Asian-Inspired, Wholesome Recipes That Go Easy on the Wallet and Planet

From foraging to leaf-to-stem preparation, multidimensional aims elevate vegan cooking.

By: Seth Canada

>>> Versión en Español <<<

Traducido por Serena Sonoma

The pandemic—and the recession that accompanied it—only made me a savvier cook. Prior to the global health crisis, I had eaten healthily for the most part, knowing that I could never afford to get sick and miss work in the restaurant industry. Now, it’s even more important to maintain good health and strong immunity. Although I put down my chef knives several years ago, I still approach my wellness regimen without breaking the bank. 

The cost-cutting measures similar to the ones I would take during those years as a head chef to keep a restaurant afloat and staff (myself included) employed help me stay within my food expenditures regardless of my socioeconomic status at a given time. I was a college student three times, many years apart. Nearly a third of U.S. college students experience food insecurity, and another one of my food articles, Three Recipes for Staying Healthy When You’re Falling on Hard Times, centers on the issue. These recipes below that I'm sharing with TRANS readers for the first time, in celebration of this Earth Day (April 22) and the Stop Food Waste Day (April 24), were written while I was an adult college student in 2021.

More often than not, I shop for groceries first in the refrigerator, and then the pantry. I take mental note of what I already have from last week before I head out to the grocery store or farmers market for the current week. What’s on sale at the grocery store in a given week and the ingredients I don’t have to purchase determine how my personal menu looks for the week. Here, I reaffirm that not only is eating right affordable but it’s essential since many of us had (and continue to have) more sedentary time in front of our computers than we would by going to classrooms or doing in-person work. (This is not to say that eating healthily replaces staying physically active.)

In early 2021, like many students who burned their eyes through their Zoom screens, I had a few good things to say about virtual learning, not including my expanding waistline. However, the online schooling that had kept me staring at my laptop for hours on end didn’t stop me from seeing the world!

I left Washington, DC during my university’s spring break and had since enjoyed life in a different U.S. city every few months. I particularly liked walking around and exploring a new neighborhood. In the Bay Area, California, I at times stumbled upon a basket of lemons, a bucket of plums, or a box of avocados that people left in front of their house or gate for passers-by to grab a few. 

In one week, I accumulated more lemons than anything else. I also had some leftover gochujang sauce after a take-out meal from a Korean restaurant. Partly due to moving often, I’d been getting better at cooking with any random selection of produce and dry ingredients.

I can never forget the food I grew up eating three decades ago in Myanmar (formerly, Burma), where there were no factory-farmed meats, poultry, and dairy products. Most people grew their own food there. Many food vendors would serve entrée-size cold noodle salads, with or without free-range chicken, and a cup of cabbage soup. And there’s this spicy citrus fruit salad with red onion, dried shrimp, fish sauce, and hot chilis that I grew up eating.

Needless to say, the foods I make reflect the cultures and cuisines I’ve been exposed to personally and professionally. I was particularly satisfied with my lemon-Brussels salad incorporating the odds and ends of health-promoting ingredients and miso soup with a broth made of vegetable scraps, dishes that reflect the values instilled in me since I was a kid: sustainability and wellness.  

Shop-the-Fridge-First Salad

Servings: 2

Serving Size: 3-4 cups

Prep Time: 25 minutes

Cook Time: 10-12 minutes

Kitchenware: Mandoline slicer

Ingredients:

2 medium Yukon gold potatoes 

1 whole romaine heart, washed; dried

6 large (or 8 medium) Brussels sprouts, washed

Quarter of small onion (red if possible)

1 medium carrot, washed

2 large (or 3 medium) lemons 

4 tablespoons dried wakame

4 medium cloves of garlic

1 tbsp sesame oil

A pinch ground turmeric

2 tbsp hemp hearts (split hulled hemp seeds)

2 tbsp gochujang sauce

Salt to taste (pink Himalayan, if available)

Instructions:

1. Boil potatoes in water in a small sauce pan covered with a lid over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes. Alternatively, potatoes can be cooked in a simmering broth.

