Peachy Green

Grain bowls are a weeknight staple around here. Steam a grain (quinoa, brown rice, barley), toss a veggie in a hot skillet (greens, broccoli, really just anything), add a protein (tofu, chickpeas, egg). Basic. Boring, until you get to the fun part—the sauce.

I’m always on the lookout for interesting-sounding sauces, especially ones that use ingredients I always have on hand. This ginger-miso dressing just about fit that bill, with a substitution or two, and I streamlined the preparation so it came together in the time the vegetables spent in the pan.

Then we tasted it.

“I’d eat this every week. It’d be really good with tempeh or tofu,” I said.

“Or as a dipping sauce for dumplings,” Austin said.

“Or spring rolls. Or even a salad dressing.”

“I’d just drink shots of it.”

“It would be good if this came out of our shower instead of water.”

Austin drew the line at my suggestion that my job pay me in this sauce instead of with money, I think because he loves saving for retirement and worried it wouldn’t keep. He did say he’d breathe it instead of oxygen if he could, so that’s saying…something. Something like, “Everyone please try this. Tonight.”

FARRO BOWLS WITH MISO-GINGER SAUCE

Serves Four

1 cup farro

4 bulbs green garlic, sliced thinly

8 cups greens, destemmed (I used spinach & turnip greens)

1/4 cup olive oil (plus more for cooking veggies)

1/3 cup water

3 tbsp miso

1 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tsp soy sauce

2 tbsp roughly chopped ginger

1 tsp Sriracha sauce

Cook your farro. Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a cast-iron skillet; add green garlic. Saute for a few minutes until softened. Add greens in batches and stir until wilted, but still bright green.

Make the sauce: Combine olive oil, water, miso, rice vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, and Sriracha in the vessel that belongs to the immersion blender; blend away until smooth.

Serve by layering grain, greens, and sauce in bowls. This really would be perfect with tofu; we were out.

This chilled grain salad is the perfect summer supper—it comes together quickly (cook the spelt a day in advance) and is light and refreshing after a day in the sun, but also replenishing, with plenty of complex carbohydrates and protein. I served ours with leftover broiled green beans, which reheated beautifully in a hot skillet.

CHILLED SPELT SALAD WITH RADISHES, CARROTS, AND CHEVRE

1/4 cup olive oil, plus more to cook greens

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp dried oregano

Salt & pepper to taste

4 cups trimmed greens (I used swiss chard & arugula)

2 cloves garlic

1 cup dry spelt, cooked* and chilled

1/2 cup thinly sliced radishes

3/4 cup grated carrots

4 oz chevre, crumbled

Whisk together 1/4 cup olive oil, vinegar, oregano, salt & pepper in a large bowl. Heat a little more olive oil in a medium-sized skillet and add greens & garlic. Cook until just wilted, then add to dressing mixture. Stir in spelt, radishes, and carrots until everything is well-coated with dressing, then fold in chevre.

*To cook spelt: use a 1 cup spelt to 3 cups water. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 90 minutes. I’ve been able to halve that time by soaking in advance.

I can’t stay ahead of my milk, y’all.

Allow me to explain. I’ve always wished for local milk at the East Atlanta Farmer’s Market, and this season Country Garden Farms is making all my (dairy-related) dreams come true! They’re there every week with gallons and half-gallons of amazingly creamy, raw whole milk. (Sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal in Georgia, so they are very clear about how their milk is for pets only; assume all tasting notes in this post come directly from these two.)

So the problem is, I only use about a quarter-cup of milk per day, on my breakfast granola. Even though I’ve been freezing it in pint jars and only thawing one at a time, I still can’t seem to get through a jar before it sours.

Tonight’s solution to the problem was Smitten Kitchen’s creamed chard, and oh my, was it ever tasty. Cooking the white sauce with spring onions flavors it throughout with delicious oniony sweetness, and though you’ll totally forget the chard is even there, it adds a little texture and color and, you know, vitamins. So good.*

I served ours with a sourdough baguette for sauce-sopping, skillet broccoli, and first-of-the-season broiled snap beans for an altogether lovely, and very green, meal.

