Cooking

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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.

Favorites

These are some of our favorites from the last two+ years of cooking, if you're looking for an incredible vegan dinner, try these first!

Dinner History

  • 2016-11-29 baked leek and sweet potato gratin 3x and carrot apple ginger soup 4x with garlic bread (3 loaves). The soup is good, but we had to add a bunch of extra salt, garlic powder and basil to get it there. The gratin, we messed up a bit and forgot the salt when assembling, then we added extra salt to the oil/breadcrumb mixture, and stirred that into the dish, added extra plain breadcrumbs to the top. Worked out well, many people told me they loved it, but I found it a bit too salty.
  • 2016-11-22 Roberta made veggie rolls and a lentil soup - sorry no links. Both were great.
  • 2016-11-15 spicy lentil soup 3x a repeat and chocolate chili / Chili sin Carne al Mol 2x, with garlic bread. Both excellent. The chili is quite unique, and excellent with some bread to sop up the delicious chocolate sauce. The lentil soup amazing as always, really does benefit from having a lot of fresh lemon juice in it to bring out the flavors.
  • 2016-11-08 spicy cabbage rice 3x and bengali cabbage and potato curry 3x. Both were good, not great. We had a lot of left over food since it was a super quiet night, I think everyone stayed home to watch election results.
  • 2016-11-01 moroccan spiced tomato chickpea and zucchini stew a repeat, 5x and zucchini tater-tots 4x and (of course) garlic bread. The stew was only OK this time, not sure why it was so disappointing this time. The tater-tots, we were very excited for them, and then they were *enormous* amounts of work, and just not that good when they were done. It IS very important to flip them and make them crispy - this takes much longer than the quoted 30 minutes, but is worth it. Even so they are underwhelming. Also did a survey this week, about the two dishes - only three votes each: stew good/good/good, tots great/good/average.
  • 2016-10-25 my favorite vegan chili a repeat, 3x and sweet potato leek soup 3x and garlic-rosemary bread, as usual. The chili was great, nice level of spice, but just not quite good enough to recommend doing again. The soup is amazing, super rich and tasty, would make again. Our new immersion blender is super awesome, did this down with a lot less trouble than the regular blender would have been.
  • 2016-10-18 pumpkin mac and cheese 3x and spicy coconut noodles 4x and vegan pumpkin bread 2x. The mac and cheese was hearty and good, also HUGE, 3x made the 2 13x9 dishes and 2 of the 9x9, all quite deep. The coconut noodles were excellent, would make again. The bread, I made 3 subs, the most important was oats instead of the whole-wheat flour, then also sunflower seeds and cashews instead of walnuts. Given that, it was delicious and perfect texture, best bread I've ever made here actually, obviously would make again, though it seems like it might be partially miraculous that it turned out so good.
  • 2016-10-11 For Thanksgiving: Butternut Squash With Whole Wheat, Wild Rice, & Onion Stuffing 2x and Red Quinoa Pilaf with Kale and Corn 2x and Vegan Roasted-Garlic Mashed Potatoes 3x with deep dish apple crumble pie and apple pie by grandma ople (a repeat) for dessert. The squash was good, not great, but very hard to make (scooping half cooked squash while it's hot? Are they insane?), and took forever, I would not make it again. Also, we couldn't even FIND wild rice, so we subbed some awesome black rice that we found. The pilaf was excellent and much easier to make; 2x made less than half a pot so if I do make it again I'd scale it up more than that - 5x would probably fill the pot. Both pies were good and lasted about 3 minutes :-). The mashed potatoes we served because you can't have thanksgiving without mashed potatoes, but actually we didn't roast the garlic, just put it in with the potatoes while boiling, which was not as good for sure. Next time I'd do it proper...
  • 2016-10-04 Ewans Carrot Soup (a repeat) 2x and Butternut Mac 2x and garlic bread. Both good, though we had to adulterate the carrot soup quite a bit - not sure why it wasn't as good straight up as last time. 10 lbs bag of carrots was $2, so this was a super cheap recipe! The Butternut Mac was easy and flavorful, but missing something, I just have no idea what - not quite as creamy as real cheese, but that wasn't the problem.
