I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.
I’m not a vegan, or a vegetarian, but I like to dabble in that space. Most of the time I prefer plants to meat, and a lot of what I cook is meatless. So, I was intrigued by a new book called Smith & Daughters: A Cookbook (That Happens To Be Vegan) from a Melbourne restaurant of the same name that happens to stick to a vegan menu. The goal of the restaurant menu and of the book is to offer “plant-based food the way it should be: big, bold, flavorful, noteworthy, celebration-worthy, and myth-dispelling.” Rather than focusing on the conscientious reasons most people choose to follow a vegan diet, here plant-based cooking is a jumping-off point for creativity. The food is inviting, fun, and hearty. The Breakfast Burrito is made up of a few homemade components and is a great example of the flavorful cooking seen throughout the book. The burrito is made with homemade Chipotle Cashew Cheese, Brazilian Black Bean Soup, Spicy Ground Chorizo made with textured vegetable protein, and Tofu Scramble. Something to note about the ingredient lists is that you will see things like “chicken stock” and “butter.” But, in the Book Notes at the beginning, it’s mentioned that vegan substitutes for those types of items are intended. The delicious-looking Sopa Seca is made with broken angel hair pasta, chipotles in adobo, and vegan chicken stock. Some other dishes I want to try include the Warm Hearts of Palm Salad served with guacamole; the Artichoke and Chickpea Salad with Lemon and Cumin Vinaigrette; and Spanish Meatballs made with brown rice, bell peppers, oats, brown lentils, and chickpea flour. The recipe that got me cooking first, though, was Brazilian Slaw. This brought back a memory of a cooking class I attended taught by Susan Feniger. The title of that class was Inspired by Brazil, and one of the dishes was a Vegetable Salpicon or slaw. I still have the notes and recipes from that class (I keep the notes I receive from cooking classes filed away), and that slaw is the dish I remember most. Feniger’s version was topped with crispy shoestring potatoes, and the mix of vegetables was slightly different. The general concept was the same, and I couldn’t wait to try the version from this book.
Here, the crispy topping was baked corn tortilla strips rather than fried shoestring potatoes. They were baked until golden and crunchy and set aside to cool. I made a couple of substitutions based on what was fresh and in season right now. So, instead of using corn and apple, I used a mix of radishes. Along with radishes, carrots were also cut into julienne strips. Red and green cabbages were thinly sliced into ribbons. Mushrooms, and I used maitake instead of oyster just because they looked better that day, were seared with soy sauce until browned and allowed to cool. Last, pimento-stuffed green olives were sliced. To make the dressing, first a vegan aioli was prepared. It was made in the blender with silken tofu, garlic, apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, and olive oil. The aioli was mixed with lime zest and juice and more garlic to form the slaw dressing. The vegetables were combined in a big bowl along with parsley and cilantro leaves, and all was topped with dressing. The mixture was tossed until well coated and served with tortillas strips on top.
I’m always a fan of crunch, and it’s abundant here. The vegetables are crunchy, and the tortilla strips are really crunchy, and all that texture made this fun and delicious to eat. The aioli is also a perfect base for other dressings. I used what was left from this recipe to make a green goddess dressing for another salad. And, I also made the Coriander Cashew Cream with added chipotle to use on tacos. I may not be vegan all the time, but thanks to recipes like these more plant-based meals are showing up on my table.
Brazilian Slaw Recipe excerpted with permission from Smith and Daughters: A Cookbook (that happens to be vegan) by Shannon Martinez and Mo Wyse, published by Hardie Grant Books March 2017, RRP $35.00 hardcover.
As far as salads go, you just don’t get prettier, with more texture, more variety and more fun.
Serves 4–6
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil 150 g (5 1/2 oz) fresh or frozen corn kernels 85 g (3 oz) oyster mushrooms, roughly torn 1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce 1 granny smith apple, cored and cut into thin matchsticks 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into thin matchsticks 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced 85 g (3 oz) green pimento olives, sliced into thin rounds 300 g (10 1/2 oz) thinly shredded purple cabbage large handful flat-leaf parsley leaves large handful coriander (cilantro) leaves
Dressing 250 g (9 oz/1 cup) Aioli zest and juice of 1 lime 1 small garlic clove, crushed
Garnish 3 corn tortillas, cut into 5 mm (1/4 in) strips (or use roughly crushed tortilla chips) olive oil spray chilli and lime salt
Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF).
