Costa Rica Tacos

While staying at the hostel in San Jose in my first week, I bought groceries to save some money and made food in the hostel kitchen. It was nice also to be able to cook while on vacation. There's definitely something to being in charge of your own food.

As it was a communal kitchen, I didn't end up taking photos of the process, but got a couple good ones of the final product. It was a very simple meal, starting with yellow saffron rice, topped with sauteed onions, tomatoes, and avocado. It was almost perfectly vegan on corn tortillas when I ruined it with cheese! But it was a delightful dinner and the onions were fantastic. I found some seasoning here that is a nice complete blend. I'm taking it back home with me to experiment with some more.
While cooking, another hostel resident struck up a conversation with me. He was a Canadian who was cooking some Ramen noodles beside me. When I was telling him how great my tacos were going to be and described the different parts, he said all I needed was some chicken or steak to make them complete. I shook my head and said, "Nah, I don't need meat." I realized that I totally and completely meant this statement. Maybe there will be a day that comes when I don't need cheese or eggs or yogurt, too. Who knows. But I think my life as a vegetarian is going to start very soon. I feel ready to live the lack of need on an everyday basis.

Jicama & Radish Salad

Okay, enough with the wrap-up. This is a recipe deserving of its own post, mostly because it came out of nowhere and I really like it.

We had our friends Reed & Courtney over for dinner tonight, and I'd been wracking my brains all week to figure out what to make. I had half of a giant jicama left that Mom had sent me (the package came to my office, and one of my coworkers said: "Your mom knows that we have jicama here, too, right?"), and some limes that were on the verge, and then I thought some more, and then I came up with this recipe. I didn't take a picture of the finished product, but I got some nice ones along the way.

The Dressing

Squeeze one lime, hard, and get all the juice out. If you have two limes, squeeze them both. But maybe, like me, you discover that one of the limes is old and hard. That's okay. One will work. You want to squeeze the juice into a medium-sized jar.

Add 2 Tbsp. Sesame oil and 2 Tbsp. Flax oil (or 4 Tbsp. sesame oil. I added the flax for nutritional value). Add 1 tsp. Tamari. Put the lid on the jar and shake it. Emulsify!

Add a generous pinch of black pepper. If you have a pepper grinder, you should grind some fresh pepper in here. Shake the jar again. Yum.



You could use lemons, but you should probably make lemonade with those. Add basil or mint to the lemonade, and a couple squeezes of agave nectar. Later, before dinner, spike this lemonade with gin and add a splash of tonic. Then remember that you have blueberries in the fridge. Add some blueberries and muddle. This drink is so totally refreshing it almost makes you forget the stupid humidity.

The Salad

This salad is way too much of a hassle unless you have a food processor with a grating element. Or if you love grating things, or cutting them into matchsticks. I have a food processor with a grating element, which is why this recipe was born.

Grate your jicama.


Mine was really giant, which is why it filled the entire bowl of my food processor. That was only HALF of the jicama! I know. I hardly believe it myself.

Then grate a bunch of radishes from the farmer's market. Toss the two together in a bowl with the dressing (shake the dressing again first! emulsify!). I didn't get a photo of this, but it turns a little pink.

You can set this aside for as long as you want. Prepare ahead and assemble the salad later, like this:

Get out your nice salad bowl and line it with a mixture of baby arugula and baby spinach. The spinach is optional, but the arugula is kind of necessary. I suppose you could sub with watercress. Both have a little bite, which is nice here.

Put the jicama and radish mixture on top and toss together.

Wash and quarter some fresh cherry tomatoes. If you have a garden, I hope these come from it. Otherwise, farmer's market. Or, okay, wherever you can find them. There is a blight and all. Add them to the salad.

Dry roast some pepitas on the stovetop. Pepitas are pumpkin seeds, the shelled kind. They're green and cute and puff up when you toast them. Just put them in a dry skillet over medium heat and shake them around every now and then until they get toasty on their bellies. Top the salad with these.

You could probably double the dressing recipe, if you wanted to dress the salad some more, but I liked it a little subtle. I imagine this would be tasty if you added some cayenne to the dressing too.

We served this salad with two items from Veganomicon: The old standby, chickpea cutlets, and the new favorite, lemon roasted potatoes. Except Pete forgot to add the lemon. That's fine, though, because I want to make more of that lemonade, and they were still perhaps the best, creamiest, most sublimely tasty potatoes I have ever eaten.


