Pumpkin muffin tops with pecans

Just when I thought I couldn't be any more free, I've had to eliminate soy, beans and legumes for the week. Egads! Although I enjoy the vegan and gluten-free challenge, soy was not something I wanted to do without.

My first day, Monday, was a bit painful. I mostly ate single foods, like cherries for a snack and boiled butterball potatoes (with olive oil, smoked sea salt and freshly ground pepper) for lunch. Not enough to fill my belly or satisfy my appetite. So of course I turned to baked goods.

The recipe calls these "pumpkin hermits," but I've never heard that term. As soon as I read the description and ingredients, I knew I had to make them-- and they're more like muffin tops than cookies.

Here are the substitutions you will need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour: 1 C of Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Baking Flour, plus 1/3 C each quinoa flour, coconut flour, and tapioca flour or potato starch, plus 1/4 tsp xanthan gum
  
  You could also use 2/3 C each of the single-source flours.
  
• 1/4 cup butter: 1/4 C soy-free Earth Balance
  
• 1 large egg: 1 Ener-G egg (follow package instructions and whisk til foamy)
  
  You could also try ground flax seed or mashed banana.
  

I left out the dried fruit and added about 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg. They turned out delicious and wonderfully spiced, great for breakfast, a snack or dessert!

Pad Thai Salad

One of my new year's resolutions is to make at least one recipe from every cookbook I own. Hopefully reading through and trying so many new recipes will inspire my cooking creativity and expand my go-to recipe repertoire.

Technically, this doesn't count because I've already made a dish from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's latest book, Appetite for Reduction. But I've barely had time to cook at all, and mostly been making my simple, recipe-less go-to meals (burgers and sweet potato fries, flavored mac & cheez, various pizzas, etc), and it was a full month ago that I pulled out the stops to make a lovely meal of TWO new recipes to impress my favorite dinner guest.

While the other dish was much more involved (I'll post that one separately) this was the favorite of the evening. It's straightforward but with bold, recognizably Thai flavors that really make for a stand-out salad. And I'm decidedly not a salad person, especially at home. Add rice noodles and baked, marinated tofu (or tempeh), and this would be a very satisfying meal. I will make this salad again, likely for esteemed guests or to take to a party.

Gretchen's Cuban bowl

Gretchen often asks me about recreating the Cuban bowl from Laughing Planet. The basic ingredients are brown rice, black beans, plantains, sweet potatoes and pico de gallo, and I always get the tempeh add-on. Usually when I make this at home it's because I have plantains that are about to go bad-- I like them sweet and so I wait til the last moment to use them up. They're not always available at my grocery store, either, so if I see them I usually buy them.

This particular incarnation got a fancy three-part treatment, a real work out for my sole non-stick frying pan. The first and second layers are straight forward: brown rice and fresh spinach. The next is tempeh that has been steamed, dredged in a little bit of egg-replacer slurry and then in seasoned (cumin, coriander, chile powder, chipotle powder, salt) store-bought gluten-free breadcrumbs, and fried.

On top of that we have fried sweet plantains, and then a layer of a quick sofrito (onions, garlic and bell peppers sauteed until soft and caramelized) and Trader Joe's incredibly handy canned Cuban-style black beans. Top with fresh cilantro, avocado, and your favorite salsa (I'm a sucker for anything with roasted tomatillo). Now that's a Cuban bowl!

Tempeh cutlets with creamy tomato-pepper spaghetti

One of my new year's resolutions is to make at least one recipe from every cookbook I own.

I bought American Vegan Kitchen for the appetizers-- namely the Spicy Balsamic Maple Wingz. Well I made that recipe; it was one of those ones where you have to make three other foundational recipes first, and the whole thing takes more than one day. It was delicious, but it was also the meal that sealed the deal-- Erik had a bad reaction to it and right afterwards we learned that he is gluten-intolerant.

I hadn't picked up the book since then, because everything seemed very seitan (and gluten) -centric. Looking for something that was easy to make substitutions on, the tempeh cutlets stood out. Only the flour (I used potato starch), soy sauce (wheat-free tamari) and pasta (quinoa-corn pasta) needed replacing. The recipe calls for a can of tomato sauce-- of course I had to make a big batch of my own, and I hadn't prepared beforehand by marinating the tempeh, so this meal took just over two hours to make.

Overall it was good, but I probably wouldn't use the recipe for the creamy tomato-pepper sauce again-- it's just sauteed peppers, soy milk, and tomato sauce. The tempeh cutlets were nice, but I ran out of red wine vinegar and used balsamic for the remainder, so they were sweeter than they should've been.

My interest in this book has revived, and I will definitely try de-glutening some of the other recipes.

Spicy soba noodles

One of my new year's resolutions is to make at least one recipe from every cookbook I own.

I can't say that I watched many cooking shows as a kid, but there weren't many on back then. In fact, the only one I remember is "Yan Can Cook." The star, Martin Yan, was so animated-- always moving, telling stories, making jokes, and turning out some really exotic (for the early 80s) cuisine. In fact, the show started the year I was born, so I really did grown up with it.

One day a couple of years ago, Martin Yan came to the cafeteria at my place of work and signed copies of his most recent cookbook. There was a little bit of snow, which is a big deal for Portland, so no one was around. I bought the book, had it signed, and posed for a photo with him. It's a terrible photo-- I was having a really bad hair day-- so I'm not going to post it here, but the cookbook has been more sentimental than utilitarian... until last week.

I needed a super-quick dinner, but stir-fry can be so boring. Searching for inspiration, I saw the unusual combination of sauce ingredients in the "Spicy soba noodles" recipe: soy sauce (use gluten-free tamari!), sweet chili sauce, lemon juice, fresh ginger, and turmeric. Intriguing!

Although I used rice noodles, stir-fried a number of vegetables-- Chinese cabbage, asparagus, carrots, onions, garlic-- and tempeh, and served the dish hot, the sauce really shines through. Erik loved it and had the leftovers for two lunches in a row. I will definitely make this again and look to Martin Yan for more new twists on classic meals.