Vegan Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread Cake

This very festive recipe is adapted from Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Classics (which I'm pretty sure I scored off the free book shelf when I worked at HarperCollins circa 2002). The pear/caramel topping is a wonderful and (relatively) unexpected way to serve gingerbread. I'm posting it now to go with my Vegan Thanksgiving 2022 video on the No Bones at All playlist!

The topping:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted vegan butter

1/2 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar

2 ripe but firm pears (Lemlin prefers Bosc or Anjou but Bartlett is fine too)

The cake:

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cloves

1 vegan egg replacer (over the years I have tried Ener-G, Vegan Egg, and Bob's; all are fine, but in my experience Bob's results in the fluffiest cake)

1/2 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar

1/3 cup unsulfured molasses

1/2 cup plant milk soured with one tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice

4 tablespoons melted vegan butter

Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease the sides of a 9-inch round cake pan. To prepare the topping, melt the butter in a small saucepan, adding the brown sugar and stirring until blended. Scrape into the cake pan and spread evenly.

Peel, core, and quarter the pears and cut each quarter into thinner slices, arranging evenly around the pan.

Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix the vegan egg replacer (prepared according to package instructions), brown sugar, molasses, soured plant milk, and melted butter. Scrape into the flour mixture and mix until well blended.

Pour the batter over the pears. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto a plate. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. Non-dairy whipped cream optional!

Although this cake is best served the day it is made, Lemlin writes, it will still be delicious if made one day in advance, covered, and kept at room temperature. (I can vouch that it's almost as good even a few days later!)

Fridays at Mealey's: Recipe Roundup!

Hard to believe it's already been more than a year since I got to Washington, DC—a COVID-prompted move that has allowed me almost-daily quality time with my sister and her family. 🥰 Elliot helped me unload the U-Haul on a Tuesday morning, I invited everybody over for dinner that Friday, and they've been coming every Friday night ever since. I've used many excellent new-to-me recipes over the past year, and will (of course) be updating this post periodically.

My New Favorite Cookbook

Every single dish I have made out of Sweet Potato Soulby Jenné Claiborne is out-of-this-world delicious:

• Coconut collard salad (page 74)

• Quick-pickled onions (page 75)

• Tender mess o' collards (page 103) — definitely double this

• Happy hearts "crab" cakes (page 129) — Elliot's favorite; I whip up a dressing with vegan mayo, Dijon mustard, and fresh dill

• Pan-fried butter beans & greens (page 118)

• Lentil loaf (page 138) — I have tried so. MANY. Lentil and nut loaf recipes over the years, and this is one of the best

• Ooooh Mama mushroom gravy (page 205) — I sometimes add a small tin of tomato paste for the sake of variety

More Main Courses

French Onion Skillet Lasagna (Vegan Richa) — I "reconstructed" this lasagna by tripling the white sauce and adding layers of roasted butternut squash. Kate's all-time favorite!

Chickpea Seitan Cutlet (Isa Chandra) — served with the mushroom gravy recipe from Sweet Potato Soul

Seitan Gyros (Lettuce Veg Out) — I used this recipe before I found Isa Chandra's chickpea cutlets, and I prefer the latter, but this recipe is good if you prefer baking to frying. I serve it with BBQ sauce from Trader Joe's.

Vegan Pot Pie with Herby Biscuits (Shanika Graham-White via Food52)

Lentil Shepherd's Pie (Rainbow Plant Life)

Penne alla vodka (Miyoko Schinner, The Homemade Vegan Pantry, page 148) — uses homemade cashew cream

A dinner plate with plant-based macaroni and cheese, collard greens, barbecue seitan, and biscuits.

Mealey's Old Reliables (ICYMI)

Tater-Tot Casserole (Vegan Stoner)

Quiche (using my vegan onion pie recipe, but mixing up the filling; Kate's favorite combination is sundried tomato, onion, artichoke, kalamata olive, and Daiya cheddar)

Scottish-inspired handpies (sign up for the mailing list to get the recipe link in your welcome email; lately I've been using the quiche pastry for these handpies—two quiche crusts = enough pastry for four handpies)

Side Dishes

Best-ever roasted potatoes (Serious Eats) — quite time- and labor-intensive, and TOTALLY worth it!

Best Damn Vegan Biscuits (Minimalist Baker)

No-Fuss Vegan Cornbread (Gena Hamshaw for Food52) — I sprinkle canned or frozen corn on top of the batter

Lemon Vinaigrette (Minimalist Baker) — I always double this and use the second half in the next salad I make, often one with massaged kale.

Macaroni and cheese — I don't use a recipe. The essential ingredients are raw cashews, broth, steamed or roasted butternut squash, lemon juice, miso, a boatload of nutritional yeast, and other seasonings to suit your preference, sauce-ified in a high-speed blender.

Air-fried French fries — highly recommend getting yourself an air fryer if you love fries and or/fried tofu enough to make them at homeon a regular basis.

Desserts

Cranberry upside-down cake (so easy and absolutely scrummy)

Oatmeal raisin cookies (Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, The Joy of Vegan Baking, page 120 in the original edition)

Chocolate peanut-butter buttons (Vicki Brett-Gach, The Main Street Vegan Academy Cookbook, page 212) — best eaten straight from the oven!

No-bake cookie dough bars (Rainbow Plant Life)

DIY sorbet — frozen berries or mango with fresh mint and a bit of plant milk and maple syrup in the frozen dessert setting on the Vitamix.

