I was recently in the south at an event called Porkapalooza. Yes, it was as good as it sounds. There was pulled pork, and cabbage with pork belly, and beans with pork shoulder, and brownies with bacon, and donuts with bacon. And yet, one of the best things I ate there did not contain bacon, or pork of any kind. It was banana pudding – with whipped cream, and Nilla wafers.

This is banana pudding, too, but it’s vegan. The opposite of porkapalooza. What a world!

Soyapalooza?

I went with roasted bananas in this one, which are perhaps an acquired taste: I enjoy their earthy complexity, and it lets you use bananas a few days earlier than you otherwise might. An alternative would be simply to wait until bananas are very ripe and skip the roasting, as when making banana bread. I didn’t top this with Nilla Wafers or whipped cream, but rather scarfed it up in a bowl. But, you know, do as you will.

You could serve this at a vegan event, or at a pork-themed event, or just in your kitchen for no event at all.

Vegan Roasted Banana Pudding

Ingredients

• 3 bananas (see note above)
• 1/2 package (6 oz) silken tofu
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Boil water, then add sugar to water and continue to boil until dissolved.
3. Roast bananas until black on the outside and sweet on the inside, about 45 minutes.
4. Remove banana fruit from peel and blend with all ingredients in the Magic Bullet, large cup.
5. Chill and enjoy.

I guess I’m on a Sichuan kick, because I woke up this week with a craving for these delicious cold noodles. These are sort of like an authentic Chinese version of the Chinese-American classic cold sesame noodles. “Ma la” is the Chinese expression for hot and numbing, provided by the combo of Sichuan peppercorns and red chili peppers. (You can get the peppercorns, as well as peppercorn oil, aka “prickly ash oil,” at a Chinese grocer or online.)

While I think “ma la” is the most common name for this dish, you also sometimes see it on menus as “Chengdu Cold Noodles” or “Sichuan Cold Noodles.”

These noodles are cold and spicy, but also so much more: the sesame oil fills up your nose while the peppercorns dance and numb your tongue. Chinese black vinegar provides an interesting, vaguely funky tang, and sugar and soy sauce tie the whole thing together.

Serve with dumplings or, you know, vegetables, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Ma La Cold Noodles

Ingredients

• 1 lb fresh Chinese egg noodles, or use dried Italian-stye spaghetti
• 2 Tbsp sesame oil
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp Chinese black vinegar (or use sherry vinegar)
• 1 Tbsp ground Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 Tbsp hot chili oil
• 1 Tbsp Sichuan peppercorn oil (“prickly ash oil”), optional
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp sesame seeds (optional garnish)
• 3 scallions, sliced (optional garnish)
• half cup bean sprouts (optional garnish)

Directions

1. Cook noodles until al dente according to package instructions. Cool with cold water.
2. Blend remaining ingredients except the garnishes in the Magic Bullet.
3. Toss noodles with sauce and garnishes.

Have you ever tried grinding your own spices? I never have before, because I didn’t think I had the appropriate equipment for grinding spices. I have a coffee grinder, but then I’d have spices all over my coffee grinder. It’s a shame there isn’t a blender-like device that’s easy and even dishwasher-safe. Oh, wait.

This is my first foray into Bullet-ground spices and I decided to go for a recipe that really takes advantage of the fragrant flavors of fresh grinding: Sichuan-spiced roast chicken. Sichuan food is one of the world’s most unique and flavorful cuisines, full of interesting and unusual spices. Here, I use pantry staples plus Sichuan peppercorns (available at Chinese grocers or online), toasted in a pan and then ground in the Bullet, for a dish that is spicy and incredibly fragrant and flavorful.

The original recipe over at Serious Eats uses chicken wings, but I found the same flavorful combination worked well with chicken legs for a more dinner-appropriate option. This was a real star: anisey, slightly mouth-tingly from the peppercorns, mildly spicy from dried chili pepper, and bright and citrusy from cilantro and scallions. If you like extra crispy skin, you can do the baking powder step; still great either way.

