You are what you eat

Quick vegetarian meals, part one

This post is in response to a friend who asked for some fifteen-minute vegetarian recipes. I laughed and said, "Well, maybe 30-minute recipes ..." and she replied that even that would be helpful.

I was a vegetarian for nine or ten years, and believe me, it was no hardship (except, as my friend pointed out, in restaurants, which can be a problem in that you always end up having a pasta dish or the meatless pizza or some such). At the time I didn't object to soy-based meat substitutes, but today I'd balk at that, so I'm not going to include these in my menus or recipes.

Most vegetarians depend on legumes for much of their protein. I love beans, lentils, and split peas, and I relied on them for many of our meal plans. During my vegetarian years, I didn't have a pressure cooker, which was foolish of me. A pressure cooker makes fast work of dried beans, even if they're unsoaked.

But let's start at the beginning. (I want to state right here that my friend probably knows all this, and I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who hasn't stopped to consider these points.) I'm a believer in meal planning, and I plan meals covering one to two weeks. This simplifies grocery shopping, I never have to wonder "what's for dinner," and I don't rely on those nasty processed foods. I have all the ingredients I need to make dinner on a given night. It also ensures variety and gives me the advantage of being organized, so that I know I have to soak beans on Tuesday night for Wednesday's dinner. I'm not rigid about this stuff, but having a general plan works great for me.

So, the first thing to do is to plan your meals around your schedule. A busy day followed by an evening of work or social obligations is not the time for an elaborate dinner. Save that for weekends or whenever you have the luxury of time.

Second, I can't emphasize enough how much a pressure cooker can help. I can whip up split-pea soup in under half an hour, including chopping the veggies. In the smaller of my two pressure cookers, I make risottos whose taste cannot be differentiated from the time-consuming stove-top, constant-stirring-required version. Dried beans are cooked through very quickly compared to the hours of simmering they otherwise require, and they're far superior to canned beans (cooked dried garbanzo beans, in fact, seem like an entirely different vegetable from the canned variety). Vegetable broth is done in a matter of minutes.

The slow cooker (crock-pot) is also extremely valuable, especially for the working person. I had forgotten this handy tool until one summer when I had so much to do out in the garden that I never felt like cooking at the end of the day. Putting dinner in the slow cooker before noon meant that we were guaranteed a decent meal after the busiest (and grimiest!) of days. And it doesn't heat up the kitchen much, either. Among other conveniences, the crock-pot cooks previously soaked dried beans overnight so that they're ready for the next day's meal.

Next, let's consider the meal itself. Your meal should include protein, so if you're having, say, spaghetti with marinara sauce, it's a good idea not only to sprinkle your pasta with parmesan, but also to have a side salad that incorporates feta and chickpeas, or whatever cheese and bean varieties you like. To simplify putting a balanced meal together, it's helpful to have the following on hand:

• Washed salad greens. Either buy pre-washed salad greens, or wash the greens, spin them dry in a salad spinner, lay them on paper towels, roll them up in the toweling, and put them in a plastic bag. Don't add juicy veggies like tomatoes and cucumbers until you put the actual salad together, as they will cause wilting and sogginess.
• Cooked dried beans, or canned beans. These can be added to salads and pasta (and pasta salads!) and soups and casseroles ... you get the idea. Having a bean salad in the fridge is even better; use two or three kinds of beans for variety, throw in some scallions, tomato, bell pepper, sliced black olives, celery, or whatever, and toss with a vinaigrette, and you've got lunch or a dish to round out a dinner. Add cooked pasta for a great main dish salad.
• Hummus, if you like it. Spread it on a pita, topped with some fresh veggies and/or sprouts and some good yogurt, and you've got an instant lunch.
• Cheeses that you like. These can be shredded into salads, rice, pita sandwiches, quesadillas (I'll get to that), refried beans, vegetarian chili, etc. to complete the protein in a meal.
• Hard-cooked eggs. These add protein to a tossed salad, fit well in many pasta salads, and are good to eat out of hand or as deviled eggs. I love egg salad, which can be used to stuff a tomato as well as serving as a sandwich filling.
• Tofu, if you like it. I don't, but I wish I did. It can be used in all manner of dishes, including salads, soups, stir-fries, breakfast eggs or shakes, etc.
• Better Than Bouillon, vegetarian or mushroom type. This is somewhat expensive, but even a little really strengthens the taste of soups and stews. You can also make a good mushroom gravy using fresh mushrooms and the Bouillon.