Mrs. Frost's Veggie Chili

Does the Internet need another recipe for veggie chili? NOPE! But I’m planning a kid-friendly vegan recipe round-up as part of my resources for The Boy From Tomorrow, and I figured it would be better to tell you exactly how I make it rather than linking to some recipe I’ve never actually tried. This chili is as minimalist as I can make it, mild while still flavorful; I don’t use a spice mix, just chili powder and cumin with a pinch of cayenne. It’s basically the chili of my childhood with soy crumbles instead of ground beef, and in this version, there’s enough salt in the (store-bought) veggie broth that you don’t have to add any. If you’re skipping the soy crumbles, add another tin of beans or a cup of green lentils (which will require extra water).

Serve with Gena Hamshaw’s no-fuss cornbread recipe. Simple cashew sour cream recipe to follow.

Vegan Chili

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp. minced garlic

2 onions, diced

1 ½ tsp. chili pepper (or to taste)

2 tsp. ground cumin (or to taste)

pinch (or more) cayenne pepper

2 large potatoes, diced

4 cups veggie broth

2 bell peppers, diced

2 15.5-oz. cans of beans (black and kidney, but any kind will do)

1 large can (28 oz.) of crushed tomatoes

1 6-oz. can tomato paste

1 package soy mince crumbles (I use Light Life)

Sauté garlic and onions in olive oil until translucent, adding spices and stirring well. Add chopped potatoes and continue cooking. When potatoes have softened, add the veggie broth followed by the rest of the ingredients, and simmer for a good while. The more times you reheat the pot, the tastier the chili will be! Serves 8-10.

Cashew Sour Cream

This recipe is tweaked from DIY Vegan by Nicole Axworthy and Lisa Pitman (they offer the garlic and mustard as a suggestion for extra zing, but I say these ingredients are essential; add even more if you want!)

1 ½ cups raw cashew pieces, soaked in hot water (the longer they soak, the less you’ll need to process them)

2 tbsp. lemon juice

2 tsp. apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp. minced garlic

1 tbsp. mustard

½ tsp. salt

Drain soaked cashews, preserving ½ cup of the liquid, and blend well, adding remaining ingredients. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour to let the “cream” firm up, and the flavors mingle. Yields a full pint jar and is also delicious on baked potatoes. 

Vegan Onion Pie

After I went vegan I looked back through all the recipes I'd posted on the blog, either making a note on vegan substitutions or removing the post until I could veganize it to my satisfaction. My grandmother's onion pie recipe is one of these. For Thanksgiving I thought I'd try to veganize this simple quiche using VeganEgg from Follow Your Heart.

[Update, 2024: alas and alack, FYH has discontinued this product. I’ve made this quiche with JustEgg and it turned out great. I’ll eventually rewrite this recipe using tofu and/or chickpea flour and/or aquafaba.]

I was feeling even more sentimental than usual when baking this onion pie; my grandmother is not herself anymore, she hasn't been for a good few years now. I want to get back into making (vegan versions of) her recipes to remember all the good times, back when she was still cooking and baking and decking the whole house with hundreds of snowmen decorations at Christmas. She doesn't remember any of that now, so our family will have to remember it for her.

Here's my vegan update. For the pie filling:

4 cups sliced cubed onions (I used red and white)

1/4 cup Earth Balance butter

2 VeganEggs (4 tbsp. powder whisked with 1 cup cold water)

1/2 cup non-dairy milk + 1 tsp. arrowroot [see note]

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

2 tbsp. nutritional yeast

1 pastry shell

[NOTE: to make a liquid as thick as the evaporated milk the original recipe calls for, I took Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's suggestion in The Joy of Vegan Baking, whisking 1 tsp. arrowroot into half a cup of homemade cashew milk. Cornstarch is another thickener option.]

I haven't made the pastry recipe from A Platter of Figs since I went vegan, but it's easy enough to tweak, and I added some extra ingredients for a more flavorful "co-starring" crust:

2 cups flour

2 sticks (1 cup) vegan butter (cut into thin slices)

1 tsp. salt

1 VeganEgg (2 tbsp. powder whisked with 1/2 cup cold water)

fresh and/or dried herbs/spices (I used 1 tbsp. dried chives, 1 tbsp. black sesame seeds, and 2 tsp. coriander)

This recipe yields two 9" crusts, so freeze the second for later.

Mix the flour, butter, and salt, then add the VeganEgg mixture and herbs. Refrigerate dough for at least an hour.

Now to the filling instructions:

Sauté onions in Earth Balance butter with salt and pepper until tender, stirring in nutritional yeast toward the end. Pour in pastry shell. Whisk VeganEgg with water, mixing in the thickened milk. Pour mixture over onions. Bake at 425º F for 25 minutes or until golden brown. (I left mine in for 30 minutes and the crust is a little crispy.)

Does it approximate a traditional quiche? Not looks-wise—the baked VeganEgg is dry-looking compared to a quiche made with eggs—but taste-wise it is very good indeed!

Next time I'll add mushrooms to the filling and fresh herbs in the crust, and maybe some poppy seeds.

Fancying up that crust was a very delicious idea; when we had late-night leftovers this was the first dish I reached for.

