There’s something to national stereotypes.You know — Germans mean potatoes, Poles mean onions. And Italians? Pasta. One of our teachers is Italian. And whenever he visits, I serve pasta. Most often it’s spinach pasta — a recipe approved and loved by a real Italian (not the kind you see in tourist brochures). Ingredients 1 tsp coriander 1 tsp cumin … Read more
Traditionally, Christmas Eve dinner is a fasting meal, so you really don’t have to try very hard to make 12 fully vegan Christmas dishes.But we also have no reason to limit our creativity — especially since today’s Christmas Eve customs are guests from abroad anyway: from Germany (the Christmas tree), from Ukraine (kutia), or even … Read more
Stuffed vegetables are my personal comfort food — not just for the taste itself, but for the memories they bring back of the best thing from my INGREDIENTS 50 g TVP (soy protein granules)Marinade for the TVP: 2 tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce 1 tbsp Crema di Balsamico Filling: 100 g millet … Read more
The vegetable most closely associated today with the celebration of Dziady, Samhain, Halloween — call it what you will — is the pumpkin. INGREDIENTS Filling: 300 g pumpkin purée 100 g sunflower seeds 1 tsp smoked paprika ½ tsp cumin ½ tsp ground coriander seeds 3 tbsp nutritional yeast 1 clove garlic salt Dough: … Read more
My latest culinary fascination is… German cuisine. Yes, the very same German cuisine I regularly bash. More precisely, something I consider to be a true German specialty. And no, it’s not Bratwurst or oatmeal. It’s Brotaufstrich! Which means all kinds of spreads and pastes for bread. INGREDIENTS: 200 g canned or cooked chickpeas 50 g capers 50 g … Read more
Hail Seitan (Not to be confused with Satan. I had to — the phonetic similarity still cracks me up. Though honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone out there took it seriously and saw in seitan a satanic conspiracy.) Ingredients: 200 g seitan powder 50 g hemp flour 50 g sun-dried tomatoes in oil 50 g oil from sun-dried … Read more
TVP: texture vegetable protein. Until recently, only TSP, or “textured soy protein,” was available on the market. These are all those products like dry soy cutlets (affectionately called “sawdust cutlets”), pieces, granules, steaks — large, rectangular cutlets with a fibrous texture. TSP products had their time, at least in Poland, in the 1990s, when they were pretty … Read more
Continuing the kitchen inventory series: Lentils, sunflower seeds, and tomatoes. Still no onions, but when you live in the forest, going to the store is a whole expedition. INGREDIENTS:– 2 bell peppers of different colors (about 150–200 g)– 100 g sunflower seeds– 50 g red lentils– 30 g olive oil (3 tablespoons)– 30 g hoisin … Read more
Stuffed vegetables are my comfort food and a traditional folk Polish dish.Poland and Germany are countries with allotment gardens. Small plots of land, originally on the outskirts of cities and usually belonging to working-class families, were an important supplement to the diets of many households in Poland until the 1990s. INGREDIENTS:– 500 g cooked white … Read more
Some lottery bonus of fate is that I’ve never been a fan of either sweetened carbonated drinks or those awful sweet Mars bars, Twixes, Pigs, or whatever those brown things with corn syrup and additives are called.Similarly, fast food. All those pizzas, hot dogs, burgers. Not even pizza. And I never really understood those fans, … Read more
