5-Ingredient Vegan

5-Ingredient Vegan is the most recent cookbook by innovative author, illustrator and recipe developer Nava Atlas. Just a few of her other popular cookbooks include; Plant Power, Wild About Greens, Vegan Holiday Kitchen, Vegan Soups, Vegan Express and Hearty Stews for All Seasons. What I love the most about all these cookbooks is that they are all focused on making plants taste great.

The ingredients Nava includes in her recipes in 5-Ingredient Vegan are easy to find in grocery stores in any part of the U.S. Just one of the time saving techniques Nava includes in this fun new vegan cookbook is using items like fresh produce, whole grains, good quality canned and frozen foods along with prepared sauces.

Another one of the secrets you will learn in 5-Ingredient Vegan is how to pack your dishes with flavors that will have your friends and family coming back for more! I would also recommend getting fruits and veggies from local farms or farmer’s market that will kick your dishes up several more notches!

20 Minutes or Less

Many of the recipes in this cookbook are ready to eat in a or less than 20 minutes and have you covered for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and more. They are also fun to create, very pleasing to the eye, and would be great for people starting out on a plant based diet. They’re also helpful for someone who you are encouraging to eat more plants. Many of the dishes will also make you the star of the show if you brought them to parties!

Delicious Recipes

With dishes like Scallion Pancakes, Southwestern Tofu Burritos, Tempeh Fries with Fresh Dill Mayonnaise, Smoky BBQ Chickpeas, Baked Polenta Fries, Coconut Sweet Potato Bisque, Pasta with Power Greens, Salsa Verde Bean Burritos, Skillet Blueberry Crumble, Pineapple-Orange Ambrosia and Chocolate Granola Clusters, how can you go wrong?

5-Ingredient Vegan is my kind of cookbook, it contains unique recipes that focus on bringing out flavors of whole foods, and that is what I love! I think you will too, so pick up a copy of your own. If you’d like to learn more about Nava, she has a really fun website loaded with other tips, travel and restaurant recommendations and more recipes: https://theveganatlas.com/

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Once you get into the leafy greens habit, it’s hard to stop. And why would you? Greens are one of the most nutrient-rich food groupon the planet, boasting a multitude of benefits.

They’re one of the best sources of Vitamin K, essential to bone health, and are abundant in vitamins A, B (especially folic acid) and C. Greens also provide a wealth of antioxidants and chlorophyll, are protective against cancers, and are anti-inflammatory. The hardier greens, like kale, chard, and collards, are superb sources of highly absorbable calcium, a perk that’s especially valuable to vegans.

All of these are great reasons to eat more greens, aside from the fact that they’re delicious, versatile, and add interest to all manner of preparations.

Here are a handful of ways to enjoy them every day:

1. Use greens in smoothies and juices. Some greens are better for this purpose than others. Spinach tastes so mild in smoothies and juices that your taste buds barely know it’s there. Kale and collards are a bit more assertive but add a very mild green flavor to smoothies and juices. To make either juices or smoothies, a big handful or two of spinach or one or two good-size kale or collard leaves per servings is about right. Greens blend well with bananas, apples, berries, and pears. You’ll need a high-speed blender (like Vita-Mix or BlendTec) to break kale and collards down smoothly; a regular blender is sufficient for spinach.
2. Use “massaged” raw kale in salads. Strip rinsed and dried kale leaves from their stems and chop into bite-size pieces. Place the cut kale into a serving bowl. Rub a little olive oil into your palm, then massage the kale for 45 seconds to a minute. It will soften up and turn bright green. To this, you can add all manner of other veggies and fruits, and dress any way you’d like. A simple formula that I’ve been enjoying for years: add dried cranberries, toasted or raw cashew pieces, vegan mayonnaise, and a little lemon juice. It’s downright addictive. Massaged kale goes well with avocado, apples, pears, napa or red cabbage, carrots, pumpkin seeds, walnuts … what you combine it with is limited only to what happens to be in your fridge. It can be dressed in ordinary vinaigrette, sesame-ginger dressing, tahini dressing, and the aforementioned vegan mayo.
3. Add hardy greens to stir-fries. The best greens to use for this purpose are lacinato kale, collards, or chard. Strip the leaves from the stems (you can slice the stems from the kale and chard very thinly and use them again. Stack a few leaves atop one another and roll up snugly from a narrow end. Slice very thinly. This will make long, thin ribbons; cut them once or twice across to shorten. Add toward the end of your veggie stir-fries, as the greens cook down quickly. They blend well with all manner of veggies that you’d usually use in stir-fries—broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, bok choy (itself a leafy green), asparagus, green beans, etc.
4. Use plenty of leafy spring greens in salads. Granted, this isn’t a revolutionary idea, but look beyond lettuce to create invigorating warm-season salads. Use lots of peppery watercress (a nutritional superstar), baby bok choy, tender dandelion greens, tatsoi, and mizuna (the latter two are Japanese greens that have become increasingly available at farm markets and CSAs). Combine with baby green and sprouts, plus your favorite salad veggies and fruits, for cleansing (and clean-tasting) salads.
5. Learn to love the bitter greens. Add variety to your greens repertoire by getting to know escarole, broccoli rabe, and mustard greens. These greens mellow out considerably with gentle braising or when incorporated into soups and stews. The basics: Heat a little olive oil in a large steep-sided skillet or stir-fry pan; sauté as much chopped garlic and/or shallots as you’d like. Add washed and chopped greens, stir quickly to coat with the oil, then add about 1/4 cup water or vegetable stock. Cover and cook until tender and wilted down, about 5 minutes. Traditional additions to this kind of braise are raisins and toasted pine nuts, plus salt and pepper and if you’d like, a little apple cider vinegar.

