Tag Archives: garlic

Potato Salad

This potato salad derives from a family recipe I’ve learnt from my step-mom. The original version is just as vegan as this, but I added some chick peas this time to make it a little heartier, and the dressing of course is my own making. The basic concept is the perfect union between capers, Russian [...]

Picnic Soy Meatballs

After reading Kittee’s vegan meatball recipe, I was hungering for something similar. We hadn’t made anything resembling meatballs since the Lion’s heads way back in October. Also, because we were going to go on a picnic on May Day, we thought it would be nice to have them there. May Day, among other things, is [...]

Caraway Tofu with Spicy Potato Wedges

The idea for this dish came from Antonio Tabucchi’s book Requiem. In one scene, the protagonist dines with a dead friend of his in a restaurant, and they are having sarrabulho, a traditional Portuguese meat dish. While eating, they are discussing how the meat is marinated in some white wine, caraway, garlic, and olive oil. [...]

Peanut Sauce Stir-Fry

When I finally tried making my own peanut sauce, I couldn’t believe how easy it is to prepare, and to tweak according to what’s at hand. Sometimes I add lime juice, or leave out lemon grass if we don’t have it, or use coconut milk instead of veggie stock to thin the sauce, and it [...]

Ma La Tofu

This dish gets its name (má là = numbing and spicy) from two types of pepper, the numbingly hot aroma of sichuan pepper and the fiery hot flavour of chili pepper. This combination is great even if you’re not that fond of super-spicy food. The tongue-numbing effect of sichuan pepper is felt only after consuming [...]

Roasted Bell Pepper and Sunflower Seed Hummus

I have visited the US a few times, and one of the things I miss most is that the supermarkets carry hummus and baba ghannouj in a number of flavors - my favorite being the roasted red bell pepper. Lately the bigger supermarkets in Finland have started carrying one brand of Swedish hummus that is [...]

Spicy Potato Rösti

Rösti is a Swiss potato pancake, and in its most simple form, a rösti recipe only has grated potatoes as an ingredient. I added a little flour to keep my rösti together and a sweet apple to counterbalance the spiciness of chili, onion, garlic, and thyme. Delicious!

As a side dish, this recipe makes plenty for [...]

Black Bean and Sunflower Seed Croquettes with Tomato-Sage Sauce

These croquettes were made with simple ingredients that we almost always have around the house. Black beans, sunflower seeds, and pink peppercorns were the main components here, but lemon juice, sesame seeds, and ground coriander added a lot of flavor as well. Pink peppercorns and coriander are both fragrant and delicate seasonings, and they paired [...]

Marinated Tempeh

I fried this tempeh for lunch one day, and didn’t have time to marinate it more than an hour. It was very delicious, which made me realize that tempeh absorbs flavors even more readily than tofu does! Actually, the marinade I used is pretty close to the one we often use for tofu, but I [...]

Balsamico Roasted Vegetables

The simple act of adding balsamic vinegar to vegetables before roasting takes their flavors to a completely new dimension. The vinegar loses its acidity in the oven, and enhances the sweet flavors of the root vegetables.

We got our monthly supply of organic flours and vegetables on Friday evening, delivered to our door by my [...]

Palak Tofu

Palak is an Indian spinach dish that everyone knows from Palak Paneer, in which it is served with Indian cheese. I do not think that I ever tasted that dish before going vegan, but I’ve witnessed friends devour it in restaurants numerous times, and have become curious. Palak is delicious on its own, but tofu [...]

Five-Spice Tofu with Slightly Sweet and Sour Veggies

We had a weekday dinner at its best on Wednesday: delicious five-spiced tofu, slightly sweet and sour stir-fried veggies, and a bowl of brown rice. Yumminess can’t be exaggerated, it was all very delicious. It happened to be the Chinese New Year’s eve as well - everyone was wishing happy new year for each other [...]

Stir-Fried Noodles

This was a late Sunday lunch that we made quickly. Preparation time is heavily dependent on your chopping skills, since everything needs to be sliced into thin strips or matchsticks. I’m not that quick on the chopping block, but luckily I had Anni to help me. This is an easy recipe to tweak, and indeed, [...]

Walnut Tofu Quiche

We baked this pie Sunday evening, when neither of us felt like having real dinner. I often make savory pies that are based on a puréed tofu filling, but haven’t thought about walnuts in this context before. Their deep flavor paired perfectly with the sweetness of the fried onions and the tangy lemon juice.

The ingredients [...]

Meatless Loaf

This soy and cashew loaf has many specialty ingredients in it, but I’m pretty sure that the recipe can be tweaked according to what’s on hand and it’ll be just as good. We both really enjoyed the texture that this loaf got from the chewy soy protein bits and the creamy cashews. I think this [...]

Moroccan Style Chickpea Soup

This is a great simple soup that I discovered when I was in Fez a few years back. We stayed in the old town, medina, and close to our hotel was a hole-in-a-wall type of breakfast place, serving freshly baked bread and chickpea soup. The soup was so delicious that we went there every morning, [...]

Seitan Rendang

Rendang is definitely my favourite Indonesian dish. I’ve been meaning to make a veganized version of it for a while, but since the cooking takes so long, I’ve been putting it off. Christmas at the cottage was the perfect place to make it. We cooked this on the day before Christmas Eve, while heating up [...]

Moth Bean Salad

Moth beans are yet another new legume in our kitchen. They are very tiny, and look something like small, brown mung beans. Moth beans cook really fast, are creamy in texture, and have a nutty flavor that paired really well with the sharp dressing.

Beans:

200 g dried moth beans, soaked overnight
2 cloves garlic
vegetable broth
1 bay [...]

