Fresh garden broccoli stir-fry over quinoa pasta

It seems like just yesterday I bought teeny tiny broccoli plugs for 25 cents each from a farmers market vendor. They looked so small and helpless I couldn't believe they'd survive the rabbits and other predators of tender young plants. The first week I bought four plants, and they did so well in the garden that the next week I bought four more. All have survived and grown huge and one has just yielded a large head of broccoli. It may be just a broccoli plant to you, but to me it was a gardening milestone. The broccoli got planted. The broccoli survived. The broccoli will be eaten by me and not the rabbits! I was practically hysterical with glee. I couldn't decide if I should do something simple or fancy with this ultra-fresh vegetable but decided I really wanted to focus on tasting, not disguising, the broccoli. I made a simple but delicious stir fry with artichoke hearts and lemon zest adding a special punch. Since I have lemon thyme and chives growing in the garden, I added some of those herbs, too.

The Ancient Harvest quinoa spaghetti that we used is gluten-free, and although we're not intolerant of gluten, this noodle has become a favorite of ours. The noodles are bright yellow and have a very good texture and taste. I think the only thing in the dish that wasn't gluten-free was my husband's home-made seitan sausage, and that could easily be substituted with cashews, mushrooms or beans.

 Ingredient list

• broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces
• garlic, minced fine
• vegan sausage or substitute a gluten-free item
• artichoke hearts
• shredded carrot
• Quinoa pasta
• lemon zest
• lemon thyme
• chives
• fresh ground black pepper
• crushed red pepper

First, I steamed the broccoli gently in a covered wok until almost tender. Then I removed the cover and added some oil to the wok, and added finely minced garlic to cook for a minute. Thin slices of homemade seitan sausage were stir-fried in, then artichoke hearts, shredded carrot, lemon zest and lemon thyme. The cooked veggies were placed on top of quinoa spaghetti, and crushed red pepper, fresh ground black pepper and chives were added.

Garden tour (of our garden) on July 20.

Dill © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Basil  © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

This has been eaten. © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Three kinds of lettuce.  © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

One of the tomato plants. © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Tumbling Tom.  © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Swiss chard. © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Asian lily. © 2009 Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Benja Krayatip Rice with greens, tomatoes and cashews

One of my husband's graduate students from China gave him a gift of a muslin bag filled with many different colors of rice. It came with a folder, mostly in Thai, with a English description of the rice, cooking instructions and a note that the rice was recommended for "diabetic people, weight control people and aged people." With a description like that, how could I lose? The bag contained Thai brown glutinous rice, Thai hom mali rice, Thai brown hom mali rice, Kam Doi Muzer rice, red hom mali rice and hom kurlap rice. Much to my surprise, when I googled the name Benja Krayatip rice, I found information about how the rice is grown. Here is what I found:

THAI ROYAL PROJECT

Queen Sirikat promotes and directs the production of Benja Krayatip Rice on a Model Farm in Baan Yang Noi, Khuengnai District, Ubon Ratchathani Province, Thailand.

Benja Krayatip Rice

Benja Krayatip Rice is a perfect mix of 6 Thai rices. Grown under the auspices of the Thai Royal Family, in rice fields maintained according to strict Royal standards, this special blend of rice is selected, grown and harvested in the greenest possible way. Only natural pesticides ( a solution of marigold and black sugar cane) are used and in the actual planting process only the power of the water buffalo hand plow and strength of native farmers is used. No machinery of any kind is used in or near the rice paddy fields. The rice is then harvested by hand so no rice is damaged, and subsequently sorted using a computer camera laser method. This ensures that only the perfect rice grains are selected packed and shipped.

With this Royal project, the goal of the Royal family is to ensure that the rice is grown in the “greenest” possible way, minimizing the chances of contamination from oil-based machinery and using only “natural” pesticides. Lastly, in keeping with their ecological approach to farming, the rice is “fair – traded”.


So, apparently this is no ordinary rice. One of my sons said he has seen similar rice in Asian grocery stores, and if you can find it, I highly recommend it. This bag was purchased in the Beijing airport. I was going to label this post, "leftover rice," because that's what it was, but after uncovering this information, I decided to upgrade the title. I cooked the rice in my rice cooker and it cooked up perfectly and tasted delicious. I had a lot leftover so I used it in a stir fry the next day. For this stir fry, I kept the ingredients separate as I cooked them. Along with the rice I used beet greens and cippolini onion from our CSA, tomatoes from our garden and raw cashews.

Wedding weekend

Well I've been totally wiped out after a packed four-day weekend trip to Philadelphia to attend a niece's wedding extravaganza. Haven't even READ any blog posts since before we left on our trip, let alone write one. I prescheduled something to post last Saturday and even completely forgot I had done that but, after two intense days back at work that just added to the exhaustion, I'm home today and starting to feel somewhat normal again. So, here's the "condensed" version of the weekend.

