Waste Not Want Not Wednesday: Very Veggie Fried Rice

When I made this for lunch recently, Jonathan, my 2 year old son said, "Like this meal." That's great news for me. This lunch dish was composed primarily out of leftover ingredients I wanted to use up when I cleaned out my refrigerator.

You could make this for lunch, as we did, as a side dish at dinner, or keep some in the refrigerator for a nourishing snack. It reheats well, though I think it's yummiest fresh from the pan.

Very Veggie Fried Rice
serves 4-6, depending on appetite!
1 cup frozen peas

1 large carrot (or 2 small), diced fine
1 large celery stalk, diced fine
(alternatively, use up to 2 cups of leftover veggies. You may need to adjust the seasoning if you choose to do this)

2 cups leftover cold cooked brown rice
1/2 cup green onions, white and green parts, minced
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tsp five spice powder
1/2 block tofu, or, leftover tofu from another meal
1 tablespoon grated ginger
3 large cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp low sodium soy sauce
low sodium soy sauce or Bragg's Liquid Aminos to taste
chopped peanuts, chopped cilantro, and Sriracha (optional) to garnish
1-3 tablespoons oil, for the pan

To keep this lower in fat, use a large non-stick skillet or wok. That will significantly reduce the amount of oil necessary to "fry" your rice.

Squeeze the excess moisture from your tofu and break into medium chunks on a plate. Sprinkle tofu crumbles with five spice powder and soy sauce. If you are using leftover tofu, skip this step, and add the five spice powder when you add the garlic and ginger.
Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add the chopped garlic and ginger. Saute for about 30 seconds, just until cooked. Be careful not to burn! Add the chopped celery and carrot and cook until softened, about 4-5 minutes. Add the tofu and cook until heated through, about 2 minutes. At this point, add more oil to the pan, if necessary. Add the cold brown rice and cook until hot, stirring often. Stir in the hoisin sauce and green onions. Check the seasoning. Add Bragg's if it needs more salt.
Serve in bowls, garnished with chopped peanuts and cilantro. For those who (like me) like it spicy, drizzle with Sriracha. This would probably be great with a wedge of lime, too!

"Buttermilk" Biscuits

Vegan food is not inherently healthy. This recipe definitely proves that. Ever since I started toeing the water of veganism, I have been on a quest for a decent biscuit recipe. It's been pretty difficult to find one that I liked. Usually, the biscuit ends up tasting like Earth Balance or soy. Not my favorite flavors. This is my favorite recipe (well, for now, anyway). It's based on the buttermilk biscuits from the 2006 edition of The Joy of Cooking. I veganized the recipe in a way that would minimize the soy flavors. You could use almond milk in this recipe, but I did not want my biscuits to taste like almond. I want them to taste like biscuits. If you do not have coconut oil, you could try using a non-hydrogenated shortening. These are good the next day, best if rewarmed in a hot oven. 

"Buttermilk" Biscuits (adapted from The Joy of Cooking, 2006 edition)

makes about 9 massive biscuits; for smaller biscuits, adjust cooking time

2 cups all purpose flour, or whole wheat combination

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tablespoons cold Earth Balance

2-3 tablespoons cold coconut oil

3/4 cup cold Rice milk

1/4 cup cold soy milk

1 tablespoon vinegar

Mix the milks and vinegar and set aside while you prep the other ingredients.

Preheat the oven to 450. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in the fats using your fingers or a biscuit cutter. The mix should resemble peas. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk mixture. Stir together. Knead the dough about ten times in the bowl, until the dough comes together. Dump out onto a well floured board and knead a few more times. With your hands, flatten dough out to about 1/2" . Cut biscuits out and place on baking sheet. Knead scraps together and keep cutting until you run out of dough. Group the biscuits close together on the baking sheet. This helps them get super tall and fluffy. 

Bake for 10-13 minutes, until golden brown. 