  • 2016-09-27 Butternut Squash and Roasted Red Pepper Soup 3x and Golden Roasted Curry Mustard Potatoes 2x, with garlic bread for the soup. Both dishes were *excellent*, would make again. The soup, should have made 4x, it would have fit, and we needed the extra - all the food gone today at 8:15! The potatoes, 2x already filled all four trays in the oven, so not really possible to make more easily. The potatoes, we used way more mustard than they called for - perhaps double, otherwise as in recipe. The soup, we fried the onions and added garlic too, I can't imagine why the recipe doesn't fry the onions!
  • 2016-09-20 mediterranean baked sweet potatoes doubled, a repeat and kale and apple salad also doubled. The potatoes awesome as always (and as always, we used at least 3x the sauce, just double the potatoes). The salad was good, but not as good as the previous kale salad (IMO, other people loved the apple in it).
  • 2016-09-13 Roasted Red Pepper Chickpea and Spinach Curry 4x and Spicy Indian Rice a repeat, 6x. Both dishes excellent, would make again! The curry is very unusual, you bake it at the end rather than simmering it; it left the tomatoes in this super delicious flavor-explosion state! The rice was excellent as usual - once again we ignored the flooding instruction and did it our way.
  • 2016-09-06 Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie 4x plus corn on the cob! 4x made more than we thought it would - 2 large and 2 small glass dishes; we had about 1.5 small ones left over since it was another quiet night (as expected). The shepherd's pie was good - much better with some hot sauce on top, of course :-).
  • 2016-08-30 Kale and Kohlrabi salad 2x and vegan tomato cabbage stew 4x. The salad used all fresh ingredients from Eric's community garden plot, and was super delicious. The stew was also super yummi, 4x was just perfect - the cabbage took awile to stew down to fit, but in the end the pot was perfectly full.
  • three week's Eric was gone on vacation - apparently dinners *did* happen, Panter made a chili, and Pari did two meals, I'll try to get some details and recipes to add here
  • 2016-08-02 sausage with potatoes and sauerkraut 4x and jerk sweet potato and black bean curry a repeat, 2x, plus rice and bread. We of course used vegan sausage for the sauerkraut recipe; which turned out delicious in the end, but we actually had to adulterate it a bit. We added garlic powder (a mistake I think?), some dried dill, and a surprisingly large amount of salt. Next time, I'd do some to the potatoes while they are cooking - perhaps a bit of sauce or herbs or something, I think they were the source of the bland. The jerk dish, excellent as always, but we used too much jerk (we used an entire jar PLUS some dried powder), the dish ended up ATOMIC in spice level, but still got totally eaten up in the end - lots of our members love very high levels of spice, apparently :-)
  • 2016-07-28 Thai Red Curry 6x and garlic cilantro lime rice (a repeat) 4x with thai mango salad (not really this recipe, Pari improvised it), and a Spicy Napa Cabbage Slaw with Cilantro Dressing which Matt had a recipe for. The red curry was the best such curry we have made here; it was really delicious, would make again, but even with extra fluids and veggies (we added broccoli, beans from my garden, and carrots), 6x only made about 2/3 of the pot, so the recipe needs to be like 10x+ next time for sure; maybe TWO bottles of the curry paste. Also, we pressed and fried the tofu, which the recipe doesn't call for, but made a huge difference in the awesomeness I think. The rice we messed up a bit - very slow getting the water in, and then too much water later, so it ended up a big sticky, but still delicious like last time. The mango salad was the BEST; not sure how different it was from the linked recipe, but Pari hit that one out of the park! And the fruit store where we got the mangos (three blocks west of hacklab) also had amazing thai basil for cheap, we need to go there a lot more often! The cabbage slaw was SPICY! Overall one of the best dinners in awhile, we got a lot of compliments.
  • 2016-07-19 Gazpacho a repeat, 4x and Cauliflower Buffalo Wings, 3x. The wings were amazing, would make again, in fact I think it's a new favorite! Thanks to Matt for the recipe. The franks hot sauce ones are better than the vinegar ones. The ranch dip recipe on the same link is also amazing. We could have used WAY more than 3x, but didn't really have oven space for more anyway... The gazpacho was also delicious as always, really does benefit from extra time to sit - totally worth making it an hour or more early. We also made vegan banana bread, but like last time, it came out more like a pudding. Still tastes delicious, but you need a spoon to eat it...
