Gloriously Green Smoothie Bowl

I've realized there are few things I am more afraid of than time passing. I afraid of waking up one day only to know that life has passed me by. This may sound depressing, and it kind of is. But I've also found an easy way to amend that feeling. And that is to make sure that each day is a bit special, memorable in its own way. By doing something different every day you don't get stuck in habits that make you go through life with every day being just like the one before. Of course I'm now going to give you a food-related way to do this (because thoughts of food take up probably 80% of my mind): have something fun for breakfast! Mixing up your breakfast is one way to break habits and it also make starting your day so much more fun! Therefore I'm now officially naming this week breakfast week, and I'll try to share as many good breakfast recipes as possible.

The first recipe I have in store for you is a great green smoothie bowl. I've not really understood smoothie bowls until now, but this mix is a bit to thick to drink and is therefore perfect to enjoy in a bowl with some good toppings. It's super easy to make and contains oats to fill you up and loads of gloriously green stuffs to make it beautiful and stock you up on nutrients! Give it a go! Long live fun breakfasts!

For 1 lucky breakfast-eater

½ dl rolled oats
1 date
2 dl water
½ tbsp. chia seeds
½ apple, and the other half for serving
1 kiwi
¼ avocado (you can increase to ½ if you want to!)
1 tbsp. limejuice
4 mint leaves

For serving:
The second apple half
Goji berries
Coconut

Soak the oats, date and chia seeds in the water overnight. If you're smart, do it in the container of your smoothie mixer!

In the morning, add core the apple and cut it into smaller pieces. Peel the kiwi. Add all the remaining ingredients to your smoothie mixer and blitz until nice and smooth.

Pour the smoothie into a bowl and serve with the topping suggested or others that you prefer.

(You can also make a regular smoothie by adding more water!)

Just as promised: Jalapeño Cornbread

Didn't I say I was going to share a recipe for the cornbread I had with my chili the other night? Well, I at least try to keep my promises, so here it is. I have always loved cornbread. I remember my mom making it when I was a kid. Those chili dinners were pure you, and we ate it with butter and honey. Getting older I remember serving cornbread with chili when friends were over for dinner, and they simply didn't get it. In Sweden rice is the given thing to serve with chili. To me cornbread makes perfect sense, the perfect excuse to have something that is closer to cake than to bread but for dinner. Couldn't be better.

This time I actually decided to make my cornbread a bit savorier by adding jalapeños and scallions. This contrasts nicely with the sweet bread. You can omit this if prefer simple sweet cornbread, or take it one step further and add nutritional yeast to the batter. Another alternative would be adding pumpkin seeds in the place of jalapeños. I chose to bake my cornbread as muffins, but you can bake it in a cake pan too. The recipe makes enough for 4 muffins, and a double recipe would probably fill a 20 cm*20 cm/8*8" pan.

Makes 4 muffins

1 dl corn meal (polenta)
1 dl all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. sugar
1 ¼ dl vegan milk
1 tsp. vinegar
2 tbsp. canola oil
1 dl sweet corn
½ jalapeño, finely chopped
1 scallion, finely minced
Optional: 1 tbsp. nutritional yeast

Pumpkin seeds to sprinkle on top
Coconut oil or other oil for greasing pan
Additional corn meal for breading pan

Turn the oven on to 175°C/350°F.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Make a whole in the middle and add the wet ingredients. Mix from the center and out to incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Add the sweet corn, jalapeños and scallions.

Grease 4 cups in a muffin pan with coconut oil. Sprinkle with corn meal. You can also use muffin cups, but I think this method gives the muffins such a nice crust all the way around. Divide the batter between the muffin cups and sprinkle the tops with pumpkin seeds.

Bake in the oven for 16-20 minutes, until a knife inserted at the center of a muffin comes out dry. Enjoy them with chili while they're still warm.

Put on 'em cowboy boots, it's chili time!

