Memorial Day Weekend is upon us, which means one of my FAVORITE food seasons is here! I’m a July baby, which means I was put on this earth for burgers, corn on the cob, peaches, pasta salad, BBQ chicken, and vanilla cones. I’ll just be here absolutely blissed out until October, when it all becomes pumpkin-flavored (and then I’ll still be blissed out).
Something else I love about summer food is that nobody cares if you look like a hot mess eating it – in fact, the messier the better. Barbecue sauce all over your fingers is the ultimate sign of happiness. Ice cream dripping down your arm is adorable. Corn in your teeth is the essence of beauty. Summer is (literally) dripping with nostalgia. Unfortunately, a lot of summer food (and barbecue food, specifically) isn’t inherently plant-based. I myself am not vegan, but I do strive to eat sustainably – and I believe strongly that plant-based eating should not be a barrier to delicious, nostalgic food. This recipe is an answer to that.
Shakshuka is pure comfort food. It doesn’t have a season, and it doesn’t need a reason.
But oh, are there reasons.
Since I last posted in October, a LOT has happened, but the biggest news (which is news to absolutely no one) is that we are in the midst of a global pandemic. And in New York City, we were at the very epicenter for quite a long time and are still finding our way out. My loved ones and I have been fortunate in that we have been able to stay home and stay healthy. Although this is something we do not take for granted, it doesn’t diminish the fact that social distancing and living under quarantine for months can be mentally taxing.
A lot of my time in quarantine has been spent cooking and eating comforting foods and of course, making bread. It’s been great to see so many of my friends learning to make sourdough, because now I feel like part of a big club!
But if you’re like me, you’re having trouble keeping up with your bread-baking habits. With a loaf in the freezer, a loaf in the bread drawer, two loaves proofing in the fridge, and jeans up in my closet that I haven’t worn since March giving me side eye from beneath a thick layer of dust, what am I supposed to do with all of this BREAD?!
Raise your hand if you’re from the Northeast and have officially turned into a human prune!!! *both hands up*
Did YOU know it was possible to feel both dehydrated AND saturated at the same time? Heat and humidity are the latest power couple, and it is getting rough out there. I just got back from an incredible week in Connecticut at the Amherst Early Music Baroque Academy, but it wasn’t always fun and games for my fiddle… Let’s just say when working with a period instrument with gut strings in 95% humidity, the name of the game is “What The F#*! Just Came Out of My Instrument?!” 5 points every time a string goes a whole step out of tune. 10 points when two consecutive strings go out of tune in opposite directions. 15 points when you play a note and nothing comes out… You don’t really want to win.
In this heat, my second love (cooking) also becomes not-so-lovely. When the mere thought of turning on an oven drowns me in my own sweat, I often resort to “un-cooking.” Luckily, the summer season offers us a huge selection of delicious produce, so filling up on raw fruits and veggies is hardly boring. And, not to diss salad, but there are plenty of creative ways to enjoy your raw produce, which was precisely our challenge at The Recipe ReDux this month.
This month’s theme, “Get Your Fruits and Veggies in Shape,” challenged us to transform summer produce using creative cuts. My spiralizer is one of my FAVORITE tools in the kitchen for this, and summer rolls are a go-to meal for me during the warmer months – oven-free, fresh, crunchy, light, healthy, and filling! What could be better than combining the two?!
While making this recipe, I was pleased with how quick and SAFE spiralizing was as an alternative. Julienning veggies with a knife or special peeler is fine, but it takes forever… Plus, I will take any chance I can get to keep my fingers away from blades.
To “wrap up” this delicious dish (hehe) I made an easy miso sesame ginger dipping sauce. Miso automatically lends an explosion of flavor to whatever it’s in, and I am always looking for new ways to incorporate it. This was a home run as far as I’m concerned!
Fresh, crunchy summer rolls with spiralized veggies and an addictive miso sauce.
Ingredients
Scale
Rolls
12–24 sheets rice paper
Warm water
1 large carrot
2 large (or 3 medium) cucumbers
1/2 purple cabbage
1 avocado, thinly sliced
1 mango, thickly sliced
1 cup cilantro or Thai basil leaves
Miso Sauce
3 Tbs. light miso
4 Tbs. seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 1/2-inch knob ginger, grated (about 1/2 tsp)
1 Tbs. sesame oil
Instructions
Spiralize carrots using the “spaghetti” blade, or thinnest blade possible. Set aside.
