How Sweet It Is: Apple Butter

OK Autumn, I resisted, but you got me; I am beguiled. You've become a sweet taste in my mouth, now. You wooed me with golden light, blazing trees, and crunchy carpets of leaves, and closed it with apple butter: Honeycrisps cooked for hours and hours with cider and cinnamon, transformed into a spoonful of heaven on earth.

Apple Butter
(A grateful nod to Martha Stewart)

2 tablespoons coconut oil (or unsalted butter)
7 medium apples, peeled, cored, and quartered
2 1/2 cups apple cider
small pinch salt
2 tablespoons ume vinegar (or lemon juice, but ume vinegar is divine!)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 250.

Melt coconut oil in a dutch oven or big pot, add apples and stir over medium heat for five minutes.

Add cider and salt, bring to a boil, simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Allow mixture to cool a little. Add ume vinegar or lemon juice and cinnamon. Blend using handheld blender or regular blender.

Spread into a large baking dish and bake 4 hours.

Turn oven off (don't open the door) and let apple butter sit overnight, or at least a few hours. The alchemy will happen; it will darken and thicken and become concentrated and sweet. Wait for it.

Keeps in a sealed container in the fridge for several days, but it will not last that long so don't worry about it.

Apple butter is amazing with biscuits. I was too slow to take a "before" picture.

Pasta Primavera

Who cares about your cheap fork, bent out of shape, when the dish it's spearing is fresh and herby and cooked in one pot in twenty minutes, and includes the year's first asparagus?

This is Pasta Primavera, a Lovesmiths standard, a recipe included in the handmade cookbook I assembled twelve years ago for my husband during a hectic period when I was working full-time during the day and playing in a couple of bands at night, and couldn't manage to always make dinner for the family. It was called "The Man's Cookbook" and I wish I could find it, but it has moved across the ocean a couple of times and I don't know if it fell off a boat or dropped into a corner, but I haven't been able to dig it up.

Fortunately, I couldn't forget this easy recipe. I especially love the technique of parboiling the vegetables, scooping them out, and then using the vegetable cooking water for the pasta. I also love how infinitely versatile it is - you can use any vegetable, any kind of pasta, and any bean - or skip the beans and add cubes of tofu or cheese, especially if your son insists bitterly that you put chickpeas in absolutely every every everything.

It was easy to teach Henry how to make Pasta Primavera since he has loitered around the kitchen many times while it was being made, and has eaten countless versions over the years. He just seemed to know the process instinctively. I will definitely ask him to make this on his own sometime this spring. It'll be sans chickpeas, I'm guessing.

Pasta Primavera
Serves 6-8

1 lb asparagus, hard ends snapped off, cut into 1-2-inch lengths
1 lb broccoli, cut into small florets
2 large carrots, quartered lengthwise and cut into 1-2-inch lengths
2 stalks celery, halved lengthwise and cut into 1-2-inch lengths
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
4 cloves of garlic, minced very finely
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons dried basil, thyme, or oregano, or blend of any combination (or double that amount of fresh herbs)
1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced. (optional)
1 can, drained, of chickpeas or any kind of white bean, or cubed tofu or cheese.
1 lb pasta
Handful of parsley, minced

Put a large pot of water up to boil. While it's coming to a boil, make the vinaigrette:
Whisk together olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, garlic, salt, and herbs in a medium, non-metallic bowl until combined and emulsified. Add chickpeas/beans/tofu/cheese (and optional mushrooms) to marinate.

When water comes to a boil, add a pinch of salt and asparagus, broccoli, carrots and celery. Cook 2 minutes (don't go over), then scoop out into a strainer and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

Add additional water to pot if necessary to bring it to approximately 3/4 full, return to boil, and add pasta. Cook according to package directions and drain well.

In a large bowl, combine pasta, vinaigrette and marinated protein and mushrooms, and cooked veggies. Stir gently but thoroughly to combine. Garnish with parsley.

