A Tale of Two Stir-Fries

Well, the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart ended two weeks ago and I've decided to stick with being vegan for the duration.  This wasn't really my plan, but then, neither was being vegetarian.  We'll see how it goes.

Saturday evening after work (I work every other weekend.  Always fun.  Not.) I chopped up about half of the veggies I recently bought with a stir-fry in mind.  Why only half, you ask?  Well, because half seemed like enough for one meal plus one or two meals worth of leftovers.  It also occurred to me when I put the other half back in the fridge that I could stir-fry the same veggies a different way later on.  So, I made a Chinesy (I make no claim as to authenticity) stir-fry for us on Saturday and an Indian stir-fry for dinner tonight.  If you ever find that you have an overabundance of several veggies that hold up well in a stir-fry, give something like this a try!
 
The Chinesy stir-fry came out well and was simple enough, now that the fine folks at MediterrAsian have given me the confidence to do Asian stir-fries with or without coconut milk or red curry paste:

2 tbsp canola oil
1.5 cups (approx.) baby carrots, quartered lengthwise
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1.5 cups snap peas, ends trimmed
1 red bell pepper, sliced lengthwise
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp Chinese five spice powder
4 oz. baby bella mushrooms, sliced
1 cup vegetable broth
salt and crushed red pepper to taste
2 tbsp corn starch mixed with 2 tbsp cold water

Heat oil over medium heat in work or wide saucepan.  Add carrots, garlic and ginger and saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add snap peas red bell pepper and cook another 3 minutes.  Add hoisin, soy sauce and Chinese five spice powder and stir well.  Add broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes.  Check flavors and add salt and crushed red pepper as needed.  Add cornstarch mixture and stir often as sauce thickens to a glaze.  Remove from heat and serve over rice.
***
Then tonight I chopped up the snap peas, carrots and red bell pepper for an Indian-style stir fry.  The spices are all from a mixed vegetables recipe in my Indian cookbook, but the veggies that I used were different because hey - it's what I had.  Also a winner!

2 tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1-2 bay leaves
1 tsp black mustard seeds
2 tsp urad dal
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 cup baby carrots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1.5 cups snap peas, cut in half and ends trimmed
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt

Heat oil in a wide saucepan over medium heat.  Add next four ingredients, cover and heat until mustard seeds start popping and urad dal is golden brown.  Add onion and tomatoes, stir and cook for one minute.  Add turmeric and stir.  Add remaining veggies, stir well and cook for 3-5 minutes.  Stir in tomato sauce and remaining spices.  Blend seasonings well and cook for another minute or two.  Add about half a cup of water to make it saucier and so that veggies don't burn.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for another 3-5 minutes or until sauce has thickened.  Serve over rice.
***
Well, it seems that winter's finally here.  Today I actually had to wear running tights and a knit cap for the first time since I started running again post-foot injury.  I don't know about groundhogs; for me, dark-eyed juncos are much more reliable in the meteorology department, and I saw a bunch in my backyard a couple of days ago - always a sign of cooler weather to come. 

Stay warm, eat and be healthy!

Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup with Broccoli Risotto

Well, I'm back, and happy (belated) 2012.  Hopefully some of you are still sticking to your New Year's Resolutions.  One of mine is to participate officially in the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart, which means that, unlike back in September, I've actually signed up to do the full three weeks instead of noncommittally seeing how long I can stand it.  I hung in for three weeks and change a few months ago, so I figure I can do it again.  One of the neat things about participating in the Kickstart is the daily emails from vegan celebrities: until today I assumed that Alicia Silverstone and John Salley (of Bulls, Lakers and Pistons fame) were their best-known celebrity spokespeople, but today's message of encouragement was from none other than Steve-O!  Did anyone else out there know he's a vegan?  I thought that was very surprising and cool.  Anyhoo...

Day 8 is winding down after a thoroughly enjoyable meal of soup and risotto.  The inspiration for the soup was in the current issue of the Vegetarian Times, and the risotto was inspired by the availability of broccoli in the fridge and arborio rice in the cupboard.  After working all weekend and having today off, I was finally able to make this happen, which also means that I have leftovers for later in the week!