Sichuan-Spiced Roast Chicken

Adapted from Serious Eats

Ingredients

• 4 chicken legs
• 1 Tbsp baking powder (optional)
• 1 Tbsp whole cumin seed
• 1 tsp. whole fennel seed
• 2 dried red chili peppers (or use 1 Tbsp flakes)
• 1 Tbsp whole Sichuan peppercorns, seeds removed
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• small bunch cilantro, chopped (leaves and stems)
• 4 scallions, thinly sliced
• kosher salt

Directions

1. Optional: the night before, cover chicken with baking powder and kosher salt and leave uncovered in the fridge overnight. (If you don’t do this, just cover the chicken with kosher salt before roasting it.
2. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. When hot, put chicken on a broiler pan and cook for twenty minutes. Flip and cook until cooked through, about twenty more minutes
3. Meanwhile, combine spices in a small pan over medium-low heat. Cook until fragrant, about one minute, then add to Magic Bullet and blend just a few times until everything is roughly ground, but not too fine.
4. When the chicken is done, toss everything in a big bowl and serve.

There are some times when you want unadorned, perfectly-cooked steak, with a crispy salty crust and a warm medium-rare center. And then there are times when you get a little bored of simply cooked steak and want something a little more complex. This is for those other times: a salty, savory, tangy, funky umami sauce to top your perfectly cooked steak (or chicken or pork).

If you’ve never used miso before, this sauce is a great place to start. Miso (fermented soybeans) is a great way to provide salt and depth of flavor without too much else to distract you. Lately, I’ve even seen miso in the Asian section of my regular grocery store. And it takes particularly well to steak, which is sometimes aged and fermented itself to bring out meaty, umami notes. Lime zest also provides a complex, vaguely beguiling layer of flavor.

I’d highly recommend taking advantage of low-sodium versions of soy sauce and butter here, as the miso itself is pretty salty. You can also vary the butter up and down as much as you like; if company is coming, I’d recommend the full-butter version, but I’ve tried it with as little as one-third as much butter and it’s still delicious, albeit less luxurious.

The Magic Bullet does a great job of blending everything together and you can even take advantage of its microwave-safe properties (without the blade attached!) to heat everything up.

Miso Lime Steak Sauce

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• 1/4 cup miso
• 2 tsp. dry mustard powder
• 1 tsp. brown sugar
• 1/4 tsp. pimento (smoked paprika, or use regular paprika)
• Zest of 1 lime
• 12 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed and chilled (or use ess)

Directions 

1. Add all ingredients except butter to Magic Bullet. Attach lid without blade and shake. Microwave on high heat for two minutes.
2. Add a few cubes of butter and attach blade. Run Bullet until well-blended, then add a few more cubes of butter and repeat.

There are some dishes that are great because of balance: sweet and sour, fresh and rich, salty and tangy… you get the idea. This is not one of those dishes. This “salad” (if something that’s a combo of grains and brussels sprouts can be called a salad) has strong flavors that all but whack you in the face. I use high heat on brussels to get them good and crispy, a vinaigrette of fish sauce and lime (from David Chang of the Momofuku empire in NYC), and my newest favorite grain, farro. This whole dish is really good, but the vinaigrette is truly something special: sweet and funky and tangy, your dinner guests will be saying, “What is that?” Nobody will call this dish unassuming.

If you haven’t tried farro, you’re in for a treat: nutty and substantial, high in fiber, it’s like brown rice that developed superpowers and is suddenly ready to win the game. I get it in the bulk bins at Whole Foods.

Brussels-Farro Salad with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette

Ingredients

• 2 lbs brussel sprouts, trimmed and halved
• 1 cup farro
• ½ cup fish sauce
• ¼ cup water
• 2 Tbsp rice vinegar
• juice of 1 lime
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 garlic clove, peeled
• 2 dry hot chile peppers, or use flakes

Directions

1. Roast brussel sprouts in oven at 450 degrees until crispy, about forty minutes.
2. Boil farro in heavily salted water until tender, about thirty minutes.
3. Meanwhile, chop garlic in Magic Bullet. Add all remaining ingredients and blend.
4. Drain farro and mix with brussels and sauce in a bowl. Serve warm, hot, or cold.