  • 2016-07-12 Vietnamese bun cha with sticky spicy tofu a repeat, 3x and vegetarian stuffed cabbage rolls 2x. The bun-cha was excellent, as before, though somehow I ended up putting all the dressing on the pasta and none on the salad - the recipe isn't clear about where the dressing actually goes, and the pasta needed it... I did follow the instructions below re pressing the tofu, helped a LOT, but also should have recommended making WAY MORE than the recipe calls for - with recipe quantities, everyone only gets like 4 1-inch cubes, which isn't very much compared to the pasta or salad. Maybe double the tofu next time? The cabbage rolls, we added sauerkraut and Pari basically winged it, and it ended up way too strong on the herbs - especially the parsley, and too much pepper (spice) overall. Still good but a lot of work, I think next time I'd try a recipe which had more stuffing (e.g. potato or whatever).
  • 2016-07-05 Cheesy Vegan Potato & Broccoli Casserole 4x and Zucchini Noodle Cashew Stir Fry 3x with a watermelon jello for desert. The casserole was subtle but excellent and pretty easy to make (thanks to food processor) - would make again. Does take a long time in the oven though. The stir fry, we don't have a spiralizer so it wasn't really "noodle" but it was really good - the sauce was great. A lot of chopping but otherwise super fast. Roberta's watermelon jello (using agar agar) was amazing!
  • 2016-06-28 Roasted Eggplant and White Bean Soup 4x and Kuchumber Salad (a repeat) 4x and Baba Ganoush 2x, with an attempt at Vegan version of Chocolate Meringue Cooking with Peanut Butter Cream Centers for dessert. Plus garlic/rosemary/pepper bread. The soup was subtle but excellent and easy to make - would make again. Kuchumber salad awesome as usual - though you can't make friends with salad. The Baba Ganoush, Pari went totally nuts and WAY off that recipe, made a version she has done many times before, where you don't even blend it, and it was *amazing*, but that recipe link won't help at all to re-achieve it. I'll see if I can get her to write the recipe down. The attempt at vegan chocolate merangue cookies was bizarre - the coco caused the whipped aqua-faba to deflate, so we had very flat cookies. Still tasted incredible with the peanut butter though. We have this idea that it's the preservative in our cheap coco that caused the problem, plus the chemistry needs to be more acidic, and/or maybe we need to mix the coco in before beating the aqua-faba... we're going to try again soon...
  • 2016-06-21 Vegan "Butter" "Chicken" 4x and Roasted Veggies 2x with Saffron Yellow Rice Pilaf 3x. The butter chicken was good but not great - Pari spent ages trying to fix it, but I thought it was fine. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be - only about half the pot for 4x. The rice was *awesome*, would make again, though really I don't think the saffron made much difference. The veggies were good, but no thanks to the recipe, you could have roasted them in olive oil for all the difference the recipe made. No leftovers, food was gone at about 9pm - though interestingly, we also ran out of bowls, we're somehow down a bunch, we need to buy more.
  • 2016-06-14 Roaster Red Pepper Pasta 4x and Spicy Lentil Soup (a repeat) 4x. The red pepper pasta was surprisingly good, would make again. Rich and creamy and nutty. The soup was always was excellent. We also had garlic bread. Some left-over soup because it was a slow night - still only a few servings, but didn't have any thing to put it in since they are all still full from last week!
  • 2016-06-07 vegetarian sweet potato chili 4x with spicy indian rice and carrot zucchini chickpea fritters plus a "broccoli surprise" by Matt. The chili was HUGE, 4x actually made two big pots, not one. It was also well below average, kind of plain and sweet in a bad way (we think it was the creamed corn); we extensively altered it at the end (more garlic, some fermented bean paste, and huge amounts of lemon juice) and that made it OK. We have a lot left over (10+ servings). The rice dish was amazing, would make again - though we just used enough water, not the overdose they call for, and forgot the peanuts. The fritters are also yummi, less spicy than I expected, really good with a bit of sriracha. Matt's Broccoli Surprise was also great, it used the same fermented bean paste, called "doubanjiang", and some tofu & garlic, all roasted in various stages, simple and delicious.