There is this one thing I am confused about. Is chili Mexican or Southern cooking? I guess the two are intertwined and inspired by each other so that there is no need to give one or the other the credit for this wonderful dish. Wherever it's from, chili is a wonderfully comforting dish! I have a handful of chefs and cookbook authors that shine a little extra bright in my food sky, and one of them is Jamie Oliver. A few years back he published his book Jamie's America, recalling his trips through this diverse and colorful country. In one chapter he had a recipe for a "Cowboy chili", full with the deep and heavy flavors of smoked paprika and coffee. Of course he'd cooked it in a cast-iron pot over a wood fire and served it to some hungry ranchers. I bet he wore a flannel shirt and cowboy boots while making it too, in order to make a bit of a show (it became a TV-series too). I do own a flannel shirt, but unfortunately I don't think a wood fire in my apartment would go well with the tenant and the only hungry person I had to feed was myself, but yesterday I cooked up a chili worthy of having Cowboy in it's name anyway. Wonderfully deep flavors and easy to make, this dish will hopefully speak to the cowboy I know you have living deep down inside you!

You may be skeptical about having coffee in food, but trust me that in the case of chili it lends a great roasted, robust and earthy flavor. I used a fairly weakly brewed coffee (I live in the US after all...) so if your coffee is very strong you might want to substitute some of it for water. Simply add a bit a time and taste as you go. When you're satisfied, add water if needed. When it comes to the smoked paprika, this can vary greatly in smokiness. I've realized that the bran I use has quite a mild smoke flavor and I therefore used the larger amount. So depending on your paprika and how smoky you like things, add a bit at a time of this too.

2 big servings (I may not be a rancher, but I eat as one)

1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp. cumin
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. coriander
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 tsp. smoked paprika
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. chili flakes (more or less to taste)
400 g crushed tomatoes
2 dl coffee (quite weak)
1 tbsp. dark syrup or molasses
1 dl sweet corn
2 dl cooked beans of your choice
1 bell pepper
Salt & pepper

Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Heat a skilled to medium heat and add a lug of oil. Add all the spices and fry for a minute or two until fragrant. Add the onion and garlic, lower the heat and sauté until the onion is soft, for about 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile cut the bell pepper in pieces, whichever shape and size you prefer. Add the remaining ingredients to the pan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and let simmer for at least 20 minutes under a lid, so that the flavors can mingle. Taste for salt and pepper.

Serve the chili with some cornbread (recipe is on its way!) or rice or grains. Eat with your cowboy hat on.

A fragrant trip abroad – Coconut milk noodle soup

Back home in Sweden I have a close friend lives quite close to me. He participated in this last vegan challenge and shares my passion for cooking. Back when I still lived at home we used to meet about once a month in his little apartment and have dinner together. Every time we chose a different cuisine, and in his little kitchen that is barely big enough to turn around in we traveled from Asia, to Mexico and Morocco. This is a recipe inspired by one of those dinners. A wonderfully fragrant coconut milk soup that tickles your nose buds with smells of ginger, lime and garlic. Just as a happy bonus the soup is also simple stupid to make!

This is one of those dishes that you really can make your own, depending on the season and what you prefer. Firstly, choose the kind of noodles you prefer. I used soba this time, my good friend made it for me using thick, fresh Udon, which was delicious! Secondly, you can use any of your favorite veggies. I used carrots and cabbage simply because that was what was in season. Also, the cabbage is fun because you can slice it in thin long strips making it resemble noodles. You could go for sugar snaps, broccoli or even a frozen wok mix to make it even simpler (fresh veggies are tastier though). 

There is one critical aspect of serving this soup that I won't allow you to compromise. You have to serve it with fresh lime wedges. This is how you do it: squeeze the juice into your bowl and then pop the wedge in the bowl. This will infuse certain parts of the soup with more lime than others, making it oh so much more interesting to eat!

A fragrant meal for two

2 scallions

1 clove o garlic

½ jalapeno

10 g ginger

5 g fresh turmeric or 1 tsp. dried turmeric

2 tsp. finely minced lemongrass

1 carrot

150 g savoy or white cabbage

1 tbsp. light soy sauce

1 Poblano pepper or small green pepper

3 dl coconut milk

5 dl water

100 g dry noodles (or an equivalent amount of fresh noodles)

300 g extra-firm tofu

This is a really simple soup to make, and once you get cooking it goes fast. So start by getting all the ingredients prepared. Heat a pot of water for cooking the noodles. Slice the scallions, finely chop the garlic and jalapeno. Grate the ginger and turmeric if you're using fresh. Remove the zest from the lime. Finely mince the lemongrass. 

