my recipes – Page 9 – The Jewish Vegan

Vegan Shepherd’s Pie

This recipe is one of over 25 recipes in my Vegan Kosher for Passover Guide! While designed to meet the requirements of keeping Kosher for Passover as a vegan, the recipes in the guide are delicious year-round and offer options for folks who are vegan and gluten-free. Interested in the guide? Click here.

Growing up, I made a lot of different kinds of recipes with my dad. In fact, my childhood memories are peppered with images of my dad in the kitchen, either the two of us cooking or just him alone. Cooking and food has always felt tied to family and people for me because of this. We weren’t just making food to eat – we were doing something together and tying memories to smells and tastes.

So, when I went vegan at 13-years-old, that connection still felt natural and strong to me innately. The first recipe I remember making with my dad after going vegan was a shepherd’s pie. I had never actually had shepherd’s pie before becoming vegan (I’m not sure if my dad had either!), but I was excited none-the-less to try something new. Plus, I love mashed potatoes almost as much as I love mac’n’cheese, so the topping really spoke to me.

I remember following the recipe exactly as stated, and then my dad and I gave our filling mixture a taste and adjusted some of the spices to what we thought was best. We popped the pie in the oven. About an hour later, we enjoyed our first shepherd’s pie.

The shepherd’s pie I made that day stuck with me for 12 years. Even though my Shepherd’s Pie recipe today is pretty different from what I remember making that day (the one I made back then used a meat substitute and different vegetables, and I can only guess at what spices we used), I still have with me the reminder that even when I’m making someone else’s recipe that dish is for me and the people for whom I’m making the dish. No one’s stopping me from making the changes I think will work best!

That’s what I hope to share with you here! Take a bite of your filling before it goes in the pie pan and make some choices about how you think it should taste. More spice? Add some extra cayenne! Not salty enough? Add more salt! Do you like a lot of garlic flavor? Add garlic powder! Maybe you like a rosemary flavor – go wild with it! This food is for you and yours.

Now let’s get started!

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Vegan Shepherd's Pie

Gluten-free, vegan, & Kosher for Passover - what more could you ask for? Made with quinoa, walnuts, & mushrooms, this Shepherd's Pie is sure to leave you full after a seder or a weeknight dinner.

Prep Time15

Cook Time20

Bake55

Total Time1 30

Course: Main Course

Keyword: gluten free, kosher for passover, passover, seder, shepherd's pie, vegan, vegan dinner

Servings: 8 servings

Equipment

2 pie or baking dishes

Ingredients

Mashed Potato Topping

4 large red potatoes
6 tbsp non-dairy milk
2.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp pepper

Filling

1 yellow onion, chopped
1/2 cup quinoa
1 yellow pepper, chopped
1 orange pepper, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups baby bella mushrooms, chopped
1 cup raw walnuts, unsalted, chopped
.5 cup parsley, chopped
2 cups vegetable broth
3 tbsp almond flour
.5 tsp pepper
1 tsp thyme
.5 tsp cayenne (optional)
.5 tsp paprika
2 tsp salt
.5 tsp pepper
.5 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

To make the mashed potato topping:

Cube the mashed potatoes and boil for 20 minutes. Mash with a potato masher until you get to your desired consistency.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix with a spoon. Set aside.

To make the filling:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
Heat the olive oil over medium heat. Saute the onions, garlic, and carrots for 7 to 10 minutes or until the onions begin to turn translucent.
Add all of the ingredients to a bowl and mix well.
Divide the mixture into two pie or baking dishes and spoon the mashed potatoes evenly over each. Spread the mashed potatoes so it covers the entire top of the mixture and reaches the edges.
Bake in the oven on the middle rack for 55 minutes. The edges should be bubbling over and the potatoes on top should have some crispy spots.
Remove from the oven and let cool for 20 minutes. Serve warm!

Notes

You can store your leftovers in the fridge for up to 4 days covered in tinfoil.

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Simple Stir-Fry

Below is my recipe for a simple tofu stir-fry, but before that is a little bit about why I love stir-frys and how you can get creative with your recipe. If you want to skip all that, you can hit the “Jump to Recipe” button above!

As I mentioned in my about me section, stir-frys were a really big part of how I got into cooking. They allowed me to feel like I could be creative in the kitchen without worrying about messing about. There’s a formula to a stir-fry, but within the formula you can think outside of the box and use what you have on hand – and that’s what I did!

