Recipes - Marcella

Broccoli Cream Soup

• 4 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 - 2 lbs broccoli
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 cup soymilk
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Separate broccoli tops from stems and peel stems. Cut into chunks. Boil the water and salt, add stems and simmer 10 minutes. Add tops and cook an extra 10 minutes. Save the water.

With a slotted spoon, scoop broccoli into a blender and add all remaining ingredients but the lemon juice, plus a half a cup or so of the broccoli water. Blend, adding more water if necessary.

Return to pot (after dumping out the remaining broccoli water, of course) and simmer on low for about 5 minutes. Stir in lemon juice. Done!

Tartar Sauce for Okara Crab Cakes

• 3 oz soft silken tofu, such as Mori-Nu brand
•  1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/2 Tbsp brown rice syrup or agave nectar
• 1 tsp umeboshi vinegar (in "Asian" section of grocery stores)
• 1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 Tbsp minced dill pickles
• 1 Tbsp minced onions

 Add the first 5 ingredients to a blender and blend til smooth. Then, with the blender running, slowly add the olive oil and blend again til thick and creamy. Move to a bowl, add pickles and onions, and enjoy with your crab cakes or faux fish. Not something to eat in abundance, it's still a lot better than buying a jar of vegan mayonnaise, in my opinion.

A note on the crab cakes, I realized after posting that I neglected to mention why I have okara - something many have probably never heard of - lying around: I've been making my own soymilk. Okara is the byproduct. That's really the only reason anyone would happen to have it. I plan on posting on the process but I realize that it's not for everyone, being kind of labor intensive if you don't have an actual soymilk machine (I don't, I have a VitaMix). Investing in either of the two is definitely worth looking into, as the cost of whole soybeans is much less than soymilk, the additives are up to you, there's no packaging to throw away, and you get to use the leftover okara (which has a fair amount of protein and lots of minerals) for other things. So, overall it's less wasteful and expensive and I like maximum efficiency.