More scrumptious holiday recipes I used at Thanksgiving this year:

The Best Vegan Stuffing Recipe

Cashew Gravy

Cabernet-Cranberry Sauce with Figs

Read my post about my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary here.

Roasted Red Pepper Cutlets

This cutlet is healthier without the breadcrumbs—the combination of oats, cornmeal, and nutritional yeast offers a surprising amount of protein!—and it also works well for “breading” eggplant, zucchini, tofu, or seitan. Serve with marinara sauce over pasta, quinoa, or a vegetable stirfry, and the leftovers make hearty sandwiches with hummus, pesto, or vegan mayo. Or cut the peppers into smaller nugget-sized pieces to serve with a dipping sauce.

1 16-oz. jar roasted red peppers (four peppers)

¾ cup steel-cut oats

¾ cup cornmeal

⅓ cup nutritional yeast

1 tbsp. onion powder

1 tbsp. garlic powder

1 tbsp. dried herbs (any combination of basil, thyme, rosemary, and sage)

1 tsp. salt

black pepper to taste

½ cup flour

3 tbsp. Ener-G egg replacer + ¾ cup warm water (the equivalent of 6 eggs)

½ cup vegetable oil

Drain the water from the pepper jar, carefully pull out the peppers and halve them lengthwise to form cutlet shapes, and remove any stray seeds. To make the cutlets, you’ll dip the pepper first into the flour, then into the egg replacement mixture, and finally in the oat-and-cornmeal coating before frying. Pour out the flour evenly onto a plate, and in a medium-sized bowl whisk the egg replacer with water until fully dissolved and frothy. Put the oats in a food processor and grind for a minute or so, then add the cornmeal and seasonings and pulse until fully mixed. Pour coating mixture into a second bowl.

Heat the vegetable oil in the frying pan as you begin the three-part dipping. Once the pan is heated, cutlets will brown nicely in seven minutes, flipping halfway through.

Yields approximately eight cutlets (though size will vary). 

(I wrote up this recipe for a Bob's Red Mill recipe contest last summer figuring I could blog it regardless, and then naturally I forgot all about it!)

Kimchi!

Making more fermented foods is one of my culinary goals for the year, and I recently got around to making my first batch of kimchi. Kimchi is a Korean side dish or relish, sort of similar to sauerkraut, with a refreshingly spicy-sour flavor. Eat this yummy stuff and do your GI system (not to mention your sinuses, heh) a huge favor.

Zoe Keller of One Beet Wellness gave a demonstration at Herbstalk this past June, and her handout was really helpful. Zoe pointed out that, despite our fears about disease and contamination, most bacteria are beneficial! My sort-of-recipe below is based on hers.  

Here's what I used:

one half a head of white cabbage

one head of fennel (including stalks)

three large carrots

one half a daikon radish

one large apple, peeled

stalks from four onions (you could just use an onion)

cloves from half a head of garlic, minced

two-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated

4 tsp. of sea salt (no iodized salt! this is very important)

one skimpy squirt of sriracha (because I don't do super-spicy)

The method is simple: chop and mix everything up, sprinkle salt, and massage the veg until the salt has drawn the water out. Spoon the mixture into a glass jar or crock, pressing very firmly, pouring the water on top and weighting down the veg with a smaller glass jar. It's important that the veg not rise above the water line, or you might end up with mold on top.  

I put a tea towel over the jar to keep the dust out, but the water kept bubbling up and soaking the towel, so I wound up overturning my iced-tea pitcher and placing that over the jar instead. (The pitcher is plastic, so it totally retained the yummy-bacterial odor. Oops. Hadn't thought of that! Soaked it in hot water and lemon juice and that did the trick.)

In this summer heat, the mixture got tangy within a few hours. You can leave it to ferment for weeks, but in this case, after four days my jar smelled quite fragrant enough! Once refrigerated, it'll keep for months.  

Next time I'll use red cabbage to stain the whole thing purple. I also need to buy a mandolin to expedite the chopping.

It may be an acquired taste for some—hard to believe kimchi is not made with vinegar—but it really is so good for you! 

Vegan Dessert Hall of Fame

Cranberry upside-down cake (recipe from Vegkitchen.com), served with oat milk. Photo by Todd (2023)

I've been meaning to collect my very favorite online dessert recipes for awhile now. I'll update this post periodically.

COOKIES

Pumpkin Chai Snickerdoodles

Ginger Yum-Yums and Chocolate Peanut Butter Buttons out of the Main Street Vegan Academy cookbook

Chickpea Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies (GF)

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies (GF)

CUPCAKES & MUFFINS

Lavender chocolate cupcakes (used maple syrup for the icing)

Chocolate stout cupcakes with whiskey buttercream

Peanut butter chocolate cupcakes

CAKES & PIES

Coconut Cream Pie

Apple Pie

Sticky Toffee Pudding

Cranberry Upside-Down Cake

Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread Cake

Classic Spice Cake from Fran Costigan’s Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts

PUDDINGY THINGS

Pumpkin Pie Pudding

Boston Cream Pie

Rice Pudding

SORBET & ICE CREAM

Banana chai sorbet

DESSERT COOKBOOKS

The Joy of Vegan Baking (lemon bars, chocolate macaroons, apple cake, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies)

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (gingerbread with lemon frosting and pumpkin chocolate chip!) 

Many more exquisitely delicious sweet things to come!

Where Have You Been All My Life?

