Vegetarian Recipes
This Butter Shoyu Mushroom Pasta brings together earthy mushrooms with the richness of butter and umami of soy sauce. Sweet peas give little bursts of sweetness as a perfect counterbalance in every bite. One pan, a handful of ingredients, less than 30 minutes — this is my kinda pasta!
This Cold Tomato Somen Noodles recipe is all about simplicity and seasonality—thin, delicate somen noodles served with fresh, bright tomatoes and a savoury sauce. It’s tomato-forward and the kind of meal that lets peak summer tomatoes shine.
These Mushroom and Cauliflower Quesadillas are crispy on the outside and loaded with roasted cauliflower, meaty king oyster mushrooms and melty cheese. They are extra good served with quick-pickled red onions tucked inside for a little zip and zing. These may be vegetarian but they are so tasty and satisfying. Even your carnivorous people will devour them happily!
This Confit Garlic and Scallion Dip is a creamy, savoury dip that combines the rich, mellow sweetness of confit garlic with the bright punchiness of scallions. It’s the kind of thing that has everyone digging in and then asking you for the recipe.
This CRISPY RICE SALAD WITH HALLOUMI ticks all the boxes with hella textures and flavours — refreshing crunch of cabbage slaw and cucumber slices, viral crispy rice, buttery-toasted almonds and springy, salty halloumi cheese, all tossed in a sweet spicy tahini dressing. See what mean about it being a salad that delivers it all?
Pommes Anna (or Potato Anna) is a classic French dish of buttery sliced potatoes stacked into a cake-like form that is baked until tender on the inside and crisp on the edges. The signature presentation of a Pommes Anna is flipped over onto a serving dish where the golden brown bottom becomes the top. You must have a really good non-stick pan or a really well-seasoned cast iron pan to pull it off. Do practice this dish before serving it to guests at a dinner party. Once you can comfortably pull this off, it is a rather satisfying culinary triumph!
These Crispy Potato Stacks with Garlic Herb Butter come out of the oven with ruffle-y, crispy edges around a tender and creamy centre. They are the perfect side dish for the holidays or for hosting dinner guests you really want to impress.
I have officially dubbed this TOMATO SALAD WITH TOASTED ALMONDS AND DATES the salad of the summer! My summer, at least. And maybe yours too, once you try it. This salad centers thickly sliced, juicy tomatoes, a big handful of baby arugula and an incredible toasted almonds and dates topping. It’s so good there is always inventory shrinkage before it gets to the salad.
This GREEN BEANS WITH MISO BUTTER BRAISED ONIONS is side dish perfection. Onions are cooked until nearly melt-in-your-mouth in a simple but flavourful 3-ingredient braising liquid of butter, miso paste and water. To serve, the tender onions are served over green beans, under a blanket of the umami-rich, unctuous sauce.
This EASY ONE-POT CHINESE NOODLE SOUP is the answer when you need a nourishing and soul-soothing meal that requires hardly any cooking and is done in 20 minutes. Literally, the only skill needed is the ability to throw everything into a pot and boil them!
A riff on Pasta con Broccoli, the beloved Italian classic where tender broccoli, garlic, and good olive oil melt into a silky, cheese-flecked sauce right in the pot. A splash of lemon and a few little twists make it even better.
This is one of the easiest pastas you’ll ever make. In basically the same amount of time to cook the pasta, you can make the sauce. Then toss the sauce with the cooked pasta plus handfuls of baby spinach to wilt, and finish it with grated Pecorino Romano and dried chili pepper flakes. That is it. DINNER is served.
This MUSHROOM AND EGG “GYUDON” JAPANESE RICE BOWL is an easy, healthy 30-minute meal perfect for weeknights. King mushrooms are an amazing swap-in for meat because of its inherent “meaty” texture and ability to soak in loads of flavour. My favourite way to prepare king mushrooms is hand-shredding into strips and sautéing them with a little bit of oil in a searing hot pan until they’re nice and brown on the edges. This technique brings out their flavour and make them satisfyingly “meaty”. If you haven’t tried this, you MUST. I highly recommend it 🤌
This EASY CHINESE TOMATO EGG NOODLES is a dish you should most definitely have in your weeknight arsenal. It’s so quick and easy to prepare, and satisfying to eat. Summer tomatoes are glorious in this tomato-forward dish. But honestly I make this all year round because it is such a no-fuss meal I can throw together in 15 minutes. We all need more of those, am I right?
Before you think this is yet another hummus recipe, think again. This CONFIT GARLIC HUMMUS WITH GRILLED MUSHROOMS is absolutely unlike any other hummus recipe I’ve seen or tasted. Loads of garlic (two heads) is roasted in oil in the oven to flavour the smooth and creamy hummus. But it’s the mushroom topping that gives this dish its OH-MY-GOD swoon factor. A mix of cremini and shiitake mushrooms are grilled and then marinaded in garlic, lemon juice and peel, thyme, maple syrup and dried cascabel chile.
