Tag Archives: Vegetarian

Red Lentil Dal / Masoor Dal in the Crock Pot or Slow Cooker

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Masoor Dal in the sun ourwaytoeatThere is something wonderfully comforting about coming home to a warm meal ready to eat without any effort, even if you did in fact make it yourself.  No matter what kind of day you had, you can right the wagon when you come home to a crock pot simmering with this warming soup. The spicy aroma seeps out of the cracks of your house, and gives you a warm and welcoming hug before you even walk in the door.  I like to put together a crockpot meal the night before the day in my week that most needs fixing.  For me, that is Monday.  I come home, fling open the door and say “honey, I’m home” and then singsong back to myself in reply, “supper’s ready!” This is a healthy, low fat, plant strong meal.  It qualifies for all sorts of healthy eating buzz words: vegetarian, Meatless Monday, vegan, slow carb, plant strong and nutritarian.

Masoor Dal ingredients in crock ourwaytoeat

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups of red lentils, inspected on a white plate or platter, debris removed.
  • 8 cups of water—really, it’s a soup that does not at all require stock!
  • 1 onion, finely chopped.
  • 2-3 carrots, grated.
  • 1 cup of tomatoes, canned or fresh, chopped.
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced.
  • 2 Thai chilies, minced.  I used dried Thai Dragon chilies from my garden.  Something similar is easily available at the grocery store.
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
  • 2 teaspoons Garam Masala
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger, or ¼ cup grated fresh ginger
  • 1 tablespoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds, toasted in a pan on the stove until popping

Optional  additions – 1-14 ounce can of coconut milk –totally optional, gives the soup some creamy body, and the spices a place to hang since there is no other added fat included but the soup is lower fat and still wonderfully flavorful without it.

Masoor Dal in the crockpot ourwaytoeat

Method:

Inspect lentils, chop onion, garlic, fresh ginger (if using) and Thai Chilies and add to liner of your crock pot.  Toast mustard seeds and add them along with all other seasonings to the liner of your crock.  When you are ready to start the crock, add 8 cups of water and tomatoes.  Stir, and cook on low for 6 hours, then stir in coconut milk, if using, and return Dal to a simmer.  If you are a Midwesterner, exclaim as Bjorn jokingly did, “its good, Dal garnit!”

Masoor Dal ourwaytoeat

Serve warm with Greek yogurt or sour cream to garnish, and warm Naan or Basmati rice on the side.

Dal and Naan ourwaytoeat

 

 

 

Beans for Breakfast

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My first memory of black beans showing up on my plate at breakfast was in Boise, Idaho in the summer of 2008.  We were in Boise for a wedding, we traveled all the way for Minnesota to be there.  It was very nice to get to meet up with the newlyweds for breakfast the morning after their wedding.  I am not certain of the name of the restaurant that we went to, but it was downtown on the cool pedestrian-only street, it had a Southwestern vibe, and we sat outside on tall patio tables.  If you might know the place I’m talking about, feel free to let me know.  I don’t remember much about the meal, other than loving the black beans, and learning from the bride that a very good Eggs Benedict has a tinge of lemon in the hollandaise.  For a vegetarian, breakfast is an easy meal out.  There are tons of vegetarian options that are made easily by a typical meat and potatoes greasy spoon.  The downside of breakfast is, because it is so easy to throw a veggie and cheese omelet on a menu and call it good, the average breakfast joint can run a little short on excitement for a vegetarian.  Black beans for breakfast in Boise were a revelation to me. Over in England, I’ve eaten a traditional English Breakfast in which kidney beans are a crucial element, but probably because I live in the Midwest, black beans, or beans of any kind are not a frequent accompaniment to my toast and eggs.  I thoroughly enjoyed them that morning in Boise.*