2. Set aside the top halves (green part) of four-six outer leaves of romaine for use later for garnishing the plates. Do not cut off the root end of the romaine heart. 

3. Using a knife or mandoline vegetable slicer (if available), thinly slice romaine, leaving about two inches of the bottom part of it (this and other vegetable scraps can be turned into a vegetable broth).  

4. Thinly slice Brussels sprouts, grabbing them from the stem ends, and using the same method mentioned above. These ends are better suited for composting as they tend to make a broth bitter. 

5. Remove the peel and outer layer of the onion (onion peels give color and flavor to a broth). Thinly slice the onion.

6. Cut carrots into small strips (julienne cut) using the mandoline’s setting for this cut or knife. (I don’t peel organic carrots but the skinny end of it can join other vegetable  scraps in the making of a broth.)

7. Cut lemons into halves and remove pits. Using a spoon, scoop the lemon pulps into a mixing bowl that will be used to mix all the ingredients. (What’s left of the lemon — the peel, rind and some pulps — can be placed in a jar that contains leftover artichoke brine, sauerkraut juice, or something with salt and acidity that will preserve the lemon rinds. When the rinds soften after a few weeks, small-diced pieces are great with lentil, curried chickpeas or chana dal soup.)   

8. Add two tablespoons of wakame to the mixing bowl and mix with the lemon pulps. 

9. Heat oil in a small frying pan over medium-low heat. Peel, and then slice garlic (yes, save the peels for the broth). Fry garlic slowly and carefully, not to burn it, for less than a minute. Remove the pan from heat and add turmeric. 

10. Check the potatoes by poking a fork into them. When fully cooked, place them in cold water.

11. Add the gochujang sauce to the mixing bowl. Add the garlic-turmeric infused oil to the bowl, leaving the garlic slices in the pan. Cut unpeeled, cooked potatoes into one-inch cubes. First, mix potato cubes with the ingredients in the bowl, and then add sliced and julienned ingredients to the bowl. Mix everything together. 

12. Serve the salad, topped with hemp hearts, fried garlic, and the rest of the wakame, over the romaine leaves. 

Note: Potatoes can be cooked and then chilled in the refrigerator ahead of time. Replace romaine, Brussels sprouts and carrots with four cups of pre-shredded cabbage-carrot mix, if time or mandoline pose challenges. Wakame replaces fish sauce that would be used for a non-vegan version of this recipe.

Fragrant Vegetable Broth with White Miso and Kombu

Servings: 6-8

Serving Size: 1 cup

Prep Time: 7 minutes

Cook Time: 2 hours

Ingredients:

8-10 cups of broth ingredients previously stored in the freezer

(asparagus ends, cabbage core, fennel fronds, kale stems, collard green stems, golden beet peels, mushroom stems, onion peels, herb stems etc.)

1 inch piece ginger, crushed

1 stick cinnamon 

8 tsp white miso

4 strips kombu, soaked in 1 cup drinking water

2 spring onions, thinly sliced 

Ground white pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Place all the vegetable scraps, ginger, and cinnamon in a pot, and add enough water to cover the ingredients. Cover the pot with a lid, and simmer the content on the lowest heat for a total of two hours, checking every 40 minutes, adding water as needed. 

2. Cut soaked kombu into one-inch squares. Set aside. 

3. Mix white miso into the water that soaked kombu until consistent. Set aside.

4. When the broth is ready, infused with the colors, flavors, and aromas of the ingredients, strain it. The yield should be six to eight cups. 

5. Pour one cup of broth over one-two tablespoons of miso-water mixture, kombu, and  spring onion in a soup crock (if available). Cover the crock for two minutes. Serve with white pepper. 

Note: Brussels sprouts, arugula, and spring baby green salad mix, etc. will give a broth bitter taste.