Heat 2 teaspoons of the oil in a chargrill pan or small frying pan. Grill or saute the corn until lightly charred. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Heat the remaining oil in a medium-sized frying pan over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and soy sauce and sauté until golden and slightly crisp. Set aside to cool.
To make the dressing, combine the ingredients in a bowl and whisk together until well combined.
To build the salad, combine all of the ingredients in a large salad bowl and add enough of the dressing to lightly coat. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
For the garnish, spray the tortilla strips with olive oil spray and dust with a little chilli and lime salt. Transfer to a baking tray and bake in the oven until crisp. If you are using tortilla chips, just sprinkle with the chilli and lime salt instead.
Build a small conical tower with the salad and top with the garnish. Big salads are always better, especially when tortilla chips are involved.
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I had a big, lovely head of green cabbage from my CSA, and I wanted to use it for something other than slaw. At first, I considered this Hungarian cabbage strudel, and I still may try that eventually. But, then I saw the recipe for cabbage and mushroom galette in Vegetarian Cooking for Everone, and that was how this cabbage was meant to be used. This savory galette is made with a yeasted tart dough, filled with sauteed cabbage and mushrooms, and given a little kick with the horseradish sour cream sauce. I have to tell you about the dough first. It’s a lot like a pizza dough except that an egg is added. The dough was mixed and left to rise for about an hour, and that one, little egg made the dough very tender. It was less elastic than pizza dough when being shaped, and it was flakier than pizza crust once baked. This was a tart dough I’ll definitely use again.
For the filling, minced onion and sliced shitakes were sauteed in butter with thyme and dill. Then, the sliced cabbage was added with a little water, and the saute pan was covered while the cabbage cooked for about 15 minutes. The cover was removed, and the heat was raised to evaporate remaining moisture from the pan. Last, parsley, a chopped hard-boiled egg, and some sour cream were stirred into the vegetables. At this point, I transferred this mixture to a bowl and left it in the refrigerator for a few hours. I had also rolled out the dough into an oblong, rectangular-ish shape, placed it on a baking sheet, covered it with a kitchen towel, and placed that in the refrigerator as well. At dinner time, I assembled the tart while the oven warmed. The filling was placed on the tart dough leaving a border of a few inches. The border was folded up and over the filling and was brushed with melted butter. For a savory tart, I like to spinkle the top edges with sea salt. The tart baked for about 30 minutes while I made the horseradish sauce.
The recipe in the book suggests peeling and chopping fresh horseradish root and then partially pureeing it in a food processor with water. Then, it was to be drained and combined with the other ingredients in the sauce. I took a lazier approach and simply peeled the horseradish and grated it on a microplane into a bowl of sour cream. Then, I added chopped chives, salt and pepper, and white wine vinegar. You could also just use prepared horseradish and skip the added vinegar in the sauce, but I do like the bite of just-grated, fresh horseradish. The sauce was perfect with the cabbage and mushroom filling, and this hearty galette was perfect for fall.
Memorial Day meals must involve grilling, and those meals have to include slaw, right? I decided that must be true, so I set out to find a new and different twist on standard coleslaw. I flipped through a couple of other books before I thought to have a look at Eat This Book by Tyler Florence. I should pick up this book more often because I’ve only cooked from it a few times, but it’s full of great ideas. The food is influenced by all corners of the globe, and as you flip pages, each recipe offers a completely different style and set of flavors from the last. I’ve made the falafel with tahini sauce which was great, and now I’m wondering why I haven’t made the sauteed feta cheese or African-spiced chicken with green olive sauce yet. I got this book back in 2005 at our local wine and food festival. Tyler was at the festival, did a cooking demo, and signed books. In my book, he wrote: “Lisa, cook your heart out.” Well, Tyler, I’m trying. I’m still having as much fun cooking as I was four years ago, and I now realize I haven’t been using your book as much as I should.