Here she is, in all her spiffy fire-engine-red glory: my new Vitamix, a present from my mom and sister! People rave about how a Vitamix changes your life (provided you enjoy spending much of your waking time in the kitchen), and I'm here to tell you it's TRUE. There's something sort of magical about throwing whole kale, ice cubes, and a few other things into a blender, flipping a switch, and ending up with a perfectly smooth and refreshing beverage that also happens to be packed with nutrients. Once you start making smoothies at home, grocery products like Bolthouse Farms smoothies taste unpleasantly sweet (and they often have weird additives besides the sugar). The Vitamix is easy to clean, too—you just fill it up partway with water and let it run for a bit longer.But wait! There's more!

1. Non-dairy cheeses. I'm having so much fun with Artisan Vegan Cheese. Post forthcoming.

2. Raw desserts. I'd been looking forward to making Kathy Patalsky's Boston Cream Pie recipe for ages! (Oh all right, two years.) There's also a frozen-dessert setting on the Vitamix: fresh fruit + ice = almost-instant sorbet. Sweeeeeeeeeeet.

3. Nut butters and milks. They say there's absolutely no comparison, that you can never go back to store-bought almond milk once you've made your own. I want to try Kathy's method, which is here.

(There is more, oh so much more!)

I'm also excited at the prospect of no-waste juicing. While I'm not necessarily using the Vitamix to process the pulp to make other foods, I can say that I'm probably not going to be doing green juicing anymore now that I can do a smoothie. I'll just use my juicer for combos like carrot-apple-ginger—and, inspired by the Vitamix offering no more fiber waste, I'm going to use the pulp to make carrot crackers, fruit crumble, and whatever else I can think of. 

Here's a quick recipe (if we can even call it that) for banana chai sorbet (I used a spice mix we found at a grocery store in Uganda):

five ripe bananas (chopped and frozen)

1/8 tsp. masala spice (or just cinnamon, cardamom, whatever you like)

1 tbsp. maple syrup

dash of salt

Add all ingredients and process on the frozen dessert setting. (Next time I'll use 1/4 tsp. of spice and a bit less maple syrup.) Yields about three cups. Oh, and Happy Veganversary to me! Four happiest years of my life so far. (ICYMI, here's last year's Veganversary post.) 

Sneaky-Delicious Potato Salad

It feels like it's been ages since I did a proper vegan post, and I really want to get back into the weekly habit. The cookbook projects I've mentioned over the past several months are still very much on the list of things I'm excited about, and I also want to start cooking and baking more out of the cookbooks that are already on my shelf. Last month I baked my first two batches of cupcakes out of Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World for a holiday party, and they turned out splendidly. I'll blog about that soon.But for now, here's a shot of the shhh-they'll-never-know-it's-not-"real"-mayo potato salad I made for Christmas Eve dinner using the recipe my mom suggested.  Once the secret was out (I mean, yeah, I was eating this stuff by the bucketful), my cousin half-jokingly started in on that whole "soy gives men boobs" argument (if we can even call it an "argument"), and I triumphantly replied that I'd used soy-free Earth Balance olive oil mayo. Sure, it's not the healthiest thing on your plate o' Christmas feast—or at least it shouldn't be!—but it's still a very satisfying take on a classic comfort food.Here's my vegan version of the original Taste of Home recipe:

1.5 lb. red potatoes1.5 lb. purple potatoes (they add visual interest!)1 medium onion, finely processed3 pickle spears, finely chopped3 ribs of celery, finely chopped1 tsp. celery seed1 tsp. salt (or to taste)1/2 tsp. pepper (or to taste)1/4 cup pickle juice (from the jar)1 1/2 cups Earth Balance vegan mayo (made with olive oil)1/4 cup mustard (I used Dijon)

Boil potatoes for 20-30 minutes until tender, then transfer to a bowl of cold water. Prepare the onion, celery, and pickle and drop in a large mixing bowl, then chop the potatoes into cubes and add them in. I opted to whisk the mayo, pickle juice, mustard, and seasonings separately first. Add the dressing to the pile of vegetables, mix well, and leave to chill in the fridge.If you click on the original recipe, you'll see I used much more mustard than the original recipe calls for—the pickles and pickle juice add to the punch, but the mustard really is the most necessary flavor. 

My sis ordered me @sharon_gannon's new cookbook, packages stolen off her doorstep, so here's what I got instead. Ha. pic.twitter.com/o3YlmnyRLm— Camille DeAngelis (@cometparty) December 25, 2014

