Ok, let’s be honest right from the first paragraph here: I didn’t do the challenge exactly as John wrote it, but I think he’ll forgive me.

See, I’ve only done a bit of canning before, and it had been a while, so I didn’t really remember all the rules, other than the general food safety stuff. Since I wasn’t an experienced canner/food preserver, I was supposed to make one of three recipes: apple butter, bruschetta, or roasted tomatoes with garlic and basil.

But as you will see, I didn’t make any of those things.

A few weekends ago I got together with my friend Carole and did a bunch of canning with her. We canned corn and roasted tomatoes (with just oil and salt). I took home about a half dozen of the jars and have used most of them since.

Then, real life^tm attacked. Rich and I both have a lot of commitments outside the house in the coming months (starting, err, tomorrow!), to the point where there are some weeks we won’t be able to cook dinner at home at all. Well, not unless we want to be eating at 10 or 11pm! So I knew I had to start making some meals ahead that we could easily grab and reheat at home (or on the run). Suddenly making apple butter just didn’t fit into my schedule.

The last two weeks have been spent making a lot of different things: vegan chili, corn soup, squash/corn/chipotle soup, and several types of muffins. I started to can up some of the soup and quickly realized there was no where to store it.

Seriously, have you seen my cupboards? There isn’t room for a bunch of big jars of soup!

So instead, I tossed them all into my freezer. You can freeze jars of soup or chili, providing you let them cool completely before doing so (to help reduce ice crystal formation) and you leave an inch or two of space at the top of the jar, to allow for expansion (due to freezing). I have had tons of room in the freezer, so this plan worked really well.

The corn soup you see pictured above is a jae steele recipe, from her book Ripe From Around Here. The chili isn’t really much of a recipe: in a large pot, saute up one diced onion until softened, then toss in a few minced cloves of garlic. Cook for a few minutes, then add in a 19 oz can of kidney beans, black beans and two large cans of diced tomatoes. Dump in some chili powder, chopped chipotle peppers and cumin to taste. Add in corn (an entire jar in my case!) and stir everything super well to let the flavours meld. Cook for 20 minutes or so, then taste and adjust seasonings. Done.

The squash soup is based on a recipe from FatFree Vegan Kitchen. I’ve posted it with my modifications below, but the kudos go to Susan for the original idea! Oh and ignore the nutrition label on the jar in the picture… I really did make this soup, I just reused an old jar.

Butternut Squash, Sweet Potato and Corn Soup
Heavily inspired by Susan’s recipe at FatFree Vegan Kitchen

1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
2 teaspoons chipotle pepper sauce
3 cups butternut squash, chopped into 1-inch cubes
2 cups sweet potato, chopped into 1-inch cubes
5 cups vegetable broth
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
3/4 cup plain, unsweetened non-dairy milk (I used almond)
2 cups fresh corn kernels
freshly ground pepper
salt & pepper to taste

Saute the onion over medium heat in a large pot until browned, about 5 minutes or so. Add in the garlic and ginger and cook for another minute or two, then add in the chipotle, squash, sweet potato and broth. Lower your heat to medium-low and cook until both the squash and sweet potato are tender, 20-30 minutes. If you need to, add a bit of water to the pot periodically to make sure the liquid level remains the same.

Once your squash and sweet potato are cooked, add in the curry powder and non-dairy milk. Then, grab your trusty hand blender and puree the soup until smooth (be careful not to let it splash on you!). Add salt and pepper to taste, and a bit more curry powder and/or chipotle if you feel it needs the extra kick.

Last but never least, add in your corn kernels and cook until tender, about 3 minutes or so.

Eat!

I certainly had fun jarring up all that stuff, and I hope some of you who have never really tried prepping food ahead will try freezing or canning – it really is pretty easy and will make eating healthy meals a whole lot easier when you barely have time to think!

To check out more of what my fellow Daring Cooks did with this month’s challenge, just visit the Daring Kitchen.

I’d never actually made my own nut butter before, so this was a fun challenge. Since we were allowed to make any savory recipe with the nut butter, I decided to make almond butter and then use it to make the Raw Pad Thai recipe from Jae Steele‘s Ripe from Around Here, which I’d just purchased days before completing the challenge.

Making nut butter is pretty easy: Get out your food processor. Put in some nuts: about double the amount for the quantity of nut butter you need, so if you need half a cup of nut butter, put in a cup of nuts. Turn your food processor on and let it process the nuts for a few minutes, then stop, scrape the sides, and process for a few more. If after about 5 minutes you don’t have nut butter, add a neutral tasting oil in small amounts and continue to process until you do have the right consistency. Then, use immediately in whatever recipe you want. You can also add a bit of salt to your nut butter or roast the nuts before using them to give the end product more flavour.

