Sweet Potato and Red Curry Soup with Rice and Kale

I might as well just call this blog Whisk, Stir, and Blend: A Blog About Making Food from Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week. I'm not ashamed - she's been keeping me well fed for the last few weeks. Here's a hearty soup with some Thai flavours for the cold, winter days: Sweet Potato and Red Curry Soup with Rice and Kale (p. 34).

Get your big soup pot ready. Heat some olive oil, and sauté 1 diced onion for about 5 minutes. Add three minced garlic cloves and 1 Tbsp mined fresh ginger, cook for about 1 minute. Add 3/4 cup basmati rice, 6 cups vegetable broth (I used salt-free chicken stock because the store was sold out of veggie stock! Seriously!) and salt and pepper. Cover and bring to a boil.

While it's coming up to a boil, get the veggies ready: clean and stem one bunch of kale (the recipe calls for purple kale - I don't think I've ever seen it so regular it is) and peel and dice two medium sweet potatoes into 1/2" chunks. Once the stock is boiling, turn it down to a simmer and stir in 2 Tbsp red curry paste (add more if you like it spicy). Throw in the kale and sweet potato. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked.

Add 1 can coconut milk (YUM), 3 Tbsp fresh lime juice and 1 Tbsp agave nectar (use honey if you don't have any). Serve with lots of cilantro and sriracha and enjoy! It's a lovely recipe when you're in the mood for a warming bowl of soup. It doesn't have a protein so you could add one if you want a more complete meal (like tofu, beans, chicken or whatever) but it doesn't really need it - it has a lot of different textures going on. It's creamy and flavourful and not too spicy. A nice way to use red curry paste other than making straight-up curry.

Rosemary-Chocolate Chip Cookies

I had only made it through the first few chapters of Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week, soups and salads, and had flipped to the back for some reason - only to discover there were dessert recipes too! Now Isa has co-authored cookbooks on vegan cupcakes, pies and cookies so it's not really a surprise. I was excited to try the first one listed - Rosemary-Chocolate Chip Cookies (p. 272). I had never made vegan cookies before, because usually margarine doesn't hold up to butter in cookie recipes. But my local grocery store just happened to have currently trendy coconut oil on sale and this is what she uses. Also - rosemary? What?

Seems there are two kinds of coconut oil. There's virgin, which is what I have - it smells quite strongly of coconut and is very soft and shiny. There's also refined, which I hear has less of a coconut smell. Oh well, I like coconut so it's all good. In a large bowl, using a fork, mix 1/2 cup coconut oil (room temp) with 2 Tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped finely. Rosemary in sweet cookies? Yes. Add in 1/3 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup white sugar and mix for 1 minute. Add 1/4 cup milk (soy, almond, cow, whatever you have... I had cow) and 2 Tbsp ground flax seed (commonly used as an egg replacer in vegan baking) and mix again for about 30 seconds.

Mix in 2 tsp vanilla. Add in 1/4 or 1/2 tsp salt (my husband preferred it saltier, I preferred a little less), 1/2 tsp baking soda, and 2/3 cup flour. Mix well with the fork, then add another 2/3 cup flour. Mix and when it's almost combined, throw in 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips. And yes, without raw eggs you can definitely sneak a spoonful or two. Spoon onto trays covered with parchment paper and bake @350 for about 11 minutes. It made about 18 cookies for me.

Let them cool on trays and try not to stuff them all in your face at once. These were lovely - the coconut oil did a fine job of making a soft, chewy cookie. With a faint taste of coconut, lots of sweetness and some citrusy pine flavour from the rosemary, these were quite unique and quite the crowd pleasers. Fabulous warm but still good the next day. I've already made them twice and will definitely make them again soon.

Lasagna Soup

In my last post, I promised a recipe that tasted like Chef Boyardee. Here it is: Lasagna Soup from Food Network magazine. This is one of those meaty recipes from Food Network I usually skip because, well, they sound gross. But this one actually appealed to me - and I found the perfect Italian whole wheat pasta for it so I gave it a try.

First, cook 8 oz lasagna noodles. I found these little wavy pasta shapes that were very lasagna-like, or you could just buy actual lasagna sheets and break them into pieces. Mix with a little olive oil (to stop them sticking together) and set aside. In a large pot, heat some olive oil and cook 2 diced onions for 4-5 minutes. Add 3 garlic cloves (sadly I only had one good one, they rest had gone off), 1 tsp dried oregano and 1/2 lb Italian sausage with the casings removed - I used 3 hot sausages and it was more like 2/3 lb. Luckily removing the casings was pretty easy, because it was a little unpleasant. But it means they cook like ground meat, and you break them apart even more with a wooden spoon while it browns, 3-4 minutes.