Tempeh reuben from French Meadow Bakery

Last Friday, I dressed at 6:30 a.m. (in Wisconsin) in the outfit I planned to wear at the rehearsal dinner some 12 hours later in Pennsylvania. And I discovered that if you wear a long skirt for air travel, you will get patted down at security. Good thing I didn't tape a soy yogurt to my leg. We changed planes in Minneapolis and headed to our favorite pit stop, French Meadow Bakery Café, for an early lunch. I've posted about this before and it's still a great airport find. I had a bowl of vegan chili that was too much to finish. It was a bit too heavy on tomatoes and light on beans but still tasty and filling. It came with two slices of sourdough bread. Ken ordered a grilled tempeh reuben. After 20 minutes he went to check on it, and twenty minutes later went to cancel it and get his money back. This was an airport—we had a plane to catch. This brought the manager out and she got the sandwich, packaged it to go and gave him a refund! (French Meadow has two airport locations. The main, full-service restaurant (packaged food also available) is at the end of the main shopping area just before entering concourse C. There is also a small satellite shop with packaged food and beverages at a different location.)

When we arrived in Philadelphia, we picked up the most garish red rental car I've ever seen and headed to Lai Lai Garden restaurant in Blue Bell. An indication of the festivities to come, the rehearsal dinner had 90 guests! I first want to say I had plenty to eat—was, in fact, obscenely stuffed and loved my dinner—but since I'm writing about vegan stuff here, there are a few things I'd like to point out. When the appetizers came, the non-vegetarians (NVs) received plates with a large egg roll, a large spare rib and a third thing. It may have been a fried shrimp—can't really remember. We vegans (Vs) received a plate with three small steamed dumplings. Okay, ours was probably much healthier, but theirs was much BIGGER. Quality and quantity are different things altogether, but still. They had three DIFFERENT things. Why didn't they get a dumpling? Why didn't we get some other interesting vegetable thing to go with our dumplings?

We Vs were then given a choice of three entrées. We could have tofu and veggies, string beans or a third thing that I can't remember. (I do seem to have a problem with third things.) We all chose the tofu.

Their food (only some of it!)

Then the NV entrées started coming. There was a giant lazy susan in the middle of our very large table and it was soon filled with meat, chicken and seafood dishes. More and more kept coming until the turntable was packed to capacity. And still more dishes came. The Vs were each brought a plate with tofu and veggies. It was really good, and I couldn't finish it, but it's the principle of the thing I'm pointing out. Is it assumed that NVs should be provided with an extreme assortment of food and Vs are limited to only one thing? I also wonder why NVs are unable to have vegetarian dishes along with their meat. None of this is meant to be a reflection on our hosts, just on the general state of food consumption in the US.

The wedding the next night was very beautiful and very big. There were 270 guests, making this the biggest wedding I've ever attended. The bride was beautiful and the groom dashing. Everything was in good taste, especially the food. After the ceremony, we had a cocktail hour with lots of interesting dishes. I'm sorry to say I was so involved in eating that I completely forgot to photograph anything so a description will have to suffice. I visited the pasta bar first and received a plate of perfectly cooked pasta on which I chose to add a chunky tomato sauce. There was all sorts of non-veg stuff to add for the so- inclined, but I was happy to find a bottomless bowl of black olives and another of a finely chopped kohlrabi salad. After that I headed to the bruschetta station where all sorts of spreads (including hummus) were stacked up. There was a vat of artichoke salad, a gorgeous roasted red pepper salad and who knows what else. Roaming the room, the Vs found plenty of delicious food to eat, as did the NVs. A cosmo from the bar, artichokes and olives and I was happy.

When we finally started dinner around 10:30, I wasn't all that hungry, but managed to eat my baby greens and a good portion of my —guess what?—tofu and vegetables. Good thing I never get tired of tofu and veggies. It was delicious. I wish I had some now.

The great band stopped playing at 12:30 a.m. and we made our way back to the hotel room (we stayed at the wedding hotel for the night of the wedding.) by about 1 a.m., and crashed.

Pumpernickel bagel, roasted asparagus, marinated mushrooms, salad.

The next morning we attended a brunch at the hotel. You wouldn't think we could eat any more, but we did. The brunch was a revelation. I never got past the salad with ginger vinaigrette, marinated mushrooms, balsamic roasted asparagus, bagels and fruit, but the room was laden with every imaginable breakfast food an NV could dream about. And Vs could find plenty to be happy about, too, unless they were looking for protein! I wish I had photographed the long table filled with gorgeous NV pastries.

Bagel, salad, hash browns, fruit.

We are originally from Philadelphia, and still have family and friends in the area, so in between wedding events we visited with relatives and friends, trying to make the most of the short amount of time. It was wonderful to be with my family, my husband's family and old friends. I wish it could be like this all the time. It was exhausting but worth it.