I’ll be honest with the pad thai – I didn’t go 100% raw. I didn’t want to spend the money on a ton of raw ingredients (such as raw tamari) when I have good non-raw ones in the house. As well, I modified the recipe very slightly by adding in some beets, since we had some from our CSA that week.

The end result was amazing.

If you want to try making this yourself, go grab a copy of Ripe from Around Here, which I really recommend that you do. Yes, it’s a vegan cookbook with lots of raw and gluten-free recipes, but I really do think everyone will enjoy the recipes, even those of you who eat meat at every meal and aren’t really into vegan recipes.

If you want to see what the other Daring Cooks did with this month’s challenge, just check out the Daring Kitchen!

Things have been really busy in our household this month, and to top it all off, I ended up with a terrible cold last weekend (which Rich ended up catching a few days later, oops!). So making these was a bit rushed, and the post will have to be short and sweet.

The green chile sauce was simple, but it was a bit of a challenge to find tomatillos and Anaheim peppers. In the end, I found tomatillos at one of the Mexican/Latino markets in Kensington Market, but was not able to find Anaheim peppers. I ended up substituting jalapenos, and just used less of them, as jalapenos are actually hotter.

As you might have guessed, I converted the recipe to vegan by simply using vegetables in my filling instead of chicken. I chose red bell pepper, mushrooms and onions and seasoned them well with salt and black pepper. Then I tossed in a little Daiya ‘cheddar’ cheese to help hold everything together.

The tortillas were easy to make gluten-free – I just did corn tortillas as suggested! I was pleasantly surprised at how easy they were to make.

I ended up rolling my enchiladas instead of making stacks, as I just prefer them that way.

And the final product?

Yum! A totally delicious challenge and I do have some chile sauce left over, which I’ll be sure to use on something this coming weekend.

Want to make this yourself? You can find the recipes on the Fine Cooking Website. Most bags of masa harina have instructions on making corn tortillas on them, but a pretty good one is this one from Bob’s Red Mill. And as always, I recommend heading over to the Daring Kitchen to see what everyone else did with this recipe!

What is Brunswick Stew? Well, it’s a very thick, meaty stew (usually with at least some game meat, and often including bacon) popular in the southern United States. This is one challenge recipe I probably never would have made if I wasn’t a member of the Daring Cooks. Since the recipe is very meaty, it’s not something I’d really have thought of making to be honest! However, it did make for a fun challenge to try and veganize, so that’s what I did.

We were given two versions of the recipe to try. The first was the ‘long way’ and involved a lot of ingredients and making your own broth. The second version was a bit more simple, and seemed easier to make vegetarian, so that’s the one that I chose.

I replaced the meat in the recipe with mushrooms and tempeh. I marinated the tempeh with some liquid smoke, wheat-free tamari, a little garlic and some red miso. This was to give it a somewhat smokey flavour, to replace the flavour of the bacon in the original recipe. The mushrooms I used were a mixture of cremini and portobella, to further enhance the flavours of the dish.

Otherwise I made the recipe as written. I included all of the vegetables, herbs and spices and just replaced the meat with my mushrooms and tempeh. I also replaced the butter with vegetable oil.

And the result? Pretty tasty! I probably won’t make it again, as I have a number of really delicious vegan stews that I make over the cold winter months, but I have to admit it was fun to try this out! And as you can see in the picture below, my stew was indeed very thick – my spoon easily stood up in the middle.

I just wonder what folks from the southern US will think of my version.

If you’d like to make this yourself, just head on over to The Daring Kitchen and nab the recipe!

Risotto, huh? Risotto was actually the very first thing I ever posted to this blog. It’s something I make on a semi-regular basis, so to be honest, I didn’t find this challenge all that challenging. The only thing I’d never done before was make my own vegetable stock. Making vegetable stock is not difficult, it just takes a bit of time and patience.

Before making my stock, I read a whole bunch of posts online with various recipes for making it. Some roasted the vegetables before making the stock, some didn’t. Some included a lot of herbs and spices, some didn’t. I went with my own variation on the theme.

I started with a good sized red onion, a bunch of cloves of garlic (at least half a head, if not the whole thing), some baby-cut carrots I had left from another recipe, and several ribs of celery. Cut the celery and onion into chunks, but leave the garlic cloves whole. Put everything into a pan and lightly coat with some oil (I used safflower) and salt and pepper. Then roast at 375C for about 30 minutes.

