roasted carrots – Emily N Cannon

Tonight’s dinner is roasted carrots with black lentils and green harissa, the first recipe I’ve ever cooked out of Vedge. The lentils and carrots are both spiced with the book’s “island spice blend,” which is some pan-Caribbean spice mixture with a little sugar. I didn’t have any dried onion powder so I just doubled the garlic powder. It’s pretty tasty, though I think the recipe underestimates the amount of liquid required to cook the lentils (3 cups of broth for 2 cups of dry lentils? Hmmm. I had to add water near the end because the liquid was absorbed but the lentils were a bit al dente.)

Looking at the photo after the fact, this would make a great Halloween dish: black, orange, and green goop! SpooOoOOOOoOooOky!

Baked tofu with balsamic vinegar and green garlic, roasted rainbow carrots with thyme and asparagus, lemon parsley dressing, kale salad, and quinoa

The sauce was a riff on the creamy-cilantro lime dressing from Salad Samurai: lemon instead of lime, parsley instead of cilantro, and fresh spring onion instead of powder. The rest of the recipe includes cashews, a little light miso, garlic, and pepper, just add water and throw in the VitaMix.

Baking tofu in a mix of olive oil, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, green garlic, and fresh thyme sprigs is a pretty good base. The same ingredients – sub salt for the soy sauce – makes for good roasted carrots. Kept the asparagus simple with olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt.