Tag Archives: vegan

Vegan, GF 担担面: Mala Sichuan Sesame Noodles

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Since I was a little kid, 担担面 (dan dan noodles) have been a staple when my family orders at Chinese restaurants. The first time I went back to visit Chengdu, my hometown, I’d beg my mom to let me eat them every day. My flavor of choice for most Chinese foods is 麻辣 (mala), the quintessential numb-spicy taste ubiquitous in Sichuan cuisine. In major cities in Sichuan (such as Chongqing, where most of my family lives), dan dan mian is street food, served for 15RMB and scarfed down as a quick lunch on a workday. Despite originating in Sichuan, most dan dan main variations in the rest of the world tend towards a sweet peanut sauce. If you’re looking for that variation, you’re in the wrong place. I like my dan dan mian with a formidable mala kick.

Something else that Chinese food is known for is including gluten and meat in everything. Even veggie dishes are often cooked in animal stock or lard, resulting in a fattier, richer umami taste. Dan dan mian is typically not gluten-free because it contains soy sauce and noodles. In this recipe, we swap out soy sauce for coconut aminos, and wheat noodles for buckwheat noodles, both of which are great gluten-free substitutes. The minced topping in dan dan mian is made from minced mushroom instead!

Ingredients (serves 2)

Minced Mushroom Topping:

  • 蘑菇 100g mushrooms, minced*
  • 姜 1 tbsp ginger, minced
  • 胡椒 2 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns, ground**
  • 辣椒 2 dried chili peppers, ground**
  • 椰子酱油 3 tbsp coconut aminos
  • 醋 1 tbsp vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar)
  • 芽菜 2 tbsp preserved vegetable**

Sesame Sauce:

  • 芝麻酱 2 tbsp tahini
  • 芝麻油 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 辣油 1 tbsp chili oil

Other:

  • 荞麦面条 100g buckwheat noodles
  • 小白菜 2 baby bok choy bundles
  • 香葱 1 tbsp thinly sliced scallions

Directions:

  1. In a food processor, grind the ginger, peppercorns, and chili peppers. I like to roughly chop the ginger before putting it in the food processor.
  2. In a pan that can handle high heat (a wok works best, but stainless steel worked great in my case), heat a copious amount of oil with a high smoke point (I used avocado oil) until it’s hot. What we’re trying to replicate is the hot flash cooking method typically used with a wok. You’ll want to use a generous amount of oil so the mushrooms are properly fried.
  3. Add the mixture of spices from the food processor and let them sizzle until you can smell the aroma (about a minute).
  4. Add the minced mushrooms and cook for about two minutes. The oil should coat the mushrooms.
  5. Add the preserved vegetable, along with soy sauce, chili oil, and vinegar, tweaking the ratio of the three by tasting and adding a splash more of whatever you feel is missing.
  6. For the sesame sauce, mix the tahini, sesame oil, and chili oil in small bowl, adjusting the ratio of the three until it fits your liking. I like my sauce a little runnier, so I also mixed in a few tablespoons of water until the consistency was right.
  7. For the noodles, bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the noodles and the boy choy leaves and turn the heat down to medium, cooking for 5 minutes. Drain the water.
  8. Portion out the noodles and bok choy into two bowls. Pour the sauce over the noodles, add as much of the minced topping as you’d like, and garnish with scallions. Toss immediately to prevent the noodles from drying out and clumping together, and enjoy!

Notes:
* Shiitake mushrooms have worked best for me.
** Amazon sells 芽菜 (preserved vegetable), dried chilis, and Sichuan peppercorns, but these ingredients can also be purchased at most Asian supermarkets.
*** The key to all cooking is to continuously test as you go along! This is definitely true for both the mince and the sauce.

Gado Gado with Spicy Almond Sauce

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About a month ago, I happened upon this delicious hole-in-the-wall Indonesian restaurant in LA called Borneo Kalimantan Cuisine. I tried gado gado for the first time, which is one of Indonesia’s five national dishes. It’s essentially a light stir-fry served with peanut sauce, and I loved the depth of the dish–namely, the delicious sauce accompanying it. I had tons of veggies in my fridge that I wanted to use before they went bad, so stir-fry seemed like the perfect option to make use of everything. My favorite thing about this recipe is how customizable it is; it’s a solid way to use up veggies that you don’t want to throw out, but that you may not find another dish to incorporate into.

