Vegan Indian Food

Planning out our meals

My favorite cuisine to cook lately has been Indian food. I like that it has a ton of flavor, many dishes are traditionally vegetarian, and the pressure cooker is used extensively. After stocking up on spices, rice, and lentils from the local Indian grocery store it is a relatively cheap way to eat.

The Indian cookbooks that I have now are:
Vegan Richa's Indian Kitchen. This was my first Indian cookbook and it has a lot of information about ingredients that a non-Indian audience might not be familiar with. There are a good mix of recipes from across India and almost everything I have made from it has been great. I really enjoy that many of the lentil and bean recipes have instructions for both the stove top or pressure cooker. Recommended: Tikka Kathi Rolls, Baigan Patiala, Spice Cabbage Potatoes, Yellow lentils with spinach and coconut milk, kitchari, garlic fenugreek sauce

Indian Instant Pot. I picked up an Instant Pot a few years ago and it has been wonderful for Indian cooking. This cookbook does have a big section of meat recipes, but I usually use the sauces and substitute in tempeh or some frozen fake meat. The ingredient lists, especially spices, and much more simplified from the other cookbooks, but things end up pretty tasty. This is the book I go to when I want something that I can just through in the pot and go about my evening. Recommended: Butter chicken (use tempeh), dal makhani, Punjabi lobia, Chicken tikka masala (I used soy curls)

Prashad at Home. I like looking through this cookbook for inspiration and before we started buying frozen roti we used the roti recipe, but I haven't made many recipes in here. I plan to try the quick uttapam recipe that doesn't require fermentation soon.

Vibrant India. Now that I have a better sense of the cuisines around India, I find myself gravitating toward South Indian flavors - tamarind, curry leaves, coconut, fermented batters - and this book gives a lot of inspiration for that. This weekend I used the dosa batter to make uttapam and paired it with sambar, so good. Recommended: Curry leaf popcorn, any of the vegetable stir-fries.

Vegetarian Indian Cooking. I wasn't sure if I needed another Indian Instant Pot cookbook, but it looked different enough from the other one that I decided to pick it up and I'm glad that I did. I now regularly make dhokla (although I use the microwave instead of the Instant pot) and it has our favorite saag recipe. You will need a well stocked spice cabinet, but I believe it is worth it, but beware that the recipes are laid out in a weird manner and the index is really unhelpful. Recommended: Panchmel dal, saag, khaman dhokla


Dhokla with all the curry leaves! This version was made in the microwave. It keeps surprising well in the fridge for a few days and we had a piece in our lunches.


Aloo saag, panchmel dal, with frozen roti, rice, and Indian pickles

Butternut Squash Stacks

I have been playing around with more raw food recipes lately. I enjoy the freshness of raw food and I think SOME of the philosophy behind eating raw foods is compelling. Anyway, so I have been dabbling here and there with recipes. I tried to follow this raw food recipe from Callie England for these stacks, but I couldn't get the butternut squash soft enough to chew through. I ended up boiling the butternut squash for a few minutes in order to eat it.




Notes
These were super duper tasty! The cat came over to sniff them and ended up licking up some of the spinach filling. She is so weird.

I did boil the squash for a bit too long, so it became a tad mushy. Overall, pretty good.

Bunny bread

My husband and I have birthdays 1 day apart, so we tend to hold some sort of birthday event to celebrate. Last year we went bowling with a group of people and this year we held a cocktail party. It was a bit ridiculous - a keg of Manhattans, a pitcher of moijtos, and dark and stormies. We had people over from school as well as the pub we frequent. It was a great mix of people. The star of show, though, was this bread bunny.

I saw a link to a recipe on Pintrest and decided that I had to make it. I halved the recipe, mostly because my oven is small and I can't fit a large cookie sheet in it. When we obtain a bigger oven, I will be making a full size one.



Ingredients
(for the smaller size)
1 lb bread dough (I used the recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking for the foccacia. I had to add about 1/2 cup more water, otherwise that recipe is topnotch.)
Eye looking things (The recipe calls for raisins and I didn't have anything, so I used peppercorns)
Teeth looking things (Recipe says slivered almonds and again I had just run out, I used a raw cashew)

dip for the belly (I used a spinach dip - 8 oz vegan cream cheese, 4 oz frozen spinach, sriracha cooked in the slow cooker until hot and delicious).
crudités

Method
Look on the Taste of Home website for instructions. I did not do any sort of egg wash before baking.


Notes
Everyone loved the dip and bread. It looks so creepy, but was really tasty.

Crockpot Party!

