Summer Food: Roasted Eggplant and Zucchini with Fresh Tomatoes, and Tomato Sauce

On some days it's just too hot to eat something that is above body temperature. Today is one of these days.
So I decided to go with tons of veggies that could in the end be eaten hot or cold.

Sweet and Sour Sauce

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Simple and tasty, this sauce goes well with spring rolls, on sandwiches, or barbecued goods.

Ingredients:

• 2 red bell peppers
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 7 tablespoons of rice vinegar
• 13 tablespoons of raw cane sugar
• 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon of tapioca starch
• 200ml of water
• optional: sambal oelek (if you like your sweet and sour sauce hot!)

Thai Pasta Salad

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Mondays are always a bit of a challenge: I always prepare a lunch for work for my colleague and myself... but I want to vary what I bring. So I keep my eyes open for new ideas and suggestions. Today, the Vegan Food Nerd came to my rescue. Their dish inspired me to pick up some of the basic ingredients they used and to come up with something new myself. :)

This is not actually a Thai recipe. But the nice noodles, coconut milk, and red Thai curry paste made me call it that! :D

Ingredients for 6 generous portions:

• 400g of rice noodles (the type that looks like fettuccine, about 4mm, ca. 1/6 in)
• 300g of soy sprouts
• 3 bell peppers (red, yellow, green)
• 1 large zucchini
• 250g of snowpeas
• 1l of coconut milk
• some oil (for example sunflower)
• 2 tablespoons of red Thai curry paste - if you like it hotter, use more (double check the ingredients! Curry pastes are not always vegan/vegetarian!)
• some soy sauce
• some salt
• 2 limes
• 100g of (unsalted) peanuts 
• 400g of tofu (it's the squishy type which I buy at the Asian supermarket, not the firm stuff)

You will also need: A big pot, a deep-fryer. If you don't have a deep-fryer, I suppose you can also fry the tofu in a pan, but it won't be quite as nice.

Oven-baked Pasta Paella

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Another Tuesday, another Tuesday lunch! I really wanted to do something new, so I went through a cooking magazine I get every other month. Made some changes and everything turned out to be great! 

Ingredients for 4 large or 6 normal servings:

• 250g of green beans (I used frozen beans)
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1 yellow bell peppers
• 4 medium sized onions
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 jar of mild green chili peppers
• 100g of dried tomatoes (the type that comes in oil)
• 1 can of precooked chickpeas (ca. 200g)
• 300g farfalle pasta
• 2 cans of tomato chunks
• some olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of turmeric
• 2 tablespoons of paprika powder 
• 300ml of veggie stock
• some salt
• fresh parsley (I used half a pot of fresh parsley)
• 1 lemon (preferably organic!)

Antipasti II: Roast Bellpepper with Shaved Almonds and Garlic

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Part II Antipasti recipes! Part I (marinated roast veggies) is here. Part III (Tomato filled with pesto cream cheese) will be posted soon.

(1) marinated roast veggies
(2) Roast Bellpepper with Shaved Almonds and Garlic
(3) Tomato filled with pesto cream cheese

Antipasti I: Marinated Veggies

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We had an Italian themed dinner party last week and made a nice little plate of antipasti as appetizers. It's June, so we wanted to stick to as many cold dishes as possible. Antipasti proved to be easily prepared in advance and a great way to start out the dinner. There are three main components to the dish on the picture above: (1) Marinated veggies, (2) baked bellpeppers with shaved almonds, and (3) the tomato that's filled with pesto cream cheese. I'll explain how they were made in the following blog posts.

So here is how you can make the marinated veggies:

For this starter plate for six people (each person got their own ;) No sharing necessary), I used the following:

Ingredients:

• 1 medium eggplant
• 2 small zucchinis
• 250g of meadow mushrooms 
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 150ml olive oil (plus some for frying)
• 1½ tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
• some fresh basil, thyme, and rosemary
• salt

Dinner Party III

Dinner Party No. 3! 

I really love how we have established this little tradition of cooking three-course dinners for each others among us three couples. We started out last fall and have cooked really good stuff for each other since. This week, we started the third round of our "perfect vegan dinner" - and it was Italian themed.

Dinnerparty Nr. 3!

Ich finde es total toll, dass wir diese kleine Tradition füreinander Drei-Gang-Menüs zu kochen unter uns drei Paaren etabliert haben. Wir haben im letzten Herbst damit angefangen und haben seitdem immer nur leckere Sachen für einander kredenzt. Diese Woche haben wir die dritte Runde unseres "perfekten veganen Dinners" gestartet - und das Thema war Italien im Ruhrpott. 

Rosemary Panna Cotta with Strawberry Sauce

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The dessert for our latest dinner party was easy to prepare and was also easily prepared in advance.

Ingredients for six portions:

• 200ml soy cream
• 300ml almond milk (I made my own)
• 1 teaspoon of agar agar
• 50g of raw cane sugar for the panna cotta
• 1 vanilla bean or vanilla flavor
• 2 rosemary sprigs
• 600g of fresh strawberries
• 1 tablespoon of raw cane sugar for the sauce

Easy: Basil Pesto

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Trying to find a vegan pesto can be quite the challenge because most pestos are made with grana padano or parmesan. Although I know of one (good, yet slightly pricy) brand, I wanted to make some myself. Another reason for this was our latest dinner party at which I try to make as much from scratch as possible. (I used the pesto to make pesto cream cheese to fill a tomato. YUM!)

All you need for this basil pesto are a small number of ingredients and a blender: a regular one or an immersion blender should work.

Ingredients:

• 2 pots of fresh basil (cf. picture)
• 50g of cashews
• 4 tablespoons of yeast flakes
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 150ml olive oil (try to go for a good quality)
• 1 tablespoon of sea salt

Mississippi Mud Pie

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Inspired by my friends over at the used to be guerilla Café Mousebear/soon to be an actual café Krümelküche, I made Mississippi Mud Pie for a friend's birthday.

These are the ingredients for a 26cm/10¼in springform:

Ingredients for the dough base:

• 260g of flour
• 30g of cocoa powder
• 200g of margarine
• 35g of raw cane sugar
• 3 table spoons of water

Ingredients for the chocolate cream filling:

• 50g of margarine
• 90g of raw cane sugar
• 2 table spoons of soy flour
• 2 table spoons of cocoa powder
• 50g of dark chocolate
• 100g of soy cream (or rice, oat, coconut cream etc.)

For the topping: 

• 300g of whippable vegan cream (if it's sweatened, great, if not, add some sugar)
• 50g of dark chocolate