Spiralize cucumbers using the “spaghetti” blade. I like to drain my cucumber noodles after spiralizing by squeezing them through a cheesecloth or a stack of paper towels. Set aside.
Spiralize purple cabbage on the “ribbon” blade, or thickest blade possible. Set aside.
Prepare your avocado, mango, and cilantro and arrange them alongside your other prepared veggies for easy assembly.
Submerge a sheet of rice paper in a bowl of warm water for 5 seconds. Immediately lay the wet sheet on a cutting board or large plate.
Fill your roll (careful not to overfill!) with veggies. I like to start with cilantro so you can see the leaves laying flat through the roll, and then add the veggies from thinnest to thickest. I also like to add more cilantro on top before rolling.
Roll each summer roll delicately while keeping it as compact as possible.
Sauce
Whisk all ingredients together until smooth.
Notes
Work as quickly as possible to prevent your rice paper from sticking to your surface!
If necessary after rolling, double up with another sheet of rice paper.
Happy Hump-Day everyone! As I write, I am back home on my sunny porch in New York enjoying a relaxing few days with my family. It has been quite the whirlwind GRADUATING and saying goodbye to my close friends as I prepare to start my transition from Philly to NYC, and next Friday, I head to Houston to participate in an month-long orchestra festival. And in a sort of related incident, I finally put a Manhattan School of Music sticker on my instrument case, so things are getting kind of real. It is beyond immensely exciting, but also a leeeeeetle bit terrifying. It’s all part of the bigger picture as this new chapter begins, so I’m trying to get in as much time as I can with all the people I will miss over the next month!
The good news about having all this time to myself (and a nice, homey kitchen with natural light AND OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY SPACE!) is that I can concoct enough recipe posts to hold you all over while I’m in Texas without a kitchen. This recipe is just one of several I’ve been developing, and I’m kind of stoked, because today’s post also has a big “first” attached to it: This is my first contribution to The Recipe Re-Dux, a wonderful healthy food blogging network and monthly challenge that was brought to my attention a few months ago. I applied to be a part of it, and was offered membership starting this month. YAY! I was also excited when I heard that this month’s theme (there is a special theme or ingredient for each month’s challenge) was cooking with tea. And I LOVE TEA.
I have cooked with tea before, and in fact I have a post on the blog already with a tasty recipe for Chocolate Chai Mousse Cake, in which I also discuss my love affair with tea. But aside from that, my experience with using tea outside of my addiction to drinking it is minimal. At first, I thought maybe I’d create some kind of popsicle, or that a mixed beverage of sorts might be a good idea for the challenge. But, they don’t call this a “challenge” for nothing, so I wanted to explore and venture into the unknown world of savory tea dishes. One of the first ideas that came to me was a green tea pesto. I had never heard of or tasted such a thing, although upon Googling, I found that it had been done before (someday, I’ll get to be a bit more original). I was a little skimpy on the amount of tea I put into the pesto, but for a reason – because I also cooked the homemade gnocchi in green tea. Be. Still. My. Heart.
I was admittedly really nervous being so adventurous in the kitchen for this recipe – gnocchi can be a temperamental dish that requires both patience and lots of manual labor, and since I swapped out all-purpose flour in favor of whole wheat pastry flour, I was really unsure of how the texture would come out. I was half expecting the gnocchi to fall apart in the water, and that I would end up wasting pounds of unusable gnocchi dough. But miraculously, they came out deliciously delicate and fluffy. They could have had a bit more bite, but I personally really liked the lightness. Plus, boiling the dumplings in green tea gave them even more of an herbal punch.
1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour, plus some for handling the dough (I use Bob’s Red Mill)
1–2 tsp. fresh thyme, chopped
1 egg
1.5 tsp. salt
7–10 sachets of green tea, paper tabs cut off + water for boiling
Pesto
2 cups fresh basil
1/4 cup raw pine nuts
3 tbs. hemp hearts
1–2 tablespoons green tea leaves, ground with a mortal and pestle or spice grinder
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tbs. freshly grated parmigiano reggiano
1–2 tsp. lemon juice
salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
Gnocchi
Prepare potatoes by washing, peeling thoroughly, cutting into chunks, and making sure to remove any eyes.
