Katya Metelitsa, a well-known gastronomic critic and creator of the Veget Table mobile app, a unique guide to vegetarian Moscow, spoke about her favorite vegetarian recipes.
Monastery green buckwheat
Fortunately, everyone in my family, including our small Chinese dog, loves buckwheat porridge and does not mind eating it every day just with olive oil. Usually I do this: I pour cold water over the cereal in the evening, and in the morning it, swollen, quickly cook.
Buckwheat is a real superfood, has the same magical properties as quinoa, and, in my opinion, even tastier. Especially - green, if germinated. It's quite simple, I use regular paper towels. The sprouts appear around the third day, and this is such a raw food treat - you can throw them, for example, in a salad. But you can also cook.
I do this: I chop a lot of onions, sprinkle with salt so that it does not burn, and simmer for a long time in olive oil, and grated carrots in the same place. When the vegetables become sweet, soft, transparent, I add sprouted, or soaked in the evening, or slightly boiled, or just boiled buckwheat and all this is languishing. Sometimes I add caraway seeds, or sesame seeds, or mushrooms fried in a dry frying pan. It turns out - amazing.
Zucchini spaghetti
When I'm at home alone and too lazy to cook, I make my favorite salad: I just rub the zucchini or zucchini with the peel on a coarse grater, season with olive oil, lemon and soy sauce - that's it. But if you do not eat it immediately, the zucchini will let in a lot of juice, it will still be tasty, but somehow sloppy, or something. Such, as they say, you cannot put on the table. For this occasion, here's my favorite vegan recipe: zucchini spaghetti. Everything is the same, but the vegetables are not rubbed, but cut into thin strips. You can add a little fresh chili, cilantro, instead of lemon - lime, it will turn out quite festive.
Red rice with peas and sun-dried tomatoes
I was once in Bhutan, this is a fantastic country, but the food there is quite unedible. And terribly spicy, Bhutanese are ascetics and fire-eaters. The most delicious thing was rice, just boiled, fresh. But not white, like ours, and not brown, unpolished, but reddish, of a special kind. It is not sticky, but not particularly crumbly, and it has a very pleasant nutty flavor. I thought this rice was exotic, it grows only in the Himalayas, and recently I discovered it here, it is called "ruby". Red rice takes longer to cook than usual and can be excellent vegan pilaf. My favorite is with leeks, green peas and sun-dried tomatoes. First, vegetables with spices are lightly fried, then rice in the same oil; then - boiling water or broth. Cover and wait.
Baked beetroot salad with fried pear
Beets are delicious if you know how to handle them. For example: wrap in foil and bake for a long time in the oven. Or - a couple of hours in a multicooker on the "baking" mode, on salt, so that the moisture disappears. Then pour it over with ice water to make it easier to remove the skin, cool, cut into slices and understand that it is practically a fruit. But you can continue: here you have, for example, pears - hard, beautiful, but not so that they are especially successful. The so-called "wooden". Either unripe, then the variety is unsuccessful. You can do with them as, on the contrary, with a root vegetable: cut thinner, put in a frying pan and fry on both sides. Beet layer, pear layer, balsamic dressing (it is better to use a thick so-called balsamic sauce, if not, then narsharab pomegranate sauce, for example). Freshly ground black or white peppers can be helpful. And also,for example, feta cheese, Bulgarian feta cheese - if you eat that.
Arugula salad with fried strawberries
Hard and not too sweet strawberries can and should also be fried, but better without oil, in a dry frying pan. Having cut, naturally, along. It turns out - great. And he is very friendly with arugula. The dressing is olive oil (I just don't recognize any other), a drop of honey, a little lemon or balsamic vinegar. The main thing is to have all the tastes: bitter (arugula), sweet, sour, spicy. Oddly enough, some kind of salinity is present in the strawberries themselves, but if there is not enough, you can add.
Kohlrabi and the "brains of the weaver"
Kohlrabi is, I believe, the new broccoli. The hit of the season. It also looks cosmic, and there is no coarse cabbage smell in it, and you can not cook it at all, just gnaw it raw, like a stump. But if you cut it thinly, it tastes better. And if in circles, then it can be used as a basis for something like sandwiches, instead of bread. Above, for example: “weaver's brains”. The name is eerie (it is from the ancient Lyon cuisine), but the dish is vegetarian in every sense. There is no exact recipe, because everything depends on the taste of the main initial product - cottage cheese, and it is always different. You can and should do it by eye: sour cream, heavy cream, a little wine vinegar, very finely chopped sweet onions, garlic - if no one minds, very, very finely chopped parsley. Salt. It is good if there are still thin chives. Some add thyme, or tarragon. Thanks to salt and wine vinegar, the "weaver's brains" stay in the refrigerator for two or three days and become even tastier.
Chuka seaweed millet fritters
I invented this dish myself: accidentally, because I cooked crumbly millet, but no one was somehow tempted by it. And I thought: pancakes. More precisely - fritters, it's kind of like cutlets. I added finely chopped onions, preferably red, or a tender shallot, or the very middle of a onion, a beaten egg and, on a whim, bright green chuka algae, we sell them in the form of a salad. Then everything is simple: a hot frying pan, heated oil (coconut oil is good, but you can also use universal olive oil), take the "dough" with a heaped tablespoon and fry it. The onion turns out to be damp, crunchy, but here it is somehow appropriate. I tried the same thing, but without algae - not interesting at all.
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