Oh, and did I mention that our oldest son, daughter-in-law and their fabulously amazing baby were there from Seattle?

cabbage with tapenade

I was just about to write that I seemed to be binging on stir-fries when I realized that "binge" and "stir-fry" don't really belong in the same sentence. Binge on ice cream, binge on chocolate, binge on linzer cookies...but stir-fry? So, I'm on a stir-fry kick, streak, obsession...or maybe it's a stir-fry rut. I've been making stir-fries for days because they're so fast, only use a wok and maybe another pot to boil or steam a grain. Easy, easy, easy. And endlessly versatile, allowing me to use whatever I find in the pantry. I posted the first one, the second was made in ten minutes and eaten while watching American Idol before I could photograph it. (Yes, I admit to being hooked on AI) The third was the weirdest but best tasting of all. I've gotten really fond of adding prunes to the wok so I added those, and while looking for interesting ingredients among my husband's almost empty jars of things, I found green olive tapenade and black olive spread. (One of these days, Ricki, I'll make the actual tagine instead of just borrowing parts of it.)

I started with thin slices of tofu, since it was leftover from the past few nights, and stir-fried it with leftover bun salad sauce (strained of solids and stored in a glass jar) and a spoonful of sucanot. I shredded hard green cabbage with my santoku and stirred it in with two chopped green onions from the garden, dried tomatoes from last summer, the aforementioned cut-in-half prunes, a few sliced mushrooms and some thinly sliced baby carrots. With everything still crispy, I added the two olive spreads. I served it over thin rice noodles. This tasted delicious, even heated at work the next day for lunch.

Rice noodles taste really good are are fast to make. I put on a pot of water when I first started to cook and by the time the veggies were crisp-tender, the water was boiling. Pop the noodles into the pot and WATCH CAREFULLY, testing every 30 seconds or so for doneness. Don't turn your back as these noodles go from perfect to goo in a very short time. Drain them and add to the wok to soak up the sauce. Now, I promise not to write up any more stir fries.

Stir-fry on the fly

Tonight was a normal cooking night for me which means no recipes to use or write, no solid plans, no clear idea what's in the refrigerator. I don't usually blog about my cooking when I can't present a recipe, but might as well blab on since I've already started. A look in the fridge revealed broccoli and bok choy. Bok choy is so easy to stir fry so of course I chose that. There was tofu, which I haven't had for a while. I thinly sliced some tofu and started sizzling it in the wok and started a pot of water boiling for soba. There was a container of leftover garlicky tamari-based sauce that we had made for bun salad so I tossed some of that on the tofu. There was leftover tomato paste so I added some of that with a little water. Threw in a couple of mushrooms. There was a recipe on Ricki's blog recently that had prunes and olives, and although I didn't have olives, I had a bag of prunes. I added a handful of prunes, cut in half, and also a handful of cashews, which I tend to add to everything. I cut up the bok choy and added that. By now the water was boiling and I cooked the soba and then added it to the wok. It looked pretty good so I photographed it and here it is on my plate. Delicious. Fast. Easy.

Now, about those prunes. I read a while ago that prunes are high in calcium and may help build bones in women. It takes 7 to 10 prunes a day, which is a little beyond my capacity, but it seemed like a good idea to add them to my diet. Why not? They taste good and it can't hurt to add calcium. My husband does the food shopping and he keeps buying the prunes, not noticing if I've eaten any or not... so we usually have them in the house. I haven't been using them in cooking, but tonight could be the start. They really did taste great.

Baby broccoli

I really miss Seattle. While it wasn't particularly warm, and it rained a lot, at least it was clearly spring. The cherry trees were in full bloom and daffodils and other beautiful flowers were everywhere. Here in Madison, there is still snow on the ground, although I did spy some snow drops (the flowering variety) in the back yard. I must be thinking of spring because when I grabbed my lunch from the refrigerator this morning, I thought I saw a package of asparagus in there. I have a wonderful recipe for asparagus cooked with balsamic vinegar that I make every year to celebrate the coming of spring. It seemed a bit premature to be eating asparagus, but I was willing.

By the time I got home, took the dog outside and did a bunch of chores, it was 7 p.m. I spent 15 minutes looking for my recipe before finally finding it. I went to get the asparagus and discovered it was actually a package of baby broccoli. Disappointed but unwilling to shift gears, I was ready to cook whatever with the asparagus recipe. There was also a package of small red, yellow and orange peppers so I cooked them too. Well, I'm not going to write the recipe here because it wasn't a particularly good way to prepare broccoli, and the recipe deserves asparagus. And I burned the cashews, which look kind of like grubs, don't you think? In my opinion the flavors didn't work well together and the vegetable wasn't tender enough - I think it needed to be steamed before being stir fried. The peppers tasted great, though. My son ate the leftovers the next day and thought they were good, but I'm holding out for asparagus.

Fried rice

No recipe tonight - just a photo of the fried rice I made for supper. It was just a simple stir fry with lots of baby broccoli, carrots, yellow and orange peppers, onion, mushrooms and leftover rice. I seasoned it with a spice mixture from Penzeys called Bangkok Blend, and tamari. Even when I don't think I have enough energy left to make dinner, something as simple as this still beats some over-seasoned convenience food. Yeah.