Sweet Potato and Red Pepper Soup:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium-large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1" cubes
1 medium Russet potato, peeled and cut into 1" cubes
half of one large white onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper or to taste
2 red bell peppers, roughly chopped
6 cups vegetable broth
salt and cayenne pepper to taste
Spinach pesto for coulis (recipe follows)

Heat oil in soup pot over medium heat.  Add next three ingredients and stir well to coat with oil.  Saute for 7 minutes.  Add next three ingredients, stir and cook another 3-5 minutes.  Add bell pepper and broth, cover and simmer on medium-low until potatoes and peppers are tender, about 30 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool, then puree in batches and return to pot.  Add salt and cayenne if desired.  Serve hot with a dollop of spinach pesto in the center of the bowl.

Spinach pesto:
2.5-3 packed cups baby spinach
1/4 cup pine nuts
4 cloves garlic
3 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Place first four ingredients in food processor and puree until smooth, pouring in olive oil through chute.  (Alternatively, just throw everything in your food processor or blender and puree until smooth.)  Add salt and pepper to taste and store in refrigerator until ready to use.

Broccoli risotto:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/3 cups arborio rice
1 bay leaf
4 cups vegetable broth
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 cups broccoli florets, steamed in microwave with salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in saucepan.  Once heated, add rice and bay leaf and stir well.  Saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add broth one cup at the time, stirring often, until all broth is incorporated and rice is creamy.  Turn off heat and stir in nutritional yeast.  Fold in broccoli and serve.

Lentils with cracked wheat and wilted kale salad

Well, today was the last of several days off from work before before I go back and - yuck - work straight through the Christmas weekend.  Oh, well.  At least I got over my cold in time to do all the fun stuff planned for this past weekend.

So, being home, I decided to cook for the fun of having a lunch not of leftovers and also so that I'd have ample leftovers for the next few days of lunch breaks at work.  I'm actually at a point now where I have too much in my cupboards, so I'm looking more for excuses to use up pantry items than the relatively scant produce in the fridge.  I asked Steve to pick up some more kale a few days ago because I was starting to want some again, and today I finally cooked it.  Nothing fancy about the kale itself, but the lemon-tahini dressing really makes this wilted salad.  It's also good atop a simple spinach salad.  Try it sometime!

Wilted kale salad:
2 tbsp Earth Balance
1 tbsp olive oil
1 bunch kale, washed and roughly chopped, stems removed
sea salt to taste (regular is okay too)

Heat Earth Balance and olive oil in a four-quart pot over medium heat.  Add kale and stir every 2-3 minutes until wilted.  Season to taste with salt.

Lemon-tahini dressing:
2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp water
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
salt and crushed red pepper to taste

Combine the first three ingredients in a mixing bowl until smooth.  Stir in salt and crushed red pepper.
***
To pair with the kale, I wanted something at least vaguely North African or Middle Eastern so that no other flavors would clash with the dressing.  I looked up some bulgur wheat recipes (I was actually using cracked wheat from the Indian grocery store; technically not the same, but close enough for my purposes) and decided to go with this one, since it also gave me a reason to cook up the last of my brown lentils.  For Emeril, it's surprisingly simple.

The flavors all came together very well, but if I ever make this again, I'm going to ignore the bit about adding the uncooked bulgur wheat to the cooked lentils and then leaving it to absorb the liquid.  I found it hard to tell if the wheat had enough water or not (since the cooked lentils got pushed to the bottom of the pot and trapped some of the liquid) and kept adding water until it became apparent that there was too much.  The result was a little on the mushy side.  I was able to fix it (kinda) by turning the heat back on for a few minutes once everything had been stirred together, but still.  Bulgur wheat's just as easy to make as couscous and, if you do it right, turns out about the same as whole wheat couscous.  Live and learn.  Nevertheless, nothing was lacking in the flavor department (in part because I added a little more of the dry spices to the final mixture), and I've got leftovers for the next couple of days and a teeny bit more space in my cupboard than I had this morning.