Of course, I never had all these things on hand at all times, but having some of them, at least, does make things easier when time is at a premium.

Other things to consider:

• When you cook dried beans, cook more than you'll need, and freeze the rest in some of the cooking liquid for another recipe down the line. Toss cooked beans into salads, rice dishes, pasta, soup, etc. for a protein boost.

• Cook more rice than you need for a recipe, and plan to use it as fried rice in the next day or two (more on this to come).

• Freeze leftover soup, or dishes like lasagna or eggplant parmesan, in amounts suitable for lunch or for another dinner. The freezer is your friend!

• Make veggie stock when you have time and freeze it in amounts you're likely to use for your favorite recipes.

• Think about how to use one recipe two ways. For example, leftover vegetarian chili is great as a burrito filling (just simmer the excess liquid away) or even an omelet filling.

Neither of the above lists exhausts the possibilities, of course, but it should give you some ideas about planning, using ingredients efficiently, and so on.

Next up, I'll post some ideas and recipes for quick meals.

Roast leg of lamb with herbal mustard coating (plus what to do with leftovers)

Jim and my son-in-law, Seth, share a birthday, and usually on a weekend near the date, we have a celebratory dinner. After James and I found a boneless leg of lamb at Costco, the dinner menu started to take shape.

We ended up with ginger-butternut soup, leg of lamb with mustard coating, potatoes Anna, and a mixed-greens salad tossed with fresh oranges and walnuts, dressed with a citrus-walnut vinaigrette. For dessert, Guinness cake and vanilla ice cream.

I'd never roasted a leg of lamb, so I consulted a couple of cookbooks. Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking included a recipe for the herbed mustard coating. The roast came out moist and delicious. You'll want to coat the lamb a few hours ahead of time so that it picks up more flavor.

Gigot a la Moutarde

1/2 cup Dijon-style prepared mustard
2 T. soy sauce
1 clove finely minced garlic
1 tsp. ground dried rosemary
1/4 tsp. powdered ginger
2 T. olive oil

Whisk all the ingredients together until it becomes mayonnaise-esque. Spread the mixture over the lamb and refrigerate until you're ready to roast it. Our roast was in a mesh bag (to keep it together sans bones), but we just spread the coating right over the string.

Roast the lamb in a 325-degree oven, allowing the internal temperature to rise to about 160 degrees for medium doneness. That should take 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, but check the temp with an instant-read thermometer at 2 1/2 hours. You'll want a bit of pinkness remaining in the center for the best taste and tenderness. If you like your lamb rare, figure on a couple of hours or so, and roast until the center temperature is 140 degrees.

Be sure to deglaze the pan with a little beef broth, hot water, or wine; defat and strain it, and spoon over sliced lamb. Save and refrigerate any juices that you don't actually eat; they'll come in handy with leftover lamb.

We had lots of leftovers, so the next day we made a version of gyros. The real thing is made from uncooked ground lamb combined with herbs and spices and baked meatloaf-style or, more authentically, roasted on a spit. We simply used thinly sliced lamb (Jim sliced it with an electric knife to get the thinnest possible slices), re-heated it gently, and stuffed slices into pita halves, topping the lamb with tzatziki sauce, feta cheese, chopped onion, and chopped tomato.

Tzatziki sauce

8 ounces plain yogurt (we like Stoneyfield Farm whole-milk yogurt)
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
Pinch kosher salt
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 1/2 tsp. olive oil
1 teaspoons red wine vinegar
3 or 4 mint leaves, finely minced

Simply mix all the ingredients together and spoon generously over lamb-stuffed pita. Top with crumbled feta, chopped onion, and chopped tomato.

We still had leftover lamb, so I made shepherd's pie. And that finished it off! I simply ground up the cooked lamb in the food processor and didn't really measure the amount, but it was probably around 3 cups or so. (You can, of course, make shepherd's pie using beef.) I like to mash my potatoes with plenty of butter. In a pinch, I've been known to use Potato Buds, but don't tell anybody!