Back in Minnesota a few weeks later we went to the Mill City Café for breakfast.  We don’t venture all over town to go out to eat as often as we did when we were newly dating with students’ schedules, and without the possession of a respectable kitchen.  Even though Mill City Cafe is clear across the river and a ways North, we return to the Mill City Cafe  now and then for sentimental reasons.**  I was delighted to see black beans listed on the menu as a side dish.  I ordered them and happily gobbled them up with the American Breakfast, giving the choice of bacon or sausage included with my entrée to Bjorn.  After these two tasty introductions to beans for breakfast, I have been including black beans in our breakfasts at home whenever I have a hankering for them.  They are a great vegetarian protein, and work especially well when you are heading toward the brunch hours, or when you have a taste for a savory breakfast, which I so often do.

Black Bean Hash is simple, especially when you start with leftover potatoes, which is the only way potatoes make it to the breakfast table in my house.  I start by frying some diced onions in a little olive oil, depending on my mood, I toss in a little minced garlic, then I add potatoes which are chopped into cubes if they weren’t already cubed in their previous incarnation.  I use canned beans.  I think about switching to dry beans because there are so many good reasons to use them, but so far I haven’t made the move.  My holdup is, takes too long to soak them, and doesn’t work well for me because I like to make last-minute decisions about a meal.  I drain and rinse the beans, add some corn that is either thawed frozen corn, or fresh corn cut off the cob***.  I usually add some chili pepper flakes, and dump in some salsa to pull it all together.  In another pan I started some water to simmer to poach eggs.  I was in the mood for a poached egg for this meal, but the egg would be just as good or better fried, or baked directly in the hash in the oven.

One my favorite things about Southwestern and Mexican cooking is all of the delicious accompaniments that these cuisines invite.  Today, I sliced some avocado, and doused it with a lime juice to keep it fresh and bright, and sprinkled it with sea salt, cracked pepper and some chopped fresh dill from the garden.  I also fried some tortillas to add the lovely, salty crunchy carbohydrate to the meal.  To prepare the tortillas, I sliced them into strips and fried them in a little oil, and then dusted them with some spicy seasonings and a little salt and a squeeze of lime juice to help the seasonings adhere.  Finally, and most importantly for my Tex-Mex accompaniments:  cheese and hot sauce.  I keep several different brands of sauce on hand, and today, I also had some mild and slightly salty Cotija cheese to crumble over the hash.  This meal is quick to make as long as you use leftover potatoes, and it is hearty enough to satisfy for hours.  It is a great weekend breakfast or brunch, but would work equally well for dinner at night.

*Boise is pronounced Boyseee by the locals, FYI.

**We’ve seen a few of our favorite local bands play at the Mill City Café over the years, and we had a very nice Valentine’s Day prix fixe multi-course dinner there on our second Valentines Day together.

***The addition of corn to the beans is a combination that provides an essential Amino Acid.  This is important for me as a vegetarian or any person whose diet is light on meat who needs to try a little bit harder to make sure their diet includes the essential combinations of nutrients.  Bodies cannot produce essential amino acids on their own, and need them to synthesize proteins.

Inspired by… Summer Soba

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I am a follower of an ever-growing list of blogs.  If I let myself, I would probably be able to add a new blog to my Favorites every week*.  Most of the blogs I follow are food-related, a few focus on lifestyle, decor or fashion, but mostly, cooking, restaurants and the like.   There are so many creative and fascinating people out there blogging, it humbles a person who is just starting out.  A lot of these fantastic bloggers have better cameras, and more technical agility and more honed culinary skills than I do.  Some of them have even contracted with a web designer.  But this doesn’t deter me, because this is just for fun.  The way I look at it,  if I keep coming back every day to see what these internet personas are doing in their little corner of the world, maybe someone will stumble upon our blog and come back to see what we’re eating and what is inspiring us.   Since I spend a few of my free moments virtually lurking around kitchens of some serious foodies and great chefs, now and then I am inspired to try a recipe, or more even often, create a dish inspired by something delicious-looking I’ve found in a blog.  Hence, a new, soon-to-be recurring feature, Inspired by… which will feature a dish I make that is based on Another Blogger’s Creation**.  I encourage readers to follow the link back to the original blogger’s post.  When I say, my dish is Inspired by… something I don’t mean I’m going to even attempt to recreate exactly what the original blogger did, or show how to make the dish step-by-step.  It is more likely to be a riff on the original.  I like to play fast and loose with recipes, and I am not a Parisienne daily grocery shopper, so I’ll be using what I have on hand.  So, here it goes.  My first Inspired by… begins, where my blog following began, an easy Summer Soba supper, inspired by Macheesmo.

