lunch box: sandwich sushi

contents:

carrot, sprout and hummus rolls
cucumber and tofu cream cheese rolls
rainbow goldfish (yes, they taste the same)
grapefruit slices

My friend Debbie has this adorable habit of giving presents 4-6 months after the actual holiday in question. I love it becuase it's like you get a second holiday out of nowhere, and you can never predict when it's going to happen. She recently gave me this great bento cookbook as a Christmas present. There are a few of these little wrap "sushi" rolls in there, usually with lunch meat and slices of cheese, and so I thought I'd give a vegan version a try. The rolling is tricky, I have to admit. I think it would have been easier if I had one of those little bamboo sushi rollers, but I managed alright by hand. Check out these sushi instructions to get the basic idea.

ingredients:

whole wheat wraps
carrots
sprouts
hummus
cucumber
tofu cream cheese

Cut rounded corners off opposite edges of the wrap so that you have a longer straight edge to roll from.

Spread thin layer of hummus or tofu cream cheese filling across entire wrap

Slice the carrots and cucumbers into long thin pieces

Leaving a small amount of plain wrap to one side lay your ingredients in straight line at one edge of your wrap

Fold wrap over ingredients and begin rolling tightly until you've used up the whole wrap

Cut into sushi sized rolls. You will probably need to discard (snack on) the rolls at the far edges since they will be pretty loose and hard to keep together. If there is a gap in the center of a roll you can always cheat in some extra filling to make it rounder. I had to do this for a couple of them.

passover casserole

Both my parents are artists. My Dad is a sculptor and my Mom painted for a long time and now works in textile design. This means growing up whenever my sister and I had craft projects, dioramas for school, or Halloween costumes to make, we had a team of excited RISD graduates brainstorming with us. I guess it's normal for kids' parents to help them on projects like that, but with mine I ended up with things like a working mini wooden pushcart for a book report on The Pushcart War, a full goldfish suit with foam eyes, and a series of tiny abstract paintings that made my dollhouse look more like the MOMA. So when my Aunt asked us to bring a vegetarian dish to passover this year, and I saw a recipe online that said to create a design with potatoes, I knew it was the one to pick.

I really have to give full credit to my Dad on the landscape. I was the one who suggested we use sweet potato as the background and make white potato pyramids, but after that he took it to a whole other level. "Should I make a moon? Grab some dill for trees! I'm adding cinnamon to make it look more archaic!" and the result is what you see above.

It was a hit at Sedar, and not just for how it looked. The recipe itself is essentially a vegetable tagine with shepard's pie crust. You could easily substitute any of the vegetables in the base for something else. I also noticed while cooking with my dad that my mad scientist approach to food might be genetic. He does not believe in following recipes or measuring anything either. Luckily with stews there's really no way to mess it up.

We are thinking of tackling the parting of the red sea next year. Too ambitious?

ingredients:

for the tagine--

3 tbs olive oil
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 garlic minced cloves
2 onions chopped
3 carrots peeled and chopped
2 zucchini chopped
1 head of broccoli chopped
1 head of cauliflower chopped
1 large 28oz can of diced tomatoes
1 cup vegetable stock
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup slivered almonds

for the potatoes--

3 sweet potatoes
1/4 cup orange juice
salt, pepper, and cinnamon to taste

3 white potatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

In separate pots, boil sweet and white potatoes until soft. Drain and mash in separate mixing bowls with their respective ingredients above.

The only thing I don't like about this recipe is that it results in a lot of dishes. We're already using too many for my taste. Luckily when I made this I was at home with my parents dishwasher.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a large frying pan with cover, fry onions in olive oil until soft. Add spices, stirring well to keep them from burning.

Add your vegetables, canned tomatoes with sauce, and vegetable stock. This is going to be pretty overflowing, but it will cook down I promise. Cover pan and cook on low to medium heat, stirring occasionally to give all the veggies a chance at the bottom of the pan.

Once the ingredients have cooked down a bit, stir in almonds and raisins. Keep cooking until carrots are soft.

Transfer tagine to a large 10x15 casserole dish. Pat down with a spatula to create a relatively smooth surface for your potato layers.

Now it's really up to your own design plans. We first separated out about a 1/4 of the mashed white potatoes and spread the remaining amount on top of the tagine with a spatula. Then we added a top layer with all the mashed sweet potatoes. My dad used a cutting board and knife to shape out the pyramids and moon before laying them on top of the sweet potato layer. The trees are springs of dill I plucked to look more tree-like. The pyramids have a dash of cinnamon to make them look older. Just use your imagination and try to see the things in your kitchen as more them what you normally use them for.