This recipe is gluten-free, paleo, keto, and can be made vegan (see modifications below).

Ingredients:

Stir Fry:

  • 3 tsp avocado oil
  • 6 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1 small nub of ginger, minced
  • 2 medium red onions, diced
  • 2 cups shredded chicken breast
  • 2 medium bell peppers, sliced
  • 2 cups of green beans
  • 3 stalks of celery, sliced long
  • 3 tsp chili sauce
  • 4 tbsp coconut aminos

Sauce (whisk all of these ingredients together):

  • 1/4 cup nut butter (I used almond butter)
  • juice from 1 lemon or lime wedge
  • 1 tbsp coconut aminos
  • 1 tsp sriracha hot sauce
  • 1/2 tsp coconut sugar

Garnish (optional):

  • Lemon or lime wedge
  • Fresh cilantro
  • Fried shallots
  • Crushed peanuts

Directions:

  1. In a large pan, heat the avocado oil on high heat, and saute the garlic, ginger, and onions. This helps create some nice aromatics for the rest of the ingredients.
  2. Add shredded chicken breast, then remove these two from heat and set aside.
  3. Add the rest of your vegetables, tossing and sauteing frequently to make sure everything is cooked through.
  4. After about 5 minutes of cooking, reincorporate the chicken mixture that you set aside earlier.
  5. Add the coconut aminos and hot sauce to the pan, stirring to combine everything. Keep tasting, salting, and adding coconut aminos and hot sauce little by little to get the flavor you want!
  6. Serve over rice, drizzling a few spoonfuls of the spicy peanut sauce over the dish, and garnishing with some fresh cilantro, fried shallots, and crushed peanuts.

Modifications:

  • To make this dish vegan, simply omit the chicken. Tofu also works if you still want some protein in the dish.
  • You can essentially use any vegetables that would work well in a stir-fry; ones that have lower water content and cook quickly. I would suggest: bean sprouts, cabbage, or bok choy

Charred Shishito Peppers (GF, Vegan, Paleo)

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Some days I feel painfully lazy when it comes to cooking dinner. Though I usually see the kitchen as as place of solace, and my time to relax, there are evenings where I’m either working late, or want to do something else, which prompts me to look for a quick, easy recipe.

Shishito peppers are incredibly versatile, and there are so many ways they can be prepared. The form that most people will be familiar with encountering them in is also their simplest–charred, salted, and a bit deflated. A common way to serve shishito peppers at Japanese restaurants is to lightly dress them in soy sauce, but they taste just as delicious when the soy sauce is swapped out for its gluten-free replacement, coconut aminos. Shishito peppers can be found at Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Asian supermarkets, and they are relatively affordable.

With this method of cooking shishito peppers, you can leave the peppers on the pan while you’re reading a book, working away, or watching TV. If your pan’s sounds are within earshot, you’ll hear a satisfying pop from the peppers are they char and deflate, which is exactly what you want to achieve that blistered, smoky texture.

Beautifully blistered peppers

Ingredients:

  • Shishito peppers (I emptied a whole bag from Trader Joe’s into my skillet)
  • Coconut aminos
  • Apple Cider Vinegar
  • Coconut sugar
  • Olive Oil
  • Coarse sea salt (I swear by Maldon)

Directions

  1. Drizzle the pan with olive oil, and heat it over medium heat. I recommend using a cast iron skillet for these peppers, as it tends to flavor and cook the peppers more thoroughly due to cast iron’s heat retention capabilities.
  2. Once the oil is hot, but not yet smoking, add the peppers to the pan. Make sure they are spread evenly, with each pepper making some contact with the surface of the pan. The trick here is to refrain from touching the peppers until they are ready to be turned.
  3. The peppers will cook slowly, and will expand, pop, steam, and deflate. Once they begin doing this (around 5-7 minutes), use a pair of tongs or chopsticks to turn them, one at a time. They should be significantly charred on one side, and flipping them will introduce the same lovely color on another side.
  4. Sprinkle some sea salt over the peppers.
  5. Let the peppers sit in the pan for another 4-5 minutes, until they are deflated. I like to take the chopsticks or the tongs and help pop the peppers that haven’t been able to deflate on their own.
  6. Transfer the peppers to a plate covered with a paper towel to soak up excess oil.
  7. While the peppers are cooling, combine a few tablespoons of coconut aminos, a dash of apple cider vinegar, and a few pinches of coconut sugar. I taste test as I go, and tweak ratios when creating this marinade.
  8. Remove the paper towel from the plate, drizzle your marinade over the peppers and toss them lightly to combine.