After it’s roasted, put all the vegetables into a large pot. Cover with enough water to completely cover the vegetables; at least 6 cups. Add in a bay leaf, some thyme (fresh thyme sprigs would be best here, but I didn’t have any) and a few peppercorns. Turn on the heat to medium-high and bring the mixture to a simmer, then turn the heat to low and let simmer for an hour. Strain your stock right away with a fine-meshed strainer or even cheesecloth over a colander if need be. Taste the end product and if need be, add some salt and pepper. You should have at least 4 cups of stock, which you’ll need to make the risotto.

I then added some dried mushrooms into mine. These are dried oysters. Leave them to soak for 15-20 minutes, then remove the mushrooms and put aside for your risotto. They’ll leave behind some extra flavour in your vegetable stock. Take the stock and heat it lightly in a pan, so it’s still nice and warm when you need it for the risotto.

Then you make your risotto: Heat some oil in a pan, then add in some onion. The original recipe said to take out the onion after a few minutes and get rid of it, but I don’t see why you’d do that – just make sure it’s diced small and leave it in! I also added in some minced garlic at this stage. Once the onion and garlic are very lightly browned and soft, add in the risotto rice and stir to coat the rice in the oil/onion/garlic mixture. Continue stirring for a few minutes; you’re looking to lightly toast the rice.

Next, add in some wine. I used red wine as we don’t have any white in the house right now, but tons of bottles of red. Either is fine, as long as you like the flavour of the wine. Don’t use wine that is so-called ‘cooking quality’ – use something you’d be happy drinking! This is an important flavour component of your final dish, after all. If you don’t drink wine or avoid alcohol, you can use a bit of extra vegetable stock instead. Stir the rice to coat it with the wine (or stock). Once it’s fully absorbed, you’re ready to start adding in that lovely vegetable stock.

Cover the rice with an inch or so of your stock. Stir constantly until that is absorbed, then add in another inch of stock. Keep doing this until you’ve got just a little bit of stock left (half a cup or so). At this stage, add in whatever things you want to your risotto. I added lightly sauteed cremini mushrooms, those rehydrated (and chopped) oyster mushrooms from before, some chopped sundried tomatoes and some rosemary. Once you’re mixed in your ingredients, add in that last bit of stock. Once the stock is fully absorbed it should be ready to eat – nice and creamy but still with some bite, not mushy.

Serve piping hot. If you’re not eating vegan, you might want to add in some parm cheese right at the end.

For the full recipes, including more exact amounts of ingredients and several flavour combination ideas, just visit The Daring Kitchen!

The 2010 February Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

So mezze. I love small plates and I love mezze, even if the trend is getting a bit old at restaurants here in Toronto. But at home, I think it’s a great idea for a party. Unfortunately, we had no event to have a party for, so instead I just made this month’s challenge just because I could.

We were required to make pita bread from scratch, and hummus from the recipe Michele found. Other than that, we could make whatever else we wanted for our mezze table. I opted to go the slightly easy route: a gluten-free pita, hummus, and falafel (also gluten-free). Everything was already vegan, so I didn’t have to worry about that end of things.

The pita was the real challenge for me. The original recipe was of course filled with gluten, so I had to get creative and figure out how to make a good flatbread that would go well with hummus. I searched around for a recipe that caught my eye and found this one, which was apparently adapted from the book The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread by Bette Hagman. After playing with the ingredients a bit to make sure they were vegan and used what I could find the day I wanted to make my pita, I set out pouring my flours, mixing my dough, and, well, hoping! My pita turned out decent but not as good as they could have. It didn’t rise much, which isn’t a huge surprise, but I think next time I might add a bit more yeast to give it more rise. They also didn’t have pockets, which is also no surprise. Fresh out of the oven, it was a bit too chewy and dense, although it did have good flavour. The next day, it was actually better, which does not surprise me much, as I’ve found most gluten-free, vegan baked goods need to cool completely so their texture will ‘develop’. I think next time I might try some flax+water to replace some of the egg whites and maybe add some agar instead of just adding in extra xanthan to replace the gelatin.

Gluten-Free Pita – Adapted from Gluten-free Gastronaut
This recipe makes 9, 6-inch pitas.

Dry ingredients:
1/2 cup quinoa flour
1/4 cup sorghum flour
3/4 cup rice flour
1 1/4 cups tapioca starch
3 tablespoons almond meal
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 1/4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons xanthan gum
1 tablespoon egg replacer

Wet ingredients:
4 teaspoons dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon agave
3 tablespoons earth balance (vegan margarine)
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons hot water
egg replacer for 3 egg whites (depends on the brand, check your box)

Take 2 large cookie sheets and grease them well, or cover them with silicone baking mats. Set aside.

