Mushroom Pasta with Port

This week's recipe comes from my all-time favorite cookbook: the Vegetarian Bible (here's a link to the Amazon page, should you want a copy). It's super delicious and pretty simple to make, to boot. Today I present:

Mushroom Pasta with Port

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons butter (I'm actually watching my calorie intake, so I substituted for light margarine and used less than this amount)
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 shallots, sliced
6 cups white mushrooms, sliced
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
Scant 3/4 cup heavy cream (I used a bit less here too)
2 tablespoons Port wine
4 ounces sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
Now the recipe calls for freshly grated nutmeg, but I just put in a teaspoon of the regular pre-grated
1 pound dried spaghetti
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste

Here they are:

Serves: 4 (706 calories per serving, with the changes I made); Prep time: It took about 20 minutes (I got pre-sliced mushrooms, so that probably helped); Cooking time: 30 minutes, give or take

Directions:
1. Heat the butter and half of the oil in a big saucepan. Add the shallots and cook for about three minutes over medium heat. Add the mushrooms, turn the burner down to low, and cook for two minutes. Season with salt and pepper, add the flour, and cook for one minute, stirring constantly.

2. Gradually stir in the Port and cream, then add the tomatoes and nutmeg. Cook over low heat for eight minutes.

3. While that's cooking, bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the spaghetti and the rest of the olive oil and cook twelve to fourteen minutes

During this wait time, I took a picture of my cat Pippa, who decided to lay down in the napkin basket:

4. Drain the spaghetti and put it back in the pan. Pour the mushroom mixture over the spaghetti and cook for three minutes. Serve and enjoy.

Recipe review: It's more calories than I like to consume at one meal, but it was totally worth it. I'm definitely keeping this recipe handy for a special treat.

Happy eating.

Cheers,
Emma

Tortellini Soup

Tonight for dinner, my mom and I made a family favorite: Tortellini Soup. It is one of those recipes that we've had since before I was a vegetarian but, luckily for me (and you!), it is super easy to make meat-free. All that's needed is to swap out the beef broth for vegetable stock and the Italian Sausage for its soy counterpart. 

Rather than let my mom make two batches of soup simultaneously like she usually does (she uses vegetable stock for her soup too now, but she'll never give up real sausage), I decided it was time for me to learn how to cook this recipe, so I made my version along side her.

Let's do this.

Tortellini Soup

Ingredients:
1 cup onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
5 cups vegetable stock
3/4 cup red wine (the rule of thumb seems to be that you should pick a wine that you like to drink, lest it go to waste after it serves its purpose)
1 cup sliced carrots (peel first)
2 cups canned diced tomato (don't drain - put that tomato liquid goodness into the soup!)
1/2 teaspoon basil (we used dried)
1/2 teaspoon oregano (we used dried here too)
1 and 1/2 cups zucchini, sliced
8 ounces cheese tortellini
3 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
1 green pepper, diced
1 tablespoon olive oil
Parmesan cheese, to serve
Vegetarian Italian Sausage, optional (I like to add it, but it's completely up to you. I now use the Tofurky brand because the Morningstar one tends to fall apart. As for the amount, I put in 2 (sliced), but you can use more or less, if you want)

Here are the ingredients lined up. Well, most of them. Please note: there are more pictured here than needed for one serving. My mom made a double batch of the original recipe.

Serves: 8 (300 calories per serving); Prep time: Should be about 30 minutes, but ours took longer since we tripled the recipe and split it into meat and vegetarian versions; Cook time: 65 - 70 minutes

Directions: 
1. In a large pot, sauté the onion with the olive oil over medium heat for two minutes. Add the garlic and sauté another minute.

2. Add the Veggie Italian Sausage (if you're using it, obviously), vegetable stock, wine, carrots, tomato, basil, and oregano. Bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Stir every so often.

3. Add the zucchini, tortellini, parsley, and green pepper. Simmer covered for 35 - 40 minutes, stirring occasionally Basically, you want the zucchini to be soft and the tortellini cooked. Sorry for the slightly blurry picture.

4. Ladle into your bowl of choice, top with Parmesan, and eat. I had a garlic bread stick with mine.

Recipe Review:
Just as delicious as I remember the original being!

Happy eating.

Cheers,
Emma

P.S. Here's the obligatory animal picture - my cat Pippa:

Smoky Mushroom & Herb Burgers

This first recipe for my blog is from my newest cookbook, Good Food Made Simple: Vegetarian (here's the link to its Amazon product page, should you want your own copy).

