Brown Rice Pasta Primavera

Cooking with friends is always an enjoyable time and a great experience. I recommend it to anyone who is looking to pass a quiet night with good company and delicious food. The funny thing about cooking with friends is that sometimes you learn cooking techniques that stick with you forever. Whenever you use that technique, you naturally think of that person. Such is the case whenever I make pasta with broccoli. One night in college I made pasta with my friend Nathan, and he literally blew my mind when he told me that you could just drop broccoli into pasta during the last few minutes of cooking. Not only did it add a vegetable to the dish, it also saved a dirty pan. Lately I feel like my hands are a little dry, and I have attributed this to the number of dishes I have been doing. So, every time that I take the opportunity to save myself a pan and some trouble, I say a silent thank-you to Mr. Punwario(this is Nathan's college nickname that he would not want reprinted here).
Unlike most vegetables, there was never really a time when I hated broccoli. I attribute this to two things. First, my mom used to ply us with cheese-covered broccoli. Second, it was commonly used in pasta dishes. These two disguises allowed broccoli to slip undetected into my diet. The other day I found myself wanting something quick and delicious. It was nearing the end of the grocery week, but I had a bottle of Charles Shaw opened. Past the age of 22, Charles Shaw is never meant to be drank, and only acceptable as a cooking wine. So, I pieced together some things from my pantry with some things from my fridge and ended up with a magical little pasta dish that reminds me of cavatelli with broccoli. (Author's note: in New Jersey this would be pronounced Cah-vah-teal).

 Brown Rice Pasta with Broccoli

• 2 c. broccoli florets
• 2 c. mushrooms
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 c. white wine
• 2 TBSP lemon juice
• 1 c. brown rice pasta (dry measure)

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, chop the broccoli florets into bite-sized pieces, quarter the mushrooms, and mince the garlic.
2. When the water comes to a boil, add the pasta. Cook for about 5 minutes and then add the broccolli to the boiling water.
3. In a saute pan over medium heat, cook the garlic for one minute in a small amount of oil (just enough to not burn the pan).
3. Add the mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes. Add 1/2 a cup of dry white wine and lemon juice. Stir and continue to simmer over medium heat.
4. Drain the pasta and broccoli, add to the mushroom/wine mixture and simmer until the wine reduces (about 3 minutes).
5. Serve hot. You can sprinkle this with Italian Daiya, vegan Parmesan, or sun-dried tomatoes. Go crazy.

Oil-free Vegan Pesto

There are some word combinations that make anyone's ears pop up, and oil-free vegan pesto always seems to do the trick. Let me start out by talking about pesto. I love it. I love basil on its own, but when its diced into tiny pieces and mixed with pine nuts, my blood really gets pumping. I love pesto on my pasta, pesto on my pizza, pesto on a sandwich (it is the only condiment besides ketchup that I will allow on a sandwich or burger). However, a traditional pesto is really, really, really bad for you, especially in the amounts that I like to use. It's full of olive oil and most commercial pestos also contain Parmesan cheese (a big vegan no-no). This used to be a problem for me, until I realized that I could take a hint from Fat Free Vegan and replace all of that olive oil with vegetable broth. I further decided to include some spinach in my pesto, because I am a firm believer in the nutritional properties of that little superfood.
The result is a pesto that you can feel good about. I use my food processor for this recipe, but if you do not have one, and your knife skills are up to par, you should do just fine. This pesto goes great on a pizza in place of tomato sauce, on a vegan caprese sandwich (use the daiya cheese and warm it ever so slightly), or over some whole wheat pasta. It keeps in the fridge for about a week, so it's a good make-ahead item for those of you who, like me, see the inside of our cubicles more than the inside of our kitchens.


Easiest Pesto Ever

• 2 cloves garlic, quartered but not chopped
• 1 c. basil
• 1/2 c. fresh or frozen spinach, if frozen, don't forget to drain and pat dry
• 1/4 c. pine nuts
• 1/3 c. vegetable broth

1. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse on high for about 10 seconds, or until smooth.