Bake casserole for 20 minutes or until its heated through.

macaroni and squash

John, who you might remember from bake club, just got back from getting his yoga teacher certification at Kripalu. In addition to all the amazing things he's said about the program, he also made sure to tell me I would have been blown away by the food. It basically sounds like he had a buffet of vegetarian ambrosia every day. When I pressed him for specific meal details all I could get out is that there was an incredible vegan macaroni and cheese that used squash as a replacement. So now that he's back, and willing to teach a class in my living room, I thought it would be fun to try and recreate the Kripalu Macaroni and Squash for our after-practice meal.

It took a bit of recipe hunting online to find something that sounded right. There are a lot of regular macaroni and cheese recipes that just add squash as an extra ingredient, and on the vegan side there seem to be two camps for the cream sauce replacement, either coconut milk or soy. After checking with Dawn, my vegan food adviser, I decided to go with the coconut and I think it was the right choice. I expected the flavor to be overly tropical (pina colada casserole? yuck!), but it actually blended in quite well. Most importantly John said it was a perfect match, and the large tupperware of leftovers I sent home with him was devoured in a couple days. You can't ask for a better review then that. James even wandered into the kitchen and admitted it smelled good before he realized it was squash.

ingredients:

1/2 box whole wheat pasta shells
1 medium sized butternut squash
1 15oz can coconut milk
1 large onion
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
salt, pepper, and dried sage to taste
breadcrumbs for crust

Peel squash and scrape seeds from inside. Chop into very small cubes.

In a large saucepan heat a couple tbs of olive oil to fry chopped onion until soft. Add squash, coconut milk, and spices. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for about 20-30 minutes.

As squash cooks mash up cubes with your spoon. You don't want it to be completely smooth, but the majority of the squash should be blended with the coconut milk sauce.

In a second pot, boil your pasta shells.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Add drained pasta shells to your squash pot (or a large mixing bowl if you don't have room, but I will do pretty much anything to avoid adding more dishes to wash later). Stir in walnuts.

Pour mixture into a medium sized casserole dish (9- x 13-inch). Sprinkle layer of breadcrumbs on top.

Bake for 30 minutes or until breadcrumbs get and crunchy and pasta is bubbling.

The side dish is blanched string beans tossed with a simple balsamic vinaigrette, dried cranberries and a little sprinkle of flax seeds.

lunch box: vegan casserole

contents:

vegan casserole with tofu crust
sesame brown rice (with sesame oil and seeds)

Sometimes I see a recipe that is so super-vegetarian that its almost as if someone went inside James' brain, picked out all his most hated things to eat, and figured out how to combine them into one dish. This casserole on Epicurious is just such a gem. I figured since there was no way in hell he was going to partake in this week's lunch food, I might as well go all out and try to substitute the cheese for something vegan. Up until now nutritional yeast has been like some friend of a friend you're always hearing about, but never actual meet in person. It's possible I've eaten it at restaurants and not known, but I've certainly never cooked with it before. It came highly recommended though, so I bought some to use instead of parmesan in this recipe. It's defiantly not cheese, but it is sort of cheese-like in a powdered mac and cheese packet kind of way.

Also I just have to say how much I hate when people write out recipes by weight. I get it. Vegetables are all different sizes. They are individual snowflakes. But, does this author really think I'm in my kitchen with a scale weighing a 1/2 lb of carrots? Just tell me 3-5 carrots and I'll wing it from there.

ingredients:

2 tbs olive oil
2 medium onions
1 medium sized cabbage
1 bunch of kale
4 carrots
1/2 cup water
2 tbs soy sauce (conveniently about the amount that comes in one of those Chinese food take out packages)

1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
1/2 package of firm tofu
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 chopped garlic clove

It will be easier if you chop all your vegetables first, since you don't want to over-cook one veggie in the frying pan while you're chopping another. Remove core from cabbage and cut into slices. Peel and cut carrots into thin matchsticks. Remove heavy stems from kale and lightly chop leaves. Slice onions. With all the vegetables, try to keep your slices on the larger size.

In large frying pan cook onion slices in oil until clear

Add kale, cabbage and carrots. You may need to add the cabbage and kale in sections since it takes up a lot of space before it cooks down. Add water and soy sauce. Cook until carrots begin to get soft.

Transfer veggies to large casserole pan.

Preheat oven to 350

In a food processor combine your topping ingredients-- bread crumbs, tofu, nutritional yeast, oil, garlic and spices. I buy seasoned breadcrumbs, so I opted out of adding additional salt, oregano and basil here. Paprika, I couldn't turn down and also added a little cayenne pepper for extra flavor. Blend ingredients thoroughly. The resulting mixture will be very doughy in texture.

