Vegan Friendly Archives - Nerds with Knives

Black Rice Salad with Red Cabbage and herbs

January 10, 2025 by Emily

Sticky Lemongrass Chicken with Black Rice Salad

This beautiful, healthy Black Rice Salad is studded with crunchy red cabbage and loaded with fresh herbs.

Clover Club Cocktail

December 27, 2024February 10, 2021 by Emily

The Clover Club: Dry gin, fresh raspberry syrup, tart lemon juice, and a splash of vermouth.

Yes, this pink, frothy cocktail is perfect for a romantic Valentine’s celebration but don’t let its good looks fool you, the Clover Club is a serious drink. And one originally imbibed exclusively by men – specifically the literary, legal, and financial men who, from 1882 until the 1920’s, met once a month in Philadelphia. The drink, named after their gentlemen’s club, was published in the New York Press in 1901. It called for gin, lemon juice, sugar, raspberry syrup, and egg white. Fast forward to modern times, and it’s also the name of a gorgeous cocktail bar in our old Brooklyn neighborhood. This new Clover Club, the bar, is where we first sampled Clover Club, the drink.

Sticky Lemongrass Chicken Thighs with Black Rice Salad

January 10, 2025May 21, 2019 by Emily

Chicken pieces on Black Rice and Cabbage Salad

Sticky Lemongrass Chicken Thighs are marinated in our favorite Thai flavors, then roasted until golden brown and delicious. We serve them on top of a beautiful, healthy Black Rice Salad, studded with crunchy red cabbage and loaded with fresh herbs. This chicken will stick right to your favorites list.

Nettle, Leek and Potato Soup with Garlic-Brown Butter Croutons

June 13, 2024April 29, 2019 by Emily

Spring is here, and one of the first areas of the garden to poke up green leaves is the stinging nettle patch. If you can avoid the sting, the nettle is one of the healthiest, most delicious perennials that’s super-easy to propagate — and is the superstar of this soup, made with leeks, potatoes, and the green, green nettle.

There’s no getting around the fact that the stinging nettle is the unloved weed, the lurking Triffid, the snarling Caliban, if you will, of the British landscape. If you thought otherwise, let me show you the plant in its natural habitat:

Wild nettles growing up an English phone booth.

But despite its rather unprepossessing appearance, its urban ubiquity, and the unpleasant electric-shock feeling of walking into one, nettles are one of the most nutritious and tasty spring greens you can cook with. Last spring we made a nettle risotto with garlic and taleggio, and this year we’re combining nettles with leeks and potatoes to create a rich, green soup, sprinkled with brown butter – garlic croutons and wild violets from the garden.

Creamy Mushroom Soup with Black Rice

October 23, 2024January 14, 2019 by Matt

Delectable, creamy winter soup created from a blend of mushrooms, herbs, and wild rice — this is our choice for an easy and healthy vegetarian or even vegan supper that highlights the variety and richness of the fungi kingdom.

Easy Home-made Kimchi

July 5, 2024May 14, 2018 by Matt

Matt here. Emily’s going to come in with the important tasting notes and all that later in the article, but I just wanted to share an anecdote from our very early cohabitation. When we first moved in together, I remember I was clearing room in the fridge – and at the time, Emily had a really beautiful spacious fridge (I think it was even bigger than the one we have now) and there was plenty of room to hide stuff at the back of the shelves. I was clearing out room to fit in whatever we’d bought together at the store, and I spotted a jar whose contents were unfamiliar to me. I opened the lid and, I don’t remember now, but I probably cursed. I think I might have warned Emily that there was something really bad in there that needed to be thrown away right that second, and preferably triple-bagged. I warned her that we might have to replace the fridge. I warned her that we might have to move.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce

January 9, 2025September 18, 2017 by Emily

Vietnamese Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Fresh, light and delicious, Vietnamese summer rolls are a great appetizer or light meal any time of the year. Crisp vegetables, bright herbs and shrimp are rolled in a rice paper wrapper, with a side of sweet and salty peanut sauce for dipping.

