vegan vegetable quinoa chickpea soup

Sometimes you just need soup. And now that winter has finally hit with a good three or four inches of snow that I am forced to shovel, I am thrilled to come back inside the warm house to be greeted by this hearty, filling, vegan soup. Best part – like most soups, you can experiment and throw in whatever you like, whatever you have on hand.

Vegan vegetable quinoa chickpea soup

Ingredients (you can play with this as much as you like… this is just what I’ve done)
1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion or two shallots, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
6 cloves crushed garlic
1 cup dry quinoa (I use tricolor quinoa)
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoon dry basil
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
2 or 3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 container (about 15 ounces) chickpeas, rinsed and drained
28 ounces (about two normal-sized tins) of crushed tomatoes
6 cups vegetable broth
1 tin coconut milk
Any vegetables you want to throw in
Salt, pepper to taste

In a soup pot, saute the onions/shallots, and if you are using the carrot and celery saute those too. I have not always added these, and the soup is good without them. Add a pinch of salt and continue to saute until soft. Just before adding other ingredients, throw in the garlic and saute for half a minute.

Add the fennel seeds, basil, Italian seasoning, nutritional yeast, and stir. Add the rinsed quinoa and chickpeas. Stir and saute for one minute or so. Add the tomatoes, vegetable broth and coconut milk. Stir. Bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat to simmer and cook with the lid on for about 20 minutes.

Stir now and again to make sure the quinoa does not stick to the bottom of the pan. After about 15 minutes, throw in whatever frozen vegetables you want to add (I threw in some broccoli). Then at about 20 minutes, throw in the fresh veg that don’t need as long to cook; I added some quartered zucchini and a few cups of baby spinach leaves. Once you add the vegetables let it cook for another five or ten minutes until the veg achieves a consistency you like.

amazing vegan mashed cauliflower

Finally, after much experimentation, I have achieved the perfect consistency and flavor for my mashed cauliflower. Side benefit: it’s vegan (although you could add a bit of butter if you wanted when you’re blending it). I wanted it to be flavorful and have the same consistency as fluffy mashed potatoes.

In the past when I’ve tried to make this, I used fresh cauliflower, which somehow didn’t soften up well enough, and I got something less than cohesive and almost grainy. The frozen cauliflower, added directly from the freezer releases liquid as it roasts, helping to soften it while still allowing the cauliflower to take on a nutty, roasted flavor. It’s also a lifesaver because this can be done on the fly if you have cauliflower in your freezer, as I always do.

I also added an onion to the pan because previous attempts to make mashed cauliflower didn’t end up having much flavor. Once roasted, of course, you don’t want the cauliflower to have too much liquid in it because it will be too watery/soupy when blended. Somehow I got the right ratio of everything this time, and the texture was just like the mashed potatoes I wanted to emulate.

The downside is… I couldn’t get a good photo (as if I ever do). I mean how can mushy, mashed-up, grey cauliflower ever look good? And when, frankly, I am a terrible photographer and the lighting in my house is bad (especially at 4 a.m. when I made this)? Try not to let the dull look of this dish as I prepared and photographed it put you off. I assure you, as much as this looks like slop (as many of my best-tasting meals do), this is amazing.

Ingredients
1 package (600 grams) frozen cauliflower florets
one small or medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt to taste
pepper to taste
pinch of cayenne pepper to taste, if desired

In a medium-sized roasting pan (or a medium cast iron skillet, which is what I did), add the oil, chopped onion and cauliflower. Roast in the oven at 200C for about 20 minutes, add a pinch of salt, stir, and return to the oven for maybe another 20 minutes at 180C. It’s ready when the cauliflower is completely roasted and soft/mashable.

Mash up the bigger pieces of cauliflower and add salt, pepper and cayenne before transferring to a bowl. Use a hand/stick blender to mix blend to a mashed potato consistency.