Yes, I used soy sauce every time back that, but I switched up my vegetables – adding things like potatoes and cucumbers and avocado (not my best stir-fry). I could take risks in a limited way and my confidence in the kitchen grew through that. And that’s what I hope to share with you here – a basic structure for a stir-fry recipe that you can take and use what you have on hand. What I would really love is if you’d tag me in your creations or send them to me in a comment at the bottom of the page so I can see how creative you all get with this very basic structure of a recipe.

And lastly, you can always reach out to me for help at @thejewishvegan on Instagram or on my Facebook page The Jewish Vegan.

Let’s get started & have some fun!

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Simple Tofu Stir-Fry

This recipe is as simple as it is customizable - use whatever you have at home to make a delicious meal in no time!

Prep Time10

Cook Time10

Total Time20

Course: Main Course

Keyword: stirfry, tofu, tofu stirfry, vegan, vegan dinner

Ingredients

vegetables of your choice - chopped bell peppers, mushrooms, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, asparagus (really, the skies the limit)
soy sauce (use liquid coconut aminos for a gluten-free version)
broth or vegetable/sesame oil*
1 package of tofu
ground ginger optional
onion powder
garlic powder (or you could use fresh garlic!)
greens of your choice I've used arugula here, but kale, baby spinach, or cabbage would also work well

Instructions

Heat the broth or oil over medium heat.
Once hot, add the vegetables and cook until they are nearly cooked through (about 6-7 minutes).
Add the soy sauce to taste (about 2-3 tbsp, but this also depends on how many vegetables you've used), as well as the other spices. Mix in.
Add the tofu and cook for 3-4 minutes, until hot.
If you're adding greens, add them last so that they can wilt at the end. Cook until they are just wilted. Then your tofu stir-fry is ready to be served!

Notes

*Sesame oil adds a really great flavor to stir-fries.

**You serve your stir-fry plain or over rice, vermicelli noodles, ramen noodles - get creative!

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Vegan Hamantaschen

Hey y’all! Below is my vegan Hamantaschen recipe I created this year for Purim and a little bit about why I love this triangular cookies. If you want to skip right to the recipe, check out the button above.

Believe it or not, I had never once had a Hamantaschen cookie or heard of them before I went to college (I did a lot of Jewish food discovery in college). I was at a Jewish community event to make the oddly shaped cookies when someone there told me “you can’t make Hamantaschen vegan!” Challenge accepted.

My number one tip for new vegans (and vegans who’ve been in the game for a while too): never utter or believe the phrase “you can’t make xyz vegan.” In my 11 years of being vegetarian and then vegan, I have been continuously surprised at how many things I have been able to have vegan that I never thought I could (shout out to Champ’s Diner pastrami and tofu sandwich that brought me back to the days of my dad making corned beef, a flavor I didn’t think I’d have again). I believe you’ll be able to have anything vegan some day.

But I digress.

I wanted to make Hamantaschen throughout college, but I always felt like the vegan recipes I found needed difficult things to find. So I created this recipe using ingredients I already had in my kitchen and pantry so I knew it would be accessible to pretty much everyone. The only slightly tricky ingredient is apple butter, which you can find in the grocery store near either the apple sauce or the jams and jellies. The recipe will also work with apple sauce, but you may need to adjust the amount of flour used to compensate for the higher level of liquid in the apple sauce compared to apple butter.

There’s a few skills you’ll be using/learning in this recipe:

Using a rolling pin and evenly rolling out dough to a specific thickness (a skill I very much still struggle with!)
If you use the apple sauce substitute, using your intuition as you compensate for the liquid by adding more flour
Shaping cookies as you fold the circular cut-outs into triangles around your filling

I had a lot of fun developing this recipe, and I think you’ll have a lot of fun making it too! If you have kids, family members, or friends, this is a great recipe to get everyone involved in. Let’s get started!

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Vegan Hamantaschen

This cookie is a perfect treat to share with your family and friends for the Jewish holiday, Purim - or when you want a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth treat. And this simple recipe will help you build confidence in your baking skills!

