cajun pasta + coconut-crusted tofu

Making your own, quick Cajun spice mix will allow you to control what actually goes into the mix, the amount of spice it will contain and save you a few bucks. This pasta dish comes together fairly quickly, including pan-frying the coconut-crusted tofu, which reminds me of coconut shrimp from my pre-veg days.

This fresh tomato based sauce reminds me of Hungarian lecso or Latin sofrito, both of which are covered in recipes in my upcoming cookbook, Vegan Bowls (Amazon, B&N). I adore this way of making sauces as it is both flavorful and a snap to prepare. The most important ingredient in the process is patience.

As for the tofu, I am thrilled to have found an easy way to dredge and crust an ingredient without the batter dissolving before being cooked. I didn't try baking it, but am planning on attempting to do so in the future.

Finally, since I received some pedron peppers in my CSA last week, they had to make it onto the plate. I preheated my toasted oven and baked them on 400 for about 5 minutes, until they blistered. You could also quickly fry them in the same pan after all the tofu is cooked. Pedrons have very thin skin so they cook fast. Incidentally, they are delicious!

Cajun Pasta with Coconut-crusted Tofu

Serves 4

12 ounces pasta, cooked al dente, drained and reserving 1 cup of cooking water

Spice Mix:

1 ½ teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon onion powder

½ teaspoon white pepper

¼ to 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Sauce:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 large red bell pepper, thinly sliced

2 celery ribs, chopped

3 medium tomatoes, chopped

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup vegetable broth

2 teaspoons spice mix (above)

1 cup reserved pasta water

Tofu:

¾ cups arrowroot starch or cornstarch, divided

½ cup vegetable broth

2 cups unsweetened coconut flakes, blended for 10 seconds in a blender

2 teaspoons spice mix (above)
1 (14-ounces) package firm or extra firm tofu, pressed, cut into ½-inch slices

4 tablespoons neutral oil

1. Spice Mix: Combine the salt, paprika, garlic, onion, pepper and cayenne in a small bowl. Set aside.

2. Sauce: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, bell pepper and celery. Cover and cook until tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and garlic and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are broken down, about 10 more minutes. Add the vegetable broth and spice mix. Cook until the broth evaporates, about 4 more minutes. Add the pasta and pasta water. Stir and cook until the pasta is heated through and well coated with the sauce.

3. Tofu: Combine ½ cup of the starch and broth in a shallow dish. Combine the coconut flakes, ¼ cup of the starch and spice mix in a separate shallow dish. Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Dredge the tofu in the wet mixture and then in the coconut mixture. Fry the tofu until golden brown, about 1 minute per side. Drain on paper towels.

4. Assembly: Serve the pasta with the tofu. Sprinkle the dish with more spice mix, as desired.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

mexican-flare quinoa bowl

With my new cookbook, Vegan Bowls (Amazon, B&N) coming out in a few short months, I'm again craving more bowl foods. As you can imagine, after months of bowls for breakfast, lunch and dinner during recipe development and testing, we needed a bit of a break from the bowl foods, but that didn't last too long.

Bowls are convenient, easy and balanced, which is part of their appeal when dinner rolls around. Who wants to think about what to serve with a protein to make it a complete meal, when that is exactly what bowl food is all about?

Since I cooked up a batch of black beans earlier in the week, the next most obvious application for the legume was a Tex-Mex meal.

This bowl is full of Mexican flare, including roasted corn, fajita vegetables, avocado and a salsa sauce. The quinoa is dotted with spinach, adding more nutrition and flavor. Serve this bowl with tortilla chips and dig in.

Mexican-flare Quinoa Bowl

Serves 4

Quinoa:

2 ¼ vegetable broth

1 ½ cups quinoa, rinsed well

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 (10-ounce) package frozen spinach, thawed

Vegetables:

3 cups corn kernels, thawed if frozen

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 large red bell pepper, thinly sliced

1 large onion, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Beans:

3 cups black beans
1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon dried oregano

Sauce:

¾ cups salsa

¼ cup vegan mayonnaise

1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Garnish:

Avocado, slices

Cilantro leaves

Tortilla chips

1. Quinoa: Heat the broth in a medium pan over high heat. Bring to boil, add the quinoa and salt, cover with a lid, reduce the heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and steam for 10 minutes. Fluff with fork and stir in the chopped spinach. Return to medium heat and cook until the spinach is heated through.

