The Smiling Onion

Vegetarian and Gluten-free Cooking

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5-Minute, 5-Ingredient Hazelnut Gelato (Vegan, No Sugar)

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Summer is coming! It is, it is, it is! I know that some of us eat ice-cream year-round, but for those of you who don’t (who are you??), I think I can say with certainty that it’s time to get started again, rain or no rain. If we act like summer is here, it will come. Okay?? And…according to the always-reliable weather forecast, it is going to be in the 70s and 80s all next week. So let’s celebrate with some 5-minute homemade gelato!

This gelato is seriously delicious. It contains no dairy, no eggs, and no sugar. The secret? Frozen bananas and a Vitamix! Yes, you can be skeptical…but I urge you to try this before passing judgment. It really does taste like gelato and…IMO…banana is not the central flavor. I mean, it’s there – don’t get me wrong – but you don’t have to be a banana lover to like this; you just can’t be a banana hater. (Actually, I gave some of this gelato to my mother and asked her to guess the base, and she didn’t even realize there was banana in it!)

Okay, so let’s get to the five ingredients: we need two ripe bananas which have been frozen solid (to the point where you can’t cut into them to peel them unless you let them sit out for a few minutes), hazelnut oil, coconut cream (which you can buy or obtain by just scooping the cream from a can of refrigerated full-fat coconut milk), a pinch of cinnamon, and mesquite powder. Oh – a pinch of sea salt is also nice, but I’m not counting that in the “5-ingredients” because c’mon, it’s salt!

Have you heard of mesquite powder? It’s a superfood made from the seeds of the mesquite plant, which grows in desert areas, and has been used by indigenous people in Mexico and the Southwest for a long, long time. It has a sweet, caramel-like flavor, a bunch of awesome vitamins (calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium, zinc…), and some protein to boot! It’s wonderful in smoothies, hot drinks, baked goods, raw cookies…and this gelato, of course. In short, I highly encourage you to get some and try it out!

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Date and Ginger Scones

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There is something about the word “breakfast” that is just downright appealing. It implies something well beyond the “crap, I have to leave right now, I guess I’ll just grab this package of instant oatmeal” meaning of the word. No, in its natural state, I would argue that “breakfast” is the type of affair that’s suggested by the phrase “Let’s do breakfast.” Or better yet, “I made breakfast.” You know … the meaning of the word that triggers images of steaming tea and coffee mugs, wonderful smells wafting out of the kitchen, cozy pajamas, rain patter on the windows, sleeping kittens, etc. (Sleeping kittens?! Okay, maybe I’m alone on that last one, but I do find it to be one of those comforting images the word breakfast evokes.)

Anyway, in case I’ve completely lost you with the whole “breakfast” thing – consider the word “scone.” Are we on the same page now? These date and ginger scones are part 1 of what I consider to be the perfect breakfast – part 2 being a mug of tea. They definitely fit the “wonderful smells wafting out of the kitchen” criteria too. And…if you are having one of those “crap, I have to leave  right now” mornings, they are an excellent grab ‘n go option that will allow you to transport the elegance of “breakfast” to the road.

Oh, I should mention that this is a super easy, 1-bowl recipe!

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Chiles en Nogada (Stuffed Poblano Peppers with Walnut Sauce)

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Ever since my 13-year-old self read Like Water for Chocolate and cried her eyes out, I’ve been dying to try chiles en nogada. Incredibly, I ate it for the first time today, 15 years after I vowed to make it as soon as possible. Well, good things come to those who wait.

I should start by saying that this isn’t the traditional chiles en nogada. For one thing, it’s completely vegan – no ground meat whatsoever. For another, the walnut sauce has hemp seeds in it (trust me, you won’t know – they just make it nice and creamy!) And finally, while traditional chiles en nogada is quite heavy on the fruit (the meat filling is usually cooked with raisins, apple, pear, and peach), I just put some chopped raisins in mine for a bit of sweetness and called it a day. Not out of laziness, but because I’ve never been a fan of fruit-heavy savory dishes. Some people also dip their chiles en egg batter and fry them — I chose to leave mine roasted and unfried.

Well, the gods were with me. Because I created a truly delicious (IMHO) vegan, gluten-free twist on the classic dish I’ve been wanting to eat since age 13. Roasted poblanos are filled with a savory mixture of juicy portobellos, lentils, spices, walnuts, and raisins; topped with a thick and creamy walnut sauce; and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds. As in the traditional recipe, the colors of the Mexican flag are well represented: just in time for Cinco de Mayo. (Although chiles en nogada is generally eaten for Mexican Independence Day –- which falls in September — it is one of Puebla’s traditional dishes, which makes it  appropriate for Cinco de Mayo in my book! Especially since your standard American-style nachos are deemed appropriate and would basically not exist in Puebla!)