In the six years since I've become a vegetarian, whenever I want a burger I buy those frozen ones from brands like Boca. And those are good, but I thought it might be nice to try my hand at making homemade veggie burgers. Between all of my numerous cookbooks, I have a bajillion recipes for veggie burgers, but this is the only one that caught my eye. So, without further ado, I present:

Smoky Mushroom & Herb Burgers

Ingredients:
1 (15-ounce) can of red kidney beans (drain the can and rinse beans)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus extra for brushing (the recipe actually calls for sunflower oil, but I'm fairly convinced that grocery stores don't really sell it, as I've never seen it)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 and 2/3 cups finely chopped white button mushrooms
1 large carrot, shredded
2 teaspoons smoked paprika (I had no idea that this was different from regular paprika, but it is, in fact, a separate product. However, I'm sure regular will suffice)
3/4 cup rolled oats
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 bunch cilantro, including stems (weird request, but I obliged), chopped (I like cilantro, but my guinea pigs i.e. family don't, so I subbed this out for flat-leaf parsley)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
salt and pepper

To serve:
Hamburger roll of your choice (mine was potato buns)
Salad greens
Sliced avocado
Salsa

Here are my ingredients lined up (minus the soy sauce and salad greens, because I forgot to get those out before prep started):

Serves: 6 (170 calories per burger); Prep Time: 15 minutes (According to the book, but I'm pretty sure that figure came out of thin air. My prep time took me over an hour. I do get easily distracted though...); Cooking Time: 10 - 15 minutes

Directions:
1. Since this recipe calls for a lot of finely chopped / shredded ingredients, I used a handy dandy food processor. Ain't nobody got time for all that knife work. Additionally, being a novice cook, I find it helpful to measure everything out before I start cooking. Like so:

2. Place the beans in a good sized bowl and mash well with a vegetable masher. Here's a graphic:

Heat the oil in a skillet, add the onion, sauté until translucent, about two minutes. The recipe doesn't say what temperature to use, so I set my burner to medium and it worked well enough. Add the mushrooms, carrot, and paprika and sauté for about four minutes, or until the veggies are soft.

3. Add the skillet of veggies to the beans, along with the oats, soy sauce, tomato paste, and cilantro (or parsley, as the case may be). Season with salt and pepper and mix together well. Then divide in six equal(ish) portions and shape into patties.

Put the flour on a plate and lightly coat both sides of the patty. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but my patties were quite wet and hard to keep together. Perhaps more oats would help, but I didn't feel like experimenting too much on my first attempt with this recipe.

4. Now, the recipe calls for a ridged grill pan for cooking, but I don't have one and I wasn't about to freeze my butt off outside with the regular grill, so I used a frying pan instead. Lightly brush the top of the patties with oil and put them oil-side down on the pan, cooking on medium heat 2 - 3 minutes. Brush oil on the tops and flip, cooking for another 2 - 3 minutes.

While the burgers were finishing in the pan, I took a picture of my kitchen companion, Izzy.

Finally, I put the salad greens on the bottom bun, placed the burger on the greens, and topped with the avocado and salsa.

Ooooo...

Ahhhh...

Recipe review: 

These burgers are messy, so you probably won't be able to set it down once you start eating. As far as taste goes, I thought they were really good. A fair amount of work goes into making homemade veggie burgers, so I won't go through this every time I want a burger, but it definitely will make a good special treat.

Verdicts from the meat-eaters:

Grandma - "I really like these, even better than real burgers. But I also don't really like ground beef to begin with. I'd eat them again."

Mom - "I like these better than that frozen soy crap. And turkey burgers. I like real burgers the best though." Fair enough.

Happy eating.

Cheers,

Emma

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my virtual kitchen!

This first post is just to introduce me and my culinary viewpoint. So, here goes. As you can deduce, either from the name of this blog or because you know me in real life, my name is Emma and I'm a vegetarian. Specifically, I'm a lacto-ovo-vegetarian which means that I don't eat meat (obviously) or seafood, but I do eat eggs and dairy.

I graduated with my M.A. in Museum Studies, but the current museum job market is more competitive than the Hunger Games, so I'm living at home with my mom and grandma and working part-time while I wait for my adult life to really begin. In the meantime, I decided I needed to learn how to cook to keep myself from starving when I do eventually move out on my own. I'm kidding. I do know how to cook for the most part, but I am still a novice. Basically, I can follow a recipe and make a decent meal, but I have zero knife skills, so it takes me about twenty minutes to dice an onion.

To become a better cook and to satisfy my dietary preferences, I decided to pick out interesting recipes from my numerous vegetarian cookbooks and learn how to make them, using myself and my family as the guinea pigs. I'm also taking some of my family's favorite recipes (making them meat-free when necessary) and learning to make those too, for good measure. Over the past year or so, I've been slowly working towards this goal and posting the obligatory food porn pictures on Facebook. Then I had the idea recently to just blog about my culinary journey. I'm going to share the ups and downs of my experience, give you the recipes I use and how it actually was putting it together, and a review of the final product. I will also shamelessly share pictures of my adorable pets.

My ulterior motive for this blog is to show that vegetarian food is both interesting and delicious. For the record, lest you be scared that I'm also going to spew anti-meat rhetoric, I'm not. I don't care if you're a vegetarian or not; it's none of my business. I have a 'live and let live' attitude. I'm not going to belittle meat-eaters and I expect the same in return, so mean anti-vegetarian comments will not be tolerated.

So, whether you are a vegetarian, someone cooking for a vegetarian, trying to reduce your meat-intake for health reasons, or just a foodie looking for nice recipes, hopefully this blog will enlighten and inspire, and better my own culinary skills.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,
Emma

P.S. Here's the first of those adorable pet pictures: my cat Peanut.