Greens photos by Hannah Kaminsky. Recipe photos by Susan Voisin.

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According to the National Chili Day website, the origins of the dish are debatable. Some say it is an American dish with roots in Mexico, while Mexicans don’t want to have anything to do with it. Chili stands started popping up in San Antonio in the 1880s, where “chili queens” sold “bowls o’red” along with a piece of bread and a glass of water for ten cents.  Word got out, and the fame of chili began to spread, making the dish a tourist attraction. Chili con carne was featured at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 at the San Antonio Chili Stand.

Chili joints began popping up across the west by the 1920s, and by the end of that decade, chili parlors could be found in just about any town. They were often just a shed or a room with a counter and stools, but a bowl of chili was often the difference between going hungry and staying alive during the Great Depression, since it was so cheap.

Since then chili has gone on to be a well-loved comfort food dish, and it’s often a staple in vegan diets, as it can easily be made without animal products.

Here are 5 vegan chili recipes that will help get your through the cold autumn days. 

Classic Veggie Chili from Nava Atlas – This chili recipe isn’t revolutionary, but a plant-based repertoire wouldn’t be complete without it. For a classic combo, serve with Corn Kernel Cornbread and a colorful salad, combining mixed greens, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, olives, and pumpkin or sunflower seeds.

Photo by Hannah Kaminsky.

Green and White Chili Bowl from Zsu Dever – Red chili is all the rage, but its seldom-made cousin—green and white chili—is just as flavorful, perhaps more so. This chili is full of hominy (dried and treated maize), fresh green chiles, and two kinds of white beans.

Everyone’s Favorite Black Bean Chili from Robin Robertson – This versatile chili recipes uses soy curls and black beans, but lentils and kidney beans can be used as well.

Photo by Annie Oliverio.

Red Lentil Chili from Chef AJ – Red lentils cook very quickly and are not only pretty but creamy and delicious. This chili is delicious on its own, but is also wonderful over a baked potato or sweet potato.

Photo by Wendy Solganik of Healthy Girls Kitchen.

White Bean Pumpkin Chili from Dianne Wenz –  This chili contains a big dose of pumpkin, but you wouldn’t know it unless you saw the chef in action. (Or you made it yourself!) The base of this recipe is pumpkin, rather than tomato, to give the dish a fall feel, and to give it a little nutrition boost, since pumpkins are packed with vitamins and minerals.

SaveSave

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Classic Veggie Chili with Lots of Variations

Serves: 6 to 8

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil or 3 tablespoons vegetable broth or water
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium or large bell pepper (any color), finely diced
• 4 to 5 cups cooked or two 28-ounce cans (drained and rinsed) beans of your choice (see Variations)
• 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
• 11/2 to 2 cups cooked fresh or thawed frozen corn kernels
• 1 to 2 fresh hot chili peppers (see Variations), seeded and minced, or one 4- to 8-ounce can chopped mild green chilies
• 1 tablespoon good-quality chili powder, or to taste
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder (optional; highly recommended)
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• Salt to taste

Optional Toppings (any or all)

• Lightly cooked or raw chopped onions or scallions
• Chopped fresh cilantro
• Grated nondairy Cheddar-style or pepper Jack–style cheese
• Diced ripe fresh tomatoes

Preparation

Heat the oil, broth, or water in a large soup pot. Add the onion and garlic and sauté over medium heat until the onion is golden.

Add remaining ingredients except salt along with 1/2 cup water. Simmer gently, covered, for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Season gently with salt and adjust the other seasonings.