Anyway, if you have a couple hours to spare (nothing with stuffed roasted poblanos is ever quick and easy to prepare), I highly recommend this recipe. The filling is just the right amount of sweet and savory, and the walnut sauce provides the perfect creamy compliment. Plus it’s just so elegant!

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16 Passover Recipes

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Passover is around the corner! That means matzoh ball soup, charoset, hard boiled eggs, horseradish, tzimmes, and a whole lot of other Passover staples if you happen to be attending or hosting a seder this year. In fact, planning what to eat at a seder is almost never difficult – there are so many traditional Passover dishes! What can be hard for most of us, however, is figuring out what to eat after the Seder, when you are sick of the staples yet still have almost a week left of restricted eating.

Since I’m gluten-free year round and happen to also follow Sephardic Passover (this means beans and grains are A-okay), the basic change to my diet is restricting oats. Which isn’t super difficult. However, many of my friends follow Ashkenazi Passover, which is much more restrictive – no grains or legumes at all (though quinoa is okay), no poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, or sesame seeds…the list goes on for a while. And it can be difficult if you are vegetarian.

So, instead of giving you yet another version of Matzoh Ball Soup (though I have a pretty great idea for one and will probably post it next year), I’ve decided to list for you all of the delicious and wonderful things you can eat right from this blog even if you follow a strict Ashkenazi style Pesach. (If you follow Sephardic Passover, you can pretty much eat anything on this blog that doesn’t contain oats!)

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Raw Hamantaschen Cookies (Sugar-Free, Grain-Free, and Vegan!)

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Food blogging has definitely made me a lot more aware of the plethora of special occasions that seem to pop up almost every other week! Somehow, I would feel remiss if I didn’t celebrate at least a few of them with a delicious special-occasion-appropriate recipe.

After the Super Bowl, for which I created this delicious superfood bowl, I was thinking the next special occasion recipe would be a gluten-free matzoh ball soup for Passover. Yup, I had completely forgotten about Valentine’s Day (luckily I squeaked by with these amazing grain-free sandwich cookies), St. Patty’s Day (last week’s Irish Flag Skillet), and Purim, which brings me to today. Who knew there were so many holidays in late winter/early spring? And I’m not even counting those of the “national cookie day” variety.

Anyway, the Jewish holiday of Purim begins tonight. Growing up, this holiday was always one of my favorites – it involved the telling of the Purim story (often re-enacted in a play) and the vanquishing of the story’s villain, Haman. It also involved cookie making and cookie eating, probably a big part of why this holiday is such a big hit with kids (that and the obligatory noise making whenever the name of the villain is mentioned during the Purim story!)

Hamantaschen cookies, pictured above, get their name and shape from said villain, who was reputed to wear a three-cornered hat. Growing up, my family would always make these cookies and it took forever! First, we’d have to make the dough. Then, we’d have to roll it up into logs, wrap it, and freeze it. Next, we’d have to let it soften slightly. Then, we’d have to form the cookies, which was not an easy process. It didn’t help that the dough had a severe Goldilocks complex – it was always either too cold or too warm to work with! We were constantly refreezing, resoftening, etc. And, to add insult to injury, the dough itself wasn’t even that great once it was baked into cookie form. Hamantaschen are definitely all about the filling.

Jam, poppy seeds, nuts, apricots…so many delicious fillings! The favorite, though, was always the date filling that my mother made. In fact, never mind the cookies –  we were happy eating the filling by the spoonful!

That’s why I’m so excited about the raw hamantaschen I created this year. The cookies themselves are made out of traditional filling ingredients like dates, coconut, and nuts, which in my opinion is an improvement in taste over commonly made hamantaschen doughs. They are also sooo much quicker and easier to make! There is no dough rolling, freezing, or softening. The dough comes together in the food processor. And the whole process (including measuring, pitting the dates, shaping the cookies, etc.) takes about 15 minutes. The best part? These cookies are gluten-free, fruit-sweetened, grain-free, raw, and vegan! How’s that for some Purim love?

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Irish Flag Skillet

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Happy St. Paddy’s Day, everyone! I hope you are all gearing up for some Jameson and Guinness (well, skip the Guinness if you’re gluten-free like me!) It’s a beautiful day in New York City, so I, for one, am planning to do my celebrating outdoors.

