Vegetarian & Vegan

I don’t think a little cooking technique and olive oil is going to “undiet” this infamous Cabbage Diet Soup. Mine tastes good, like a slimmed down minestrone. This is just how I made it. You can add any green, non-starchy veggies to this and it will still be low calorie.

Cucumbers and radishes get a spring in their step when mixed with a tarragon and Dijon mustard vinaigrette.

When Jay, the Verizon tech (and ex-chef), was fixing my internet, he described these Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter-Coconut-Honey-Caramel Balls as part of his Thanksgiving menu. I thought, “I’m totally stealing that idea.” They will forever be known as Jay’s Sweets.

This simple dish of coconut whipped sweet potatoes is vegan, but you would never know because it’s delicious. Perfect as a side dish for Thanksgiving or any fall-winter meal.

This is my mom’s Cheese, Onion & Tomato Pie based on the Savory Cheese and Onion Pie in “The Vegetarian Epicure” by Anna Thomas published in 1972. All my life, we’ve called it Cheese, Onion & Tomato Pie, but after I reached out to Anna Thomas and asked permission to publish this recipe, I looked it up and see that she has another recipe called Cheese & Tomato Pie in her book, The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two. This is not that recipe although that one looks good too. My mom uses a frozen 9” pie crust for the pie, but the original recipe calls for a 10” shortcrust pastry. My mom adds Parmesan cheese to the recipe as well.

Use this layered potato crust to make a gluten free pie crust for a savory pie or quiche.

The rich and sweet flavor of caramelized onions comes from cooking them slow in olive oil, salt, pepper and their own juices until they’re a rich, golden brown. You can flavor them by using various liquids to deglaze the cooking pan and-or sweeteners to change the taste and sugar levels. When I’m making Whole 30 compliant, caramelized onions I only use olive oil and water or stock to deglaze the onion pan and no sugar of any kind.

A simple syrup made of Concord grapes and sugar to be used for drinks, dessert and even savory recipes.

“Hey, nice looking slaw!” When was the last time someone called your coleslaw pretty? Behold, a stunning red coleslaw studded with dried cherries and topped with pistachio dust.

A recipe for a southern potato salad with eggs, sweet relish, mustard, red peppers, celery, carrots, red onions, parsley and more. It resembles confetti.

Add green tea, a classic Japanese flavor for sweets, to desserts, ice cream, and drinks.

Sweet, crunchy, salty almonds and black sesame seeds add texture, flavor and beauty to desserts and salads, or you can just nibble on them.

Pudim Molotov is a gluten-free Portuguese dessert with an egg white flan base that’s often served with a caramel sauce. I put a Japanese spin on my version.The link to egg white flan recipe I used and my additional ingredients are below.

Make a super, refreshing summer cooler from hibiscus tea, mint and lime.

Remember when you simply threw the canned chickpeas in the food processor to make hummus. Those were the good, easy days. Now you must slip the skins off each chickpea or die of hummus shame because it’s not smooth enough. This is my work around and you can totally grab a can of chickpeas and slip off the skins, one at a time…

This Potato, Cauliflower & Green Bean Salad in a Dijon Basil Vinaigrette is perfect for a picnic since it gets better the longer it sits.

Rainbow chard and yellow peppers add the beauty to this recipe and the dynamic duo of garlic and flowering garlic chives adds the flavor.

When I buy garlic chives at the market, they give me so many I have make up dishes to use them up. This was a winner

Choux pastry is used for making cream puffs, éclairs, and other hollow pastries that are filled with various savory and sweet fillings.

A dark chocolate bark encrusted with toasted black & white sesame seed and a sprinkle of sea salt.

Talk about flexible! This mushroom, zucchini and fennel dish can be served as a salsa, bruschetta or cecina topping, quesadilla filling or a side dish.

A recipe for a simple savory crêpe made from chickpea flour, water, olive oil, salt and pepper. You can serve it with any kind of dip, tartare, salsa, curry, salad, etc or just nibble it on it’s own.

A spicy Sichuan peppercorn flavored cucumber salad where you smash the cucumber so it absorbs more of the dressing.

The words healthy and fried do not always go together, but delicious and fried usually do. These healthier-than-meat 10 Veggie Egg Rolls nail fried and delicious! Use any combo of veggies you like that combine to make six cups of filling.

To this native New Yorker, it’s not a hot dog without onions, sauerkraut and mustard. These are better than the onions I grew up with.

I like to add candied nuts on top of desserts, salads, a cheese board, and more. This is a quick way to make them.

This is a lovely salad that I originally had in Montreal, at the Dominion Square Tavern, in the dead of winter in 2012. It’s a long way from New York so I had to make my own version.

