A week from today my girlfriend is moving to town. She’s vegetarian and I’m not, and despite the fact that I’m not a meat-a-holic, it seems that most of my ‘nice’ cooking involves meat of some sort. I’d like to cook meals for her, but don’t have a repertoire of vegetarian dishes. Help me out, dopers! What are your favorite vegetarian things to cook?
(she does eat eggs and dairy).
Last night’s dinner:
1 potato, diced
2 carrots, sliced
1 broccoli crown, chopped (I would have used cauliflower, but it was $3.99 a head and broccoli was on sale)
half a white onion, chopped
handful of unsalted cashews
1 bottle Thai yellow curry sauce from Trader Joe’s
Throw everything in a skillet and simmer. That’s it! Serve with rice, or just eat it as is, like I did. The curry sauce contains a small amount of dairy (whey), but no fish like many Thai sauces have. Next time I make this, I want to try adding Trader Joe’s Chicken-Less Strips.
I prefer Morningstar Farms frozen chicken strip “Meal Starters” to TJ’s chicken-less strips any day of the week.
This with a nice bottle of red wine and maybe some cheese as a starter. I like to roast all of the veggies on the grill when the weather is nice. Dependent on getting decent quality veggies, so it’s a great recipe to keep in mind when cruising the farmer’s markets and such.
**Tanzanian Spinach and Peanut Curry
**
2 lbs spinach, either fresh washed and chopped or frozen chopped, thawed and squeezed dry
1 tomato, deskinned and chopped (or double the recipe and use a can of diced 'maters)
1 onion, chopped
2 Tablespoons (or more to taste) peanut butter. Yes, the natural kind is best, but the processed stuff will work, too.
1 cup coconut milk
2 tsp curry powder or paste
3 Tablespoons butter or ghee (This is super easy to make vegan by substituting coconut oil and adding a little extra pinch of salt)
1 tsp salt
Stir the peanut butter into the coconut milk and set aside. Melt the butter or ghee in a large sautee pan over medium heat. Cook the onion, tomato, salt and curry powder/paste about 5 minutes, or until the onions are soft, but not brown. Add the spinach and heat until the spinach is cooked/warmed through. Add the peanutty milk and stir gently. Simmer on low for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally so the stuff doesn’t stick.
I love it served over jasmine rice, with a fistful of naan to sop up every last drip of awesomeness.
A nice risotto is fancy enough for anybody in my book, and comes out pretty well with vegetable stock as long as you use the requisite tons of butter.
Make whatever you’d normally make, only cook your meat on the side and add it to the dish separately. Try to jack up the protein for her by adding veg sources of proteins. Remember that whole grains + plant source foods = protein. So beans + rice = protein.
Have you tried asking her what some of her favorite dishes are?
Other tried and true veggie classics:
•Almost all Italian dishes are awesome without the meat. You can go as simple as spaghetti with marinara sauce to veggie lasagna, baked ziti, eggplant parmigiana, etc.
•Pizza/Calzones/Stromboli. Easy to do veggie.
•Almost all Asian food is awesome without the meat. Stir fry, curry, sweet n sour, sweet n spicy…
•There’s always Mac n Cheese (homemade = better) with a nice salad and side of steamed broccoli.
•Veggie Chili and dang near any soup: veggie, broccoli cheese, mushroom barley, potato leek… I could list soups all day.
•Most Mexican food is just as delightful using refried or black beans as a substitute for chicken or ground beef. You could do taco night! Or burritos. Chile rellenos. Quesadillas.
• Greek food is also easy to do veggie: stuffed grape leaves, spanokopita, hummus & pitas…
Noodles with peanut sauce and tofu
Minestrone
Cuban black bean soup
Lasagne
This is nice enough for company but super-easy - I’ve posted it before in these threads.
Enough acorn squash for one half for each person
Black beans, either canned or previously cooked
Yogurt
Salsa, or we like just chopped chiles in adobo sauce
Cut your squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Put cut side down in microwave and cook for 12 minutes. Turn over carefully (it’s hot!) and cook another two minutes or until done.
Mix beans with salsa or chiles and heat up if necessary.
Dump beans into squash, top with yogurt.
Super-easy and very tasty. Also looks gorgeous.
I don’t have a copy myself, but I’ve heard The Moosewood Cookbook (and its various sequels) be pretty highly recommended, for future meal planning. My mom has a copy, and I’ve looked it over - it looks like it has some nice meals in there.
The one in the link is the “new” version - my mom has the original that came out years ago.
There are tons of great vegetarian Indian dishes. Check out this link for Cook’s Illustrated recipes for vegetable curry (follow the links at the bottom of the article). You have to register to view the recipes, but it’s free… and worth it because the curry is great.