Garden fresh gazpacho

This year I planted green pepper basil in my garden. It is exactly as you can imagine - green leafy plant that tastes like a mix of basil and green peppers. I had never seen it before and didn't really know what to do with it but wanted to use it...so the combination of many ripe tomatoes and this new fangled green pepper basil led to the following gazpacho recipe.

I also didn't feel like cooking. This whole operation took about 10 minutes including picking things in the garden.

Green pepper basil

Yield: 2 large servings

Ingredients

1 beefsteak tomato
1/4 white onion
1/3 English cucumber
1/3 red pepper
2 green basil leaves
1/2 garlic clove
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil
Pinch of salt

Basically cut all the vegetables up a bit then put it all into a blender with the vinegar, oil, and salt. Waz it up for about 30 seconds - you still want a bit of chunkiness in your soup. Check the seasoning and add salt or more vinegar to suit your taste.

Serve and enjoy.

© 2018 Gail J Cohen

Vegan chiles rellenos

I love chiles rellenos and this summer have a bumper crop of poblano peppers growing in my garden so all the more reason to make them. However, they can be a bit heavy and my partner is trying to eat healthier, so I put my mind to figuring out a vegan version.

I also don’t like using “weird” stuff, so there’s no vegan cheese or anything else in here. Just straight up stuff that you’d have in your kitchen to make a vegan picadillo and then stuff the peppers. The batter is a little odd but works and is a bit lighter than the eggy versions that are more traditional.

There are quite a few steps to this dish but they are below, so go for it. I serve it with rice, so remember to have that on the go as well. Some people will stuff the peppers and refrigerate them for an hour and then batter and fry them. If you do it that way, you can make the tomato sauce and batter during that cooling off period.

Serves 2-3

Ingredients:

4 poblano peppers

Picadillo

1 tbsp oil

½ onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

½ cup fresh or frozen corn

1 potato, diced

1 jalapeno, diced

½ tsp Mexican oregano

½ tsp ground cumin

2 tbsp tomato paste

2 tsp tamari

2 cups water

Salt and pepper

Batter

½ cup regular flour

½ cup cornstarch

Pinch of salt

¾ cup soda water

Tomato sauce

1 dried chile (arbol, puya, cascabel, costeno amarillo)

3 tomatoes (or a combo of tomatoes and tomatillos)

1 clove garlic

½ onion

2 tbsp chopped cilantro

Salt and pepper

Splash of oil

Instructions:

Roast the poblanos. 

If you have a bbq or gas stove, char the skin over the flame. If you have an electric stove, put it under the broiler for 10-15 minutes turning it so all sides get charred. Put the hot peppers in a bowl, cover them with a tea towel, and let them sit/steam for 10 minutes or more. The skin should now come off easily when you rub it. Be careful with this step because you want to keep your peppers in the best shape possible for stuffing. Remove as much of the blackened skin as you can then carefully slice from tip to tail on one side and, again carefully, remove the seeds. Make sure the stem remains attached. Rinse and put aside.

To make the picadillo:

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add onions and saute for a couple of minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables and saute for another minute or two.

Mix tomato paste and water together so you get a tomato juice type situation going on. Add that to the veggies in the pan along with the herbs and tamari (which gives this a bit of a beefier flavour but can be left out if you don’t have any). Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes until the carrots and potatoes are soft. You want the final product to be quite dry but if it starts looking like it’s drying out and going to burn before the veg are cook, just add a bit more water. Check the seasonings and then put aside to cool.

For tomato sauce:

Stem and seed the chile and then soak in a bit of boiling water for 15 minutes.

Roughly chop all the other vegetables. Chuck them in a blender along with the softened chile and a couple of tablespoons of the soaking water. Waz it all up until smooth, about 2 minutes.

Heat the oil in a small pot. Pour in the sauce. You should get a lovely sizzle so just watch you don’t get burned. Add salt and pepper. Turn the heat down and simmer for 10 minutes. The sauce will turn a darker red colour. Taste again for seasoning.

Batter up

Make the batter by simply adding the flour, cornstarch, salt, and soda water and whisking it all together.