Quick-Marinated White Bean Salad With Feta

July 2, 2024September 16, 2016 by Emily

A white bean salad doesn’t have to be boring. Creamy cannellinis absorb the bright flavor of a vinaigrette in just a few minutes. Paired with briny olives, fresh cucumbers, tomatoes and feta cheese, and served in lettuce cups, they make a quick and substantial dinner.

Note: This recipe is part of our series for Serious Eats.

We’re as guilty as anyone else of “lazy salad syndrome”. If we can get away with opening a box of pre-rinsed greens and throwing on a dab of supermarket dressing, we’ll do it. As a side salad, that might just about be acceptable. But if we’re making a salad as its own dish – for a quick summer meal, for example – it’s inexcusably lame. But with just a little effort and really no time at all, I can prepare this white bean salad with ingredients I already have in the pantry. Most of the ingredients for this recipe are kitchen staples, and the only things I need fresh are cucumber, tomatoes, feta, and lettuce.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Chermoula Roasted Eggplant

June 15, 2024August 19, 2016 by Emily

We roasted eggplant until it became soft and silky and topped it with Chermoula (a North African spice mix with garlic and preserved lemon). Sprinkled with tart feta cheese and fresh herbs.

This dish is adapted from a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s brilliant cookbook, Jerusalem. Ottolenghi is an Israeli-born British chef who, among other things, writes one of my favorite recipe columns in the Guardian. He’s a master of incredibly flavorful vegetable dishes, and has a particular knack for eggplant.

Eggplant can be controversial: some love it, some hate it. If you’re on the hate side, it might be because you haven’t had it cooked well. Too much oil and it can be greasy, not enough and it turns rubbery. But grilled with a miso glaze, or roasted with Middle Eastern spices, it’s absolutely delicious.

Cumin-Roasted Cauliflower with Whipped Feta

June 10, 2024April 11, 2016 by Emily

Roasted cauliflower flavored with cumin and served with a feta cream cheese dip.

Post update: I wrote a cauliflower article in fall 2016 for our local (Beacon-based) food and restaurant magazine The Valley Table. Hop over and take a look!

Before we moved to Brooklyn (so way before we headed up to Beacon), Matt and I lived in one of the most cross-cultural neighborhoods in New York City, Astoria, Queens. It was like the real-life version of one of those 90s comedies. You know, the ones where the cab driver is sitting next to a lawyer who’s sitting next to a dominatrix and they’re all eating souvlaki prepared by a Sikh cook and served by a Russian waitress. It was like that.

It’s still one of the best places in the city to find ingredients from all over the world, especially Mexico, India and Greece. If the area is known for one type of food in particular, it’s Greek. Our weekends often involved a stop at Titan Foods where we would spend most of our rent money on olives and Feta cheese. If you’re ever in the area, check it out. It’s like the Disney-land of Feta up in there, not even kidding.

In this case we’re using feta as the sauce (more of a dip, really), for some incredibly delicious cumin-dusted roasted cauliflower.

Cumin-Roasted Cauliflower with Whipped Feta — The Whipped Feta Dip is delicious with crudités or chips, or as a spread for sandwiches.

Roasted Cipollini Onions with Thyme

June 12, 2024February 27, 2015 by Emily

Roasted cipollini onions are a great accompaniment to any meal – they have a sweet and savory caramel flavor that we combine with thyme for added depth.

If you’re not familiar with them, Cipollini onions (pronounced chip-oh-lee-knee) are a thin-skinned, mild onion about the side of a golf ball. They’re pretty easy to recognize because they have a flattened, almost UFO-ish shape that’s very distinctive. The name literally means “little onion” in Italian. Go figure.

These little guys are my all-time favorite onion to roast because they caramelize beautifully and become incredibly soft and sweet.