Hopefully I'll find time to cook and blog about it once more before the holiday.  If not, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, etc. and a prosperous 2012!

North African Vegetable Soup

When shopping for Christmas presents on Amazon last week, I came up a few cents short of the $25 minimum order that qualifies for free shipping.  So, I looked around in the food/kitchen part of their website for a little something for myself and found this prepared harissa from France.  The four-pack cost about $15.  En tube, no less!

Then I felt like a jackass when I Googled "harissa recipes," hoping to find recipes using harissa, and instead found a slew of harissa recipes I could have easily made myself.  Oh, well.  I still got something to remind me of the wonderful time I spent in Geneva and of all the weekend shopping trips in France with my Swiss and German roommates, buying groceries with ingredient lists in several languages because they were being sold throughout the European Union.

So, when I changed the search to "recipes using harissa," this Moroccan vegetable stew recipe from Sara Moulton came up in the results.  This worked out well, since I'm a little under the weather today (and, thankfully, home from work), so I haven't had an appetite for the Indian yumminess that I made the other day.  Whenever I have a cold, all I really want is liquid, so I turned this stew into a soup, used up several veggies that had been hanging around for a while and got to use some of the harissa to boot.  I made numerous changes, as shown below the photo, based mainly on what was on hand:

2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large yellow onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic
2 tsp minced ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
4 cups vegetable broth (I used Better than Bouillon veggie base)
1.5 cups thawed frozen yellow squash, sliced in 1/2-inch rounds
1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained
1/3 cup cilantro, chopped
harissa for serving

In a soup pot, heat oil over medium heat.  Add onion and saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add celery and garlic, stir and cook for another 3-5 minutes.  Add the next three ingredients and stir to combine.  Add tomatoes and sweet potato, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10-15 minutes.  If sweet potatoes are not tender after this step, add the squash and chickpeas, raise the heat slightly, cover and simmer another 5-10 minutes or until sweet potatoes and squash are tender.  Turn off heat, stir in cilantro and serve.
***
I tasted the result before and after adding the harissa, and it's really good both ways.  I was able to taste the cinnamon more before I added the harissa than after, but I also liked how the harissa gave the broth a little more color than the liquid from the canned tomatoes could do on its own.  The harissa wasn't quite as hot as I expected (maybe I'll taste a difference once I'm no longer congested), but it was still very tasty and has great potential for being used in other soups and stews as a zippier alternative to tomato paste, particularly in Turkish recipes like chickpea and zucchini moussaka that I blogged about last year.

I'll be taking it easy for the rest of the day so that I can go back to work tomorrow and also be well enough to enjoy all the fun stuff going on this weekend, like tomorrow's holiday drop-in at work and Columbia Veg's "'Tis the Season to Party Like Veg*ns" potluck!

Hope everyone's having a happy and safe holiday season, and I'll be seeing some of you soon!

Tamarind Rice and Okra Masala

Well, the holidays are here once again, which means that opportunities to overeat abound.  Since I just bought a pair of skinny jeans the other day (my first-ever time shopping at Old Navy), I'm going to do my best to restrict any holiday excesses in my kitchen to the big day (T minus 11 and counting) and to making stuff for the various parties we've been invited to.  Thankfully, my pantry is always well-stocked for making Indian food that's tasty, filling AND won't stop me from wearing the new jeans when we go out for New Year's.

Lately I've also been loading up on pantry items because I needed a break from all the cooking and juicing I'd been doing in order to keep the veggies in the fridge from spoiling.  With the exception of a bag of celery that Steve bought on sale last week, I soon found myself with an overabundance of dry goods that needed to be addressed.  One of my go-to recipes in this situation is the tamarind rice recipe from Healthy South Indian Cooking (p. 138).  Since I had a bag of cut okra in the freezer, I decided to make the okra masala from the same cookbook (p. 253) as a side dish and substitute a couple of celery stalks for the diced onion since it was the only fresh veggie in the fridge yesterday.  I made a few more tweaks with both recipes, but they're still pretty close to the originals.