Prep Time15

Cook Time15

Refrigeration Time1

Total Time1 30

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Jewish

Keyword: baking, cookies, hamantaschen, jewish, jewish food, purim, vegan, vegan cookies, vegan hamantaschen, vegan purim

Servings: 20 cookies

Equipment

Rolling Pin
baking sheet
parchment paper
spatula
cooling rack

Ingredients

2.75 cups flour
1 cup powdered sugar
1.5 cups vegan butter softened to room temperature
.25 cups apple butter*
2 tsp vanilla extract
raspberry jam (or other filling)**

Instructions

Add the butter to a bowl or stand mixer. Cream on high until smooth using a hand mixer or the whisk attachment for the stand mixer. Scape the sides as needed.
Mix the powdered sugar and flour in a separate bowl using a whisk or fork to create the dry mix.
If using a stand mixer, switch to the beater. In the bowl, mix by hand with a whisk or rubber spatula. Slowly add the dry mix to the butter by the spoonful until fully incorporated.
Once the butter and dry mix have begun to form a dough, add the apple butter and vanilla extract and mix in.
Once all of the ingredients have formed a dough, place half the dough on a lightly floured sheet of parchment paper. Sprinkle a bit of flour on top of the dough and place another sheet on top. Roll out the dough to approximately 1/8-1/4 inch thick. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
Let the dough sit for 1 hour in the fridge.
Remove half of the dough from the fridge and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Using a circular cookie cutter, cup, or lid of a jar, cut circles out of the dough. They should be approximately 2-2.5 inches in diameter. Transfer the circles to a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
When you've cut as many circles as you can manage, reroll your dough and finish cutting the circles. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
Spoon a teaspoon of your filling into the center of the circles.***
Fold the ends of the circle up to create a triangle shape around the filling. Fold the edges of each side of the other to ensure the filling does not leak out when baking. If your circles are falling apart, wait a few minutes for the dough to soften a bit and try again. If you notice any cracks in your dough, you can smooth them over by slightly wetting your hand and running your finger over the crack.
Place the baking sheet in the oven on the middle rack and bake for 15 minute, or until the hamantaschen turn golden brown around the edges. Let sit to cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool for 10 more minutes. Enjoy!

Notes

*I recommend using apple butter for this recipe. However, you can substitute apple sauce for apple butter, your dough just may not come out as sweet and you may need to use slightly more flour to compensate for the higher liquid content in apple sauce.

**There are lots of fillings that would be great in Hamantaschen, but be sure to choose one that is not too liquidy as it will melt too quickly in the oven and run outside of the cookies.

*** Using more than a teaspoon of filling will likely cause your cookies to overflow!

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8-Ingredient Vegan Challah

Hey y’all! In this post, you’ll find my 8-ingredient vegan challah recipe, a little bit about what challah is, why it’s special to me, and about the skills you’ll learn through making this recipe. If you want to skip right to the recipe, check out the button above.

Challah is a special recipe to me because it’s the first baking recipe I really felt I had become an expert in. I learned to bake challah as an undergraduate student through my university’s Challah for Hunger chapter, an organization where chapters bake and sell challah to raise funds for hunger relief organizations. Chapters also engage in education and advocacy around hunger issues. As an alumni of the organization, I still work with the non-profit, advising four chapters around the country.

Because of my experience with Challah for Hunger, I baked challah every other week for three years – and a lot of it. This gave me tons of practice with one recipe, and I was able to build my confidence that allowed me to experiment with this recipe in ways that I otherwise likely wouldn’t have. I also had the wonderful opportunity to guide others through the process of making this recipe on a bi-weekly basis, which further developed my skills.

Not only that, but challah is DANG delicious y’all. Just a plain loaf of challah is slightly sweet and fluffy from a double rise. I can honestly eat a whole loaf myself, and I have burned my tongue on many occasions eating my challah too quickly out of the oven.

Challah bread is a Jewish bread typically made for Shabbat (the weekly day of rest from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday) and other Jewish holidays. Many challah recipes have egg in them or the dough is washed in egg. Challah is also typically braided.

I eat challah for all occasions and no occasions. I give challah as gifts and bake it for friends who need a pick-me-up. My recipe is egg-less and contains just 8-ingredients. There are a few skills you’ll gain through this recipe:

Challah braiding: this is a skill that takes a bit of practice, but the video below should help you get started. And I always say, it doesn’t matter if your braid is a little wonky because it’s gonna taste delicious!
Kneading: Just when do you put your hands in your dough and start kneading? And when do you stop and let your dough rise? And how do you even knead at all? This isn’t an exact science, and you’ll get a feel for these things over time. But I’ve put some of my tips in the recipe below.

So, that’s challah! The recipe below is one that I’ve developed and tweaked over four years into what it is today. Let’s get started!