Stuff it

At this point, you’re going to stuff the peppers, which is a bit of a fiddly business. Just be patient and have some toothpicks on hand to help seal the stuffed peppers.

Take a split pepper and place in the palm of your one hand. Gently fill with 2 tbsps or so of the picadillo (depending on the size of your peppers, you may need more or less). Make sure they are not too full to allow you to pull the two sides together and seal with a toothpick or two. Repeat for each of the poblanos.

In a medium sized frying pan, add enough oil to generously cover the bottom of the pan and heat.

Gently dip each of the chiles in the batter and place slowly into the hot oil. Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side or until the batter gets lightly golden brown. If the batter doesn’t stick as much as you’d like, you can spoon a little bit more on the chiles while they’re cooking.

Once they’re all golden brown, remove to a bit of paper towel to absorb a bit of the oil. Serve over a bed of rice with the tomato sauce.

Buen provecho.

© Gail J Cohen 2018

Beet and sweet potato soup

This is a hearty vegan soup that has a little warm heat from the delicate Kashmiri chile.  I love beets and this seemed like a great way to use them and sweet potatoes, which I’d also like use in more dishes.  And pink soup, woo hoo!

6 servings

Ingredients:

4 small beets

2-3 small sweet potatoes

1 onion

1 tsp whole cumin

1 tsp whole coriander

1 green cardamom pod

1” piece of ginger

4 cups veggie stock

1 tsp Kashmiri chile

4 tbsp oil

Salt

Peel the beets and sweet potatoes and cut into smallish pieces. There are two ways you can prepare them to get a deeper and richer flavour. One is to roast them in the oven: Heat oven to 375F. Sprinkle veg with oil and a tiny bit of salt. Wrap in a foil package and then roast for about 45 minutes.  

The second is to saute them in oil for a bit in a frying pan so they get a bit caramelized and soft around the edges, which takes about 15 minutes.

In the meantime, take the cumin, coriander, and seeds from the cardamom pod and grind them in a mortar & pestle or spice grinder. The flavours are best when freshly ground but you can always use already ground spices.  Finely chop or grate the ginger.

Dice the onion. Add 2 tbsp of oil to a medium sized pot and sautee the onions with a pinch of salt until just starting to brown. Then add the ground spices, ginger, and chile and fry for just a minute.

Add the veggie stock and roasted vegetables. Bring to the boil. Then lower the heat and simmer for about half an hour until the vegetables are soft. 

Remove from heat and blend until quite smooth. Adjust the seasoning. Serve with a small dollop of sour cream or cashew cream.

© Gail J Cohen 2018

Stuffed zucchini

This recipe is a bit of a variation on stuffed zucchini that my mom has made since I was a little kid. I love potatoes and think that little cubes of it are fantastic in this rich and lemony tomato sauce, so I added them and the mint and chile flakes to zip it up a bit.

You can make this dish vegan by skipping the ground beef and using more rice and more of the zucchini innards for your stuffing. You an also add some slices of eggplant to the sauce to give it more texture. (Be sure to salt them first).

Serves 4

Ingredients

4 fat zukes

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 tomatoes, sliced thickly

1 cup passata

250 g ground beef

3 tbsp chopped parsley

1/3 cup cooked rice

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 potatoes, cut into small cubes

2 tbsp chopped fresh mint

Pinch of chile flakes

Juice of half a lemon

4 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

Carefully cut the zukes in half and scoop out the inside. Be careful to get as much of the flesh as you can but not to make any holes in the skin. Roughly chop and then reserve the pulp. Put the zukes aside.

To prepare the filling, heat 2 tbsp of olive oil in a medium-sized frying pan. Add half the onions and sautee for a few minutes until they start to turn brown. Add half the garlic and sautee for another minute.

Add the ground beef to the pan and brown. Add the tomato paste, about 1/3 of the chopped zucchini pulp, rice, mint, parsley, chile flakes, salt and pepper. Then add about 1/3 cup of water so your tomato paste has enough liquid to mix well into the other ingredients. Cook the whole mixture for about 10-12 minutes until it’s just cooked.  Put aside to cool.