*According to Thurston, that is.

According to Austin and his brother, anytime the dinner responsibility fell to their dad he’d put a skillet on the stove and start more or less randomly emptying cans and packages into it and stir it all around until it was good and cooked.

For my dad’s part, when he cooked dinner, it was nearly always breakfast. Scrambled eggs, half a bagel, and cantaloupe (bacon for my brother). If it ain’t eggs, Mom made dinner.

This dinner is an accidental homage to dad meals everywhere, apparently. I don’t know if Donnie B. ever called his skillet suppers “hash”, but he could have, because that’s what you call it when you really just dumped a bunch of things in a skillet and stirred them around but you want to seem like you knew what you were doing. It’s hash! Hash is a thing, I made hash.

And of course, I poached an egg on it. We’ve met, right?

BEETS & GREENS HASH WITH POACHED EGGS

Serves two

1 tbsp olive oil

3 smallish beets, scrubbed & sliced very thinly

2 cloves garlic, minced

6 cups roughly chopped greens (I used beet greens & swiss chard)

Salt & pepper to taste

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tbsp chia seeds

4 eggs (I only poached one for each of us and wished I’d done two)

Heat olive oil in a deep cast iron skillet. When it’s nice and hot, add beets. Cook, stirring only occasionally, until tender and beginning to brown in spots. Add garlic & greens, in batches, stirring until wilted. Season to taste with salt & pepper. Add butter, nutritional yeast, and chia seeds. Set aside.

While all that’s going on, boil a pot of water and poach your eggs. Serve hash warm, topped with eggs.

And a poached egg! Lately anytime I’m feeling like my meal concept is lacking inspiration I up and poach an egg on it. It’s generally pretty effective & definitely worked this time, although beets & goat cheese are kind of a can’t-miss combination all on their own.

This would be such a quick meal, if only spelt didn’t take decades to cook. I did cut that time in half (to 45 minutes!) by soaking it for about an hour while we walked the dogs, then changing the water & simmering until tender, but still chewy. That timing wound up being about perfect—the beets & greens were prepped and cooked and finishing up just about the same time the spelt was.

About the chia seeds: they’re so good for you! They’re all full up with omega-3s, and much easier to use than flax—they keep in the pantry & don’t need to be ground to make the good stuff bioavailable, plus they’re tiny and nearly flavorless. Oh, and yes, chia as in Chia Pet. Why wouldn’t I?

ROASTED BEET & GOAT CHEESE SPELT WITH CHIA SEEDS

3/4 cup spelt

1 cup sliced beets

2 tsp olive oil, divided

2 cups destemmed beet greens

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup vegetable broth

1 tbsp chia seeds

2 oz. goat cheese, crumbled

2 poached eggs

Salt & pepper to taste

Cook spelt (according to your package, or as described above). Heat oven to 375. Toss beets with 1 tsp olive oil & salt to taste, then spread in a single layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat 1 tsp olive oil in a large skillet and add greens & garlic. Saute a few minutes, then add vegetable broth and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, until greens are tender. Combine greens with cooked spelt & chia seeds, season with salt & pepper, and serve, topped with beets, goat cheese, and poached eggs.

Once I read about a medical study asserting that people who used the language “fighting a cold” instead of “having a cold” shortened the severity and duration of said cold by some statistically significant amount. My first few years of teaching were basically one contiguous illness, usually colds but also various other small-child-borne diseases, and I would pretty much take any advice I could get.

I actually hardly get sick at all anymore, thanks to a few factors—namely borderline-obsessive hand-washing, zinc supplements*, middle schoolers (much less likely to be all up in your contagion zone, plus generally better hygiene), and probably just an immune system of steel, honed those first years to prime battle-ready status. However, alas, this weekend I succumbed. Sorry, no, I fought, and am still fighting, a cold, passed to me by Austin, who is also still fighting.