Mix your dry ingredients in a mixer with the paddle attachment. If you don’t have a mixer, you can do this by hand – just take a whisk and mix everything together really well.

Dissolve the yeast in warm water with the sugar. While your yeast is getting frothy, put the hot water in a small bowl and drop in the Earth Balance, stirring to make sure it melts.

Pour both the yeast mixture and the Earth Balance mixture into the bowl with your dry ingredients, and then turn your mixer to medium-high. Beat for 3 minutes. If you’re doing this by hand, just take a wooden spoon and mix well until everything seems blended. This will probably take a good 5 minutes – you need to give the xanthan gum time to do its thing.

Grease your hand with a little Earth Balance or plain tasting oil (such as canola or sunflower). Make balls of dough slightly larger than an egg and then pat them down onto your prepared pans. You want to end up with dough rounds that are about 6-inches in diameter and about a 1/4 inch thick. Keep going until all your dough is used up; you should get about 9 pitas. Leave the pans in a warm place to rise for an hour or so, until about 50% higher.

Preheat your oven to 500C. Once fully heated, bake your pitas for 5 minutes or so, watching carefully to make sure they do not burn.

For best taste, let them cool completely before eating, but they’re fine eaten right away if you like.

The hummus recipe was good, but I have to admit I prefer my own recipe. This one is very lemon-y.

Hummus – Recipe adapted from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
Prep Time: Hummus can be made in about 15 minutes once the beans are cooked. If you’re using dried beans you need to soak them overnight and then cook them the next day which takes about 90 minutes.

1.5 cups dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight (or substitute well drained canned chickpeas and omit the cooking) (10 ounces/301 grams)
2-2.5 lemons, juiced (3 ounces/89ml)
2-3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
a big pinch of salt
4 tablespoons tahini (sesame paste) OR use peanut butter or any other nut butter—feel free to experiment) (1.5 ounces/45 grams)
additional flavorings (optional) I would use about 1/3 cup or a few ounces to start, and add more to taste

Directions:
1. Drain and boil the soaked chickpeas in fresh water for about 1 ½ hours, or until tender. Drain, but reserve the cooking liquid.
2. Puree the beans in a food processor (or you can use a potato masher) adding the cooking water as needed until you have a smooth paste.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

And last, the falafel. It was easy to make these gluten-free by simply using chickpea flour instead of all-purpose. They turned out really great, although I do recommend having a large food processor to make it. Mine couldn’t keep up with all the dry ingredients it needed to chop. Also, I think next time I’ll half the amount of onion – this was too strong for me. But they were delicious otherwise, and not too difficult to make – try it some time!

Falafels - Recipe from Joan Nathan and Epicurious.com
Prep Time: Overnight for dry beans and 1 hour to make Falafels

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight OR use well canned drained chickpeas (7 ounces/100 grams)
1/2 large onion (roughly chopped, about 1 cup)
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped OR use a couple pinches of dried parsley (.2 ounces/5 grams)
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped OR use a couple pinches of dried cilantro (.2 ounces/5 grams)
1 teaspoon table salt (.1 ounce/5 grams)
1 teaspoon dried hot red peppers (cayenne) (.1 ounce/2 grams)
4 whole garlic cloves, peeled
1 teaspoon cumin (.1 ounce/2 grams)
1 teaspoon baking powder (.13 ounces/4 grams)
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour (1 ounce/24 grams) (you may need a bit extra) *** I used chickpea flour instead to make this gluten-free!
tasteless oil for frying (vegetable, canola, peanut, soybean, etc.), you will need enough so that the oil is three inches deep in whatever pan you are using for frying

Directions:
1. Put the chickpeas in a large bowl and add enough cold water to cover them by at least 2 inches. Let soak overnight, and then drain. Or use canned chickpeas, drained.
2. Place the drained, uncooked chickpeas and the onions in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the parsley, cilantro, salt, hot pepper, garlic, and cumin. Process until blended but not pureed. If you don’t have a food processor, then feel free to mash this up as smooth as possible by hand.
3. Sprinkle in the baking powder and 4 tablespoons of the flour, and pulse. You want to add enough bulgur or flour so that the dough forms a small ball and no longer sticks to your hands. Turn into a bowl and refrigerate, covered, for several hours.
4. Form the chickpea mixture into balls about the size of walnuts.
5. Heat 3 inches of oil to 375 degrees (190C) in a deep pot or wok and fry 1 ball to test. If it falls apart, add a little flour. Then fry about 6 balls at once for a few minutes on each side, or until golden brown.
6. Drain on paper towels.