I wont lie to you, getting this sticky dough on top of the casserole is a hassle. The best system I worked out was to keep wetting my hands with water and make small pancake shapes to lay on top. Once you have a full layer of dough you can pinch together the sections to make it more even. No matter what, you'll end up with a crumbly looking crust, but I think that's the idea anyway.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until crust browns nicely

lunch box: thai red curry

contents:
thai red curry
brown rice
ginger roasted carrots
pineapple

I'm disappointed with how this picture turned out. The curry looked so beautiful the night I made it, but after sitting overnight it turned into a reddish grey mush. It tastes just as good, but aesthetically I could wish for a better lunch box. Oh well. At least I've discovered that it's quite easy to make food that I've up to now been considering a splurge take-out treat. I've been a little afraid of Thai recipes after a debacle a year or so ago trying to make green papaya salad that turned out smelling (according to James) "like tuna fish can water". Yeah, that was gross. Oh but speaking of fish, make sure to read the label on your curry paste, since some can contain fish.

ingredients:

1 14oz can coconut milk
1/2 cup water
2 tbs thai red curry paste
two handfuls of unsalted peanuts (1 cup?)
10-15 fresh basil leaves
1 large potato cubed (precooked in the microwave)
1 red pepper chopped
3 small blocks of firm tofu cubed
large handful of string beans
1 small onion

In large frying pan cook onion in a few tbs of olive oil on medium heat until clear.

Drain as much water as possible from the tofu before cubing and adding to pan. I buy the kind my produce place sells in little cartons, which is much thinner and smaller in size then the store bought tubs. If you're using one of those, I'd say maybe a 1/2 a tub would do. Keep stirring tofu while it cooks to keep from sticking.

Add red pepper and string beans. Cook for a few minutes until pepper begins to soften and string beans turn a brighter green.

Push veggies to one side of your pan. If you have a sloped kitchen like me, make sure to move it uphill. Pour coconut milk and 1/2 cup of water on the other half of your pan. Stir curry paste into coconut milk letting it dissolve fully before mixing sauce into the veggies. Bring to low boil.

Add peanuts, (precooked) potatoes, and fresh basil. Serve over rice.

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ingredients:

6 carrots
2 large tbs of finely chopped fresh ginger
olive oil (in retrospect, sesame oil would have been great)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Toss chopped carrots, ginger, and dash of olive oil in large mixing bowl

Cover a baking tray with tin foil and spread out carrots in single layer

Bake for about 20 minutes. Turn carrots at least a couple times to keep from burning.

moroccan butternut squash and carrot stew

Is it me, or has the world jumped into an even earlier then usual Christmas frenzy this year? I hate to be a Grinch, I want to listen to my Peanuts Christmas record as much as the next (half Jewish) person, but I would like to remind everyone that it is still technically fall. Soon enough it actually will be December, and we will have nothing but cold miserable winter for months and months. In the meantime let's take a moment to recognize that we haven't even had Thanksgiving yet, and focus on some fall food to celebrate the actual season we are in.

Looking around for butternut squash recipes, I'd say about 90% of the results were for soup or risotto, which was not what I was in the mood for. I found this one on Epicurious and made a few changes to accommodate dinner party portions and the contents of my spice shelf (I didn't have saffron or turmeric). The altered recipie made about 5 medium sized servings. For a larger group or more famished eaters, I would double it.

Ingredients:

Stew--
2 tbs olive oil
1 medium chopped onion
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsps Hungarian sweet paprika
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup water
1 small can diced tomatoes (drained)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
large butternut squash (I think mine was about 2 lbs) peeled and cubed
5 chopped carrots

Quinoa--
1 1/2 cups quinoa
1 tbs olive oil
1 small chopped onion
1 chopped carrot
2 garlic cloves, chopped
3 cups water
salt, pepper, chopped fresh mint and cilantro to taste

In a large stew pot, fry onion and garlic on medium to low heat until clear

Add spices. Be careful to keep stirring so you don't burn them/have a sticky mess at the bottom of your pan.

Add water, tomatoes, and lemon juice. Bring liquids to boil.

Mix in squash and carrots

Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes until vegetables are soft. You will need to stir it a few times to make sure the veggies get cooked evenly.

In separate pot fry onion, garlic, and carrot portions for quinoa until slightly brown. Stir in quinoa and let cook for another minute.

Add water. When water starts to boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 15 minutes.