This past Friday, one of the new graduate students had a crock pot party at his apartment. Everyone was bringing over crock pot creations to share. Inspite of my crock potting skillz, my offerings did not turn out as I wanted.


Brownie Pudding Goo


Spinach Artichoke dip


Tatertot casserole

Recipes

Brownie Pudding

Spinach Artichoke Dip

Tatertot Casserole
frozen tater tots or hash browns
cream of mushroom soup (I tried to make my own with coconut creamer, but it did not turn out well)
TVP or frozen Boca crumbles (I prefer the boca crumbles
frozen spinach

Mix together in a crock pot crock. Heat on low for about 3 hours. Stir occasionally. Season to taste, salt, black pepper, chipotle powder, etc.

Notes
Brownie Pudding - I accidentally mixed together the pudding part of the recipe into the brownie part. You are supposed to just put it over top and cover the crock pot. So, it turned out to be brownie goo, instead of brownie pudding. It was still good, just not what I expected. Meh.

Spinach Artichoke Dip - this one is always good. Success!

Tatertot Casserole - I put this together in the crock pot on a whim. I was going to do lentil soup, or falafel, but I thought I would try this. I tried to make my own cream of mushroom soup since I couldn't find a non-dairy version at the store. I sauteed up some diced mushrooms, added coconut creamer, added corn starch, then brought to a boil until thickened. I mixed that with the hashbrowns and reconstituted TVP (the hippy store did not have frozen crumbles) and then cooked for a few hours. I added some frozen spinach at the end to give some color and maybe flavor. This came out being so bland and boring. I even added some maple syrup to bring out a bit of sweetness. My lovely husband took care of throwing away the entire 3 qt pot of this. I would like to try this again, but I think I need to work on the cream of mushroom soup part. FAIL

Aloo Palak

One of my favorite thing to order at Indian restaurants used to be Palak Paneer. Since I have given up dairy, I have found that Aloo Palak is an adequate replacement. It is my favorite variety of Tasty Bite. Speaking of Tasty Bites, they have some delicious easy food. The ingredients are always good and many of their meals are dairy free. You can see my previous blog post about the Tasty Bite Aloo Palak here.



This is adapted for my 1.5 qt slow cooker. It is another recipe from the Indian Slow Cooker.

Ingredients
5 oz fresh spinach, washed, but not dried
onion
1 tomato
ginger
7 garlic cloves (The original recipe called for 20 in a 5 qt slow cooker)
3 hot chilies
1 T ground cumin
1 T chili powder
1 t garam masala
1/2 t turmeric
salt
1/2 yukon gold potato


Method
Put everything except the salt and potato in a slow cooker. You might need to shove and push. Really you don't need any water. The spinach cooks by steaming in the liquid adhering to the leaves. Cook on high for 3 hours.





Using an immersion blender, blend the mixture until all the chunks have disappeared. Add the potato and salt. Cook on low for 2 hours, or until the potato is cooked.

Serve with rice.

Notes
Again, the fantastic immersion blender to the rescue. I was really surprised that everything was able to cook without any added water. I didn't have any problems at all with spinach sticking to the side or things not getting cooked through.

I really enjoyed this recipe a bit. I still had to up the spices before serving to make sure it would be enjoyable.

My husband thought this was good, but he missed the paneer.

EDIT: I had the leftovers for breakfast a few days ago, and the flavor was fantastic. I will be making this again for sure. It was really good!

Roasted Eggplant Muffuletta Sandwich

This is a recipe from Veganomicon. I have been eyeing it since I got the cookbook and finally made it the other day. I am going to make this many times more.



You can find the recipe in it's entirety here.

I didn't change anything about recipe. It is perfect the way it is. You need to press the sandwich for a few hours prior to the devouring and you should have seen all the physics text books I had stacked on top in my office. It was comical.

Notes
My husband thought this needed a creamy layer, like a mozzarella cheese. Maybe some tofu would suffice? I thought it was great.

Spinach Artichoke Dip

Another win for the slow cooker tonight. My friend was having a game night over at her house and I had decided to bring something snacky to share. She is trying out veganism for a month and every potluck dish was vegan, which is pretty awesome.

I have no picture, because it was devoured and it doesn't look that appetizing.

Total cooktime: about 2 hours

Ingredients:
8 oz marinated artichoke hearts
10 oz frozen spinach
8 oz vegan cream cheese
juice from 1/2 a lemon
Sriracha sauce
salt and black pepper

Cook spinach according to package directions. Chop up the artichoke hearts to bite sized pieces. Add everything to the slow cooker and mix well. Cook on low for a few hours. I think we started to eat it after about an hour and it was heated through.

Served with some water crackers, it was delicious.