  • 2016-06-01 General Tso's Chickpeas a repeat, 4x and a curry by Pari, both with garlic cilantro line rice 2x, and for dessert: Vegan Meringue Cookies. The General Tso, awesome as usual. Pari's curry (with potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cilantro and coconut milk) was great too. The lime rice, *great*, but also quite subtle - was a little overpowered by the two dishes tonight, I would do it again, but pair it with something a little less intense, like maybe a thai curry or something. The dessert, using "aquafaba" (bean water, literally the water from a can of chickpeas, usually wasted!) was incredible!!! Going to make again for sure. I can't believe how well it worked, and how easy it was too with the stand mixer :-)
  • 2016-05-24 Potato Rendang with Green Beans a repeat, 8x, Japanese-Style Sesame Green Beans 4x and 6 cups of carrot rice (9 carrots). The rendang is great, would make again; it's a repeat from the very bottom with no comments so I wasn't sure. The beans are incredible, and so simple too, totally make them again! The carrot rice is an improv based on last weeks - lots of people told me it was good but they didn't like the onions in it, so no onions this time! We also made a rosemary lemonade by boiling some (dried) rosemary and squeezing all the zested lemons & limes from the rendang, it was really excellent as well!
  • 2016-05-17 Golden Thai Curry with Green Beans 4x and Vegan Mashed Potatoes doubled and Ital Vital’s Ginger-Carrot Rice 3x. The carrot rice was great, should make again; triple was a big pot, it lasted longer than the curry, so double might be enough next time. We also failed to use the coconut oil, and added the cloves (1/3 of what it called for, next time I would try 2/3rds) late, so might get better. The curry was ordinary - too many potatoes watered down the taste and texture. We also subbed bok-choi and broccali for the carrots, since the rice had carrots already... The mashed potatoes on the other hand were *amazing*, we should do that again on a regular basis! The stand mixer made it easy to do as well, just boil and mix!
  • 2016-05-10 Vegan Red Cabbage Bowl with Tofu and Peanut-Sriracha Sauce a repeat, doubled but with tripled tofu and quad dressing, as recommended below, and vegan mac and cheese, 6x. The cabbage was great, you can't usually make friends with salad, but I feel like this one might be an exception! The mac and cheese was good, not great - creamy, and filling, but not incredible. 6x was perfect, 2 big glass dishes and 2 small ones, last bowl was 10:30 or so. The search continues for a really awesome vegan mac and cheese...
  • 2016-05-03 Spiced Vegan Lentil Soup, a repeat, 4x, and Spicy Thai Peanut Sauce over Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Rice 4x. The soup was great as always (I think this was the 3rd time we've made it?), and the roasted sweet potatoes were also excellent, A++, would make again. Not quite as good as the other two favorite sweet potatoes dishes I think, but truly great, I'm adding it to the favorites as well. We actually added some sweet potatoes to the soup as well, which added substance to it, and didn't ruin it (but I don't think it made it better either - the sweet element doesn't exactly fit). Panter also made Torta tat-Tamal, a Maltese dessert pie with dates and chocolate which was great (so sweet!), albeit a little runny.
  • 2016-04-26 Vegetarian Borscht, a repeat, doubled and Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Soup 4x and rosemary garlic pepper bread as usual. Both soups OK, not great. Very quiet night, we might actually have left-overs!
  • 2016-04-19 Roasted Root Vegetables with Rosemary doubled and Rutabaga Masala 8x, also tomato rice, 8 cups of basmati. Both dishes were good, but the roasted veggies did steal the show as expected. Even doubled was HUGE, we did 3 cookie trays and 2 glass baking dishes, and served in stages. We added extra herbs (dried basil and thyme) but otherwise basically as written. 8x masala wasn't quite enough, but we also didn't put all the tomatoes in, and could probably have put more of the rutabaga from the other dish in too, to fill the pot. I'd do the roasted veggies recipe again, though as with all of that kind of dish, sure is a LOT of chopping!