Word to the wise: not for the first time with the tamarind rice, I followed the directions about soaking the split peas and then adding them to the hot pan uncooked, and (like before) I wished I hadn't.  Have you ever made six-bean soup from dried beans and some of the thicker beans didn't cook all the way through?  The result I get with the split peas is a little like that.  Not so undercooked as to render you flatulent for the rest of the day, but just a little too chewy.  I have to make a note about that in the book and just use some chopped nuts instead the next time.

As always with Indian recipes, any ingredients you've never heard of can be found at your neighborhood Indian grocery store.  Some ingredients you have heard of can also be bought there for less, like big bags of turmeric for two bucks.  If you haven't already been, check 'em out!


Tamarind Rice:
1 cup brown rice
1/3 cup yellow split peas
1 tbsp tamarind paste
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola oil
8-10 curry leaves
3 dried red chili peppers
1/2 tsp asofoetida powder
1-2 tsp black mustard seeds
1-2 tsp urad dal
3/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chutney powder

Cook one cup brown rice in two cups of salted water, covered with a tight-fitting lid, until all liquid has been absorbed, about 30-40 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool at least 15 minutes.  (If using white rice, use 1.5 cups of water per cup of rice.  It's also better to make it several hours or one day ahead so it can dry out and not get mushy during the cooking process described below.)

Soak yellow split peas in 1 cup of water for one hour.

Blend tamarind paste, salt and 1/4 cup of warm water in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large saucepan or wok, heat oil over medium heat.  When the oil is hot, add the curry leaves, red chilies, asofoetida, mustard seeds and urad dal.  Cover and cook until mustard seeds pop and urad dal is golden brown.  (If the pan is hot enough when adding these ingredients, these items will cook fast.  Watch the urad dal and dried chilies in particular to make sure they don't burn.)

Drain the water from the split peas and stir them into the saucepan, stir-fry for one minute, then add the tamarind mixture and stir well.

Add the turmeric and chutney powder and stir for one minute.  Add the rice and stir until all ingredients are combined.


Okra Masala:
2 tbsp canola oil
1/4 tsp asofoetida powder
1 tsp black mustard seeds
2 tsp urad dal
1/2 cup chopped onion (this is where I substituted celery)
2 cups frozen (or fresh, if you have it ) cut okra
1/2 tsp cayenne or to taste
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 tsp salt or to taste

Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat.  When oil is hot, add asoefoetida, mustard seeds and urad dal.  When the mustard seeds pop and urad dal is golden brown, add the celery and stir-fry for 3 minutes.

Add the okra and spices and stir-fry for another 5 minutes.  Add the tomato sauce and salt (if needed; some tomato sauces are saltier than others), reduce heat, cover and simmer until okra and celery are tender, another 5-7 minutes.

My first stab at chili

I mildly regret not having tried my hand at chili back when I was still doing a lot with ground turkey.  It would be nice to be able to say I did that at least once, even though I wasn't the world's biggest chili fan.  I like to think that if I've had something once, or even many times, and found that it wasn't that great or was only really good some of the time, I can improve upon it at home.  Many's the time I've eaten gumbo that looked and acted suspiciously like canned tomato soup with a few random pieces of rice, okra and/or shrimp.  (I'm looking at you, Wild Wing Cafe.)  But every time I made it myself, it was great.  Not to toot my own horn, but it was.  And now that I no longer eat any of the meats that were the cornerstone of my homemade version, I can at least look back fondly upon the days when I made it and it kicked ass.

Alas, my first attempt at chili was meat-free.  Having also never eaten veggie chili before, I had to stop and think about what goes into chili besides ground meat, beans and tomatoes.  As it happened, a couple of bell peppers in the backyard were due to be picked and we had half an onion and a couple of jalapenos left over from the last time Steve made guacamole, so we had enough on hand to make a truly veggie chili.  I never thought about adding corn, although I'm sure that would have been good.  Basically, I used the above fresh veggies plus a bunch of cans of beans and one can of tomatoes, added some spices and stirred it up until I had something remarkably like chili.

