Cooking

We cook vegan dinners for about 20 people every Tuesday evening, for the hacklab open house. This page documents the recipes and how they turned out, mostly because we're total geeks, but partly so that if we ever want to repeat something, we can know what we did :-). Most dinners are eaten from bowls, so we do a lot of curries, stews, soups, etc. We've also done a number of pastas, breads, and baked dishes.

Dinner History

• 2015-06-30 really good tomato soup and Vegan Lasagna with Basil Cashew Cheeze, both doubled, both excellent! We served the maker festival team (~12 people) tonight so we had a bigger budget and went in for more expensive recipes. The soup took a lot of work - that's a LOT of tomatoes to roast! But it is super delicious as promised. Roberta made the lasagna and it's even more work but amazing, we had two big trays and they went fast, I saw a lot of people (including myself) going back for seconds and then eating until they were too full :-). I'd make either dish again, but they do take a long time (we started at 4pm today rather than 5pm as usual, and served a little after 7pm.
• 2015-06-23 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes (a repeat from a few months ago), tripled, absolutely GREAT as before, tips from last time worked out really well. It served a LOT of people, probably only need to double it really since it's SO filling. Used 9 huge sweet potatoes, each ends up as 4 servings, so that's 36 servings total, we had 8 left over at 11pm.
• 2015-06-16 south indian style vegetable curry, 3x, which made a HUGE amount the pot was complete full. With rice. Good but not great.
• 2015-06-09 Sweet and Sour Eggplant, 6x with 6 cups rice, and we should have made more! It was great, but we did a lot of alteration, including adding some caramelized onions (prepared while the eggplant was sweating, one gigantic spanish onion), button mushrooms, and green peppers. Plus oregano, since I thought it needed some herbs. Due do the scale we made it (and our small-ish pots and minimal heat), we really weren't able to brown the eggplant cubes, it took much longer and we basically cooked it, but it was still delicious.
• 2015-06-02 repeat of Spiced Vegetable Biryani, again without tinfoil. Also left over Sweet Potato and Black Bean Curry from Eric's houseboat adventure. Plus watermelon. A repeat night, it's super delicious!
• 2015-05-26 Pari's Vegan Shepherds Pie, and Spicy Mushroom Tacos, tacos tripled, shepherds pie doubled. The pie recipe came out of a "Vegan Cooking for Carnivores" book. Both owe thanks to a donation of 5 lbs of specialty mushrooms (king oyster, oyster and shiitake) by Eric's dad (these would otherwise have been really unaffordable). The tacos were *awesome*, best thing we've made since the jerk sweet potato dish in march. Note the taco pictures show orange bell peppers, but the recipe doesn't have them - we added them anyway, in with the mushroom saute at the end. The guac also ended up being more of a salsa since the only avocados we could find were super hard, still great and totally went well with the mushroom bit. The Shepherds pie was also good, and far more plentiful as well, which is good, everything got eaten... probably can't ever make either again since the mushrooms would be way too expensive, but it was a great meal while it lasted :-)
• 2015-05-19 Roast Summer Vegetables and Chickpeas, tripled with bread. We made the two parts separately and only combined them at the end, rather than adding the second to the first and simmering. This left the potatoes a little undercooked, but was great for all the other veggies, which had a great crunch and taste. I'd do the same again next time, except I'd microwave the potatoes after I chopped them to pre-cook them a bit. We made it in three batches, which came out of the oven over time, that worked awesome. We also added a lot of extra spices to the tomatoes part, including curry powder and ground cloves, which tasted awesome, if I made it again I'd make MORE of the second part, it was a little bit spare (so say 4x that part, or maybe even 5x). Bread: Daria made a great olive oil and rosemary spread, then baked, to give it extra flavor. Great dish overall and with triple we had a LOT but it still went quickly (gone by 10pm or so).