I adore the combination of coconut and lemon. I added coconut flour and substituted coconut oil for some of the butter for flavor. I added rice flour to give it the texture of a Scottish shortbread.

If you want a fast, only slightly tricky, candy recipe that will guarantee yours and the people you may or may not share it with’s GLEE, this Salted Chocolate Cappuccino Buttercrunch Toffee is it!

This recipe is a winner. Dal Vegetable Soup is healthy, easy-to-make, inexpensive, gluten-free and vegan. With all that going for it, it should taste like dirt, but it’s mighty tasty too!

Fresh ginger is one of my favorite flavors and dry ginger is one of my least. So I never make gingerbread. This past holiday season I had a windfall of fruits leftover from a chocolate fountain holiday party. So I whipped up a new chutney with all the flavors of gingerbread except the dreaded dry ginger. I substituted fresh ginger and it was FABULOUS!

I make them my way. I like them crispy and golden and salty and slathered with sour cream and something sweet.

A dramatic, yet simple flaxseed and sesame cracker that goes great with dips or crumbled on a salad for extra crunch. Psst… it’s good for your health!

The flavors of fall in the Northeast abound in these Maple Sugar and Pink Salted Cranberry Orange Walnut Chocolate Clusters.

Creamy peppermint centers, dipped in chocolate and they’re vegan to boot!

Homemade peppermint cream chunks, crushed candy canes and crisp rice in dark chocolate clusters that look just like coal.

Originally a cross between a cabbage and turnip, the humble rutabaga is silky and elegant pureed with cream in this simple, yet addictive recipe. I often wonder why I only make them for Thanksgiving? They definitely taste like a special occasion.

Inspired by my garden, I created a salad where green, unripened tomatoes contrast three ways with their vine ripened counterparts: color, flavor and texture. It’s a great way to use up extra homegrown herbs as well.

Yes, please. A blend of butter, maple syrup and maple sugar crystals that you can slathered on toast or just eat with a spoon.

When I was a kid this was a truly exotic recipe. Who eats bananas for dinner? CRAZY! It’s the perfect accompaniment to a savory curry and vegans and vegetarians can enjoy it too!

Making your own elderflower syrup is a BREEZE! Mix it with seltzer and lime for a delish beverage. You could throw some vodka or tequila in that too! If you don’t have an elderberry tree, find the flowers by foraging or friend with one.

My lemon curd goes POW! It’s a delicious balance of sweet and tart for making tarts, filling cookies and cakes and crêpes, adding to parfaits and more. Or you could just eat it on toast!

Serve dukkah with sliced bread and olive oil. Roll a log of goat cheese in it and serve with crackers. Also delicious for crusting fish or chicken.

A simple salad dressing made with preserved lemons, olive oil and aromatic spices

Raita is a seasoned yogurt with an endless possibility of combinations. I welcome you to go wild with your favorites.

A light, tangy vinaigrette made from yuzu vinegar, fresh lime and raw, local honey. Yuzu is an incredibly aromatic, tart citrus fruit that looks like a small grapefruit and tastes like the love-child of a mandarin and a grapefruit and lemon. If I’m putting this dressing on something that’s rich like smoked duck breast and sweet like mango I like to add a little bit of Yuzu kosho to the dressing to give it a little bite; it’s a spicy yuzu-and-chili condiment that you can find in a Japanese grocery or online. Yuzu vinaigrette is frequently made with yuzu juice, but I was gifted some O yuzu rice vinegar, so I made this recipe. I see now that it’s not that common. Feel free to substitute yuzu juice and rice vinegar for the yuzu vinegar.

A sauce for dipping chicken sushi, dumplings and other Asian appetizers in. It’s gluten-free if you use gluten-free soy sauce.

Garlic fried rice has something for everyone, vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, carnivores… except the garlic allergic and the VAMPIRES!!! Oh and the paleos, but that’s their choice and they should really cheat with this dish. It’s healthy and so damned delicious… I can understand why the Filipinos kept it a secret.

We didn’t give my niece sweets until she was three years old. She loved macaroni and cheese so I made a mac ’n’ cheese birthday cake for her second birthday. I dyed the mashed potato decorations with beets and spinach, but you can use turmeric, carrots, parsley, red cabbage and so forth.

Back in the Stone Age, I found the base recipe for Jackie’s Sassy BBQ Sauce in a compilation cookbook that was from a neighborhood association or the Rotary Club, which I’ve long since lost. I tweaked it and changed it and made it my own, so I renamed it. I’ve made it all over the world. In the 90’s, I had to bring my own Mexican chili powder to Australia to make it because they didn’t sell it there. In my family, it’s evolved to a comfort food and my little brother likes it every Christmas Eve as part of his birthday dinner along with my Confetti Potato Salad and Pot Licker Greens. No, we don’t live or celebrate his birthday in a warm climate. I oven-barbecue it every year.

