seeds. For the burgers, shape about 8 patties and bake them on a greased baking sheet at 375 degrees for about a half hour.

I had a eggplant I needed to use and I had the idea of roasting it and stuffing it with some of the burger mixture. I halved the eggplant, rubbed it with olive oil and roasting it at 375 for a half hour. Then I mashed the roasted eggplant (scraped out of the skin)  into about half the burger mixture. Then I roasted the eggplant again with the stuffing inside the eggplant skins (375 degrees for a half hour). It was an excellent combination.

Spinach, Corn and Roasted Red Pepper Enchiladas

I think about you, dear readers, I really do. So, when I made these very dairy enchiladas, I thought about those of you who are lactose-intolerant. The recipe calls for eight tortillas and I had a package of ten. With the extra tortillas, I made some lactose-free enchiladas.

It was an excellent experiment. Crumbled tofu is a perfect substitute for the small amount of cottage cheese in the recipe, and the enchiladas taste fine topped with plain sauce and no cheese. Although, if you wanted to have “cheese” on top, I noticed an interesting product in the local health food store: Daiya cheese style shreds. They are OU pareve. I haven’t tried this product yet (If you have, let me know if you like it).

dairy-free broccoli, corn and red pepper enchiladas with tofu

This recipe is adapted from Simple Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin. It is similar to a recipe I was given several years ago (and posted about here), except that recipe was a lot cheesier. That recipe always came out like lasagna, which was yummy in its own way. This is a little lighter.

Jeanne Lemlin has at least two other enchilada recipes that sound good and easy: mushroom and bean enchiladas and these zucchini bean enchiladas.

If you are thinking about dairy menus right now, I like to serve a Mexican themed meal, with salad, chili, yellow rice, guacamole, taco shells, some salmon and pasta or enchiladas.

Miso Happy

Is there anything as cheering on a gray, rainy day as a bowl of miso soup? It is so healthy and energizing.

This isn’t authentic miso soup, but more of a simple cheat. All the same, it strongly reminds me of the kind of soup I have had in restaurants.

It is really pretty easy. Combine miso, water, a little soy sauce, cubed tofu, sliced scallions and sliced mushrooms. Heat to not quite boiling. Put a spoonful of fried onions in a ceramic bowl, add the soup.

Miso is very versatile–no need to save just for soup making (although I hear that a little bit added to French Onion soup is fabulous). You can use it in dressings, spreads and marinades for fish, poultry and vegetables.

Miso-glazed cod is a classic, but you can use miso on salmon, too. I concocted a marinade with 2 Tbl. white miso, 2 Tbl. Mirin, 1 Tbl. honey, the juice of half a lime, a few shakes of dried ginger and a pinch of white pepper. This is enough marinade for a pound of fish. Roast at 425 for 25 minutes.

Here is another thing you can do with miso that is extraordinarily easy: combine peanut butter (2 Tbl.), miso (2 tsp.), and honey (to taste, maybe a teaspoon or two). Spread this on toast and top with sliced apple, pear or banana.  This sandwich idea (with the apples) originally came from Serendipity. The recipe was published in The Serendipity Cookbook, which is out of print. I don’t have a copy of that book and can’t find the recipe online, so my version is from memory. Actually, I think I remember first learning about it from this episode of this show, where the owner of the restaurant Serendipity, Calvin Holt, demonstrated how to make the sandwich. I think the original sandwich involved alfalfa sprouts, but I can’t precisely remember.

Quinoa with Garlic Roasted Sweet Potatoes

This started off as Melissa Clark’s recipe for Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Garlic (from Cook This Now).  The basic idea of that recipe is roasting  (at 425 degrees for about a half hour) sweet potatoes (1 1/2 lbs., peeled and cut in 1″ cubes) after tossing them with 3 Tbl. olive oil, 1 tsp. kosher salt, 1/2 tsp. pepper, 6 whole unpeeled garlic cloves and a broken cinnamon stick. I decided to toss the cooked sweet potatoes (after removing the bits of cinnamon stick) with a batch of cooked quinoa, toasted almonds, dried cranberries and diced prunes. I also added in some lemon juice. When heated through, the ingredients melded together. The dish reminded me of both couscous and tzimmes at the same time.