  • 2016-04-12 California Avocado Cucumber Cups 6x and Moroccan Spiced Tomato, Chickpea and Zucchini Stew 4x, a repeat, and garlic/rosemary/pepper bread. The stew was great (would make again, as before), but at 4x (instead of 3x) still didn't fill the biggest pot, maybe 5x would do it; although we did not add 7 of the 9 cups of water it calls for (that would have made it a soup!). The cucumbers were AWESOME, but also a huge amount of work, and of course the Avocados came from Kensington Market - odds of being able to buy huge perfectly ripe ones like that at FreshCo are basically zero. Great dinner overall, but it didn't last - food was gone in like an hour, and then tons of people had to order in stuff...
  • 2016-04-05 Homemade Vegetarian Chili, tripled and Vegan Cream of Broccoli Soup also tripled. The chili was good, I only doubled the beans (not tripled) but otherwise made as is. Decent but not worth making again. The soup was quite bland as is, we extensively adulterated it, but then it was excellent. What we did (this is to tripled, if you're making single, divide by three): added 3 tbsp of lemon juice, 6 tbsp of nutritional yeast flakes, 2 tbsp vegan butter, we had extra cashews already (maybe 1/4 cup extra, would add more next time for sure), a tbsp of thyme, and a tsp of garlic powder. Basic idea was: let's make it more creamy and savory, and it seemed to work. I would make the soup again, with these changes - it was really excellent.
  • 2016-03-29 Ethopian Cabbage Dish, a repeat, doubled, Ingudai Tibs, and Spicy Ethiopian Beets all with Injera bread from Kensington Market. The cabbage was excellent, as always. The beet dish was spicy but otherwise a bit boring. The mushroom tibs were great, would make again. It's nice to get more elaborate on occasion, I think this may be the first time ever with 3 main dishes?
  • 2016-03-22 10 spice vegetable soup, tripled. It made a *huge* amount of food, two nearly-full pots! It was OK, actually it got better over time, I think after sitting an hour it became great; but I still wouldn't make again. We used some fresh tomatoes, and bought a little too much cashews, but otherwise we pretty close to the recipe. We also made garlic-pepper-rosemary-olive oil bread, which was great, would do the pepper again!
  • 2016-03-16 Jerk Sweet Potato and Black Bean Curry, a repeat, doubled. Amazing as always, but I think our Jerk spice is getting a bit old - still lots of flavor, but no kick. Should buy some new stuff next time I make this. The juice of one lemon was also added, and really balanced the sweetness of the yams with the earthy jerk spice mix well. Also, for dessert, vegan banana bread, 1.5x, but I think I added too much oil and too little flour in my informal 1.5x-ing, it ended up dense and kind of pudding like even after extra 15 minutes in oven...
  • 2016-03-11 For Pie Day / 100 member party: Apply Pie by Grandma Ople, Chocolate Chip Pie I and Hershies Gone to Heaven Chocolate Pie. The apple pie was simple and incredible, just like the 6800 reviews(!) claimed. I think I would try adding cinnamon/nutmeg next time. The two chocolate pies were sweet as expected but unexceptional.
  • 2016-03-08 spicy roasted ratatouille doubled, a repeat from a few months ago, plus garlic bread. Wasn't as good this time, I think last time we used more tomatoes and added some tomatoe paste as well, it was a bit more watery this time. Also, I learned that apparently you don't have to peal acorn squash, which is awesome since it's so much work and so wasteful to do so. Eats fine, though it does change the taste in a slightly negative way, I think. Finally, double wasn't nearly enough tonight - could have done quadruple, though it would not have all fit in the pot. Food was totally gone at like 8pm, even though we served late at 7:30!
  • 2016-03-01 Parker's Split Pea Soup doubled, and Vegan Banana Bread for dessert. The pea soup is surprisingly great, would make again! Should triple for a regular night - only doubled tonight since it was stormy, that worked out well.
  • 2016-02-23 Thai Squash Curry 6x with 4 cups rice and using vegetarian red curry paste (though we used green chilis). Good, not great. Should have made 8x with 6 cups, the pot was only about 3/4 full and it all went fast.