Taste to make sure you like the seasoning (and season to your taste).

matzah ball soup

For a few days I have been thinking about making matzah ball soup so I can achieve fully the inner Jewish grandma status I’ve always wanted to be. Sure, I won’t actually get there. But the soup has been made for the very first time. It can certainly be improved, but it was a good first try and lovely for a rainy, stormy day.

I adapted this Bon Appetit recipe, which was okay, but I am going to look at other methods.

I also had to buy a new, giant stock pot.

2 3-lb. chickens, cut into 8 pieces

2 large yellow onions, unpeeled, quartered

6 celery stalks, cut into 1″ pieces

4 large carrots, peeled, cut into 1” pieces

2 large shallots, quartered

1 head of garlic, halved crosswise

6 sprigs flat-leaf parsley

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

Bring all ingredients and 12 cups cold water to a boil in a very large (at least 12-qt.) stockpot. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until chicken breasts are cooked through, about 20 minutes.

Transfer breasts to a plate (remaining chicken parts are strictly for stock). Let breasts cool slightly, then remove meat and return bones to stock. Shred meat. Let cool, tightly wrap, and chill.

Continue to simmer stock, skimming surface occasionally, until reduced by one-third, about 2 hours. Strain chicken stock through a fine-mesh sieve into a large saucepan (or airtight container, if not using right away); discard solids. You should have about 8 cups.

3 large eggs, beaten to blend

¾ cup matzah meal

¼ cup schmaltz (chicken fat), melted

3 tablespoons club soda (I didn’t use this because I forgot to buy it – it probably would have helped… but oh well. Next time)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Mix eggs, matzah meal, schmaltz, club soda, and salt in a medium bowl (mixture will resemble wet sand; it will firm up as it rests). Cover and chill at least 2 hours.

1 small carrot, peeled, sliced ¼” thick on a diagonal

Kosher salt, to taste – don’t go too crazy with it

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh dill (I hate dill so I did not use this)

Coarsely ground fresh black pepper

Bring chicken stock to a boil in a large saucepan. Add carrots; season with salt. Reduce heat and simmer until carrots are tender, 5–7 minutes. Remove from heat, add reserved breast meat, and cover. Set soup aside.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil. Scoop out 2-tablespoonful portions matzah ball mixture and, using wet hands, gently roll into balls.

Add matzah balls to water and reduce heat so water is at a gentle simmer (too much bouncing around will break them up). Cover pot and cook matzah balls until cooked through and starting to sink, 20–25 minutes.

caramel popcorn

Caramel popcorn is something my mother has made my entire life. She joked with her colleagues that most days she’d serve popcorn for dinner, but caramel corn was for payday. Later I made this for all the birthday/slumber parties and the like.

The recipe came from a cookbook one of her aunts published. Since leaving home, I never make it because it’s too sweet, I can’t easily find white popcorn in Sweden, didn’t have a hot-air popper, and the original recipe calls for corn syrup.

But suddenly I had white corn, a hot-air popper and golden syrup and the ability to give the finished product away.

It’s not difficult. Here’s the recipe.

Caramel popcorn
Preheat oven to 125C

Pop about 1/2 a cup of popcorn in a hot-air popper directly into a baking dish/roasting pan

In a heavy-bottomed stovetop pot:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup or golden syrup
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanila

(You can also double this recipe, as my family usually did – and use a very large roasting pan.)

Melt butter, add the brown sugar and syrup on low-medium heat. Bring to a boil, stir constantly. Let boil 5 minutes without stirring.

Remove from heat. Stir in baking soda and vanilla. The mixture will get very foamy and lightly caramel colored.

Pour over the popcorn and stir to coat. Bake in preheated oven. Stir corn every 15 minutes, turning pan halfway through, for about 45 mins to 1 hour. It should be crispy once it cools off a bit.

scoop on soup

Even though Sweden still isn’t on lockdown, I am not keen to exit my self-imposed isolation. This means I end up cooking with what I have, and right now, soup is the only thing I feel like eating anyway.

Yet I’m out of many of the ingredients I most love in soup… so it’s been experimentation time. I wanted something tomato-based – maybe just a pure tomato or tomato garlic soup. But I also felt like having something more substantial. I couldn’t find any recipes online that gave me quite what I wanted. But here we are… an experimental, slightly spicy tomato chickpea coconut soup.

Experimental tomato chickpea coconut soup
1 medium onion, chopped and sauteed
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
a pinch of sugar
1 tin (15 ounces or so) of crushed tomatoes or equivalent chopped, peeled fresh tomatoes
1 tin (15 ounces or so) of drained, rinsed chickpeas
1 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 cups water (here you could add bouillon of some sort if you want more flavor; I used a half teaspoon of some browned shallot flavored liquid base/bouillon)
salt and pepper to taste

Saute onion; add garlic once onions are translucent. After 20 or 30 seconds of stirring, add cayenne, then vinegar, tomatoes and sugar. Stir.

Add chickpeas and coconut milk. Stir. Bring to simmer. Add water.

Cover and simmer about 30 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool down before blending with an immersion blender.

Once finished, taste it to see if it’s spiced and seasoned properly. Add salt, pepper, more coconut milk, whole chickpeas (or whatever you want). Drizzle with high quality olive oil when serving.

In the photo I was just going to serve the plain soup but added some wilted spinach on top at the end. That wasn’t too bad.

I suspect this will taste better, as do many things, on the second day.

soup for the win

In a post-tooth extraction/infection world, operating with ingredients on hand, the diet becomes overwhelmed by soup. Smooth soups. Good thing soup is a favorite – and easy. For a few days running, I’ve been on a semi-spicy black bean soup (a variation of this recipe) kick, but blended everything so as not to disturb the sensitive mouth. But today I had a bit of pumpkin leftover from something else, some must-use coconut milk and, most of all, hunger.

Hunger led me to the latest soup experiment, which is a take-off on my old go-to pumpkin curry soup recipe. In my updated version, I have guessed at the ratios – you can spice it to suit your own tastes, of course. I am not sure about the measurements. This is a super inexact recipe.

I added white beans to this because I wanted to thicken the soup a bit, add a bit of protein and a bit of texture. White beans don’t add much flavor, so this won’t ruin the flavor profiles of anything else you have going on.

New, improved (?), improvised pumpkin curry soup (vegan)
1 tablespoon (or so) olive oil
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon curry
¼ teaspoon ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon cayenne

On medium heat, saute the onion until golden. Add garlic and spices, stir and cook for about two minutes. Remove from heat until other parts of the soup are ready.

Liquid step
1 cup water
1/4 cup (or so) coconut milk
2 teaspoons vegan bouillon cube or powder (or equivalent)
15 (or so) ounce white beans (I used rinsed, tinned beans)

Mix all the liquid ingredients together with white beans in container or pan you can use for blending. Blend together with an immersion blender. When smooth, add to the spice mixture and return to medium heat.

15 ounce can pumpkin (or the “meat” of a baked butternut squash)

I only had about half this amount of pumpkin, and you adjust to your taste. Obviously. Mix this pumpkin into the simmering soup base. Let simmer about 10 or 20 minutes.

Remove from heat and blend with the immersion blender.

1 cup coconut milk
Coriander garnish if desired

Return the blended soup to low heat, mix in coconut milk until warm enough to serve.

Vegan chocolate protein bliss balls

Not long ago some acquaintances were raving about some protein bars that happen to come from Sweden. I will eventually get around to experimenting with making some approximation of those… but in the interim, doing my customary recipe research, I found a recipe for vegan chocolate protein ‘bliss balls’. I’m always looking for vegan stuff to try as well as gluten-free options (and this can be gluten-free too as long as your oats and protein powder of choice are GF). I’m not big on “protein bars” or snacks or what have you, but I know they are popular with many, so here’s my first foray into this world. Very easy, requiring no baking at all – just a bunch of ingredients thrown into a food processor and a tiny bit of mess when you roll them.

