Alex moved to Philly for the summer for work, and came home to visit this weekend. He isn't exactly the seasoned chef I consider myself, and had been basically living on beer and Hip City Veg, and was looking forward to a home-cooked meal upon his return. I decided to make a throwback, waaaay back, to when we were sixteen, when I would cook something a lot like this.


It worked out pretty great. We had a nice dinner with red wine and bread. I think you are supposed to use white wine to drink with this, but I like red wine better. So that's what I did. Incidentally, I was recently yelled at by a sommelier for drinking red wine with vegetables. After finding out I was vegan, he told me I just "couldn't understand the finer things in life."

Roman-Style Seitan with Garlicky Green Beans and Mashed Potatoes

4 Seitan Cutlets, use your favorite recipe
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 white onion, sliced into half moons
3 bell peppers, I like to get one of each color, sliced into strips
1 cup white wine
3 large tomatoes, diced
 4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons capers
1/4 cup chopped parsley
Big pinch of salt, pepper

5 yukon gold potatoes, washed, quartered
3/4 cup cashews
1 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil
ten cloves garlic, unpeeled
salt, pepper

1 lb green beans, washed
5 cloves garlic, sliced thin
2 teaspoons olive oil

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Take the ten unpeeled garlic cloves and spread them out on a baking sheet and put in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.
Place the potatoes in a pot and fill with enough water to cover them.
Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and cook until very tender, about 25 minutes.
In a large cast iron skillet, heat the tablespoon of olive oil over pretty high heat.
Add the seitan cutlets and let them brown nicely on each side, then remove from the pan.
Add the onions and peppers to the pan, and cook until they have softened and reduced in size, about 10 minutes. Leave the heat up high, so that it happens quicker.
Meanwhile, add the cashews and water to a blender, and blend like the dickens. Now you have cashew milk!
Add the garlic to the pan with the peppers, and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring often, until the garlic is fragrant.
Add the tomatoes and wine, salt and pepper.  Now nestle the seitan cutlets back into the pot, distributing the veggies over the cutlets. Cover and reduce heat to medium low.
At this point you can steam and shock your green beans if you have room on your stove. You can also boil them for about 5 minutes, then plunge into some ice water to keep them bright green and crisp, thus shocking them. We are going to cook them with garlic last.
Check the potatoes, which should be pretty tender by now, and drain. Pour them back into the pot they were boiled in with the roasted garlic, which you can now peel. Pour in the cashew milk, olive oil, salt and pepper. Mash until very smooth, and the garlic cloves have been mashed into unification with the potatoes. Taste for salt. Cover and keep on the back of the stove until the rest is ready.
Add the 2 teaspoons of olive oil to a frying pan and heat up. Add the sliced garlic and cook for 1 minute until fragrant. Now add your green beans and toss pretty continually until warm and coated with the garlic and olive oil. Sprinkle a little salt and turn off the heat. Turn the heat off the peppers and seitan and add the capers and parsley. I like to take the cutlets out and slice them before plating, but it's not really that necessary. Serve with a lot of peppers and wine sauce from the pan. Obviously serve with more wine!

 The basics: A good pasta with a good sauce. My sauce is made with lots of caramelized onions, roasted garlic and a healthy pinch of chili flakes, and aggressively seasoned with oregano, thyme, and basil. I always blend my sauce. It's just a thing I have..


Can anyone remember their first stuffed shell? I think the first stuffed shell I had was in Connecticut somewhere on vacation with my family at about age 10. How did I live 10 years without any stuffed shells? A mystery to this day. From the day after my first stuffed shell on, I hardly ever wanted to eat anything else. These are stuffed with a cream made from cashews, tofu, parsley, nooch, and an italian-spiced lentil meat.


Authentic Italian spinach and beans. A staple in my house, Italian night or not. A hundred cloves of garlic, white wine, and some olive oil is all you really need.