Well, at this point I might as well up and move to Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan): here’s yet another dish with that ma la (“hot and numbing”) flavor. This stir fry involves fermented broad bean paste (available in most Asian markets), which alone would make for one of the most flavor-packed quick meals you’ll have made in quite a while. And I also use Chinese black vinegar for an added funky flavor and Sichuan peppercorns (available online or in Chinese markets) for that mind-opening, mouth-numbing touch.

As with the typical stir fry, the sauce really stands alone as something of its own dish, and the protein and vegetable can be subbed more or less interchangeably. Here I went with head-on shrimp for that authentic Chinese flavor, snow peas and water chestnuts for taste and crunch, and scallions for sweetness and aroma. But you can use whatever you like.

The Magic Bullet does a great job of bringing together the sauce quickly and easily.

Sichuan Shrimp Stir Fry

Ingredients

Sauce

• 1 cup chicken broth
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp fermented chili bean paste
• 1 Tbsp corn starch
• 1 Tbsp mirin
• 1 Tbsp black vinegar
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp. fresh ginger (jarred or peeled)
• 1 clove garlic, peeled

Stir Fry

• 1 lb shrimp
• 2 cups snow peas
• ½ can water chestnuts
• 5 scallions, sliced
• Vegetable oil

 Directions

1. Blend all the sauce ingredients in the Magic Bullet.
2. Heat a dash of vegetable oil over high heat in a wok or large skillet. Add stir fry ingredients except for the scallions and cook until everything is just cooked through, about four minutes. Lower heat to medium-low and add sauce and scallions. Cook until everything is heated through and sauce begins to thicken, about two minutes.
3. Serve with rice.

This one’s an oldie (for me), but a goodie and vegan to boot: edamame-miso pesto. I wouldn’t exactly say this mimics classic Italian pesto, as without basil the flavor is very different, but it’s a cool little spin-off. The idea is to make a pasta sauce that hits all the same flavor receptors as pesto: the edamame is nutty and the miso is umami, providing the pine nut-parmesan punch that we love about pesto, and ginger in place of the basil provides fresh, herby flavor. Oh, and it’s green. Like pesto. See?

In my humble opinion, this is actually considerably healthier than classic pesto, since the edamame provides low-fat protein that you won’t find in regular pesto. Plus, you can make this one year round, without using suspicious winter basil.

I like a small-shaped pasta here, so that you can spear the pieces of edamame as you spear the pasta. A spicy garnish can be nice here, too, like Korean hot sauce or Tabasco.

I actually got the idea for this dish from a dumpling filling from Rickshaw Dumpling Truck, in New York City. Of course, when you make it at home you get to eat a whole bowl of it, which is pretty good if you ask me.

Edamame Miso Pesto

Ingredients

• 1 lb frozen shelled edamame, thawed in the microwave for one to two minutes
• 4 large cloves garlic
• 1 large piece ginger (about 4 inches), peeled
• 2 Tbsp miso, any kind
• 1/3 cup olive oil (or more to taste)

Directions

1. Blend garlic and ginger in Magic Bullet, shaking as needed to move it all around.
2. Add 2/3 edamame, miso, and olive oil to Bullet. Process until well-blended, shaking as needed to move everything around.
3. Add remaining edamame and pulse just a few times.

I’ve had a can of green olives in my pantry for about five years. It’s become my Do-Everything jar: It smashes garlic! It weighs down chicken-under-a-brick! It integrates complex functions! OK, not that last one. On the other hand, it’s been taking up space that could be take up by countless other things I bought and forgot about, so I decided it was time to bite the bullet and use the olives, so to speak.

This is a great pasta dish with Greek flavors. The beans really make the whole thing more substantial tasting, and the Magic Bullet does a great job of chopping the basil, olives, cheese and garlic. I used the risotto method here, cooking the pasta in the flavorful sauce to make it all come together in the bowl in 30 minutes or less.