Macheesmo is the first blog I ever followed.  I was googling a recipe for some ingredient I needed to use up, and landed on his site.  Macheesmo is an informational blog written by a guy named Nick, and typically shows a recipe step-by-step.  He has a few recurring features, such as a weekly poll to determine a recipe he’ll make and blog about, and “Homemade Trials” where he attempts to make something from scratch that you’d otherwise buy.  I think he even does research.  As is typical for me, I followed the recipe loosely.  I stir-fried green onions, carrots and button mushroom with a few Thai chilis and green beans from the garden.  The sauce contained soy sauce an sesame oil, but substituted ginger from the spice cupboard for the fresh ginger and champagne vinegar for the mirin.  The Macheesmo recipe contains corn, which sounds great, but wasn’t in my refrigerator.  I topped mine with toasted black sesame seeds and fresh basil from the back yard.

As promised by Macheesmo, the result was a tasty and healthy supper, and an even more delicious cold lunch at work the next day.  It was far tastier than a frozen microwaveable meal which are a noontime standard in the office lunch scene.  Ironically, a co-worker commented “that doesn’t look very appetizing!” when she observed my plate.   The dark colour of the soba noodles, combined with the soy sauce sesame seeds must have thrown her off the trail, because it actually was the best lunch I’ve had in a while.   To each his or her own.  I recommend checking out Macheesmo, and giving the Summer Soba a spin.

*I did in fact just add about 5 to my links, Blogs To Get You Through The Day list.

**Yes, Another Blogger’s Creation purposefully harkens back to Another Bad Creation, (ABC), the 1990’s R&B group from my youth.

Sunday Noon

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I am sure that of the best home-cooked meals I’ve eaten in my life, the vast majority of them were consumed at or around noon on Sunday.  The day of rest welcomes a meal made a slower pace and consumed with some measure of reverence.  Slowing down enough to enjoy and to be aware of the activity of cooking and eating has so much to do with what makes food enjoyable, after all. 

The slow part is not out of the ordinary for me.  I’m a slow cook.  I don’t like to rush.  I like to meditate on the process a bit and I like to have most of my dirty dishes washed before the meal is served.  Most importantly though, I like things all to be hot and ready serve and to eat at the same time.  Yesterday’s noon meal was no fancy Sunday roast, but I hold that pizza is worthy of being the culinary high point of the week when it is made with love from scratch with the yummiest toppings you have available.  It takes some time to make your own dough and to cut and saute your favorite toppings.  Above, pizza dough flecked with basil and Pecorino Romano Cheese.

On the left, mushroom, green pepper, pineapple, fresh mozzarella and marble cheese (mozzarella was in short supply!).  On the right, maple syrup breakfast sausage, mushroom, green pepper, mozzarella and marble jack.  Tomato sauce seasoned with salt, pepper and oregano on both.

Char marks are one of the best results of grilling a pizza.

The vegetarian version was delicious.  Perfect char marks, delicious toppings… Only addition needed was a coke.

Punch Neapolitan Pizza, one of our top three favorite pizza shops in our hood serves some of its pies uncut with a knife and fork.  It works well for a personal size pizza with a crispy crust that is loaded with toppings.  Here is Bjorn’s maple syrup breakfast sausage Sunday delight.