Shepherd's pie

cooked lamb
1 large clove garlic
1 onion
1 tsp. dried rosemary, crumbled
4 T. butter
2 T. flour
3/4 cup lamb juices and/or beef broth
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
4 potatoes, cooked and mashed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Place roughly chopped cooked lamb, garlic, onion, and rosemary in food processor and chop till fairly fine. Melt the butter in a skillet; add flour and cook until smooth and blended. Add juices and/or broth; stir and cook until thickened, at least five minutes. Add the lamb mixture and salt and pepper to taste. Blend well and place in a 1 1/2 quart casserole. Spread the mashed potatoes on top, making sure they're spread to the rim of the casserole. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the meat is bubbling hot and the potatoes are somewhat browned.

Deciding what's for dinner, and making it work

I wonder how many people who read this are like me when it comes to making dinner plans. Sometimes I've made a menu plan for a week and I've shopped accordingly and stuck to the plan. And sometimes it's a matter of using what's available in the fridge and pantry, or of using fresh ingredients before they spoil.

Yesterday I thought about the sweet potatoes I'd planned to use a week ago and didn't. Sweet potatoes aren't like white potatoes in terms of storage: they're more delicate than they look. Rough treatment or prolonged storage take a toll on them.

I waste more food than I like to admit to, and one of my New Year's resolutions is to be better about that, particularly when it comes to fresh vegetables (which I'm trying not to buy in the first place, for the most part, due to my commitment to eating locally). So I wanted to use those sweet potatoes.

In a vegetarian crockpot cookbook I found a recipe for a stew incorporating sweet potatoes. Alas, I was missing some ingredients, like canned cannelini beans. But I did have dried lima beans on hand. I had no collard greens, but I did have spinach--I'd bought a big container of it, thinking of both salad and sauteed spinach. I had no canned tomatoes, but this is never a problem as I have pounds and pounds of tomatoes in my freezer. I didn't even have the amount of sweet potatoes called for, but I did have white potatoes to make up the difference.

I had to cook the lima beans first, so I got out my smaller pressure cooker. I was in the kitchen intermittently anyway, having decided to bake bread. The pressure cooker did its thing while I ran the stand mixer to knead the bread dough (basic whole wheat). I rinsed and drained the beans after the pressure came down, then refrigerated them.

The spouse wanted to go out to lunch, so I decided to put everything in the slow cooker before we left. I chopped and sauteed onion, pepper, and garlic, defrosted tomatoes and chopped them, and added all the ingredients to the slow cooker. I refrigerated the bread dough after its first rising. Off we went.

To my dismay, upon my return (after running errands and such following lunch), I found that I'd forgotten to plug in the slow cooker! Not the first time that's happened, alas. I had to transfer everything to a pot on the stove after all. I got the bread dough out to let it come to room temperature. It had risen quite a bit even though refrigerated. I chopped the spinach and added it to the stew. Hubby went off to a township meeting. It was going to be one of those nights when dinner was fashionably late.

I proofed the bread in the loaf pan and preheated the oven. The dough rose nicely and achieved some spring when I put it into the hot oven.

We took our bowls of stew and slices of freshly baked bread downstairs to watch the New Hampshire primary returns. Everything tasted wonderful despite the stops and starts of its making. Sometimes you just have to make do--with ingredients and with timing. Sometimes "making do" results in serendipitously good food.

Here's the recipe for the stew as I adapted it from the original recipe.

White Bean and Sweet Potato Stew with Spinach

1 T. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
1 small green pepper (or half of a large one),
        chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 medium potato, cut into 1-inch chunks
1 tsp. peeled minced fresh ginger
1 lb. tomatoes, peeled and chopped, OR
        1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes, with juice
3 cups cooked dried lima beans, or other white bean,
        OR 2 cans (15.5 oz.) white beans, rinsed and drained
pinch of cinnamon
1/2 tsp. (or more to taste) ground cumin
2 bay leaves
3 cups chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chopped spinach

Heat the oil in a large skillet; saute the onion, pepper, and garlic until softened. Transfer to a slow cooker. Add all other ingredients except the spinach. Cover and cook on low for 4 to 6 hours.

About fifteen minutes before serving time, stir in the chopped spinach. Cook until the spinach is somewhat wilted but still bright green. Adjust seasonings and serve.

If you want to do it on the stove instead of in a slow cooker, simply saute the onions, pepper, and garlic in a soup pot and add the other ingredients. Cook for about 45 minutes, or until the veggies are tender. Add the spinach as above and serve.