Quinoa Stuffed peppers

 Stuffed peppers are one of those Italian dishes that I always remember having around when I was a kid. Unfortunately, I refused to eat anything green, so I really missed out. Now that I'm older, I feel bad for my mom, because I was probably such a pain in the ass to feed. I'll try to do better with my kids, which I am not having for awhile, despite my sister passing on my mom's message to get to work on some grandkids. 
So, I grew up in New Jersey, and while my personal affiliations lean more towards Irish, sometimes I feel like I should get some sort of honorary "guidette" award. This is probably a good time to make some comments on MTV's Jersey Shore. I watched a few episodes, mostly because everyone I know kept asking me if New Jersey was really that bad. I will say this: I grew up at the Jersey Shore and 90% of the wintertime population was completely normal. However, in the summer a lot of tourists from Northern Jersey and New York come down to live in the summer rentals. They turn our quiet, classy town into Ed Hardy central and their bars start pumping house music at 180dB. It would be easy for me to rag on them, but I am grateful to the Italians for bringing such good food over to America. So, I salute you and your forefathers with my recipe for quinoa-stuffed peppers. This dish is a great way to use up vegetables that you might have on hand near the end of your grocery cycle, or to use some things that have been hanging out in the freezer. It's also a nifty use of quinoa, which is probably one of my favorite superfoods.

Mama Mia! Garlic Knots!

Apologies for being so bad about posting lately. Work has been ridiculous and between there and the gym, I haven't had a spare moment to write anything lately. I've been super low on energy and not really prioritizing my cooking or blogging as much as I wish I could. Rest assured, I've still been eating very healthy and very vegan. I even tried out a couple of new recipes which I was very pleased with. I'll be posting them here over the next couple of days so that you too can try them out.

One of my most favorite places in the world is C&O's Trattoria in Venice Beach. Not only do they serve the most amazing, gigantic plates of pasta I've ever seen, but they have a very great hook as well. Three words. Unlimited garlic knots. You just sit down and order an entree, and the garlic knot guy will come to your table time and time again, filling your plate with delicious garlic knots that are warm out of the oven. I'm pretty sure that their garlic knots are vegan, because most pizza dough usually is, but I really should call to do some investigating. If the opportunity arises to visit there in the next 40 days, I will have to call them and find out if their delicious garlic-y goodness fits in line with my new lifestyle choices. If they tell me that they aren't vegan, however, it might be a real deal-breaker. It's debatable whether it would ruin my relationship with veganism or my relationship with C&O's.

Once upon a time, I was a Girl Scout. Our motto was to always be prepared. Thus, if C&O's doesn't come through for me, I have an excellent backup plan. That backup plan is my very delicious, previously top-secret recipe for garlic knots. It's super easy to make, but they always seem to really impress people. When I made a tray on New Years Eve, they were a big hit. Luckily, they're one of those things that are just naturally vegan. You could, I suppose, screw everything up by adding parmesan or romano cheese. If you really feel like you need that extra garnish, you should go ahead and pick up some vegan parmesan from your local Whole Foods. It's just as good.

Without further adieu, here is a totally simple, totally awesome garlic knot recipe. You could serve these as an accompaniment to a pasta dish, as an appetizer, or as part of a cocktail party spread. If you were feeling particularly lazy, you could probably put these out with some tomato sauce for dipping and call it a meal.

Garlic Knots
1 package vegan pizza dough (I just buy it in the bag from Trader Joe's, but you could make it as well)
6! cloves of garlic
1/2  c. earth balance
2 tbsp. olive oil
salt
1/4 c. fresh basil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Turn your pizza dough onto a floured surface. Knead it a few times before rolling it out to a rectangle about 1/4" thick and 5" long.
Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into strips that are about 1" wide.
Tie each individual strip into a knot and place on a nonstick baking sheet.
Brush tops with 1 tbsp. olive oil.
Cook for 10-12 minutes, or until tops of the knots are a golden brown.
While these are done cooking, sauté minced garlic in 1 tbsp. olive oil until it starts to turn golden.
Add the earth balance to the sauce pan and stir until completely melted.
Transfer the still-warm garlic knots to a bowl and toss with the garlic-butter mixture.
Chop the fresh basil and sprinkle over your garlic knots with a pinch of salt (kosher is best).