Pressure-Cooked Chipotle Black-Eyed Peas

This is something that we cooked for a quick dinner. Since we got a pressure cooker, we’ve started using much more dried pulses. It’s great not having to plan in advance, and just quickly cook up some beans when you feel like it. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, this isn’t as fast to [...]

Carrot Lover’s Soup for One

This was a quick lunch I made for myself on a day when I had to use up three carrots, since we’d got our organic veggie delivery the day before, and the old ones had to go. We froze a bunch of leeks after the previous organic delivery, so now I could just take one [...]

Cuban Black Bean Soup

When me and Heikki were travelling in Cuba, black bean soup was one of our favorite vegan foods. Staying at casas particulares, renting extra rooms from people’s homes, we had the advantage of sampling Cuban home cooking the vegan way. We could always explain what vegan food was, and could be sure that our [...]

Seitan Roast

This was our vegan take on the traditional Finnish Christmas ham, although its similarities to a ham are very minor. We coated our roast with Dijon mustard that’s seasoned with garlic and red bell pepper - I am not a great mustard lover, but that particular mustard is delicious. We used pink peppercorns for decoration [...]

Tofu in a Jar

This is a simple tofu marinade we used as a base for our Christmas Roast. After making the roast, we fried the rest of the tofu in some olive oil, and had it on sandwiches.

Here’s what we used:

500 g firm tofu
4 cloves of garlic
3 and ½ dl vegetable stock
1 and ½ dl red wine
½ dl [...]

Black Eyed Pea and Tofu Cutlets

These vegan cutlets were mainly inspired by the Chickpea Cutlets from the Veganomicon cookbook. We made those cutlets a few weeks ago and they were really good. I liked the idea of mixing beans and gluten flour, since gluten can be too glutinous on its own, and the cutlets were really easy to prepare. Another [...]

Sherry Onion Sauce

This was a simple sauce I made to go with the wonderful Black Eyed Pea Cutlets, served with pan fried potatoes. Thanks to cashew nuts, the texture is smooth and really creamy, and this is a good all-purpose gravy that would go with just about anything, I imagine.

Here’s what I used for the sauce:

1 onion, [...]

Juicy Baked Tempeh

We had a triangular-themed dinner on Monday; these tempeh triangles were served with triangular carrots, and the accompanying black bean salad was surrounded by cucumber triangles. The tempeh was first cooked, then marinated, and finally baked in a hot oven, and it ended up being very juicy and delicious.

Heikki has successfully taught me to eat [...]

Chipotle Seitan and Bean Chili

This was a tasty dinner; crumbled seitan and mixed beans in a smokey chipotle tomato stew, wrapped in a soft corn tortilla along with garlicky cumin soy yogurt sauce and cubed cucumber.

It’s pretty hard to find smoked chipotle chilis in Helsinki, in fact I’ve never seen them, so I just used a cheap Pirkka-brand sauce [...]

Seitan Log

Following in the footsteps of Susan’s veggeroni, and a number of other similar recipes I’ve seen floating around the Internet, this is my own version of oven baked gluten. This makes a dense, sort of dry salami-like wheat gluten log, ideal for crumbling for further use.

This seitan has some tiny air bubbles in it, as [...]

Tofu “Cheese”

This tofu “cheese” has a consistency resembling cottage cheese, or a little like feta cheese, and is really tasty. It doesn’t taste like cheese, however, which for me is a good thing: I outgrew my cheese addiction about 7 years ago - it took a few vegan years to combat my cravings. Tofu marinated this [...]

Twice-Seasoned Soy Strips

This is the latest attempt of my ongoing mission to master the seasoning of textured soy protein (TSP). Usually I’m lazy and just boil the TSP chunks in a broth made from vegetable stock cubes, but this time I tried something fancier. We thought that the result was really good.

For the soy strips:

100 g [...]

Tofu Patties

We had these tofu patties for lunch two days in a row: first day served with cous cous and some leftover gravy, and the next day with olive mashed potatoes and basil yogurt sauce. We thought the patties tasted even better the next day, and thus would be perfect to have in the freezer for [...]

Sunflower Seed Garlic Spread

Last week I found a post by Mihl from Seitan is my motor through Vegalicious. Mihl had developed a recipe for sunflower seed spread, and reading about it, I instantly got a feeling that this would be a new favorite at our house. First batch I made was the plain version that Mihl posted, only [...]

Fava Bean Dip

Fava beans, also known as broad beans, are very delicious, but there’s one problem: they have thick skin, and every bean needs to be peeled separately. Especially dried fava beans are a little difficult to work with. I was very happily surprised when we found dried split fava beans at a local shop, Al Marwan. [...]

Olive Tapenade

This is a really salty spread, nice for snacking with crackers or fresh bread, and maybe a glass of red wine.

What I used:

1 and 1/2 dl olives (we had Kalamata and some leftover green ones)
3 teaspoons capers
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon lemon juice
pinch of sugar
1 teaspoon dried basil
freshly ground black pepper to taste
2-3 tablespoons olive oil

I [...]

Stir-Fried Morning Glory

I’ve eaten kangkung or morning glory often when travelling in Southeast Asia. Our local Asian food store (Aseanic Trading on Kolmas linja) has this in stock every now and then, but this is the first time we’ve tried it.

200g morning glory (also known as kangkung or water spinach)
2 cloves of garlic
1-2 tablespoons canola oil for [...]

Arugula Yogurt Dip

This is a green dip we had as a Friday night snack with some carrots, rutabaga (Swedish turnip), and corn chips. Arugula dip is great with any kind of chips and veggies, and we also serve this as a sauce with potatoes, or in a bun with a veggie burger.

Ingredients:

1,5 dl plain (Alpro) soy yogurt
1 [...]