zuppa toscanan

Zuppa Toscana is an Italian soup made of sausage, potatoes, kale and cream. I made a simple bechamel sauce to replace the cream, which is nothing more than cooking some flour in a little oil and adding the liquid. The flour-based roux thickens the soup and makes it creamy, therefore replacing the need for the cream.

I used ground Tofurkey sausage in this, along with seasoned lentils, but you can use either with equally great results.

I garnished my soup with some leftover Bacon Tofu from Everyday Vegan Eats (page 134) because I made a quadruple batch earlier in the week and I had a little bit leftover. The crisp vegan bacon was quite delicious in this soup and I recommend it highly.

If you have EVE and haven't tried the bacon, I urge you to do so...but go full out and pan-fry it because it gets crispy and crunchy and oh! so tasty.

Zuppa Toscana

Serves 4

3 tablespoons  olive oil, divided

½ medium onion, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups ground vegan sausage (such as Tofurkey Italian sausage) OR 2 cups cooked lentils (see note)

3 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour

1 ½ cups unsweetened plain vegan milk

3 cups vegetable broth

1 bay leaf (if not using seasoned lentils)

1 pound red potatoes, chopped

8 ounces kale, tough stems removed and chopped

Sea salt and black pepper

1 cup chopped prepared vegan bacon (such as Bacon Tofu from Everyday Vegan Eats)

½ cup minced fresh basil

1. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large pot over medium high. Add the onion, garlic and sausage, if using. Cook until golden,about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove and set aside.

2. Add the remaining oil and the flour. Cook the flour for 2 minutes and add the milk. Whisk well to prevent lumps. Add the broth, bay leaf, if using, the potatoes and kale. Season with salt and black pepper.  Bring to boil, reduce to simmer and cook until the potatoes are tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.

3. Taste and adjust seasoning. Remove and discard the bay leaf. Serve the soup garnished with  bacon and basil.

Note: Cook the lentils with 1 bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds and 1/8 teaspoon red chili flakes.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

middle eastern red lentil soup (shorbat adas)

Red dal is the quickest cooking lentil. Dal is split lentils and red dal is red lentils that are split in half. They take about 15 minutes to cook and taste delicious.

Sharpa adas is a very popular Middle Eastern soup of lentils that is seasoned with lemon, cumin and olive oil and is served with pita.

I add collard greens to this dish to boost it's nutrition; collards contain the highest amount of calcium of all the dark leafy greens. Because they are so bitter, it is a good idea to cook the collards in a pot of water until they are tender before using them in a recipe, about 15 minutes - the time it takes to cook the soup.

I serve this soup with seasoned pita croutons, adding flavor and texture to the soup. The pita is spiked with za'atar, a Middle Eastern spice mix of sesame seeds, thyme and sumac. If you don't have za'atar, season the croutons with 1/2 teaspoon thyme and 2 teaspoons sesame seeds.  

Overall, this is a tasty, nutritious, easy and quick soup to get on the lunch table.

ALSO: If you haven't already entered my contest to win Somer McCowan's new cookbook, The Abundance Diet, make sure to do so, HERE. Contest ends June 22.

Middle Eastern Lentil Soup (Shorbat Adas)

Serves 4

Soup:

8 ounces collard greens, tough stems removed, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium carrots, grated

1 medium onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 medium tomatoes, chopped

2 tablespoons chicken-free broth mix (Savory Broth Mix from Everyday Vegan Eats)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon turmeric

6 cups vegetable broth

1 ½ cups red dal, rinsed and picked over

Sea salt and black pepper

Lemon wedges

Pita Croutons:

2 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons za’atar

¼ teaspoon sea salt

3 pita breads, cut into 1-inch squares

1. Soup: Cook the collards in a medium pot of salted water until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and chop well. Set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the carrot, onion and garlic. Cook until softened and golden, about 8 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook until the tomato breaks down, about 5 minutes. Stir in the broth mix, cumin, paprika and turmeric. Stir in the broth and dal. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer. Cook until the dal is tender. 

