Easy, Quick Delicious: Maribeth Abrams, With Anne Dinshah

It’s difficult for vegans to find food they can eat in restaurants, or in packaged foods. At the same time, for many vegans, finding the time to cook, and learning how to make all kinds of new foods, can be daunting and a real obstacle to vegan success.

With The 4 Ingredient Vegan as your guide and protector, you can travel far along the way of nutritious and delicious meals through the ease and convenience of processed foods.

The 4 Ingredient Vegan is one of The Book Publishing Company’s top vegan books of 2011 – sign up to enter their giveaway and win 2 books.

The recipes in The 4 Ingredient Vegan are easy, delicious, and mostly quick. They’re all about using shortcut ingredients and time saving tips.

There is little gathering prepping of food to do, because every recipe has just 4 main ingredients, which are often prepared foods, such as vegetable broth, canned beans and soups, frozen vegetables and fruit, chopped nuts or nut butters, miso, nutritional flakes, vegan cream cheese sour cream, high quality condiments spice mixes, phyllo dough, noodles etc.

What cooking remains is simple and easy. This kind of food preparation is convenient, fast, and nutritious, ideal for those who work or go to school all day. This cookbook is a meant for people who want to eat healthy but have little time to cook, or who may not enjoy cooking – but definitely enjoy eating.

The authors also make good use of labor saving blenders and food processers in most of the recipes.

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BUT – isn’t there always a but – to make this cookbook happen for you, you’ll need a well-stocked pantry and fridge. That means planning and shopping ahead. Fortunately, the authors provide a fairly simple list of pantry staples to get you started.

I like to think that I avoid processed food, in favor of cooking my own. I do love to cook, and I spend a couple of hours a day at it. But the fact is, I am often busy with other things, and I do use processed foods every day as a matter of convenience and take them for granted.

In my kitchen, I always have a few cans of beans, olives, coconut milk, tomato paste and so on, as well as frozen peas, spice mixes, veggie cubes, prepared flavorings and condiments, nut butters, pasta, non-dairy milk, tofu miso, dried fruit and shelled nuts. I don’t think of them as processed or convenience foods, but they are.

From this cookbook, I can see how taking that minimal use of processed food a few steps further could mean the difference between eating well, and eating junk food, for someone who is too busy or disinclined to do much cooking. It’s a matter of discriminating between good processed food, and bad.

Bad processed food contains ingredients such as trans-fats, gmos, msg, high fructose corn syrup, excessive salt and sugar, artificial preservatives and coloring, with little food value, the most important quality being a very long shelf life.

Good processed food is made with high quality food, such as organically grown vegetables and beans, generally has a short list of ingredients, and usually needs to be refrigerated and used up quickly after opening to get the maximum nutritional value.

The authors of The 4 Ingredient Vegan offer a judicious balance of convenience foods and whole foods, for easy cooking and maximum nutrition…although not always quick. For example, instead of calling for prepared polenta, they teach you how to cook your own, or how to cook lentils (almost a convenience food) instead of opening a can.

We enjoyed 2 recipes from the book:

Artichoke, Leek and White Bean Soup calls for frozen artichoke hearts, fresh leeks, a carton of vegetable broth, a can of white beans, and of course a blender. Besides salt pepper olive oil, there were no other flavorings or ingredients to deal with. And it was easy to make.

It would have been much less expensive to use homemade broth and cook the beans, but I know that for most people, in that case, this soup wouldn’t have happened. But I’d use fresh or frozen broccoli, instead of artichokes, because broccoli is less expensive, readily available and blends much more easily.

Hearty One-Pot Lentil-Vegetable Supper calls for 4 cups chopped fresh vegetables, 1 carton of vegetable broth, a 28 oz can of chopped tomatoes, and 2 1/2 cups brown lentils. As the recipe suggested, I jazzed up the flavor with curry spices and Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (another convenience food I keep on hand).

Instead of vegetable broth, I used 2 vegan bouillon cubes in 4 cups of water. I also soaked the lentils for several hours before cooking to soften them up and speed the cooking.

