Photos from the Book
Veggies
Low Carb Vegan Cooking
More recipes and articles at Low Carb Vegan Lab.
Photos for the Book:
Chinese Mustard Greens
Trim the ends of the Chinese Mustard Green bunches so that all the stems are separated, leaving you with very long pieces. Wash these thoroughly. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add some salt to taste. Fill an adjacent large bowl with cold water for the ensuring shock treatment.
Place the greens into the pot and boil for ~2–3 minutes, making sure not to over-boil (the color will start to seem a bit depressing as it overcooks, so stop boiling if it starts to look a little sad).
Quickly dunk the greens into a large bowl of ice water or cold water to stop the cooking process — this helps retain its happy green color. You can make ice water by adding ice cubes to tap water.
Roasted Brown Cremini Mushrooms with Sage and Chives
As a lazy cook, I am always seeking opportunities to take scissors to ingredients rather than chop them. Long straight chives stems and huge sage leaves are just perfect for cutting with scissors! So cut away.
Clean the cremini mushrooms and cut them in half, and toss with the olive oil and seasonings in a large tossing bowl. If you don’t have a tossing bowl, a mixing bowl will also work. Make sure that the oil and seasonings are evenly coated with the mushrooms.
When serving, garnish with additional fresh chives and sage if desired. This will allow the discerning palette to make micro discriminations between fresh and roasted spices. If you find the taste of fresh sage as a garnish overpowering, just, you know, sprinkle some more salt and pepper on top!
Your kitchen, if not home, may smell like roasted chives and sage for hours, but that’s cool.
Green Bean Casserole
Green beans contain quercetin, a senolytic that also comes in an expensive capsule supplement. Senolytics kill senescent aka zombie cells by causing apoptosis (programmed cell death), in case you’re wondering about this article’s subtitle :)
Creamed Baked Kalettes
Kalettes are a new vegetable invented by hybridizing kale with the Frankenstein CRISPR genes of Brussel sprouts (which always insist on being capitalized in a spell checker) in a radioactive chamber managed by genenitcaly modified organism cyborg engineers. So, you may as well eat them. They look like baby kale mushrooms but have the charming tooth pickable size of their Brussel sprouts heritage.
Tangy Coleslaw
Creamy Coleslaw
Soft Boiled Garlic
If you buy already peeled garlic cloves in bulk, get in the habit of boiling a bunch and keeping them in the fridge, since they have so many uses. Just give them a rinse and drop them in a pot of boiling water for 15 minutes, then store in a container.
These are a great alternative to minced garlic (which is often very watery) or garlic powder (which often explodes in a dust storm all over your shirt). Also, when soft, they are so easy to chop into smaller pieces and won’t go flying across your countertop every time your knife slices into them.
They work well in sauces, such as my Creamy Sauce, or as simple snacks, just laying on top of marinated baked tofu as shown below.
Or, make toothpick mini skewers, stacking olives, garlic, cherry tomatoes and whatever else will fit on a toothpick when you are looking for snacky things to eat.
Caramelized Fennel
This recipe treads a very fine line between conceptual categories and distinctions such as Caramelized, Charred and Burnt. If you accidentally stray into Burnt territory, just tell your dinner guest(s) that the fennel has been charred ‘in the Bulgarian manner.’
Happy Baby Eggplant
This recipe takes its name from a yoga pose that is famous for making practitioners of that ancient art fart, or at least really want to while struggling to hold it in. Thus, this recipe is also a kind of homage to all new vegans whose gut biomes are adjusting!
Lo Bak & Mini Bella Mushroom Pan Cake
Roasted Heirloom Carrots
Buffalo Cauliflower Bombs
In a super massive mixing bowl (the kind that is very hard to find a place to store in your kitchen), dump the cauliflower florets. Because I’m lazy, I use thawed from frozen bags of florets, but you’re welcome to start with a head of cauliflower and break it up into crumbly pieces that make a mess and add to the cleaning work.
Continue to check in on them every 5 minutes until they meet your cauliflower buffalo bomber expectations — the batter should start to get crispy but, you know, not burnt, etc.
You can pour and brush on additional buffalo sauce if you want to increase your diet’s intake of melted vegetable margarine, up to you (“Keto People in the House!”). Needless to say, the fat content of this dish makes it best as a cheat meal for those with weight loss goals.
