Quick Pickled Carrots

I'm enough of a food geek to think pickling is fun, but I don't always have time to spend toiling over the canning kettle.  Refrigerator pickles let me enjoy pickled vegetables with less of a time commitment.

The ingredients
1 lb carrots, cleaned and cut into thin sticks
1 1/4 cup water
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3 cloves garlic, smashed with the edge of a knife
1/4 c sugar
2 t dill seeds, or a couple sprigs of fresh dill
2 t salt

The process

1. Pack carrots into wide-mouth mason jars, or another heatproof container.
2. Bring remaining ingredients to a boil in a saucepan, and simmer until the sugar dissolves, about 1-2 minutes.
3. Pour pickling liquid over carrots, and let them cool to room temperature uncovered.
4. Cover and refrigerate a few days before eating.

Japanese Feast

I adore Japanese food, but at my local Japanese restaurants almost everything contains fish, so unless I make the trek to Cha-Ya I'm out of luck.  I make tempura semi-regularly, but for some reason I didn't think I could succeed at making sushi.  I decided to try to put together a Japanese vegan feast yesterday to expand my skills, and overall I think it was a success.  I used my new Japanese vegan cookbook, Japanese Cooking: Contemporary & Traditional, as inspiration, and found sushi-making tutorials online.  My first roll was pretty sloppy, but once I got the hang of keeping the roll tight and not letting the fillings creep out the top of the roll, it turned out pretty good.

Here's a rundown on my menu:

Miso soup with tofu and green onions—I've made miso soup before with a water base, but for this I made a konbu stock, which deepened the flavor.

Kimpira—which consists of burdock root and carrot in a sauce of konbu dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil.  I loved the smoky flavor of this, but the burdock root was very fibrous; I'm not sure if I bought bad burdock, or if that's just how burdock is.

Yam tempura and onigiri.  The tempura batter was perfectly light and crisp, the result of using very cold water and not overmixing it.  The onigiri were stuffed with umeboshi plums, which are basically sea salt bombs.  Not my favorite, but easy to eat around.

Last but not least, sushi with pickled carrots and avocado.  I'll be making a whole lot more of these babies.

Soup x 2

For my first time trying out recipes from Appetite for Reduction, I couldn't decide between the Butternut-Apple Soup and the Cauliflower Pesto Soup, so I made both.

While it was a little odd to have two different soups for dinner, the contrast between the green and the orange was nice.  Both soups were very simple and quick to make, and both tasted fine, but neither blew me away.  The butternut-apple soup wasn't as appley as I would have preferred; it basically tasted like every other butternut soup I've ever had, including the kind that comes in a box.  The cauliflower-pesto was more unique; the recipe involves simmering cauliflower in broth until it's soft, then removing it from the heat and blending in lots of basil.  I love the idea of blending basil into soup, but I thought it could have used more.  (Maybe I should just eat pesto as a soup?  Yum!)  Also, I prefer chunky soups so if I make this again I'll pulverize the basil before adding it to the soup, and leave the cauliflower florets in tact.  This soup did inspire me to try adding more herbs to soups, though, and I think I'll be making a potato-basil or potato-cilantro soup soon.

Garlic Wine Quick Bread

I based this recipe on my beer bread recipe, subbing out wine for beer and garlic for onions.  I used a rose wine, but I think any white wine would work fine as well.  It was delicious served with a dab of pesto on top.  I'll be eating the leftovers topped with pear slices.

The ingredients
3 c flour
1 T sugar
1 T + 1 t baking powder
1 1/2 t salt
8-10 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 1/2 c wine

The process

1. Combine dry ingredients
2. Add garlic and wine, and stir until just combined.
3. Press dough into a greased loaf pan, or mound it on a cast iron skillet.
4. Bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes.
5. Cool on a cooling rack before serving.

Indian Feast

For my second use-my-cookbooks meal, I decided to focus on Indian food, because I love Indian restaurant food but I've always been a little intimidated by the long ingredient lists in Indian cookbooks.  I made chana samosas from Vegan Yum Yum, vindaloo vegetables from Vegan Fire & Spice, and poppyseed dal from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, as well as some brown basmati rice.

I was a little intimidated by the samosa recipe because I thought the dough would be hard to work with; as it turned out, the dough recipe had enough oil in it that it was easy to roll out, but I had a hard time getting it to seal closed around the filling (one came open during frying).  The filling used more garbanzos than potatoes, and I found it a little dry; I'd stick with a traditional potato filling if I made these again.  They were a big hit with my husband, though, and I liked having an excuse to eat mango chutney.

The dal was the real star of this meal.  The recipe called for the black "urad dal", but I couldn't find any, so I used regular brown lentils instead.  After the lentils are cooked, they are combined with a mixture of ginger, cilantro, and poppyseeds that were fried in lots of margarine.  This was one of the best things I've tasted in some time, and was very simple to make.  I enjoyed the leftovers for both breakfast and lunch the next day.

The vindaloo vegetables were hearty and nutritious, but the flavor wasn't really anything to write home about.  If I make these again, I'll amp up the sauce with lots more curry powder and chiles.

Overall, it was fun to have an Indian feast without having to first grill a waiter about which items contain ghee, and I was pleased with myself for being able to cook such a feast in under 2 hours.