  • 2016-02-16 Spices Vegetable Balti, quadrupled, with rice and naan. Biggest pot was MORE than full, but there were only 4 servings left at the end (I froze them), so we served a LOT of people. Comes out a little bit liquid-y, we actually blended up two loads to try to make the broth a little less watery. Tastes good overall, but I don't think I would make it again.
  • 2016-02-09 Minestrone Soup. As usual, this recipe turned out well.
  • 2016-02-02 Roasted Geek Potatoes with Mixed Veg. Definitely experimental, but highly promising. Suggestions for improvement have been appended to the recipe, but more experimental data is always welcome!
  • 2016-01-30 Spicy Roasted Ratatouille with Spaghetti, doubled for the Saturday open house. Also, garlic bread with farmer's market butter. We used double the pasta (a whole package), so it was more pasta-y, also added two cans of tomato paste for more tomato taste. It's good and quick to make, would make again sometime.
  • 2016-01-26 Mujaddara doubled. Really good, not spicy at all. Doubled made the whole pot, a lot of food for only $20! Really simple to make other than the caramelized onions, which as always are a lot of work.
  • 2016-01-12 Vegan Chili tripled. Used only three small jalapeños but it still came out super spicy! Overall I'd say it's mediocre, the carrots are a nice touch but it's a bit lacking in flavor.
  • 2015-12-22 Mediterranean Baked Sweet Potatoes doubled, a repeat and a favorite plus Sandy's Sweet Slow Cooker Sauerkraut also doubled, only without the slow cooker. The sweet potatoes were amazing as always, it's an easy recipe and so delicious! The sauerkraut was also delicious, though since we couldn't purchase any caraway seeds, it was missing an element that I consider essential to a sauerkraut experience. Anyway good intro to sauerkraut for people who don't normally eat it - the sugar and apple really take the kraut edge off it nicely, making it almost dessert like. Would make again, we made it this time because I discovered two mostly full jars of it in the fridge when I cleaned it out...
  • 2015-12-15 Creamy Butternut Squash Linguine with Fried Sage tripled with vegan parmesan cheese. Tripled was *a lot*, doubled would have been enough, as of 9pm there is a little bit less than a third of it left. It's good, in fact lots of people told me it's really good, but I actually thought it was kind of mediocre - I think I'm just not hot on pasta dishes in general. Anyway, the fried sage thing was really interesting, and with the pepper added a couple of nice tasting accents to the pasta. I added some halved cherry tomatoes to the recipe for color - very nice touch to an otherwise all orange meal.
  • 2015-12-12 Sauerkraut Chocolate Cake for the DIYbio Science Collider Party. Doubled, the second one was mini-cakes :-). One batch of icing was enough for both, as suggested in the recipe.
  • 2015-12-08 Sweet and Sour Eggplant, a repeat from 2015-06-09. 8x this time, as suggested, and it's a pretty slow night so it's lasting well (still ~6 servings left at 9pm). I was also more careful with the pan heat / portion / pat drying, so I actually managed to brown those eggplant chunks this time, and it tasted really good! With brown rice this time, first time we've made that here, it adds a nice extra taste & texture.
  • 2015-12-01 Eric was sick and Pari couldn't make it so no dinner this week! I heard that hacklab ordered pizza in our absence.
  • 2015-11-24 spicy vegan potato curry 4x and Jerra Rice also 4x. Pari blended the onion stuff, and then later the curry was a bit bland so she added a lot of extra spices (garlic powder, garam masala, cumin, etc). Turned out great, but I don't think I would make again unmodified. 4x was also A LOT, probably 3x would have been sufficient.
  • 2015-11-17 Noodles in a creamy coconut peanut sauce, 6x we used both the crazy Japanese noodles and much more regular spaghetti. And kachumber indian salad 4x, which is spicy. Both dishes are good, the pasta especially, but it was also a lot of chopping. And half a jar of peanut butter!