3. Croutons: Preheat the toaster oven or oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the oil, lemon juice, za’atar and salt in a medium bowl. Add the pita squares and toss well. transfer to a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Stir and continue to bake for another 10 minutes until crisp.

4. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth. Season the soup with salt and black pepper. Serve with lemon wedges and croutons.

© 2015 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.


I'm entering this post into the linky blog party over at Kimmy's blog:

"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.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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.

cream of celery soup with spinach and crispy onion

I'm relatively sure we are all experiencing quite a hot summer, regardless of where we are individually located. While the weather is so scorching, soup might seem to be the last meal on your mind to make, but this Cream of Celery Soup with Spinach and Crispy Onion is light and delicate.

I chose celery as the base of this soup because celery automatically brings to mind a level of coolness and it is easy on the budget.

Since celery is very stringy (in fact, I like to peel my celery before I dip the stalks in any dip) it is imperative that the soup be strained through a fine mesh strainer, otherwise instead of enjoying a delicious soup, you'll find your mouth full of celery fiber.

This is not as difficult as it sounds, and the straining can be accomplished in around five minutes. Transfer your soup to the strainer set over a clean pot and use the back of a ladle to swirl the soup around in the strainer. This motion will effectively push the soup through the strainer without back-aching strain.

There was a comedian on Last Comic Standing a few weeks ago who joked that since celery is about 10 calories, the digestive process requires more energy than the celery provides, therefore you can kill yourself eating celery.

To avoid this calamity, I've added thin ribbons of spinach to increase the nutrition.

The soup is garnished with crispy fried onions, which adds another layer of flavor, and minced celery leaves, which increases the celery flavor.

There is a little bit of vegan cream cheese in the soup and some might be tempted to omit it, however, doing so is the difference between a creamy potato soup with celery and cream of celery soup.

CREAM OF CELERY SOUP WITH SPINACH AND CRISPY ONIONS 

PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Cream of Celery Soup with Spinach and Crispy Onions  

Serves 2 as a meal, 4 as an appetizer

1 tablespoon neutral oil

1 bunch celery, trimmed and chopped, leaves reserved

1 medium onion, chopped

2 medium (9 ounces) waxy potatoes, peeled and chopped

pinch cayenne

2 cups vegetable broth

2 cups water

Sea salt and ground white pepper

2 tablespoons vegan cream cheese

1 cup thinly sliced spinach, tough stems removed

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

Crispy Onions, recipe below

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the celery and onion. Cook for 2 minutes to soften the vegetables. Add the potato and cayenne. Stir and cook for 2 more minutes. Stir in the vegetable broth and water. Season with salt and white pepper. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer and cook until the potatoes are very tender, about 15 minutes.

2. Blend the soup until smooth using an immersion blender or use a standard blender, taking care not to overfill the blender jar. Strain the soup through a fine mesh strainer into a clean pot. Use the back of a ladle, swirling the soup in the strainer, to move the soup through the strainer and into the pot.

3. Return the soup to a simmer, add the spinach and cook gently until the spinach is tender. Stir in the cream cheese, using a wooden spoon to stir until smooth. Stir in the lemon juice, taste and adjust seasoning.

4. Mince the reserved celery leaves and serve the soup garnished with the Crispy Onions and celery leaves.

Crispy Onions

½ medium red onion, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon arrowroot starch or cornstarch

1 tablespoon neutral onion

1. Toss the onion and arrowroot. Season with salt and black pepper.

2. Heat the oil over medium heat in a medium skillet. Add the onions, stir with the oil and cook until crispy, stirring occasionally.

© 2014 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

I am linking to these recipe parties: Healthy Vegan Fridays, What I Ate Wednesday, Gluten-Free Fridays and Virtual Vegan Linky Potluck. 

 

    

roasted corn and lime tortilla soup

Ever had the feeling that your head is running in a thousand different directions and your body is needed in a thousand more? We all have! Especially in this day and age, we find ourselves being pulled hither and thither. When your kids are hungry and lunch or dinner needs to be on the table in less than half an hour, what can you do - besides literally phoning it in?