I recommend eating them with hot out of the oven with a smear of jam, but that is just my preference :)

House Balsamic Vinaigrette

I have a confession to make. I generally hate salad. At least, I did, until I began to experiment with the classic sherry vinaigrette on page 56 in the French Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Loomis. I discovered that I don't like sherry vinegar, and that I am a wimp about mustard, so I tweaked and tweaked until I came up with a recipe that I really did enjoy*. Now I like salad :) In fact, one of my absolute favorites is a simple salad of baby greens and grape tomatoes tossed with a little of this vinaigrette.

This recipe forms the base for all of my homemade salad dressings, with few exceptions. It's very easy, can be made by hand, in a blender, or in a food processor, and tastes infinitely better than bottled dressings. Homemade salad dressing seems so fancy (from this bumpkin's perspective, anyway), but really, they are the easiest thing in the world. Mine probably aren't cheaper than the store bought bottles of, say, Kraft, or whatever, but that's because I use quality--often organic--ingredients, not cheap soybean oil and vinegar.

A note for those worried about the amount of fat in this:
First of all, eat real food in moderation and enjoy life :)
Second, I dress an entire bowl of salad for my family with about 2 tablespoons of this, no joke. A serving size for any fat is 1 tablespoon, I believe. This dressing is flavorful and sticks well to salad leaves because it is a thick emulsion. It just takes a little while to get it gently tossed in the leaves. Also, I don't like very vinegary dressings. So if you want to add less fat, do it. I don't care. You'll probably end up needing way more salad dressing for the same amount of leaves.
Third, this the only salad dressing that my little two and a half year old always eats. Back when we ate dairy, he wouldn't even reliably eat ranch. It's also one of the only dressings that I like.

House Balsamic Vinaigrette
makes just over 3/4 cup
1/3 cup good quality balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp dijon mustard
1/4 tsp black pepper
salt to taste
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1/2 cup good quality olive oil

Mix everything but the oil in a small mixing bowl, food processor, or blender. Slowly add the olive oil, whisking or blending all the while, until the olive oil is fully incorporated, creating a thick emulsion.

*But it all came about because of that original recipe by Susan Loomis, so a big fat thanks to her!

Cardamom Pear Coffee Cake

A delicious cake that screams of fall and is pretty easy to make. The only thing that might make this recipe more complicated is if you choose to make homemade chunky pear sauce (recipe is at the end of this blog post). But even that is super easy, and honestly, well worth the effort!

Cardamom Pear Coffee Cake
for 1 8"x8" cake
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup oil (any unflavored oil should work well)
1 tsp salt
1 Tablespoon vinegar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cardamom
1 1/2 cup unsweetened pear sauce

Topping:
2 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup sliced or slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8"x8" pan. Mix all of the dry ingredients (NOT the ingredients for the topping, however) in a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine the wet ingredients, stirring to combine. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Pour into greased pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle the almonds over the top of the cake, then sprinkle the sugar over the top. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out dry and the topping is golden. Allow this to cool before cutting.
This cake is best enjoyed warm, with a big ol' cuppa black coffee. Awesome.

Pear Sauce:
This recipe is a great way to use up ripe pears if you find you have a sudden influx of them.
Peel and core several to several pounds of very ripe pears. Place in a sauce pan or deep pot with a dash of water (less water for few pears, up to a cup for several pounds of pears; just use as little water as you can without burning fruit to the bottom of your pan). Simmer over medium low until pears fall apart. Stir often. You can leave this sauce as chunky as you'd like. I like mine fairly chunky. It's great as a snack, or in the cake, above. Try it in oatmeal as a natural sweetener (this is what we do with our 2 year old!).

Cabbage Salsa and Cilantro Mayo Sandwich Toppers

To find the recipe I used for Curry Burgers, check out the (very awesome) website theppk.com. It's a great way to use leftovers, and I think we'll be using this basic recipe to make veggie burgers out of many of our leftover legume based stews. For the record, my 2 year old son loved the burgers but hated the curry we used to make them. For some reason he thought they were chicken nuggets...

