farmer's market stir fry

Stir fry is one of my favorite dinners to make. It's quick, hard to mess up, and versatile. I've been trying to pick up new vegetables at the farmer's market for culinary experimentation, and there is one stand that is always selling unusual bunches of leaves for $1. Recently I picked up a bunch of okra leaves, which I was informed made an excellent addition to stir-fry. I promptly went home to test this advice:


In addition to the okra leaves, I threw in a zucchini, an eggplant (which I always salt and sweat ahead of time, as I do not buy this business about eggplants that are now bred to be less bitter), and some baked tofu. For seasoning, I crushed a few cloves of garlic, then added red pepper flakes, a generous splash of mirin (a Japanese cooking wine--it has a thick consistency and is on the sweeter side), and a dash of sesame oil. Sounds yum, no? Here, have a close up to drool over:


So how did the okra leaves turn out? The flavor is quite mild, similar to actual okra. The guy who sold me the leaves said they would also behave like okra and produce the same thick juices (or "slime" for the okra haters out there) that okra does when cooked. Honestly, I did not notice that there was much of a thickening effect, certainly nothing like what I would have expected from a comparable volume of okra. Still, they were cheap, added bulk, and the taste was good, so I'll probably be adding them into the stir fry rotation again.

Let's have a dinner party!

I figure if I'm going to do a food blog, I should kick it off with something good, no? Fortuitously, I hosted a dinner party this week. The menu was vaguely Italian and decidedly delicious in its theme. Unfortunately by the time everything was ready to eat I was too busy socializing to snap any finished photos but I did get a few of the prep:



On the left is a triple recipe of marinara sauce, from Veganomicon. I made it pretty much according to the instructions, and added in an onion (carmelized) and a bulb of roasted garlic. This was a nice basic tomato sauce, perfect for the lasagne I used it in.

On the right is a batch of no-knead bread dough about to go into the oven. I loosely follow the recipe that appeared in the New York Times a few years ago. I do find that their liquid/flour ratio is quite high, so for this batch I did roughly 2 c. water and 6 c. flour (1.5 of which were whole wheat). I also use a fair bit more salt than the recipe calls for (a generous tablespoon...be still my rising blood pressure). This batch also benefited from a couple tablespoons of olive oil and a generous amount of dried rosemary.

Next up, appetizers:


Pesto stuffed mushrooms waiting to go into the oven for a quick run under the broiler. This recipe is from one of my go-to cookbooks, Donna Klein's Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. While these are delicious fresh out of the oven, they also are great the next day diced and tossed with some pasta, if you are lucky enough to have leftovers.

There were also some green beans (not pictured), but the piece de resistance was definitely:


Lasagne! Yes, it is possible to make amazing, decadent, and creamy vegan lasagne. This version is made using a recipe from Veganomicon. Since I hadn't made it before, I followed the recipe pretty much as written (including the optional pine nut cream), with a few mods:

-50% more sauce than called for

-One online review complained that the recipe had too much lemon, so I omitted the lemon zest from the almesan (fake parmesan). I also added a few tablespoons nutritional yeast to the almesan. Who doesn't need a little extra B12 in their diet?

-I also found some complaints online that the recipe was "watery". I used uncooked noodles and skipped the suggestion to add a cup of water. The noodles came out nicely al dente and the lasagne was not watery at all. My only possible complaint would be that it was maybe too much noodle content. If I make the lasagne again I will probably add some more vegetables and omit a noodle layer (this lasagne had 4 layers)

-I don't know about where you live, but tofu here is generally sold in 14 oz. packages. Both the ricotta and the pine nut cream call for 1lb of tofu (16 oz). I just went with 14 oz but kept all the other ingredient volumes the same. The results were great and definitely not too tofu.

The lasagne also refrigerates well. Here's a bit of the leftovers right before I ate them for lunch the next day:



This recipe is a bit decadent for everyday, but I will definitely be making it again. Now that I've done one round according to instructions, I'm planning to experiment...visions of white/pesto lasagne with lots of basil and grilled vegetables are floating through my head.