Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Vegan recipes I really like

Tom, Outta the Cornfield ask, so here are some I make often.

Red Beans and Rice. A southern dish, variations are as many as meat loaf, I just leave out the sausage.
Saute (chopped) medium onion, bell peppers, 2 or 3 stalks celery, 1 or 5 garlics, add equal amounts of red beans and cooked brown rice, a can of chopped tomato, thyme, oregano, paprika, bay leaf, pepper(s) of your choice (black, cayenne, chipotle, jalapeno) salt.  Simmer slow for 15 to 45 min. or how ever long you can wait.

Spaghetti sauce.  Take any sauce recipe, leave out the meat, add white beans and add lots more basil than they call for.  I have had this in Italy.  I then use whole grain pasta.  You may have to experiment, some of the whole grain pasta's are not so great, I like Barilla, as good as white flour pasta.

Indian Potatoes with Cauliflower
Stir every few minutes while you make this.
Saute 1 minute 1T oil, 1t cumin, 1t garlic, 1t ginger.
Add and saute 7 min. (chopped) 2 or 3 potato, 1/2t paprika, 1/2t garam masala, 1/2t tumeric.
Add 1/2 (chopped) medium cauliflower and 1t fresh cilantro, lower heat to a simmer 10 min., cover.
You may need to add a tiny amount of water in the last few minutes.

What is Garam masala?  If you cannot buy this, make do with as many of these as you can get your hands on.  Mix these in descending order, say a spoon of the first item and a little bit less of each as you go.  Cumin, Coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, cayenne, nutmeg.  Shake it up and you now have the secret to many Indian dishes.  There are a hundred recipes for this spice, so use what ever of these you have you will get part way at least.

Pilaf, Lentil, Millet, Barley or Rice.  Variations on rice pilaf, same thing, this can also be made with combinations of these grains but cooking time means you use different pans then combine near the end.
Basically it's a small amount of vegis cooked with the grain.
1 carrot diced small, 1 celery stalk diced.  Sometimes a few shavings of onion, or a few peas.  A little salt and pepper at the end.
Put the vegis in with the grain and simmer till grain is done.  Brown lentil takes 25 to 30 min., red takes 5 or 10 min., green in between.  Millet about 20 min. (2.5 times water to grain on millet). Barley takes over an hour so add vegi's at about 50 minutes.  At serving time I sometimes add a little vegi oil and/or nuts, even raisins work.
Bonus salad.  You can cool a bit of this then add any of these: few fresh diced onion, diced pepper, cucumber, tomato, oil and vinegar, even drained-washed beans, sha-zam a high protein salad.

Americans don't eat lentil or millet very often.  They are both high in protein easy to digest and fast to prepare.  Almost all millet is grown in Colorado, most is organic, low priced, buy it at a store that sells bulk.  Millet is nutty or even popcorn like flavor.  It's also tiny and round, drop it and it goes everywhere like ball bearings.


OK, in a few days I'm going to give you some more, including some soups worth fighting over, yea, grab a wooden spoon and go in swinging.

8 comments:

  1. Here's the first 3 items in the andouille recipe: one and a half yards of pig gut casing (anus optional), 4 pound of factory pork, 2 pound of factory pork fat. See, now this shit goes right to mens dicks, this fat sticks first in the tiny blood passages that inflate for an erection, once the dick don't work any more without drugs to hold them open a little bit for an hour, then, next time you eat it it sticks in your heart, those blood vessels are bigger than in your dick so the dick gets plaqued up first. That's E.D., which should stand for early death, almost every male gasping on a gurney in the ER with a heart attack has a bottle of viagra at home. Doctors are not doing their jobs, when a guy comes in for viagra they should start treating them like heart attack patients right then. I'm not attacking anyone with this rant, just trying to inform people. Women need to know this too, they do most the buying and cooking.
    Nope, no andouille. If I came over and you were serving it, I would take a tablespoon size piece to try, no more, I don't miss meat or sugar.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sob,
    I guess my gumbo is out too...

    Ron

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just googled vegan gumbo, there are some recipes for it that look like they would work.

      Delete
  3. Now dinner last night was a chef salad with chicken.

    Ron

    ReplyDelete
  4. I could eat all these things and be just fine. No suger/meat/dairy and the would be very difficult for me to do. I try to limit these things some for sure. A bit of half and half in my coffee is a nice treat now and then. I buy whole milk for that and a bit of sweetened cereal for desert these days. A half gallon lasts the better part of two weeks. I think I'm reasonably healthy. I try and I'm eating better than ever. Lots of vegetables in salads or on the grill. I want my pork fat what can I say. I've eaten my share of vegan dishes and for me there's always something lacking and that is of course is the fat. That's where all the flavor is. Nothing new. I'm hungry now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tom, we didn't wake up one morning and stop eating meat, it was a multi year process. We cut back on the amount of meat and cheese constantly for years. Started with two things, a book that suggested you never take a portion of meat larger in all 3 dimensions than the palm of your hand, so about like a thick hamburger patty. And the father-in-laws disgust with the drugs we were giving our cattle, so we got out of the cattle business and angled toward not consuming it either. We started one day a week no meat, then two, dropped chicken after visiting a cousin that has a massive chicken farm in Arkansas, then a rare fish or two. Find some good flavored olive oil, they are all different flavors and add that to your sauces or dishes, you get the fat but it's a good fat, and put walnuts pecans or almonds in vegi or fruit salads, even in Italian dishes. (Italians do that too, nuts and bean on pasta with lots of olive oil, damn it's good. The other way to slow how much meat you eat is to eat lots of fruit. Our house looks like a fruit market part of the time, yesterday I had raisin, date, watermelon, grapefruit, raspberries, plum, apple, avacodo. The day before it was pears in place of the apple.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for that! A friend gave me a new pretty small slow cooker. I've been thinking beans and rice with a bone of some kind but I will go look for some flavored olive oil and see what happens.

      Delete

Anonymous comments might end up in the trash.