This soup was like a cold-battle nuclear warhead, dropping a load of garlic, ginger, vitamin-packed greens, probiotic-heavy miso, and steamy, spicy broth to bolster our immune systems and clear our clogged sinuses. Also, it was delicious. Pretty sure we’re both going to win this one.

MISO SOUP WITH GREENS & TOFU

2 tbsp olive oil, divided

1 large bunch spring onions, chopped, white & green bits separate

8 cups greens (I used beet greens & rainbow chard), stems chopped & leaves torn to bite-sized, separated

6 cloves garlic, minced

3 tbsp minced ginger

1 tsp crushed red pepper

6 cups vegetable broth

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 package tofu, drained & cubed

Salt & pepper to taste

1 cup cooked brown rice

1/4 cup thinly sliced radishes

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

2 tbsp miso paste (I used mild white miso; different types of miso have different flavor profiles)

Sesame oil, for drizzling

1 lime, sliced

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a dutch oven, and add white parts of onions. Cook a few minutes, stirring occasionally, then add swiss chard stems. Allow to cook a few more minutes, then add garlic, ginger, and crushed red pepper, stirring for 30 seconds. Add broth & soy sauce and bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the tofu: heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a nonstick skillet. Add tofu, season with salt & pepper, and cook until all sides are lightly browned.

Begin adding greens in batches to the simmering broth, stirring until wilted. When all the greens are ready, stir in the cooked tofu & rice. Heat through, then remove pan from heat. Stir in cilantro, green parts of onions, and radishes. Mix miso with a few tablespoons of warm water, then add to the soup, stirring well to combine (adding miso at the end of the cooking time preserves the probiotics). Serve each bowl of soup drizzled with a little sesame oil and accompanied by a lime wedge to squeeze over top.

* About zinc, since I imagine this vegetarian blog has an audience that could perhaps benefit: I’ve found zinc supplements, taken as soon as I feel the slightest bit run-down or post-nasally, to be borderline miraculous. Zinc is largely found in red meat, so I imagine other vegetarians might see the same result.

No, those are not fish sticks.

Okay, now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk satay! So fun, right? Sometimes I make fun of Austin for his preschoolerish love of dipping sauces, but really, he and the preschoolers are onto something. Dipping food is fun, and this particular sauce is delicious. I baked my tempeh, which unfortunately dried it out a bit (nothing peanut sauce couldn’t cure), so I advise sauteing instead, as recommended in the recipe I used (which is for tofu, but works beautifully for tempeh, too).

When I removed the tempeh from the marinade, I made sure each piece was coated well and reserved the rest of the marinade to saute radishes and a mixture of greens in for a flavorful vegetable side, served over rice to round out the meal.

The peanut sauce is more complicated than my usual one, and a little too sweet for us, I think, but very tasty. Be warned (I guess) that the recipe makes a ton—way more than we needed, but I challenge you to show me a person who’s ever been inconvenienced by too much peanut sauce. I plan to thin it with coconut milk and use it in a stir-fry tomorrow, and I basically cannot wait.

The other day, I was driving home from work thinking about how I was totally lacking dinner inspiration. I thought I would just make yellow curry. I wasn’t all that excited about it.

I also unrelatedly mused about baking tofu, and how I don’t do it very often but should.

For some reason, all this pondering didn’t coalesce into a meal idea until I was sitting at home, poking around on Facebook, putting off cooking the meal I wasn’t all that excited about, when I came across this ginger baked tofu recipe, wondered where it had been all my life, and walked into the kitchen to make it.

My changes were slight:

- I didn’t use anywhere near 1/4 cup sesame oil—I dabbed a little on each tofu slice for the initial baking, then added about a teaspoon to the sauce.

- I spooned the sauce onto each tofu slice individually, rather than drowning the pan in it, and used the excess to flavor roasted kohlrabi & sauteed kohlrabi greens (3 heads’ worth).

Enchiladas are very tasty, but very much a project, what with all the filling and rolling and tucking and cracking of tortillas and general mess. Totally not worth it, especially when you can slap your enchilada components into a baking dish in lasagna-like layers and get the same result with far less heartache. Canned beans and enchilada sauce make this even more convenient.