If time allows, let stand for an hour or so off the heat, then heat through as needed before serving. The chili should be very dense, but if you’d like it a bit more on the soupy side, add another 1/2 to 1 cup water and continue to heat through. Ladle into bowls and pass around the garnishes.

Variations

• Use pink, pinto, red, or black beans, varying your choices each time you make this. Using two different beans in the same pot adds to the visual appeal.
• If using fresh chilies, for a spicier effect, use jalapeño or serrano peppers or 1 or 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (the latter come in cans or jars and are supremely incendiary). For a milder effect, use poblanos.
• For added texture, stir in a cup or so of cooked grain—quinoa, whole-grain couscous, or bulgur all work well. Adjust the liquid as needed.
• Winter squash or sweet potatoes added to chili are not only delicious but also add to its visual appeal. Toward the end of cooking time, add 2 cups or so cooked diced sweet potatoes or winter squash. Butternut or sugar pumpkins are particularly good.

Nutrition Information


Per serving: Calories: 265 with oil, 245 without oil; Total fat: 4g with oil, 2g without oil; Protein: 15g; Carbohydrates: 47g; Fiber: 13g; Sodium: 25mg

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Plant Power is divided into two sections. Part one focuses on plant-powered living with nutrition information, tips for setting up a vegan pantry, meal planning strategies, shopping for veggies, and much, much more. There’s practically advice on dealing with family who aren’t vegan yet, and how to get kids to eat more veggies.  Nava also shares her own plant-powered journey and dispels some of the myths that surround vegan diets.  If you have any questions about a vegan diet or lifestyle, you’ll find the answers here.

The second part of Plant Power is where you’ll find all of Nava’s delicious recipes. These aren’t recipes that will keep you in the kitchen for hours on end. On a recent edition Victoria Moran’s Main Street Vegan Radio Nava said she wrote the recipes in this book for busy people who want a good meal after a long day at work and don’t want to spend a lot of time making it. The recipes are easy to make, don’t take much time, and don’t require hard-to-find ingredients. They’re also highly flexible. Nava includes variations and substitutions for many of the recipes. She also includes “Complete the Meal” suggestions for most of the recipes, to help you with side dish ideas. Homemade sauce recipes such as barbecue sauce and cashew sour cream are included, but Nava suggests using store-bought if you’re pressed for time or just don’t feel like making your own. The cover says there are more than 150 recipes in Plant Power, but it seems like much, much more to me. If you include all of the variations, you could probably cook from this book every day for a year and never make the same thing twice.

I made a few of the really simple dishes in Plant Power recently, and they were all incredibly delicious. I stared with Tofu and Black Bean Rancherous for breakfast. This is similar to a recipe Nava had in Vegetarian Times several years ago, so I already knew I would love it. And I did! From there I went to the Fully Loaded Emergency Nachos, and I made Nava’s cashew sour cream to go with them. The recipe header says this dish is called “emergency” nachos because it’s a “last bastion of hope before you reach for the take out menu”, but I thought it was more of a “stop everything and make these nachos!”, because they’re so good. I’ve also made a few of the sandwiches, including the Barbecue-Flavored Chickpea Sandwiches and the Thai-Flavored Salad Wraps. I have a lot of pages bookmarked, and I plan on doing a lot more Plant Power cooking.

Plant Power is a gorgeous hardcover book full of mouthwatering photos taken by Hannah Kaminsky. Even if you’re a vegan veteran like me, you’ll want this book for it’s delicious, no-fuss recipes, and you’ll want to keep it out on your coffee table, rather than relegate it to bookcase with your other cookbooks.

Chic Vegan readers are in luck, because we have a copy of the book for one lucky reader. Follow the instructions below to enter. US and Canadian residents only, please. Contest ends at midnight eastern time on Sunday, September 28. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed in a fine sieve
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil or 3 tablespoons broth or water
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 medium green bell pepper, finely diced
• 1 1/2 cups cooked or one15- to 16-ounce can (drained and rinsed)
pinto or red beans, coarsely mashed (or 1 1/2 cups cooked)
• 15- to 16-ounce can tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes
• 1 medium tomato, finely diced
• 1 tablespoon reduced-sodium natural soy sauce or tamari, or to taste
• 1 teaspoon agave nectar or maple syrup, or to taste
• 2 teaspoons good-quality chili powder, or more, to taste
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 6 whole grain rolls, English muffins, or mini-pitas

Preparation

Combine the quinoa with 1 cup water in a small saucepan. Bring to a slow boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oil, broth, or water in a medium skillet. Add the onion and sauté until translucent. Add the bell pepper and sauté until both are golden.