It Takes a Village (to Teach a Kid How to Make Stir-Fry)

When I was fifteen I started dating a boy whose father loved food and cooked often. Over at his house, I saw things I'd never seen in any kitchen: ginger root, basil plants, black bean sauce, and a large, cast-iron wok. I thought my household was unconventional, with my mother's refusal to stock the fridge with soda and her insistence on brown bread (while everybody else in Indiana ate white bread, I thought), but this was really different. I might have complained about my all-natural peanut butter sandwiches on whole wheat, but my boyfriend complained about his honey and tahini sandwiches on pita, and I had never even heard of tahini.

I was impressed. Especially after I'd had a few meals over there: spicy sesame noodles, eggplant with peppers, and bright stir-fries that brought tears to my eyes.

I was altered for the better by being exposed to a wide variety of kitchens as a kid, from my southern grandmother's grits and gravy, to my suburban friends' jello salads, to my sophisticated boyfriend's ginger root and wok, so this week's cooking lesson, based on the basic stir-fry technique I learned as a teenager, is dedicated to those early outside influences, a reminder about the benefit of foisting your kids on other households as much as possible!

Kale and Shiitake Mushroom Stir-Fry

Serves 4

2 tablespoons coconut or peanut oil (both hold up well to high heat)

2 large bunches kale, washed, stems removed, leaves chopped

1 lb shiitake mushrooms, sliced, stems discarded

2 tablespoons, peeled and minced, ginger root

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup water

5 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon spicy sesame oil

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Before you start making the stir-fry, put up a pot of rice or noodles. I like a blend of white basmati rice and quinoa.

Prep everything: wash and chop vegetables and set aside; mince garlic and ginger and set aside separately; whisk together water, soy sauce, sesame oil and cornstarch in a small bowl and set aside. You want everything ready and close at hand - once you begin it's all very fast and furious!

Heat wok over high heat - The wok is ready when a drop of water flung onto its surface evaporates immediately.

Add oil and heat for a few seconds before adding kale, a few big handfuls at a time while you STIR CONSTANTLY. If the kale begins to burn, reduce the heat a bit. Once all the kale is added, stir fry for 2 or 3 more minutes, until kale is almost tender. Add a few spoonfuls of water if it is sticking.

Add mushrooms and stir, stir, stir for 1 or 2 minutes, until mushrooms shrink and start to brown.

Push kale and mushrooms to the side of the wok (the sides are not as hot as the middle, so the cooking will slow down), and add garlic and ginger to the middle. Stir 1 minute, then stir everything together to combine.

Re-whisk the sauce for a second and then pour it down the side of the wok (don't pour it on the middle, it will cool the wok down, and might make your stir-fry turn out soggy, yuck.) and stir constantly for 1-2 minutes until sauce thickens and coats everything. 

Eat immediately, on top of rice or noodles.

It takes a ton of kale - kale really cooks down!

Have everything ready to go and close at hand.

Stir, stir, stir.

Vegan Maple Granola

First lentil loaf, now granola - I might have to change the name of this thing to "That 70s Blog." In fact I have an abiding love for all kinds of hippie vegetarian food; it reminds me of my hometown, Bloomington Indiana, in the 1970s: The Tao restaurant, Rudi's Bakery, and the Bloomingfoods Co-op, its bulk bins overflowing with carob and wheat germ.

But honestly, the granola they were feeding us back then contained enough fat to quench a Big Mac Attack and more sugar than a Jell-O Pudding Pop. It was not the health food it pretended to be. These days, you can buy tasty and reasonably healthy granola in the grocery store, but the price! And the main ingredient is OATS, still one of the cheaper items from those good old bulk bins. So I put the kibosh on prepackaged granola, and here are the delicious, econo results. This is an incredibly versatile recipe - use your favorite nuts or seeds, and play around with spices. I always use maple syrup, but I wonder if other liquid sweeteners, like agave, might be tasty too? If you try, please let me know.

