Celina's No Cook Tomato Dip

Perfect with olive or rosemary bread. Celina brought this dip to Cypress Salon's last book club meeting (topic of conversation, Beauty Queens by Libba Bray) and we basically inhaled it. She was nice enough to share the recipe.

18 oz tomato paste
1 1/2 cups water
1/3 cup delicious olive oil (it's not for cooking so a flavorful oil for raw eating works best)
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt & pep to taste
1/2 tbsp oregano
1/2 tbsp basil
1/2 tsp rosemary, crushed mortar and pestle style

Whisk the tomato paste, water, and olive oil together well. Add all the spices and let stand a couple hours for flavors to blend.

Sunchoke and Roasted Mushroom Bisque

What? More sunchokes? I'm sorry, were you under the impression that one can have too many sunchokes? You were dead wrong.

A heaping handful of red or fingerling potatoes, diced
5 big knobby sunchokes, at least, sliced not too thin
3 big handfuls of crimini mushies, sliced
1 large onion, diced
olive oil
butter or "butter"
6-7 sage leaves, minced
sea salt
8 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup "milk"

Toss the potatoes and sunchokes in olive oil and salt and roast in the oven at 425 for about 20 min. Toss the mushies in some oil and throw them in the oven too for about 20 minutes. Sit down and read or call someone from Pittsburgh. You have some time to kill. When those guys are almost stick-a-fork-in-me-I'm-done, saute the onion in the butter until it's soft and translucent. Add the tubers, mushies, broth, sage, salt, and simmah dahn nah for another 20 minutes or so. I went ahead and blended with my immersion blender, but it left the soup someone chunky. If you're not into that I'd let it cool and put it in a "real" blender. (Quotation marks are so-as not to offend immersion blenders.) Add the "milk" at the end for additional creaminess.

I ate it with a side of roasted beets, pots, carrots, and sunchokes, because guess what- you can't have too many sunchokes.

Beetroot Sunchoke Black Bean Burgers with Onion Fennel Chutney

New Year's Eve extravaganza dinner with Annemarie and Molly! This recipe was ad libbed based on a combination of various recipes and all measurements should be taken with a grain of salt (pun intended).

Burger Ingredients:
4 smallish beets, shredded
1 large knobby sunchoke, shredded
1/2 large fennel bulb, finely chopped
2 tbsp fresh dill, finely chopped
1 cup cooked black beans
2 eggs (if any vegan friends can tell me how to adequately bind a burger sans egg, I will be eternally grateful!)
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
1 tbsp garlic powder
smoked paprika and salt to taste

I blended all the ingredients together by hand and added more bread crumbs as necessary so the patties wouldn't be too wet. We baked some patties on a greased baking sheet for about 1/2 hour at 375 degrees. Others we fried in olive oil until slightly charred. Despite what you might expect, it is humanly possible for something baked to taste better than fried! The nutty, almost smoky flavor of the sunchokes was brought out in the oven, not the stove top.

Onion Fennel Chutney Ingredients:

3 cups onions, sliced

1 cup thinly sliced fennel bulb

6 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1/4 teaspoon fennel seed, crushed

1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper

Water, as needed

This recipe, borrowed from Morningstar was a great condiment for the burgers. You saute everything on med-high for a couple minutes, then cover and simmer for 45-55 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so until everything is a nice, dark brown. I had to add more water and vinegar when I accidentally left the top off and it dried out too much.

We ate our burgers on toasted fennel rye bread with a smear of veganaise. Bam! Happy New Year!