Five-bean veggie chili:
2 tbsp canola oil
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 jalapeno peppers, finely diced
1/2 medium-large onion, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups water
2 Knorr brand cilantro cubes
1 can dark red kidney beans, drained
1 can navy beans, drained
1 can black beans, drained
1 can pinto beans, drained
1 can diced tomatoes with their juice
1 can fat-free refried beans
2 tsp dried Mexican oregano
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper or to taste

Heat the oil in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat.  Add diced peppers, onion and garlic and stir well.  Add water and bring to a boil.  Add cilantro cubes, stir well and reduce heat.  Add next four cans of beans and tomatoes; stir well.  Add refried beans and stir well to blend with liquids and thicken soup.  Add spices and raise heat to boil off excess liquid, stirring often for 10-15 minutes or as needed.  Serve alone or with rice, cornbread, tortilla chips, etc.
***
Not bad!  Although next time I'll probably use less water - maybe one cup or less, since the undrained tomatoes add quite a bit.  I'm really not sure how much time I spent on this, but it seemed like at least half of that time I was boiling off the excess liquid until it was thick enough to call chili.  Flavorwise, I give myself an A!  Next time (and I'm sure there will be one, since flexible recipes like these are right up my alley) I'll probably add a bit more spice, possibly in the form of the dried red chilies I get from the Indian grocery store on Two Notch Rd.  I'm sure I'll try it with corn at least once and maybe also experiment with different hot peppers from the produce section.

So, that was my lunch hour today.  Tonight we'll be going out someplace where I can load up on pasta for the big race tomorrow.  If any of you in the Columbia area are doing the Ray Tanner Home Run, hopefully we'll run into each other - and good luck!

Black Bean and Squash Casserole with Cilantro Rice

As promised, I did dispense with the large amount of spinach mentioned in my last post by replaying the spinach kootu from a couple of weeks ago.  It came out great, as always, but my plan to make it into a vegetarian alternative to the tuna/bacon/spinach pasta went up in smoke when I realized that I was all pasta'd out after my last big batch of pasta salad.  So, I just made some brown rice to go with it and that was just as good.

Tuesday was a day off, so I addressed my anxiety about the three yellow squashes that had been in the fridge for at least a week by making this casserole. 

Black Bean and Squash Casserole with Cilantro Rice:
2 cups water
2 Knorr cilantro cubes
1.5 cups basmati rice (jasmine or another long-grain works too), rinsed
3 yellow squash, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
3 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
2 tbsp canola or olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 cans black beans, drained
cayenne pepper to taste
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
2 cloves garlic
8 oz. cheddar cheese, shredded

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Bring the water to a boil and add the cilantro cubes. 

Toss the squash and jalapenos in a mixing bowl with the oil, salt and pepper.

In a separate bowl, combine the black beans with the next four ingredients.

In a 10 x 13" baking dish, spread the uncooked rice evenly across the bottom of the pan.  Layer the squash and jalapenos evenly across the rice, then pour the cilantro broth over both.  Layer the black beans evenly over the squash.

Bake, covered, for 45 minutes or until rice has absorbed all liquid.  Remove from oven (heat may be turned off at this point), cover evenly with cheddar cheese and put the dish back in the oven uncovered until the cheese has melted, about 3 to 5 minutes.  Serve warm.

***
I don't normally experiment with casserole dishes without having a recipe to tweak, but this came out okay all things considered.  My only regret is that the rice didn't really make itself a part of the casserole because of the barrier formed by the squash.  It would have been nice for some of the cheese to reach down and mix with the rice, but alas...maybe someday I'll try it again. 

Here's what it looked like on Steve's plate:

As for the squash, it neither helped nor hindered, but it was nice to have a veggie figure prominently in the mix, unlike the standard rice-and-beans plate you can get at any of the Mexican restaurants around here.  And I normally use a 1.5 to 1 ratio of water to uncooked rice, but I made it 4:3 this time figuring that any liquid coming out of the squash would make up the difference.  I was right, and the rice came out perfectly!  So the moral of the story is...maybe don't bother making this as a casserole, and just cook everything, put it on a heatproof plate and put that in the oven just long enough for the cheese to melt over the rice?...
 
