...Meaghan Herself

Vegan Cardamom Spiced Southern Style Strawberry Cobbler

I visited my sister in South Carolina this weekend. Apparently that area just grows a ton of strawberries around this time so I couldn’t resist buying a pint before I headed home. My sister also gave me some cardamom, which she bought but hardly ever uses. I’ve never bought cardamom before because it’s so darn expensive, but wow is it worth the price! IMO it’s the best smelling spice ever and perhaps the tastiest. Anyways, here is my attempt at cobbler. It turned out absolutely perfect which is why I am sharing it with you all. I think the cardamom is a great complement to the strawberries, but if you don’t have it, you can just add more cinnamon. I adapted the recipe from this southern style cobbler recipe. Enjoy :)

Ingredients

1/3 cup of vegan butter substitute

1 cup self rising flour (or 1 cup all purpose flour + 1 tsp baking powder)

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup of nondairy milk (I used vanilla almond milk)

A dash of salt

1/2 t cardamom

1/4 t cinnamon

2-3 cups strawberries, hulled. Cut the large ones in half.

A tablespoon or two of sugar

Juice of half a lemon

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add butter to the baking dish and put it in the oven while it preheats, to melt the butter.

Mix all dry ingredients together. Stir in milk until smooth. 

Pour batter over margarine. Do not stir!

Combine strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. Pour strawberries over the batter. Really, resist the urge to stir! You’ll end up with a mess. The idea is that the batter rises around the berries as it cooks.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes until the batter is golden brown and the strawberries are all bubbly.

Let it cool for about 10 minutes and serve with a scoop of ice cream and/or vegan whipped cream! Yum!

And yes, it is as good as it looks. 

Vegan Chopped!

So, our version of chopped is definitely less challenging than the original chopped. I didn’t have chicken livers or black garlic in my “basket”. I asked my boyfriend to pick out 5-6 ingredients for dinner. I asked for ingredients that were somewhat challenging, but realistic. I was really excited to see what he picked out:

Silken tofu, raw peanuts, lacinato kale, garnet yams, poblano peppers, and thai red curry paste.

My mind immediately went to the leftover coconut milk in my fridge, which would go well with the curry paste. So thai themed seemed obvious…but what about the poblano? The silken tofu? That was kinda throwing me off. It occured to me that mexican-thai fusion would be AMAZING and easy with these ingredients.

I started with a sofrito (poblano pepper, onion, and garlic cooked down) in a large enameled pot. As that was cooking, I made my curry by blending the silken tofu, lite coconut milk, 1/4 cup of water, a few spoonfuls of curry paste, chili powder, cumin, fresh grated ginger, lime zest, lime juice, a spoonful of peanut butter, and a dash of tamari and sriracha. Once the sofrito was thoroughly cooked, I added the peeled chopped yams and kale. I added 1/4 cup of water to the pot, covered it, and let the steam cook the yams and kale. Once the yams were almost tender, I added the curry mixture to the pot along with some frozen corn and simmered for about 10 minutes. I turned off the heat and let it sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

I garnished the dish with pan roasted peanuts which I seasoned with chili powder and ginger and some chopped scallions, served on top of brown rice. 

Seriously one of the most delicious dishes I have ever made. It was so rich and filling from the tofu and coconut milk…the flavors which seemed like they might clash, went perfectly together. This was so much fun to make! I want to do Chopped-esque challenges again in the future!