Pesto, Picnics, Pasta Salad, and Populism

OK so maybe I was kidding about the third one, but I did go on a picnic and I did make a pesto pasta salad. Last Sunday I went on the most gorgeous hiking trip with my new friends in the Greater LA Veggie Hikers group. We drove out to the California poppy fields and then did an amazing hike of Devil's Chair. Not only was the scenery lovely, but the change in elevation really got my blood pumping. Yes, we saw lots of great bits of nature, but the best part of the entire day had to have been the vegetarian potluck. There were so many delicious vegan dishes, and it was the first time in months that I can remember having so many different options on a table. I ate a ton of different pastas and salads and some great dessert. It sure was a good thing that we were able to burn it all off in the afternoon. For my contribution to the event, I brought a pesto pasta salad with brown rice pasta. It was pretty good, but definitely not the most delicious thing on the table. This is a dish that is great hot but is also good cold. It's a great take-along dish for any potluck or picnic, or sometimes just to keep in the fridge when you know there are going to be nights when you don't even have time to heat up dinner.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

I had a bunch of grape tomatoes and basil left over from pasta salad at the beginning of the grocery week, and felt like I had to use them in some meaningful way. I had also recently been reading about the different "types" of tomato sauce. You can apparently do a slow-cooking sauce (this is the one I usually go with), and everything gets really rich and caramelized. Another option is to do a sauce that cooks for a few hours, and the third is to do a really fresh sauce that only gets cooked for a matter of minutes. Since I was dealing with grape tomatoes, I felt like the best thing to do would be to stay true to their nature and go with a very bright sauce. Whoever posted the anonymous comment about aluminum cans leaching lycopene from tomatoes, this sauce is for you. It uses fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and a bit of garlic. It only takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, but pre-roasting the tomatoes keeps it from tasting too "raw". I know a bunch of people who are into the whole raw vegan thing, but this girl likes her food to be pretty cooked. Sure, I love a good salad or crunchy raw vegetables. I even had a raw brownie that I was into once, but when it comes to something like my tomato sauce, I like it to have that kick that only comes with being heated above 105 degrees.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye

Since the revolution (which is how I refer to me becoming a vegetarian), I have been bringing my own lunch to work almost every day. Sometimes, my co-workers get lunch envy, and nothing gets them gathered around and asking questions like when I show up with a home-made vegan pizza.
Now, I am from New Jersey, which means I know more about pizza than you do and I make better pizza than you ever will. I spent a summer working at Vesuvio's Italian restaurant in Belmar, NJ, where they made some of the best thin crust pizza I've ever tasted.  I picked up a thing or two while working there, and now you, gentle reader, get to reap the benefits.

Step 1: The Dough
Now, the reason why New York, Boston, and New Jersey have the best pizza in the world is supposedly in the water. However, the real reason why it's a thousand times better than those Papa Huts and Pizza Johns is that the crust is rolled out until it is as thin as possible. A good slice of pizza is a 1-to-1 ratio between crust, sauce, and cheese. That being said, you can recreate some of that pizza magic in your own kitchen by just taking the time roll out your dough to the proper thickness.
I like to use Trader Joes' pizza dough in whole wheat, although their garlic and herb is also very tasty. They sell it refridgerated in big bags, and I will bring it home and freeze individual servings of dough. When it's time to make a pizza, I defrost my dough and then roll it out onto a cutting board with plenty of whole wheat flour. You should knead it a few times before gently stretching the dough in your hands until it is no more than 1/4" thick. Be liberal with your flour, because the dusting of whole wheat on the bottom of the pizza is really going to make your crust.