Vegan Meal Planning Without Tears, part 2

Vegan meal planning, part 1 (breakfast.) Now for lunch and dinner! I usually just make enough dinner for lunch the next day, but here are some light meal options:1. A big protein-packed salad. Pumpkin and sunflower seeds are both a great source of protein, and add nice texture. Lately I've also been making big batches of beet and carrot salad and adding a big dollop to a green salad. Consider making your own dressing—I like whisking up some mustard, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Otherwise, Goddess dressing is my absolute fave.2. Another salad option, alone or on top of a green salad: chickpea and tomato salad.3.  Sometimes I just like a sandwich. I'm a huge fan of the soy-free olive-oil-based vegan mayo from Earth Balance (Follow Your Heart brand is also good). I'll do some Tofurkey or Smartbacon slices with lettuce and tomato on sourdough bread from Trader Joe's. Vegan mayo is also great with textured vegetable protein (TVP) to make a salad that approximates tuna or chicken. (Not that I want to approximate those foods, but TVP is great for transitional purposes!)And for dinner:1.  I often just do a stirfry, which you can jazz up by using different combinations each time. Stirfry essentials (in the order you put 'em in):—onion and garlic—other vegetables: carrots, mushrooms, peppers, zucchini, potato/sweet potato, etc.—for protein: beans or tempeh—greens (I use kale, collards, spinach, or callaloo)I am using nutritional yeast on a daily basis now because it's a good source of protein and B vitamins and it gives a rich cheesy taste. LOVE it. (Also great on kale chips.) So I stir in a healthy shake of "nooch" every time I sauté vegetables.2.  I do "unrecipe" versions of chili or lentil stew. Easy peasy. Don't worry about getting the proportions perfect—just throw it all in there and leave it to cook.Lentil stew: Begin by sauteeing onion, garlic, and herbs, add carrot/potatoes/etc., then veggie broth and rinsed lentils. If you buy beets for another recipe, you can chop up the greens and use them in this stew. (But you can use the beetroot here too. Yay for unrecipes!)Chili: same deal (onion, garlic, potato, etc.), then add crushed tomatoes, black/pinto beans, peppers, and chili powder or spice mix.Make sure you cook a lot because the older the leftovers the better they taste!3.  As for a proper curry recipe, my go-to is chickpea and pumpkin curry (I usually sub butternut squash for the pumpkin and skip the lemongrass).4.  "Alfredo" sauce using avocado + veggie broth (fresh herbs optional) = HEAVENLY. Put it on pasta or over a stirfry. Makes everything you put it on taste amazing.Great easy side dishes:Roasted root vegetables: beets, parsnips, carrots, potato/sweet potato with garlic cloves and fresh sage or rosemary. Bake at 400º for one hour.Best way (I've found) to cook Brussels sprouts—halved, tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper, and baked at 375º for 45 minutes. When people tell me they feel overwhelmed by the notion of cooking (like, "proper cooking") for themselves, I try to present my meal planning tips like this, as simply as I can. Not everyone could have a confident grandmother to learn from in the kitchen—I do think that's a big part of why my sister and I cook so much, and are open to trying new recipes and improvisation—but EVERYONE can prepare flavorful, simple, nutritious meals for themselves and their loved ones as long as they're willing to go through a bit of trial and error. Heck, isn't that just life? Besides, figuring out what you like and how you like it is a way more satisfying process than you might expect! 

Vegan Meal Planning Without Tears, part 1

Recently my dear friend Anne asked for some tips for vegan meal planning, so I thought I'd share what I came up with. While preparing healthy meals may not be as fast as the drive through, you don't have to spend hours chopping, stirring, and washing dishes either. We are busy people! You can do what's expedient without sacrificing the wholesomeness—I'm all about making big quantities, because leftovers are efficient as well as delicious.So, first things first: breakfast!

1.  "Quick-cook" oatmeal is my mainstay, with cinnamon, a dollop of maple syrup, and nut or coconut milk. Extras I love: chia seeds and/or goji berries (found a great price for them online). Stir them in near the beginning so they cook along with the oats. You can also do raisins, walnuts, slivered almonds...whatever you want! Oatmeal has 5g of protein per serving (and I generally have two servings), and that's not even counting the extras.  2.  Good for summer (and also if you are trying to minimize gluten intake)—I posted a recipe for chia breakfast pudding on the blog awhile back.3.  I haven't tried making my own granola yet, but my friend Jill has made batches for gifts and I really love it. Here's a recipe round-up at Oh She Glows (great blog!!)4.  I sometimes do a smoothie for breakfast—I don't get too fancy, bare minimum is a ripe banana + cinnamon + almond/coconut milk. Additions: fresh or frozen fruit, avocado, hemp protein powder, flax oil. Spinach, spirulina, etc. too. You can also pick up a bottle of probiotic (use 1 tbsp per serving), which will make the smoothie taste more yogurt-y and give you the same gastrointestinal benefits.

If you have more time, like for a Sunday morning brunch, I also absolutely love this recipe for a corn-crusted mushroom and tofu with fresh sage (I don't worry about the almond meal, although that would be good for protein) and this recipe for pumpkin pie pancakes (using coconut oil).When all else fails, a piece of fresh fruit and a handful of nuts will keep you going until lunchtime (and if it doesn't, have a second helping of nuts!)Next time: lunch and dinner! 

Scrapes with Scapes, and a recipe for Beet and Carrot Salad

"I shouldn't say there was a great deal" was Marilla's encouraging answer. "I'm sure Mrs. Allan was never such a silly, forgetful little girl as you are."

"No; but she wasn't always so good as she is now either," said Anne seriously. "She told me so herself—that is, she said she was a dreadful mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes. I felt so encouraged when I heard that. Is it very wicked of me, Marilla, to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and mischievous?"