No Italian meal is complete without at least some kind of bread, roll, or bread rolled into a stick and baked. Breadsticks are somehow very special. If you make bread, people are like, "meff." If you make rolls, people are all like, "hmm." If you make breadsticks, people will flip out about how much they love breadsticks and have 7. These are rolled in olive oil, garlic powder and salt. Honestly, when you are all pissed off about the fiscal cliff, or your favorite vegan Ice cream shoppe closing, or about the animals in your attic banging around waking you up too early in the morning, just get yourself a breadstick. And things will be better. I promise.


What a fancy dinner! It might have taken me seven hours from start to finish, but I'd do it again in the name of ridiculously indulgent dinners, Italian food, and my friends and family.

The Mightiest Meatless Meetball You'll Ever Make:

Bake for about 30 minutes, then flip and bake about 10-15 more until the meetballs feel firm to the touch. Serve warm with lots of marinara sauce.

I have heard of and even seen red quinoa at the store and wanted to be adventurous and try it sometime soon, but stumbled across black quinoa in the bulk bins, and danced on the dangerous side and bought a few cups of it, you know, to live on the wild side, cut loose, spice things up.. etc.
So I had my suspicions about black grains. This may not or may be due to this time 5 years ago or something when I made wild rice and had the same silly ideas about getting amped to eat healthy food, thinking it was gonna be great with little effort or gameplan. And it was really just horrible. It took me about 4 more years to give even brown rice another shot after that. But now that brown rice and I are friends, I bought some black quinoa under the same delusions I once labored the day I made wild rice for the first time. I really love plain quinoa just as is, with some salt, pepper, olive oil and paprika or whatever. So I figured I would start the same way with the black quinoa. It has a funny smell that regular quinoa doesn't have and I tasted it first, pre-seasoning, and didn't like it at all. I threw in some onion, garic, red vinegar, and agave with a ton of salt and pepper, but it still wasn't great.
How do you make something that just isn't very good taste good? Guacamole of course.
Alongside is italian-y seitan with breadcrumbs and kale covered in garlicky creamy cashew sauce. I just realized that I get myself to eat healthy food by dousing it in stuff that's bad for me. Though if the worst things for me that I eat are guacamole and cashews, then I suppose I could be doing much, much worse.
That's my rationalization and Im sticking to it :)

Rice and beans sounds really boring, but really, it's so good! You can season it to taste and make it as flavorful as you want it to be. So what I'm saying is, if you don't like your rice and beans, it's your own fault! So just add some salt or something. Ooo or avocado. That'll fix it up.

Rice and Beans and everything else in the fridge:

1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cups baby spinach
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large can of black beans, rinsed and drained
1 jalapeño pepper, diced
1 cup brown rice, rinsed
2 cups water
1 tablespoon annatto powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

1 avocado, diced (optional)

Bring rice and water to a boil, then reduce to simmer. Simmer about 40 minutes, or until the water is absorbed. Don't stir. Just turn the heat off and keep covered.
Meanwhile, saute onion in olive oil over medium high heat. Add garlic and saute about 2 minutes. Add carrots, jalapeño and baby spinach. Stir until spinach is wilted and add beans. Stir in salt, pepper and spices (except annatto powder) and let cook about 10 minutes, stirring every few, until carrots are tender.
Add annatto powder to rice and stir. Add to veggies and beans and stir to combine. Top each bowl with some chopped avocado and serve!

Here it is, it's green pesto-glory.

1 lb pasta, noodles or shapes
2-3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 large bunch basil
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons nooch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper.

Boil water for pasta.
In a food processor, chop pinenuts and garlic as fine as you can get them. Then add basil and process until relatively smooth. Slowly add the olive oil through the top of the food processor while it's still running, until a smooth sauce is achieved.
Boil pasta and drain. Toss pasta with pesto and serve.

It looks a little murky to be green, but green is the color of mostly all of the ingredients! This is chock full of good stuff for you, and hey, if you wanted to eat this 4 times a week, you could do much much worse. The broth is super spicy, because spicy chili is the bees knees. Or.. something.