Add the remaining ingredients except the bread of choice, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook over medium-low heat, loosely covered, for 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occasionally. Let the skillet stand off the heat for 5 minutes to allow the flavors to mingle further and for the quinoa to absorb the tomato flavors.

Evenly spoon the filling over the bottoms of whole-grain rolls, cover with the tops, or serve open-faced.

Nutritional Information

Per serving: 252 calories with oil, 223 without oil; 5g fat with oil, 2 g fat without oil; 400 mg sodium; 44g carbs; 9g fiber; 4.2g sugar; 11g protein

Recipe from Plant Power: Transform Your Kitchen, Plate, and Life with More Than 150 Fresh and Flavorful Vegan Recipes by Nava Atlas. ©2014, published by HarperOne, reprinted by permission. Photos by Hannah Kaminsky. 

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What do you see as your ideal meal-making style? Decide whether you want to make different meals every night or most nights and rotate them through the season or whether you want to try the three-meals-with-leftovers strategy. If you want to be a seat-of-the-pants cook, more power to you. For that kind of spontaneity, you’ve got to have an especially well-stocked pantry and fridge as well as the imagination to look at a bunch of ingredients and envision what they can become.

Here are some of my tried-and-true meal-planning tips for making cooked-from-scratch meals a daily reality, even after the most exhausting days. 

1. Plan three full meals for each week. From those meals, you can plan two nights of leftovers, which makes life easier—though this is challenging if you have hungry teens or athletes at home. Don’t think of leftovers as boring. They can be repurposed in ways that might not make it into the culinary hall of fame, but with a few tweaks they can be as tasty as the original preparation. For instance, leftover chili can become Cincinnati chili mac.

2. Plan meals before going shopping. Planning your meals before you go food shopping will ensure that you don’t waste time, money, and energy running back and forth to the store all week. A mere twenty to thirty minutes of meal planning per week will simplify your life immeasurably, especially if you have a tight schedule, young children, or both.

3. Plan meals after going shopping. What? Didn’t I just say to plan meals before going shopping? Sometimes it’s good to think outside the box. When farm market or CSA season is in full swing—or during the summer and fall harvest season in general—and you’re getting basket loads of fresh produce, it may be wiser to retrofit your meal plans to your fresh food finds.

4. Prepare a few basics for the week ahead. On whatever day or evening is the most home- centered, prepare a few basics for the days ahead. Sunday afternoons and evenings are ideal as you’re looking to the coming week, but do whatever is good for your schedule. Even the simplest things can ease weeknight meal preparation immeasurably.

5. At least once a week, prepare a big one-pot or one-pan meal. This kind of meal can stretch to cover at least two nights. Such meals include hearty soups and stews, bean dishes, abundant pastas, and casseroles. You’ll find many such recipes later on in this book. Double the quantities if you need to, especially if you have a large family. Then you need little more than salad and fresh whole-grain bread to accompany the meal.

6. Develop a weekly repertoire. Make slight variations on your standard recipes each week so that meals don’t get boring. For example, Friday dinner has long been a pizza and salad meal, but within this basic framework, there are endless variations!

7. Create a seasonal repertoire. An alternative to a weekly repertoire is a seasonal repertoire, consisting of ten or fifteen basic meals that you like best. These ten tasty meals— one for each weeknight for two weeks—are repeated as needed throughout the season. Weekends can bring a heavenly leftovers buffet. That doesn’t sound too daunting, right?

You’ll find much more detail on how to accomplish all of these strategies, plus lots more of these kinds of tips in Plant Power: Transform Your Kitchen, Plate, and Life with More Than 150 Fresh and Flavorful Vegan Recipes by Nava Atlas, from which this was adapted (©2014, published by HarperOne, reprinted by permission). Photos by Hannah Kaminsky.  

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Nava’s book Vegan Holiday Kitchen came out in the fall of 2011 and it instantly became my go-to cookbook for the holidays. Polenta, Sausage and Mushroom Stuffing and Pumpkin Cheesecake with a Hint of Chocolate have both become mainstays on my Thanksgiving table, and I’m excited to make them again tomorrow. Since Nava is my my holiday recipe guru, I asked if she’d like to chat about holiday cooking, being vegan and her upcoming projects.

Chic Vegan – I know you were vegetarian for a long time before you went vegan. What inspired you make the switch? How long have you been eating meatless?

Nava Atlas – I was a child who hated looking at meat, and a rebellious teenager. The concept of vegetarianism was barely a blip on the radar in the time and place I grew up. I knew nothing about being a vegetarian other than that I wanted nothing to do with meat. I finally declared myself at 17.