Pasta with Olives, Cherry Tomatoes and Beans 

Ingredients 

• 1 lb pasta
• 1 can olives
• 1 can white beans (cannellini work well)
• 1 chunk parmesan cheese (about 2 ounces)
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• 3 cups broth, any type
• 2 Tbsp olive oil

Directions 

1. Add basil to Bullet cup and turn on to chop. Remove basil. Add parmesan cheese to Bullet and turn on to chop. Remove parmesan and add garlic and olives and turn on to chop.
2. Add pasta, olives, broth, oil, and garlic to a pot and bring to a boil. Cook uncovered until pasta is just short of being done.
3. Stir remaining ingredients into pot and cook until everything is hot, two minutes. Serve, passing additional parmesan, if desired.

Tamarind is one of those mysterious ingredients that seems like a secret ready to be unlocked: it’s sour, yet it’s sweet, and might it also be savory? What is it? Where does it come from? Why, tamarind, why?!

Anyway, this dish is a great variation on an American barbeque sauce for baked or roast chicken. You get all the same coloring and some of the same flavor, but with great tangy (tamarind!) and fermented salty notes (from fish sauce). The Magic Bullet does a great job of blending up onion and garlic, to give a nice depth of flavor and heft to the sauce with minimal effort. Letting everything marinate for a few hours also lets the flavors permeate.

The original recipe over at Food52 uses lime zest and some exotic spices; I’ve skipped those here as I think they overly complicate what is really a straightforward recipe. (Tamarind paste and fish sauce are both available in the Asian section of a good grocery store.)

Tamarind Chicken

Ingredients

• 2 pounds bone-in chicken pieces (legs or thighs)
• ¼ cup tamarind paste
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp fish sauce
• 2 ½ Tbsp brown sugar
• 1 onion, peeled
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 2 tsp. red pepper flakes
• 2 tsp. cumin

Directions

1. Blend garlic and onion in Magic Bullet, shaking as necessary. Add remaining non-chicken ingredients and blend until smooth.
2. Add chicken pieces to a bag with the blended sauce. Shake everything up, and marinate at least one and up to eight hours.
3. Roast chicken in the oven at 450 degrees, or to taste.

It’s spring! Finally! Here in DC we have great farmers’ markets (and bike lanes – DC is surprisingly hipster) around the city and at the Dupont market on Sunday you can, for a limited time only, find ramps, a.k.a. wild leeks. Ramps are a beguiling mix of flavors: mildly oniony like a scallion, yet garlicky and earthy and wild, too.

It turns out when you blend ramps into a pesto you get something that is surprisingly different and even arguably better than basil pesto: the pesto gets unexpectedly creamy, making a pasta sauce that clings to the noodles without being greasy. I don’t know why that happens, exactly – just another aspect of ramps’ magical powers, I guess.

Ramp Pesto

Ingredients

• 1 or 2 bunches of ramps (try the farmers’ market)
• ½ cup walnuts
• ½ cup olive oil
• 1 hunk of parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp. salt
• lemon juice, to taste

Directions

1. Bring a pot of heavily salted water to boil. Wash the ramps and trim the ends. Add the ramps to the water for one minute to blanche. Remove ramps and boil pasta in water until al dente.
2. Toast walnuts in dry skillet over medium heat until fragrant, about three minutes.
3. Add the parmesan to the Magic Bullet and blend until pulverized.
4. Add all the remaining ingredients except the lemon juice to the Magic Bullet and blend. Shake the Bullet as needed to mix everything up and continue to blend until you have a pesto. Taste for salt and add lemon juice as desired.
5. Mix pesto with pasta and serve, with tomatoes or asparagus preferably.

This meal is delicious and both vegan and gluten-free. I mean, come on: that’s a food trend trifecta. (Is deliciousness a trend? You heard it here first.) Despite containing no animal products and no gluten (whatever that is), these tacos are truly satisfying. The Magic Bullet does a great job of faking out Mexican crema (like sour cream, only a bit runnier); the cashews blend up into a nice, creamy white sauce, and the lime provides that classic sour tang.

I got the idea for this recipe from the cookbook Tacolicious, via Serious Eats. I’m not quite sure the crema is better than dairy-based crema or sour cream, but this is a good way to please the vegans in your life. That is, if you are unlucky enough to have such a life.

