The brisk air and waterfalls of early Spring beckons! And Blackwater Falls State Park in WV, a 3-hour drive from Pittsburgh, provides the perfect answer. Whether easy-to-traverse boardwalks or exploring less traveled paths best fits your style, Blackwater has both grand and intimate cascades this time of year. And no trip is complete without a visit to Big Belly Deli in Davis, WV. I've been thinking about their grilled pastrami sandwich and their veggie Reubens all year...
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| Blackwater Falls from the Gentle Trail overlook |
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| Elakala Falls |
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| Hot pastrami on rye from Big Belly Deli |
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| Blackwater Gorge from Lodge (left); Yellow Birch Trail (top three, right); Elakala Trail (bottom right) |
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| Balanced Rock |
Sometimes a road trip is all that is needed to perk up the spirits. Add the sound of rushing water, white spray against a cloud-rimmed sky and unopened rose-hued tree buds for a perfect getaway from city life. Blackwater Falls State Park near Davis, West Virginia is a fantastic destination!
Today is Vegetaruary Day 28, the last day of a Vegetarian February Challenge issued by our daughter. And we celebrated with a light lunch of muffin tin eggplant parmesan stacks. It has been a fun adventure trying out new recipes and revisiting old favorites. Early on, we relied more heavily on cheese, but as our cooking vista expanded, we found ourselves eating vegan dishes more and more frequently. Among the new discoveries are a super easy, super fast browned butter radish couscous, tofu sofritas tacos, and a hearty two-bean loaf with homemade tomato jam. We also enjoyed standbys such as silken tofu spinach soup with Sichuan chili crisp (instead of prosciutto bits), vegetarian spring rolls, vegetarian chili and a spiced lentil curry topped with yogurt. Although the challenge is over, I suspect we will be eating similarly on most days going forward. There are so many more recipes we want to try!
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| Eggplant Parmesan Stacks |
Last year, we tried a 15 day vegetarian challenge, and were foiled by work dinners and (not so) hidden ingredients in oyster sauce. But as the pandemic shutdown progressed, with more time in the kitchen and no traveling, we discovered some incredible vegetarian dishes from the likes of Gordon Ramsay, Yotam Ottolenghi, Grace Young and Melissa Clark.
So when 2021 came along, my daughter decided to double the challenge by selecting the entire month of February, the shortest month of the year. We were much better prepared this time! A side benefit is that after only two weeks of vegetarian eating, my cholesterol and LDL levels normalized and my doctor called to say that I did not need to start statins after all. Plus, I easily dropped the weight I had been trying to lose for the past 3-4 years, without even noticing. More importantly, we enjoyed a variety of delicious meals, expanding our cooking repertoire. Listed below are about a dozen of our favorites!
Eggplant Parmesan Stacks
This is my second time making individual Eggplant Parmesan entrees from the Muffin Tin Chef cookbook by Matt Kadey. His technique of oven baking the breaded parmesan slices results in a completely non-greasy dish where the sauce, cheese and eggplant melds into rich, satisfying stacks. I also like the addition of broccoli rabe (although I used regular broccoli). Best of all, as with many of my Asian eggplant recipes, there is no time-consuming and messy salting of the eggplant slices required.
🐾 Next time, I might skip the muffin tin, and try arranging the eggplant slices as little stacks in a 9 x 13 inch pan. Jump to the recipe for Eggplant Parmesan Stacks.
Spiced Braised Lentils, a Food52 Genius Recipe (vegan-friendly)
This Melissa Clark recipe infuses lentils with all the flavor of a good Madras curry powder, with tantalizing toppings of crunchy mustard seeds on creamy white yogurt. The satisfying bites of rich lentils play well against the contrast of textures in the toppings. Not having unsweetened coconut flakes, I substituted toasted bread crumbs the first time I made this, and then tried smoky wok-crisped mushrooms the second time.
Try using lentils of different colors. Here I have a combination of brown and red lentils with some split peas. It's also a great recipe to use up zucchini squash and other vegetables.
For vegans, simply omit or substitute soy yogurt for the topping. It is truly deserving of a place in the Genius Recipes category.
