(Mostly) Vegan Cooking
I recently had dinner at Al’s Place and was obsessed with the bright, bold lemon citrus flavors I found in many of the dishes. When I peeked into the kitchen later on, I figured out the secret — many jars of preserved lemons! I’d been meaning to learn how to make preserved lemons for a while, so tasting amazing food with the preserved lemons was a great motivator for learning how to do it myself.
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I used to cook all sorts of Chinese food before becoming vegan, but it usually featured some sort of meat. I’ve since avoided a lot of Chinese food, but my mom recently reminded me that there are a lot of vegan options when making Chinese cuisine, due to a heavy Buddhist influence. It was finally time to give vegan Chinese food a try!
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It’s October, which means that it’s fall, which means that it’s almost Halloween, which means that we are solidly into pumpkin (#psl) season! To celebrate my friend Carissa’s birthday, I decided to try making a vegan pumpkin pie. After all, she’s the one who inspired the veganism in the first place!
Some things I’m learning about vegan baking that are blowing my mind:
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Over the years, I’ve really come to crave a delicious veggie burger. One of my favorite veggie burgers in San Francisco was from a place called Greenburgers that has since closed, so it finally was time to learn how to make one myself! Luckily, it’s pretty easy to do, and you can even bake them in the oven if you don’t have a grill handy. The final result is a veggie burger that’s moist, packed with nutrition and color (my fave!), and is super tasty. If you can resist the urge to eat them all at once, you can also make these veggie burger patties in advance, and then freeze them until you are ready to eat them.
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I got a huge craving for falafel this week. Luckily, this easy homemade falafel recipe is pretty quick to make — just takes a little bit of planning because you need to soak the chickpeas overnight the night before. Using dried chickpeas instead of canned ones is what makes these falafel fluffy and not super dense. It relies on the starch within the chickpeas to help bind the ingredients together, so you don’t need to add any additional flour.
I love this falafel recipe because it produces falafel that are moist, yet crisp on the outside (is there anything worse than dry falafel?!). While they are deep-fried, pretty much everything else is super-healthy, so no need to fret too much about the calories. 🙂 One of the amazing things I’ve found about becoming (mostly) vegan is that I no longer worry about portion control or calories — since everything is plant-based, I eat as much as I want, and it all works out in the end.
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I’m always on the lookout for interesting, hearty salads, and this delicata squash salad with kale definitely fits the bill! In fact, it might be one of my favorite salads ever… I had it for lunch AND dinner the day I made it. It’s the perfect blend of sweet and savory, and the lemon-garlic-tahini dressing that’s over it is ridiculously good.
This is what the delicata squash will look like when cut into U-shaped pieces and set upon the baking sheet & seasoned with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
This was actually my first time ever making (or eating) delicata squash. The cool thing about delicata squash is that unlike other squashes (e.g. butternut, spaghetti, etc.), you can eat the skin!! No more annoying peeling — just remove the seeds and cut it up into U-shaped slices, and you’re ready to roast! Upon roasting, the squash gets super tender and sweet. When my husband ate this salad later, he first thought he was eating sweet potatoes!
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In high school and college, I turned to baking as my stress-relief activity in between finals. Sometimes I would even bake as many as 6 batches of different cookies in one day. In truth, I was scared to test any vegan cookie recipes, for fear that they wouldn’t turn out as good as regular cookies with copious amounts of butter and eggs.
Turns out that I had no reason to fear — these oatmeal pecan cookies were my first foray into vegan baking and they are BOMB! They are maybe the best cookies I’ve ever had, and I don’t say that lightly! Something about the toasted pecans is insanely good, plus they are just a little chewy and gooey on the inside. Also, since they are vegan and 100% egg-free, they also make for some ridiculously amazing salmonella-free cookie dough!
Also, did you know that most dark chocolate is vegan?! I just discovered this, and am so happy about this realization. Chocolate is one of my life’s soul foods, and it’s icing on the cake to realize that I can still have chocolate as an indulgence, even while vegan.
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I usually shy away from eating raw cauliflower, with the exception of this cauliflower salad with pecans. It’s awesome-sauce! (Pun-intended, though admittedly it’s a bad one. ?)
When my husband ate this cauliflower salad the other night, he said it reminded him of Michael Pollan’s guidance for food rules: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Well, this salad is even better than “mostly plants” — it’s 100% plant-based and vegan, quick to make, and super yummy to boot.
How many different colors can you spot?
Especially when cooking vegan food, I try to make my dishes as colorful as possible. Besides making for better food photos, it’s beneficial to have as many colors represented as you can in any given dish because the more colors you are able to incorporate, the more varied are the nutrients you consume. It’s a win-win for your eyes and your belly!
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Peanut noodles were a Chou household staple growing up, and often requested by my friends. It seems fancy, but it’s really pretty simple — making a peanut sauce recipe is as easy as mixing together some peanut butter and water. Now that I’m older, I also like adding some chile paste to make spicy peanut noodles.
The trick to yummy peanut butter noodles is to get the spicy peanut sauce perfectly balanced in flavor — you want it to be a little salty, sweet (to counteract the salt), and spicy. The best way to figure out the best ratio for you? Use the below spicy peanut sauce recipe as your starting point, but then do what the pros do and taste as you go. Remember — it’s easier to taste the sauce and get it right before you mix it in with the noodles (you don’t want to have to try to mix a glob of chile paste into your noodles if you want it spicier later).
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As you might be able to tell, I’m loving sweet summer corn and using it in as many recipes as possible while it’s in season! One of my favorite ways to eat corn is to have it straight off the grill, but unfortunately, that’s not possible to do in my little San Francisco kitchen without setting off the smoke detector. Charring corn over a searing-hot pan is the next-best thing, and I love using this technique to create a tasty summer zucchini salad with corn. Add in some fresh basil and ahh — you’ve got summer in a bowl.
Finn, my kitchen helper and taste tester.
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