This roasted acorn squash with quinoa stuffing is the perfect holiday dish! Packed with a flavorful and fragrant quinoa pilaf richly flavored with pecans, red onion, apple, and mushrooms, this cozy dish is sure to impress, leaving you satisfied on a hearty note with a hint of sweetness. To make this dish completely gluten-free, use a GF tamari.
Each full squash makes a nice-sized main dish portion. Or, if you have lots of other food at the holiday table, each stuffed squash can be cut in half to serve 8. Reprinted with permission from Vegan Holiday Cooking: 60 Meatless, Dairy-Free Recipes Full of Festive Flavors by Kirsten Kaminski, Page Street Publishing Co. © 2019. Photo credit: Kirsten Kaminski.
All Things Sweet and Bittersweet: Q & A with Hannah Kaminsky
Hannah Kaminsky’s Ultra-Moist Amazing Chocolate Layer Cake
I’m really going to be dating myself here when I admit that I’m old enough to be Hannah Kaminsky’s mom. That’s a fact, because I have a daughter who was born the same year. And while I do worry about Hannah to the extent that any Jewish Mother would about an honorary daughter, I don’t see our friendship or our working relationship as maternalistic. It’s the camaraderie of two colleagues who’ve worked together long enough to joke that we can get into one another’s brains. So I hope you’ll enjoy this interview with Hannah Kaminsky on the occasion of the publication of her latest book, Sweet Vegan Treats (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019).
And here, I thought I was a precocious cookbook author, having published my first book, Vegetariana, when I was in my late twenties. But I have nothing on Hannah, whose first book came out while she was still in her teens, and who, by the age that I was getting started as a bumbling and naïve author, had already written half a dozen.
Vegan Pumpkin Pecan Pie
At last, a delicious resolution to the pumpkin vs pecan pie battle! While I have never felt that either pie was worthy of all the hype, it appears they simply needed to be combined in order to achieve their full potential. And there you have it, a vegan pumpkin pecan pie that’s as beautiful to look at as it is delectable to eat.
Straight pumpkin pie strikes me as monotonous in texture and flavor, while standard pecan pie tends to be tooth-achingly sweet However, when I brought them together in one crust, the two fillings seemed to accentuate one another’s strengths, while diminish- ing any negative aspects The pecans do have a more dominant presence, but a dollop of pumpkin crème topping allows both flavors to have an equal turn in the spotlight Who says you can’t make everyone happy?
Easy Quinoa Pilaf with Salsa Verde
Salsa verde, AKA tomatillo salsa, makes a bold flavor statement in this easy quinoa pilaf. It has a somewhat smoky aspect that adds a distinctive flavor to dishes. Whatever salsa verde you don’t use up in this recipe can be used as a dip for tortilla chips, of course. Even better, mash it with a ripe avocado and lime juice for a simple guacamole.
But let’s get back to the subject at hand — this delectable quinoa skillet, whose other yum factor comes from melty vegan cheddar. You can take firmly packed half-cups’ worth of the finished dish and invert them on a plate for an appealing presentation, as shown in the photo above. Or just use it as is, pilaf style, as shown in the photos below.