I topped ours with the leftover fake cheese from the macaroni, so our meal was fully vegan (check the label on your enchilada sauce and especially your refried beans, though). Naturally, you can top yours with actual cheese, or none at all, and use any combination of veggies and beans you like.

LAYERED VEGGIE ENCHILADA CASSEROLE

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup chopped onion

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup diced radishes

1/2 cup diced turnips

4 cups destemmed and torn to bite-sized greens

1 tbsp chili powder

1 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Salt & pepper to taste

15 oz. can enchilada sauce

10 corn tortillas, quartered

15 oz. can refried beans

1 cup grated cheese

1 avocado, sliced

Heat olive oil in a large skillet and add onion. Cook until softened, then add garlic, radishes, and turnips. Cook until tender, and add greens in batches to wilt. Add spices, combine thoroughly, and remove from heat.

Meanwhile, heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a 9x13” pan and pour enough enchilada sauce in the bottom to just coat. Arrange half of the tortilla quarters to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover with refried beans (heating up makes them easier to spread). Add vegetable mixture, top with another layer of tortillas, and pour the remaining enchilada sauce over top. Sprinkle with cheese and bake for 20 minutes, or until browned on top and bubbly around the edges. Serve with lightly salted avocado slices.

That title, I’m afraid, is selling this short. What this IS is the blue-ribbon, top-notch, best vegan macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had (and after the last few weeks, I assure you that I am, if not an expert, at least a seasoned professional). Its honorable mention came from a macaroni & cheese cook-off wherein every other dish was chock-full of actual, genuine cheese, not to mention bacon and sausage and butter and who really knows what else, and I personally think that’s a pretty good showing for a macaroni and cheese that’s missing one of its eponymous components.

The people have spoken.

The aforementioned mac & cheese cook-off is an annual event hosted by friends of ours, and the competition was formidable. For reasons that remain mysterious, Austin began trash-talking about my amazing vegan mac & cheese weeks before the contest and entirely before I’d ever made (or even agreed to try making) the first dish of vegan mac. So, without much choice if I was to defend the family honor, I Googled “ultimate vegan macaroni & cheese” and set to work making the first few recipes that turned up. My final recipe is a combination of previous tries, and one I pretty much made up on the fly day-of. It uses a mixture of Daiya and Follow Your Heart vegan “cheeses”—Daiya for the creamy, melty texture, and Follow Your Heart for the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-cheddar* flavor. So we brought our fondue pot of fake cheese & macaroni to the table (I feared what would happen if the sauce were allowed to cool). I didn’t count, but I think there were maybe 20 entries of all sorts. Everyone ate as much as they could possibly, and then voted for one favorite, and enough people voted for fake cheese to earn us an honorable mention. Not a bad showing, as I say.

HONORABLE MENTION VEGAN MAC & CHEESE

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 red onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

6 cups destemmed and torn to bite-sized swiss chard

2 cups dried pasta (I used whole-wheat elbows)

3 tbsp Earth Balance

1 tbsp flour

3 cups almond milk

2 tbsp minced rosemary

2 cups Daiya cheddar-like shreds

2 cups grated Follow Your Heart cheddar analog

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

Salt & pepper to taste

Heat oil in a skillet and add onions & garlic. Cook until onions are softened, then add swiss chard. Cook until wilted.

Meanwhile, cook & drain your pasta.

Also meanwhile, melt Earth Balance in a saucepan. Whisk in flour, and cook until golden brown. Pour in almond milk & rosemary. Cook, stirring regularly, until the sauce begins to thicken (enough to coat a spoon). Add the cheeses and nutritional yeast, and whisk constantly until completely smooth, which took longer than I imagined it would. Salt & pepper to taste, then combine sauce, noodles, and swiss chard mixture, and serve.

*Uh, yes, I can. But, not bad, if you can get past the (completely vile) texture when it’s cold.