—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

  Week two of my Enterprise farmshare included beets, tomatoes, various greens, and a dozen scapes. I'd heard of scapes before, but for me (like most people) they fell into the "what the heck do I DO with them?" category. Sure, you can always just chop ’em up and saute, but that's boring. I decided on a pesto recipe from Oh She Glows, which incorporates an extremely tasty recipe for vegan "parmesan."  The pesto did not turn out according to plan, however. That's because the recipe calls for three scapes, and I used all twelve. (What was I thinking, you ask? I suppose I wasn't.) So it came out more like a pâté.  No big deal though, I incorporated half of this pesto-pâté into a perfectly tasty pasta primavera sauce later (didn't take a photo, was at a friend's and forgot my camera) and used the rest of it as a spread or for some added texture on top of a romaine and avocado salad.As for the beets—I was much more sure of myself there:  Here's a quick recipe for this yummy salad, heavily inspired by the culinary genius of Aussie Kate at Sadhana Forest:

3 beets (setting aside the greens for stew, juicing, or what have you)4 large carrots1 cup peanutsjuice of one lemon (or more, to taste)fistful of mint, finely choppedsalt and pepper to taste

Peel and grate the beets and carrots, process the peanuts (or crush by hand with a mortar and pestle), and mix everything in. Ta da—a light refreshing salad for a day when it's much too hot to cook! Using this many beets and carrots will yield a nice big bowl, ten good side servings at least.  I tried another new recipe this week for the kale (not dehydrated—baked at 300 degrees for 25 minutes per Oh She Glows), and it turned out great:  I baked these for a party we were throwing Saturday night, but I ought to have made them later in the day, because they were fairly wilty by the time 8 o'clock rolled around. I just didn't want to be racing around the kitchen as guests were arriving! So I've decided that while kale chips (especially deluxe kale chips) are amazingly delicious, they are probably better suited to movie night on the couch. Next week: another Vegan Ireland round up! 

Magic avocado sauce

My mom is looking to improve her diet, and since I'm home in Jersey right now I've appointed myself her personal chef. I'm coming up with fun new recipe ideas and we're eating like queens. All-around win! I even made a pasta sauce out of beets (the leftovers of a beet, kale, and pinto bean stew, actually—just thrown in the blender), and Mumsy kept saying she couldn't believe there weren't any tomatoes in it. (Power of suggestion, perhaps?) On this occasion, wanting to come up with something unusual to put on a simple dish of sautéed vegetables, I had the ingeeeenious idea to cut up a pair of avocados and blend them with veggie broth and some fresh herbs.OH.MY.GOSH.Easiest, tastiest sauce EVER. Ever, ever, ever.Here is the "recipe": using a blender or food processor, blend two avocados per one cup of broth, adding fresh herbs (basil? cilantro?) if you feel like it, and salt/pepper to taste. That's it!  In case you are wondering, the vegetable sauté consisted of sweet potatoes, kale, garlic, and chickpeas, with roasted Brussels sprouts on the side. (This pic reminds me just how much I have to learn re food photography!) I've also tried the sauce on pasta (this nifty new kind, brown-rice quinoa fusilli from Trader Joe's), and it tastes great with nooch on top. Creamy, flavorful, easy peasy. I know avocados aren't cheap, but trust me, this sauce is totally worth the price of ingredients, and it'll go farther than you think! It also keeps for several days in the fridge too (and if the brown layer on top squicks you out, just skim it off). 

Banana Chia Breakfast Pudding

Kind of sad, isn't it, that until I was thirty years old this was the first thing that popped into my head whenever anybody said the word "chia"?:(You too, I bet!) Chia seeds are incredibly nutritious (fiber! antioxidants! those precious omega-3s!), and they're so easy to throw into a smoothie, cakey bread (like banana or lemon or pumpkin), or warm breakfast cereal. I had a really delicious chia pudding for dessert at Quintessence awhile back, and when I spotted some too-ripe bananas in the fridge while I was home last month, I decided to make something similar for breakfast.Gathering whatever I have on hand, experimenting, and taking notes—I need to do this more often! This being a raw pudding with no surprise ingredients, honestly, it was hard to mess up. My mother happily gobbled up a bowl, and she doesn't eat more than a bite of the things I make if she doesn't actually like them.Here's the recipe (if you can even call it that):

• 3 large ripe bananas
• ½ cup almond milk
• 3 tbsp. chia seeds stirred into 1½ cups water
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
• 1 cup chopped strawberries
• 1 tbsp. maple syrup (optional; if you use berries and super-ripe bananas it'll be sweet enough without it)

Let the chia seeds sit in water for a few minutes so they "glub up." Mash bananas with a fork and mix all ingredients together. Yields 4½ cups, so about four servings. (That said, I gobbled it all up apart from the cup I gave my mom.)Next time I'll try letting the seeds soak in almond milk so it'll be creamier. I also want to try a more autumnal chia pudding with pumpkin puree!

Butternut "bisque" with sage and cumin

When life gets crazy, blogging is the first thing to go--and Flashwrite too, alas. Scotland is coming up soon, and then I have BIG plans for this space.(Big, big plans! Redesign, relaunch, and MORE!)But for now, here's a recipe I've been meaning to blog since before Thanksgiving. I kept eating it up before I got around to taking a picture.Trying out this tasty recipe, it occurred to me that a bisque of butternut squash with almond milk instead of cream would be comfortingly delicious. I tried it, and it was. Here's the super-easy vegan recipe:

3 lb. butternut squash, cut into pieces (I bought it pre-cut, but if you purchase a whole squash, cut it in half and roast until soft)one onion, diced1/4 cup olive oil2 cloves garlic1 tbsp. dried ground cumina dozen large sage leaves, finely chopped2 cups broth made from vegetable bouillon (I like Better Than Bouillon)2 cups almond milksalt and pepper to taste

Toss the squash and onion with olive oil, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper in a glass baking dish and roast at 425º at least an hour. Midway through, open the oven and stir in chopped sage leaves. Once cooled, mash it all together and pour into blender or food processor along with vegetable broth and almond milk and puree. (Or you could pour everything together into the pot and just use an immersion blender.) Yields approximately six generous servings.Happy Holidays, everyone!