2. Vegetables: Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the corn and cook until golden, about 7 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season with salt and black pepper and set aside in a bowl. Add the oil to the skillet and stir in the bell pepper and onion. Season with the garlic powder, salt and black pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and the onion is lightly caramelized, about 10 minutes. Remove from the skillet and set aside in the bowl.

3. Beans: Add the beans to the skillet. Season with the chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt and black pepper, to taste, and cook until the beans are heated through, about 3 minutes. Set aside.

4. Sauce: Combine the salsa, mayo and lime juice in a small blender. Blend until smooth and transfer to a small pan. Heat over medium heat until warmed through, about 3 minutes.

5. Assembly: Layer the quinoa in the bottom of the bowl, topping with roasted corn, sauteed vegetables, beans and avocado and cilantro. Serve with the sauce and tortilla chips.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

"crave eat heal" + giveaway

Annie Oliverio of Virtual Vegan Potluck and An Unrefined Vegan blog,  has finally published her long-awaited cookbook, Crave Eat Heal! This is one of the most anticipated cookbooks of 2015 and I am excited to be part of her blog tour. 

Crave Eat Heal (Amazon, B&N) is a bit different from other cookbooks out there in the sense that the chapters and the premise are unlike any I've yet come across. The book is based on satisfying cravings we all have from time to time and doing it using unprocessed, whole foods with no refined sugars and low oil. The book is hard cover with beautiful full-color photos and thick, sturdy pages. A gorgeous book to own!

Annie breaks the book into chapters titled: Carbs, Chocolate, Comfort, Cool, Creamy, Crunchy, Green, Junk, Salty, Spicy, Sweet, Tart and Warm. As you can imagine, recipes in Carbs would help to satisfy those pesky carb cravings with recipes such as "Cocoa-Cinnamon French Toast" or "Whole Wheat Peach Pancakes." 

Annie manages to whip up recipes that please our senses and appetite and are tasty and still healthful. You will find gluten-free, low-oil, unprocessed, raw and delicious dishes in this book! Many are easy to make, but all are outstanding.

Before I get into the recipes I've made from the book (so far), don't forget to snag the recipe at the end of the post from the Cool chapter, Butter Lettuce Wedges with Sunflower Seed Dressing, Pears, and Tempeh Bacon. 

At the end, there is also a giveaway for Crave Eat Heal, courtesy of Cedar Fort, Inc., for one US winner and a giveaway for one international winner of the e-book, Crave Eat Heal. Outtakes. The two are separate giveaways so please enter to win the physical copy only if you are a US resident. Contest ends June 1. 

As anyone who knows me, knows that I love gyros with a passion. I love the savory protein and the creamy, tangy tzaziki sauce. When I saw Annie's version of gyro, I had to try it. And it was delicious! You can find the Tofu Gyro with Tzaziki in the Salty chapter, on page 234.

When I was craving something fresh and crunchy, I picked up Annie's book and stumbled on Chopped Vegetable Salad with Ginger-Tahini Dressing. And I was very pleasantly delighted by this easy recipe. And Annie is right: marinating the vegetables for a bit allows them to absorb the dressing even more. Find this recipe in the Crunchy chapter, page 172.

I love the Junk chapter! It's almost cheating calling it junk, though, as the recipes are still so healthful! Nevertheless, you can find recipes such as Butternut Squash Queso, Coconut-Lime Mini Doughnuts with Coconut-Lime Glaze, or this Iced Maple Latte Shake, page 210. Malty, iced coffee shake: yum!

Now for a freebie recipe from Crave Eat Heal from the Cool chapter: The recipe and photo below are by Annie Oliverio and they are courtesy of Cedar Fort, Inc, Front Table Books. Make sure to catch, or catch-up on, the rest of the blog tour HERE. And if you, like me, love Annie's recipes, subscribe to her blog HERE. Annie is also on Pinterest HERE. You can add Annie to your circle on Google+ HERE.

This take on a classic salad reminds me of many family dinners eaten out at The Brown Derby: a big, crunchy wedge of lettuce topped with a creamy dressing and sprinkled with salty bacon. My version subs tempeh for bacon and adds a little sweetness with fresh pears.

Gluten-free, Raw Option, Oil-free, Quick, Easy

BUTTER LETTUCE WEDGES WITH SUNFLOWER SEED DRESSING, PEARS & TEMPEH BACON

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

Dressing

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/2 cup non-dairy milk

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 clove garlic

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

Pinch sea salt

1 tsp. dried chives, or 1 Tbsp. fresh chives, chopped

1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped

Salad

2 large heads butter lettuce, cut into quarters

2 ripe pears, cored and thinly sliced

Tempeh bacon, crumbled or chopped (exclude if going for 100% raw)

DIRECTIONS

Add the sunflower seeds through the salt in a high-speed or regular blender and process until very smooth.  Add the chives and parsley and pulse a few times to incorporate.  Set aside.