  • 2015-11-10 Butternut Squash and sweet potato soup, 2.5x, a repeat (from a long time ago), and Spiced Lentil Soup, 3x. The lentil soup is AMAZING, should make again. The butternut soup is great, nice and creamy but man all that chopping is a lot of work! Pari also made coconut bread pudding for dessert using the left over bread and coconut milk, it's great too, best left over dessert ever :-)
  • 2015-11-03 Ethopian Cabbage Dish doubled, a repeat, excellent as always, with Injera from Kensington Market. Pari also made a tomato-lentil soup which was super yummi. And for dessert we made Cinnamon & Sugar Roasted Chickpeas, which were only OK, I wouldn't make them again. Plus we had random acts of pizza too, so lots of food, and still everything but 2 pizzas got eaten by the end. Makes me think we must usually be well under how much food *could* be eaten by people...
  • 2015-10-27 Chickpeas and butternut curry with green peas rice, improvised by Pari, apparently very good. Also made a huge salsa.
  • 2015-10-20 Vegan Mac & Cheese, improvised by Pari, and a kale-pomegranate salad. Plus Scrumptious Apple Pie and apple cider (both from apple trees in the neighborhood).
  • 2015-10-13 Vegetarian Borscht doubled and Havard Beets, 6x. The havard beets were amazing, should make again! The Borscht was also quite good, especially with sour cream. We made both from a $0.99 10lb bag of beets (how can it be that cheap!), so even with three loaves of bread, this was still the cheapest dinner in ages. Pari also made a carrot & almond dessert with honey that was really good.
  • 2015-10-06 from a $3 10+lb pumpkin: old fashioned pumpkin pie, made 2 pies, spiced pumpkin seeds, super delicious!, pumpkin gingerbread, made 4 loaves, double layer pumpkin cheesecake, wow!, pumpkin smoothie 4x, made 12 glasses. Huge amounts of fun and comboed well with the random acts of pizza. The bread was great, but the real hit was the cheesecake, amazing, probably can't go back to regular pumpkin pie! The smoothie is also amazing, would make again for sure.
  • 2015-09-29 split-pea soup, doubled and creamy thai carrot soup with basil. FreshCo didn't actually have parsnips, so I subbed Sweet Potatoes in the split-pea soup. We also added extra garlic powder and onion powder. The thai carrot, we added keffir lime leaves, which made it super delicious, but we should have removed them before blending, since they failed to blend correctly, and then we had to manually sieve them out. Also, for dessert: marbled chocolate banana bread, which we made in cupcake shapes since we didn't have a loaf tin, they were delicious but a little bit dry.
  • 2015-09-26 The keyboard waffles again, plus apple pie oatmeal cookies, which were good, actually more like muffins than cookies thanks to how moist they are!
  • 2015-09-22 Dal Fry and Rice with Peas, both from Eric's cooking class recipes again, both 6x. We added green beans and carrots to the Dal, plus two jalapeno's, and Pari did some magic with coriander seeds as well. We also added some caramelized onions to the top of both dishes. Best dishes in awhile, both were super delicious! Should make again. Also, keyboard waffles, that's right our kickstarted iron finally arrived, and it was glorious!
  • 2015-09-15 Aloo Gobi and Spinach Rice and Mango Lassi (not vegan), all from Eric's cooking class again. Pari helped and it all tasted awesome!
  • 2015-09-12 Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for the Saturday open house. Made 36 cookies, very delicious.
  • 2015-09-08 Channa Masala & Jeera Rice, both from recipes from a vegetarian cooking class Eric took years ago (finally dug up the recipes). Basically doubled the spices in the channa, it tastes good now. Also used more tomatoes and less onions than it called for. The rice is great, I've wanted to do non-white rice for awhile and this one worked well. Plus watermelon for desert.
  • 2015-08-25 Contest Winning Vegetarian Chilli, doubled. Recipe says it makes 16, but actually it's more like half that, even doubled it didn't fill the big pot. Had some trouble with the pinto beans, FreshCo doesn't sell them in cans, only dried, so I tried it that way, but they really needed to soak for a lot longer than I had. They were *mostly* cooked by the time dinner was actually served, buy only because I had them soaking by about 4:30. Anyway, good recipe, tasted good, though I don't know if it would win any contests. The zucchini is the best part, and I also disagree with comments saying it has too much tomato - tomato content was totally fine! Also, very little spice, could use more. Great color though, very good looking recipe!
