Category: Vegetarian

Key Lime Cupcakes

Recipe here.

For Girl’s birthday party tomorrow.  Had to try one tonight…you know, just to make sure that they were OK…before I served them to the children.  I wouldn’t want to serve them an inferior baked good, you know…

The verdict?  Yum!  The cake itself is rich and moist and slightly Red Velvet-y (because of the buttermilk,) but without any chocolate flavor, of course.  I omitted the green food coloring, so the cakes are white on our cupcakes, rather than green (eww!)

The frosting is creamy and delicious with a PRONOUNCED lime tang.  I love citrus and the flavor of these definitely does not disappoint.  I sprinkled a TINY bit of extra lime zest on top of each cupcake after frosting.  I didn’t frost them too heavily, so had an extra cup of frosting leftover.  I’ll have to come up with something to do with it.  It might be really nice on a loaf of zucchini bread…

The Moosewood’s Caribbean Vegetable Stew

Recipe here.

This was quite yummy.  I added a bit of garlic (about 2 cloves, pressed) and about 2 tsp of Jamaican Jerk seasoning.

For the chile, I used one roasted hatch green chile from Central Market (although it would have been even better with two.)  I just LOVE the Hatch Chile festival week!  If you’re in Central Texas and haven’t already checked this out, you are missing a bet.  Head over there right away – only 2 days left!  They have huge grills set up outside the store and roast hatch chiles all week long.  They sell bags of the roasted chiles (hot or mild, your choice) and feature all kinds of hatch chile products all week (tortilla chips, enchilada sauce, chile con queso.)  They are the best chiles EVER.  I always buy a bag to use right away and another to chop and freeze for future use.  YUM.

Veggie Sandwich

Vegetarian Girl LOVES the “Veggie Delite” sandwich from Thundercloud Subs (a fairly famous Austin chain,) so I thought that I would try to create an “at home” version for her.

I used:

a whole wheat hamburger bun

hummus

thinly sliced cucumber

thinly sliced tomato

caramelized onions

sauteed mushrooms

She liked the sandwich, but said that it was a little bland and that she’d like to add some lettuce, pickle slices and chopped olives next time.  So, not bad for a first stab, but we’ll know how to fix it next time.

Some other great possible additions or substitutions would be:

baby spinach leaves or your favorite kind of sprouts

avocado slices or a smear of mashed avocado (or even guacamole – yum!)

a spread of cream cheese or a slice of your favorite cheese (instead of the hummus)

grated carrot

Hoisin-Glazed Scallops with Sauteed Spinach and Peanut Butter Noodles

Peanut Butter Noodles recipe here.

The scallops recipe is from the subscription-only section of Fine Cooking’s website, but basically, you just cook the scallops in a VERY HOT lightly oiled pan (after sprinkling them with a tiny bit of cayenne and salt) until they’re browned on both sides and opaque throughout and then you lightly brush them with hoisin sauce.  Easy peasy.  The accompanying spinach recipe is slightly more difficult to sum, but I didn’t use it, anyway.  I just sauteed my spinach the same old way, with a little Baby Bam.

I’ve added the “vegetarian” tag to this post, because the peanut butter noodles would be (and were, for The Girl) an acceptable vegetarian entree, on their own.  They were delicious and were a huge hit with all four of us.  You could add any veggies that suit your taste (mushrooms, water chestnuts, baby corn, broccoli, etc.) and you could add a bit or sriracha to spice it up, if you like that sort of thing.  We added cucumber, grated carrot, red bell pepper, cilantro and finely chopped peanuts.

White-on-White Buttermilk Cake with Jack Daniels Buttercream

Recipe here.

I actually made this in January, but somehow forgot to post it until now (just came across the photos when clearing off my laptop’s desktop,) but it was definitely more memorable than my behavior would have you believe.  This was a delicious, rich cake that was fluffy and sweet without being cloying and would be a perfect birthday cake for anyone except the most fervent teetotalers.

Will be a definitely repeat…possibly for Hubby’s birthday in a couple of months?

Wheat Berry Salad with Raisins and Pistachios

Recipe here.

This was quite tasty.  It had a nice lemony tang to it, and the chewiness of the wheat berries was very filling.

Now, that being said…if you hate raisins and goat cheese, or if you’re not crazy about cilantro or are frightened by unfamiliar novelty grains, this salad isn’t going to convert you.  It is exactly the sum of its parts, so if you like the parts, you’ll love it; if you don’t, you won’t…

Spinach and Cheddar Souffle

Recipe here.

I’ve always loved souffles and absolutely adore Ina Garten, so when I saw this recipe in House Beautiful magazine, I knew that I had to try it.  It was totally easy and really is foolproof.  I confess that I even forgot and opened the oven door once and the souffle still didn’t fall.  Yummy and cheesy, but also light and fluffy.  We served it with a fresh tomato-and-basil salad (tomato from our garden…basil from Girl’s sweet Spanish teacher’s garden) and it was beautiful.

Vegetarian Girl, clowning around with the souffle after it came out of the oven.