Once quinoa has absorbed all the water, stir in your cilantro and mint. Add salt or pepper to taste. I think I under-spiced since the stew was so flavorful

Serve with a little extra mint and cilantro sprinkled on top.

lunch box: kale salad with spicy lentil-quinoa snacks

contents:

kale salad
spicy lentil-quinoa snacks
lemon ginger yogurt

This kale salad is a loose recreation of one I love from a health food store in Princeton. Usually I put tempeh in it, brown rice, or both, but I left it out this time because I figured I was protein covered already with the lentil-quinoa snacks. The kale absorbs dressing like crazy (maybe because its raw?), so if you're making a big tub to use over the course of the week you may want to add extra dressing at some point.

ingredients:

kale
carrot
red cabbage
flax seed
almonds
lemon juice
olive oil
tahini

Wash kale and cut or pull apart leaves with your hands into small salad like pieces. You are definitely going to want to remove the stalks and use only the leaves for this recipe since you wont be cooking it.

In a small bowl add one or two spoonfuls of tahini and equal parts water to make a paste. Then add a splash of olive oil and mix again until the tahini starts to thin out. If I had to guess I would say maybe a 1/4 cup of olive oil. Then add lemon juice to taste. I usually use about a half a lemon, depending on it's juiciness. This will make a very thick almost mayonnaise-like dressing.

In a large bowl pour your dressing over the kale and massage into the leaves with your hands. I'm not kidding, this is actually what people call it- massaging. If you have a wisecracking boyfriend at home, they will probably take this time to make a series of jokes about your kale being stressed. Also I'm going to admit something here, which is that I time most of my cooking to music instead of a watch. I think technically you're supposed to massage the kale for about 5 minutes or so until it wilts, but a medium length song is usually fine.

Add two or three grated carrots, red cabbage chopped finely, flax seeds, and almonds. I like to chop the almonds at least into halves to get them spread through the salad better, but that may be too picky for you. This is where you would add rice or tempeh if you're using it. Mix with your hands (why not? they are already covered in tahini dressing).

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I found this lentil snack recipe through JustBento.com and made it for the first time this past weekend. My process definitely needs some tweaking. The recipe called for bulgar wheat, but for some reason there wasn't a grocery store or bodega near me that had it, so I had to substitute with quinoa. I'm not sure if this is where the problem came from, but I ended up having to add more water after the lentils were done to make the quinoa cook in the same pot. The end result was delicious, but I think maybe a little too soft. I'm going to try this again either cooking the quinoa separately, or after I can get my hands on some bulgar (which for the record I didn't realize was so exotic), and report back to you.

Also a note about the cupcake paper system for storing yogurt: though adorable, it's not a good idea for anything wet. By lunchtime my precious little yogurt cup looked more like the Wicked Witch of the West- post water. For Tuesday's lunch I cut a plastic cup and used just the bottom for keeping yogurt in. Much better.

ingredients:

1 cup lentils
1/2 cup quinoa
3 tsp tomato paste
1 small onion
2 garlic cloves chopped
1 roasted red pepper (pre-made in jar)
chopped cilantro, cumin,curry powder, red pepper flakes, lemon juice

In a medium sized pot bring lentils and 2 /12 cups of water to a boil. Once boiling, cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20-30 minutes until lentils are soft.

Add tomato paste and quinoa to pot. Now, the recipe says you can just let this sit for a half hour and if you were using bulgar it would absorb. I, with my usual inability to cook grains or beans correctly, had no excess water in the pot at this point and needed to add an extra cup and re-simmer the quinoa to get it to cook. Like I said, I'll get back to you on this one.

In a large frying pan saute onion and garlic until onion is clear. Add chopped red pepper and saute for a few more minutes. Add your quinoa lentil mixture to the frying pan and stir in spices, cilantro, and lemon juice. Remove from heat and let cool.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Now that your mixture is cool (you did let it cool, right?) roll into small golf sized balls and and place on a greased cookie sheet. Yes I'm making a stink about this cooling thing because, you guessed it- I was impatient and burned my fingers.

Bake for about 15 minutes until the balls get a thin crust to them.

The dressing is just plain yogurt with lemon juice and ginger powder.

pineapple tempeh stew

This recipe is a hybrid of African Peanut Stew from the Moosewood Cookbook, and a tempeh patty from a vegan Caribbean restaurant that has sadly gone out of business. Whenever I make this stew for someone for the first time, they invariably make a face at the ingredients list -- probably thinking, "pineapple, peanut butter, and Tabasco...seriously?" And then they gobble down the whole bowl once it's cooked. So for those of you nervous about cooking with pineapple in savory dishes, I mean this in the nicest possible way- get over it.

ingredients:

one small onion
2 cloves garlic chopped
1 red pepper
1/2 package of tempeh cut into small cubes
1 16oz can of pineapple chucks in pineapple juice (NOT syrup)
1/2 bunch kale
1/4 cup peanut butter
Tabasco to taste


Wash kale and chop or rip with your hands into small salad sized pieces. You can remove the heavy stalk if you want and use only the leaves.

