Vegetarian/Vegan Recipes

Try looking through vegweb.com or vegiehead.com ... always heaps of great things on there

Are you looking for things to barbecue, or just good spring/summer veggie recipes? Here's a salad recipe from Cooking Light that is both easy and really good (and can be mostly put together ahead of time and then tossed at the last minute; for the vegans, omit the goat cheese balls and maybe add some strawberries):

Spring Salad with Grapes and Pistachio-Crusted Goat Cheese
Yield: 4 servings/Cooking Light

1/4 cup shelled dry-roasted pistachios, finely chopped
1/2 cup (4 ounces) goat cheese
1/4 cup balsamic or other light vinaigrette
1 (5-ounce) package gourmet salad greens or spring lettuce mix
1 cup seedless red grapes, halved
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Place pistachios in a shallow dish. Divide cheese into 12 equal portions, rolling to form 12 balls. Roll each ball in the pistachios until well coated. Set pistachio-crusted cheese balls aside.

Combine vinaigrette and greens in a large mixing bowl, and toss gently to coat evenly. Divide greens mixture evenly among 4 salad plates. Top each serving with 1/4 cup grapes and 3 cheese balls. Sprinkle salads evenly with pepper, and serve immediately.

I'd suggest you don't do veggie burgers-- we appreciate it when our carnivore friends think of us, but we get a bit tired of them I've served barbecued tempeh often and it's always well received. You can buy vegan barbecue sauce at Whole Foods (or make your own). This blog post is the one I go to: http://thechiclife.com/2011/06/lazy-lunch-easy-bbq-tempeh-tangy-power-greens.html - make the kale also (maybe toss in some golden raisins) as a side dish and serve it as shown, with the tempeh on top of the kale. Or here is another (including a bbq sauce recipe) from Moosewood: http://www.mwcooks.desirepathdesign.com/Recipe/barbecued-tempeh-or-tofu

Since you don't need a lot of grill space for meat, it can be good to grill corn on the cob-- tastes so much better on the grill. Do a flavored butter for the vegetarians and flavored extra virgin olive oil for vegans with the corn.

For dessert, an easy but elegant idea is to buy some vegan sorbet, then caramelize some bananas in brown sugar (and maybe some rum!) as a topping (just remember to use oil or vegan margarine and not butter). Just google 'caramelized bananas with rum' and I'm sure you'll get lots of hits

Appetizers are actually the hardest for vegan friends-- here are a few ideas: guacamole (lot of healthy recipes out there), mediterranean style tapas platter (mostly purchased items - hummus or edamame hummus, olives, canned dolmades, jarred roasted peppers marinated in some balsamic vinegar and garlic, some good feta chunks for the vegetarians, pita for dipping, caponata or baba ghanoush). I pull ideas from this list often: http://www.marthastewart.com/856365/vegan-appetizer-recipes/@center/852566/vegetarian-recipes#856365/346592 - but several recipes show dips on breads-- remember that most breads aren't vegan, so you'd need to also have some vegan crackers on hand.

Good luck! Your veggie friends will REALLY appreciate your efforts!

Mmm, fresh garden salsa with cilantro. I LOVE it.

Tomatoes, green peppers, red onions, cilantro, lime, salt, and pepper.

I want this now!

Tofu-vegetable kebabs

You'll need:

Firm tofu
BBQ sauce (make sure it is vegetarian/vegan, most are, though)
Differently coloured peppers (one green, one, red and one yellow would be fine, you might end up with left over of each colour, though)
Onion(s) (I like red ones, but borown would work, too)
Skewers

What you do:

1. Press the tofu. That means, wrap it in paper towels or a clean kitchen towel, put it on a plate, put another plate upside down on top of it and pile some weight on the second plate. At least that's how I do it.
Let it sit for a while. It removes execces water and makes it so the tofu sucks up more marinade.

1.a - Optional. Freeze and thaw the tofu. This is not really needed but changes the consistency in a nice way. Put Tofu in tupper box, freeze over night, thaw in the morning.

2. Cut Tofu into cubes.

3. Marinate tofu cubes in BBQ sauce. Just put them (back) in the tupper box, pour BBQ sauce on top of them, put lid on, shake everything around a bit, put it in the fridge for a few hours.

4. Cut vegetables. Make sure you cut the onion so that you get nice big onion pieces (aka, sideways only, maybe if onion is big, cut those big pieces one time to make them not monstrous) and not tiny cubes. Actually everything should have nice, relatively big pieces.

5. Drain marinade of tofu. (maybe you can use the BBQ sauce for something else, last time Imixed it with vegan mayo and made a dressing for pasta salad with it, but that is quite fattening...)

6. Assemble kebabs. Nice piece of onion, green capsicum piece, tofu, onion, red capsicum piece, tofu, onion, yellow capsicum piece, tofu... or similar arrangements.

7. put on grill. Make sure first how you friends feel if anything meaty touches them, if you need to get some aluminium tray to put them in because of meat having fomrerly touched the grill, etc. Some people are a bit pedantic others don't give a damn, but it is dangerous to assume.

8. Enjoy


This is a basic receipe. You can play around with it, use different marinades, different vegetables you can imagine BBQing, replace the tofu with button mushroons (would imagine they need a different marinade, though, maybe just oliveoil and garlic), add tempeh, etc.


Other things that go well on the grill: Corn on the cob with olive oil, garlic and salt, wrap a potato in aluminium foil, again with olive oil and garlic and throw that on the grill, portobello mushroons...