I love rice and I love kimchi. Like, looooooove. Today I’m sharing this EASY KIMCHI FRIED RICE recipe that’s become a weeknight staple ever since my two girls finally learned to enjoy kimchi! This is one of the quickest dinners you can pull together using fairly basic fridge and pantry staples. You can use homemade kimchi or store-bought kimchi. As easy as this recipe is, there is one thing I want you to pay attention to: perfect fried rice starts with perfectly prepared rice!
Delicious homemade Chinese Vegetable Dumplings filled with sautéed snow pea leaves, Chinese chives, shiitake mushrooms and tofu. Recipe includes homemade wrappers but you can also use store bought wrappers with this filling.
Refreshing and delicious recipe featuring bouncy noodles loaded with a variety of crisp veggies and shredded chicken, all tossed in a Chinese-style creamy, savoury, spicy and tangy peanut butter sauce.
Are you Team White Sauce or Team Red Sauce? Honestly, I have been Team Red all the way, all my life. BUT, this dreamy creamy Springtime White Lasagna almost made me second guess my lifelong allegiance. Plus, I tricked my whole family into eating THREE whole different kinds of green vegetables in ONE meal because of this luscious, roasted garlic cream sauce. I said roasted garlic cream sauce. I just wanted to make sure you read that. 😉 Can you even imagine??! It’s definitely kinda magical.
All it took was a delicious cookie. The kind that is hearty and chunky with all my favourite things like seeds and cacao nibs and cranberries and goji berries and tahini (aka my favourite butter of all time until infinity). The kind that promises to be hearty, healthy AND delicious, and actually delivers on that promise. It’s no wonder that I fell in love with it and have made the recipe more than half a dozen times. And in falling in love with the cookie, I discovered and also fell a little bit in love (not in a creepy stalker way … in a respectful admiration type of way) with its creators, Sarah Grossman and Tamara Green, the duo behind Living Kitchen Wellness blog and now their debut cookbook, The Living Kitchen Cookbook, Healing Recipes to Support Your During Cancer Treatment and Recovery.
Any morel lovers out there?! I am so pleased to partner with Green Peace Canada on this blog post to raise awareness about the Boreal forest by way of this wildly delicious Cauliflower Gnocchi with Morel Mushrooms recipe! Easy to make two-ingredient cauliflower gnocchi are tossed simply with sauteed morels, shallots and garlic, and finished with chives and a wee drizzle of nice balsamic vinegar to brighten everything up. This is an elevated dish fit for royalty! Or at least your most favorite dinner guests. The ones who bring very nice wine! ;)
I think there is a certain consensus among those of us who are living through Winter right now that citrus fruits are basically the best part about it. The other features of our winter - air so cold it hurts any exposed skin, shoveling and de-icing all the things all the time, extremities that are always cold even while INDOORS, plus a few other things that make you swear under your breath - I can live without!
With the start of school and adieu to summer vacation, I begin to accept that Fall is just around the corner. Every year when I spot the first copper-y dried leaf fallen on the sidewalk, I think of (lower your device's volume if you're at work haha) this old KFC commercial where the woman is screaming and pointing at something. The camera then turns to the sidewalk in front of her, showing a single fallen maple leaf on the ground with the voice-over saying "summer can't last forever". She then bolts in the other direction. I feel exactly the same way! Does anyone else (Canadian) remember this one? Best. Commercial. Ever. My favorite. :)
Hiya! It's been a minute since I posted. How has this month flown by so fast? Oh I remember now. It's because I've had my hands full with the girls who are on summer break. Why even is there a summer vacation? People who work don't get 2 months off their jobs (I mean other than school-related staff). Stay-at-home parents don't stop cooking / dishes / laundry / vacuuming / groceries / chauffeuring and all of that for a couple of months every year. Why do children get 2 months off school? Isn't school basically their job? Seems like a good idea to keep their minds sharp all year round. Maybe next year I will sign the girls up for math camp all summer heh heh. #tigermomgoals
Ever since my family moved to a diet with limited dairy, my girls have been begging for mac & cheese. This is a dairy-free version which satisfies all the cravings for the real thing. They love it so much I literally have to cut them off before they gorge themselves silly on it.
I most frequently make this with sweet potatoes and portobello mushrooms because they are my family's favorites, and that is how I wrote this recipe. However it is also wonderful using acorn squash, baking potato, eggplant, sweet pepper, heck hot pepper even. Once you make the stuffing and walnut breadcrumb topping, you can personalize the meal by putting it into everyone's respective favorite veggie vessel, adjusting time in the oven based on it.
I generally abhor salad prep. I love to eat salad. But the prep, no. So much washing and spinning and trimming and seeding and cutting. But these rolls and the dipping sauce. Oh I'll do it for them. They are one of my favorite ways to eat a load of vegetables in one sitting. The filling can be quite versatile. The only 'formula' (for me) is the inclusion of buttery avocado + crunchy carrots + refreshing cucumber + something leafy. Beyond that, almost anything goes.
Charred cabbage wedges topped with creamy miso mushrooms make a luxurious and flavourful vegetable dish. The cabbage turns tender with deeply browned edges while the mushrooms soak in a rich, umami sauce. This is anything but a mere side kick on the dinner table!