When it's too hot to cook ... What's for dinner?

Wouldn't you know it, our air conditioner broke down right before the recent heat wave here in Michigan. And when it's in the 90's in Michigan, it's humid as well. The thought of operating even the range under such conditions--use of the oven was right out--was repulsive.

We'd already done our cheese/fruit/bread/olives/wine dinner; we'd grilled and had a tossed salad and bread to go with the seared animal flesh; we considered pasta salad, but the thought of all that steam being created in an already hot, humid environment defeated that idea.

It's a good thing there are other ways to avoid the stove and still have an excellent meal.

One menu that works well is a Middle Eastern one that includes tabouli (also known as tabouleh or tabbouleh), a cucumber-yogurt salad, and black olives; pita wedges and hummus would make this a more substantial meal and add protein. Tabouli is made with bulgur wheat, a grain that has been parboiled, dried, and (usually) de-branned. The parboiling means that soaking, not cooking, will soften the grain and make it edible. You can find bulgur wheat at many supermarkets these days, certainly at Whole Foods and health food stores.

American versions of tabouli often reverse the ration of grain to finely chopped parsley, particularly the tabouli mix that comes in a box at the supermarket. Middle Eastern tabouli has as much or more parsley as it does bulgur. It may or may not also contain mint and other herbs and spices.

I make a very basic tabouli using parsley, bulgur, scallions, tomatoes, lemon juice, and olive oil. I sometimes add cucumber and/or black olives (the deli kind), but since I was serving those on the side, I left them out this time. The final product may be eaten using the inner leaves of Romaine lettuce as scoops, but we usually just use forks. The recipe is adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's in World of the East Vegetarian Cooking.

Tabouli

3/4 cup bulgur
2 tomatoes, seeded and diced fairly small
4 T. finely minced scallions
2 cups very finely chopped parsley
3 T. lemon juice
1 tsp. salt
2 T. olive oil

Soak the bulgur in 4 cups of water for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, chop the other ingredients. When the bulgur is done soaking, line a sieve or colander with a clean, lint-free kitchen towel and pour the bulgur and soaking liquid into it. Draw the towel together so it closes around the bulgur and squeeze as much water out of the bulgur as possible. Empty the bulgur into a bowl.

Add the chopped ingredients, the lemon juice, salt, and olive oil. Taste and adjust the seasonings, adding more salt and/or lemon juice if necessary. The salad should be pleasingly tart.

Yogurt and cucumber salad

I've seen versions of this in both Middle Eastern and Indian cookbooks. This salad is very refreshing on a hot day. Traditional versions use twice as much yogurt as I do, so feel free to up the amount of yogurt if the idea appeals to you. You can use cucumber alone, or finely chop other vegetables and add them to the salad. I had a lot of radishes and scallions on hand, so I minced them and tossed them in.

If the cucumber is very seedy, cut it in half and use a spoon to scoop out most of the seeds before dicing it.

My favorite yogurt at the moment is Stoneyfield Farms whole-milk yogurt, but any plain yogurt, including no-fat, works fine.

1 large cucumber, small dice
1 cup plain yogurt
2 to 4 scallions, minced
2 or 3 radishes, minced
1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste
2 to 3 T. minced fresh mint

Combine all the ingredients and serve.

Wasn't that a party!

As many of my friends can testify, I have long fantasized about giving a really elegant, classy Christmas party: groaning buffet table all laid out, candles burning, soft music in the background, an atmosphere of warmth and ease, no evidence of the cooking itself to be seen.

The reality is always different.

I never get all the food on the table before people arrive; in fact, usually I still have dishes to prepare by the time the first guests show up. So I'm frantically busy in the kitchen, and the upshot of that is that people hang around the island in the kitchen talking to me and each other as I'm busy sauteeing, stirring, chopping, and slicing.

And this year we also had a 14-foot ladder in the great room, right in front of the huge Christmas tree bare of ornaments but sporting a lovely display of lights. I had hoped to get the tree decorated before party day, but alas ... So it turned into a tree-trimming party.

For various reasons, several people needed to arrive earlier than the scheduled time of 7 p.m. By 5:30 the party was in full swing, even though the buffet table was practically empty.