The spicy slaw accompanies pulled pork barbecue in the book, but we paired it with grilled chicken sausages. I was thrilled to have almost all the ingredients for this from our CSA. Red cabbage, a baby head of green cabbage, onion, and carrots all came from Hands of the Earth Farm. Green cabbage was suggested in the recipe, and red chiles were to be used for color contrast. Since I had that lovely head of red cabbage and the smaller green cabbage, I used them both and then used both a red chile and a green one. The carrots and onion were shredded on a box grater, and the cabbage was thinly sliced by hand. Green onions, a red chile, and a jalapeno joined those vegetables, and the combination was mixed with a dressing of mayonnaise, dijon mustard, cider vinegar, lemon juice, celery seed, and hot sauce. A pinch of sugar and salt and pepper were added. I really like celery seed in slaw, so I garnished with a little more of it on top.
This wasn’t a thick, gloupy kind of slaw since the vinegar and lemon juice thinned the mayonnaise a bit, but the dressing was still nicely creamy. The crunchy cabbage and sweet carrots with the spicy chiles and zing of the hot sauce in the dressing made for a lively and delicious slaw. It was a great side dish for our sausages, and it would partner well with just about anything off the grill.
Back to the files I went, and there are so, so many things in those files. I was in spring cleaning mode, and I managed to sort through two bulging folders of recipes before it was time to do something else. It’s kind of fun to look back and see what pages I cut out of magazines years ago. Some recipes are things I’ve tried since then from other sources and no longer require the pages I saved. With other recipes, I can’t believe they’ve been hidden away for so long and I still haven’t tried them. Such was the case with this salad. My best guess is that it came from a summer issue of Living in 2002. I just searched that site and couldn’t find the recipe, so I’ll include my version at the end of this post.
On a side note, I finally made a trip to MT Supermarket to shop for noodles and whatever else caught my eye. I have to say I was overwhelmed by the number of choices of everything. There are countless varieties of rice, soy sauces, fish sauces, vinegars, and on and on. I literally could not decide which noodles to buy and came home with so many my pantry is overflowing. For anyone in Austin who hasn’t gone there yet, I highly recommend it.
But, back to the salad. There is a lot of chopping and shredding and poaching and cooking, so allow plenty of time to complete it. Or, make the peanut sauce or do some chopping in advance. Every layer of this dish is full of flavor beginning with the chicken. Chicken breasts were poached with ginger, garlic, cilantro stems, and sesame oil. The vegetable mixture included cabbage, carrots, serrano chiles, green onions, mint, and cilantro leaves. And then, the peanut sauce is a powerhouse of flavor accenting everything else. This is exactly the kind of dish in which you can add more of a favorite item, leave out one you don’t like, and still have a very interesting combination. The chicken was tender and delicious, but as I was cooking it, I was thinking about how tofu would be just as good and much quicker. I used green cabbage, but savoy or napa would have been great. I shredded it very thinly on a Benriner, but thicker pieces would have added nice texture. I think I say this of every recipe, but next time, I’ll add more chiles. It’s not just me. Kurt always requests more chile flavor and heat as well. So, change this or add that, and you’ll still have a fantastic salad.