More Vegan Cookbook Reviews

30 Minute Vegan
Vegan Baking Classics
Vegan Soups And Hearty Stews For All Seasons
Vegan World Fusion Cuisine
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Christine Waltermyer Expands and Transcends Macrobiotics

Since I almost starved myself to death on a strict macrobiotic diet when I first went vegetarian, I’m a bit prejudiced against anything macrobiotic. Like most prejudices, mine doesn’t hold up under close examination.

Christine Waltermyer bases her cooking on macrobiotic principles. However she expands and transcends macrobiotics with recipes that are fresh wholesome, simple easy, comforting delicious – all at the same time.

As she explains in The Way of the Natural Vegan Kitchen: “For a health-promoting diet to last a lifetime, the food has to taste so good we think it must be bad for us. Otherwise, why bother.” My sentiments exactly!

Christine explains the basic macrobiotic principles that she follows: eat in harmony with your natural surroundings, maintain balance in your life and diet, savor mealtimes, and enjoy natural living – excellent principles to embrace, regardless of your ideology.

Then she adds her enhancements to make macrobiotic diet better:

1. Include more raw foods
2. Supplement with Vitamins B12 and D2
3. Avoid eating fish (heavy metal contamination)
4. Eat foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids
5. Reduce or eliminate salt, refined soy products, and gluten
6. Include more cultural variety in meals, such as Mexican, Indian, and Italian versions of macrobiotic recipes

All of the above, combined with a deep love respect for food, and a huge talent for cooking and teaching others how to cook, results in an outstanding collection of recipes – mostly gluten free, but with a few seitan recipes, pita bread fruit pizzas, and a barley salad.

The Natural Vegan Kitchen is one of The Book Publishing Company’s top vegan books of 2011 – sign up to enter their giveaway and win 2 books.

I have only one quibble with this cookbook:

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The recipes call for fresh produce, which in a northern climate with a long winter, can be tough to do. For instance, fresh tomatoes in winter are hard, tasteless, expensive, come from Mexico, and have almost zero nutrition.

Canned or dried tomatoes are a reasonable substitution in my opinion. Same goes for using some frozen veggies, such as peas and corn. Freezing, drying and canning are just ways of preserving food, like fermentation, e.g. miso, tamari, tempeh, umeboshi – all of which are used in this book, along with canned beans.

On the Plus Side:

The glossary of ingredients, mail order sources, and reading list are thoughtful and helpful additions – even though few of the ingredients are unavailable in your local grocery or natural food store.

We tested the Black Bean Soup, which actually did delight even the pickiest eaters – a.k.a. the grandchildren, our toughest recipe testers. I regretted not doubling the recipe, because there wasn’t any left for supper. Boo-hoo!

We also tried simple quick easy White Beans Greens, with cannellini beans and red Russian kale – local, organic and greenhouse grown, which I snagged at last Saturday’s farmers market.

We ate the beans greens with another Natural Vegan Kitchen recipe, Sweet Potato Polenta Pancakes, which I cooked as patties, in far less oil than the recipe specified. We all thought they were much better suited as a side to a savory dish than as breakfast pancakes with applesauce and vegan sour cream.

You don’t have to embrace macrobiotics, or know anything about it to benefit from The Natural Vegan Kitchen. Christine Waltermyer’s recipes will give you a basis for healthy happy eating which you can build on for the rest of your life. Even the desserts are healthy!

Along the way, you’ll probably learn to love kombu, miso, and umeboshi vinegar, used frequently in this cookbook. I’ve been using kombu for years as my secret soup and bean weapon, so I’m happy to see it in so many recipes.

I’m already half sold on miso, and have some in my fridge. Umeboshi vinegar is another matter, but if I can find it, I’m willing to give it a try.

I read the The Natural Vegan Kitchen several times, marking many recipes I want to make, including gluten free power pancakes, fruit pizzas, coconut curry carrot soup, super slaw, Tuscan spring salad, zucchini rice patties, peachy quinoa pudding … etc. etc.

Thanks for a great cookbook, Christine Waltermyer!

More Vegan Cookbook Reviews

30 Minute Vegan
Vegan Baking Classics
Vegan Soups And Hearty Stews For All Seasons
Vegan World Fusion Cuisine
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How to Buy, Store and Prepare Nuts Seeds

Buy nuts seeds fresh and in small amounts that you can use up quickly. Because of their high oil content, nuts and seeds go rancid easily, so test before you buy if possible. Rancid fats can make you sick.

The turnover in bulk bins is usually faster than with packaged nuts, but it depends on the store. If you get your nuts or seeds home and they taste bad instead of fresh and sweet, don’t eat them, return them for a refund.

Soak nuts and seeds for 3 – 12 hours to soften and make them easier to digest, to bring out the full flavor and nutrition, and to reduce bitterness from tannic acid. Discard the soaking water.

Soaking is especially effective with walnuts and hazelnuts, which should be soaked 12 hours. Hazelnuts should be rubbed together in the water after soaking, to remove loose skins. Discard the soaking water.

Store nuts and seeds in the fridge or other cool place, in tightly sealed containers. Freeze them if you won’t be using within a month.

Blanch almonds by plunging in just-boiled water for 1 minute, drain, then cover with cold water for 5 minutes. The skins will slip right off. If you don’t want to heat your almonds, soak 12 – 24 hours, then peel the skins off.

Grind raw or roasted nuts or seeds in a spice grinder to make a powder for thickening sauces, soups and veggie burgers, adding to smoothies, making nut or seed spreads or patées.

Purée soaked nuts and seeds in a blender, food mill or food processor, with a little water, non-dairy milk or vegetable stock to suit your purpose.

Roast nuts seeds on the stove or in the oven, at low temperature (275 – 300 degrees), for 15 minutes, stir often, and watch carefully so they don’t burn. Sprinkle with salt if you like.

Eat nuts seeds raw, add them to trail mix, or sprinkle them on salads.

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Tips for a Happy Healthy Breakfast

The following tips are loosely based on Ayurvedic dietary principles, and my own experience. They may or may not apply to you – go with your gut instincts – Judith Kingsbury

Breakfast doesn’t need to be large, but should be well balanced, nutrient dense, and have some variety. While oatmeal is a Good Thing, and I like it the best for breakfast, sometimes I feel like a smoothie, or toast with nut butter jam. Or just a bunch of fruit and nuts. Mix it up!

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Breakfast should include plenty of liquid, whole grains and protein; vitamns, minerals phytonutrients – and about 25% of daily calorie intake. Since we’ve been fasting for up to twelve hours, it’s not a good idea to overwhelm our digestion with a huge breakfast.

Over-eating at breakfast makes us sluggish and unenthusiastic about lunch, which should be our main meal, because that’s when our digestion is at its daily peak.

Eating lightly at breakfast and dinner, and getting most of your calories at lunch, encourages good digestion and an ideal body weight.

On the other hand, going for lots of sugar caffeine at breakfast time will cause a mid-morning blood sugar crash, requiring more sugar and caffeine.

If you’re a night worker, go right to bed after work, then get up and eat a good lunch before 2:00 p.m., and have supper before 9:00 p.m., either before or during work, with a snack of soup, or fruit and nuts during the night. Be sure to take in plenty of liquids.

Eating drinking like that while working at night will help keep your digestion in good shape, and minimize the disruption of your bio-rhythms.

For diabetics concerned about carb intake, Dr. Mirkin explains that whole grains digest much more slowly than whole grain flours. Refined grains and flours are higher in carbohydrates and sugars, lower in protein, and digest much more quickly, leading to elevated blood sugar levels.

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Rice Cooking Tips:

Because it includes the germ of the rice kernel, with it’s volatile essential oils, brown rice should be stored in the fridge or freezer so it doesn’t go rancid.

Brown rice can be used in place of white rice, but it has a much longer cooking time.

We’ve tried various ways to get around this – pressure cooking, par-boiling, soaking, crockpot cooking.

Nothing works nearly as well as just rinsing the brown rice, then putting it on the stove and cooking it – for 45 minutes!

The good news is that brown rice can be cooked ahead and stored refrigerated in quantity, re-heats very nicely, and can be used cooked in any recipe.

