Some nice tips for tasty vegan cooking

Some nice tips for tasty vegan cooking

Some nice tips for tasty vegan cooking

This is a chapter with notes on how to make food tasty, interesting and varied. Some of them are notes on general cooking, some on meal planning and variation, some on making leftovers interesting. 

Use oil well to maximize flavor

 

It is the oil in foods that carries much of the taste, and that gives much of the satisfied feeling after eating.

If you skimp too much on your oil, you will probably find your cooking unsatisfying and not very tasty. It does no good to cut down on oil in cooking and then be craving fatty foods like milk and cheese to compensate. While you don’t need to use large amounts of butter or lard as in some older cookbooks, you can use a reasonable amount of healthy oils like olive or peanut, or some butter for flavor mixed with canola to make it lighter, and come out with food that is very tasty, satisfying to eat, and healthy for you.

Part of the reason you need to allow for sufficient oil is that good soups, stews and sauces, depend on this cooking ‘secret’ - get your seasoning flavors, your spices and your condiment vegetables like garlic, ginger, onion, bell peppers and celery, cooked in the oil before adding the flavored oil to your cooking water or sauce. 

That’s the reason why the usual meat-based bean soup and bean recipes use a ham hock, bacon or sausage to cook with - they are all sauces of strongly flavored salty oil. That is also why most oilfree soups are so bland, and why spices that are just thrown into cooking water for soups are often flavorless.

Sauteing Onions

Cook onions very slowly and they become smooth, sweet and rich tasting. Cook them on a higher flame and they are less sweet and have more of an edge, sometimes with a slightly scorched taste. The tastes have different uses. The rich, sweet taste is good for rich soups, stews and gravies. Onions cooked more quickly with more of an edge are good in tomato sauce, and with stronger tasting veggies and beans, especially with Mediterranean style spices. 

Cooking grain with oil

Adding the oil and spices to grain before it is cooked, gives a milder, subtler and more pervasive taste than if oil and spices are added after the grain is cooked, where the flavor coats rather than permeating the grains. 

Varying tastes and textures

In meals with more than one dish you generally want the tastes and textures to complement rather than be too similar. For example, a rich wet stew is best complemented by a dry grain dish. Or, a very spicy rice dish could be complemented by a sweet and smooth tasting soup or stew, or vice versa. 

If you think of tastes as being in 5 major categories - salty, sweet, sour, bitter, pungent - it’s a good idea not to have the same taste dominant in all your dishes - so, a spicy sour stew with a sour cabbage salad and rice cooked with lemon juice would not work. 

Salty or sour dishes are complemented by mildly sweet dishes - and grains and most vegetables and beans are basically very mildly sweet. 

Salty and sour in the same dish intensify each other - you will see them together often in the recipes. Using lemon juice or vinegar in your cooking lets you use less salt. Salty and sweet tend to complement or balance rather than intensify each other. A little bit of sugar added to a dish with a primarily salty taste, like soy sauce, will mellow and smooth out the flavor a bit. 

Hot dishes, those using peppers or chilis,are best complemented by bland grain dishes, and by smooth creamy side dishes like yogurt.

Varying Leftovers

This becomes very important when you are cooking ahead a lot, and making stews or rice dishes to last for 3 to 5 days. Here are some suggestions.

· Vary the side dish. If you have a bean and vegie stew, have it with plain rice one day, with toast another day, over rice another day.

· By the 3rd day, vary or ‘perk up’ your leftover by adding a little extra seasoning - a little extra salt and lemon to make the taste a little sharper often helps. An extra touch of cayenne or pepper can also liven it up. Or, add a garnish like seeds, nuts or grated cheese.

· For a rice and veggie dish you can make a half-new dish by sauteing some veggies with spices and adding the leftovers to that. A cold rice salad can be turned into a hot rice and vegetable dish with a little extra oil, cooked onion and spices.

· If you cook ahead with whole beans, say for a stew, make enough beans that you can keep some of them plain, to be mixed in vegie and rice quick sauteed dishes.

· Keep an interesting bean dip around to have as a snack with bread, or as a complementing side dish with a plain grain dish.

· When you make rice for a meal, cook your rice plain and make extra, so that you have it available as an ingredient to stir into a fresh dish.

· If you are planning a week’s worth of meals, make Tuesday or Wednesday your ‘Eat Something Else’ day as a change of pace, and do a quick cooking meal with a convenient food like mock duck, or pre-cooked beans with rice and veggies with a different spice pattern.

Pasta also makes a good change of pace. You might also consider having a soft cooked cereal like cream of wheat or rice, either sweet like a breakfast cereal or cooked with soft vegetables and spices.

· Use a topping, dip or relish as a side accent to vary the taste of dishes.

Expand your thinking about appropriate foods, especially for breakfast or dinner. For instance, I often like to start the day with a vegetable soup for breakfast, and cooked cereal makes a onderful and warming quick dinner.

article source: Charles Obert / LBVeg