Some vegetarian recipes I made this month, and a crappy photo of Zoka Coffee‘s Winter Blend, the perfect coffee for the Hannibal season 2 premiere. The blurriness reflects, uh, Will’s [classified].

“Crunchy, green and moreish potato salad,” Two Spoons

 

I’m not a huge fan of salads with mayonnaise, so this mayo-less salad, which uses medium-boiled eggs and olive oil as the “binder” is a welcome change. I also love the texture of this recipe, with the crunchy celery, soft eggs, and tender potatoes. I used small red potatoes and threw in some extra purple fingerling potatoes I had.

“Roasted Cauliflower Soup with Cumin,” Joy the Baker

 

This soup was great with garlic bread, which I made from a seeded whole-grain baguette from the store and ~3 cloves of garlic. I’d actually increase the garlic in the soup to 2-3 cloves instead of 1 because it was so good with the extra garlic from the bread. This soup is Japan-friendly, especially if you chop up a dried aka-tôgarashi (赤唐辛子) pepper for the flakes and substitute ground cumin (クミン) if you can’t find cumin seeds.

“Feta and Chive Sour Cream Scones,” Joy the Baker

I had leftover feta and chives from other recipes, so I whipped up a batch of these scones. I used whole-wheat flour for half the volume of all-purpose in the original and used plain yogurt instead of sour cream, since I never have sour cream on hand. A pumpkin-shaped cookie-cutter works instead of a circular cookie-cutter if you’ve moved recently and seem to have forgotten what you owned in which country. I ended up with about 24 small, flattish scones instead of 12 and should have cut them much thicker.

“Vegan Cincinnati Chili” (with not-vegan cheese), Oh My Veggies

I added aged cheddar (and the light of heaven, apparently, which sums up how I feel about good cheese) to this otherwise vegan Cincinnati chili recipe. If you like molé or have been looking for a meatless version of this regional dish, you’re in luck. Part of the reason I don’t eat Skyline is the grease, but without the meat, it’s not even an issue.

What have you been cooking? And who wants to build me a light-box so you don’t have to suffer through my “weeknight dinners with bad lighting” routine?

By the way, I have some new recipes recommended by a friend for the Japan-Friendly Recipe Master List! Japan buddies, if you have any recommendations for recipes to add, let me know!