If you don’t know the Arabic dish called Mujadara then you, my friend are missing out. Big time. This dish is a wonderful mix of grains and flavors that you can whip up to feed a crowd or keep for lunch the next day. For the past few years, this is one of my go-to comfort dishes because it has everything a good comfort dish needs, minus all the crap it doesn’t.
The first time I made this dish, I was a newbie and I followed the directions to the letter. The next time, I made a few small tweaks featuring cauliflower & soy, and today’s version is oil-free, vegan and uses beluga (black) lentils instead of your standard green or brown.
Mushroom & black lentil mujadara.
This dish is very simple, totally plant based if you decided not to add any meat alternatives to it, and very delicious. Very.
In need of a one pot vegan recipe that’s not your standard vegan casserole or soup? Consider risotto, it’s a great way to get your fill of grains while mixing a bunch of delicious vegan ingredients to the skillet.
Depending on how much time you have, you can fancy it up with a saffron broth, or just add a few threads of saffron to your waste-free broth to save on time. If you’re in a hurry, plain water will get the job done but without the depth of flavor that will trick a crowd into thinking you’ve been in the kitchen all day! (wink, wink)
For today’s offering, we have vegan spinach, portabella mushrooms and spinach risotto.
Easy mushroom & vegan sausage risotto.
This is an easy vegan recipe that requires minimal prep work, although I do recommend that you make sure you thaw the spinach if you use frozen, which I did, as well as the vegan sausages, which also came frozen. Other than that, all you’ll need is a sharp knife and your favorite cutting board.
If you’ve visited this blog on more than two or three occasions you already know that I am a HUGE fan of international cuisine. I love Asian food the best of all, from fried rice to curry to vegan katsu, but I am also a fan of Mexican food, Cuban, Hungarian and German too. Pretty much, I am a fan of world cuisines, which means I am always on the look out for something that I haven’t tried.
I once ate vegetable stew and Palinca (Romanian spirits) inside a restaurant in Poiana Brasov that was FILLED with animal furs and horns and skulls. Yuck, I know, but the truth is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a restaurant without these particular decorations in the mountain regions of Romania. The stew was good, if plain, because this is not a part of the world that caters to eaters who don’t consume animals.
In fact, you’d find it difficult to find a place unlike this in Hungary too.
But I’m a culinary adventurer so I always like to see what new dishes I can go home and veganize.
Lately though, I haven’t done a lot of traveling so I have to rely on the beauty of the internet to take me away and this week it took me to Afghanistan. Whoa, right?
Well I started simple with a dish that was–relatively–easy to veganize. Afghan rice pilaf, called Kabuli Pulao.
If you’re interested, Google the dish name and you’ll see just how much it relies on animals, so making it vegan was truly a challenge.
Vegan Kabuli Pulao. Afghan rice pilaf.
This dish has a relatively simple list of ingredients, especially for vegans. Start with replacing the lamb, which for me meant TVP (textured vegetable protein) because it’s the most versatile. Then you’ll need rice, carrots, raisins (yuck, I skipped this part), onions, cardamom and almonds. I also skipped the almonds, for calories but also because I didn’t have any on hand.
I don’t know about where you live, but here in Romania the weather has been a bit…let’s say temperamental. It’s been incredibly hot and humid one day, chilly and rainy the next, and them my personal favorite, the unbearable mix of super hot and incredibly humid.
Fun, right?
Yeah, I’ve been finding ways to not let the weather get to me, mostly by ignoring the heat, but also making use of the little desktop fan that I have all to myself. When the weather is really ridiculous, I just switch it up and wait until close to sundown to start working & writing, because I have that luxury.
But what about those days when the weather dips just a little? Well, on those days I take advantage and have something unexpected in this stupidly hot summer. Enter, Cajun vegan sausage casserole.
We can all agree that July is just too damn hot for any type of casserole, except when it isn’t. When that day rolls around, I’m taking full advantage. So…here we go!
When you’re in search of an easy vegan casserole recipe, I find the Cajun or Creole style options are wonderful. And very forgiving. These types of vegan recipes work really well if you want a spicy dish or a milder one, and you can experiment with grains to change it up and prevent mealtime boredom.
How to cook "with visual instructions" "using familiar ingredients from your local grocery stores" healthy, traditional and delicious Japanese dishes!!
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