Autumn Panzanella

I know it's not autumn but once you try this salad you won't care that it's not season appropriate! (Well who does care when the food is good?) I'd never had panzanella (bread salad) before trying this recipe. The idea of always sounded kind of strange to me, plus I hate soggy bread so I didn't like the idea of putting dressing on a bread. But! How things changed once I tried this recipe. It's now one of my favourite meals! I'm so in love with the dressing - it tastes like stuffing with thyme, herbes de provence, sage and garlic. I love the acidity of the lemon juice and cider vinegar. I love the bits of roasted sweet potatoes and onions, chopped tomatoes and chickpeas. The original recipe calls for Parmesan cheese which I tried the first time but I think it's just as good without so I don't usually add it.

Happy early Easter! At the request of my mom, I'm going to attempt making hot cross buns for the first time. If you have a good recipe, please share!

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Broccoli Slaw
French Pasta Salad
Mediterranean Pepper Salad
Portabello Salad with Mustard Dressing

Autumn Panzanella
Adapted from Phoo-D

Serves 4 as a main course or 8-10 as a side salad

Be sure to allow the finished dish to sit for an hour before serving. This is necessary for the flavors to fully develop, otherwise the bread will not have time to absorb the dressing and may taste rather bland.

Salad
10 cups cubed whole wheat bread (cut into 1" pieces) (Ashley note: I use whole wheat baguettes usually but use what you like.)
1 cup diced sweet potato (about 1 medium)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, cut into 1/2" wedges
2 cups diced fresh tomato (or a 14oz high quality can, drained)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
1 1/2 cups chickpeas, cooked

Dressing
1/4 cup olive oil
1 lemon, juiced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon herbes de provence

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees, with a rack in the middle. Line a large rimmed baking pan with foil, and evenly spread the bread, sweet potato, and onion across the sheet. Drizzle 1/4 cup of olive oil over the baking pan, and then toss all ingredients so they are evenly coated with oil. Place the pan in the oven and cook for 20-25 minutes, stirring the contents occasionally, until they are evenly toasted and the vegetables are soft.

Meanwhile, assemble the dressing. Place olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, sage, thyme, vinegar, salt, pepper, and herbes de provence in a blender. Blend in quick five second bursts, until the garlic is emulsified and the ingredients are well combined.

Once the bread and vegetables are toasted, place them in a large bowl along with the diced tomatoes, grated Parmesan (optional), chickpeas, and dressing. Gently toss all ingredients until they are well combined and the bread is evenly coated with dressing.

Cover the salad, and let it sit at room temperature for an hour, which will give the bread time to absorb the flavors of the salad. Once the flavors have melded together nicely, taste the salad to see if it needs any additional salt, pepper, or apple cider vinegar. Adjust seasonings to your taste, and serve.

Curried Sweet Potato Soup

This soup was really really awesome. I've recently started to make soup a lot more often again because the weather has been getting colder and it's a good easy way to eat a healthy meal full of lots of vegetables and stuff. As soon as I saw this soup in the October Shape magazine, I knew I had to make it. Red peppers, kale (or some other leafy green), sweet potato, beans, curry and coconut milk. Sounded like it would be the perfect soup and for me it was. And not only is it full of deliciously delicious things, it's super easy to make. This is my new favourite soup and one of my new favourite meals. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to make it again in the daylight to get a better photo though...

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Sweet Potato Badi
Beet, Barley and Black Bean Soup
Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili
Choklay's Tibetan Lentil Soup

Curried Sweet Potato Soup
Adapted from October 2008 Shape Magazine

My soup ended up being quite thick so you might want to add extra vegetable broth if you want to thin it out.

1 large sweet potato
3/4 cup canned light coconut milk
2 1/4 cups vegetable broth
1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded and diced into 1/2 inch pieces
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
19 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
2 packed cups coarsely chopped kale (or other leafy green like baby spinach)
1/4 tsp sea salt (you might want to add more salt, I always put less than recommended)

Microwave sweet potato on high for 4 to 6 minutes or until very tender. Split potato in half with a knife. Use a pot holder to hold each half and scoop pulp into a soup pot; discard skin.

