Minestrone Soup

This flexible recipe is a lovely meal all on its own. It’s specially exciting if you have some pesto and croutons to top it.

Ingredients:

2 tbs olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 or 4 carrots, sliced

2 celery sticks (optional, but add lots of good flavor)

4 to 6 cloves garlic

1/2 cup tomato paste, or 1 cup of tomato sauce, or 3 medium tomatoes, finely chopped

2 potatoes and/or 1 or 2 zucchini or other summer squash and/or green beans, or other seasonal veggies, chopped

2 cups spinach and/or kale and/or turnip greens and/or beet greens or other seasonal greens

1 tbs fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried oregano

1 tbs fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme

2 or 3 bay leaves

8 to 10 cups water and 3 cubes vegetable bouillon or 8 cups liquid vegetable broth

1 tsp salt or more as desired

1 tsp pepper (optional, but cooks in to add wonderful flavor)

1 cup pasta (elbow, rotini or shell pasta works well)

2 to 3 cups cooked white beans (black eyed peas work well, too!)

Optional Toppings—

lemon juice

parmesan or nutritional yeast

parsley

basil

microgreens

INSTRUCTIONS

In a pan, saute onions with olive oil for a few minutes, when starting to become translucent, add chopped garlic, carrots and celery and saute for 3 more minutes. Add a splash of water if it’s looking too dry

In a pot, add the water and bouillon or vegetable broth, cooked beans, sauteed onion, carrots, celery and garlic, chopped potatoes/zucchini, summer squash/green beans, herbs and spices, cover and bring to a medium boil for 10 or 15 minutes, until the potato is cooked through

Add pasta and greens and boil for a few more minutes until the pasta is cooked.

Serve hot and serve with any or all of the optional toppings for your steamy enjoyment!

Garlic Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes

Cauliflower makes a delicious dish in so many ways. Mixing it with potatoes makes it the ultimate comfort food and I just feel better about piling it on my plate since it’s not ‘just potatoes’. Here’s a quick and easy version to try—

INGREDIENTS

1/2 a large cauliflower or 1 smaller one, chopped

4 medium potatoes, cut into 1-inch slices (farm fresh potatoes are amazing and there will be some later in the warm season. For now, if you’re not sure where to find affordable organic potatoes, you can always try yukon gold organic potatoes available at Trader Joe’s for a pretty good price.)

6 to 8 garlic cloves, peeled

a sprig or two of fresh herbs (try thyme and/or rosemary)

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Put potatoes, cauliflower, garlic and herb sprigs in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until veggies are cooked through and soft enough to mash.

Drain water and remove the sprigs.

Add olive oil, salt and pepper and mash it all up!

Serve it up and enjoy.

Vegan Cashew Cheese

The fact that this recipe exists in my repertoire is due, in part, to our beloved Kooki and the secrets he’s gathered along his life journey and shared with us—one of which is just what makes this vegan cashew “cheese” so superior to other vegan cheese substitutes. He might tell you it’s the ground mustard seed. I, being (not strictly vegan, but still) generally anti-creaminess in many of my foods (read: extremely anti-mayonnaise/ equally anti-sour cream) love this stuff and would credit the beautiful balance between the tofu, cashew and nutritional yeast. Even if you do love the above-mentioned creamy foods, set your love for those aside and give this creamy food a try. I hesitate to call this ‘cheese’ because it really isn’t. It’s in a delicious category of its own and won’t leave you feeling heavy the way other cheeses and wannabee cheeses could. Smother some pasta and veggies with it (which is what I’m thinking to do with my leftover batch and this week’s broccoli and spinach) or use it on vegan pizza or in a vegan lasagna. It’s a project, so get ready, but when I made it last night, it managed to transform my grumpy six-year-old’s complaints that he doesn’t like cauliflower and will NEVER eat it to, and I quote(!), “This is magical, Mom. I love it so much, it makes the cauliflower and sprouts taste so yummy, it’s magical, I love you mom.” Yup. If you have little kids that sometimes refuse to eat their veggies, try it. Ok, here goes:

INGREDIENTS

1 medium onion

3 or 4 cloves garlic (peeled and chopped)

12oz soft or silken tofu (I use the unrefrigerated 12 oz nigari silken tofu boxes available at Sprouts— they keep a long time on the shelf and blend smoothly)

2 cups roasted and salted cashew pieces (½ 16oz bag from trader joes) or 1 cup (about half a jar) cashew butter

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

<½ cup lemon juice (or about 2 limes)

2 tsp ground yellow mustard seed

1tbs ground pepper

1 tsp Paprika

1 tsp turmeric

6 tbs soy sauce

INSTRUCTIONS

Slice up the onion and sauté in little olive oil until translucent and slightly brown.

Add onion and rest of ingredients to a food processor and blend until smooth.

Scrape out the sauce and use as you wish! Again, think pizza, lasagna, a dip for raw veggies and more. Last night, we had quinoa-brown rice pasta with steamed cauliflower and spinach, smothered in this cashew sauce and topped with tatsoi microgreens. Magical, remember?!

Vegetarian Menudo Recipe

I know, I know, it’s a stretch, for anyone acquainted with authentic menudo, to believe it can be made vegetarian. For those of you standing in disbelief—disregard the title of this post and let’s just call this a caldo de verduras. For those of you, like me, that have been witness to the wonders of menudo the morning after a long night of New Year’s Eve partying…but just happen to have made the choice to stick to a vegetarian diet, try this nourishing soup and call it what you want! A special thank you to my Tia Carolina and her audacious friend that invented a recipe and called it veggie menudo. Prior to her sharing it, I, too, thought it impossible. I’d always just stuck to veggie pozole. They aren’t that different, given the absence of meats that differentiate the traditional versions. To fulfill my own crazy need for categories, I’m reserving the cabbage and radish toppings for my veggie pozole. So, here is my version of veggie menudo, using this week’s in-season veggies. If you’d rather make the “real thing”, here’s a recipe for you.

Ingredients:

For the soup—

1 large onion, chopped

8 cloves garlic, chopped

1 handful celery tops

2 big handfuls dried shitake mushrooms (we buy these at our local Vietnamese grocery store)

2 tbs dried oregano

1 tsp lemon pepper

1 tsp dried chile flakes (optional)

6 small carrots or 3 large ones, sliced

1/2 head of Napa cabbage, sliced

1 cup spinach, sliced

6 cups hominy OR 1 large yucca root, peeled and sliced into 1/2-inch slices (yes, I know this isn’t traditional but it saved me a trip to the grocery store and it did the trick!)

radish microgreens

lemon

tortillas de maíz

For the sauce— (mind you, this step is optional, if you’re ok with less work and a lighter broth or just spicing it up with chile flakes. Yes, I used chiltepin! On the other hand, if you want to go for it, you can make lots and then use the leftover sauce to make enchiladas another day)

6 guajillo (dried) peppers

1 tsp cumin

1 cup broth (from your menudo pot)

3 cloves garlic

Instructions:

Set aside a little bit of onion for garnish and sauté the rest of the onion in a pan with a little olive oil until translucent and a tiny bit browned.

Add the garlic and celery leaves and dried mushrooms with a little more olive oil and sauté for another minute

In a pot, add about 10 cups water along with the sautéed onions, garlic and celery leaves, 4 cubes veggie broth (this time, I used two “Not Beef” cubes, one “Not Chicken” and one “Garden Veggie” cube from Edward & Sons), oregano, lemon pepper and optional chile.

Once it’s boiling, add your veggies and the cooked hominy or yucca root.

If you’re going for the sauce, too, here’s what to do:

Toast the guajillo peppers in a pan

Break or slice the peppers and soak them in a bowl with broth from the soup until soft (maybe 10 minutes). Press them down into the broth so they soak thoroughly and put a lid on the bowl to keep the heat in and speed up the process.

Then blend them in the blender along with the broth, cumin and garlic.

Serve your menudo topped with radish microgreens, a squeeze of lemon, sauce to taste and a warm tortilla on the side.