Cut the carrot into matchsticks and slice the cabbage into thin strips. Slice the pepper. Slice the tofu or cut it in cubes. 

When the water is boiling, add the noodles and cook until al dente. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking and remove the starch to keep the noodles from sticking to each other. 

Heat a wok pan (or regular frying pan) to high heat. Add a splash of oil and the tofu. Season with salt and drizzle som chili sauce over it. Toss the pan often or flip the tofu over so that it doesn't stick to the pan. Fry until the tofu has a nice browned surface. Remove from the pan.

Scrape out any leftover tofu scraps from the pan and return it to the heat. Add another splash of oil. Add the ginger, garlic, scallions, jalapeno, turmeric and lime zest. Fry stirring often until very fragrant. Add the carrot and cabbage and fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the pepper, soy sauce, coconut milk and water. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 2 minutes. Add the noodles and heat only until the noodles are warm again. 

Serve in pretty bowls with the tofu. Top the soup with cilantro leaves. Squeeze a few lime wedges into the soup and then leave the wedges in the bowl. 

Roasted carrot gnocchi with rosemary & white wine

This past week has been both very good and very bad. Good since spring finally seems to be arriving and bad since I’ve been busy in the evenings, leaving way too little time to cook. Thank god for leftovers is all I can say! I’ve realized I’m a leftover hoarder. The little freezer compartment we have is stuffed with containers and I’m guilty of putting every single one of them there. But back to the good news, spring is springing! Unfortunately it hasn’t sprung far enough yet to provide some new vegetable to choose from at the farmer’s market yet. I am so lucky to live close to several great markets that sell fresh produce every week. All through winter, every weekend I’ve been faced with the same hard decision: carrots, potatoes, sweet potato or winter squash? I love all these winter vegetables, I really do, and shopping at a farmer’s market makes buying seasonal produce so much easier because you simply can’t buy the unseasonal stuff. I must admit I’m looking forward to some new choices later on in the spring, but for this week I went for carrots. This is what they ended up becoming: roasted carrot gnocchi with rosemary and white wine sauce.

Making gnocchi is actually a lot simpler than most people think. All you have to do is to cook and roast a root vegetable of your choice, in this case carrots, and puree and mix them with some flour. Roll the dough you get into a roll the thickness of your index finger, cut it into pieces and cook in salted water. What you do from there is up to you. You can mix gnocchi with pesto or tomato sauce, fry them or bake them or have them as they are. Here I cook them in a sauce of white wine and rosemary, simple and delicious.

Serves 2

A good handful of almonds

400 g carrots (about 4 average sized ones)

1 ½ clove of garlic

2 springs of rosemary

1 dl semolina flour

2 tbsp. water

A dash of grated nutmeg

½ yellow onion or 1-2 shallots

2 dl white wine

2 dl cannellini beans (or cranberry beans or small white beans)

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil

Roughly chop the onions. Roast in a dry pan until they start to brown. Remove from the pan.

Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F. Chop the carrot in rough pieces and finely chop ½ clove of garlic. Place them in an ovenproof dish with a splash of olive oil, some salt and a spring of rosemary, torn into smaller pieces. Roast for about 30 minutes until the carrots are soft and have started to brown slightly.

Once the carrots are done, puree them using a mixer or blender. Transfer to a bowl and add the semolina flour and some grated nutmeg. Using a fork or your hands, start mixing the carrots with the flour. Add the water gradually until you have a cohesive dough. Place the dough on a floured surface and roll it into a roll with a diameter of about 1 cm. Cut the roll into 1 ½ cm pieces.

Start heating a big pot of lightly salted water. Chop the onion and the remaining garlic and the leaves from the second spring of rosemary. Heat a pan big enough to later fit the gnocchi and add a splash of oil. Gently sauté the onion and garlic with the rosemary until the onion is soft. Add the white wine, some salt and pepper and bring to a simmer. Add the beans and cover with a lid.

Your water should be boiling now. Add the gnocchi to the water, but only so many that they have room to move around. You might have to cook them in two batches. You know that the gnocchi are done when they’re floating on the surface. As they start popping up to the surface, add them to the pan with sauce. Once you’ve cooked them all, add about 1 dl of cooking water to the pan and let the gnocchi cook in the sauce for just around 3 minutes, until the sauce has started to thicken from the starch in the gnocchi.