Undercooking brown rice by using less water and cooking it for 30 minutes is a good way to ensure that your cooked brown rice doesn’t get mushy in whatever you’re adding it to. This trick worked well in Cuban Black Beans Rice

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Perfect light green salad for a low fat meal or spring menu

Easy Healthy Spinach Salad Recipe: Organic baby spinach, colorful salad mix, red cabbage, shredded carrot, toasted sunflower seeds.

Total Prep Time: 15 minutes

6 Servings:

Nutrition Data Per Serving: 46 cal, 5g carb, 0g fat, 51mg sodium, 2g fiber, 3g protein, low cholesterol, high in Vit. A, C, K, B6, Riboflavin, Folate, Iron, Calcium. Estimated glycemic load 1

Printable Recipe: Click the print button in your browser to print JUST the recipe

Spinach Salad Ingredients:

• 10 oz pkg organic washed baby spinach
• 4 cups organic chopped red or green leaf lettuce
• 1/2 cup shredded red cabbage
• 2 Tbsp (1 oz) toasted unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup shredded carrot
• Creamy cauliflower salad dressing or other low fat dressing

Salad Directions:

1. Wash and drain the salad greens
2. Place salad greens in a bowl twice the size needed to hold the salad (this will make tossing it easier.)
3. Grate the carrot
4. Finely shred the red cabbage
5. Toast the sunflower seeds in a small fry pan on medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until golden brown
6. Add the remaining ingredients to the greens, and toss lightly
7. Serve with creamy cauliflower dressing or other low fat dressing on the side

Prep and Serving Suggestions:

If you can get them, you’ll get maximum taste and nutrition if you use organic ingredients for this salad recipe.

Low fat Creamy Cauliflower Dressing is perfect with Spinach Salad. Have as much as you like – it’s mostly cauliflower and lemon juice, although you’d never know from tasting it!

Enjoy spinach salad with a light healthy, but festive bountiful meal of
barley bean vegetable soup, toasted French bread with low fat spicy bean dip, a relish tray, assorted herbal teas, and poached pears for dessert.

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Gourmet Chef Alan Roettinger’s Excellent Vegan Adventures

Professional Chef Alan Roettinger is the Speed Vegan. That’s because he wields a 12 inch chef’s knife at warp speed, wearing chef’s whites, while having Fun in the Kitchen. Actually I think this book should have been called The Gourmet Chef’s Excellent Vegan Adventures.

There are many intriguing layers to Speed Vegan:

1. The author is a private gourmet chef who has lived and cooked for clients all over the world. He himself appears to be a blend of several nations and cultures, referencing Italian, Mexican, Asian, and Middle Eastern in his recipes.

2. Speed Vegan documents Roettinger’s transition to a vegan diet, and he clearly has dedicated his entire being to the enterprise. So there’s a strong sense of exploration and discovery, thrilling adventures, and fun in this book.

3. This is a macrobiotic leaning, pretty much gluten free, low carb, no sugar cookbook – something you don’t realize on first glance because the recipes are so intriguing. About 1/3 of the recipes are salads – really amazing salads. But Roettinger hasn’t given up fat and salt by a long shot. Those need to be adjusted way downward in almost every recipe.

4. As a professional chef, Alan Roettinger brings a high level of knowledge and skill to the table, which he shares freely with the reader, while staying within the bounds of the book. Just enough knowledge is given out in a casual, anecdotal and fun way that the reader is challenged but never overwhelmed.

5. Alan Roettinger’s playful sense of humor generates belly laughs, which is unusual in cookbooks.

For instance, the recipe on page 148, Odd and Ends Redux, A La Deborah: How to create something fabulous from the doubtful remnants in the back of the fridge. I won’t tell you more, it would spoil the fun.

6. Speed Vegan kicks you out of your food ruts. It certainly stretches my boundaries. I’m an everyday, family style cook who tends to go the fastest easiest route to balanced meals that everybody will eat. Gourmet cooking is not a consideration.

If the food is fresh, good looking, tasty and fills up the starving masses, I’m happy. If I can make a recipe in 30 minutes using one pot, that’s a winner. If I can get all the ingredients in one quick trip to the grocery store, that’s as it should be.