Just kidding!

Vegan Squash and Kale Tacos with Cashew “Crema”

Ingredients 

Cashew Crema:

• 1/3 cup raw cashews
• dash of cumin or cumin seeds
• juice of 1 lime
• 1/8 cup water
• 1 tsp. salt

Filling:

• 2 Tbsp vegetable or olive oil
• ¾ cup onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 3 cups butternut squash, diced
• 1 tsp. chile powder, any type
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 4 cups kale, rough chop

Directions

1. Soak the cashews in water for about an hour. Draw and reserve soaked nuts.
2. In the Magic Bullet, combine the cashews, cumin, lime juice, water, and salt. Blend until you get a creamy consistency.
3. Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until softened. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about a minute. Add the squash and sauté for about eight minutes, just until the squash softens. Season with the chile and the salt.
4. Add the kale and cook, stirring, for about 1 minute, until it begins to wilt.

Remove from the heat, taste, and adjust the seasoning with salt if needed.

You may think you’ve had good hummus. And maybe you have. But have you had the best hummus? This is a reasonably quick and quite easy way to make what I think of as restaurant-style hummus: ultra smooth and rich with tahini, night and day better than the stuff in the tubs.

This hummus has secrets on top of secrets beneath secrets. The first secret is to use dried chickpeas, soaked overnight, rather than canned, to give a fine and not mealy texture. The second secret is to peel the chickpeas. If that sounds like a drag, then wait for the third secret: cook the chickpeas in baking soda, then boil them, and the chickpea skins slid right off. The peeled, dried chickpeas produce the smoothest, finest hummus of all time. And a healthy dose of tahini and fresh lemon doesn’t hurt, either.

If all that sounds like a lot of work, it isn’t really: soak the chickpeas overnight, give them a quick sauté and boil, and blend them up to make the best hummus of your life.

The Absolute Best Hummus

Ingredients 

• 1/2 cup dried chickpeas
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups water, plus two tablespoons
• 1/3 cup tahini
• juice of ½ lemon, or more to taste
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• ½ tsp. salt or to taste

Directions

1. The night before, put the chickpeas in a bowl and cover them with water, at least twice as much water as chickpeas by volume. Soak overnight.
2. The next day, drain the chickpeas and put a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the drained chickpeas and the baking soda and cook for three minutes, stirring constantly.
3. Add the two cups of water and bring to a boil. Cook, skimming off any foam and any skins that float to the surface, for about thirty minutes.
4. Blend the garlic clove in the Magic Bullet. Drain the chickpeas and put them and all the other ingredients in the Bullet. Blend, adding more water, salt or lemon to taste. Serve.

Have you ever completed the pantry challenge? Two weeks ago, I filled a box with everything in my pantry that I hadn’t used in more than a year. It was a big box. Amid the scones and bloody mary mix, I found ancient graham crackers and dried milk powder, as well as a bunch of old snack food.

These compost cookies (made famous by Momofuku milk bar in New York) do a great job of using up whatever’s in your pantry (Cranberries! Chocolate chips! Chex Mix! Pretzels!), and they are delicious to boot. The mix of a very sweet butter base with a great, salty crunch from snack foods is extremely satisfying. The Magic Bullet does a great job of making the graham cracker filling, which gives a distinctive caramel flavor to the dough.

Compost Cookies

Ingredients

For the graham mixture:

• 6 graham cracker squares
• 1 Tbsp dry milk powder (or use coffee creamer)
• 1½ tsp. sugar
• ⅛ tsp. salt
• 1 Tbsp butter, melted
• 1 Tbsp heavy cream (I actually used skim milk and extra butter)

For the four mixture:

• 1⅓ cups flour
• ½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt

For the finished cookie dough:

• 1 cup butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• ⅔ cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp corn syrup
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 tsp. ground coffee
• about 4 cups snack mix-ins, such as chocolate chips, pretzels, or Chex Mix