In a large, flat-bottom oven-proof pot (it needs to be big enough to lay out your zukes as well as go in the oven), heat up the remainder of the olive oil. Sautee onions and garlic as above.

Turn the heat down to med-low. Carefully add the passata so you don’t get splattered. Lay the tomato slices (and eggplant if you're using it) on the bottom of the pot, add the rest of the chopped zucchini pulp, lemon juice, potato cubes, salt, and pepper. Bring to the boil.

In the meantime, take the cooled filling and carefully spoon it into the zucchini shells.

Place the stuffed zukes on top of the vegetable mixture in the pot and reduce the temperature to low.Simmer covered for about 20 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 350F.  After 20 minutes, turn off the burner and remove the cover from the pot. Put the pot in the oven uncovered to cook for about another 20 minutes. 

When it's ready, the dish should be a bit brown on top, and the veggies (particularly the potaotoes) all soft. Depending on the water content of the zukes, you may want to remove them from the sauce and boil it down for a thicker sauce or just serve it as is.

Serve with rice, smothered in the rich cooking sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.

© Gail J. Cohen 2018

Vegan basil hemp pesto

I've been cooking but not writing about it much lately. Trying to get back on track. The fall harvest is a great time to do it! Here's one for the gardeners (and the vegans).

If you're like me, you tend to grow basil in your garden in the summer and there's only so much of it you can use before the frost get it. Pesto is one of the greatest ways to use up large amounts of the fresh stuff. And making it takes hardly any time at all.

And this recipe mixes it with one of my favourite (and local!) seeds: hemp, which have an extraordinary nutty flavour that is enhanced by toasting the seeds before making the mixture. Add a little hemp oil to ratchet up that nuttiness. The fresh parsley, which is likely also in your garden, adds a bit of herby lightness.

Yield:  1.5 cups

Ingredients

1/2 cup hemp seeds

3 loosely packed cups of fresh basil leaves

1 sprig fresh Italian parsley

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 tbsp cold pressed hemp oil

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp salt

fresh ground pepper

Toast the hemp seeds in a non-stick pan on medium heat. It will seem like it takes a while but keep your eyes on it at all times because the seeds will go from not toasted to burnt in about 30 seconds. The toasting shouldn't take more than about 5-6 minutes depending on the pan you're using. Cool before making the pesto.

Clean the basil and parsley, making sure it's mostly dry before continuing on.

Add all the ingredients into a food processor. Blend for about a minute making sure the garlic is all chopped and it is quite smooth and creamy. Check the seasonings and voila. 

Use it on pasta, add cream/cream substitute if you want to make a creamy sauce, use it dressing for salads, etc.  It'll keep in the fridge for about a week but you can also freeze it in ice cube trays and save it for later when you're yearning for some garden freshness in the middle of winter.

© Gail J. Cohen 2017

Avocado paletas

I adore Mexican paletas. They are so simple and make use of just a few simple ingredients to create lovely and light desserts. Mostly I go for the pure fruity ones but using the blessed, beautiful avocado makes for an incredibly rich and creamy taste treat without any added fat or dairy. Here's the super simple recipe.  You'll need some popsicle molds.

Yield: 6-10 popsicles

Ingredients:

1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 ripe avocados
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice

Put the water and sugar in a small point and gently heat until all the sugar is dissolved. You're basically making a simple sugar solution. Let it cool.

Cut and pit the avocados and put them into a blender along with the lime juice and cooled sugar water.

Waz it up until it's smooth. Then pour the bright green mixture into the popsicle molds and freeze for at least two hours.

To serve, run a bit of hot water on the outside of the mold and gently remove the popsicle. Let the oohing and aahing begin.

I'm smokin' hot (sauce)

Every year I plant hot peppers in my lovely little garden. I tend to have a bit of a variety but every year I put in cayenne peppers because they never disappoint. This year I only had one plant but supplemented it with some serranos and jalapenos, so had a good variety of hot peppers. And at the end of the season, there are always lots left over. So what to do with lots of fiery little chiles?  Well make them into hot sauce, of course! 