It was easy to remain a vegetarian when I met my husband, right out of college, who wanted to eat the way I did and reacted with amazement at everything I concocted. We raised our two kids vegetarian. Then the age of the Internet came along, and I started to find out all sorts of things about dairy. Long story short, our son Evan was the first to declare himself a vegan, at age 10. I’d been thinking about it, but I made the leap soon after he did. That was over 11 years ago.

CV – I love your cookbook Vegan Holiday Kitchen! I do a lot of my holiday cooking from it. What inspired you to write it?

NA – In 1990, an earlier version of this book was published, titled Vegetarian Celebrations. A holidays rolled around, especially Thanksgiving and Passover, I’d always be asked for ideas on what to serve to the lone vegetarian guest at the meal. Fast forward 20 years, and now it’s the vegan at the table whose needs must be addressed.

As you know, the entire plant-based cuisine come into its own. Now, we have our own glorious way of celebrating, with delicious and sophisticated food — we vegans aren’t just sitting quietly and expecting Aunt Lulabelle to set aside some green beans and other side dishes (hold the butter) for us to pick on. I wanted Vegan Holiday Kitchen to celebrate fresh, seasonal holiday fare that does no harm to living beings.

CV – What have you been cooking up this holiday season?

NA – I just did a test-drive of baked latkes. Duh! I can’t believe I haven’t been doing that all along! Latkes are usually fried in oil, per tradition, and though I’m not a no-oil person, the plethora of oil used and the way the frying process made the entire house (and my hair) smell of latkes for days on end has never endeared itself to me. I couldn’t believe how much easier and cleaner it is to bake them. And they taste just as good, if not better.

CV – Do you have any favorite holiday dishes?

NA – For Thanksgiving, I do love a nice grain-filled stuffed squash dish, though I sometimes make other things. Recently, I did a post on some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes.  Some of the holiday fare I turn to year after year are things that are already “tradition” in my family, but that in no way resemble what I grew up with. In other cases, nostalgia has driven me to create vegan versions of dishes I grew up with like matzo ball soup for Passover.

CV – What would you cook for a holiday dinner party of die-hard meat-eaters?

NA – I might choose something comforting and familiar like Lentil and Mushroom Shepherd’s Pie. But honestly, I’ve been entertaining eaters of all persuasions for so many years, and no one has ever left the table unhappy or dissatisfied. So much of the experience is not just the food (which I strive to make as tasty as possible, especially for the purposes of persuasion) but the spirit in which it’s serves — joyfully and unapologetically!

CV – Your cookbooks The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet and Vegan Express were among the first I owned as a vegan. At the time there weren’t very many vegan cookbooks on the market, but now it seems that a new one comes out every day. What do you think of the vegan cookbook explosion? Is the market too saturated or have we reached a cookbook renaissance?

NA – That’s a great question! Seriously, when my first book, Vegetariana, was published (in 1984! Yikes! I was 5 years old when it was published …) there weren’t even that many vegetarian books on the market. Now, as you suggest, the market seems flooded with vegan titles.

Looking at it in a more positive light, think of all the baking books out there, or all the Italian cookbooks. No one seems to think the market is saturated with those, and they just keep coming out. So, as plant-based cuisine expands and more people embrace it, there may be limitless room for specialized titles within this niche.

CV – I know that you’ve been working on another book. Can you tell us a little about it and when we can expect it?

My next book is Plant Power, coming out in the early fall of 2014 via HarperOne. It’s mainly about getting dinner on the table and how to easily create complete meals, but in addition, there is a whole section on how to transition to a more plant-based kitchen, with tips on shopping, pantry, meal-planning etc.

My art site was just redesigned and we’re still tweaking the typography but hopefully things will be in top shape by the time this interview runs. Most of the places in which my work is exhibited are colleges, universities, or alternative art centers. You won’t find my work over any sofas; beyond what might at first seem humorous, it’s designed to provoke. One of my best known pieces, for example, is Sluts & Studs, and is about the bias inherent in language.

Is there anything else we can look forward to from you in the future?

I’m doing a lot more exhibiting, and I hope to do more limited edition artist’s books in the near future. My personal work often deals with issues of gender and social justice, but I’m also embarking on a series that overlaps with my concern for animals and the earth. The series is titled “Meat Science” and will strive to get viewers to look at, and think about, difficult issues with my characteristic use of irony. Other than this, I’m still working on growing VegKitchen.com, and I may have a few cookbooks in me yet, despite my occasional protests to the contrary!

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