Making granola is a nice Sunday afternoon project; easy, low-maintenance, good-smelling, and entirely kid-friendly (let your kid pick his/her favorite seeds/nuts/spices and invent a unique blend), and it's fun to enjoy the fruits of your labor all week. Although if you're aiming for all-week supplies (and if you eat as much as we do), you might double the recipe.

Lovesmiths Vegan Maple Granola

2 tablespoons coconut oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon cinnamon (or other spices - or omit spice and use 1 teaspoon vanilla, very yummy)
Big pinch salt
3 cups rolled oats
1.5 cups nuts and/or seeds, any combination (We love sliced almonds+pecans+walnuts)
Optional: 1/2 cup dried fruit (dried cherries are our favorite)

Preheat oven to 300

Melt coconut oil over medium heat in a large, deep skillet. Add maple syrup, cinnamon, and salt. Stir well.

Add oats and nuts and/or seeds and stir constantly for a minute or so to completely coat and lightly toast nuts and seeds.

Transfer mixture to lightly oiled baking dish - either a rimmed cookie sheet, or a 13 x 9 dish - you want to spread the granola out evenly in a reasonably thin layer.

Bake 30-40 minutes, until toasty and brown, stirring every 10 or so minutes. If using dried fruit, stir it in immediately after taking granola out of the oven.

Cool completely (be prepared for grabbing hands), and store whatever's left in a sealed container.

Lentils and Caramelized Onions with Angel Hair Pasta

When I was a kid I picked the onions out of everything: chili, spaghetti sauce, meatloaf; most meals ended with a loathsome little pile of onions on the side of my plate.

I'm still kind of picky about onions. I don't much like them raw, and I strongly dislike them undercooked. But I am crazy about onions caramelized in olive oil. My younger self would be shocked to learn that caramelized onions, brown, sweet, and melt-in-your-mouth tender, are one of my favorite things in the world to cook and eat.

For this week's cooking lesson I had three aims: to show Henry another great way to serve lentils; to teach him how to caramelize onions; and to convert my onion-hating son into an onion aficionado.

Mission accomplished for two out of three, but I was so busy devouring my meal (this dish is mysteriously delicious) that I didn't notice until washing-up time that Henry had arranged his onions in a tidy pile on the side of his plate.

The circle of life.

Lentils and Caramelized Onions with Angel Hair Pasta
Serves 4

3/4 cup dried green lentils, rinsed and drained
2 medium onions, cut in half and sliced thinly
8 ounces angel hair pasta (if you don't eat pasta, omit and double the lentils)
6 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus two pinches for cooking onions and pasta
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper, optional
parsley, chopped

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add lentils, reduce heat to medium and simmer 15 minutes or until lentils are tender but intact.

While lentils are cooking, caramelize the onions: Heat olive oil in a large, deep skillet, add onions and cook over high heat, stirring constantly, until onions start to sizzle. Add a pinch of salt, stir well, and reduce heat to medium-low. Cover onions and cook for 5 minutes. Uncover and cook 10-15 more minutes, stirring occasionally, until onions are sweet and delicious and you are tempted to eat them on the spot with a spoon. Resist.

After lentils have cooked 15 minutes, add angel hair pasta with a generous pinch of salt, and cook 4-5 minutes, until pasta is al dente. Drain and return to big cooking pot. Gently stir in caramelized onions, salt, pepper, and optional cayenne.

Serve warm, garnished with lots of parsley. If you have leftovers, this makes an excellent next-day lunch.

Lentil Loaf with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy

We have been eating a lot of beans lately, and my family is begging for a break; anything, they plead, anything other than beans.

Fine - they can have lentils.

It's time for Henry to add a few good lentil recipes to his repertoire anyway. Lentils are versatile and inexpensive, they cook quickly, and don't require soaking. I already love them but my son has never been a big fan. "It's just hard to get very excited about lentils," he says.

Not for me it isn't.