Hot and Sour Soup (vegan-friendly)
We love this warm and cozy soup, which uses pantry staples to create a rich and hearty sensory experience. In another post, I covered my odyssey of trying multiple recipes for hot and sour soup to arrive at the perfect texture and flavor. In the process, we decided that we liked the soup better vegetarian as the pork slivers could end up tough and did not add much in the way of flavor. The best part of this recipe is that it relies heavily on dried mushrooms and long-storing pantry staples such as eggs and tofu.
For vegans, omit the egg -- which adds pretty yellow streaks but is not necessary. The luscious flavor comes primarily from the vinegar and white pepper, and the tofu and mushrooms offer plenty of protein.
Bean Loaves with Tomato Jam (vegan)
This was another recipe from The Muffin Tin Chef cookbook. The homemade tomato jam made from red Roma tomatoes was fabulous (next time double or even triple the jam)! The mixture of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), pinto beans, pecans (I did not have sunflower seeds) and the seasonings yielded a very meaty aroma and appearance. My husband thought I was making beef stew when he walked in the door!
I did not have a whole onion, so the mixture ended up on the dry side. I tried to compensate by adding half a red bell pepper, but in retrospect I should have mixed in some oil, broth or even egg to help bind it together. Nevertheless, this is definitely a keeper and may even form the basis of a new veggie burger!
Vegetable Spring Rolls and Celebration Rice Cake (vegan)
When my daughter picked February for the challenge month, it seemed reasonable given that it is the shortest month. What I did not realize, however, was that the lunar New Year and Lantern Festivals both fell in February. Grace Young and Yotam Ottolenghi to the rescue!
Grace has a wonderful vegetable spring roll recipe in The Breath of a Wok, as well as a delicious char siu (Chinese bbq pork version) in Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen. Back in 2020, I had made both of these, even making my own spring roll wrappers out of flour and water as I was trying to minimize trips to the store. Click here to read about how easy it is to make spring rolls, whether you prefer yours to be deep-fried, air-fried or even non-fried!
And I had previously modified Yotam Ottolenghi's savory vegan celebration rice cake to include dried Chinese mushrooms and other "treasures" available to me in a nod to the Eight-treasure sweet sticky rice cakes traditionally served for the Spring Festival. So I pulled out my Instant Pot Bundt Cake pan and made another wreath-like sticky rice cake with a rich, enticing mushroom gravy moat.
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| Savory Sticky Rice Celebration Bundt Cake |
🐾 My tip for this dish is to soak the glutinous rice for at least 8 h as I did the first time I made this, as some of the rice on top did not get as soft and sticky as I would have liked in this version.
Silken Tofu and Spinach Soup (vegan)
This is one of my all time favorite tofu dishes. Indeed, the luscious soup base with tiny white cubes of tofu set off against emerald green spinach and garnished with a sprinkle of prosciutto is one of my suggested entry dishes for people that believe they could never like tofu. The original soup recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop's Land of Fish and Rice had pork in it, but I had modified it to our tastes. Click here for the recipe.
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| Silken tofu with spinach soup - vegan version garnished with Sichuan Chili Crisp |
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| Hot and sour soup with cubes of clean-out-the-fridge zucchini. |
Brown Butter Couscous with Spring Vegetables
This recipe by "EmilyC" on the Food52 site is a true winner! As I put in my review, "Fantastic, quick and easy! This is a great weekday meal with wonderful flavors, colors and textures. Will definitely be used a lot. I kept the radish greens and added them with the spinach. It all disappeared with no leftovers."
Crisp and smooth on the outside, spring rolls have always been one of my favorite dim sum. Whether in the form of Chinese 春捲 chun juan or Filipino lumpia, these elongated elegant packets are truly addictive. But for decades, I was afraid to try making them at home. No longer. Now that I have discovered how easy it is to make spring roll wrappers, all barriers have been removed. These homemade spring rolls are delicious whether they are deep-fried, air-fried or not fried at all!
Happy Chinese New Year 新年快樂! This Spring Festival 春節, which celebrates the arrival of the new lunar year, will be celebrated with fresh, homemade spring rolls for the first time, thanks in part to culinary explorations during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.