Serve the gnocchi with the roasted almonds and a nice green salad.

Painting with allspice and caraway

I have for a long time been interested in Middle Eastern and North African cooking. I love how these cuisines are densely packed with flavors. Learning how to combine all the necessary spices is like learning to paint. Like making different shades by mixing different color, you can bring out all the nuances of flavor by combining spices in the right way. In cooking this kind of food, I still feel like a novice though. Like the art students sitting at museums making sketches of the big masterpieces. But the more you practice the better you get. This time I used chickpeas and pearl couscous as my canvas in a stew spiced with allspice and caraway. The couscous is cooked in the stew making is almost risotto-like. Make sure to use pearl couscous (moghrabiah) and not the fine kind. You can also substitute the couscous for grains, although this will increase the cooking time. Serve the stew with flatbreads and garnish with mint leaves, pomegranate seeds and roasted nuts.

(Turns out that I need a bit more practice with drawing Middle Eastern patterns and designs too. Sorry about the not so beautiful picture for this recipe. Trust me in that it's worth trying despite that though!)

You can use canned chickpeas. In that case, use about 2 dl and add them to the couscous and onions together with the other ingredients that make up the broth.

Two big servings (or small ones with leftovers)

1 dl dried chickpeas

8 dl water

1 bay leaf

1 cinnamon stick

½ + ¼ tsp. allspice

2 tsp. salt

½ yellow onion

1 clove of garlic

1 tsp. caraway seeds

1 dl pearl couscous

1 tbsp. all-purpose flour

1 tbsp. lime juice

Salt and pepper

Soak the chickpeas over night.

The next day, drain the chickpeas and add them to a pot together with the water, ½ tsp. allspice, the bay leaf, cinnamon stick and salt. Bring to a boil and allow the chickpeas to simmer until they’re tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, thinly slice the onion and chop the garlic. Heat a pan to medium head and add a good lug of oil. Add the onion, garlic, remaining allspice and caraway seeds to the pan and sauté for 5 minutes union the onion has started to brown. At this point, add the couscous and flour and fry for another 2 minutes. Pour the broth and chickpeas in the pan and let simmer under a lid for about 15 minutes until the sauce has thickened and the pearl couscous is cooked through.

Serve with pomegranate seeds, mint leaves and roasted nuts.

Double Cabbage Kasha Varnishkes

This week has been one of those where there is never any real time for cooking. I’m usually quite spoiled and have several days a week when I get of early, but this one has been an exception. Still, I guess that’s life for way too many people: getting home late, being tired and despite this having to muster some energy and creativity and come up with a good meal. Or if you live in New York and follow the ads on the subway, just order a meal from Seamless. The claim that a true New Yorker “avoids cooking like they avoid Times Square” and that you can “cook when your dead or living in Westchester”. I haven’t succumbed to their advertisement and they still make me ever so slightly upset (even though they’re funny). I believe that we would all be happier and healthier if we cooked more at home. So instead of ordering noodles, I made double cabbage kasha varnishkes.

Before I moved here, I would only understood what half of the title of that dish meant. But living in New York has broadened my food horizons in oh so many ways. Kasha varnishkes is no stranger than roasted buckwheat and farfalle pasta (even though that may sound odd enough). Kasha is from what I’ve understood roasted buckwheat, and here you can buy it in the grocery store but you might as well roast it yourself. New York has a big Jewish community, and this is an old Jewish that originates from Eastern Europe. Traditionally the recipe includes chicken fat and egg, which I have obviously omitted, but I bumped up the recipe with two kinds of cabbage instead: white cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Any old Jewish grandma would probably slap me over the fingers for ruining their food heritage, but it ended up being a very fast and comforting dinner. Give it a try!

Note on protein: Buckwheat does contain a fair amount of protein and so does the pasta. Still it doesn’t hurt to serve this dish with a nice bean or lentil salad, if you happen to have some around. You could also add some beans or lentils in the dish or opt for using for example bean pasta if you can get ahold of such.

