As we head into the weekend, I say “Let’s get ready for Meatless Monday”!
Remember: it helps your budget, it helps your body and it helps the planet.
WHY CHEF?
Well, if you take a look at the land a cow is housed on to feed one family, you can take that same land and plant fruits and veggies and feed an entire community!
OK CHEF! I’VE GOT YA!
Good! So we’re going to start this year together with Meatless Mondays!
Let’s talk about food now. I went to my daughter and soon to be son-in-love yesterday and they (as you may remember) are vegan. I went to Jimbo’s before and picked up an organic eggplant, an organic russett potato and some thin or pencil organic asparagus. No idea what I would do with it….
So I started with the potato. I only had about 40 minutes to put this meal together. So I peeled it and sliced it as thin as a person can without a slicer. I pan sautéed it in olive oil, and added a dash of salt and pepper as it cooked. I also added a bit of chopped Rosemary. Rosemary or even Parsley potatoes? Yeah. It’s the bomb!
Once the potatoes were done, I patted them dry and set them aside. Then I went in search of flour. I found some garbanzo bean flour, something left over from another meal I cooked. And I combined that with some pancake flour. It’s a good flavor. Now, because it’s a vegan meal, there’s no eggs. So I simply peeled and thinly sliced the eggplant (so it would cook up fast) and again used the only oil available to (on medium heat) cook the eggplant. As I went to cook up the last batch… oops! No more oil! Help!
My daughters’ fiancé came to the rescue: “there’s coconut oil”, he said. Well, there was just enough coconut oil to complete the meal. I got lucky. I finished the eggplant and set it aside. Now it was time to find the vegan breads crumbs. We looked here, there and everywhere. Whoo hoo! We finally found them! So I started with bread crumbs, browning them in the coconut oil. Once browned I added water, cut the bottoms off the asparagus and placed a salted, peppered bunch on top, and put a lid on it. 5 minutes later, it was done.
The way I plated it: potato on the bottom topped with a piece of eggplant and across the middle, the panko’d asparagus. There were no real seasoning outside of the potato and salt and pepper. And it really made the vegetables shine. One potato, one small eggplant, and a bunch of asparagus fed all three of us, with eggplant left over to spare. It was filling and the perfect combination. So good in fact, that we ate it so fast I forgot to take a picture! My bad! lol
Any ideas? Put your thinking cap on and let me know what you come up with! And if you liked this recipe? Pass it around!
Happy Eating,
Chef Marian