Scallion Pancakes

Scallion Pancakes. Just those two words are enough to completely grab my attention.

If you’re veg and live in the San Francisco Bay Area (anywhere not under a rock), you’ll hopefully know exactly what I’m talking about.

Garden Fresh, a popular vegan restaurant in Mountain View, serves scallion pancakes as an appetizer.  It’s a fried pancake (yum) served with a brown sauce on top of another fried pancake (double yum).

One day, I was at my local library and browsing the cookbook section.   Although I have the world wide web at my fingertips, and close to two dozen vegan cookbooks at home, I do like to occasionally check out a vegan cookbook at my local library so that it keeps them in circulation.

While in that general area, I randomly picked up this cookbook called Quick & Easy Chinese. I was flipping through it, looking at the color pictures. When, suddenly, I spotted scallion pancakes!  Okay, so the author calls them “Green Onion Pancakes”. The picture looks exactly like the scallion pancakes at Garden Fresh.

So if you also love the Scallion Pancakes at Garden Fresh, and want to try and make some at home, go look for this cookbook Quick & Easy Chinese.  I took a quick look through the rest of the cookbook, and it didn’t strike me as particularly veg-friendly.  So, you may just want to get it through your local library.

Red Bean Salad

I grew up eating the sad Standard American Diet, consuming animals by the mouthful.  Green Salad was one of those foods, as a young carnivore, that I  liked only when it was smothered with a creamy Thousand Island dressing and crunchy croutons on top.

As a vegan, I’ve educated myself and now enjoy a variety of different salads, from bean salads to green salads to fruit salads.

Recipes for three bean salads abound.  I basically use the one from Peaceful Palate by Jennifer Raymond.

I still don’t like green beans though.  So in my version of a three-bean salad, I replace the green beans with red bell pepper.  In this version photographed, I used both red and yellow bell peppers.

I brought this bean salad to a vegan food party (aka potluck) in Pacifica.  Purely by coincidence, I found this went well mixed with a green salad that someone else had brought.

And, thanks to Saucy Vegetarian, I can make my own creamy salad dressings for my green salads.  For crunch, I add walnuts instead of croutons.

Peanut Sauce over Pasta

You’ve heard the saying, “the right tool for the right job” ?  Well, that same goes for sauces!  If you’re looking for a versatile sauce that’s quick to make and packed with flavor, a peanut sauce fits the bill.

One of my favorite cookbooks is The Saucy Vegetarian by Joanne Stepaniak.  There are pages and pages of “Quick & Healthful, No-Cook, Sauces & Dressings”, including two peanut sauces.  We’ve used both, and now our favorite is a hybrid of the two — we make the Peanuti Salad Dressing with the dash of cayenne pepper prescribed in the Spicy Peanut Sauce.

Peanuti Salad Dressing (slight adaptation)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tbsp tamari soy sauce
1 tbsp brown rice vinegar
1 tsp dark sesame oil
1/2 tsp crushed garlic
1/4 to 1/2 cup water, more or less as needed
pinch of cayenne pepper (this is the adaptation)

This sauce is easy to make, and incredibly delicious. Some of my favorite suggestions on using this sauce are over pasta (tastes great with broccoli), topping for a baked potato, or a dressing for a green salad.

I particularly enjoy using this sauce over pasta when making food to share with others. It’s always a favorite, and I return home with an empty bowl. The peanut sauce doesn’t particularly photograph well, but don’t let that deceive you. If you take the ratio of  how good it tastes to how quick it is to prepare, trust me, this one is off the charts!

This photograph features the organic noodles from Trader Joe’s (16 oz for 0.99) with strips of organic red and yellow peppers and green onions.  Note, the recipe calls for creamy peanut butter, but I use whatever is already open in the frig.  Sometimes it’s nice to have the extra crunch from the chunky peanut butter.

The Peanut is indeed a mighty friend to have.  Thank you Joanne Stepaniak for introducing us to this wonderful recipe, and I highly recommend her vegan cookbook — The Saucy Vegetarian.  It’s a wonderful resource when I’m looking for new sauces for my favorite grains, beans and vegetables.