We also made some vanilla ice cream based on this recipe from Vegan Dad, to which I added NM red chile powder (just a smidgie) and some cinnamon-vanilla spiced sugar. I used hemp milk, almond milk, and coconut milk. Decadent! We have big plans for our ice cream maker based on this experience. Next on the docket: Peanut butter, carob & chile ice cream! (I really think I could have used more chile powder on this batch.)

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Even though I haven't been posting, I've been cooking. Part of the problem is that I always forget to take pictures, or don't take pictures of the whole project. I have the best intentions, though. I really do.

Anyway, here's a roundup:

Picnic at the Park

We made limeade, which was cool and refreshing

and sandwiches, equally delicious


and packed it all up and ate at the park, watching cargo boats go by. A lovely early summer day.


Homemade Ravioli

Mostly fell apart in the water, but we froze the leftover dough and will give it another shot.

I had a birthday party


I had probably the best birthday yet this year. With a cherry on top.

More sandwiches!

Sandwiches are a great summertime meal because you don't have to heat up the dang kitchen and it's fast, so you can get to the beach quicker.

These ones had roasted garlic, avocado, some seaweed flake stuff, cukes, mustard, and sprouts.

Pete doesn't like cukes, so I had a side of cucumber "chips" too. His sandwich was cheese & avocado, but I couldn't get a good picture.

Summertime Stir-fry

I love the farmer's market in our neighborhood, mostly because it's convenient to bike down there on a Saturday morning.

Stir fries are also great in the summer because you can just grab whatever at the market and throw it together. Easy! Quick! Healthy! Pow!

Sushi!

Sushi is surprisingly simple and fast. I honestly don't know why we don't make it more often.

If you don't have a sushi mat, invest the $5 and get one, and a bit more for a small bag of sushi rice and some nori wraps. Then fill the sushi with whatever you have handy. We were pretty conventional here: cucumber, avocado and radishes! If you get a really spicy radish, you don't even need the wasabi.

Fried Plantains

So, I know that I have been so terrible at updating, even though I have been cooking some delicious vegan and vegetarian dishes. Mostly, I forget to take photos while I'm cooking, think that what I'm making is not interesting enough to post, or just am a lazy bum. Sometimes it's all three.

This post is sort of a double fail though because I didn't cook the plantains myself and the photo featured isn't even of the actual plantains I ate. But man, were they delicious.

I figure that this is a good subject as a Costa Rica edition of Sunday Vegan Sunday, or at least the first CR Edition, seeing as this week I am most likely going to be cooking at the hostel to save money and will most likely also buy pretty much just veggies to save money. I'm interested to see what foods I can find and maybe I'll try actually making some fried plantains myself while I'm here. The lunch I had today was awesome, though not vegan. But it did include great black beans, some rice, and the surprisingly fantastic fried plantains. It might be the sort of dish that is only really good if it's cooked correctly, or maybe plantains are just way better cooked than bananas are. Nevertheless, they were very delicious and a wonderful new food.

Now I'm only half of a SVS blog loser.

Spring Spring Spring Spring Spring

This spring has been a bit funny, alternating between cold, cold and rainy and warm and sunny until this week, when it decided to get really warm and the pee smell New Yorkers enjoy so much this time of year started to rise off the sidewalks once again. I'm thrilled in spite of the smell, because this means that the farmer's market selection will go from strictly winter greens, if you're lucky, and those wicked apple cider donuts (and I mean wicked in both the New England and traditional senses), to a cornucopia of greens, fruits, vegetables and flowers. It's so much more fun to eat in the springtime, and I was getting sick of winter foods.

Today's dinner, inspired by a recipe from Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins' The New Basics Cookbook, features a bunch of delicious springtime vegetables, and is quick and hearty to top it off. (One of the things I love about The New Basics is that I can look up whatever ingredient I have on hand, in this case, asparagus, and they give you, well, the basics, and a bunch of related recipes. Such a great resource!)

Here's what we've got: asparagus, ramps (whose leafy tops were erm, over refrigerated), some spinach, tempeh, and toasted sesame seeds, soy sauce and sesame oil. If you can't get ramps where you are, some garlic or green onions might do the trick. Shallots might also be good. That's all you need. It's simple, delicious, and cooks up in about 20 minutes.