Place two butter lettuce wedges each in four bowls.  Divide the pear slices, the tempeh bacon and the dressing between the bowls.  Serve.

Total Time: 15 minutes

Suggestions:

If the dressing is too thick, add water, a little bit at at time, to get the consistency you like.

Recipe reprinted with permission from Ann Oliverio and Front Table Books.

If you haven't entered to win "The Good Karma Diet," get to it HERE. Contest ends May 18 at midnight!

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"the good karma diet" + giveaway

What goes around, comes around. We've all heard the old motto, but many of us have yet to apply it to something as daily as eating. Too many people only consider this old adage on massive scales or only human-to-human contact, but the truth runs much deeper and affects many more beings than the homo sapien kind.

Victoria Moran addresses this correlation between who/what we eat with how we feel and what we reap. In her yet-to-be released book, The Good Karma Diet: Eat Gently, Feel Amazing, Age in Slow Motion, (Amazon, B&N, Penguin Publishers), Victoria breaches and approaches this topic with her typical good sense and good sense of humor. The book is a complete guide to eating karmically that benefits you, the world you live in and the animals that inhabit it with you.

She shows us how we can choice food that sustains energy, extends youthfulness, reduces weight and how enlightenment can affect our outlook. The book is divided into 25 chapters, full of advice, inspiration, tips and stories of experiences from folks on the karmic path. As Victoria puts it, the book is a living book and alnough not necessarily a cookbook, it does include a section of recipes.

Victoria Moran has been writing books for more than 20 years, is the author of Main Street Vegan (Amazon, B&N) and is the founder of the Main Street Vegan Academy.

If you have ever read any of Victoria's books, you will know that she is charming and very down to earth. I thoroughly loved the book, evidenced that I received the book, sat down and read it overnight. It was as addictive as the topic. Not only is the book informative, but it is fun to read!

If you purchase a book before the publish date of May 19, you get a few perks: an exclusive telecast with Victoria and you will be entered in a contest to win $$ for your favorite charity. Victoria makes sure that the karma keeps moving fluidly: you get the book, the telecast, charity gets donations and the animals are spared. Win, win all around.

Victoria shares one of the recipes in the book and below she is giving away a copy of The Good Karma Diet, open to both US and Canadian residents. Make sure to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below. Contest ends Monday, May 18.

Creamy Golden Squash Soup

Ingredients:

6 cups boiling water


1 medium white onion whole and unpeeled


1 medium butternut or walnut squash, cubed


1 small zucchini, cubed


1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped


2 tablespoons olive oil


1 medium red onion, sliced


1 medium stalk celery, chopped


1/2 teaspoon turmeric


2 teaspoons cumin


1-2 cloves garlic, chopped


1 tablespoon salt (or to taste)


1/2 teaspoon cracked black pepper


1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


1/2 cup walnuts, chopped and lightly toasted (If toasting your own chopped raw walnuts, toast in a dry skillet at medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until lightly toasted. Remove from heat immediately.)

Loving Preparation:

1. In a medium pot, add the water, whole white onion, and squash. Bring to a boil again; then simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Add the zucchini and carrots and simmer for 10 minutes more.

3. Meanwhile, sauté the sliced red onions in oil on medium heat until golden brown. Set aside.

4. Drain the soup into a large bowl and set the liquid aside.

5. Discard the onion peel and add peeled white onion, along with the drained soup ingredients, to a heatproof food processor or blender. Add celery, salt, and all seasonings, and puree until smooth and creamy. (Be very careful when blending hot liquids as the sudden release of steam has a tendency to blow the lid off of blenders. Be sure the lid is firmly in place and cover the lid with a towel for extra safety. Start the blender at its lowest speed, increasing it slowly.)

6. Pour the blender contents back into the pot and add the drained stock and sautéed onions.

7. Adjust the flavor if needed, with more salt, pepper, or any of the spices.

8. Serve hot or chilled, in bowls or mugs. Sprinkle with toasted walnuts and decorate with a sprig of parsley or cilantro.

9. Soup will keep refrigerated up to 3 days. Or freeze in a plastic container or sealed BPA- free zipper bag.

Serves 4 to 6

"Meaty" Variation:

If you love mushrooms and want a bit of a meaty texture, sauté 1 cup of fresh or 10 soaked and sliced shiitake mushrooms with the sliced red onion.