Place potatoes into a large pot, and add water to cover. Bring water and potatoes to a boil, then reduce heat slightly just to keep the water rolling. Boil potatoes until very soft, about 20 minutes. Drain, and run through a food processor or mash thoroughly until smooth while still warm. Be sure that there are little to no chunks of potato remaining. Let cool – I stuck the bowl of mashed potatoes in the fridge and prepared the pesto while waiting.
Add the cheese, flour, egg, thyme, and salt to the potatoes. Mix with your hands until the batter forms a sticky, pliable dough.
Roll out dough into balls about the size of your palm.
On a floured surface, roll out dough into snakes about 1/2 inch wide.
Cut dough into small rectangles, and roll each dumpling onto the back of a fork (or a gnocchi board, if you have one) to create ridges.
Bring about 5 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan. Once boiling, add 6 sachets of green tea. Let steep for 2-3 minutes and remove.
Add the gnocchi in small batches to ensure that they do not stick together, and remove the dumplings as they begin to float. (Tips: Test the cooking time out on two or three of your gnocchi dumplings first until you get a consistency that you like. Generally, they should be ready when or soon after they float to the top of the water. A handy tool for this is a frying strainer!) If the boiling water starts to run low, add in a cup at a time to replenish, but be sure to also steep an extra bag of green tea for 2-3 minutes for each cup of water you add.
Pesto
Combine ingredients (except oil and lemon juice) in a food processor and pulse until blended thoroughly, scraping down the sides of the food processor as needed. Blend with the oil and lemon juice, and serve.
This recipe is one that I’m kinda sorta maybe really proud of, because it’s freaking DELICIOUS, and also super easy to make. Over my spring break, I first made this for my family to put over baked stuffed shells. The sauce was so tasty that I was using the shells that fell apart mid-boil to dip into the leftover sauce while the final product was baking.* My family also loved the sauce, which was very encouraging since they’re always the first to be honest about how my food actually tastes.
I’ve also noticed that it’s incredibly difficult to find a decent tomato sauce in the grocery store that’s also made without refined sugar. I found a pretty good all-natural pizza sauce once, but in general, none have lived up to my expectations. If you’re anything like me, you would much rather take the time to make something from scratch and be sure that it will turn out exactly how you want it. Thus, this tomato sauce was born. Plus, this is a fairly simple recipe and it makes 6 heaping cups of rich, sweet, flavorful tomato sauce, and probably costs less in total than it would to buy the same amount jarred. My version does contain 2-4 oz. dry red wine, (plus about 4 oz. to drink while cooking 😉 ) but you could easily omit that if you prefer not to cook with alcohol.
I collected inspiration from a few different recipes, but in the end tried to keep the ingredient list as small as possible. This was mostly so that I could have a go-to recipe that was both inexpensive and easy to make. The one recommendation I would make is that you buy crushed tomatoes WITHOUT basil for the sauce. For whatever reason, I just don’t think that tomatoes that have been canned with basil taste as good, and they have sort of a metallic aftertaste to me. Plus, when they’re available, using fresh herbs is always best anyway. The photo above features purple basil, which is the only thing I could find fresh in my grocery store, but it worked just as well. I used canned tomatoes to save time because I’m a college student with things to do (and because San Marzano tomatoes are amazzzzzzing), so if you’re a purist, unfortunately I can’t really help you. Tharry.
28 oz. can crushed San Marzano tomatoes (without basil)
2–4 oz. dry red wine
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
In a medium saucepan, warm the olive oil and garlic on medium heat, distributing the garlic occasionally.
Add the onion and red bell pepper and cover, stirring occasionally until very soft.
Add the red wine and stir. Once wine has cooked off (evaporated), add the crushed tomatoes and basil, and stir. When the mixture starts to bubble, lower heat and let simmer for 10-15 minutes.
Transfer ingredients to a blender (or use an immersion blender) and purée until smooth or at your desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste.