To poach the chicken: 1 three-inch piece of ginger, thinly sliced 4 garlic cloves, peeled, smashed and cut in half 10 cilantro stems 2 T toasted sesame oil 1/2 t salt 2 large, bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts
-in a large saute pan, add ginger, garlic, cilantro, sesame oil, and salt and enough water to reach halfway up the side of the pan; bring to a boil over high heat; add the chicken, reduce heat to medium, and cover; simmer until chicken is cooked through; remove from heat and let stand until cool enough to handle -transfer chicken to a cutting board; remove skin and cut meat from bone, cut meat into small strips or shred with your fingers
Prep vegetables and herbs: 1/2 head green cabbage (or savoy or napa), cored and thinly sliced 6 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced or julienned on slicer 3 serrano chiles, seeded and thinly sliced into long strips 1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced white and green parts 1/2 c fresh mint leaves, chopped 1/2 c fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
-place all sliced and chopped vegetables and herbs in a large mixing bowl
Peanut Sauce: 1 five-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated 2 shallots, peeled and minced 1/4 c fish sauce 1/2 c soy sauce 3/4 c freshly squeezed lime juice 1 c smooth, natural peanut butter 1/4 c toasted sesame oil 2 T water if needed
-in a large measuring pitcher, combine ginger, shallots, fish sauce, soy sauce, and lime juice; whisk in peanut butter; whisk in sesame oil; if sauce is too thick, whisk in water starting with one tablespoon and adding more as needed
To finish salad: 1 pound rice vermicelli noodles 1/2 c roasted, unsalted peanuts for serving
-bring a large pot of water to a boil; cook noodles according to package instructions or until al dente; transfer to a colander to drain; rinse under cold water, drain, and place on a serving platter -add prepared chicken to bowl of vegetables and herbs and toss to combine; pour half of the peanut sauce over this mixture and toss to coat; taste and add more peanut sauce as desired -to serve, top noodles with chicken salad mixture, drizzle with some remaining peanut sauce, sprinkle with peanuts, and garnish with any extra herbs or green onions Tweet
This is the slaw that inspired the light tex-mex meal. I knew it was in Nuevo Tex-Mex which got me flipping through the book again and meal planning. I often say of some cookbooks that I want to make everything in them, and I mean it when I say that. It may take some time given how many books are in that group, but this book is one of them. And, now for a confession. I always post about dishes that I’ve just made for the first time, or new variations on dishes, or seasonal versions of recipes that I want to remember. However, I have made this slaw before. But, I didn’t make it right the first time. It was years ago, I was rushed, and I glanced at the ingredients and didn’t read all of the instructions. This time, I read more carefully and prepared it as it was intended. That first time, I made a mostly raw slaw with bell peppers, jalapeños, cabbage, onion, and cooked corn. I missed the roasting step which, it turns out, makes a completely different and entirely better slaw.
Because it’s January and fresh sweet corn is not available, I used frozen corn kernels which were ok. If making this with fresh corn, you should roast it on the cob and then cut off the kernels. With frozen corn, I defrosted it, tossed it with a small bit of oil, spread it on a baking sheet, and roasted it in the oven until fragrant and slightly browned. Its flavor became concentrated, it became even sweeter, and it was fantastic. The bell peppers should also be roasted, then skinned, seeded, and chopped. I seem to remember Bobby Flay mentioning on thousands of occasions that peppers should always be roasted in the oven instead of over a gas flame. Oven roasting actually cooks the pepper flesh instead of just charring the skin and results in better flavor, and that’s what I did here. He’s right about oven roasting, but I also do the quick and easy turning over a gas flame when short on time. So many confessions today.
The slaw, then, was crunchy raw cabbage, jalapeño, and onion, sweet and concentrated roasted corn, oven roasted red and orange bell pepper, and lemon juice, champagne vinegar, and chopped cilantro. The combined ingredients sat in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, and came out bursting with varied flavors, colors, and textures. You can control the heat of the jalapeños by removing the seeds and membranes which I did because the sauce served with this meal was already hitting the upper level of our heat tolerance. That left the slaw as a welcome, cool, acidic, sweet, savory, fresh part of the light tex-mex meal.