Chickpea Salad

I love the idea of an "unrecipe," where all ingredients are "to taste." This one is a really easy knock-off of the "balela" you can find at Trader Joe's in a tiny plastic container. I like to make a whole tub of this stuff.

--chickpeas--red onion (chopped up in the food processor)--cilantro (also finely chopped)--vine tomatoes--lime juice--olive oil--salt and pepper

Mix and devour!

Savoury War-time Pie

Grandmamma had heartened herself with gin now and again from a bottle produced from somewhere amongst her voluminous black skirts, and was game to the last, if a trifle maudlin.

(from a description of a Soldiers' & Sailors' Wives Club event)

 Remember the war-time soup that called for everything in your compost bin? Here's another recipe from the book I was reading at the NLS last winter (Mrs. Dorothy Constance Peel's How We Lived Then, 1914-1918: A Sketch of Social and Domestic Life in England During the War). This time I actually tested it--veganized, of course--and my updated recipe follows the original.

Vegetable Pie with Potato Crust(Meat shortage)

2 onions, 2 carrots, 1 turnip, the outside sticks of half a head of celery, 1/2 lb. artichokes or two potatoes, 1/2 pint bacon-bone stock and 1 oz. lentils. For the pastry, 6 ozs. cooked potatoes (mashed), 6 ozs. flour, 2 ozs. cooking fat, 1 teaspoonful baking-powder.

Wash, clean and prepare the vegetables, cut them into small pieces and arrange them in a pie-dish in layers, putting the lentils, which have previously soaked for twenty-four hours, in the centre; pour over the stock and 1/2 pint of water; put into the oven with a dish over it and bake for 2 hours (or boil in a saucepan and put into a pie-dish afterwards if more convenient). For the paste, steam and mash the potatoes, rub the fat into the flour, then rub in the cooked potatoes, add a pinch of salt and the baking powder; mix to a fairly stiff paste with a little cold water, roll out and place over the vegetables in the pie-dish, trim the edge and mark it neatly, bake in a moderately hot oven for 3/4 hour.

And here's my vegan version:

filling:--two onions--two carrots--three sticks of celery--one turnip--one 6-oz. jar of artichoke hearts--two cups vegetable stock (I used Better Than Bouillon)--one cup lentils (soaked overnight)--salt and pepper--herbs and spices (rosemary, cumin) to taste

pastry:--one medium potato, mashed--1 1/3 cups flour--1/4 cup Earth Balance shortening (half a stick)--1 tsp. baking powder--dash of salt

Preheat oven to 375º. Finely chop all vegetables (including the potato skins!) and sauté with herbs in olive oil until soft. Take off heat and add vegetable stock and pre-soaked lentils. To make the pastry, follow the original instructions (mix the shortening into the dry ingredients, then add the mashed potato, mixing together with a little cold water. It should make a nice easy-to-roll dough). Spoon the filling into a casserole dish (will yield too much filling for a pie plate), roll out the pastry and cover, sealing the edges of the pie with a fork. Bake for 45 minutes, dabbing the crust with a bit of Earth Balance vegan butter if you have it.

Turned out mighty tasty, if I do say so myself!

Edit, 17 September: Kate and Elliot tried out this recipe using two standard pie plates, and as you can see it worked out perfectly:

So you might prefer to use two pie plates rather than a casserole dish. Next time we're going to try some new ingredients, mushrooms and whatnot. 

Vegan Banana Pear Bread

Last summer I used Gail's basic banana bread recipe a few times, jazzing it up with spices, walnuts, and vanilla, and now I figure it's easy enough to veganize. At the last minute I added a couple pears, hoping this bread would recapture some of the divine deliciousness of those banana pear muffins (edit: the recipe doesn't seem to be online anymore, unfortunately. I'd originally found it here). Not quite as divine, but still really tasty (and very moist).

3 or 4 mashed super-ripe bananas (about 1 1/2 cups)2 pears (peeled, cored, and diced)2 cups flour1/2 cup (1 stick) Earth Balance vegan butter (melted)1 cup raw sugar (can reduce to 3/4 cup)1/4 cup canola oil3/4 tsp. baking powder1+ tsp. each of cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, or use pumpkin pie spice1 tsp. vanilla1/2 tsp. salt1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350º.  Mix the butter, oil, bananas, and pears, stir in the sugar and vanilla, and then add the dry ingredients.  Pour into a greased 4 by 8" loaf pan and bake for one hour (or until fork, knife, or toothpick comes out clean).

NOM NOM NOM!

Vegan rice pudding

Cardamom growing on one of the spice plantations in Munnar.Remember that article about preserving family recipes my friend Cheryl Tan wrote for the WaPo a few months ago?

For years, Camille DeAngelis, author of "Petty Magic," resisted asking her grandmother and mother for their recipes for meatloaf, apple pie or pumpkin soup, for example, because of "the simple fact that no dish I put together will taste as good as my grandmother's version." Then, earlier this year, she got her grandmother's zucchini souffle recipe and tried it out in her kitchen. "Apparently my grandmother has a great deal more patience than I do. The recipe calls for grated zucchini and onion, but after only a few strokes I gave up and took out the food processor," DeAngelis says.

