This vegan chili recipe is a hearty, filling meal. It’s easy to make and stores well for next-day lunches. I like to serve with crackers, but this dish is satisfying all on its own. If you’re exploring Meatless Monday, it’s a perfect dish. You won’t even miss the meat.
I really like this recipe because not only is it delicious, but it’s also easy on the budget!
These days, most people consider barley—if they consider it at all—as something wintery, perhaps sharing space with mushrooms in a warming bowl of soup. Here, this ancient whole grain gets the tabbouleh treatment, and becomes a significant salad loaded with herbs (and love—see Proverbs). Nice as part of a biblical mezze (Middle Eastern tapas, if you will), served alongside a blob of hummus and flatbread or with roasted eggplant, it’s just right for spring. Tahini is an extremely luscious sesame paste, available in Middle Eastern groceries, natural food stores, and most supermarkets. Like natural (preservative-free) peanut butter, tahini tends to separate, with the oil floating to the top of the sesame goodness below. Stir well before using.
You need not wait for a holiday—or be Jewish—to enjoy carrot and sweet potato tzimmes. It’s a festive dish for any cool-weather occasion.
In Yiddish, “tzimmes” means a big fuss or commotion. Fortunately, this mélange of sweet vegetables and dried fruits is not much of a fuss to make, and is a traditional side dish for the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Passover.
An article in Jewish Food Experience details the origins of tzimmes, stating, “A traditional side dish for Rosh Hashanah, the sweet compote of carrot circles, like golden coins, represents a wish for a sweet and prosperous year. The first-known use of the Yiddish name tzimmes is from 1892, and it is said to have originated from the German zuomuose, or ‘side dish.’”
Carrots are one of the most commonly used of symbolic foods in Eastern European meals. The Yiddish word for carrot also means to increase or multiply—a positive wish for prosperity and luck to bring to the table. In this classic Jewish dish, carrots are combined with sweet potatoes and prunes, adding bright color to the table and plate.
Recipe adapted from Vegan Holiday Kitchen by Nava Atlas.
Enter the latke recipe from The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick Goudreau. Her recipe included ground flax as a binder, which freed the potato pancake from its floury, glutinous density. In fact, these latkes were exactly as I remembered them, light, crispy, and the perfect compliment to a dollop of applesauce. I am sharing her recipe in all its glory, so you too can have the perfect vegan latkes this year.
Matzo Brei is a classic Jewish frittata-like breakfast food often eaten at Passover. In this vegan version, soft, savory chickpea “eggs” flecked with mushrooms and rosemary contrast deliciously with shards of crispy, slightly charred matzah crackers. It’s comfort food through and through. Also a soy-free, nut-free recipe, can be gluten-free.
If you, your family or guests are plant-based or allergic to fish, a vegan smoked salmon is super easy to make with this vegan lox recipe! Typical vegan smoked salmon recipes can take up to 3 days of preparation, but not this carrot lox recipe! It’s much quicker.
This vegan lox recipe is so fast and simple. It’s great to make on the weekend to use for Sunday brunch or as a food prep for the rest of the week!
Whether you have a barbeque smoker or just whip up my marinade, you can have fun with different ways to prepare this delicious plant-based recipe.
What am I, chopped liver? Fortunately, no. Made of onions, mushrooms, and cashews, vegan mock chopped liver has replaced the classic Jewish pâté as a contemporary appetizer for special occasions.
This plant-based look-alike (though not taste-alike) is often served as a Passover appetizer with matzo or matzo crackers. You can serve it with raw vegetables, too.
A sister recipe: A similar, now-classic recipe is made with green beans or peas. In the Ashkenazi tradition, green beans and peas aren’t allowed foods during the Passover week. But if it’s not Passover, or you don’t strictly adhere to the chametz rules, feel free to replace the mushrooms with an equivalent amount of steamed fresh or frozen green beans.
Of course, you need not wait for a holiday, or to be Jewish, to make this delicious spread. It’s welcome all year round. This recipe makes about 2 cups.
Seven vegetable couscous is a colorful dish traditional to the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), but you need not save it for special occasions only.
Rosh Hashanah is more than a New Year’s celebration. The holiday’s ancient roots are as a harvest festival, and enjoyment of the abundant produce of early autumn remains central to the celebration. The foods served emphasize the holiday’s optimistic spirit.
Though it’s a joyous time, Rosh Hashanah is also the first of the Ten Days of Awe, a period of spiritual reflection and repentance that culminates in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Symbolic foods for the holiday: As with almost every sacred and ancient celebration, food plays a central role and is filled with symbolism for Rosh Hashanah. When making challah bread, for example, the baker might pinch off a bit of dough and burn it in the oven as a symbolic sacrifice.
Seven is a lucky number in Jewish tradition. So a dish featuring seven vegetables, like this one, is a New Year favorite among Sephardic Jews.
Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients. This recipe is as easy as can be. Recipe adapted from Vegan Holiday Kitchen by Nava Atlas.