Excerpted from THE GOOD KARMA DIET: Eat Gently, Feel Amazing, Age in Slow Motion by Victoria Moran, with the permission of Tarcher/Penguin, a division of Penguin Random House. Copyright © 2015.

Photo and recipe by Doris Fin, CCHP, AADP.

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dump dinner: pasta puttanesca

After a bit of research into what dump dinners actually are, I've discovered that there are basically four kinds of "dumps:"

1. Slow cooker meals

2. Pressure cooker meals

3. Oven meals

4. Stove-top meals

In each instance, the ingredients ideally go straight into the cooking vessel and after heat and time, out comes a meal ready for the table.

The distinct omission in these kinds of recipes is the lack of flavor development that comes with something like sauteing, for instance. You just cannot get the same flavor from an onion that you merely boil instead of cook in a bit of fat. 

Since I am not cooking with oil for the time being (trying out the Forks Over Knives, Engine 2 Diet and McDougall plan) I figured this is the best time to try my hand at real, true Dump Dinners. That means no sauteeing and everything goes in at once.

Making a dump pasta dinner was my next challenge. Instead of cooking everything separately, I made this meal entirely in the oven. If any pasta dish is great as a dump meal, it would be Pasta Puttanesca. This dish is a tomato and olive based pasta meal.

I used white pasta here because I just wasn't sure how the meal would cook up, but since this went really well, I will make subsequent pasta dishes with whole grain pasta instead.

In my recipe I used extra firm tofu, but I am recommending baked tofu instead, although you could omit the tofu completely; the recipe is flexible.

Without further chatter from me, below is my take on the pasta dish in true dump style.

Pasta Puttanesca

Serves 4

Prep Time: 10 minutes for assembly and pre-heat, 5 minutes of sit time

Cook Time: 50 minutes

1 (15 to 18-ounce) can whole tomatoes, undrained

2 ½ cups vegetable broth

1 (4 to 5-ounce) jar kalamata olives, drained

2 tablespoons drained capers

2 tablespoons tomato paste or ¼ cup tomato concentrate

1 teaspoon dried oregano

¾ teaspoon sea salt

Black pepper, to taste

10 ounces pasta (increase broth to 3 cups if using whole wheat pasta)

1 (10-ounce) package baked tofu, cut into ¼-inch dice

4 garlic cloves, sliced

1 tablespoon olive oil, optional

2 tablespoons minced parsley, optional

1. Preheat the oven to 400-degrees F. Transfer the tomatoes to a large oven-safe pot, breaking up the tomatoes as you add them. Add the broth, olives, capers, paste. oregano, salt and black pepper. Stir well to incorporate the tomato paste into the water. Add the pasta, tofu and garlic. Make sure all the pasta is submerged in the liquid. Cover the pot tightly with foil and bake for 30 minutes.

2. Uncover the pot carefully, stir the pasta and continue to bake until the pasta is tender, about 20 more minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes before serving. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with parsley, if using.

Quick Tip: Preheat oven while you chop and assemble the dish.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

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dump dinner: ginger butternut and fennel wild rice

This is a dish that I will term a 2-Step DD (Dump Dinner) because it needs two kinds of cooking techniques.

While the recipe is still easy, as in prep time being around 10 minutes, it does require the wild rice to be cooked on the stove top and the vegetables to be roasted in the oven. The dish is ready in 40 minutes, including roasting time because the wild rice has an overnight soak.

I would say that the most difficult part of this recipe is tackling the butternut squash. My method for preparing this often imagined difficult-to-handle winter squash is to cut off the top stem-end and divide the squash into two pieces, right where the bulb meets the long neck.

Next, I peel the neck-end of the squash using a vegetable peeler and chop as needed. That leaves the time-consuming part of the squash to deal with: the bulb, seeded-end. This I reserve for another dish or another time.

I cut it in half, seed, place cut side down and bake until tender. Then I season and either scoop out the orange flesh or serve as is with a spoon. To peel, seed, and chop the curved bulb end takes a lot of time and effort and is best left as its own separate meal.

So, preheat your oven and by the time it's ready, your squash will be, too.