• 2015-05-12 Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Stew, doubled with Rice. Roberta took the lead after Eric left at 5:30, apparently it turned out well and people absolutely gobbled it down, there was nothing left at 8:30 when Eric got back.
• 2015-05-05 Spicy Peanut Noodle Salad (doubled) and a *repeat dish (we hardly ever do that!) Minestrone Soup. Both excellent. There was an enormous amount of chopping for the noodle salad, and it *was* pretty spicy, but it was great, we doubled and actually served the second half later, to avoid the sauce making the other things all limp, worked out really well.
• 2015-04-28 Thai Veg Green Curry, tripled, with rice. Tastes great. We had extra beans, and we did boil the potatoes and carrots. The recipe is actually frustratingly vague and incomplete, so we had to make a lot of steps up, but it turned out really well, tripled left our largest pot basically full, only an inch from the brim!
• 2015-04-21 lemony cabbage and pasta and Vegan Red Cabbage Bowl with Tofu and Peanut-Sriracha Sauce, both doubled. The pasta was a bit bland, but the red cabbage bowl was delicious and fresh! We subbed (briefly boiled) beans for the snap peas, and I'd recommend making extra sauce. The tofu was also great, and again I'd recommend more. Also turns out red cabbage can be boiled to make an awesome pH indicator, red in acid, purple when neutral, green ultimately going blue in bases, very very pretty!
• 2015-04-14 Lemony Couscous with Broccoli (doubled) and Broccoli Gazpacho (tripled) with unfrozen bread from last week. The couscous was great initially, but it didn't have staying power - we didn't serve it for about 45 minutes, and during that time the couscous and the broccoli both went soft and the dish wasn't nearly as good. So this is a great dish if you eat it quickly, but perhaps not such a great dish for hacklab, where things often stay out for 2+h. The Gazpacho was a bit bland, the broccoli totally overpowered the tomato. So we added some tomato paste, which fixed it up a bit, but it was still only good.
• 2015-04-11 Spiced Vegetable Biryani for the Saturday open house. It was delicious, and surprisingly easy to make - everything in one dish in the oven, no frying at all! Doubled actually, so two dishes really. Open house was super super popular with readers from Metro coming by (apparently 70 or so, according to Alex), but most didn't partake, so we had leftovers. I also forgot to cover the dishes with foil, so I think it ended up a little drier than it would have otherwise been.
• 2015-04-07 Sweet potato and red pepper soup and Smoky Tomato Lentil Soup With Spinach & Olives with crusty bread. Both soups ended up good, not great. The sweet potato one we had to extensively adulterate to get it to good (basically added salt, herbs and olive oil, plus some spice). The Spinach one was pretty good straight up. The bread was *awesome*, thank you Sacha! (Bread note: Doubled the recipe and split the dough into our two largest bowls, and that still nearly overflowed in the two hours I left it to rise. Also, used all-purpose flour instead of whole wheat since I didn't have any on hand. There was enough bread to freeze, so maybe next time a single recipe is enough. For easiest steaming, pre-heat with the boiler pan, then put the bread in the oven and use a short drinking glass or mug to dump water into the broiler pan before closing the oven door.)
• 2015-03-31 Jerk sweet potato & black bean curry and Spicy Vegan Potato Curry, we doubled the latter. The Jerk recipe was *amazing*, probably the most tasty thing we've ever made, would make again A+++. We roasted the peppers ourselves (and have extras to make soup next time). The potato recipe was a bit lacking, and then Pari did some magic with onions and tumeric and oil and others things, and it turned out awesome as well, but we won't be able to duplicate that. Sacha also made vegan naan, 6x, which was a bit much. And tapioca, yummy.
• 2015-03-24 Quadrupled the mushroom stroganoff recipe, garnished it with flat Italian parsley, and served it with mixed greens dressed with a strawberry vinaigrette and toasted sliced almonds, accompanied by a quadruple batch of dinner rolls. Made vegetable stock from scratch by sweating chopped onions, carrots, and celery, then simmering it with saved-up vegetable scraps. One ~900g package of rotini is not enough; may want one and a half next time. Not the cheapest of meals, but very yummy. Demolished by OCAD students, Hacklab members, and other visitors. A relaxing afternoon of cooking.