Eat with toothpicks or even your fingers. Keep in mind that these are supposed to be a lot healthier than buffalo chicken wings ;~)
Pickled Veggie Mandala
From your collection of pickled vegetables, arrange them sequentially in a circular pattern around a large dish, using the dish size to constrain portion sizes.
In Sanskrit, a ‘mandala’ is a circle that is used in ritual practices involving repetition and spiritual forms of focus. In the context of this dietary practice, regularly creating mandalas of your pickled vegetables aids with mindfulness, intentionality and routine, keeping you centered in a plant-based diet.
For the veggie-only version of this recipe, leave the center of the dish empty as a symbol of primordial emptiness, which itself is a symbol of hunger. You can also add a protein core to the center of your pickled veggie mandala, if an empty center is not your thing.
Roasted Green Beans and Shallots
Did you know that green beans aren’t beans? With this veggie, we eat the unripe young fruit that has yet to mature into full blown beans. They are more like ‘someday beans’ but since they are green, they’re name isn’t a total falsehood. Rest assured, though, that they are still legumes, but no one wants to call them ‘baby green legumes,’ presumably.
It’s this developmental (not mental) immaturity that makes green beans so low carb. If their beans-to-be were, well, beans, then they would be loaded with carbs in the way that most beans are. Green beans quite literally nip carbs in the bud, by nipping them at baby bean stage.
These legume younglings are rich in vitamins K and C, as well as iron, folate, manganese, antioxidants, some good ol’ protein, fiber of course (that’s a no brainer), and quercetin, which is a flavonoid with senolytic effects, since it helps the body eliminate zombie cells ! Woo hoo, you can kill zombies eating this stuff! That’s also a no brainer (there’s some kind of missing joke here, about zombies and brains.). Aren’t you glad I don’t try to be funny with every recipe in this book?
Now that you have a thorough scientific understanding of green beans, here’s one low carb vegan way you can eat them fast and easy.
Put swimming goggles on so that cutting the shallots doesn’t burn your eyes. Always remember to wear swimming goggles when cutting, chopping or dicing any member of the onion family. If you also need reading glasses to read this recipe while slicing shallots, you can get prescription swimming goggles.
Simple Fancy Salad #1
If you find a grocery that sells ‘living butter lettuce’ maybe you should keep shopping there for all your veggie needs, as that shows they have good taste in greens! Living lettuce is lettuce that is still alive, which is evidenced by having its root system still attached.
Now it is time to make the living lettuce come unalive, so cut off those roots and toss them into your green compost waste bin. Separate the lettuce leaves and wash them well, dry and place into a salad tossing bowl. Chop the mini cukes and also drop them into the salad tossing bowl.
Simple Fancy Salad #2
In some ways, this salad is a little less fancy than #1, omitting the grated cheese and the use of Dijon mustard as an emulsifier and going with a more straightforward oil and vinegar dressing. However, this salad is a bit more fancy because it has croutons!
To make the croutons, take the crusts from 3 slices of low carb bread and slice them into cubes. Place them in a mixing bowl and add the flavored oil, tossing to coat them thoroughly. Salt and pepper to taste….
Caprese Salad
Technically tomatoes are a fruit but we associate salads with vegetables and so here it is with the salads. If this book had a section called “Fruit & Fat” for sure this dish would be there! This salad reminds you that the notion of “low carb” is quite relative, since vegan mozzarella can be a bit higher in carbs compared to most ingredients in this volume. And it’s definitely not low fat! But in the scheme of things, compared to a Chicago deep dish pizza, this is a relatively healthy alternative.
Separate the fresh oregano and basil from their stems and wash in a tea strainer (that’s a great way to wash fresh herbs). Cut the basil leaves into smaller pieces because they are quite large compared to the oregano. You don’t need too many fresh herbs but the more you throw into the salad, the more impressive it will look when photographing it :) and the flavor will pack more of an herbal punch (which sounds like an oxymoron).
Roasted Radishes
This is your low carb substitute for roasted baby potatoes!
These are great to leave in a bowl on the counter, next to a toothpick holder for day long snacking.
Seitan Sandwich Spread