Directions

1. To make the graham mixture, blend graham cracker squares in the Magic Bullet, then add milk powder, sugar, and salt and blend again. Add butter and cream (or milk if you’re using that instead) and blend.
2. To make the flour mixture, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. For the cookie dough, combine the butter, both sugars and corn syrup in a large bowl and cream using beaters on medium-high for two to three minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for an additional seven to eight minutes. Use a spatula to get any missed ingredients from the side of the bowl.
4. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the flour mixture. Mix just until the dough comes together, not longer than a minute. Use a spatula to get any missed ingredients from the side of the bowl.
5. Preheat oven to 375.
6. Add the graham mixture, coffee, and any snack items that won’t break easily (such as chocolate chips) and blend on low for thirty minutes. Then add anything that will break easily (such as pretzels or potato chips) and manually stir with a big spoon.
7. On a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, add heaping tablespoons of the dough, at least three inches apart from each other. Bake for 13 minutes and check for doneness; the cookies should be golden brown and crispy. Let cookies cool before removing them from the parchment.

I recently discovered that the Magic Bullet makes a great spice grinder, presenting me with endless possibilities to add a new depth of flavor to my cooking. But when it comes down to it, if I’m going to be grinding spices, I almost always want one of those spices to be Sichuan peppercorns.

This is a recipe for a spicy, sesame vinaigrette with the distinctive floral mouth-tingle of the peppercorns – in other words, it really packs a flavor punch. Adapted from Serious Eats, you could use the sauce on anything; I’m most used to eating it on noodles, but here it’s used more healthily as a dressing for asparagus and tofu. Serve over rice, and you’ve got a delicious and healthy meal.

Sichuan-Style Sauce with Asparagus and Tofu

Directions 

• 1 lb asparagus, trimmed
• 1 package extra or super firm tofu, cut into cubes or matchsticks
• 4 scallions, sliced
• 6 dried red peppers
• 2 tsp. Sichuan peppercorns (available online or at Chinese grocers)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 Tbsp Chinese black vinegar (available at Chinese grocers, or use a mix of rice and balsamic vinegars)
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil

Directions 

1. Microwave chilies and Sichuan peppercorns for fifteen seconds, then blend in the Magic Bullet.
2. Heat vegetable oil in skillet on medium heat until shimmer. Add vegetable oil to chili and peppercorns. Let cool for five minutes, then add sesame oil.
3. Blend garlic in Magic Bullet. Add sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic and blend. Add chili oil mixture and blend.
4. Boil asparagus until tender, then mix all ingredients together and serve over rice.

News flash: Mexican food is trending right now. Tell your friends. But before you do that, try these tacos. I spent some time in Mexico this winter and gorged myself on cochinita pibil, which is an all-night roast pork extravaganza that you eat for breakfast. That was great, and maybe someday I’ll make this with roast pork, but a similar concept works great for a healthy, very easy weeknight meal with chicken thighs. This recipe relies on achiote, which is a little bit of an exotic spice that I found in the Mexican grocery near me. But you can use any chile powder (or just “chile powder.”)

Here’s the plan: the night before, use your Magic Bullet to make a delicious, chile-infused marinade with citrus. Ten minutes, tops. Leave the chicken to marinate overnight. In the morning, slice half an onion and throw it with the chicken into the slow cooker. When you come home from work, your house will smell amazing and the chicken will be falling apart and tender and will have turned itself into a delicious sauce.

Pollo Pibil Tacos

Ingredients 

• 1.5 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs (or breasts)
• juice of 1 orange
• juice of 2 limes
• 1.5 Tbsp achiote powder or other chile powder
• 2 tsp. salt
• 2 cloves garlic
• ½ medium onion, thinly sliced

Directions

1. The night before, blend all the ingredients except the chicken and onion in the Magic Bullet.
2. Put chicken and blend into a bowl and refrigerate overnight.
3. In the morning, add the chicken and onion to a slow cooker. Cook on low for at least six hours and up to ten.
4. Serve with tacos and cabbage, if you like.

If you’re like me, you may not be vegetarian, let alone vegan, but you have more and more vegans in your life and sometimes you need to cook for them. Hey, I’m cool with that.