GINGER BUTTERNUT AND FENNEL WILD RICE PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Ginger Butternut and Fennel Wild Rice

Serves 4

Prep Time: 10 minutes of chopping, 10 minutes pre-heat, overnight soak

Cook Time: 35 minutes

Vegetables:

4 cups shaved fennel

3 cups ½-inch dice butternut squash

½-inch piece ginger, minced

½ cup vegetable broth

Sea salt and black pepper

Rice:

1 ½ cups brown and wild rice blend, soaked overnight and drained

1 cup vegetable broth

½-inch piece ginger, minced

½ teaspoon sea salt

Water, as needed

2 cups cooked cannellini beans

4 scallions, minced

1. Vegetables: Preheat oven to 450-degrees F. Combine the fennel, squash, ginger and broth on a baking sheet. Season with salt and black pepper and bake until tender, about 30 minutes.

2. Rice: Combine the drained rice, broth, ginger, salt and enough water as needed to cover the rice by 1-inch in a medium pot. Cook the rice until tender, about 15 minutes over a strong simmer. Drain the rice, return to the pot. Drape a kitchen towel over the rice and steam for 5 minutes.

3. Stir in the beans, scallions and roasted vegetables and season with salt and black pepper, as needed.

Quick Tip: Preheat oven while you chop the vegetables.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

dump dinner: lentil and kale stew

Since my new book, Vegan Bowls, B&N / Amazon, will be published soon (although not soon enough, if you ask me!), I am no longer really focusing on bowl recipes - which are flavor-packed complete meals in a bowl. Well, that's not really true as bowl foods are simply amazing because they are no-brainers - you don't have to think of something else to make to balance out the meal.

The truth is that I am still making bowls, just not telling the family that they are "bowls." As you can imagine, during recipe development and testing, bowls were at every meal, at least 3 meals, but at times up to 4 or 5 meals!

Thanks to the advice of Tami Noyes, of The Great Vegan Protein cookbook, I am the proud owner of an Instant Pot pressure cooker. If you purchase one, get the coupon code - worth around $50!

This machine is amazing! My favorite aspect of this thing is that the pot is stainless steel. I had an electric pressure cooker in the past which I used only seldom because the pot was nonstick. This is an electric pressure cooker that is also a slow cooker, steamer and yogurt maker. I love it!

Now that Vegan Bowls is almost ready, I can get back to experimenting and cooking with my Instant Pot. Of course, you don't need an Instant Pot in order to cook pressure cooker recipes, but since I have it, I will be using it more often now.

I'd like to start a series of Astonishingly Easy Dinners or Dump Dinners using either a slow cooker or pressure cooker.  I recently saw a commercial for Dump Dinners and looked though the preview and the reviews on Amazon. Just as the commercial indicated, the recipes were based on processed ingredients and were nothing to write home about.

Still, I liked the idea of just dumping food into a pot and letting it go. There are some awesome books on the market now, like Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson, if you are looking for a great slow cooker book, but I'd like to start a series that is even easier than Robin's. Quite the challenge, I know, because I also want to make everything taste like you really spent a lot of time preparing things.

Dump Dinners is not a new concept, as evidenced by a quick Amazon search:

 

Unfortunately, not only are they not vegan, but the super processed aspect - dumping frozen raviolis and jarred tomato sauce into a pot, for instance - turned me off. I want more scratch-made recipes that are healthy, use less plastic (the plastic that ingredients are packaged in, especially processed ingredients) and are made with more whole foods. My first offering in this new series I'll temporarily dub "Dump Dinners" is French Lentil and Kale Stew.

French Lentil and Kale Stew

Serves 4

Prep Time: 8 minutes of chopping

Cook Time: 35 minutes

4 medium carrots, chopped

3 spring onions, or 1 large yellow or red onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, chopped

2 tablespoons vegetable broth or 1 tablespoon olive oil

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 cup French lentils, rinsed and picked over

1 pound kale, tough stems removed and chopped

6 cups vegetable broth

Sea salt and black pepper

1. Heat a large pot over medium heat or set the Instant Pot to saute. Add the carrots, onions, garlic and jalapeno to the pot. Add splashes of vegetable broth as needed to keep the vegetables from burning. Stir in the bay leaves and cumin seeds. Stir and cook for 5 minutes.

2. Add the lentils, kale and broth. Cover and cook over medium heat until the lentils and kale are tender, about 30 minutes. Alternatively, using a pressure cooker, cook the stew for 20 minutes under High Pressure.

3. Season the soup with salt and black pepper, as needed. Serve with whole grain bread and/or cayenne pepper.

Quick Tip: Chop near the stove or the pressure cooker. If using oil, add the oil to the pot first. Add the vegetables as they are chopped. If using vegetable broth to saute, add splashes of the broth as needed.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.