In large pot saute chopped onion and garlic until onion is clear

Add tempeh cubes cooking until the outsides are slightly browned. Stir in red pepper and cook for another few minutes to let the pepper get soft.

Add whole can of pineapple chunks and juice. Bring to a low boil.

Add kale to pot and stir in well so that the hot ingredients can start to wilt down the leaves. If you've never cooked with kale before, right now you are probably thinking you've made way too much. You haven't. This is going to cook down to almost nothing in a few minutes (but this is why you need the much larger pot to begin with).

After kale has softened and turned a bright green color stir in the peanut butter and Tabasco sauce. Although I like spicier food as a rule, with this recipe I use a little less Tabasco then I normally would to keep the flavors balanced. Taste it and see what you like.

Serve over brown rice or another grain of your choice.

lunch box: hummus and "pickled" eggplant

contents:

hummus
"pickled" eggplant with feta
dipping veggies- carrot, zucchini, and radishes
whole wheat pita


This hummus recipe is based on one from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food, although I have a feeling she would not approve of my using canned chick peas. Sorry Alice! She recommends adding some of the bean cooking liquid if you want to thin out the texture, but since in my case that would have meant the juice from the can (and you know how I feel about that) I just added some extra olive oil and lemon juice to compensate.

ingredients:

1 16oz can chick peas
1/4 cup tahini
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
1/4 cup lemon juice (one lemon)
1/4 cup olive oil
cumin and cayenne pepper to taste

Mix in food processor until smooth.

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Phil made this eggplant last time I was over for dinner and I've been meaning to try it since. It's an easy way to make a pickled tasting side in a few minutes. That being said, the flavor does get better the longer it sits. My mid week lunch definitely tasted better then the first day I made it. Now that I know how simple this is, I have plans to try this with some other veggies soon. Next up, mushrooms!

2 cups water
1 cup red wine vinegar
3 cloves garlic
1 medium eggplant
red pepper flakes and olive oil to taste

Cut eggplant into medium sized slices (about 1 1/2 inch thick)

Bring water, vinegar and garlic to boil in large pot

Add as much eggplant as can all be submerged in the liquid. Cook for around 10 or until eggplant is soft, stirring from time to time making sure the eggplant cooks evenly.

Remove eggplant with slotted spoon and put in mixing bowl to cool

Repeat until all eggplant is cooked. It took two batches for me

Once eggplant has cooled add olive oil and red pepper to taste

polenta stuffed acorn squash with mustard collard greens

This is a very simple version of stuffed acorn squash, using polenta instead of the usual rice. Since this makes it a lot sweeter, I like the slightly spicy mustard collards for contrast. This is not something I would recommend making during the week unless you don't mind waiting a bit for dinner. For some reason acorn squash always takes longer to bake then you think it does.


ingredients:

1/2 cup polenta
1 medium sized acorn squash
dried cranberries, olive oil, rosemary,salt,pepper to taste

1/2 bunch of collard greens
1 small onion
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tsp spicy brown mustard
1/2 cup veggie broth

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Cut acorn squash in half and scoop out seeds and those little stringy bits on the inside.

Place acorn squash halves face up in a baking dish. Score inside of squash and sprinkle a little olive oil and salt on the inside.

Cook for about an hour or until the inside of the acorn squash gets soft. Like I said earlier, this always seems to take longer then you think. I have no idea why. It's probably the same kind of dark magic that results in restaurant checks being just slightly off from what you calculate the sum of your individual dishes to be. Also possible that I don't preheat my oven long enough.

Make 1/2 cup of polenta following directions on package ( its usually around 3:1 water to polenta ratio). I know this doesn't seem like a lot or polenta, but keep in mind you'll be mixing it with your squash.

Take out your cooked sqash and let them cool before scooping out the insides into a mixing bowl.

Combine with polenta, dried cranberries, spices, and olive oil. You can also use butter or fake butter for this instead of more oil.

Put stuffed squash back in the oven to cook a little more while you make your greens.

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Chop and wash 1/2 of a large bunch of collard greens.

Fry garlic and onion in olive oil until onion is clear. Then add greens stirring well so that they cook evenly.

Once the greens have cooked down a little add your 1/2 cup of veggie stock with mustard (you can combine them to one side in the pan before mixing without)

Cook for another few minutes on low heat, letting some of the water evaporate out and the greens cook down until they are less bitter.