Here's my quite simple hot sauce recipe from the archives:

Yield: about 100 ml

Ingredients:

1 dozen cayenne peppers
2 heads of garlic
3/4 cup of vinegar
salt
pinch of sugar

I had a lot of cayenne peppers and the others that I also grew, so threw a few of those in the mix, and made 4x the recipe.

.

First cut off the stem, slit, and remove the seeds of each pepper. Please do this with gloves. And don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth while you're doing the deed. The burn is fierce.

The traditional Tobasco Sauce has "aged" peppers but in the age of instant gratification, I deepened the flavour by roasting the peppers a bit. I used my favourite Mexican style of dry roasting on the comal, but you can do it in a large non-stick frying pan or by broiling them in the oven until the skin turns a bit black. Some people suggest taking the skins off after the roasting but seriously, that's a bunch of fiddling around that takes up time I'll never get back. So I just tossed them, the garlic (which I also roasted but there's no need to), and the vinegar into the blender and wazzed it all up.

Once it's all lovely and liquidized, simmer the mix on the stove for about 20 minutes. At this point, the whole kitchen, if not house, will start smelling like hot sauce. There may be some burning eyes. It's all for a good cause.

Once the simmering of the flavours is done, run the whole thing through a sieve to clear out the pulp, seeds, and skin.

This, I would say is the time to add the salt, if you're not too busy forgetting to do it like I did, and sugar.

You need to prepare some jars to put this lovely concotion in. I didn't have any traditional style bottles so I used small jam jars (125 ml each). They need to be washed out with boiling water and new lids prepared in boiling water. Once that's all ready, pour the sauce in, seal and you're ready to go with some smokin' hot sauce!

Salata de berenjena (Eggplant salad)

Salata de berenjena is one of those dishes my family has been eating ever since I was a little kid and was definitely not something I enjoyed back then. But as a ‘grown up’ I love it. Simple, fresh ingredients that with a little TLC yield a spectacularly tasty appetizer or side dish.

This salad is also a great way to use up the less-than-perfect tomatoes from the garden at the end of the season.

It’s not a traditional salad but more along the lines of a ratatouille as almost everything is cooked. The salata is not something I make very often because it’s quite time consuming ̶ and really my parents have always made fabulous versions of it, so why mess with someone else’s success? Below is my dad’s version of this traditional Sephardi Jewish vegetable salad.

Leave yourself a bit of time – maybe 1.5 hours – to prepare it as there’s lots of slicing and frying. It’s also best made a day ahead but at the least in the morning if you’re going to have it for dinner. The vegetables need to marinate to realize their full deliciousness.

Yield: 10 servings

Ingredients

1 large eggplant, peeled and sliced
3 green or red peppers
3 tomatoes, thickly sliced
3 small potatoes, sliced
2 tbsp chopped parsley
oil for frying

Dressing:

1/3 cup white vinegar
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp salt

The slices of eggplant should be about 1 cm thick.  Salt and place in a colander to drain for 30 minutes.

While the eggplant is doing its thing, put your oven on broil with the rack near (but not right at) the top. Cut the peppers in half, remove the seeds, and place skin up on a foil-covered baking tray in the oven for 15 minutes. Bake until they are tender and their skin is charred and blistered. Remove from the oven and let cool, then peel and slice.

Start frying your potatoes in a large, non-stick frying pan. Don’t be shy with the oil but you are not deep frying them either. Continue to add frying oil as you need it along the way. Cook the potato disks to a lovely golden brown and drain on some absorbent paper when they’re ready.

Those who know more than I do suggest dipping the eggplant in a bit of milk before frying it so it absorbs less oil. I do it but can’t actually attest to whether it makes a difference. Either way, fry the slices of eggplant until they’ve got a little bit of black on each side (key says my dad) and then drain on some paper.

Gently fry the tomatoes. You want them a bit soft but if you fry them too long they’ll just turn into mush, so don’t overdo it.

Once everything is fried and cooled, layer the potato, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes in a glass or ceramic dish. Sprinkle the parsley generously on the top. Mix the dressing and pour over the vegetables.