My only issue with the original dish and my variation is the intensity of the roasted garlic. I think a little less garlic would be better, or maybe it would better to mash one roasted clove and stir it into the dish and leave the remaining roasted cloves on the side for adding as desired.

Quinoa a la Jardinera

We tend to prefer quinoa in  salad form. Even when I make a quinoa pilaf, we like it even better the next day served cold as a salad.

In my ongoing quest for a more exciting quinoa pilaf, I pulled off the shelf a book by the late Felipe Rojas-Lombardi: The Art of South American Cooking. Since quinoa is native to South America, it isn’t altogether surprising that Chef Rojas-Lombardi’s tome has a few interesting quinoa dishes.

His Quinoa a la Jardinera is a particularly nice pilaf style preparation. Warm quinoa is tossed with a colorful confetti of sauteed diced vegetables, including red and green bell peppers, red onion or scallion, carrots, and celery. Other vegetables, such as corn and peas, can be also added. You can tell from the original instructions that the recipe comes from a high-end restaurant chef rather than a home cook–the vegetables aren’t just to be chopped or minced, they are to be cut in a 1/8″ dice.

(Chef Rojas-Lombardi had an interesting background. Originally from Peru, he worked as James Beard’s assistant, was a founding chef of the gourmet food store Dean & Deluca, and then went on to become executive chef at the Ballroom. His restaurant featured tapas, and he is credited with starting the tapas trend in U.S. restaurants.)

The pilaf’s flavor is enlivened with an interesting mix of ginger and herbs. The herbs are particularly important because quinoa on its own has a pretty subtle flavor. When I first served this to my husband, he liked it, but thought it lacked the “big flavor” of quinoa salads I have made in the past. I add more dill (better), and served it the next day cold as a salad with some grape tomatoes tossed in. On the side, I served some guacamole and tortilla chips. Now, that combination–the fresh acidity of the tomatoes, the pungent garlic creaminess of the guacamole, the crunch of the tortilla chips, the subtly chewy-crunchy texture of the quinoa with the backnotes of herbs and ginger–now that had really big, big flavor.

Low-Carb Red Pepper, Mushroom and Feta Breakfast Casserole (or how I used up all my extra eggs from Passover)

I had some eggs that I had to use up. Well, a whole lot of eggs, actually.

I may have bought a few too many for Passover. Just maybe.

It wasn’t that I didn’t bake enough. And it wasn’t a matter of not eating enough. In fact, maybe I ate too much.

I wanted some way of using up the eggs that didn’t involve yet another cake or cookie or brownie. And no more matzoh brie. I was looking for something low-carb that could be eaten over the course of a few days (or–better yet–frozen for much later consumption).

At first I was going to make the egg muffins from Kalyn’s Kitchen, but then I saw this breakfast casserole on her site. It calls for 18 eggs (just the amount that I had to use up!), plus feta, bell pepper, and mushrooms (all ingredients that I had on hand and that I needed to use up).

According to Kalyn, these egg muffins and casseroles reheat well and can even be frozen. I divided the casserole into eight portions for reheating as needed for a quick breakfast or light supper.

Chestnut Pistachio Terrine (vegetarian and kosher for Passover)

Most likely, if you have vegetarians coming to your seder, you have already figured out what you are serving them. But, if you are a last minute kind of person, this nut loaf will be a good addition to your seder table.

It is good served cold with some tangy sauce on the side, like duck sauce.

Feta Compli

Last year for Pesach, I made what I called Naked Spanakopita: spinach filling without the filo. It was good, but I felt it was too crowded in a round pan and needed to be spread thinner in a  9×13 pan. Plus, I just wanted to tweak it a bit.

Then a neighbor kindly lent me a copy of The When You Live in Hawaii You Get Very Creative During Passover Cookbook, published by Sof Ma’arav Congregation, Honolulu, Hawaii (1989). There was a recipe with the irresistible title “Feta Compli.” I decided to borrow the name, plus the idea of topping the spinach layer with a cheese-ey, creamy layer. I also made the filling richer and more moist with Dill Havarti cheese and some farmer’s cheese.