Except for some tomatoes that Steve picked from the plant yesterday, we really don't have anything that needs to be used up right now.  If I had to guess, my next recipe will involve pesto made from parsley, basil and/or lemon balm.  Another pizza?  Stay tuned...

Mulligatawny

...inspired by the "Soup Nazi "episode of Seinfeld.

I've come across a couple of recipes recently that only vaguely resemble the one I make - with chicken, tomatoes and yogurt instead of coconut milk (their version, not mine).  This recipe here is the first one I ever found, years ago, when I went looking for a recipe on foodnetwork.com.  To date, it's the only one I've ever worked from, and it never occurred to me that anyone else made it differently.  So imagine my surprise when I went hunting for recipes and found that nearly all contain chicken, celery, carrots and apples!

Well, the chicken's out because I think I'm done with it (and seafood and red meat) for the duration.  And I don't have any apples, carrots or celery on hand right now - not that I'd want the apples in a soup if I had them.  Really, the reason I decided to make this is to use up the leftover coconut milk from Friday's praram, a jalapeno (with the seeds) and the remaining cilantro.  I might try it one day with carrots and celery if I ever have everything I need to make it that way, but for now I think this version is just as good as any.  It all gets pureed, the coconut milk is stirred in at the very last, and voila - a lovely, silky-smooth lentil-coconut-curry bisque.  Served over rice.

To keep it totally vegetarian, I used Smart Balance instead of the butter and Better than Bouillon vegetable base instead of the chicken broth.  And Steve's been such a good sport about the vegetarian thing.  He bought himself a rotisserie chicken from the Pig the other day, and I told him he could add some to his bowl of soup if he wanted, but he didn't.  He even went back for seconds!

Worst case scenario, he'll have a bigger appetite for snacks by the time 30 Rock comes on.

The Occasional Vegetarian Gets a New Oven

So, the self-cleaning oven with flat-top range that Steve found on sale on Home Depot's website last week arrived while I was at work Friday morning.  Thankfully, Steve was here to let them in and make sure they leveled it right.

Check it out - it even has that new oven smell!

So guess what I did to christen it, even though I still had three turkey and stuffing leftover meals in the freezer?





Chickpea Soondal and Kale Pitas

The chickpea soondal recipe is in Healthy South Indian Cooking, and I reheated the last of the kale from the other night to fill out the pitas with some greenery.  I've only made the soondal once or twice before (in the four years I've had this cookbook) and usually served it with rice and one other veggie side dish, but this was the quickest and easiest thing to whip up, since nothing needed to be chopped for it and the kale and pita were there and ready to go.

1 can chickpeas
1 tbsp canola or corn oil
1 dried red chili pepper
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chutney powder
1 tsp minced fresh ginger root (I used ginger paste from the Indian grocery store)
1/4 cup powdered unsweetened coconut (also from the Indian grocery store, along with all the spices)

Drain the chickpeas, rinse and set aside.

Heat the oil in a saucepan or skillet over medium heat.  When oil is hot, but not smoking, stir in red chili pepper, black mustard seeds and urad dal.  Fry until mustard seeds burst (listen for popping sound) and urad dal is golden.  (The cookbook says to cover the pot at this point, but I often forget to check things while I'm chopping and end up burning the urad dal and whatever else is in there.  Better to leave it uncovered where I can see that the urad dal are browning.)

Immediately add chickpeas, turmeric, salt and chutney powder and mix well.  Add ginger and cook for another minute or two.

Add coconut and stir.  Remove from heat and serve.

The kale went in the microwave for 1 minute and 15 seconds, sliced the pita in half and then filled the pita pockets in layers starting with the soondal, since it was dryer and would help retain any liquid from the kale.

