Meatless Monday: Miso-Almond Sauce

This entry was posted on Mar 2, 2015 by Charlotte Bell.
Miso-Almond Sauce
Meatless Monday: Miso-Almond Sauce

You probably already know this, but we Americans don’t eat nearly enough veggies. An NPR story reported that rather than the 2-3 cups of green goodies that are recommended, we eat a scant 1.5 cups every day, mostly in the form of potatoes (read: fries) and tomatoes (read: pizza). Meatless Monday is the perfect time to ponder how you can add more veggies into your day.

It’s truly not hard—or expensive—to incorporate more veggies. Chopping up a combination of a few veggies—broccoli, carrots, onions, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts or greens such as kale, collards or chard—and steaming them takes about 15 minutes. The trouble is, not everyone likes plain, steamed veggies.

The good news is there are a lot of things you can do to spice them up. The simplest is to sprinkle with smoked paprika, smoked salt, truffle salt, nutritional yeast or gomasio. One of my favorite ways to increase the flavor and protein content of steamed veggies is to make a simple sauce I found years ago in an older cookbook of Mollie Katzen’s (author of the classic Moosewood Cookbook) that appears to be out of print. The recipe was recently republished in her book, The Heart of the Plate. This sauce is rich, quick and very tasty, especially when it works its way into broccoli florets.

Try your veggies and sauce over quinoa, rice or soba noodles, or use the sauce as a dip for crudites. This recipe makes a fair amount, so you can try it with different veggies and different grains for variety.

Miso-Almond Sauce

4 tablespoons yellow, Hatcho, or barley miso
6 tablespoons almond butter
1 1/2 cups boiling water

Place the miso and almond butter in a medium-sized bowl.

Add a small amount of hot water (about 1/2 cup) and mash with a spoon until it
becomes a uniform paste.

Add the remaining water, and mix until well combined.

Serve warm or at room temperature over hot steamed vegetables and tofu, or mixed
into hot soba noodles (or both!).

Here’s another version I found on steamykitchen.com that’s a little different, but looks just as tasty.

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About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell discovered yoga in 1982 and began teaching in 1986. Charlotte is the author of Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice and Yoga for Meditators, both published by Rodmell Press. Her third book is titled Hip-Healthy Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Guide to Protecting the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Pain (Shambhala Publications). She writes a monthly column for CATALYST Magazine and serves as editor for Yoga U Online. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony and folk sextet Red Rock Rondo, whose DVD won two Emmy awards in 2010.

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