Saturday, November 26, 2011

Roasted Butternut Squash with Coriander Seeds

Roasted Butternut Squash with Coriander Seeds

I was looking for a soup recipe to use up the butternut squash hanging around my fruit bowl and instead decided upon this appealing sounding dish from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's cookbook Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.  I really enjoyed the slightly exotic pairing of the crushed coriander with the sweetness of the squash and it's a nice twist on your usual roasted, root veggies.  The recipe only has four ingredients and I had fun bashing and smashing the whole coriander seeds in a baggie with my rolling pin.  I cut the squash a bit smaller than called for and forgot to flip or stir the pieces while they were roasting but it didn't seem to affect the outcome.  The squash was nicely caramelized and very tasty.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Cherry-Almond-Poppyseed Muffins

Cherry-Almond-Poppyseed Muffins

Ooooooh, doesn't the name of these muffins just make you want to scarf down a whole batch?   I finally got my hands on a library copy of Vegan Diner: Classic Comfort Food for the Body and Soul by Julie Hasson and am super excited because this type of food is right up my alley.  It's a beautiful, fall, Saturday morning and baking a dozen muffins is just what I need to ground myself after a busy week.  Flipping through the book I became really excited.  If I can get my act together, I hope to be able to try more than a few recipes before it has to go back.

Okay, now on to the muffins.  I followed the recipe faithfully except for one small variation which I think works.  There were no dried cherries in the pantry but I did have a jar of maraschino cherries left over from when I made those beautiful chocolate-cherry cookies from Color Me Vegan in the summer.  I chopped the maraschino cherries in half and also added one on top of each muffin - don't they look adorable?  The smell of the almond extract while baking is divine!  The almond-cherry combination is yummy.  I think the muffins were quite good, maybe they need a little more fruit to jazz them up but they were moist and quite dense.

Cherry-Almond-Poppyseed Muffins

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Spicy Smothered Green Cabbage

Spicy Smothered Green Cabbage

After a few days of indulging in too much Halloween candy, my body was asking for something a little more down to earth and non-sugary.  A few friends and I are cooking from Terry Bryant's Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisineover the next month and today, I started with the simple but delicious Spicy Smothered Green Cabbage.  I don't cook cabbage all that often but this dish appealed to me with it's toasted mustard seeds, a hit of spice from red-pepper flakes and it's relatively few ingredients.  It was easy to prepare and would make a fantastic side dish for normal people.  Of course, I just ate it for breakfast with a cup of tea and my newly invented bean dip on ciabatta which I'll post next week.

Check out my cooking buddy Farrah's yummy dishes from the same book at  Carrot Top Vegan!