Serves 2

1 dl buckwheat or kasha

1 small onion

175 g white cabbage

175 g Brussels sprouts

1 tsp. caraway seeds

A good lug of oil

Salt

2 ½ dl vegetable bouillon (or water)

160 g farfalle

For garnish: Chopped parley

If you don’t have kasha that is already roasted, toast your buckwheat in a dry pan until it’s started to brown and smells nice and toasty. Remove from the pan.

Start heating up a large pot of salted water for the pasta.

Slice the onion thinly. Quarter or halve the Brussels sprouts depending on their size. Slice the cabbage into about ½ cm strips. Heat the pan to medium heat and add a lug of oil together with the onion, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, caraway seeds and a sprinkle of salt. Fry for about 5-7 minutes until soft and slightly browned. Add the buckwheat and continue frying and stirring for 2 minutes. Add the bouillon, cover with a lid and lower the heat. Let the kasha steam in the pan for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, add the pasta to the boiling water. Cook until done and then add it to the pan of kasha. Stir until it’s all mixed and taste for salt and pepper. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped parsley. Enjoy.

Back again, with fast comfort food

Finally I'm back from the blog vacation I took after the vegan month. I'm back on track after having a visit from home. Being on my own leaves more time for cooking and sharing the recipes with you. My new plan, now that the vegan month is over is to post something at least twice a week, if not 3 times. I was planning on getting started earlier, but to be honest I've not had that much time for cooking. Tonight actually wasn't that different. I got home late from work, tired and hungry. I bet you recognize the feeling. When you just want the food to magically appear in front of you. Even though it is possible for the atoms of the universe to spontaneously organize themselves into a scrumptious dinner in front of you, the laws of entropy make it highly unlikely. Usually it is faster just to get cooking yourself (if you've experienced the contrary, please let me know!), which was what I did tonight. I ended up with creamy polenta with roasted garlic and smoky fried tofu, all in less than 30 minutes. Better than hoping for entropy to make an exception just for you, I promise!

An easy dinner for 2

The tofu:
2 tsp. fennel seeds
1 tsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. coriander seeds
2 tbsp. vinegar
1 tbsp. maple syrup
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
½ tsp. smoked paprika
1 tsp. dried oregano
Chili flakes or paste to taste
½ onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
½ dl chopped sun-dried tomatoes
280 g firm tofu
2 tbsp. flour
A lug of oil
Salt
Pepper

The polenta:
1 ¼ dl polenta
6 ½ dl water
A lug of oil
1 clove of garlic, minced
Salt to taste
2 tbsp. nutritional yeast

Start with the sauce for the tofu. Roast the fennel, coriander and mustard seeds in a dry pan until they're fragrant. Grind in a mortar and mix with the vinegar, syrup, Dijon mustard, smoked paprika, oregano and chili. Taste for salt and pepper.

Break the tofu into smaller pieces and mix with the flour in a bowl.

Heat a lug of oil in a frying pan. Fry the onion and garlic over medium heat until soft. Add the tomatoes and fry for a minute. Add the tofu and fry until it starts getting browned. Toss often. Once browned, add the sauce with a tablespoon or two of water and cook until the liquid is gone and it starts to fry again.

Time to get the polenta going. In a saucepan, heat a lug of oil. Add the minced garlic and fry over low heat until golden and wonderfully fragrant. Add the water and bring to a boil. Add the polenta and cook over low heat while whisking. It is done when it has reached a consistency you like. If you want it creamier, add more water as you go and cook for longer. Add the nutritional yeast and taste for salt.

Pour the polenta into bowls. Top with the tofu and if you wish some pickled red onions, black pepper and fresh cilantro leaves.

Old news

I'm currently taking a bit of a vacation from the blog, to refill my vocabulary and stack of recipe ideas after my Vegan blog challenge. Also it is hard to find time for blogging when I have a visitor. But no worries, I'll be back properly soon!

Meanwhile, I just wanted to bring your attention to something I added to the blogg a while back. You can now rate the posts and recipes. So if you try a recipe, I would make you so happy if you gave it a couple of stars (anywhere between 1 and 5!). It would be fun to see what you think!

Also, while I'm taking my blog break, it would be so cool if you could give me something to come back to next week when I'm getting back to it. If you do read this, post a comment with a recipe you would like to have or a topic you would want discussed and investigated. I'd love more vegan recipe challenges!

Hope to hear from you, if you're out there! All my best, until next week!