Basil pesto is a classic in more ways than one – a classic dish from my childhood, a classic dish from Italy and a classic recipe from the Magic Bullet. This is the perfect time of year for making pesto, too, with basil overflowing from every stall at the farmers’ market.

Classic basil pesto contains parmesan cheese and it turns out that making pesto without cheese is tricky. You can’t really just leave out the parmesan or you’ll really notice the difference and parmesan substitutes like nutritional yeast are, well, not my style. Instead, the idea here is to get nuttiness and umami from really well-toasted almonds and edamame. It’s not exactly the same as parmesan, but it’s just as good and hits all the same flavor notes.

I ended up using this pesto on a pizza with cherry tomatoes and shrimp. The pizza had mozzarella on it, which sort of defeated the purpose of keeping the pesto vegan, but you could use a vegan mozz substitute (much better than a parmesan substitute) or just use the pesto on pasta.

Vegan Basil Pesto

Ingredients

• 1 cup deshelled frozen edamame, microwaved for two minutes
• ½ cup almonds
• 1 clove garlic
• ½ tsp. salt
• leaves from a big bunch of basil
• olive oil to taste

Directions

1. Add a dash of olive oil to the almonds and microwave for two minutes. Stir and microwave for another minute. Stir and repeat until almonds are nice and brown, but not burned.
2. Add all ingredients to Magic Bullet with two big glugs of olive oil. Blend, stirring as necessary, and keep adding olive oil until mixture is a paste.

There are some dishes that are so classic they don’t need to be improved upon. But everything can be improved upon, right? I present to you, courtesy of the clever little buggers over at Cooks Illustrated, fresh pasta puttanesca.

Pasta puttanesca is a famous classic Italian pantry dish. Its name translates to – well, you can google that yourself – but suffice it to say it’s a dish that’s known for being salty and satisfying. What I love about it is the way it combines the bold flavors of anchovies and capers with olives; it just smacks you in the face with flavor. This version is very clever because it combines those lip-smacking elements of the original with fresh tomato flavor.

If you’re dying for tomato season to come along but are getting impatient, this is the perfect pasta dish for you. Fresh cherry tomatoes get blended up in the Bullet to provide sweetness and, well, freshness that really pair well with the salty umami of the classic puttanesca ingredients.

Fresh Pasta Puttanesca

Ingredients

• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 tin anchovies, or to taste
• 1 quart grape or cherry tomatoes
• 1 pound small pasta, such as fusilli or campanelle
• 1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
• 3 Tbsp capers
• ¼ tsp. red pepper flakes
• ¼ tsp. oregano

Directions

1. Boil pasta in heavily salted water until just short of al dente.
2. Blend anchovies, garlic and oil in the Magic Bullet and add to a pan over medium heat. Cook until garlic is fragrant, about two minutes.
3. Blend tomatoes in the Magic Bullet and add to pan. Raise heat to high and cook three minutes.
4. Add cooked pasta and tomato mixture to a pot and put heat on medium. Cook one or two minutes until pasta starts to absorb the tomatoes. Serve.

I was recently in Greece, home of my ancestors (not really) and, in addition to having no trouble getting money out of ATMs, I had Greek salad almost everyday. There’s nothing more Greek than Greek salad, except debt crises and ouzo, which is a nasty liquor that tastes like a mixture of fennel, vodka and squashed bugs.

Okay, I can’t really back that up. Anyway, when I got home, in addition to watching the Greeks and the Germans negotiate on television everyday, I realized that IT’S TOMATO SEASON and I should make Greek salad for myself because Greek salad is delicious and so should you.

In Greece, they use a variety of interesting cheeses for this salad, but back home we’re mostly stuck with feta, unless you happen to have a great Greek store in your ‘hood.

This salad uses one of my favorite new ingredients, white balsamic vinegar. White balsamic vinegar: you’d never guess it from the name, but it turns out that it’s white vinegar, not balsamic vinegar at all. What it really turns out to be is good, like balsamic vinegar in terms of depth and tang, but with a pleasant sweetness. Make this Greek salad with white vinegar and see if the Grexit happens.