Add coconut milk and mash with a potato masher or fork until mixture is fairly smooth. Stir in broth, bell pepper, and curry powder. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes.

Stir in beans and heat all the way through. Stir in leafy greens; keep stirring until just wilted. Stir in salt.

Caribbean Roasted Vegetables

I know it's pretty shocking that I'm not posting a baked good. Sometimes I think about just changing my blog to only baking but there are some really yummy (and sometimes healthy) meals/dips/etc that I find and I want to share those too. Like this one. Practically every weekday for the last year, I took raw vegetables to work or school to eat as a snack. It took me a while but yes I got sick of them. This is what I've replaced them with. Roasted deliciousness. Usually I do sweet potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, beets and butternut squash. I've also used celery root (which I've always wanted to try) and yea maybe I just don't know how to cook it but that did not taste very good. I've tried a couple of different dressings (and done it with just a bit of oil too) but this one is the best so far. I was skeptical of the cinnamon and cloves but the dressing tastes so yummy.

When choosing vegetables for roasting, choose ones that are more sturdy. Broccoli and eggplant are definitely not sturdy (I tried those knowing what would happen but did it anyway). I've been roasting vegetables every week for the last month or so and have determined that I like to cook them at a lower temperature for a really long time (up to 3 hours if the pieces are a bit on the big side). It's really important that you cut the vegetables approximately all the same size (seems obvious but I'm usually not too concerned about this). We cook up a big batch on the weekend then eat it randomly throughout the week, with lunch or dinner.

This recipe comes from my new favourite cookbook, Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites. Not every recipe I've tried has been awesome but there have been some good ones. The reason I love it is because they're vegetarian (aside from the chapter on fish - what's with that), healthy and relatively easy and quick to make.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Balkan Roasted Vegetable Salad
Portabello Fettuccine with Spinach Pesto, Roasted Peppers & Romano Cheese

Caribbean Roasted Vegetables
Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites

12-15 cups of chopped vegetables (could be a butternut squash, a sweet potato, a few beets, a few carrots, and a rutabaga)

Dressing:
3 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tbsp packed brown sugar
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeds removed and minced

Puree the dressing ingredients in a food processor.

Prepare the vegetables and two baking sheets. Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the vegetables with the dressing in a large bowl or pot. Spread them out evenly on the baking sheets. Bake for about 2 hours or longer, depending on how roasted you want them to be. Flip the vegetables a few times (definitely check them at the 1 hour mark to make sure they're doing okay) and if you want move the sheets as well in the oven.

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili

This is my entry for Holler and Lisa's new food blog event, No Croutons Required. The theme this month is vegetarian soups - though I'm not sure if chili would be considered a soup? This is more stew-ish anyway so let's call it a very chunky and delicious soup!

I'm not usually a fan of chili, probably due to all the ground meat (or in my case it would be fake ground round/meat). But as I said, this isn't your regular chili. I'm kind of obsessed with sweet potatoes - or maybe not obsessed but if anything has sweet potatoes in it, I want to eat it. So the fact that this "chili" is full of sweet potatoes definitely helps, and combined with the onions makes it slightly sweet. I cut back on how spicy it was so feel free to add cayenne, extra chili powder or some jalapeno peppers to this.

This chili is simple, very easy to make, filling, healthy and yummy! What more can you ask for? It was a great discovery for me for something quick and healthy to make on a weeknight.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Sweet Potato Black Bean Salsa
Sweet Potato Badi
Balkan Roasted Vegetable Salad

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili
Adapted from The Clueless Vegetarian

Serves 3-4 as a meal.

1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp ground cumin
1 cup vegetable broth
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 28-oz (796mL) cans diced tomatoes
2 19-oz (540mL) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp crumbled dried oregano

Heat the oil in a large saucepan* or Dutch oven. Add the onions and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the onions are soft - about 5 minutes. Add the chili powder and the cumin and cook for another minute or so. Add the vgetable broth and the cubed sweet potatoes, reduce the heat to low and cook, covered, until the potatoes are almost tender - about 10 minutes.