Nobody tends to swoon over a bowl of lentil soup (except me, and maybe my friend Jennifer), but lentil loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy seemed like a more exciting starting place to sell lentils to Henry. As an added bonus, I could fold in a mashed potato lesson and a roux review. I used to make lentil loaf all the time.(In fact, if you had a baby in Bloomington, Indiana circa 2001 I probably made one of these for you and brought it to your house, with the gravy in a glass jar, remember?)

But I haven't made it much lately, so it was fun to dust off the recipe (originally from The Rice Dream Cookbook) and update it. Here's our vegan and wheat-free loaf. It makes a great family dinner with a side of green beans, and from here I can report at least minor swooning.

Lentil Loaf

1/2 cup lentils
1/2 cup white basmati rice
3 1/2 cups water
1 vegetarian bouillon cube (I used wheat-free bouillon cubes)
2 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 medium cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, diced small
1 large stalk celery, diced small
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1 cup rolled oats, blended or food-processed into a course meal
1 tablespoon dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Mashed Potatoes

4 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tablespoons vegan margarine, optional
1/3 cup or more almond, soy, or rice milk
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus big pinch for cooking water
pinch white or black pepper

Country Gravy

1 cup almond, soy, or rice milk
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 teaspoon dried thyme
big pinch black pepper
optional pinch cayenne pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup spelt or other flour

Put lentil, rice, water and bouillon in a medium sauce pan, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 30-40 minutes until everything is soft and cooked and water is absorbed.

(While lentils and rice are simmering, put up a big pot of water for cooking potatoes).

While lentils and rice are simmering, warm olive oil in a skillet and sauté garlic, carrot, and celery for 10 minutes until mostly tender. Stir in basil and thyme. Remove from heat and set aside.

Peel potatoes and add to boiling water along with a generous pinch of salt. Cook until very soft (15 or so minutes), drain, and mash with optional margarine and "milk"until the consistency seems right. Add salt and pepper, taste and adust. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 and oil a 9x5x3 loaf pan.

When rice and lentils are cooked, combine in a big bowl with veggie/herb mixture. Add oats and mustard and use a wooden spoon or your hands or some combination to blend everything together very well. Now you need to taste it and decide if it wants a little more mustard or a shot of soy sauce, but the mixture should be fairly stiff so it will hold up later to slicing.

Press mixture into loaf pan, and top with mashed potatoes. Bake for 30 minutes.

While loaf is in the oven, make the gravy:

In a medium bowl, whisk together "milk", water, salt, soy sauce, sage, thyme, pepper, optional cayenne.

Warm olive oil in a deep wide skillet, add flour and stir over medium-low heat 2-3 minutes.

Gradually add milk/water/herbs, whisking to combine fully.

Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, then reduce heat to low and cook 15 minutes.

Taste and adjust seasoning.

When loaf is done, slice carefully and serve topped generously with gravy.

White Bean and Kale Soup

Think about that super simple song you adore, the one that is inexplicably huge, much more than the sum of its two chords and handful of lyrics.

Here are a few of my family's favorites:
Molly's Lips
The Street Where You Live
Wild Thing
Everyday People

I generally believe that less is more - in songs, in life, on drums, and definitely in soup.

But sometimes less is less, sometimes two chords and a handful of lyrics is dead boring or aggressively bad, sometimes simple food can be bland and depressing. If you've ever eaten a watery bowl of under-seasoned bean soup, you know what I mean.

But this is NOT that soup! I'm trying to teach my kids that vegetarian food can be totally satisfying and incredibly delicious, and that if you want to create something simple and elegant, you have to pick the right ingredients in the right amounts. Henry and I worked on this spicy concoction together, and it might not be as sublime as a Troggs song, but it is mysteriously bigger than the sum of its few ingredients, and on a slushy February evening it definitely made my heart sing.

White Bean and Kale Soup
Serves 4 (or 3 is you're very hungry or if one of you is a teenager)

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 huge, enormous bunch of kale, stems removed and discarded, leaves chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 or so cups cooked cannellini or navy beans (or 2 14-ounce drained cans)
4 cups water
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne*
1 teaspoon salt

*(Amount could vary depending on the spiciness of your cayenne pepper and your tolerance for heat. This made a fairly zingy soup, which Henry and I LOVED but it was a little too much for Jake).