Herb and Garlic Sweet Potato Mash (GF, NF, Vegan, Paleo)

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It’s been a long time since my last post, hasn’t it? Since my last post back in November, a handful of other priorities have surfaced in other areas of my life that brought about a wave of reflection on how often I wanted to post new recipes and commit to sharing new culinary experiments. At the end of the day, being in the kitchen is like coming home and sinking into a warm bath; my muscles relax, and my stress dissolves as I rhythmically rock the blade of my knife over sprigs of fresh herbs. The kitchen is a place where I can create love without restriction, and share it with others. When I’m experimenting with a new creation, there’s no pressure to produce or impress. Ultimately, I decided that the cooking content on my blog should reflect a similar philosophy; beyond being a joy to make, and a joy to consume, there’s nothing else that I really want to define the food here.

With weekdays that are typically very full and demanding of time, I love carving out time for a slower brunch on the weekends, consuming it with my nose in a book, and taking my time savoring each bite. Slower brunch usually involves poached eggs and mashed avocado, because those are two breakfast staples that I think taste entirely different when made fresh, and simply aren’t indulgences I can afford during my work week. However, instead of spreading the avo on toast like I normally do, I was feeling a bit adventurous today, and decided that I wanted to pair my favorite duo with a carb source that typically isn’t seen alongside avo and poached eggs: sweet potato!

Sweet potato isn’t usually found in the same dish as mashed avo and poached eggs, because it can be tricky to make the sweet potatoes in a way that complements the two other savory items. This presented me with a fun little challenge: how would I be able to make savory sweet potato? The answer is deceptively simple: a boatload of herbs, garlic, and seasonings. The beautiful thing about this recipe is that it’s easy to customize based on whatever herbs you have on hand. I used scallions and dill, but there’s no hard-and-fast rule to follow here. It’s a great way to clean out your fridge and use up some remaining fresh herbs that seem like they’re on the verge of going bad. I will say that I think using fresh herbs and garlic, as opposed to pre-minced garlic and dried herbs, folds in an unmistakable savory aroma. And don’t be afraid to use a lot of garlic and herbs, because the sugars in the sweet potato will dominate the flavor profile otherwise.

Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

  • 2 sweet potatoes
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 6 sprigs of dill
  • 6 sprigs of green onion (scallions)
  • Paprika powder
  • Onion powder
  • Tumeric powder
  • Apple cider vinegar
  • Salt and pepper

Instructions:

  1. Wash, peel, and cube the sweet potatoes. Some people like the skin of the potatoes in the mash, so you can also leave it on for more texture.
  2. Place the sweet potatoes in a large pot (I used a Dutch oven), and cover them with water. In order to shorten the cooking time, I use an electric kettle to boil the water separately. Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to medium so that the water is a gently rolling boil, and let it cook uncovered until the potatoes are soft enough to easily slide a fork in and out (roughly 10 minutes).
  3. While the potatoes are cooking, mince the garlic, and roughly chop the herbs. I only used dill and onion in this recipe, but you can honestly use anything you want!
  4. Drain the potatoes and transfer them back into the same pot. Using a fork or spatula, mash the potatoes, which should be easy if they’re cooked enough.
  5. Fold in the apple cider vinegar, herbs, and spices (paprika, tumeric, onion, salt, and pepper), adjusting the seasoning ratios to your liking.

That’s it! This is such a versatile, simple side to make that pairs well with just about anything. Use it in place of white mashed potatoes when serving a steak. Spread it on a slice of toasted rustic bread. Layer some smoked salmon and capers on top of it, drizzled with a bit of lemon juice. This morning, I made my favorite avocado mash (recipe coming soon!), and poached an egg on top, letting all that yolky goodness bind the different textures and flavors together. It was one of the best slow brunches I’ve made in ages.

If you try this recipe out (or do any variations on it), let me know in the comments below 🙂 Happy lazy Sunday brunching.