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| A wok-fried vegetarian spring roll with homemade wrapper. Filling recipe from The Breath of a Wok by Grace Young: the Sept. 2020 Wok Wednesday recipe of the month. |
Although there are other elongated, wrapped appetizers that may be confused with spring rolls, once you have bitten into the light, shatteringly crisp wrapper surrounding a flavor-packed julienned filling there is no going back. Spring roll is the literal translation of 春捲 chūn juǎn, the Chinese name for these delectable finger foods. Among my earliest memories of visiting the Los Angeles Chinatown is walking around to the side door of the Hong Kong restaurant, which served dim sum on weekends, to get a tray of take out spring rolls. These dainty, crisp and evenly browned packets did not feel greasy to the touch and were filled with finely julienned fragments of pork, black winter mushrooms and bamboo shoots.
The spring rolls of which I speak are not the same as egg rolls. Spring rolls and lumpia have a crispy, dainty appearance, and a crackling noise is required when you bite into these smooth cylinders. The addition of egg in the wrapper results in the slightly chewier, textured surface of egg rolls, and these are often wrapped fatter that the sleek spring roll. Both of these flour-based wrappers act to lovingly cradle a cooked filling that typically contains a mixture of vegetables and, optionally, pork or shrimp, although the Filipino filling is mostly ground pork and beef. There is also a type of Vietnamese rolled appetizer (gỏi cuốn, literally "salad rolls") that is often called a fresh spring roll or a summer roll. These are great for the summer because they are made using translucent rice paper wrappers briefly rehydrated in water, and typically contain lots of fresh, uncooked herbs for a cooling sensation.
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| Left: Spring rolls from Spicies in Cambridge, MA; Upper right: Huge egg roll from the Moonlight Express food truck in the Pittsburgh Strip District. Lower right: Homemade summer rolls or goi cuon. |
Recipes from Seventeen magazine and Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen.
I loved spring rolls so much that I clipped a recipe from the April 1976 issue of Seventeen. This magazine had a section called "Now You're Cooking" that featured delicious and approachable recipes from all over the world. But it would take another 44 years, and a global coronavirus pandemic, before I worked up the courage to try making my own spring roll wrappers from scratch.In addition to the Seventeen recipe, I have included at the bottom of this post a lumpia recipe from a fellow Banning High student that I have kept with me for decades in remembrance of the most amazing multicultural classroom potluck parties. In 2020, I found myself consulting some online resources, and discovered that it was much easier than I had thought to make homemade spring roll wrappers.
The batter is quickly brushed on a moderately low pan. When the wrapper changes color and starts to curl from the edge of the pan, the lifting edge can be used to pull the entire pancake off of the non-stick pan. I did later try this in my wok, which is generally non-stick, but found that parts of the pancake cooked too quickly as the wok does not provide uniform heat across its bottom.
Here is a movie from the first time I made these, showing how the appearance changes as it cooks and the edges curl from the pan.
I used the bbq pork-based spring roll filling recipe from Grace Young's Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen cookbook, omitting the ingredients I did not have as we were under lockdown.
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| Deep fried spring rolls with Chinese bbq pork and pickled chive blossoms. Filling recipe from Wisdom of a Chinese Kitchen by Grace Young, homemade wrapper recipe from Seventeen. June 2020. |
New Year 2021 started off rainy, but with high hopes for a better year, and perhaps by summer, a chance to reconnect with family and friends. I wanted our New Year dinner to link future hopes back to childhood memories. This delicious, stunning centerpiece entrée based on a recipe by Chef Yotam Ottolenghi fit the bill perfectly. It combines elements of several traditional Chinese sticky rice treats, both savory and sweet, into a new vegan interpretation redolent with the flavors of mushrooms, maple syrup-sweetened soy sauce and warming spices. I took it a few steps farther by substituting several of the ingredients in a nod to the Eight Treasure Rice dessert traditionally served at New Year, and cooked it quickly in an Instant Pot Bundt cake pan for a stunning and delicious meal.
The ultimate comfort food is the dish your mother makes when you return home from semesters away. For me, this was a version of the famous soy sauce chicken or 紅燒雞, translated literally as "red-cooked chicken." My mother perfected this recipe in my later college years, dispensing with fussy, unnecessary steps to arrive at such an easy and carefree procedure that she called it 懶人雞, which translates to "lazy person's chicken". I further adapted it by adding vegetables to create a one-dish meal that had my own children fighting over the flavor-drenched cabbage.
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| Lazy chicken with cabbage |
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