If I decide to celebrate, that is. In all honesty – while I am partial to Irish whiskey (who isn’t?) –  St. Paddy’s Day is not my favorite holiday. This probably started about six years ago, when I had the extreme misfortune of working in Times Square during the St. Paddy’s Day madness. If you’re a native New Yorker (or someone who has lived here for a while), you probably agree with me that Times Square is almost never a pleasant place to be. But while most of us can stomach walking through it on the way to something better (which is really anywhere but Times Square)  – on St. Paddy’s Day, it’s really best to avoid it at all costs. At least that was the case six years ago, when I was working in the Paramount Building, right smack dab in the center of it all.

Venturing out on my lunch break at 1 PM – mind you, this wouldn’t have been quite as upsetting if it had happened later in the day – I was met with a mob of green-clad, drunken, obnoxious frat boys. This frat must have swallowed a pinch of magic leprechaun dust or something, because it was expanding exponentially as I attempted to make my way to the deli a block away. Now I have nothing against frat boys; I mean, I went to Oberlin, so … (For those of you who aren’t picking up on my sarcasm, Oberlin is a hippy dippy liberal arts college where you’d be hard pressed to find a frat boy even if he held the key to unlocking the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You can find plenty of hipsters, though!) But…I do have something against exponentially expanding swarms of frat boys who are already drunk at 1 PM and have completely taken over Times Square. Suffice it to say it was NOT a pleasant journey to the deli and back. And it definitely took me out of the St. Paddy’s Day spirit for quite a while.

I have, however, held on to some St. Paddy’s day traditions. I’m currently wearing green (I will never say no to some good luck!) and I enjoyed a delicious skillet for breakfast this morning inspired by the colors of the Irish flag. It’s got caramelized onions, fingerling potatoes, and swiss cheese for the white component; some tender red kale for the green component (red kale for the green component? In case you’re confused, red kale has purple stems and greenish/purplish leaves but it’s basically a dark green once it’s cooked); and for the orange component, some cute carrot chunks that pop out at you every once in a while with a nice bite of sweetness. And yes, I know Irish cheddar would have been more St. Paddy’s Day appropriate, but the swiss is REALLY, REALLY good here. Trust me.

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Mini Portobello Pizzas (Grain-Free!)

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About a week ago, I was in the middle of some mundane task that I’m failing to remember at the moment, when I suddenly had a vision: portobello pizza. I don’t mean pizza topped with portobellos; that, while very tasty, is hardly worthy of being called a stroke of inspiration. No, I mean pizzas made out of portobellos. “Think about it,” I told Bobby (my fiancé.) “They’re round, would hold toppings well, go with pizza-like flavors, and are way more flavorful than most pizza crusts, both gluten-free and gluten-laden.” Bobby was skeptical. “Would it really feel like pizza if there was no bread component?” I was adamant that it would.

A week later, I tested my theory. And I’m happy to say I was absolutely right. (As I am about most things we disagree on — just kidding, just kidding.) In any case, when I presented him with the finished product, Bobby was  sold. “This should be a thing,” he said. “They should do this in restaurants.”

Indeed, they should. And possibly it’s already a thing – I haven’t Googled it yet. But I’m pretty sure someone must have come up with the same idea at some point because it’s such a perfect pizza option: it’s grain-free, super easy, doesn’t require you to make any type of crust, and also happens to hit that comfort-food note that you expect from a good pizza. And — for my dairy-free people — portobellos are insanely juicy and flavorful, so even if you make your pizzas without cheese, you’ll still get the satisfaction of that gooey, drippy, messy pizza heaven that everyone deserves to experience once in a while.

On that note, authenticity was definitely not my goal when I created these, but they are authentic in one major way: it’s easiest to eat these with a knife and fork. And that’s how they eat their pizza in Italy, baby! If you are lucky enough to have leftovers and they cool down to room temperature, then you can pick ’em up. It may be a tad messy, but in the gooey, drippy, pizza-heaven way I mentioned earlier.

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Wine-Braised Carrots with Butter and Chives

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This dish may look and sound simple – and as far as preparation goes, it is. But in terms of flavor, it’s anything but.

The first time I made this, I was in a food rut. I wanted to eat – badly – but nothing sounded remotely appealing. Finally, I realized I was craving one specific ingredient, and nothing else was going to cut it. That ingredient? Butter. I wanted that rich, soft, comforting, fatty, full-bodiedness that comes from butter and butter alone. (Red palm oil does come close, but it’s not quite the same.) In any case, once I figured out that my body wanted butter, I was home free (in terms of getting out of my food rut, that is.)