• 2015-03-17 Moroccan Style Vegan Vegetable Chickpea Stew, very good! We added mushrooms, used regular potatoes instead of sweet potatoes, and added some extra herbs (oregano, thyme, bay leaf). Double recipe made lots, as expected. Bread from Mabels. This was also a remarkably cheap dish to make for it's volume ($25), should make again.
• 2015-03-15 For Pie Day we made 5 pies: Peanut Butter Pie w/ Pretzel Crust good, the peanut butter is more subtle than you would expect.
  Chocolate Coconut French Silk Banoffee Tart exceptionally awesome so sweet, it vanished almost immediately!
  Sundried Tomato Tart w/ Zucchini-Hummus savory, the crust is amazing, but the zucchini filling was a little bit disappointing.
  Cinnamon-Crumble Apple Pie and Mixed Berry Pie both part of the Venn-Pieagram, which turned out super great, it was also very popular and delicious. Thanks to Michael, Michael, Joseph and Eric.
• 2015-03-10 Sweet potato carrot soup with chapati, to use up the sweet potatoes. Tripled. Quite good, and we didn't put any paprika in.
• 2015-03-03 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes, it tastes so great! Best dish in the last several months. We tripled the recipe, using 12 larger sweet potatoes - this was way too many potatoes, four dishes, and we just left an entire dish for next week to make soup with. We also should have had way more tomatoes (we had 6 roma), and more sauce as well (we started with 300ml hummus) - the sauce is delicious! When we do it again, I'd say: 9 large sweet potatoes, 9 tomatoes, and 600ml of hummus.
• 2015-02-17 Tibetan Lentil Soup (green, spicy) & Curried Lentil Soup (red) with bagels from Mabels. Both recipes from Roberta's FRESH restaurant cookbook, single each, but we should have made more. The red was awesome, the green was good. Bagels actually worked well, but we needed way more than 8. Green took much longer than the claimed 15 minutes - more like the same 30 minutes as the red, so wish we'd started them at the same time. Somebody brought a gigantic apple pie from costco to end the dinner.
• 2015-02-10 Veggie Pho, claims 30 minutes but with our slow stove, took about an hour. We tripled, and used two pots. Ended up with far too much pasta (we used three packages of thicker rice vermicelli), and far too little bean sprouts and broth. Overall it's only OK, not great. The expensive shiitake mushrooms are almost lost in the pasta (maybe next time just use regular mushrooms to save money?), and it's not got any visual pop. Next time, maybe make the stock ourselves? Totally DO add broccoli and bok choy. Maybe extra firm tofu? Anyway, edible but not incredible, but there is promise...
• 2015-01-27 Cheesy Vegan Alfredo with Peas and Kale, really good! Quadrupled, which resulted in LOTS, next time use two pots to make mixing easier. Next time blend the cashews more, we added mushrooms and broccoli, which was good, in fact next time even more of all veggies.
• 2015-01-20 Japanese curry. Doubled. Roux recipe, and a large pot with three onions, leftover potatoes (2.5lbs?), leftover carrots (half a bag?), two packages of tofu, and other veg.
• 2015-01-13 Sweet Potato Fenugreek Saute and Vegan Veggie Curry (ours actually with TVP instead of Seitan). Both basically tripled. 18 bowls used.
• 2015-01-06 Misir Alicha & Tikil Gomen Both doubled, with double order of Injera (from Kensington Market). Both great, but I think the Tikil is the better of the two. It's also a lot more volume - despite the recipe claiming they make equal quantities, the Tikil is about 3x as large! And also, for dessert, a rice-apricot-cashew treat from Roberta's "Baking with Agave Nectar" cookbook (now donated to hacklab).
• 2014-12-30 Miso Winter Squash without sesame, sadly. Doubled. Very delicious. We A/B tested with baking vs. stir-frying for the second step - baking was more delicious, but stir-frying looked way better and the tofu was better tasting. Extra baked squash. Note: should in future read entire recipe rather than just looking at pictures before buying extra ingredients! Plus carrot cookies later (also vegan thanks to vegan butter + egg substitute, tasted great but a little bit crumbly.