With the writing of my cookbook, Everyday Vegan Eats (available for pre-order ;) complete, life is just beginning to get back to normal at the Dever house. While writing I was able to foist off driving the kids to their activities and making snacks, quite comfortably onto the shoulders of my husband, but now I've no more excuses to get back to cooking. As my family would remind me, it is actually my job, since I am a cook and cookbook author.

Be that as it may, there are times when I can spend luxuriating in the kitchen, there are times when I can spend making comfort foods that everyone enjoys and then there are times that food just needs to be ready in a hurry!

This is a soup I came up with for lunch today, knowing that it had to be ready in under 30 minutes. It has roasted corn, black beans, fire-roasted tomatoes, is thickened with baked tortilla chips and is enhanced with a splash of fresh lime juice. As fast as it came together, it was just as delightful.

ROASTED CORN AND LIME TORTILLA SOUP PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Remember how I said I 'd keep posting more pics from the cookbook? Here is a sandwich that would have been quite wonderful with the soup above, and just as quick to throw together.

CALIFORNIA CLUB SANDWICH

And if you haven't entered the giveaway for Robin Robertson's revised edition of Vegan Planet, do so right HERE. Unless you already have the book, why not? It's an amazing volume that has stood the test of time, now with revised recipes as well as 50 new ones. Contest ends April 11.

Also, be sure to let your friends and family know that the great Meatout is March 20th (tomorrow!). Eat vegan for one day and help the animals and the planet. Pledge HERE.


I am also linking to these recipe parties! The blogs hosting Healthy Vegan Fridays are Suzanne at Hello Veggie, Anna at Herbivore Triathlete, and Kimmy at Rock My Vegan Socks.  

The blog hosting Gluten-Free Fridays is Vegetarian Mamma.

I’ve also decided to submit this dish to What I Ate Wednesday hosted by Peas and Crayons since, well, it will be Wednesday soon enough!

food trucks! 3-bean chili and sweet potato fries bowl

Today our food truck road trip takes us to Los Angeles to visit the Bowled and Beautiful food truck on our magic carpet ride. This California-based hopeful food truck is looking to win this season's Food TV's Great Food Truck Race.

The group of ladies dishes up fusion California cuisine served in a bowl. And they do have a chance to win! The ladies have earned one of the top two spots for three weeks in row, and they don't look like they'll be slowing down. We'll see how tonight's episode progresses.

Since none of the trucks this season actually own a food truck, yet, the ladies don't actually have a business or a menu I can peek at. No matter; Food TV has supplied cyber space with a picture of one of their meals.

A signature dish of theirs is 3-Bean, Beef and Bacon Chili Bowl. The picture of the bowl on the Food TV site appears to contain sweet potato fries, so, in addition to the name, I decided to add this golden root vegetable to the bowl.

I call my dish, 3-Bean, Barley and Smoky Chili Bowl. I used kidney, pinto and black beans as my trio. I added the barley to give the dish some bite while keeping the faux meat out of the bowl. 

I grabbed a package of sweet potato fries at my local Whole Foods, baked them up and plopped them at the bottom of the bowl. Topping the fries with the spicy, smoky chili and finely shredded vegan cheese and minced onions, gave me an adequate facsimile of the pictured dish. 

As it turns out, the bowl was quite a hit! The chili took only about 20 minutes to cook. Bonus! However, the fries were the surprise element that we all thought worked quite well with the chili.

Good luck to these women, although given that they are Californian, I'd expect more veg cuisine from them. 

Here's hoping they hear the rumble of the vegan crowd.

3-BEAN, BARLEY AND SMOKY CHILI BOWL

"grills gone vegan" + black bean and carrot soup

Greetings from the new website!

Weekly Vegan Menu has moved to Zsu's Vegan Pantry and I am excited to introduce the new website. Please bookmark this new site: www.zsusveganpantry.com. 

Not only has the blog's address and site have changed, but so has my family's location. We are now in San Diego, California, hoping to get out of our cramped apartment and into a more spacious house in the near future.