"The importance, for me," she adds, "lies not so much in the preservation of the recipes themselves as in the memories of family dinners they evoke. Someday I want my children to know their great-grandmothers through the dishes they made."

Since then I've been wanting to share Grandmom Kass's rice pudding recipe, but I'm only now getting around to testing it. This dessert will end up tasting even less like the original now that I'm vegan, but maybe when I make this it can remind me of my grandparents and that beyond-delicious thimbleful of cardamom rice pudding I had in Madurai.

So here's my vegan version. It's easy-peasy and excellent comfort food—the way the cardamom mingles with the vanilla is totally magical.

2/3 cup uncooked white rice (I used 'jasmati')1/3 cup raw sugar1/3 cup raisins4½ cups coconut milk1 teaspoon vanilla6 cardamom pods

Preheat oven to 325º. Mix all ingredients in a large casserole dish. Bake for an hour and fifteen minutes, stirring regularly and taste-testing for sweetness once the rice has softened. Remove cardamom pods and serve hot or cold. Yields 6-8 servings.Some notes:

• You can add more raisins, but it might be a good idea to add more milk too, since they really suck it up while they're cooking.
• Of course you can skip the cardamom pods, or use ground cardamom, but it really does make the dish. (I can't emphasize this enough, actually. Magical. For reals.)
• There's no need to cover the dish with foil (I wasn't sure, so I called my grandmother to check).

Now if only that zucchini soufflé were so easy to veganize! (I picked up a box of egg replacer but I haven't used it yet, so I'm still skeptical.)

A Tiger in the Kitchen (and zucchini souffle!)

Remember when I was at Yaddo last April? (Sheesh, I can't believe it's going on a year ago already.) Well, when I walked into the common room my first evening there, we were doing the usual introductions and one of my new friends said, ' Wait a minute—I've read your book!' Cheryl turned out to be the social glue the whole time I was there, always hatching plans for fun things to do in the evenings, acquiring bruises all over in the name of PIG (official rules posted here, also thanks to Cheryl), and taking wonderful pictures to remember each other by.I blog family recipes from time to time, and you all know how fond I am of my grandparents, so of course Cheryl's new memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, is right up my alley. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (it'll be waiting for me when I come home next month), but here's the book description:

After growing up in the most food-obsessed city in the world, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America—proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before? In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations.A Tiger in the Kitchen, which includes ten authentic recipes for Singaporean classics such as pineapple tarts and Teochew braised duck, is the charming, beautifully written story of a Chinese-Singaporean ex-pat who learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.

Now, Cheryl has some pretty sophisticated tastebuds (as evidenced by her popular blog), but she's no 'food snob.' Recently a reader commented that her grandmother's recipe for pineapple tart was 'run of the mill', which of course annoyed anybody who ever had a grandmother. My grandmom Kass' cooking is unabashedly 'run of the mill'—simple, no-fuss recipes for good old-fashioned comfort food. So what if the zucchini soufflé recipe calls for Bisquick? I'll take my grandmother's cooking over haute cuisine any day. (Besideswhich, those pineapple tarts look pretty extraordinary to me! Bewitching bite-sized marvels, indeed.)

Ever hear that saying, 'every time an old person dies a library burns'? So far as I've observed, my grandparents' generation were and are a humble bunch, and they don't think too much about posterity or how valuable their life experiences are. Family recipes are a huge part of this trove of knowledge. Grandmom Kass learned how to cook from her aunt, because her own mother wasn't exactly Betty Crocker (we heard stories of how she used to dump sugar on the salad, and her jello always came served with a nice thick skin on top). Pumpkin soup, onion pie, creamy horseradish carrots, broccoli baked with cheese and breadcrumbs, rice pudding, depression cake...for me, my grandmother's culinary repertoire typifies mid-century blue-collar Philadelphia—nothing fancy, just good, wholesome food. (Though by 'wholesome,' I don't necessarily mean healthy. Philly is best known for cheesesteaks, pizzas, and spaghetti-meatball dinners, after all.) None of those recipes are original, but to me they are hers. She could have made up her own, of course, but I don't think it's ever occurred to her. Every cook makes her own modifications as she works, and given that she probably added a dash of this and a pinch of that without ever making a note of it, I doubt my versions of her signature dishes will ever taste as good as hers; but at least we have the recipes, and every time we make one we'll think of her.

So to celebrate the publication of A Tiger in the Kitchen, I'd like to share my grandmother's recipe for zucchini soufflé.* This one is, hands down, my favorite of everything she has ever made. It's light and delicately flavorful and I always try to snag a nice golden-crusty corner piece.

Combine in mixing bowl:

--3 cups grated zucchini--1/2 cup vegetable oil--1 cup Bisquick mix--4 eggs--1/2 cup grated parmesan--1 small onion, grated

Mix well, spoon into greased two-quart casserole dish. Bake at 325º for 50-60 minutes. Serves 6-8.

*From The Best of the Zucchini Recipes Cookbook, compiled by Helen and Emil Dandar and published locally in 1988; this recipe was submitted by Antonette Biasotto of Newark, Delaware.

Happy Pub Day, Cheryl!

(Note: A veganized recipe is forthcoming.)