  • 2015-08-18 General Tao's Chickpeas, quadrupled, with 4 cups rice (actually needed 6) (also, this recipe didn't say how many servings it would be, but for reference 4x made about 20 servings - a little bit of room left in the biggest pot). Great, would make again A++. Very quick to make - once you've got it chopped, it's hardly anytime at all, which is why we only did 4 cups rice - rice was late late late! Lots of flavor, but hardly any spice, would add more spice next time.
  • 2015-08-11 Gazpacho, a repeat from last summer, quadrupled. Delicious as before, it's amazing how great it is for how simple it is! No pots or pans at all, and minimal chopping, which is awesome! Also cooked up two packages of vegetable samosas from the freezer, with some awesome dips.
  • 2015-08-04 Golden Thai Curry with Green Beans quadrupled, with 8 cups rice, since we expected a lot of extra people for the open house after maker festival. Turns out the storm kept most people away, so we actually had a small amount left over! It's a good looking dish and tastes good too, but it's not really exceptional - just good solid food.
  • 2015-07-28 Cauliflower with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce doubled and a repeat of Jerk sweet potato & black bean curry also doubled. Maker Festival open house, so we are expecting 44 extra people, so we made a bit extra. The cauliflower dish was OK, but not great. The jerk dish as always is awesome.
  • 2015-07-24 Juiciest Hamburgers Ever tripled for the hacklab 7th birthday party. Plus 16 veggies burgers of assorted types, and about 10 different toppings including bacon & caramelized onions. Great burgers.
  • 2015-07-21 The Best Vegetarian Chili in the World. Doubled, with bread from Mabels. Easy to make, and smelled really good. It was good, but hardly best in the world. Although we DID forget to put the corn in, so maybe that was the finishing touch?
  • 2015-07-14 Vietnamese bun cha with sticky spicy tofu and Cucumber Avocado Rolls, the vietnamese dish tripled, the cucumbers doubled. Both are delicious, especially the vietnamese bun cha, would make again for sure! Served a lot of people, 2 packages of vermicelli noodles is a lot! Next time, press and dry the tofu, since it takes forever to brown while wet - I made in three batches, took more than 10 minutes each. I chopped the mint (rather than leaving leaves), which worked great.
  • 2015-07-07 Moroccan Spiced Tomato, Chickpea and Zucchini Stew (tripled) and falafel from Roberta's Fresh Cookbook (doubled). Plus bread from Mabels, rice and couscous. Both dishes were *excellent*, would make again - fairly easy, quick, cheap and delicious. The stew pot was not full, you could quad that recipe for a bit more. We also simmered a lot of extra time (maybe 30 more min than recipe calls for) to improve taste/texture. Double of falafel was LOT more than the 2*12 they claim, I think we made about 100 on four trays!
  • 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!)

Spices

 

  • allspice
  • berbere spice mix (ethopian)
  • cardamom pods
  • cayenne, hot
  • chili flakes
  • chili powder
  • chilis, powdered (NOT the same as chili powder!)
  • cinnamon, sticks
  • cinnamon, ground
  • cloves
  • cloves, ground
  • coriander, ground
  • coriander, whole
  • cumin, ground
  • cumin, seeds
  • curry powder
  • garam masala
  • garlic, powder
  • jerk seasoning
  • mustard, seeds, yellow
  • nutmeg, ground
  • nutritional yeast flakes
  • onion powder
  • paprika, sweet
  • paprika (normal/spicy)
  • paprika, smoked
  • pepper, corns
  • pepper, ground
  • pepper, white
  • poultry seasoning
  • sesame, seeds
  • turmeric

herbs (dried)

  • basil
  • bay leaves
  • thyme
  • oregano
  • rosemary
  • parsley

kitchen equipment wishlist

  • stainless steel drink mix set
  • microplane grater
  • flour sifter
  • more plates (5 large + 5 small would be enough)
  • garlic press
  • scale & thermometer
  • spiralizer, like this one
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