— Dina Quondamatteo

Let's go to the coconut milk first. Uh, a few years back I was doing some recipe testing for Jane and Rib Selten and their ingredient was that they used coconut extract. So in other words, if you were looking for a, uh, a milk substitute, now you're not gonna have that fatty element to it. But flavor-wise it works out really well. And I, I think that as I have used this recipe now, 'cause I, I like a thick, I like a thick food. Uh, I've added some, uh, flex seed meal just to thicken it up, but the flavor comes out perfectly. And for the olive oil, there really isn't a substitute for olive oil. But I'll give you a substitute for sesame oil though. If you're cooking some Asian dishes, perhaps you are making the Asian wild rice salad that we feature. Instead of using the sesame oil in the dressing, you would toast some sesame seeds and then you would, when they're finished, when they turn brown, you're going to put them into a mortar and pestle or an herb grinder. And what happens is that the natural oils from the sesame seeds capture that flavor so that you can put it into a dressing and then puree the dressing ingredients so that you don't really have this sesame seed hole. And it gives the same exact flavor. Um, I've shared with, uh, chef Fran and a couple of other colleagues that tomorrow I'm going to Italy where I spend a week, uh, cooking the dishes of my grandparents. Uh, I stay in on a farm that's about four kilometers from where my grandparents lived before they came to America. And there is nothing that I do. I make everything whole food, plant-based, no oil. So I have been able to convert a lot of those recipes just by eliminating the oil. And I will say that after fif next month will be 16 years that I've been whole food plant-based. Um, it's something that I don't miss and it's something that I don't think about. So, um, start out with the sesame oil and, and see what you can do.