Tag Archives: squash

Cashew Dipped Pleurotus with Veggies

Best recipes never come alone. They come with friends, with ‘no-plans’ evenings and intuition boosts. This one started from Li’s proposal to make some vegan tripe soup, a supposedly superdelicious substitute dish for the original one. Not that I’d have any idea about the resembling taste… okay let’s do it!

That being said, we haven’t cared much about the recipe and basically wove around what was in the fridge. Back home, after one or two more experiments likewise, I ended up with this beautiful yellowish sauté, where leek slices, celery shreds and squash pieces are mildly spiced and dipped together with pleurotus in a rich cashew cream. Here’s how it goes:

Turn the veggies in the size you wish them to be, having in mind the texture you want to create. Being essentially a stir-fry, it won’t stay more than 15-20min over the fire, so move quickly.

Prepare the cashew cream by mixing soaked cashew nuts with water, lemon and salt in a high power blender.

Prepare the seasoning: crush a few cloves of garlic, cut in very fine pieces some ginger and ground some pepper. Now fry them in little oil and be sure they won’t stay as long as to be making a crust. Scramble in your favorite kind of tofu cut in small pieces (I used smoked tofu) and sprinkle pepper and turmeric and/or chilly flakes, if you wish.

Immediately after add the mushrooms and cover until they turn watery. Remove the lid and cook 5 minutes more, then add celery, leek and only at the end, squash. Stir gently from time to time to keep texture firm. Pour the cashew cream and serve with kale or spinach leaves and optional, slices of raw red onions. Squeeze more lemon to your taste. Enjoy!

 

 

 

The Solar Salad

This salad came up after googling for a new dressing and feeling inspired by the apricot, ginger orange one. It turned out so deliciously orange that my hands unconsciously started weaving around the colors of the Sun: more orange, more red and yellow.

This is how I started peeling carrots and squash, adding some beautiful local tomatoes, cauliflower rice, red peppers and sweet corn. I balanced everything with fresh lettuce leaves and sprinkled sesame and hemp seeds.
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If you want to save the looks of this salad, keep some carrot slices away from the dressing and add it right before serving (something that I haven’t done here 🙂 Same for the lettuce! Everything gets super juicy with the apricots

list of ingredients

  • carrot & squash tagliatelle
  • cauliflower rice
  • tomatoes
  • red peppers
  • sweet corn
  • olive oil
  • orange juice
  • apricots
  • fresh ginger
  • seeds (hemp, sesame, sunflower, etc)

Vegan Raita

Is hard to hold back the temptation of posting one more Indian inspired recipe 🙂 Hope you’ll like it as much as I do! This time we have a salad, the traditional Raita which is basically a curd dish with cucumbers and tomatoes and sometimes a bit of sugar. Not this case :p

Initially I thought about making a simple tahini dressing that would soak the veggies, but then other little add-ons came in mind. And the most important one is the sweet smoked paprika flavor. So eventually I got to a recipe that looks like this:

  • small chopped tomatoes & cucumbers
  • tagliatelle style squash (or zucchini)
  • tahini based dressing with smoked paprika, ground cumin & 3 colors’ pepper
  • lemon juice & salt

optional:

  • dried yeast flakes in the dressing
  • sunflower & hemp seeds

Depending on the amount of water you use for the dressing and the juiciness of the tomatoes, you can have it soupy-ish or thicker, perhaps more suitable for a saturday night salad snack.

Pasta Delight

Zucchini is something you either love or hate. Some people may feel extremely queasy while others simply relish its rather flabby texture. When I say this, I refer to squash or zucchini tagliatelle because this is how you can make it resemble the traditional pasta. All you need is a peeler to peel off fine layers of squash until you get to the seeds.

The result should look like this

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Now think of a nice sauce to accompany the so-called pasta.

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You can play around with tahina, mustard and olive oil or simply try out one of the vegan mayonnaisesAnother equally healthy alternative is a ketchup made out of tomatoes, olive oil, dates and salt.

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Season it as you wish – garlic, basil, thyme, pepper, etc – and add some protein if needed – crushed walnuts, almonds or sunflower seeds, previously soaked and strained.

Gather a few more vegetables that keep a firm texture (pepper, red cabbage, carrots, peas, spring onions or garlic) and there you have your pasta delight!

Adding the greens (dill, rucola, parsley, etc)  or some sliced tomatoes at the very end will save them from getting completely mushed into the sauce.

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All you have left to do now is slurp, slurp!

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I prepared this dish so many times and each time it turns out a little bit different. Hope the pictures serve you well, but above all trust your imagination!

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