Vegan chocolate protein bliss balls (recipe)

1 cup almonds
1/2 cup oats
46-50 grams vegan chocolate protein powder
1/3 cup packed, pitted and chopped dates
about 1/4 cup almond milk (or water)
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
About 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, if desired

Throw everything into a food processor. Blend until you have a thick, smooth paste that you can easily roll into balls. You can then roll this in some coating (I used unsweetened cocoa powder). Store in the fridge. I think I made about 24 from this recipe.

I really can’t tell you what these taste like – I have never tried them and I am a bit too disgusted by dates to even put one of these in my mouth to find out if it’s edible, so I will have to rely on others to give me a verdict.

dark chocolate tarts

While I had been sort of hoping to veganize my standard dark chocolate mini tart recipe, I sort of ran out of time and made the regular ones. I changed the recipe just slightly from the old one I’ve shared before.

I mailed some of these to an office where most of the employees are distributed, so a lot of employees miss out on the final results. One employee misread the label on these as “farts” rather than “tarts”, giving him a small chuckle – that was as sweet as my shared baking ended up being for him.

Dark chocolate tarts
Tart shells
1 ½ cups chocolate cookie crumbs (or 1 cup cookie crumbs and ½ cup ground hazelnuts).
1/3 cup melted butter
1 tablespoon sugar

The change I implemented here was simply throwing whole Oreo cookies into my food processor and making them into crumbs. I didn’t fool around looking for some other chocolate cookies or removing the middle filling of the Oreo. This might have made the final shells more structurally sound.

Preheat oven to 190C. Lightly spray muffin tins (regular size or mini ones, as I usually use) with nonstick spray (I usually do not use the spray because the mixture uses a lot of butter; I did use some non-stick spray this time because I was not sure that keeping the filling from the Oreos in the mix would not stick to the pan).

Mix the cookie crumbs (and ground hazelnuts, if you are using them – I did this time) with the melted butter and sugar. Press the mixture into the muffin tins. Bake approx. 5 minutes in preheated oven.

While baking, prepare the filling. Remove from oven and lower oven temperature to 160C.

Filling
10 to 10 ½ ounces of dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) – 280 to 300 grams
¾ cup heavy cream
½ cup whole milk
3 tablespoons honey (flavored honey can be nice here)
1 egg, beaten slightly

The difference this time is that I used only heavy cream and no milk in the exact same proportion (so 1 1/4c cream – minus all milk).

Over a double boiler (or glass bowl over a pan of boiling water) mix chocolate with milk and cream. Stir until chocolate is melted and fully mixed together with cream and milk (smooth consistency). Stir in honey.

Slightly beat the egg in a medium-sized bowl. Gradually stir a small stream of the melted chocolate mixture into the egg, whisking the egg and chocolate together the whole time (to temper to make sure the egg does not become like scrambled eggs). Do this with just some of the chocolate until enough chocolate has been mixed with egg to ensure that the egg will not cook. Then add the egg-chocolate mixture to the bowl of melted chocolate.

Spoon the chocolate mixture into the chocolate tart shells. Bake 25 minutes, cool for at least 30 minutes before removing from tin.

vegan chocolate cupcakes and frosting

One would imagine that the whole point of baking vegan would be in the interest of making something healthier. But no, for me, it’s just to ensure that the plant-based eaters among us can also access my baking. It’s also a challenging experiment for me, not unlike the attempts at gluten-free baking I sometimes undertake. Both work well enough, but I don’t eat any of it to be able to say for sure how successful these attempts are.

However, this time I took the vegan goods to a vegan acquaintance who was willing to give me an honest and detailed appraisal. I’d adapted my standard ANZAC biscuit, which looks deceptively healthy but isn’t, to be vegan, but this was simple. It was simply a matter of swapping regular butter for coconut oil, and this apparently worked beautifully. So much so that the vegan ANZAC biscuits were gone quickly with non-vegans praising them, and the vegan acquaintance only getting to enjoy one.