As you can see, I was so hungry by the time it was ready (oven/range photos taken at 1:03, before I started cooking) I almost forget to take the picture.

I also made this on the slow-cooker, so I'd have it when I got home from yoga.  The yoga didn't happen and this took longer than I expected, but it still made a nice, warm lunch today:

North African-Inspired Stew

They used to make this one soup sometimes at Smith, called North African Vegetable Stew, that had chickpeas, potatoes, zucchini, carrots, onions and a ton of spices.  Well, I had the chickpeas, onions and carrots, but I had to substitute sweet potatoes for regular potatoes and frozen yellow squash for the zucchini.  I was hell-bent on clearing out the cupboards and some of the produce that didn't become part of Thanksgiving dinner, so although I would have preferred it the usual way, this at least cleared out some ingredients with nothing better to do and, I hope, improved my chi a bit.

2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, diced

2 cans chickpeas, drained
4 small sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 bag (8 oz?) frozen yellow squash
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1.5 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Saute the onions in olive oil until translucent.  Add to the crock pot with the remaining ingredients and 8 cups of water.  Cover and simmer on low for 12 hours.

I enjoyed a bowl of this while Steve was outside raking pine straw, and he came in later and enjoyed some too.  Since he picked up some more spinach at Food Lion today, I'm thinking that at least one near-future lunch or dinner will be of the soup-and-salad variety.

Dinner will probably be out of the town tonight.  More later about fun with my new appliance.  Thanks, as always, for reading, and "Go Gamecocks!"

Zucchini and kidney beans with brown rice

I keep thinking the next dish I make will be mattar paneer, and it keeps not happening.  Not because I don't want any, but because I've felt too zapped to cook at all these last couple of nights.  (Well, except the stuffed peppers, but that was pretty quick and easy.)  Tonight I made myself cook just so I'd have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, but I went for something much simpler. 

I asked Steve last week to curtail his shopping for fresh or frozen produce so as to make room in the freezer for a Thanksgiving turkey (the idea being that we'll make a dent in our freezer stores as soon as the fresh stuff's all gone).  For the most part he's honored my request, but a bag of fresh spinach and a wrapped package of 3 zucchini did turn up the other day (along with a bag of apples that I asked him to pick up).  That seemed as good a reason to make something simple that would take care of a zucchini.

1 cup Yoga Organics brown rice, rinsed
2 tbsp canola oil
1 whole zucchini, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground oregano
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 can dark red kidney beans, drained


Bring 13 oz. of salted water to a boil.  Add rice, stir well, cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook until all water is absorbed, about 25-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat canola oil in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat.  Add zucchini, garlic, salt, cumin, oregano and cayenne and stir well.  Cook for about 5 minutes or until zucchini has begun to soften.  Add beans, stir well and cook until zucchini is fully cooked and beans are heated.

This also turned out well, but I have to admit to being brown rice-retarded.  I know it's better for you, but I never set the timer for as long as it needs and always have to check it and then give it another 5 minutes.  White rice is SO much more reliable and makes these dishes much quicker and easier.  Oh, well - one day I'll get the hang of it.  And I got what I wanted - leftovers for tomorrow!

Hope everyone out there is doing well on what turned out to be a nice, warm Veteran's Day!

Lemon rice with cucumber and tomato salad

Still had a bunch of stuff in the fridge after making the lentil soup the other night, so Indian seemed like the easiest way to use it up.  I nearly went with Greek again but figured I should make something different for variety.  Both of these recipes are in Healthy South Indian Cooking by Vaivaran and Marquardt, but I had to make some adjustments to their recipes based on what I had (e.g. no cilantro).  It went about like this:




Lemon rice:
2 cups water
1/2 cup dry yellow split peas
1 cup water
2/3 cup jasmine rice
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp canola oil
4-6 curry leaves
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1 tsp chutney powder

Bring two cups of water to a boil.  Add yellow split peas, stir, cover and simmer on medium heat until tender, about 20-25 minutes.  Drain and set aside.

