So, despite unseasonal heat lasting through last week, this weekend Colorado Springs is turning towards what I consider true fall temperatures: highs in the 50s, lows in the 30s, with fluctuations up and down. So I started contemplating favorite dishes for this time of year, from slow cooker stews, to hot soups, to heavy baked dishes.
But I paused, and made myself reconsider, because it’s now been a few years since my wife went vegetarian (no meat at all, though cheese and other dairy is fine) and most of my go-to recipes are still meat based. Now, she doesn’t mind me making a meat centric dish for myself while she does her own thing, but I’d still like to make some fall dishes for both of us!
So I’ve started looking at options where meat isn’t intrinsic to the cooking of the dish, and/or can be made and served aside, on top, or as an addition after the primary cooking. The target is primary/main dishes, rather than sides, ideally for two hearty servings, but leftovers are rarely an issue as long as they are good for a few days in the fridge.
Right now, I’ve secured an updated baked mac and cheese dish for this weekend (rainy, highs in the mid 50s) which I’ll update with some roasted capsicums to both of our delights, but before I dig up more from unknown persons on the web, figured the board has more than enough foodies and cooks to share their successes!
My family likes my butternut squash soup. Filling and satisfying on a fall evening.
Cut a couple good sized squash in half and clean out the seeds. (You can clean off the pulp and roast them if you like. Toss with oil and salt and spices. Or discard. Up to you.) Put them cut side down on an oiled pan and roast at about 350F/170C for an hour. At the same time, peel and halve a medium onion and a couple cloves of garlic, wrap in foil, and toss in the oven to roast as well.
When the squash are very soft, remove from oven and scoop the flesh out of the skins and toss in a blender along with the onion and garlic. Depending on the size of your blender, you might need to do this in batches. Add some liquid — I use coconut milk and vegetable stock — plus salt and spices per your preference. I like curry powder plus some extra cumin and a dash of cinnamon. Puree until very smooth.
Transfer to stock pot and bring to simmer. Taste and season again. Cook for another 15-20 minutes, then add a small splash of lemon juice, a few sprigs of cilantro chopped well, and a healthy handful of pomegranate seeds.
Meat optional: saute a bit of chopped bacon or crumbled sausage and throw it at the end for anyone who feels like it’s not dinner unless there’s meat. But if you don’t, you won’t miss it.
Serve with thick slices of toasted baguette or other favorite bread.
I’d agree with chili. I have my recipe, which calls for cooked ground beef, but if I didn’t include beef, it would be just as good. Diced tomatoes, red kidney beans (yeah, I like them in chili), tomato paste, chopped green pepper, chopped onion, maybe a chopped habanero if you want some real zip (or you can sub red pepper flakes), chili powder, oregano, maybe some garlic. That’s it. Slow cooker on Low for 6-8 hours; or shorten that to 4-6 by doing the first two hours on High, the rest on Low.
If you want to “fill it out” a little more, my ex—in the week she decided to be vegetarian—used tofu as a substitute for beef. It was a little weird, but it strangely worked. Note that she chopped up the tofu cubes; it wasn’t like there were 1" squares of tofu. It just blended in.
My wife’s favorite fall/winter meal is split pea soup. Easy to make at home and easy to prepare with meat or without. We keep kosher, so no pork fat, but Hebrew National hot dogs cut up and grilled. The good thing about that is that one of you can have it with and the other without.
2 carrots
2 sticks celery
Olive Oil for sauteing
1 large can dark kidney beans (19 oz)
1 large can white kidney beans (19 oz)
2 cans butter beans (2 x 16 oz)
3 quarts broth (i use chicken, but i first had it with vegetable broth)
1 can diced tomatoes
Sun-dried tomatoes paste if available
Fresh basil
1 pound pasta (i like barilla campanelle)
I bunch chard
Heat the broth in a separate pot (i start from frozen broth, this might not be needed if you have room temp broth.)
Clean the chard and separate the stems from the leaves. Chop the stems and cut the leaves into large squares.
Peel the carrots and chop the carrots and celery.
Saute the chard stems, carrots, and celery in a little olive oil until soft.
Add the broth and the beans to the pot.
Drain the tomatoes and add to pot. Look at the remaining tomato juice from the can. Either drink or, or throw it into the pot, too.
Add the tomato paste. I use a small squirt from a tube. Maybe a tablespoon? Half a tablespoon?
Bring to a boil.
Add pasta, chard leaves, and basil. Cook until the pasta is done to your liking.
It’s a terrific soup. If you put the leftovers in the fridge, the pasta will suck up all the broth and you get stew for leftovers. I like it better as stew, but my family prefers the soup. So i have lunch for the rest of the week when i make this.
How about a nice lentil soup? I won’t post a specific recipe, since there are a million variations.