Add the tomatoes with all the juice from the can, the beans, salt, and oregano. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then let simmer until the potatoes are completely tender - about 20 minutes.

*Go for the Dutch oven if you can, unless your saucepan is really very large.

Balkan Roasted Vegetable Salad

I'm currently loving the interesting and different salads in Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special, and their Balkan Roasted Vegetable Salad is no exception. I wasn't sure what the marinade would taste like and I was a bit wary of the fennel seeds, but wow I cannot believe how good it smelled as the vegetables were roasting with the marinade. What a wonderful combination of flavours!

The original recipe called for double the amount of vegetables (which is why there's 1/2 an onion and 1/2 a cucumber in my version), but I halved it because I wanted to add barley to make it a more substantial meal. Feel free to double the veggies and omit the barley if that's what you'd prefer. I also added the walnuts and sunflower seeds for some delicious nutrition. I ate the salad at room temperature the first time and it was good, but when I had it the next day after it had time to sit in the fridge and the flavours had mingled, it was so much more delicious. I really loved the combination of roasted veggies with raw cucumber and tomato, plus the marinade was so good.

Balkan Roasted Vegetable Salad
(adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special)

1/2 cup raw barley (pearl or pot)
2 cups water

Marinade
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil*
1 to 1/2 teaspoons ground fennel seeds
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Vegetables
1 sweet potato, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 red pepper, seeded and cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 of an onion, chopped
1 cup mushrooms, trimmed and halved (quartered or cut into 8 if large)
1 tomato
1/2 a cucumber

1/2 cup grated feta
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup sunflower seeds

Preheat the oven to 500F.

Place the barley and water in a saucepan, cover, and bring to a simmer. Cook on low heat until most of the water has been absorbed and the barley is soft, about 40 minutes. When the barley is tender, drain it in a colander.

While the barley is cooking, combine the marinade ingredients by whirling briefly in a blender or food processor, or by whisking them in a bowl. Set aside. On a large baking pan with raised sides, spread out the sweet potato, red pepper, onions, and mushrooms and drizzle with about 1/2 of the marinade. Right on the baking tray, toss the vegetables with the marinade until evenly coated. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until tender and slightly browned.

While the vegetables roast, dice the tomatoes and cucumber.** Place them in a serving bowl. Add the drained barley. Drizzle with the remaining marinade and toss well. With a slotted spatula, transfer the roasted vegetables to the bowl and toss well.

Serve immediately, or at room temperature, or chilled. Top each portion with feta.

*I used freeze dried basil and I can't remember how much I put.
**The recipe suggests you peel and seed the cucumber, but I like eating the whole cucumber plus I don't want to throw good cucumber away! It's up to you what you want to do though.

Sweet Potato Black Bean Salsa

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I really needed to make the effort to incorporate beans into my diet. Not only are they good for you but as a vegetarian, I think they should be included in at least a meal or two every week. Unfortunately up until this point, I have been a very bad bean fearing vegetarian. Because you see, I don't really love beans. The first bean dish that I liked was seven layer dip, but then the beans are covered by other delicious things like guacamole, sour cream, cheese, tomatoes and green onions. Then I discovered that I liked refried beans. But I haven't really explored the world of beans too much aside from that.

I've made a few dishes with chickpeas, though I don't really like chickpeas (aside from in hummus, delicious! - I still remember the time when I was on an airplane and my vegetarian meal was a bun with a few chickpeas in it...) I thought that if I made the beans from scratch (buy dried beans instead of canned), that might make the whole thing more exciting for me so I'd be looking forward to eating beans. I haven't done that yet, but I am becoming more accepting of beans. I think I need to find one or two kinds that I like and then find dishes that use them.