Ah well. None of that really mattered. As long as the host provides plenty of food and drink, success is virtually assured. And so it was last night. I kept bringing out dishes, and they kept eating. Several bottles of champagne also helped the Christmas spirit along.

Here is the menu for last night's gathering, with links to recipes where appropriate:

champagne punch
gingery pickled vegetables
mixed herbed olives with diced fresh mozzarella
toasted pecan and walnut pate
mushroom pate
wild Alaskan smoked salmon (purchased at the supermarket)
baguette slices, both toasted and untoasted, and crackers
phyllo appetizers (purchased from GFS Marketplace)
tomato soup accompanied by grated fresh parmesan and oyster crackers
couscous and orange salad
lentil salad with feta and mint

The desserts were provided by others. Kim brought a luscious, rum-soaked bundt cake; my son-in-law provided a tray of Middle Eastern pastries and unbelievably rich homemade chocolate brownies (with a secret ingredient that turned out to be chipotle peppers!); and Cindy brought an assortment of Christmas cookies. All were enthusiastically received and joyfully savored. What a great son-in-law, what terrific friends!

A (Non-Vegetarian!) Thanksgiving Feast

Updated: now includes the missing vegetable dishes left out of original post.

Yes, it's true: I abandon my vegetarian principles at Thanksgiving. While I usually don't eat turkey or gravy at the dinner itself (after smelling it for hours and cooking, cooking, cooking, I feel full already), I do eat turkey sandwiches for the next day or so. Purists may feel superior if they so desire, but I've always said that if vegetarianism ever felt like a sacrifice to me, I wouldn't be a vegetarian. I'm just no good at sacrifice!

The first time I hosted Thanksgiving dinner after becoming an imperfect vegetarian, my nephew was very nervous. Before the occasion, he said to me, "I've heard a terrible rumor ..." and I laughed and said, "Don't worry, I'm cooking a turkey." He was quite relieved, as I'm sure everyone else in the family was. I admire those who serve a vegetarian meal to their guests on this day. For me, well, I aim to please, and I know that my guests would be horribly disappointed if I didn't serve turkey.

We live in a rural area, at least an hour's drive for all our guests and nearly two hours away for some. We're very grateful that they continue to make the trip, and we hope the meal--along with the gathering of family--is some compensation. This year everyone exclaimed over how beautiful the drive was; we'd had snow the night before, and the snowy branches, white fields, and blue sky made for some lovely scenery.

Two years ago we roasted one turkey and barbecued the other, and last year we roasted one and deep-fried the other (to wild acclaim, I might add, but what to do with the gallons and gallons of leftover, used peanut oil??). This year we just roasted both turkeys, 14-pounders. With about 20 people sitting down to dinner, two turkeys of that size guarantee sufficient leftovers to send home with people and to provide us--ourselves, our daughter and son-in-law, and our son--with turkey sandwiches for a day or so.

I tried a slightly different method of roasting the turkey this year, along with a new recipe that allows mashed potatoes to be made ahead of time and a different version of cranberry sauce. Two other people brought delicious vegetable dishes (including roasted brussels sprouts and a broccoli-and-cauliflower dish), another brought a bountiful salad, and another provided dessert. I highly recommend allowing other people to contribute to the meal! What with those contributions, making the potatoes and cranberry sauce ahead, and just warming the mashed potatoes in the crockpot, I was free to do other things in a somewhat more relaxed fashion. I set up an appetizer-and-drinks table and set the main dining table before people arrived, a major accomplishment for me!

I don't include my stuffing recipe here, as stuffing is a highly individualized matter. If I get the veggie recipes from the other cooks, I'll post them here, as they were exceptional, particularly the roasted brussel sprouts.

What a lovely day we had. There's not much better than sharing a meal with people you love.

Roast Turkey

Roast turkey on a vegetarian site??

Well, I make an exception at Thanksgiving, since my husband and I cook the traditional feast every year. This is part of the Thanksgiving menu.

There's a lot of advice out there on roasting the perfect turkey. My daughter had told me about the Alton Brown method of roasting turkey, and it sounded good to me.

The method is simple. Clean out the turkey, removing the neck, giblets, etc. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. I like to put the turkey neck in some water and/or chicken broth (left over from making the stuffing) and simmer it while the turkey roasts. Then I use it for making the gravy.