Or speaking of lentils, one of my favorite all-time vegetarian (or vegan, if you sub vegetable oil for the niter kibbeh) dishes is Misir Wat (Ethiopian spiced red lentils). It’s more of a side dish, but with another side of say, greens, and some type of flatbread (Ethiopian injera is difficult to find or make) it would make a fine vegetarian meal. The Daring Gourmet has a great Misir Wat recipe, as well as being a good resource for several other Ethiopian recipes:
Yeah, we have a few soup options, like my de-chickened (or post chickened) Southwestern Red Pepper soup. Using a (veggie in this case) stock base, roast 2-3 red bell peppers and a few hot and sweet peppers along with one yellow onion. Peel the peppers, and blend finely. Add to broth base, along with the juice of 2-3 large limes. Dice one small jicama (or half a larger one), salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with fresh cilantro, cotija crumbles, and serve with warmed tortillas or other sides. In my case, I’d add some seared chicken, and originally we used my homemade chicken stocks and broths, but that’s an easy sub.
But I’m liking a leek and potato soup as well, a little more backbone as it were when it’s colder.
Oh, and my wife is a fine baker, a side effect of our weight loss goals years ago where to save empty calories, we promises we’d only have bread we bakes ourselves… which did slow down the ease of such, but the quality was good enough that it was almost counterproductive!
As for chili, that’ll probably be a non-starter for me due to personal tastes, I spent most of my early life in NM, so chili is all about green chili and pork, so bean-based chili’s (with or without beef) are like unto an abomination.
But it and the other bean suggestions remind me that I haven’t made Boston Baked Beans (sans bacon in this case) via crockpot or pressure cooker in a long time. And that’s worth revisiting!
Well, I’m making chevre scalloped potatoes right now, which to me is a main dish.
We just harvested the food garden for the last time, so what is fondly known in our house as rat 'n rice is next – ratatouille over rice. My rat is is a stew of eggplant, tomato, bell pepper, basil, onions, garlic. I put tofu in it – tofu is a natural with anything tomato based – just blends in and you hardly notice it.
Also a stir fry with winter vegetables like parsnips, carrots, turnips, with tempeh or tofu (Tempeh is the ‘meatier’ option). Need a spicy sauce for this.
Lentil walnut loaf is a winter rotation entree for us. Easy and satisfying. Bake it along with potatoes and sweet potatoes and serve with a kale salad.
In general, learning to make meals without meat involves more prep (cooking beans for example) and more chopping of vegetables. More thinking about spices, sauces, and umami. Meat has the convenience, since the prep (slaughter, butcher, and packaging the cuts) is done for you.
Seriously though, it’s not that big a deal, but if I’m going to slow cook or pressure cook beans I’d prefer the Boston Baked beans, as something I already like (with a good crusty bread and side salad) rather than try to play mind-games with myself, a nasty, suspicious judgmental person, don’t ya know?
My preferred meat substitute (if I’m bothering, again I’m still happy to eat it as an add-on) is mushrooms. Love the damn things, sadly they’ve been increasing in price at a rate above the normal food inflation AFAICT. A marinated, roasted portabella on a bun is a wonderful sandwich in it’s own right, even if it isn’t the same thing as a burger.
A side issue is that while I enjoy eggs in a number of dishes, my wife doesn’t - not based on her food choices, but how they taste to her. She seems a bit sensitive to the sulfur elements.
Our favorite vegetarian, or vegetarian adjacent, recipe is a variation on Giada De Laurentiis’ Chili Verde’ recipe.
Of course, I do it a little differently, but I stick pretty close.
It’s also pretty great with the addition of some pork.
Hmmm. I had to do a search since the link didn’t take me right there, but ingredient-wise that’s pretty close to the posole recipe I use. I think that could work quite well. Although I’d use the 25lbs of roasted medium-hot Pueblo chiles I secured and froze in batches. Because life is too short to eat crappy canned chili unless nothing else is left!
Another vote for meatless chili. My still vegan but not as much as she used to be stepdaughter is staying with us while she’s between apartments. Last week I threw a bunch of fake meat burgers (gardein brand) on the grill and still had a few left over when the temperature dropped over the weekend. I made a batch of chili my usual way except for browning hamburger at the beginning. Instead I chopped up the leftover fakeburgers and tossed them in about fifteen minutes before dinner. I have NOT had good luck with the fake meat crumbles if I try to use them as a sub for hamburger meat - they tend to turn to mush during cooking. The chopped up patties, on the other hand, seemed to hold up pretty well.
I do a much lazier version, but that’s not what I’m here to post about. Just a suggestion: if you make squash soup thick enough, it makes a fine pasta sauce. So, roast yourself a few meatballs in the oven, and you have a veg pasta which adapts as a meat dish as well. Cheese goes fine on top. Something we do often. Also, the soup/sauce freezes well.
j
Oh, go on then. De-seed the squash, cut into chunks (no need to peel), start it roasting in oil, roughly chop up an onion, add it 20 minutes in, chop up the garlic, add that a further 20 minutes in. It’s done when the squash and onion just starts to blacken. Tip it all into veg stock, add chilli powder, boil 20 mins (until soft), liquidize, add salt and pepper to taste.