So, when Alan Roettinger talks about making big batches of roasted garlic puree, vegan chipotle mayonnaise and rosemary balsamic dipping oil just to have on hand for making his recipes – I say, “Why on earth would I do that? That’s not my kind of cooking!” Uh-huh! Says the woman who makes big batches of pesto, hummus, quinoa, brown rice, beans and soup – just to have on hand.

It’s the same thing with his chapter on stocking the vegan pantry. Even though it just happens that I do keep many of those items on hand, I found myself balking at the idea of Chinese salted black beans or porcini mushroom powder. Not that I could buy them within an hour of where I live anyway.

But Alan Roettinger redeemed himself completely and captured my heart in the introduction:

“A recipe is just a guideline, the blueprint of a dish’s construction, so you can follow along and repeat what someone else did. Don’t feel in any way obligated to copy my approach. If anything strikes you as odd or distasteful, change it or leave it out. If an ingredient proves difficult or impossible to find, carry on without it or replace it with something you think might be just as good.”

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I was with the Speed Vegan all the way when he talked about basic kitchen equipment, especially about having a good chef’s knife. Mine is one of my dearest possessions, my most essential kitchen tool. I’m in a state of bliss whenever I use it, which is all day long. However, I didn’t agree that the whole world needs a garlic press or a salad spinner.

7. What really hooked me on Speed Vegan was the recipes, which are out-of-this-world delicious! I’m talking food transcendence! You know, where you moan with ecstasy every time you take a bite.

I tested Spaghetti with Olives and Lemon, from page 124. Taking the Speed Vegan at his word, I used ordinary spaghetti instead of brown rice spaghetti, canned olives instead of kalamata olives which nobody likes but me in our house, and sautéed minced garlic in a bit of oil instead of making Roasted Garlic Puree.

I also reduced the olive oil from 1/3 cup to 2 Tbsp, and cut way back on the salt. Instead of using a food processor I minced everything with my trusty chef’s knife and added it to the oil. The results were sublime. I can honestly say that I’ve never had a more delicious plate of pasta.

If I’d followed the recipe meticulously, we might have died and gone to heaven, so it’s just as well I didn’t.

I also tested Red Quinoa With Zucchini Corn, from page 125 which tasted divine. I’d use regular white quinoa next time, because the red quinoa took a long time to cook, and the zucchini was a little overdone. But all red quinoa may not behave the same way.

I’m looking forward to trying a bunch of the 40 or so salads, and cereal made with toasted and ground brown rice, more of the pasta dishes, the soups, etc etc. Speed Vegan is quickly developing the stained rumpled appearance of well loved cookbooks. Obviously, there’s something to this speedy gourmet vegan cooking!

I credit Roettinger’s rigorous standards, perseverance, passion, and humor, along with exceptional editing, for the high quality of this book – 175 pages of total awesomeness.

More Vegan Cookbook Reviews

30 Minute Vegan

Blissful Bites
Vegan Baking Classics
Vegan Soups And Hearty Stews For All Seasons
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Savvy Veg Comments:

We only know what many others know: Diabetes is an epidemic in North America, and the top culprit is the Standard American Diet.

After reading some of the diabetes articles online, and talking with diabetic authors such as Jessica Apple, we’ve begun to get a sense for what a diabetic vegetarian diet should include, and not include.

We were puzzled as much as enlightened by VRG’s article on diabetic food exchanges for vegetarian diet. We’re guessing that the basic principle is “How to eat what you want on your veggie diabetic diet without raising your blood sugar levels”. We don’t quite grasp the mechanics, but perseverence furthers!

We’ll continue to develop our diabetic friendly recipes, and we’d love to hear your comments and suggestions for making our recipes more diabetic friendly.

Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Vegetarian

Visitor Comment: My partner is a Type 1 diabetic and for her I cook any vegan recipe that is low in sugar and low in fat. If the recipe calls for sauteing vegetables in olive oil I will saute in water. Otherwise we enjoy nearly every recipe on your site. Our favourites are Tomato Chickpea Soup, Jamaican Red Bean Stew, Crockpot Quinoa Red Lentil Soup, and Mung Dhal Vegetable Soup. – Vibeka V.

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