Since enjoying peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast every day at my friend’s house last week, I’ve been craving peanut butter. This is bad, since I normally was proud to be resistant to the stuff. However, I managed to find a way to incorporate it into vegan meals!
The first one I made because I was interested in tasting pak choi, also known as chinese cabbage or bok choy. Never heard of it before I started researching more vegan recipes. This one was absolutely gorgeous, great as a side or on its own!
(Image from jungle seeds )
Pak choi recipe from the Veganomicon (slightly modified):
You need:
- 3 Pak chois
- 1 tbs oil
- 1 tbs chunky peanut butter
- Soy sauce
- Sesame seeds
Stir fry the pak chois, nicely cut up, in the oil. When they start to wrinkle, add peanut butter and soy sauce. Steam for a few minutes, then serve. Sprinkle sesame seeds on for extra decoration.
Lots of recipes in Veganomicon, including this one, ask for the use of peanut oil. Lacking this vital ingredient, I opted for using olive oil instead, but adding a dash of peanut butter to the mix instead worked wonderfully! Very creamy, yummy, peanut-y (although to be fair probably less healthy).
The peanut butter works really well here, especially since using crunchy gives you little pieces of nut in your stew that make for an interesting mix of textures.
The pak chois came out very nicely. I’ll definitely buy them again, and you should consider trying them if you’ve never before. They are also rich in vitamins and iron, protein and calcium.
For more infos on pak chois check out Dancing Gecko’s Post , VeganHope gives a good list of recipe links, and this recipe also sounds delicious.
And this I randomly threw together as dinner last night, once again incorporating the peanut butter:
Extremely simple Courgette-Stew:
Stew is probably not the technical term for this. It is not really a stir fry either though. Either way, it was very quick and very yummy, so here we go:
You need:
- Courgette (Zucchini)
- Mushrooms
- Baby potatoes
- 1 tbs oil
- 1 tbs of crunchy peanut butter
- Some herbs: Thyme, Oregano, Basil.. Whatever floats your boat. I used an Italian 5 Herb mix.
- some water
Heat the oil in a sauce pan. Add the vegetables, all cut into bite-sized chunks, and stir. Fry until they are a bit crispy. Then add the peanut butter, the herbs and some water, some salt. Stir thoroughly until the butter is melted and well spread around the leaves. Then put the lid on your sauce pan and steam for a couple of minutes. I am really bad with estimating times, so I won’t give a specific time here. You’re done when the potatoes and the courgette are as soft as you like them. The peanut butter/water/herb mix should have formed a bit of a nice, creamy sauce for the vegetables. If you want more, feel free to add some Vegan Cheese Sauce to it, I’m sure that would be a nice addition as well.
Lastly, I have had this song stuck in my head the whole day. ‘Wir trafen uns in einem Garten’ by 2Raumwohnung. ‘Jaaa, dann denk ich an was andres!’
Have a good day!
vegansmarties 