It’s a little-known fact that my favorite vegetable is the carrot – I absolutely love its versatility, sweetness, color, texture – everything. Plus it’s good for your vision and super easy to digest! So of course I found myself with a pound of carrots on my cutting board and a vegetable peeler in my right hand. I was originally planning to just sauté some carrots in butter and call it a day (in which case there would be no blog post for me to write today), but I happened to walk away from my pan shortly after plopping those carrots in, and I didn’t return until several minutes later when I found them a lovely shade of gold and also realized I’d better deglaze the pan before I had a clean-up nightmare on my hands. So I reached for the red wine.

And the rest is history. For when I popped one in my mouth, I realized these were the caviar of carrots – the quotidian transformed into the extravagant. These sumptuous golden nuggets had the complexity of flavor of a slow-braised pheasant stuffed with white truffles foraged from a secret mountainside somewhere in France (if I told you where, I’d have to kill you); drizzled with a sauce made from the roots of a thousand-year-old redwood and herbs from the aforementioned secret mountainside — simmered together by pure sunlight over a period of many months; and finished with a black sea salt only obtained by scraping a deep-sea creature’s tongue. (Okay, maybe not, but they were pretty damn delicious. And probably more delicious than the salt scraped from a deep-sea creature’s tongue, because that actually sounds fairly revolting.)

When I come out of a food rut, I come back hard. I suddenly wanted to eat everything! Well, everything containing these carrots, at least. I’d serve them with herbed quinoa and balsamic lentils, or white-bean croquettes, or…the possibilities were endless.

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Ginger-Turmeric Tonic

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The weather these past few days has been so lovely that it was particularly difficult to wake up this morning and realize February is back. Yup, it is cold, grey, and wet. I also woke up with a sore throat, which added insult to injury.

On days like this, I’m really glad I keep fresh ginger and turmeric in the house at all times – a bit of fiery, warming tonic was just what I needed to overcome the gloom, nip the sore throat in the bud, and look ahead to sunny skies and carefree days.

Whether you’ve been overdoing it on sugar and sweets as much as I have lately, or you just need a bit of extra immune support, or you are super duper healthy and feel amazing, I recommend this tonic to you. Ginger and turmeric are both extremely medicinal and can do wonders for your body! Both are anti-inflammatory (turmeric, especially, has an often-cited compound called curcumin that does everything from inhibiting cancer cell growth to relieving pain in people with joint issues), amazing for maintaining overall well-being and health, and great for your digestive system. If you are interested in learning more about the health benefits of turmeric and ginger, I definitely encourage you to do your own research – there are way too many different health benefits to do them all justice in this short post!

Besides doing wonders for your health, I also find this tonic to be incredibly delicious. It’s wonderfully warming and intensely spicy – if you’re the type who always asks for extra ginger in your chai or juice, this drink is for you. You will feel the Bern! (Er…burn. I meant burn. I am not in any way affiliated with Bernie Sanders’ campaign. I will be voting for him, though :p)

I should mention that if you aren’t a fan of ginger or spice, this drink is probably not for you. You may want to return to some green tea, despite its far inferior light green color. (This tonic has the most beautiful dark reddish tint to it!)

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Cinnamon Sugar Sandwich Cookies with Chocolate-Whiskey Cream

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Do I even need to write this post? Doesn’t the title say it all?

Okay, fine.

Three days before Valentine’s Day, I realized I would be remiss if I didn’t post a delicious treat for you to make for your honey (or your mom, cat, best friend, self … whoever you are planning to spend Valentine’s Day with this year!) Disclaimer: Please don’t actually feed these to your cat; that would be pretty dangerous. Anyway, I could probably have whipped up a nice pudding, or mousse, even a brownie…and it would have been fairly straightforward and probably wouldn’t have taken me two days to create, photograph, and post. But…for some reason, I had my heart set on a sandwich cookie. Not just any sandwich cookie – a grain-free, dairy-free sandwich cookie with a chocolate-whiskey filling. (I’m very sorry, vegans, this cookie does have 1 egg in it and I didn’t have time to try subbing it with a flax egg. In the process of developing these cookies, however, I did come up with a delicious 5-ingredient vegan cinnamon lace cookie that I will be posting soon!)

Why did I have my heart set on a grain-free, dairy-free sandwich cookie with a chocolate-whiskey filling? Who knows. Possibly it was a dream I had (food is a main character in the vast majority of my dreams), or maybe I liked the romantic notion sandwich cookies suggest – two halves making a whole, each one bringing a little bit of delicious (aka chocolate-whiskey cream) to the relationship, all that sentimental dribble.

In any case, I knew what I wanted to make, and even though I started this process with only three days between me and Vday, the sandwich cookie gods were with me!

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