Step 2: The Sauce
A good pizza sauce should be very, very thin. One shortcut that I use sometimes is to take canned tomato paste and mix it with a little bit of water and some spices. Another real shortcut is probably to just buy the stuff in a jar. Either way, you want to get a nice thin layer of sauce on top of your dough.

Step 3: The Garlic
I'll usually mince two cloves of garlic and sprinkle them on top of my sauce layer. I eat a lot of garlic.  It probably really sucks to kiss me, but I'm selfish so I really don't care. I'm going to continue to eat as much garlic as I want. It's a natural antibiotic. It's good for your cardiovascular system.It has antioxidants. I'm worth it.

Step 4: The Cheese
When making a vegan pizza, you have a few options. One is Follow Your Heart Mozarella, a soy-based cheese that actually melts. Another is Daiya cheese, wich is tapioca based and featured at Pizza Fusion (in Santa Monica and San Diego). A third option is to forgoe cheese altogether and just sprinkle a pinch of nutritional yeast over your sauce and top with a bunch of veggies. My favorite is the Italian Daiya, which you can probably get at Whole Foods, I know that we can out here.


Step 5: Toppings
This is a great way to use up whatever vegetables you have lying around in your fridge. My favorite pizza topping is frozen spinach, which I will defrost and saute in a little bit of cooking spray before topping my pizza. Another good option is to use mushrooms, which are especially nice if you are foregoing cheese altogether. I also love fresh basil, but can never seem to use an entire package of it, so I rarely keep it on hand. I've had great success with Tofurkey's sausage. Check the label very carefully, because they only have one vegan variety.

When I was in college, we had a Wolfgang Puck Express in the middle of campus, and I cannot tell you how many times I had their pesto and sausage pizza for lunch. No wonder why my jeans didn't fit. I have recreated the flavor combination, though, by using a low fat vegan pesto, soy cheese, "sausage", and fresh tomato slices. It's absolutely amazing, and sometimes it's fun to go wild and use something other than classic tomato sauce.

Let's Talk About "Gravy"

Gravy is a term that some people use to refer to hand-crafted tomato sauce. It implies that said sauce did not come out of a can, but rather was painstakingly prepared over the course of several hours. I have never used the term "gravy", but when I think of tomato sauce, I don't think of Prego. I think of tomato paste, like the can pictured above, whole canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, and a kitchen that smells absolutely heavenly. I love to put on a pot of tomato sauce and then freeze what's left over, so I have some on hand for pizza and pasta dishes.
I know that canned sauce is very convenient, but who the hell knows what they put in there. Usually it's a lot of additives that rack up the calories. Real tomato sauce should have no more than 5 or 6 ingredients, and as a result, it will be low in fat and full of lycopene, which is an important free radical phytochemical that fights free radicals (Thanks, Lori). If you want, you can start with actual tomatoes and cook them down or some such nonsense. Instead, I do what my mom did and I take some important shortcuts. The only time-consuming part of my tomato sauce recipe is the time it sits on the stove. This recipe is super easy and super delicious. So, grab a knife and a pot and prepare to impress the hell out of your friends.

Hey Garfield, it's Lasagna!

Who didn't love the comic strip and television cartoon about that fat orange cat who seemingly lived for the sole purpose of shipping dogs off to Abu-Dabi? More importantly, who doesn't love a good lasagna?
I used to take great pride in finding the perfect ratio of mozzarella to ricotta to tomato sauce to pasta. Then, I realized that putting 4 tablespoons of spinach into a 12-serving tray did not a healthy dinner make. Lasagna is comfort food, and with my discovery of vegan ricotta cheese, seemed like a good idea to me. This recipe has two components, first is a tofu-ricotta made with a food processor. This ricotta would be suitable for a baked ziti, or even on top of a vegan pizza with lots of garlic.