Stir in 2 Tbsp tomato paste and let it brown a little while stirring, 2 minutes. Stir in 4 cups chicken stock (I used the full sodium kind - luxurious!), 1 cup water and 1 can crushed tomatoes. Uncover and simmer about 10 minutes so it can thicken. Then stir in the pasta, 1/2 cup fresh sliced basil, 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese, and 1/4 cup cream (I just used milk). Simmer 2 minutes and it's done! I served it as recommended, with ricotta on top.

This was quite the decadent recipe! It was quite spicy, thanks to the hot sausage, but it was salty, meaty, tomatoey, cheesy... no wonder it was fabulous. And yes, it bears an uncanny resemblance (flavour-wise anyway) to Chef Boyardee. Definitely a once-in-awhile recipe for us.

Lentil-A-Roni

Another recipe from Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week. This is Lentil-A-Roni (p. 134), Isa's vegan version of her childhood favourite, Beefaroni, which was also a favourite of mine! I wasn't expecting it to really taste like Chef Boyardee, it just looked like a filling vegetarian pasta dish made with lentils - which I usually have in the cupboard and only cook in one or two different ways. I also wanted to try the vegan version of adding cream - cashews. She uses it a lot her cookbook so I wanted to see how it worked.

First of all: this recipe makes a lot! The first step is cooking 1 lb of pasta (I used tri-coloured fusilli), which was pretty much an entire box. Get ready for leftovers. Set the pasta aside. In a large pan, heat some oil. I used a flavoured oil I got for Christmas - sundried tomato, parmesan and garlic. It smelled good but I'm not sure how much flavour it imparted to the dish. Anyway, cook 1 diced onion for about 3 minutes, then add 3 minced garlic cloves, 2 tsp dried thyme and some salt and pepper. After about 30 seconds, add 1 1/2 cups cooked brown lentils (I used green, which I assume are similar) then spend a minute mashing roughly with a fork, keeping some chunks.

Add 1 can crushed tomatoes, cover and cook 5 minutes. At this point you mix in the cashew cream. How do you make cashew cream? First you need to soak cashews in water - I soaked 1/2 cup cashews for about 3 hours, but you can definitely leave them overnight. Then I blended them with 1 cup vegetable stock for about 1 minute - it made a foamy, thin, white liquid that mostly tasted like stock still. I added it to the pan and it was like adding milk - it made a nice rose colour. Let it thicken for about 3 minutes, watching out for splatters.

Mix the pasta with the sauce and voila - a filling, rich pasta dish. I mixed in baby spinach to add some veggies and topped with pepper. Did it taste like beefaroni? Well, not really. But it was still good. I'm not sure if the cashew cream was needed - I suppose it helped it to thicken, which it did quite a bit once it had sat out for awhile. My next post will cover a recipe that tasted so much like Chef Boyardee it was a little creepy - but it included sausage so that may be why. Stay tuned!

Chickpea-Rice Soup with Cabbage

Guys, I can't say enough good things about Isa Does It: Amazingly Easy, Wildly Delicious Vegan Recipes for Every Day of the Week. I received it as a surprise gift and it's wonderful! It's a big, hardcover book filled with lovely images and, most importantly, simple recipes that are easy to follow and end up looking exactly as they do in the book. Yes, they're vegan, and there's a lot with faux meats and things, but I guarantee that anyone could find something that looks amazing. I've been a cooking machine since I received it. First up: Chickpea-Rice Soup with Cabbage (p. 32). This is a simple, European-style soup with simple but comforting flavours.

In a large pot, heat up a little oil. Cook 1 thinly sliced onion for about 5 minutes, then throw in two minced garlic cloves, 1 tsp dried thyme, and some salt and pepper. Add in 1/2 cup rice (I used basmati), 3-4 carrots, cut in chunks, and 1 lb thinly sliced green cabbage - this was about 2/3 of a medium-sized head (thanks kitchen scale!). It seemed like a lot, but I was thinking of this recipe as mostly a cabbage soup recipe with some other ingredients.

Add 6 cups broth - I used 4 cups low-sodium chicken stock and 2 cups water. Cover and bring to a boil. Get it down to a simmer, and add in 1 can chickpeas. Simmer for about 15 minutes, until everything is cooked. That's about it! Stir in a bunch of fresh dill (the recipe called for 3 Tbsp, but the more the merrier I say) and enjoy.

I ate this soup for days - usually with a side of kielbasa (thanks to a surprise trip out to a giant Polish store in the 'burbs). Not exactly vegan but, hey, that's not really what European cuisine is about! I really like rice in soup - it plumps up a lot and gives a nice texture to brothy soups like this one. Need an idea for what to do with the rest of the cabbage? We stir-fried ours with noodles and mixed in Asian chili-garlic sauce. My new favourite way to use leftover cabbage.