Greek Salad with White Balsamic Vinegar Dressing

Ingredient

• 2 pounds tomatoes, cut into big pieces
• 5 pounds cucumbers, peeled
• 4 oz feta cheese, or to taste
• a few slices of red onion, roughly chopped
• 2 Tbsp Greek olives
• 1 Tbsp capers
• 4 Tbsp Greek olive oil
• 4 Tbsp white vinegar

Directions

1. Blend olive oil and vinegar in the Magic Bullet and serve over all the other ingredients.

I love take-out Chinese food – who doesn’t, really? – but it’s hard to justify a greasy meal like that more than one or two times a month. That’s why lately, I’ve been experimenting with making take-out style food at home, with less grease, fresher ingredients and more vegetables than what would otherwise be delivered to your door.

This Taiwanese chicken dish – named “three cup” for its use of sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce — turned out perfectly. Served with brown rice and a boatload of roasted broccoli, the chicken was the spicy-salty-sweet of good take-out, but with none of the stickiness or heaviness.

And two big handfuls of fresh basil, added in during the final minutes of cooking, really took it over the top and gave the dish restaurant-quality depth and fragrance.

Taiwanese “Three Cup” Chicken

Ingredients

• 3 Tbsp sesame oil
• 2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into coins
• 12 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 4 scallions, sliced
• 3 dried red peppers
• 2 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• ½ cup mirin or other rice wine
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• ½ Tbsp corn starch
• about 2 cups Thai or Italian basil leaves

Directions

1. Heat large pan over high heat and add two tablespoons of the oil. Add ginger, garlic, scallions and hot pepper and cook for two minutes. Remove to bowl.
2. Add chicken and the rest of the oil. Cook, stirring occasionally, until chicken gets a nice sear, about five minutes.
3. Blend sugar, mirin and soy sauce in Magic Bullet. Add to pan and bring to boil, then lower heat to medium-low. Cook until chicken is almost cooked through, about eight minutes. Add cornstarch and stir and cook for another two minutes. Add basil, stir until wilts and serve with rice and broccoli.

OK, so this one is a little unusual, but it shows off one of my best strategies for this time of year: just wander into the farmer’s market, buy what looks good and make a pasta. And it was delicious.

There’s this guy at the Dupont Circle farmer’s market in DC who sells a wide variety of strange, wild mushrooms. These mushrooms are exorbitantly expensive – often like $20 per pound – but a little goes a long way. I’d had these “lobster mushrooms” before, so named because allegedly they taste like lobster when cooked. So, turns out, that’s not true, but they are delicious, with a vaguely briny funk that comes out with just a slight sauté.

Once I’d bought one strange ingredient, then I was on something of a mission: let the weird times roll. So I wandered over to another tent where they were sampling and selling edible flowers. It turned out they were really good, too! Bitter, herbal, and… floral (get it?), with a nice vegetal texture unlike anything you’ve had before. Highly recommended.

To turn this all into a delicious pasta, I sautéed the mushrooms, then “chopped” some garlic in the Magic Bullet and sautéed that together with the mushrooms, while I toasted some breadcrumbs. Everything gets mixed in with some penne, truffle oil, olive oil, and pasta cooking water. Funky from the mushrooms and truffle oil, with that faint scent of the sea, this pasta was actually pretty awesome.

Pasta with Wild Mushrooms and Edible Flowers

Ingredients

• 1 lb pasta
• 1/3 lb wild mushrooms, rough chop
• 2 cloves garlic
• small amount of wild, edible flowers
• ¼ cup breadcrumbs
• truffle oil
• olive oil
• ricotta cheese

Directions

1. Boil pasta in heavily salted water until al dente, reserving half a cup of pasta cooking water
2. Add mushrooms to pan over medium-high heat with a glug of olive oil. Blend garlic cloves in Magic Bullet. When mushrooms are just beginning to brown, add garlic and cook until fragrant, just a minute.
3. Meanwhile, toast breadcrumbs in a glug of olive oil over medium heat in another skillet.
4. Mix mushroom-garlic mixture with pasta, a hearty glug of olive oil, and the pasta cooking water. Serve, garnishing with flowers, truffle oil, ricotta cheese and breadcrumbs.