Warm olive oil in pot over medium high heat, add kale and stir until it starts to sizzle - turn heat down to medium low and continue to stir for 4-5 minutes. Kale will shrink substantially.

Add garlic and stir 1-2 minutes.

Add beans, water, cayenne and salt, turn heat to high, and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes.

Vegan Butternut Squash Ziti

We are not a vegan family - our diet includes fish, cheese, and eggs - but we're part-time vegans, eating a few completely plant-based dinners every week. I like the challenge of coming up with healthier versions of traditional comfort-food favorites, and this Butternut Squash Ziti recipe was the result of an extended and ultimately failed attempt to make a delicious vegan macaroni and cheese. As I gradually gave up on making a mock (it was more a mockery of) mac and cheese, Butternut Squash Ziti began to come into its own.

This is a fun recipe to make with a kid, a great one for practicing tasting and adjusting seasoning (Henry, like me, loves cayenne pepper and tends to add an extra pinch), for encouraging experimentation (it took multiple tries to get this right, we ate quite a few okay-not-great versions along the way), and the sauce was a nice spin-off from our recent white sauce lessons. Butternut Squash Ziti is satisfying, creamy and rich, a good comfort-food substitute for macaroni and cheese, not an inferior imitation.

Vegan Butternut Squash Ziti
8+ servings

1 lb ziti or penne

1 large butternut squash (3.5 - 4 lb)

1/3 cup nonhydrogenated margarine (like Earth Balance) or olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, very finely chopped

3-4 medium cloves garlic, minced or pressed

1/4 cup white or whole wheat pastry flour

 2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon thyme

1/2 teaspoon white or black pepper

big pinch cayenne pepper

big pinch sage

1 cup unsweetened soy milk or almond milk

1 cup water

1 can coconut milk (14 oz)


For topping:

2 1/2 cups breadcrumbs

1/4 cup nonhydrogenated margarine or olive oil

1 teaspoon rubbed sage

1 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon paprika

big pinch each salt and pepper


Preheat oven to 375

Cook pasta according to package directions, drain, rinse with cold water, and set aside.

Butternut squash sauce:

Cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise (keep seeds intact) and place face down on a cookie sheet. Bake for approximately 1 hour, or until easily pierced with a knife and slightly bubbling. When squash is cool enough to handle, scoop out and discard seeds and pulp. Puree about half the squash in a food processor or blender. Save the un-pureed squash, you're going to use it, too.

Heat margarine or olive oil in a large heavy pot. Add onions and a pinch of salt, cook over medium-low heat until very soft, sweet, and slightly golden. This takes at least 15 minutes! If you rush the process, you're only robbing yourself. Add garlic and cook, stirring, for an additional minute or two. Stir in salt, pepper, thyme, cayenne, and sage.

Add flour and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until flour smells nutty and toasty, about five minutes. Whisk in soy/almond milk and water, a little at a time, then whisk in coconut milk. Bring mixture to a simmer and stir constantly until sauce begins to thicken.

Add pureed squash and stir well. Use a spoon to scoop bite-sized pieces of the un-pureed squash into the sauce (I like the look and texture of this dish best when it's not all smooth - the chunks of squash look pretty and add interest). Let simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring often.

Taste and adjust seasoning. More cayenne? Wish there was some nutmeg in there? Love black pepper and can never get enough?

Add cooked, drained pasta to pot and stir well to combine. Transfer mixture to  9 x 11- inch casserole.

Breadcrumb topping:

Heat margarine or olive oil in large skillet over medium heat

Add breadcrumbs, herbs, and spices and stir to coat for 3-4 minutes. Taste and adjust - might need more sage or salt?

Spread breadcrumbs on top of pasta.

Bake for 30 minutes, and cool for at least 10 minutes before eating.

Leftovers are excellent.