Next, bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a separate pot and add rice.  Cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook on medium-low heat for 12-15 minutes or until all water has been absorbed.  Fluff with fork and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine lemon juice, salt and turmeric and set aside.

A few minutes before the yellow split peas finish cooking, heat oil in another small pot over medium heat.  As soon as it is heated, add curry leaves, mustard seeds and urad dal.  Cover loosely and cook until mustard seeds begin to pop and urad dal turns brown. 

Add the drained yellow split peas to the aromatics, stir well and cook for another 2-3 minutes.  Add the lemon juice mixture and chutney powder and stir well.  Add the rice, stir and remove from heat.
***

After making the lemon juice mixture and sticking that in the fridge, I still had a few minutes of down time from the rice, during which I made the accompaniment.






Cucumber and tomato salad:
Half of one large tomato, diced
Half of one large cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely chopped
1 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp pepper
1 green onion, chopped

Combine all ingredients except the green onion in a mixing bowl.  When ready to serve, garnish with chopped green onion.

I served Steve with the items side-by-side and stacked mine.  As far as I can tell, it turned out well both ways.  And Steve was pretty hungry by the time it hit the table, so I didn't have to package a ton of leftovers.  This was pretty much how I ate all summer in 2006, when I started training for my first half- and full marathon.  Would that I could be so skinny again!  Well, hopefully I'll be upping my weekly mileage pretty soon to get ready for a spring half, which should help.  And I plan to keep eating healthy at least until Thanksgiving arrives.

Speaking of which, I'm pretty hungry now...Hungry enough to eat a deep-fried Snickers bar, which I've never done before...maybe this year I'll make it to the State Fair?

Black beans and rice

What a busy week.  I actually made this on Friday for lunch and haven't been able to stop long enough to write about it.  This is a very simple vegan take on Cuban black beans and rice that I like to whip together when I don't have a lot of free time to spend in the kitchen:





3 cup basmati rice, rinsed
2 tbsp canola oil
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground Mexican oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 can black beans, drained

Bring 1.5 cups of salted water to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low, add rice, stir well and cover with a tight-fitting lid and cook for 13-15 minutes or until all water has been absorbed.

Meanwhile, heat canola oil in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Add bell peppers and stir well.  Add garlic, cumin, oregano, salt and cayenne and cook until peppers have softened, about 5 minutes.  Add beans, stir well and cook until beans are warm, another 5 minutes.

Remove lid from rice, rake all of it with a fork and spoon desired amount onto plates.  Mix desired quantity of beans and peppers into rice on plates (or just top the rice with the beans).

I'm hungry again just writing about it, and I haven't been able to cook much since then.  Hopefully that will change tonight...

Yummy Potato-Stuffed Peppers

So, guess who wasn't hungry again Tuesday night?

I'd originally come up with these as a complement to a TBA chicken or fish dish that would also use up the last of my red potatoes and two of the peppers from the garden, but it's been so hot this week that Steve and I decided that we could snack on pistachios later if we were still hungry - and that's exactly what we did, after eating two of these apiece.

But the pistachios required no effort on my part, and everyone knows what they look like, so...here's how I made the stuffed peppers:

8 small- or medium-sized red potatoes (larger ones cut in half or quarters)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne
3 tsp chopped cilantro
2 green bell peppers, cut in half and seeds removed

Peel the potatoes, place in a pot and cover with water. Add salt. Bring to a boil and cook, covered, until fork tender (about 15-20 minutes). Drain water and mash potatoes in pot with hand masher. Add cumin, cayenne and cilantro and stir until blended.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.

Place the peppers on a shallow baking pan lined with foil. Stuff each pepper using a soup spoon, mashing potatoes down and filling over the top. Texture the top with spoon (instead of smoothing out the potato filling) so that they will brown in the oven more visibly.

Bake for 20 minutes or until tops of potato filling have started to brown. Remove from oven and serve.

Doesn't sound like much of a dinner, but I do feel better about my feeding habits when I read articles like this as well as this one, which both suggest that a plant-based diet can prevent and/or cure more ills than previously known. To your health!