My issue with beans reminds me of Jeffrey Steingarten's book The Man Who Ate Everything. Great book by the way, highly recommend it. Anyway, he talks about how there were foods that he didn't like (I can't remember them now but I think one of them was Greek salad and possibly organ meats?). So what he did was he decided to expose himself to those foods enough, which resulted in him shedding his picky eater ways. Now in my head when I think of something I don't like but I know I should eat (ie. beans), I think of him and it makes it easier to know that one day I will like something I previously didn't.

Once I decided I needed to eat more beans, I started looking through my cookbooks' indexes to find something tasty. One of the first things I saw caught my eye: sweet potato and black bean salsa. Sweet potatoes are one of my favourite veggies (or technically tubers?) and one of my favourite things in general to eat, so how could I go wrong? And then I read the description above the recipe, which said "great for Halloween!" (since black beans = black, sweet potato = orange) and I was totally sold. (Halloween and the month leading up to it, the time of year, all the decorations, the spooky stories, and all of that wonderful stuff are all my favourite things.)

I had read through the entire recipe before going out to buy ingredients, but when I started making it, I completely forgot that I was going to half it (since it makes I think it was 7 cups of salsa!) That is an absolute ton of salsa for one person to eat. Luckily other people liked it so I constantly told them to eat it. I'm actually amazed that we got through the whole thing. Mostly I used the salsa to make quesadillas (just with the salsa and some cheese). So delicious. Other people wished it was spicier, and I would've been okay with that but I didn't have a problem with it the way it was. I was scared that the sweet potato would be too mushy once it was cooked and chopped but it held up just fine. The addition of pumpkin seeds was also festive, and nutritious! I've only made salsa a couple of times before and I haven't yet made a more traditional salsa. I think I'm scared of messing it up since I love salsa so much. I would definitely make this salsa again though, and surprisingly I wished that there were more beans in the salsa!

Sweet Potato Black Bean Salsa
(adapted from Entertaining for A Veggie Planet)

Makes 7 cups

2 pounds sweet potatoes (about 2), peeled & quartered
2 1/4 cups finely chopped tomatoes
1 13-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, finely chopped
1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/3 cup fresh lime juice*
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

1. Place the sweet potatoes in a medium saucepan and add cold water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until just tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Drain well and allow to cool.

2. While waiting for the sweet potatoes to cool, put together the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl. Once the sweet potatoes are cool, finely chop them and add them to everything else. Mix well.

*For some reason the recipe says this is 6 limes but for me it was 2.

Sweet Potato Badi

I really like this meal because it's tasty and I feel like it's good for me (hopefully I'm not deluded in thinking that). It has red lentils, tomatoes, zucchini, peas, sweet potato, and yogurt to make it creamy. (And being a coconut fiend, I love that this main course incorporates dried shredded unsweetened coconut.) The sweet potato badi is filling and easy to make, so as you can see this dish is a keeper. This is actually only my second time making it, only because I like trying out new recipes. I can see it being a dish I fall back on when I don't want to think about my meals for the week.

The first time I made the recipe I thought it was really weird that I had mixed up this bowl of coconut, plain yogurt, minced chile peppers, and salt. Definitely not a combination I had encountered before. All the ingredients come together really well though, and it's good reheated too.

Sweet Potato Badi
(Adapted from Entertaining for a Veggie Planet by Didi Emmons)

Serves 4
Takes about 40 minutes to make.

1/2 cup dried, unsweetened coconut
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup raw red lentils
8 curry leaves or 1 tsp ground cumin
1 medium yellow, white or new potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes*
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
2 small zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch thick rounds
2 plum tomatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup frozen baby peas
1/2 cup (175g) plain yogurt
1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1 tsp salt

Brown rice

1. In a small, dry skillet, toast the coconut over medium heat, shaking the skillet often, until the coconut is uniformly light brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer the coconut to a small bowl and set aside.

2. In the same skillet, heat the canola oil over medium heat. Add the lentils and saute for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring, until they begin to brown. Stir in the curry leaves or cumin. Add the potato, sweet potato, and 1 1/2 cups water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and simmer stirring occasionally for 15 minutes. Add the zucchini, tomatoes, and peas, and cook until the vegetables are fork-tender and the liquid is almost gone, about 10 minutes more. If the liquid evaporates too quickly, add a little more water. Remove from the heat.