Place the turkey in a roasting pan and spoon in the stuffing. Tie legs together if necessary (our turkeys came with a metal doohickey that kept the legs together). Rub the turkey with olive oil (I just pour some on and use my fingers to spread it around). Put the turkey in the oven and roast for a half hour at 500 degrees.

Then turn down the oven to 325 degrees (Alton Brown says 350, but we went a bit lower, to good effect). I opened the oven door just a bit so the oven would cool a little faster. At this point, Brown places a triangular piece of foil over the breast, pointy end toward the legs. I forgot to do this, however, and waited until much later in the cooking process. It came out fine--beautifully and evenly browned--but you might want to try it his way.

I did not baste the turkey at all. Alton Brown says that this really doesn't do anything for the turkey, and all that opening of the oven means the turkey takes longer to cook. Also, when it comes time to de-fat the juices for making gravy, there's much less fat this way. The turkey was juicy and delicious, and I will never baste a turkey again!

The turkey should sit for 15 to 20 minutes before you carve it. You can pop other things into the oven and make the gravy during this time.

We always deglaze the roasting pan, adding water to it as it sits over a burner and stirring the browned bits up. After we've deglazed, we pour the juices through a strainer into a large, deep skillet. I add the broth from the turkey necks and a little water until it tastes right, not too strong but deeply and beautifully flavored. Add salt and pepper to taste, and some dried thyme (start with a quarter-teaspoon and taste, adding more if you wish). We use arrowroot or cornstarch, not flour, to thicken the gravy, blending a couple of heaping teaspoons with just a little water and adding carefully, keeping an eye on how it's thickening.

James does the carving and then, in a final flurry of activity, it's all done and another Thanksgiving feast is ready to be devoured.

Make-Ahead Mashed Potatoes

(Part of the Thanksgiving menu.)

There are several versions of this floating around on the web. I found this one at All Recipes.

I use an old-fashioned ricer on the cooked potatoes and then mash them. But on this occasion, I forgot to mash first and added the other ingredients before mashing. The texture wasn't what I wanted, and I thought, Uh-oh, this isn't gonna turn out. However, after the potatoes heated up in the crockpot, they turned out just fine, very yummy, in fact.

You can bake these right after you put the recipe together, or you can store them for a couple of days in the fridge, take them out a half hour before you want to pop them in the oven, and then bake. Or, if you need the oven space, as I did, put them in a crockpot about three hours or so before serving time, start them out on the high setting, and then turn to low after the potatoes have begun to heat.

I doubled this recipe for 20 people and had quite a bit more than I needed (I'll be making shepherd's pie for sure).

5 lbs. russet or Yukon Gold potatoes, cut up
2  3-oz. packages cream cheese
8 oz. sour cream
1/2 cup milk (may need more)
2 tsp. salt
pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, if you plan to bake these right away.

Put the potatoes in a large pot of water, bring to a boil, and cook until tender. Drain well, and mash. (A hand mixer will not work for this; a food processor will turn the potatoes to glue if you're not extremely careful.)

Mix the mashed potatoes with the cream cheese, sour cream, milk, salt, and pepper. Transfer to a large casserole, if you're baking these right away. Cover and bake for 50 minutes.

If you're not baking them right away, store in the refrigerator until you need them. See my note above on using them after storing.

Cranberry Fruit Conserve

(Part of the Thanksgiving menu.)

This came from The Barefoot Contessa, and I think it's a delectable version of cranberry sauce. I omitted the walnuts and raisins. Actually, I intended to add the walnuts to half the conserve, but in the last-minute rush to get dinner on the table, I forgot! And I'm not crazy about raisins.

1  12-oz. bag fresh cranberries
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
1 orange, zest grated and juiced
1 lemon, zest grated and juiced
3/4 cups raisins
3/4 cup chpped walnuts or pecans

Cook the cranberries, sugar, and water in a saucepan over low heat for 5 minutes, or until the skins pop open. Add the apple, zests, and juices; cook 15 minutes longer. Remove from the heat and add raisins and nuts. Let cool, then chill. (It thickens as it chills.)

Chinese Vegetable Soup, Fried Rice, and Chinese-Style Broccoli

Chinese Vegetable Soup

This is from Mollie Katzen's wonderful Still Life with Menu Cookbook. I recommend it if you are looking for good meatless or low-cal dishes. This particular soup is fat-free unless you use the tiny amount of sesame oil for drizzling on top.