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8-Ingredient Vegan Challah

This fluffy bread is a perfect addition to most meals or you can eat it all by itself for breakfast or dessert (honestly, I'd eat this any time of day). While this recipe does require some higher level skills, these are skills you can learn with a little bit of practice.

Prep Time40

Cook Time50

Rising Time1

Total Time2 30

Course: Appetizer, Breakfast, Dessert, Side Dish, Snack

Cuisine: Jewish

Keyword: baking, bread, challah, challah bread, challot, jewish, jewish food, shabbat, vegan, vegan challah

Servings: 3 challah loaves

Ingredients

7.5 cups flour plus more for kneading
2.5 cups water
.75 cups sugar
.5 cups oil
1 tbsp instant yeast**
1.5 tsp salt
non-dairy milk
maple syrup
toppings as needed

Instructions

Mix the sugar, oil, salt, and water in a large bowl until everything is dissolved. Using warm water helps.
Add 3 cups of flour and mix. All the clumps may not go away. It’s okay, you can go on to the next step!
Combine the yeast with 1 cup of flour in a separate small bowl. After they have been mixed, add them to the dough mixture and stir in.
Slowly continue adding flour. As your mixture becomes thicker, add the flour more and more slowly. Add flour until the dough only slightly sticks to your hands.
Knead the dough with your hands in the bowl at first for approximately 5 minutes. You’ll need to coat your hands with flour as needed, and continue reapplying the flour throughout so that the dough remains only slightly sticky to the touch. Then transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for 10 minutes more.
Transfer the dough back to the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let sit for 30 minutes to rise.
After the dough has risen, preheat your over to 350 degrees F. Transfer your dough back to a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 9 equal balls of dough.
Use 3 balls at a time. Roll the dough balls into strips between your hands.
- If you are going to stuff the challah, create a divet in the dough with your fingers down the center of each strip that you are going to fill.
- Fill the divet with your selected topping and then pinch the edges of the dough together to close the dough.
Braid the strips together by placing them side by side. Take the three ends of each of the strips and bring them together while the other ends are angled outwards.
Bring the outside strip on the right to the middle of the other two strips. Then, bring the outside strip on the left to the middle of the other two. Repeat until you've braided all the way down. Fix the ends of the challah by braiding and tucking the ends underneath the loaf.
Repeat with the other dough balls.
Place the challot* on a parchment paper lined tray, ensuring there is about 2 inches between each loaf.
Cover the loaves with hand towels and let rise for 30 minutes.
After the dough has risen, place any toppings you are going to use on top.
Put your trays in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes.
While your challot are in the oven, create the wash for the top of the challah by mixing equal parts non-dairy milk with maple syrup.
After the 20 minutes, remove the challah from the oven and wash with the mixture you created. Place them back in the oven for 20-30 more minutes, until golden brown and a fork placed in between the braids comes out clean. Another method you can try is tapping the bottom of the challah and seeing if it sounds hollow.
Once your challah is done, let it rest on the tray for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Or, if you find challah as irresistible as me, eat it immediately and burn every taste bud in your mouth (:***

Notes

Alternatively, you can allow your dough to rise in the fridge overnight after braiding. This allows you to split the process in half so it’s less time all at once and it allows your dough to rise a little longer. The only difference is instead of covering with hand towels, you’ll cover with aluminum foil and put it in the fridge. Then follow the instructions the same way.
Some fun toppings that I've used in the past include: sprinkles, cookie butter, vegan beef & cheese, rosemary & garlic, apple & cinnamon, cinnamon sugar, and lemon poppyseed. The sky is the limit when it comes to challah flavors - get creative!

*challot is the plural form of challah

** You can use dry active yeast as well - the process is just a little different. Instead of mixing the one cup of flour in with the yeast, you'll remove 1/2 cup of water from the first step and set it aside in a wide bowl. Make sure it is warm (not hot, or you'll kill your yeast) and sprinkle the dry active yeast on top. Then sprinkle a dash of sugar on top of that. Let it sit for a few minutes and it will become foamy - this means it is activating. Add the 1 cup of flour to the dough mixture you've started and then add the yeast mixture on top. Then continue as normal with the recipe.

***So, for basically five years I pretty much ate challah right out of the oven. And then I had a day where I had to let it cool for some reason and couldn't eat it right away. And y'all, challah is EVEN BETTER when you let it cool completely first. You can always reheat it in the oven (350 degrees F for 7-10 minutes, wrapped in foil) if you like your bread warm.