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from a Melbourne restaurant of the same name that happens to stick to a vegan menu. The goal of the restaurant menu and of the book is to offer “plant-based food the way it should be: big, bold, flavorful, noteworthy, celebration-worthy, and myth-dispelling.” Rather than focusing on the conscientious reasons most people choose to follow a vegan diet, here plant-based cooking is a jumping-off point for creativity. The food is inviting, fun, and hearty. The Breakfast Burrito is made up of a few homemade components and is a great example of the flavorful cooking seen throughout the book. The burrito is made with homemade Chipotle Cashew Cheese, Brazilian Black Bean Soup, Spicy Ground Chorizo made with textured vegetable protein, and Tofu Scramble. Something to note about the ingredient lists is that you will see things like “chicken stock” and “butter.” But, in the Book Notes at the beginning, it’s mentioned that vegan substitutes for those types of items are intended. The delicious-looking Sopa Seca is made with broken angel hair pasta, chipotles in adobo, and vegan chicken stock. Some other dishes I want to try include the Warm Hearts of Palm Salad served with guacamole; the Artichoke and Chickpea Salad with Lemon and Cumin Vinaigrette; and Spanish Meatballs made with brown rice, bell peppers, oats, brown lentils, and chickpea flour. The recipe that got me cooking first, though, was Brazilian Slaw. This brought back a memory of a cooking class I attended taught by Susan Feniger. The title of that class was Inspired by Brazil, and one of the dishes was a Vegetable Salpicon or slaw. I still have the notes and recipes from that class (I keep the notes I receive from cooking classes filed away), and that slaw is the dish I remember most. Feniger’s version was topped with crispy shoestring potatoes, and the mix of vegetables was slightly different. The general concept was the same, and I couldn’t wait to try the version from this book. 
, and that was how this cabbage was meant to be used. This savory galette is made with a yeasted tart dough, filled with sauteed cabbage and mushrooms, and given a little kick with the horseradish sour cream sauce. I have to tell you about the dough first. It’s a lot like a pizza dough except that an egg is added. The dough was mixed and left to rise for about an hour, and that one, little egg made the dough very tender. It was less elastic than pizza dough when being shaped, and it was flakier than pizza crust once baked. This was a tart dough I’ll definitely use again.
For the filling, minced onion and sliced shitakes were sauteed in butter with thyme and dill. Then, the sliced cabbage was added with a little water, and the saute pan was covered while the cabbage cooked for about 15 minutes. The cover was removed, and the heat was raised to evaporate remaining moisture from the pan. Last, parsley, a chopped hard-boiled egg, and some sour cream were stirred into the vegetables. At this point, I transferred this mixture to a bowl and left it in the refrigerator for a few hours. I had also rolled out the dough into an oblong, rectangular-ish shape, placed it on a baking sheet, covered it with a kitchen towel, and placed that in the refrigerator as well. At dinner time, I assembled the tart while the oven warmed. The filling was placed on the tart dough leaving a border of a few inches. The border was folded up and over the filling and was brushed with melted butter. For a savory tart, I like to spinkle the top edges with sea salt. The tart baked for about 30 minutes while I made the horseradish sauce.
The recipe in the book suggests peeling and chopping fresh horseradish root and then partially pureeing it in a food processor with water. Then, it was to be drained and combined with the other ingredients in the sauce. I took a lazier approach and simply peeled the horseradish and grated it on a microplane into a bowl of sour cream. Then, I added chopped chives, salt and pepper, and white wine vinegar. You could also just use prepared horseradish and skip the added vinegar in the sauce, but I do like the bite of just-grated, fresh horseradish. The sauce was perfect with the cabbage and mushroom filling, and this hearty galette was perfect for fall.
This wasn’t a thick, gloupy kind of slaw since the vinegar and lemon juice thinned the mayonnaise a bit, but the dressing was still nicely creamy. The crunchy cabbage and sweet carrots with the spicy chiles and zing of the hot sauce in the dressing made for a lively and delicious slaw. It was a great side dish for our sausages, and it would partner well with just about anything off the grill.
To poach the chicken:
The slaw, then, was crunchy raw cabbage, jalapeño, and onion, sweet and concentrated roasted corn, oven roasted red and orange bell pepper, and lemon juice, champagne vinegar, and chopped cilantro. The combined ingredients sat in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, and came out bursting with varied flavors, colors, and textures. You can control the heat of the jalapeños by removing the seeds and membranes which I did because the sauce served with this meal was already hitting the upper level of our heat tolerance. That left the slaw as a welcome, cool, acidic, sweet, savory, fresh part of the light tex-mex meal.