Tempeh Green Chili

2 8oz packages of tempeh
1 head of green kale
4 cups baby spinach
3 carrots, peeled and diced
1 1lb tomatillos
2 jalapeño chiles
2 poblano peppers
3 leeks
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 onion, Diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 lb mushrooms, quartered
5 cups homemade vegetable broth
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon corriander
1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
1 can canellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 can navy beans, rinsed and drained
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 cup chopped parsely
1 avocado, diced, optional but warranted

Cut leeks lengthwise and chop off the tough dark green ends. Discard tough ends and slice the leeks into half moons. Separate chopped layers of leeks and place in a bowl. Fill bowl with water and slosh the leeks around so that the dirt and grit falls to the bottom of the bowl.
Heat olive oil in a large soup pot and add leeks, onion, mushrooms, carrots, and garlic and sauté. Rip the kale off the tough veins and rinse. Tear into bite-sized pieces and add to pot. Wilt kale for 2 minutes and add spinach. Wilt for about 5 minutes.
Peel tomatillos and rinse under water. Preheat the broiler. Place tomatillos, jalapeños and poblanos in a cast-iron skillet and broil for 8-9 minutes or until all tomatillos and chiles have split or blistered. Remove and let cool. Peel away the burnt skin and puree in a food processor. Pour mix into soup.
Tear tempeh into bite-sized chunks and place in a large skillet. Cover tempeh pieces with water and simmer about 10 minutes. Drain away excess water and heat tempeh over medium high heat. pour tamari over tempeh and stir. Cook 1 minute and turn off heat.
Now add corriander, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and paprika to soup and stir. Add broth and bring to boil. Reduce to simmer and add beans. Cook 15 minutes, covered. Add tempeh and stir. Cook for 3 minutes and turn off heat. Ladle into bowls and top with chopped parsley and diced avocado.

I like to make this super spicy. There's so many cool and refreshing parts to this dish that the spiciness is what ties it all together for me. My favorite way to eat it is to twirl up noodles with some toppings and then after that bite, take a sip of the broth with either a big spoon or... not.

Spinach White Bean Tortellini

1 recipe tortellini dough

1 lb fresh baby spinach
3 cloves garlic
1 15 oz can white beans, or 2 cups cooked white beans, like navy or canellini
1/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup nooch
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon olive oil

3 tablespoons garlic creme sauce
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

In a large saute pan, add 1/2 teaspoon olive oil and heat on medium. In handfuls, add the spinach, turning with tongs to wilt. After about 3 minutes, add white wine. Turn the spinach with tongs until all the leaves are wilted.
In a food processor, chop garlic. Now drain and rinse the beans and add them to the food processor. Blend until relatively smooth and add spinach. Puree until a loose mixture comes together. Add nooch, salt and pepper, and taste for seasonings.
Form tortellini.
Boil tortellini for 4-5 minutes, until all tortellini have risen to the top and slightly puffed.
Spoon the sauce onto the bottom of your dish. Arrange tortellini on the top of your sauce. Drizzle the teaspoon of olive oil over the top and sprinkle with fresh parsley.

I didn't get a great shot of the insides, so you can use your imagination to see what a pretty pinkish but also orange but also red filling is residing inside each one of these little pouches. Since I used tofu as my creamy base, a zigzag shower of garlic cashew cream was in order. I devoured this bowl right quick. And then another. And it was worth it.

Sundried Tomato Tortellini

1 recipe tortellini dough

1/3 package firm or extra firm tofu
6-7 sundried tomatoes, packed in oil or water
1 large shallot, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons nooch
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup veggie broth

Chop shallot and garlic in a food processor. Now add tomatoes and pulse until well chopped. Add the tofu and puree until smooth. Scrape down sides and add nooch, salt and pepper. Spin again and slowly add veggie broth, one tablespoon at a time, until a very creamy texture is achieved. Taste for flavors.
Stuff filling into tortellini wrappers and boil about 4 minutes or until all tortellini have floated to the top and puffed slightly. Serve with tomato sauce, garlic cashew creme, or olive oil and veggies!

Alex says it looks like a sushi platter. I kind of agree. This could be fun to eat with chopsticks.