• 2014-12-23 My Favorite Vegan Chili AND Amazing Roast Veg, both great! Doubled the chili, had trouble finding chili powder. Took forever to peel the beets! Also, gingerbread millenium falcon with Structural Gingerbread and Royal Icing, not edible, but awesome :-)
• 2014-12-16 Vegan Pad Thai Tripled. Very good. Cooked the tofu and broccoli in small batches. Two packages of noodles was supposed to be too much but worked out great. Cut the soy-sauce by 1/3, was fine. Used 4 scoops of "korean paste" instead of 6 of "mellow white miso". Juiced 8 limes, needed more!
• 2014-12-09 Aloo Matar Quadrupled. Pretty good, would make again. Tried to use the new wok with wok ring, but not enough heat - ultimately had to do the onions in the frying pan and the mix in a large pot, as usual. The potatoes, even though we pre-cooked them in the microwave, ended up undercooked - a little firm, but still good. Would pre-cook them a little more next time (7 min x 2 instead of 5 min x2?, maybe with stirring half-way through). Halved the paprika, as recommended in a comment - great idea, still fairly spicy!
• 2014-12-02 Vegan Japanese Curry Tripled. Good. A lot of extra fluid (6 cups!!), which we just bailed out before serving.
• 2014-11-25 Pea Soup and Carrot Soup by Ewan and Eric. Huge quantities of soup, but almost all of it was eaten anyway. Carrot was awesome, pea was merely great. With bread from Mabel's.
• 2014-11-18 Panang Cucumber Curry Spicy Cucumber Soup - curry is great, the soup is *super spicy*. Tripled both. Used 7 large english cucumbers total :-)
• 2014-11-04 Korma, hot and sour soup, naan bread, coconut barfi, homemade peasant bread, store-bought cupcakes - Chris, Alaina, Eric, Sacha, Max, Gabriel, Will
• 2014-10-28 Veggie Thai Red Curry. Tripled, served ~15. Substituted green beans for snap peas. Very good. Also made coconut tapioca pudding. Notes
• 2014-10-24 Hacklab relaunch party. Lots of cupcakes. Notes
• 2014-10-21 Vegan Mac & Cheese. Quadrupled, served ~25. Takes a LONG time to make (dinner was served at about 8pm), but it's pretty good. Homemade bread.
• 2014-10-14 Long Beans w/ Potatoes & Peppers on rice. Quadrupled, served ~15. Good, but not great - we added a lot of extra (knock-off) sriracha and soysauce, but it still wasn't incredible.
• 2014-10-07 Butternut squash and sweet potato soup Tripled recipe which served a LOT of people - we had food available till about 11pm, very unusual. Added curry powder to our pantry. Also served two pies (apple and pumpkin) and crusty bread from Mabel's Bakery (1156 Queen West) - happy Thanksgiving!
• 2014-09-30 Vegan Indian Butter Cauliflower Triple the recipe, getting two cauliflowers, one head of garlic, 3kg tomatoes, and one carton of coconut milk, a lemon, 1" ginger, three onions
• 2014-09-23 Minestrone Soup and Peach Cobbler. Delicious, should make again.
• 2014-09-09 Yemisir Wot (Ethopian Red Lentil Stew) & YEKIK ALICHA (Ethiopian Split Peas) with Injera flatbread.
• 2014-08-26 Gazpacho - delicious! And so much veggies!
• 2014-07-29 ethiopian cabbage dish with injera bread. Doubled, to use an entire head of cabbage. HUGE cabbage. We need bigger pots!
• 2014-07-22 corn on the cob and Gazpacho
• 2014-06-17 potato rendang w/ green beans
• many many before this, but we were not keeping good records :-(

Wishlist (future potential dinners!)

• NOODLES IN A CREAMY COCONUT PEANUT SAUCE
• moroccan spiced tomato chickpea and zucchini stew
• minted watermelon cucumber and blueberry
• GENERAL TSO’S CHICKPEAS
• Stuffed Miso Eggplant
• falafel with a twist
• Cauliflower steaks
• Curried roasted eggplant with cardamon and coconut milk
• Smoky tomato lentil soup
• Vegan Mushroom Stroganoff
• homemade ramen
• vegan enchilada casserole
• pumpkin mac and cheese
• Ethopian: spiced collard greens
• sweet potatoe with fenugreek
• tacos - can do both meat and veggie, e.g. grilled tofu, eggplant, etc.

Spices

• bay leaves
• black pepper
• cardamom pods
• chili flakes
• cinnamon bark
• cinnamon sticks
• cinnamon, ground
• cornstarch
• cumin seeds
• curry powder
• ground cloves
• ground coriander
• ground cumin
• ground nutmeg
• hot cayenne
• hungarian paprika
• mint
• mixed peppers
• oregano
• peppermint tea
• rosemary
• sundried tomatoes
• tandoori masala
• turmeric