This is my master recipe for Cabbage Salsa (or, Citrusy Coleslaw if the concept of salsa with non-tex-mex cuisine offends you). My family started out using this as a taco topper (using the tex-mex variation), but it soon moved to burger topper, and even a side salad. We eat this several times per month, often with tacos, but with a few variations, it's super good with many other cuisines as well (such as Indian inspired flavors!).

For full disclosure, I found a handful of recipes for cabbage salsa online and tweaked it to my own liking. It's been so long that I don't know which recipes were the specific inspirations for this, so I can't credit any of them.

Cabbage Salsa, Basic Recipe
3 cups shredded cabbage or prepackaged coleslaw mix (which is what we used for the batch pictured above)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 limes, juiced (this will vary by the lime--Most of the time I only need 1)
1 bunch of green onion tops (green parts only), chopped
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

Tex Mex Variation:
1 jalapeno or Fresno chili, minced
1 tomato, chopped fine
dash of ground coriander and cumin, to taste

Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl and toss well to combine. The lime flavor will be most sharp if served right away. Or, you can let this rest in the refrigerator for 30-60 minutes to let the flavors blend. The cabbage will soften slightly if you do this. We eat the leftovers the next day, but because it is wilted by that time, we frequently toss fresh shredded cabbage in the mix to reintroduce the crunch factor.

Cilantro Mayo
1/2 cup vegan mayo
2 Tablespoons minced green onions
3 Tablespoons finely minced cilantro

Stir ingredients together and serve. This works best served immediately. Great flavor for tex-mex, Indian, or North African flavors (think chili burgers, curry burgers, or falafel). This was pretty much essential on our curry burgers, especially with sliced tomato. It kicked them up from good to great.

Green Beans with Spring Onion Almond Pesto

This was one of those recipes that came together purely on accident, when dinner was almost finished, but I decided that the side dish needed just a little more oomph. In this case, the side was steamed green beans. And this recipe provided excellent ooph. This pesto whips together very quickly and is very flexible. Feel like more garlic and less green onion? Go for it. Want less crunch? Leave out some almonds. You can add more or less olive oil, change the type of oil, substitute broth--seriously, go nuts. No pun intended. Or was it?!

I recommend making this in either a food processor, or what I used, a 4 cup capacity "food chopper" (read: compact food processor). I like my Cuisinart 4 cup food chopper, but I'll write more about that awesome little tool later in some other post. A blender would probably work, too, in a pinch, but I have had issues with uneven processing when using a blender to make any kind of pesto. Unless you have a Vitamix, in which case you are awesome and I'm totally jealous.

Anyway, getting down to business....

Green Beans with Spring Onion Almond Pesto
Makes about 3/4 cup of pesto for 1 pound of green beans


3 green onions, trimmed of the fangly rooty bits at the bottom, and cut into rough 1" chunks (it will process better this way)
2 cloves garlic, peeled (smaller cloves will produce a less "hot" garlic flavor)
1/3 cup whole almonds
1 1/2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons-1/4 cup olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste
1 pound green beans, trimmed

Toss the garlic and green onions in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the garlic is chopped relatively evenly. Add the almonds, vinegar, and olive oil. Process again until the ingredients begin to come together to form a paste. I left my almonds somewhat coarse, rather than smooth, to preserve the lovely crunch of almonds, but if you like a smoother texture, continue processing until it reaches your desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

In a steaming apparatus (I use a bamboo steamer with lid over a pot of boiling water), steam the green beans until they are easily pierced by a fork, but haven't lost all of their crunch. Time will vary based on your green beans (and probably your altitude, or whatever). In a large bowl, toss the hot green beans with a few tablespoons of the pesto. Add more pesto until it reaches the flavor and texture that you like best. It may take quite a bit of tossing to coat all of the beans with the nutty, herby mix. But it's so worth it. Enjoy!