Not too different from a regular ANZAC biscuit

As for the chocolate cupcakes, it was reported that the cake itself was not unlike any standard vegan cupcake. Maybe a little dry, maybe not inspiring, but passable. This is mostly what I expected, but I also think that these cupcakes probably need to be eaten very soon after being baked (they can’t sit out for days, particularly uncovered, as was happening where I left them). Here is the vegan cupcake recipe I used, minus the pretzel flourishes…

It was however reported, quite against my expectation, that the frosting was superb. And I guessed – and this was confirmed – that vegan frosting is not always an easy thing to achieve. With taste and consistency being a bit fussy without butter or eggs, I gave it a lot of thought because many commercial vegan margarine substitutes just separate and don’t whip up well. And vegetable oils aren’t successful. You could just do a dark chocolate ganache topping, but that was not what I was after.

Finally I remembered the old days and the good old solutions my grandma favored. Her frosting recipe had nothing to do with veganism or healthy choices but had a lot more to do with what she had on hand and what ingredients she was used to working with. And that’s when I realized, ah yes, you can make frosting from solid vegetable shortening (i.e., something like Crisco). No it is not the healthiest solution, and vegetable shortening isn’t the easiest thing to find in Sweden. But find it I did, after doing a bit of reading online about how people use vegetable shortening to make light, fluffy frosting. It’s also a boon if you’re trying to have perfectly white frosting, which is impossible using butter. In my reading I realized that professional bakers often use Crisco to make frosting not only because it is so white but also because it is so stable and less fussy than butter icing.

As it happens, I was going for a chocolate frosting, so I whipped the vegetable shortening vigorously, added a lot of powdered sugar and a whole lot of vanilla extract and then alternated between unsweetened cocoa powder and hot coffee.

Yeah, I hear you… the sprinkle job/decoration leaves much to be desired.

Vegan chocolate frosting with vegetable shortening recipe
2/3 cup all-vegetable shortening (e.g., Crisco)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (at least 1 teaspoon; I think I used much more)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups powdered sugar (approximate – work with it to get the balance you prefer)
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
5 to 6 tablespoons milk (or hot coffee – I wanted a deeper, richer chocolate flavor, so I opted for coffee)

Beat shortening for several minutes; add vanilla and salt. Continue to beat on high speed until very fluffy. Add the powdered sugar, and begin to beat on low speed until incorporated. Add cocoa powder alternately with the milk or coffee, until you get everything mixed together well. Give it a taste to see if you need to adjust the ingredients for taste (more cocoa? more vanilla?)

Once you’ve got your flavor right, beat on high speed until smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes (maybe more!). And frost!

skor-daim bar squares

A Canadian acquaintance requested Skor bar squares to celebrate his birthday when I asked what baked good he might like. Of course, we don’t have Skor bars in Sweden, and the closest approximation is the Daim bar. Also, I have never heard of or made Skor bar squares, so I did an internet search for recipes, hoping that whatever I ended up with would somehow be close to what the acquaintance was hoping for/referring to.

He said upon having a taste that they were not exactly what he was thinking of but that they were still good. So I put this here hoping maybe someone – anyone? – who reads it might suggest what an actual Skor bar square cookie should be like?

Recipe
Skor (or Daim) bar squares/cookies
1 (11.3 oz) box Ritz crackers
1 (8 oz) bag toffee bits (I used about 225 grams of Daim bars, which I put in the food processor to make bits)
1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 cup milk chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Spray (or butter) an 8×8-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.

Place all of the Ritz crackers in a food processor and process until they are fine crumbs. Pour them into a bowl. Mix one cup of the Daim bits with the Ritz crumbs. Then stir in the can of sweetened condensed milk until well combined.

Press into the prepared baking dish. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove from oven.

Immediately pour the chocolate chips evenly over the top of the bars (I just used broken up milk chocolate bars, as I didn’t have chocolate chips). Allow to sit for a few minutes to melt, then spread evenly over the top. (If they aren’t melting, stick the pan back into the oven for a minute or two – I did this because the pieces of chocolate were a bit thicker than chocolate chips would be – it worked really well.)

Immediately sprinkle the remaining toffee/Daim bits on top. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

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vegan vegetable quinoa chickpea soup