I separated the tips of the asparagus from the stems (the original recipe called for just the tips, but I can't be bothered to find something else to do with the stems), and the ramps from both of those, and cooked in stages, according to the delicacy of my ingredients. Here's my method:
1) Heat about 2 Tbsp. of sesame oil in your trusty wok over medium-high heat and add the tempeh, stirring it around for a bit until it gets slightly brown. Add 1 Tbsp. soy sauce or tamari and stir it around. I also add a splash of water so the tempeh steams a bit (I've heard this tempers the bitterness that tempeh sometimes has).
2) Add the stems of the asparagus and stir around (this is a stir fry, so you should pretty much be stirring constantly) until they just start to brighten in color.
3) Add the ramps (if you're using the leaves of the ramps, you should probably hold them to add with the spinach) and stir until they just start to get translucent.
4) Add one more Tbsp. tamari/soy sauce, stir.
5) Throw in those asparagus tips, and yes, stir.
6) When the asparagus tips are tender, but still crunchy, add the spinach and mix it in until it cooks down. Taste, and if necessary, add more soy sauce. Sprinkle sesame seeds liberally over the whole shebang.
7) Dinner is ready! (Oh, you could make some rice or cous cous to have this over if you want to, though I like naked stir fries every now and again.)

So much catching up to do!

So the end of the semester happened, and even though I haven't been posting, I have been cooking, and taking photos. Here are some highlights:

POTSTICKERS

I mixed up recipes from Vegan Yum Yum and Vegan Dad and made these with a chickpea-shiitake filling. They're fun to put together!

Be sure to get all the air out so they do that thing where they seal up at the end:

You fry AND steam them, and then fry them again! (They go vacuum-sealed when you lift the lids after they're done steaming. So cool to watch.)

A quick, delicious and elegant meal. It will really impress someone if you invite them over for home-made potstickers, and it's a fun dinner to make with a friend, since you have to assemble them.

CHICKPEA PANCAKES

These might be the easiest thing ever, and they're delicious with Pete's curried lentils, or, as I had them here, with avocado and salsa for breakfast.

I didn't write down where I got the recipe from, but I looked at a few different places, and might have made this up as an amalgamation of a few, or maybe not. Apologies if this is your recipe. Here's what I used:

1 c. chickpea flour (garam)
1.5 c. water
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/4 tsp. cayenne (or a little more, if you like it spicy like we do)
1/4 c. vegetable oil

Gradually add the water to the flour, whisking to remove lumps. After a smooth paste is formed, add the rest of the water and spices. Cook these kind of like crepes over medium-low heat, brushing your skillet with oil before and between pancakes, and swirling the batter over the bottom of the pan to cover it. They should cook ~3 minutes/side. The cooked parts turn kind of reddish-brown when they're ready.
If you add a little curry powder to the batter, they get a nice flavor as well. This seems like a versatile base, and because it's made with chickpea flour, it's protein-packed!

BAGELS!

These took a long time, but most of it was spent waiting for them to rise. Plus, kneading them for 10 minutes was my workout for the day!

I made a half-batch, but should've made a whole batch, because then I'd have enough for Pete & I to have one each for breakfast every day for the whole week. As it is, we gave two to our friends this morning, split one, and will have one each tomorrow. Good enough for me!

SANDWICHES

We've been making some really yummy sandwiches lately. Pete likes to make a parmesean/honey sandwich every now and then, which is not not not vegan, but it's delicious if you eat that sort of thing. We've decided that sandwiches are the thing for the summer. You know what else sandwiches are good for? Picnics. But maybe not these monsters. I had sandwich all over my face while I was eating that thing. I had to hold on with both hands so it wouldn't totally get away from me, and I still had a bit of a salad left on my plate in the end.

Here's what's inside: roasted baby garlic & onions from the farmer's market, avocado, tomato, roasted cherry tomatoes, sunflower sprouts (my favorite) from the farmer's market, and cucumber (not in Pete's). So delicious.

Isa & Terry, You Geniuses, I love you.

I made these "Peanut Butter Pillows" of theirs and they were so good. Not too hard to make, not too many esoteric ingredients and it's chocolate & peanut butter together. What else do you want? Eat these warm out of the oven with some cold milk.

This is what you need for the chocolate cookie mantle:
And this is what you need for the creamy peanut butter magma:
Use your kindergarten clay skillz to make peanut butter balls:


Wrap up the pb ball in a layer of chocolate cookie dough:

They cook up a bit, so give them space on the cookie sheets:

Did I mention that these are delicious?