The first 6 ingredients are simmered to make stock. While that's simmering you can clean and prepare the vegetables. If you can't get the dried black mushrooms, try to get shiitake; if you can't get those, do without or use more fresh mushrooms. The flavor won't be quite the same, but the soup will still be good.

1 large onion, chopped
6 to 8 large cloves garlic, peeled and halved
2 oz. dried Chinese black mushrooms
4 or 5 thin slices of fresh ginger
7 C. water
1 1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste
12 fresh mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 8-oz. can sliced water chestnuts
2 T. soy sauce
4 to 6 stalks bok choy, stems and leaves chopped separately
1/2 lb. firm tofu, cut in small cubes
1 C. fresh or frozen peas
1/3 lb. fresh or frozen snow peas
4 scallions, minced--keep whites and greens separate
small amounts of rice vinegar and sesame oil for drizzling on top (opt.

Combine onion, garlic, black mushrooms, ginger, water, and salt in a soup pot or Dutch oven. Bring to a boil, partially cover, and let simmer for about 45 minutes. Strain the broth and discard the solids, then return the broth to the pot.

Add fresh mushrooms, water chestnuts, soy sauce, bok choy stems, and tofu. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer partially covered for about 10 more minutes.

Heat gently 10 or 15 minutes before serving time. When the soup gets hot, add chopped bok choy leaves, peas, snow peas, and scallion whites. Simmer another 5 minutes, then serve. Top each bowlful with finely minced scallion greens and, if desired, a light drizzle of rice vinegar and/or sesame oil

Basic Vegetable Fried Rice

For this dish you need leftover chilled rice, so if you don't have any lying around, you may want to make the rice the night before or early in the day and then chill. This is a necessary step or the rice grains will not separate properly. I used brown rice, but you can use plain white rice. I don't recommend converted rice for this dish--it doesn't fry right.

You can use whatever vegetables you like in the rice, cut into small pieces, including greens like spinach or kale. I used much more soy sauce than the recipe calls for, so be sure to adjust to your taste. I also used a tad more ginger and garlic. The peanut oil and sesame oil really add flavor, but you can make do with other vegetable oil if need be.

Recipe makes 4 or 5 generous servings; you can easily halve it.

1 C. carrots, diced
1 C. zucchini, diced
1 C. mushrooms, chopped
1/2 to 1 C. frozen peas
3/4 C. celery, diced
3/4 C. onion, diced
1 T. peanut oil
1 T. minced fresh ginger
1 T. mince garlic
4-5 C. cooked rice
1 tsp. sesame oil
1 1/2 T. soy sauce
salt to taste
sliced scallions
toasted sesame seeds

Blanch the carrots, zucchini, celery, and zucchini in boiling salted water; cool; drain well and set aside. Saute the onions in peanut oil over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes. Add the ginger and garlic and saute for another minute or two. Add mushrooms; turn the heat up, as mushrooms lose a lot of liquid and you don't want the vegetables steamed, but sauteed.

Add the blanched veggies to the pan and saute for 2 minutes. Add frozen peas. Add the rice to the pan and sprinkle with sesame oil and soy sauce. Mix the rice and vegetables, breaking up the rice with your spoon to separate the grains. Allow to brown a bit to develop flavor. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds and scallions, if desired, and serve.

Chinese-Style Broccoli

1 lb. fresh broccoli
1 1/2 tsp. slivered garlic
1 1/2 tsp. minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 tsp. peanut oil
1 1/2 tsp. cornstarch
1 1/2 tsp. water
1 T. (or more) soy sauce
salt to taste
1/4 tsp. sesame oil
1/2 tsp. sugar

Trim off the woody stems of the broccoli. Peel the stems, split lengthwise, and slice diagonally into bite-size pieces. Break or cut the broccoli tops into bite-sized florets and set aside.

Saute the garlic and ginger in peanut oil over medium-high heat for about 30 seconds or until they barely begin to brown (do not burn the garlic--it will become bitter). Add broccoli and saute another minute. Combine cornstarch with water and set aside. Add remaining ingredients, cover, and cook for about 5 minutes or until broccoli is bright green and just tender. Stir the cornstarch mixture once more and then stir it into the pan to thicken the sauce. Season to taste and serve.