I love the contrast of sweet and spicy. Jalapeños are highly inconsistent chilies. Sometimes they are mild and other times they pack some heat. I made sticky rice stuffed jalapeños for a potluck that were delicious, but like a game of “mouth Russian roulette.” Some were quite hot and some were fine so I had to warn people before they ate them. I find that pickling them evens out the heat levels.

The 70’s were a funny time food wise. As a pseudo-hippy kid, making bread out of pumpkin seemed revolutionary and wild until I heard of zucchini bread. The only time we had pumpkin was in pie at Thanksgiving and I hated it. My mother would bake this bread fairly often and all the other ingredients masked the nasty flavor of canned pumpkin that I still loathe today.One Christmas we baked them as gifts in old coffee cans, as you did back then. It was our way of recycling and being environmentally conscious. If you make this, use roasted or steamed sugar pumpkin, butternut squash, calabaza or another dense pumpkin as the base. It’s worth the extra work.

I learned this recipe for cheese wafers made of cheese scraps from Terrence Brennan and Max McCalman, when I was working with them on my show “Say Cheese: a tongue-titillating tasting of artisan cheeses, wines and the songs they inspire.” You can eat them plain, put a soft cheese like a chevre or ricotta on top with some grilled figs or my 4G Green Tomato Chutney. I also like them crumbled over a salad for extra-cheesy CRUNCH!

I can make all sorts of new fangled, over-the-top and invented dishes I want for turkey day, but I know my family and friends would turn on me if I didn’t make macaroni and cheese. It’s on the menu every year. It’s rich because it has a lot of CHEESE in it and BUTTER and that’s what makes it DELICIOUS! This is recipe for a crowd or just a few Mac ’n’ Cheese enthusiasts. You know your people. Be sure to make enough. It also freezes beautifully.

Can you hear me singing, “Life is like a bowl of cherries”? There’s nothing I love more than a perfectly ripe cherry when it’s sweet and firm so it bursts in my mouth when I bite into it. I could eat them every day of my life. But, alas, local cherry season is over before you know it. One way to save a bit of it for the darks days of winter is to pickle them.

The smokiness almost makes these “shrooms” taste like they were barbecued. They make a great potluck dish because they can be served warm or room temperature.

I whipped up this red white and blue salad featuring watermelon, jicama, and blueberries for a friends Fourth of July party. If you use a different cookie-cutter for the watermelon and jicama you can pretty much change the theme to create a patriotic salad for any summer occasion. I can see baby shapes for a baby shower salad, cars and trucks for a boy’s birthday, flower shapes for a garden party, etc. It could be fun to cut out initials.

Garlic chips and garlic dust are a garlic freaks wet dream. I like to sprinkle them on salads, vegetables, sandwiches, chicken wings and more. You can crumble them on buttered popcorn.

These chocolate truffles are made from ganache, which sounds “fancy”, but is just the French word for an emulsion of cream and chocolate.

I called this a winter salad because I made it in the winter. It looks a little like a snow ball or, as a few people thought when they saw the photo, a white chocolate truffle rolled in coconut.

You could eat any of the three delicious components of this salad on their own, but I combined to make mouth music as part of a brunch I made for friends who tend to be vegetarian-ish.

Here’s the cool thing about throwing events. You don’t always have to cook to bring delight to a party or potluck or even a holiday meal. Gathering the right ingredients and making your food interactive will make it FUN. Set up a banana split bar so your guests can make their own. Who doesn’t LOVE a banana split? If you’ve got a fussy friend or two, don’t invite them. Just kidding, there’s plenty of options for them too. They can just have ice cream or just bananas or eat their weight in maraschino cherries. Everybody’s happy! You don’t need all of the items under ingredients… unless you enjoy a bit of overkill like me. Use your favorites or try one of the less processed, artisan-made alternatives I’ve listed below. For a potluck, ask each guest to bring something from the list!

Once every couple of months a bunch of food lovers gather for Brooklyn Swappers where they trade homemade goods. You never know what these wonderfully creative cooks will be swapping: pickles, jams, sauces, chutneys, relishes, infused alcohols, teas, cakes, cookies, flavored salts, chocolates, candies, kombucha—it could be ANYTHING! For Sunday’s brunch swap, I made Salted Cinnamon Browned Butter Caramels. There’s also a potluck, for which I believe I invented a new dish: The Deviled Egg Egg