Right now I am cooking in a small kitchen, where I can reach from the fridge to the stove to the sink in a single step and where our teenage girls are sharing a room. Eek! NO teenager should ever have to share a room with another teenager  -- even though I remember doing the very same thing in my teens years; somehow it seems harder now. Generation gap.

Now that our family is semi-settled from our cross-country move, it is time to thank Tami from Vegan Appetite and author of Grills Gone Vegan, to extend a gratitude for announcing my photo of  her Corn-on-the-Cob recipe from the Grills Gone Vegan cookbook as her second place winner. My prize was a gift certificate to her very, very favorite online spice store, Penzeys Spices. I haven't had the chance to use the prize funds, yet, but I have taken a gander through their catalog and I have some great ideas!
Check them out!

Since grilling season is still in full swing, I made a couple of more recipes from GGV: The Red-Eye Tofu Steaks (page 82) with Creamy Harissa Sauce (page 172) and Lemon-Kissed Coucous (page 104).

It was amazing. Tami always knows just how to coax flavors. The tofu was smoky because of the marinade and the sauce was perfectly spicy without over-kill. That couscous really is lemon-kissed; even my husband who doesn't care for lemon in anything savory really loved this couscous. The couscous recipe is actually part of another recipe on that same page, Tunisian Skewers -- another one I highly recommend.

Since I can't give you those recipes, how about one of mine: Black Bean and Carrot Soup. No grilling-comparison, but it is a pretty good weeknight meal recipe.

Quick and easy soup using a few cans of black beans and four large carrots, this soup is blended a bit to get rich and thick while staying gluten free. I added spices and four to five large handfuls of fresh spinach at the end for added nutrition. Top it with crispy tortilla strips and fresh jalapenos and dinner is ready in around 30 minutes. Deep flavors without a lot of time.

Black Bean and Carrot Soup Print-Friendly Recipe

frito chili pie with authentic vegetarian texas chili

Authentic Vegetarian Texas Chili Recipe

FRITO CHILI PIE PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Have you become tired of hearing that "authentic" chili has no beans in it, only beef? I certainly have had it! It might be true that back in the "good ol' days," while our forefathers were rustling cattle, there were no beans to be found on the range, only the animals who were being herded to be in the stockpot in the first place. But does that really mean that we should stop the progression and evolution of the chili? I think not. As times, tastes and even the human species evolves, it is time to redefine what "authentic chili" means. After all, we don't have live birds flying out of pies in the civilized world anymore either. Authentic, maybe; desirable, not.

Not only are legumes a welcome culinary and nutritional addition to chili, they are darn tasty to boot. 

So what makes my chili "authentic?"  In a thought, it isn't the animal products that make an authentic chili "authentic," but the spices, the chilies and, heck, I'll even agree to excluding tomatoes that have come to muddy down the chili flavors. But beef? Doesn't make the chili.

This chili has 7 different dried chilies, black beans, coffee and Tex-Mex spices such as cinnamon, allspice and cumin. Not a single muted chili powder in sight. That is what makes a Texan Chili authentic - not the cruelty.

And all this to make Frito Chili Pie, as requested by hubby. Frito chips are vegan and interestingly only contain around three ingredients. Healthy, maybe not, but really good. You can melt vegan cheese over the casserole or use my Cheese Sauce, which is the option we went with. Toss some jalapenos, lettuce, tomatoes and other taco ingredients on top and have a Tex-Mex feast.

lentils and cauliflower with gremolata salad

LENTILS AND CAULIFLOWER PRINTER-FRIENDLY RECIPE

Above is a Lentil and Cauliflower Stew topped with a Gremolata Salad. Gremolata is a traditional Italian condiment of chopped parsley, minced fresh garlic and lemon zest. It is a great punch of flavor. I decided to create a cooling salad using cucumber, roasted peppers and toss it with gremolata.

The salad adds a different dimension to the old stand-by of lentil stew, which, in this case, also contains cauliflower that has been steamed with the stew. 

This was a great variation on a favorite legume dish.

Cost Breakdown

gremolata: $1

cucumber, pepper: $2

lentil: $.50

broth: $1

cauliflower: $2

onion, oil: $.25 

Total to make 5 servings:

$6.75