Beautiful Tomato-Basil salad…no recipe necessary, just sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced basil, a generous pour of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.  This is basically just a cheeseless Caprese salad, but it was delicious.

Almond Croissants

Like my Wizard of Oz coffee mug?  Yeah, we got a little obsessed around here for a while, but it has, blessedly, passed…

OK, so if you dig the flavor of almonds, you really owe it to yourself to make these right away.  I’ve made them a couple of times over the past few weeks and they are really something special, especially when they’re hot out of the oven.

Almond Croissant Turnovers

(recipe adapted from this one)

1/2 package frozen puff pastry

1/4 cup canned almond paste

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup sliced almonds

Thaw the puff pastry (you’ll use only one of the sheets in the package…wrap the other one tightly in plastic wrap and keep it in the freezer) at room temperature, wrapped in waxed paper or plastic wrap, for about 45 minutes, until it’s soft enough to handle without it breaking.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Carefully unfold the sheet and lay it out flat on a lightly floured work surface.  Using a pastry cutter or pizza cutter, cut the sheet into four equal-sized squares.  Gently spread one tablespoonful of almond paste onto each square, stopping about a half-inch away from the edges of each square.

Starting at one corner, gently fold each pastry square over, diagonally, to form a triangle over the filling.  Beginning on the folded side, gently press any excess air out of the dough and then press the edges of the triangle to seal it, using a minimal amount of the egg (applied with a pastry brush) as glue, if necessary.  Repeat with each pastry square and then place all of the filled and sealed croissants on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Brush each croissant with a thin but thorough (cover the whole surface, but don’t douse it and try not to apply so much that it bleeds over onto the parchment paper) coat of the beaten egg.  Sprinkle each croissant with a coating of the sliced almonds (as many or as few as you’d like…a small clump or coat the whole thing…your choice) and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until the croissants are golden brown and the almonds on top are toasted.

Let cool for about 1 minute while you brew your coffee,  and then enjoy.

Nota Bene:  I only use half the package of puff pastry, because there are four of us in my family, but you could obviously very easily double this recipe, by using the whole package, to make 8 croissants…or as many as you might need, if you’re serving a crowd.  I haven’t tried it yet, but I also think it would be fun to cut each sheet into 16 tiny squares and make mini croissants…stay tuned!

Dorie Greenspan’s Lemony Sour Cream Muffins

Recipe here.

These muffins were absolutely fantastic.  The melted butter gives a rich flavor and helps develop a delicious, crusty muffin top.  These will be a definite repeat.  Yum.

The recipe doesn’t specify, but this makes 12 muffins.

We served the muffins with a strawberry-banana-black grape fruit salad and some scrambled (mostly) egg whites.  When I make a recipe (such as custard or spinach-ricotta tortelli) that uses a lot of egg yolks, I’ll save the whites and either make meringues or macarons or just use them for scrambled eggs the next morning, for a slightly lower-cholesterol option.   I’ll usually add one or two whole eggs, also, for better flavor.   A good blend, to ensure palatability, is about 5 egg whites and 2 whole eggs (with some McCormick low sodium Montreal Steak seasoning – YUM!) to serve my family of 4.

Spinach-and-Ricotta Tortelli with Browned Butter

Recipe here.

I knew when I saw this recipe that, as appealing as it looked, it was going to be a fair amount of work.  I’ve had it sitting in the “someday when we have a lot of free time on our hands” pile for quite some time, just waiting for the perfect day.  I  knew that the kids would want to help with the stuffing and rolling, so it had to be a time when every one was home (difficult) and didn’t have other compelling things to do (near-impossible.)  It was time-consuming, but not terribly, and it took a little patience to get the hang of rolling the tortelli, but it was easiest than I thought and we were more successful than I had feared we might be.  All of the tortellis remained intact during cooking (I cannot boast this level of success with previous homemade ravioli attempts) and they were VERY tasty.  Well worth the effort and definitely something we will be doing again.  After running the pasta disks through the pasta machine, they became VERY long and unwieldy strips, so I cut them in half, but that turned out to be a mistake later, because I was not able to cut as many dough circles out of them.  We consequently had about a third of our spinach-ricotta filling left and our batch of dough made less tortellis than the recipe specified.  I’ll correct this next time by using a slightly larger circle cutter (I have another one that is 3 inches across) and using slightly more filling in each one.  We’ll be trying this again (now that the kids have mastered tortelli-shaping) and maybe experiment with different fillings and/or sauces.

Our batch only made about 52 tortelli, although the recipe states approximately 80.  I think I know what we did wrong, though, and will correct this next time.

We served the tortelli with some sauteed green beans and a grilled New York Strip steak (we just buy one steak and cut it into small strips to split three ways, amongst the carnivores in the family.)  Vegetarian Girl just had green beans and pasta.

We also sipped a lovely Syrah-Sangiovese blend that we brought back from Italy last summer.  We were saving it for a special occasion and figured that making our own stuffed pasta from scratch qualified as one.