Let it cool completely before covering with cling wrap. If you are leaving it overnight, you can put it in the fridge but be sure to take it out a couple of hours before serving because it should be at room temperature for maximum flavour. Just before serving toss the salad gently to get all the flavours mixed up but without making the vegetables into pulp.

© 2016 Gail J. Cohen

You can't beet this curry

I used to live right in downtown Toronto and just down the street in Cabbagetown was an unassuming Sri Lankan restaurant in a somewhat ramshackle old house. I can’t remember how I first ended up eating at Rashnaa there but I do remember that it was a taste revelation for me and I have probably eaten there more than anywhere else in the city. Most of the time I would order the mutton kottu roti, which is a spicy, meaty, plate of wonderousness. When something is that good, why stray, but at some point I started ordering a side of one of their vegetable curries. Now they have a lot of the standard ones but they also have a few special ones that they don’t make every day, so it’s a bit of a lottery if they’re going to have them on the day you decide to eat there.

My three favourites are beet, spinach, and okra. None of which are easy to replicate. I have scoured the internet for recipes for all of them and tried a few but not had the best luck. This is the closest I’ve come to Rashnaa’s beet curry and is adapted from a recipe at My New Roots. Joy factor also ratched up as the beets came out of my own garden.

One of the things that I really like is the flavour of curry leaves, which are an aromatic leaf from a citrusy tree and are completely unrelated to curry powder. They are incredibly fragrant, and not at all spicy, giving off a nutty scent when cooked. They apparently also have tremendous health benefits. You can buy curry leaves fresh and dried in most Indian and even some regular grocery stores.

Yield: 3-4 servings

Ingredients

2 – 3 medium-sized beets
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp ground coriander
20 dried or 15 fresh curry leaves
2 green chiles, finely chopped
1 stick cinnamon
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. salt, plus more for finishing
1 cup full-fat coconut milk
juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Peel beets and cut them into matchsticks. You might want to wear gloves for this to avoid getting bright pink hands.

In a medium-sized pot over medium-high heat, melt coconut oil. Add the mustard seeds, stirring constantly until they start to pop. Quickly add the coriander, curry leaves, chiles, and cinnamon, stir well, and fry for a minute.

Add the onion and saute until they are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and saute for another minute.

Add beets, salt, and coconut milk, bring to a simmer, reduce heat low and cover. Simmer gently so the coconut milk doesn’t split, for about 20 minutes until the beets are fork tender.

Once the beets are done, turn off the heat and stir in the lime juice. Check your salt levels and then gently fold in the cilantro.

Serve hot with rice and any other vegetable curries you might like.

The beautiful beet curry along with a chicken in onion gravy, smoked eggplant and herbs, and a mushroom curry.

Blueberry paletas

On an incredibly hot day when you have a gang over for a bbq, you don’t necessarily want a heavy dessert but a hit of cool sweetness is always welcome. Mexican paletas, or popsicles, are the perfect solution. I prefer making my paletas without cream or yogurt but there are lots of people out there how will make blueberry or strawberry ones with dairy. Also, not having dairy means you can have them with a meat dinner if you’re kosher and swing that way and they are vegan.

You will need a popsicle mold for these.

Yield: 8-10 depending on the size of your molds.

Ingredients

500 g blueberries (frozen works fine)

2/3 cup water

2/3 cup of sugar

juice of half a lime

a few fresh mint leaves

First make a simple syrup. Mix the water, sugar, and mint leaves in a small pot and heat until the sugar has completely dissolved. Let it sit to cool for a bit. Once it’s cooled down, remove the mint leaves.

Put the syrup, lime juice, and blueberries into a blender and liquify it all. If you are using the fresh, larger blueberries, you might want to strain the liquid in a fine sieve to get rid of all the little seeds.

Pour the blueberry mixture into the popsicle molds and freeze. You need at least three hours, if not more, for them to freeze nicely.

To serve, loosen them from the molds by running a bit of hot tap water on the outside. They should slip out pretty easily.

© 2016 Gail J. Cohen