Like all little onions, they are kind of annoying to peel but if you boil them for 30 seconds and then run ice-cold water over them, it’s really not too bad. My advice is to make more than you think you’ll need because they will disappear quickly.

Duck-Fat Roasted Cipollini Onions with Thyme — Trim off the little root end and peel back the brown skin.

Roasted Beet Salad with Hazelnuts and Goat Cheese

June 15, 2024October 10, 2014 by Emily

Roasted beet salad is all about the beets, baby. But you also need spicy greens, creamy ripe cheese and a balanced salad dressing. We show you how.

We all know there are vegetables that many, many people despise. (A Brussels sprout looks around the room nervously and begins to back away. Soon to be followed by a turnip. And then a beet. The beet grabs a stick of celery from a nearby Bloody Mary as it exits.) But the thing is, I’m pretty sure that most people just think they hate these vegetables. And the aversion they experience is not because these maligned veggies are actually gross*, but because they’ve most likely had them prepared incorrectly.

*Except for celery which actually is gross and no amount of jiggery pokery will change that.

Take Brussels sprouts, for example (always at the very top of the “hated vegetable” list). Many people boil them until they are a thoroughly revolting shade of gray and the texture of a moldy sponge. They also think that a little pat of butter will camouflage the criminally sulfurous smell. Then they wonder why there is a child-shaped hole in the wall and little Timmy has run off to join the circus. BUT, take those same sprouts, coat them well in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast them in a very hot oven and they’ll come out as crisp as french fries and just as addictive. And little Timmy can stay in school and become a doctor, or a film editor or some other, equally respectable occupation.

Puy Lentils with Spinach

June 15, 2024September 12, 2014 by Emily

We love this Puy lentils with spinach dish, a balanced recipe full of healthy pulses and colorful spinach greens. It’s an ideal side to a meat dish but can be enjoyed as a filling lunch.I’ve never been what you would call a lentil “fan”. I mean, they’re fine and everything as far as legumes/pulses go but I certainly don’t wake up thinking about a lentil dish I absolutely can’t wait to make. Until now.

There are a few … I don’t even want to say ‘tricks’ because it’s not like there’s any fanciness or magic going on here. It’s just that there are a couple of ingredients that elevate this humble dish and turn it truly delicious. In fact, it’s so simple that I’m afraid you’re going to roll your eyes and wonder if I’ve finally gone off my rocker. It’s not the huge bunch of baby spinach that gets stirred in or the swirl of Crème fraîche that it’s topped with.

Orzo Salad with Zucchini, Tomatoes, Olives and Feta

June 12, 2024July 5, 2014 by Emily

A simple orzo salad with tasty colorful summer produce of zucchini and tomatoes, tossed with olives and feta cheese. Delicious and healthy!

Happy July 4th! Of course, this blog post is pre-recorded, so you’re probably reading this on July 6th, (or August 23rd if you’ve just got around to cleaning out your spam folder. Not judging!), but as we write this, it is a wonderfully sunny and warm July 4th, and we’re all sitting in the garden, grilling burgers and drinking beers – the sound of laughter and ball games percolates across the neighborhood, fireworks are starting down by the Hudson River and … Okay, I can’t keep this up, it’s pissing down, it’s been storming heavily for two days straight, the garden is basically flooded, and the only people enjoying a ball game are the German World Cup team. We’re sitting in our living room eating dry crackers and watching a Star Trek: Next Generation marathon (in between World Cup matches, of course). We downloaded a firework app on our iPad. Wheeeee. Look, that one’s in the shape of a hot dog. Happy now? Are you? Are you happy? *Sobs*

Tomorrow (yesterday for you) will be (was) sunny and warm, so fireworks, grilling, drinking and general merriment has been postponed a day. But here’s the thing. Some dishes are better prepared the day before, and left to marinade for a day. And, lucky us, this orzo salad is one of them.