Vegan Recipes and Plant Based Cooking

I came up with the idea for these plant based biscuits to avoid using vegetable shortening to make classic cutter biscuits. Vegetable shortening is an easy plant based sub for butter, but it's not very good for you. I thought about using commercial plant butter, but  I'm not really thrilled with the ingredients in that. I don't care for the fact that they have palm oil as one of the main ingredients. So I figured some tofu and olive oil might make an appropriate substitute for butter. Butter is simply fat suspended in water with a little protein thrown in the mix. Tofu is basically a protein and water suspension and oil is fat. The math worked in theory. I wasn't sure if it would work in practice. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot. The first batch turned out really good. Nice texture. Nice richness. Tender, moist and flavorful. They came out  better than I had hoped. But there was room for improvement. I made my second batch for Christmas and adjusted my ratios a l...

This dish combines smoky Mexican chipotles and Indian spices. Both cuisines are hot and spicy. I think they meld rather brilliantly. This recipe has a lot of ingredients, but they all go into one pot and just simmer for a while. It's actually pretty easy to make, yet delivers on heaps of flavor. It's animal free. Plant-based. Vegan. . Ingredients 1 13 oz can coconut milk 1/2 small can chipotles and sauce 1 can garbanzos, drained and rinsed 1 can red beans, drained and rinsed 6 cloves garlic, smashed and minced 1/4 red onion, diced 2 poblano peppers, diced 1 jalapeno, minced 1 serrano, minced 1 long hot pepper, sliced into rings 1 tbl spicy brown mustard 1/4 cup nutritional yeast 1 tbl sriracha 1 tbl white balsamic or white vinegar 3 tbls olive oil 1/3 cup water 1 tbl turmeric 1 tbl paprika 2 tsps celery seed 2 tsps aleppo pepper flakes or crushed pepper flakes 2 tsps caraway seed 3 tsps salt 2 tsps black pepper 1 tsp garlic powder 1 tsp cayenne ...

When I was younger I loved those biscuits from Red Lobster. I've made quite a few variations on them over the years. This time I wanted to add corn and jalapeno to create a cheddar bay and cornbread fusion style biscuit. When I first went vegan I kinda thought that classically egg based baked goods would be something difficult or impossible. Nothing could be further from the truth. Flour and water are more than enough structure for most baked items. When you add leavening the product is lightened and aerated. 1 3/4 cups ap flour 1/4 cup nutritional yeast 2 tsps baking powder 2 tsps ground garlic 1 tsp Aleppo pepper, or crushed pepper flakes 2 tsps salt 1/2 cup frozen yellow corn, defrosted 1 jalapeno, deseeded and finely minced 3/4-1 cup almond milk 1/4 cup olive oil Preheat oven to 425 F. Add flour, baking powder, yeast, garlic and salt to a medium mixing bowl. Stir with a spoon just to incorporate everything evenly. Add corn, jalapeno and oil. Stir lightly to com...

Yellow corn has a wonderful savory sweetness that I really enjoy. Corn also shines when you add a little bit of chile peppers. Corn puree sounds chefy, but it's pretty easy. When you eat plant based you still want lots of flavor. You can use this to jazz up poatoes, broccoli, rice. It's a mild sweentess and a subtle heat that you'll enjoy with most any veg or starch. 1 12 oz bag frozen corn 1 13.5 oz can coconut milk 3 cloves garlic 1 jalapeno, deseeded 1 serrano, deseeded 1 poblano 1/2-1 slice torn white bread 2 tbls olive oil 2 tsps turmeric 1 tsp dry dill 1 tsp ground cumin 2 tsps ground garlic 2 1/2 tsps salt Add corn, coconut milk, chiles, garlic and salt to a medium sauce pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer until reduced by 1/3, about 10-15 minutes. Pour mixture into pitcher blender, add remaining spices and oil. Puree until smooth. Add half slice bread. Puree again. Check thickness of puree. It should be still somewhat loose for a puree, but a th...

I made this in a effort to get more calcium into my diet. When you cook kale more of the calcium is available to the body. I'm hoping the vitamin c from the kale is preserved since it's a soup. C leeches into water, but since we're consuming the water (broth), we should, in theory, still get it. The mushrooms provide potassium. I wanted to keep it relatively simple. Let the core ingredients shine. Just let time and heat work their magic on some humble veg. You could add some beans to this to make it heartier. I wanted to keep it light. 10 oz white mushrooms, chopped small 1/2 medium red onion, diced 6 cups loosely packed kale, chopped 3 cloves garlic, minced 1/4 cup dry white wine 1/4 cup brandy 1/4 cup olive oil 2 tbls apple cider vinegar 6 cups water 1 tbl salt 3 tsps black pepper In a large sauce pot cook down the mushrooms and onions in the oil and salt until nice and dark. Deglaze with wine. Cook off wine for 5 minutes. Add garlic and brandy and degla...

I was trying to figure out how to incorporate more potassium into my diet. Bananas are the first things that come to most people's minds. They do nicely, but I'm not a big fan of fruit in general. Too much sugar. Then I accidentally found out that mushrooms actually offer more potassium than bananas and way more flavor. Time to make some mushrooms! I kept it simple, but not too simple. There are not a lot of choices of fresh mushroom where I am. So I went with 1 pint white mushrooms and 1 pint baby bella mushrooms. Mushrooms and brandy are like peanut butter and jelly. They just go together. So I used that too. Basically this is a riff on french onion soup, but with mushrooms as the star ingredient. I kept the amount of liquid low to create a mushroom relish, but you could modify this with more liquid to yield a beautiful mushroom soup. Ingredients 1 pint white mushrooms, chopped small 1 pint baby bella mushrooms, chopped small 1 poblano pepper, diced 1 jalape...

So my brother was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. He's gone low carb. Way low. He really misses things like pasta, potatoes and crackers. I thought I'd try to create some kind of crunchy flatbread that was nearly no carb for him that was also plant based for me. If I had sunflower seeds, I probably would've ground a 1/4 cup of those as well and added them to the mix, but I made due with the things I had on hand. It's weird working a bread dough that doesn't have gluten. It never gets that familiar texture of regular bread dough. You kinda wind up with a soft, moist dough you can mold. It's similar to play dough. You cook it up and it becomes firmish. If you cook it more it gets kinda crunchy. Either way, it's sorta crumbly. It's a satisfying texture given the limitations and it has good flavor. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it even though I'm very pro-carb. I ate the whole first batch on my own and had to make a ne...

I love the unique bite of arugula. It's a no-brainer for a pesto. Pesto needn't be limited to being a pasta sauce. Although it's great when used that way. Try it on toast, baked potatoes, vegetables. Go nuts with it. A good pesto works as a sauce, garnish, dip, spread. It just makes whatever you pair it with that much better. Plant based pesto is pretty easy to pull off. Just swap out the cheese. Nutritional yeast is the universal vegan cheese substitute. Not only does it provide complete protein and numerous b vitamins, it also boasts an umami cheese like flavor that vegans have been using for ages to reimagine some of their favorite recipes as cruelty free. 2 cups arugula 1/2 cup basil 3/4 cup almonds 3 tbls nutritional yeast flakes 5 cloves garlic 1 jalapeno, deseeded 1 serrano, deseeded 1/3 cup olive oil 2 1/2 tsps salt 1 tsp black pepper Buzz it all up in the food processor until your desired consistency is achieved. For best results, allow to rest a f...