3. Measure out 2 tablespoons of the toasted coconut and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the remaining coconut, yogurt, chiles, and salt, and whisk until smooth. Fold the yogurt mixture gently into the vegetables. Cover the skillet and let stand for a few minutes until warmed through. Transfer the badi to a serving bowl and sprinkle the remaining 2 tablespoons coconut on top. Serve immediately with rice.

*I halved the recipe this time and just used the 1 sweet potato.
General note: If you're eating this with brown rice, start cooking the rice before you even start doing anything.

Baked Sweet Potato & Beet Risotto With Peas

I love risotto and the creaminess of it that comes from the starch in the Arborio rice (at least I assume that's mostly where it comes from). I love risotto so much that even when my coworkers give me disgusting images of why they don't like risotto (that I won't repeat here in an effort to sustain the risotto love), I still love it. I've only made it once, so I figured it was time again. I used my homemade vegetable stock, Giada De Laurentiis's basic risotto recipe, and some of my favourite veggies (sweet potato - not yams!, beets, and peas). I baked the yams and beets together for about 45 minutes with no oil (yes I'm sure they would've been more tasty with oil but this was a small effort to be healthy). They were a bit dry but once added to the risotto, totally fine. I've never baked beets before and while they still had their delicious beet essence, I much prefer them boiled (where they end up more succulent and tender). Maybe if I had tossed the beets in oil before baking them they would've turned out differently but I doubt they would've been as good as when boiled. I added frozen peas at the end and just stirred the risotto around a bit to heat them up.

I had quite the ordeal with the wine because first, I couldn't find the white wine, second, I couldn't find the bottle opener, and third, once I found the bottle opener I had no idea how to use and wasn't sure if the cork was ever going to come out and when it did if I was going to jab myself in the eye. But it came out and my eye is intact. And the wine smelled so delicious when added to the risotto, so it was all worthwhile.

I think one of the reasons I haven't made risotto more often is because of the $5 it costs for a small bag at Safeway (if they have it in stock). When I went to Eat Vancouver several weeks ago, Bosa Foods had a stall set up (well actually it was more like a mini store) selling a selection of Italian food items. I picked up a box of Arborio rice for about $3, which ends up being about half the price of the rice at Safeway. I haven't been to the actual Bosa Foods store yet, but apparently their new one on Kootenay St is huge.

Bosa Foods
562 Victoria Dr & 1465 Kootenay St
Vancouver, BC
Phone: 604-253-5578

Giada's recipe is for basic/plain risotto, so you can feel free to add whatever vegetables, meat (wait why did a vegetarian just suggest meat...), or cheese (probably only hard cheese like Parmesan and Asiago?) to it that you want. It's best to cook the vegetables separate from the rice so they don't get mushy. As for how much of each to add, it's up to you but for this amount of risotto, I did one sweet potato, one beet, and about half a cup of peas. I should've used some of the leftover risotto to try making risotto cakes (risotto that's been shaped into patties and then pan fried) or maybe deep fried risotto balls with mozzarella on the inside (I think I saw that on Emeril).

Basic Risotto
(Adapted from Everyday Italian)

4 cups vegetable stock
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

In a medium saucepan, bring the broth a simmer. Cover the broth and keep hot over low heat. (My note: this is a really important step, because it will take forever for the broth to incorporate into the rice if it's not already hot.)

In a large, heavy saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until tender but now brown, about 3 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat with the butter. Add the wine and simmer until the wine has almost completely evaporated, about 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup of simmering broth and stir until almost completely absorbed, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking the rice, adding the broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly and allowing each addition of broth to absorb before adding the next, until the rice is tender but still firm to the bite and the mixture is creamy, about 20 minutes total. Remove from the heat. Stir in the Parmesan cheese, the remaining tablespoon of butter, and the salt and pepper. Serve immediately.