Tag Archives: Recipe

Vegan Kabocha Squash Chili – Pressure Cooker

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I had a day off yesterday, so there was time to play around with a new chili recipe, and this is what came out of that!

1 lb black beans, soaked
1 lb pinto beans, soaked
1 kabocha squash, peeled and cubed
3 red/green peppers, roasted, peeled, and diced
4 tomatoes, diced
3 jalapenos, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large onion, diced
3 T cumin
2 T chili powder
1 large bunch cilantro, minced
Salt and pepper to taste

Place all ingredients except salt and pepper in pressure cooker.  Add water to cover plus 1-2 inches.  Cover and heat on high.  Cook at high pressure for 15-18 minutes and then allow pressure to naturally dissipate.  Remove lid, check beans for doneness, and add salt and pepper to taste.

I served this with homemade guacamole, vegan and regular sour cream, black olives, and tortilla chips.  The kids mostly enjoyed it, though it was a change from our usual chili, which is thicker/richer.  This had more of a brothy texture.  Probably some additional cooking time on the beans would have made them less well shaped, but the soup more integrated.

Mmmm… chili on a fall day!

You are Such a Dip!

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It’s make your own wrap night at TheVeganAsana house.  This means preparation of several forms of dip (or fillings) and then letting everyone go to town.  So, today I made baba ganoush, pico de gallo, and prairie fire bean dip.  I vary all of these depending on my mood, so what follows is how I did them today!  As you can see, I had a taste for cumin.


Baba Ganoush

1 large or 2 small eggplant
3 cloves garlic
2-3 T sesame tahini
1 lemon juiced
1 t cumin
sea salt/pepper

Cut off top of eggplant and slice vertically in half.  Place on baking sheet with flat sides down and pierce each half 3-4 times with a sharp knife.  Place 1/2 bulb of garlic (or whole if you really love garlic) on the sheet.  Put sheet in oven at 400*.  Allow to cook 45 minutes to 1 hour (until the eggplant begins to collapse).  Remove and allow to cool.  Using a spoon, scoop insides out into your food processor or blender.  It should be pretty easy to remove everything but the skins.  Add the garlic from the roasted bulb and the reminder of the ingredients.  Pulse until everything is chopped and mixed.  You can continue to mix if you like a smoother baba ganoush.  Add sea salt and pepper to taste.

Grape Tomato Pico de Gallo

1.5 pints grape tomatoes, sliced in half
1 onion, diced
1/4 cup pickled jalapenos, diced
1 t cumin
1 small bunch cilantro, minced
2 limes juiced
1/3 t sea salt

Mix and cool before serving.

Prairie Fire Bean Dip

4 cups kidney beans (make your own or canned)
1 onion diced
1/3 cup pickled jalapeno slices
1 bunch cilantro
1 T cumin
1/2 t sea salt
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup soy cheese

Combine all ingredients except soy cheese.  Pour in blender.  Blend until smooth.  Pour into oven safe dish, add cheese and mix.  Bake at 350* for 30 minutes or until heated through.  Image to the right is before cheese and cilantro.

Serve it all with wraps and plenty of other goodies to stuff inside!

Pressure Cooker Butternut Squash Risotto

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Butternut squash is one of my favorite parts of the autumn. It is so amazingly delicious.  My daughter can’t stop saying how buttery it is.  Since I got my new pressure cooker, I was excited to try a butternut squash risotto in it, so I worked with a recipe from Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure by Lorna Sass.  It’s a relatively easy recipe.  After cooking onions or shallots, you coat the rice, then put the squash (about 3 cups of squash per 1 1/2 cups of rice and 3 1/2 cups of veg stock), seasoning, and stock in the cooker and fire it up.  About 7 minutes on high pressure and then natural release will do it, and then there is just a bit of stirring over a medium heat to add salt/pepper and break up the squash.  So good!