Monthly Archives: April 2011

Coconut Red Lentil Stew

Posted on April 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

You will just have to take my word for it sans pictures this time.  This stew is delightful.  Here’s the recipe, go play in the kitchen while I look for my memory card full of delightful food pictures that I have misplaced somewhere…damn.

Coconut Red Lentil Stew

Adapted from 101Cookbooks.com Heidi Swanson

  • 1 cup / 7 oz / 200g yellow split peas
  • 1 cup 7 oz / 200g red split lentils (masoor dal)
  • 7 cups / 1.6 liters water
  • 1 medium carrot, cut into 1/2-inch dice
  • 4 tablespoons fresh peeled and minced ginger
  • 2 tablespoons curry powder
  • 2 tablespoons butter or ghee
  • 8 green onions (scallions), thinly sliced
  • 1/3 cup / 1.5 oz / 45g golden raisins
  • 1/3 / 80 ml cup tomato paste
  • 1 14-ounce can coconut milk
  • 2 teaspoons fine grain sea salt
  • one small handful cilantro, chopped
  • cooked brown rice or farro, for serving (optional)

Give the split peas and lentils a good rinse – until they no longer put off murky water. Place them in an extra-large soup pot, cover with the water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and add the carrot and 1/2 of the ginger. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the split peas are soft.

In the meantime, in a small dry skillet or saucepan over low heat, toast the curry powder until it is quite fragrant. Be careful though, you don’t want to burn the curry powder, just toast it. Set aside. Place the butter in a pan over medium heat, add half of the green onions, the remaining ginger, and raisins. Saute for two minutes stirring constantly, then add the tomato paste and saute for another minute or two more.

Add the toasted curry powder to the tomato paste mixture, mix well, and then add this to the simmering soup along with the coconut milk and salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes or so. The texture should thicken up, but you can play around with the consistency if you like by adding more water, a bit at a time, if you like. Or simmer longer for a thicker consistency. The thicker this soup got, the more I liked it.

This stew freezes great.  I took it over to Ben and Janna for emergency freezer meals after the birth of their very lovely Olivia.

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Posted in Recipes, Soup, Vegetarian

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DIY Sushi

Posted on April 25, 2011 | 2 comments

Mr. Wonderful and I are crazy about sushi, you can typically find us at either XO on a Tuesday night (half off), or Tokyo Grill on a Friday night (best selection in town, plus crack ginger dressing for salad).  We are sushi-at-home amateurs, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to do this every now and again.  The end results taste a lot better than they look.

Here is a top secret recipe from the waitress from XO:

Spicy Dynamite Mayo

Japanese mayo differs from regular mayo in that it’s made with rice wine vinegar.  You can just as easily use regular or low fat mayo here but I wouldn’t mess with fat free.  Get serious.  You are basically eating negative cals with sushi, so do it up with a delish sauce.

Mix together the above ingredients.  Serve with rolls, on rolls, inside the rolls…basically you might consider this for a mask at some point too.  It’s pretty delicious.

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Posted in Gluten Free, Recipes, Vegetarian

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Curried Noodle Pot

Posted on April 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

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Curry on the brain this week I guess.  Monday I wrote about Curried Hash and now, we have the Curried Noodle Pot courtesy of the lovely Heidi Swanson from 101cookbooks.com.  This recipe comes from her cookbook Super Natural Cooking.  Why buy one of her books?  Her photography.  You can thank me later for the copious amounts of food porn present.

Curried Noodle Pot

  • 8 oz whole-grain wide Asian noodles ( I used whole spelt udon)
  • 2 T coconut oil
  • 4 cloves garlic finely chopped
  • 1 onion chopped
  • 1-1/2 tsp red curry paste
  • 12 oz extra firm tofu pressed and cubed
  • 1-14 oz can coconut milk
  • 2 C veggie stock
  • 2 tsp ground tumeric or curry powder
  • 2 T shoyu sauce (or any other type of soy sauce)
  • 1T agave syrup
  • juice of one lime
  • 2/3 C peanuts (optional)
  • 1/3 C slivered shallots
  • 1/3 C chopped fresh cilantro

Cook noodles in plenty of water until just tender.

Start making curry while noodles cook. Heat coconut oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat.  Stir in garlic, onion and curry paste and mash the paste around the bottom of the pan a bit to distribute evenly. Cook until fragrant – just a minute or two.  Add the tofu stir until well coated with curry. Stir in the coconut milk, stock, shoyu and agave, bring to simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat, stir in the lime juice and add the noodles.  Turn to coat.

To serve, heap big piles of noodles into individual bowls and top with a ladle or two of curry. Top with peanut and cilantro and shallots.

Note:  I thought this needed a bit of salt because I used unsalted peanuts for garnish.  From start to finish, this took me less than 20 minutes to make.  Bonus points for quick dinner.

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Posted in Quick Cooking, Recipes, Soup, Vegetarian

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Clean Out the Fridge Sweet Potato Hash

Posted on April 18, 2011 | 2 comments

I consider it a personal challenge when I have a few stray veggies in the fridge and a container of eggs.  It’s not really a food emergency or worth going to the store unless I am out of half and half for the coffee.  With the eggs, I could make an omelet (how predictable), or I could bust out some spices and a piece of stale naan bread from the freezer and make the following:

Curried Sweet Potato Hash with Egg Over Easy and Grilled Naan

This is a toss it all together recipe, so I didn’t measure.  Do the best you can with what you have on hand.  In these photos:

  • 1 small onion diced
  • 1 jalapeno pepper diced
  • ½ green pepper diced
  • 1 handful edemame from the freezer
  • 1 medium sweet potato diced
  • 1 egg, over easy
  • 1 piece of Naan bread, grilled
  • 1 tsp hot curry powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp black pepper

Dice up the veggies, approximately the same size.  In a sauté pan or whatever is clean frankly, spray a little oil and add the sweet potato dice first, it will take a little longer to cook, when that becomes a bit soft, add all the rest of the veggies.  Cook until just tender.  Sprinkle mixture with curry, pinch of salt and pinch of pepper.  While the hash is cooking, push to once side of the pan and fry the egg over easy.  Over an open flame or in the oven warm up the naan bread.  To assemble.  Naan on the bottom, hash, fried egg.

Feelin’ really crazy?  Butter your naan bread with peanut butter and slice up a banana on top of it before adding the hash and egg…this is called a Tickle.

For lunch this same day, I took the leftover hash, put it in a sauce pan, with a can of coconut milk, a can of water and some additional curry powder.  Soup.  🙂

Crazy for Cumin?  Try this one from Pinch my Salt, one of my fave food blogs.

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Posted in Leftovers, Recipes, Vegetarian

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Just Add Sprinkles

Posted on April 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

Turns out Mr. Wonderful is totally kid friendly.  Also, he is artsy.  The recipe for this blog post is simple:  1 box rainbow chip cake mix made into cupcakes, vanilla frosting, loads of decorating items, and 1 Dakota.  Results may vary, but I think these were awesome!

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Milk Chocolate Banana Peanut Pancakes

Posted on April 15, 2011 | 5 comments

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Alright, this recipe doesn’t need a fancy narrative, it just needs you to take your sweet self into the kitchen and make it now-yes, you can eat breakfast for dinner.

Pancakes

  • 1 1/2 C all purpose flour
  • 3 1/2 tsp baking POWDER
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 T sugar
  • 1 1/4 C milk
  • 1 egg
  • 1 very ripe banana cut into bite sized pieces
  • 1 handful milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 handful peanuts or walnuts (unsalted)
  • 3 T melted butter (optional)
  • 1 T vanilla (optional)

whisk together dry ingredients.

make a well for wet ones, gradually add wet to dry ingredients

poor by 1/4 C onto hot (375 degree) griddle

drop sprinkles of banana, chips and nuts into batter

flip just once after tons of bubbles appear

slather with butter, dust with powdered sugar if you are a diva or syrup like Mr Wonderful does and inhale

with leftover batter, for Walter the Wonderdog, I put just bananas and peanuts in the pancake…Bagels like Walter love pancakes too.

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Posted in Breakfast, Vegetarian

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Want some Kale with your Black Beluga Lentils?

Posted on April 1, 2011 | 6 comments

Perhaps you saw the title of this post and thought, WTF I don’t even know what Black Beluga Lentils ARE let alone why I would want Kale with THEM!  I know, I know, weirdo veggie Adrienne wants us to eat crazy stuff and be kind to things with faces…well, yes, but Kale is a powerful, versatile and sturdy vegetable.  It is often overlooked, mostly because the only interaction you ever have with it is under that crappy obligatory unripe melon slice, next to your steak and baked potato at the steakhouse.  Yep, that’s Kale and it’s delicious.

Kale seems a little dark and mysterious, a little scary, and so is the amount of times this woman says “super” in this Kale video.  Nonetheless, it’s a good primer-when you are done watching, come back for the soup recipe will ya?

Black Beluga Lentil Soup

Adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Lively Lentil Soup at 101cookbooks.com

  • 2 C black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed
  • 2 C great northern beans, cooked
  • 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 2 T chipotle en adobo sauce (from the can)
  • 2T cumin
  • 2T smoked paprika
  • 2 tsp pepper, ground
  • 2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
  • 1T extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 tsp fine-grain sea salt
  • 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
  • 2 C water
  • 3 C of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped

Saffron Yogurt

  • a pinch of saffron (30-40 threads)
  • 1 T boiling water
  • two pinches of salt
  • 1/2 C 2% Greek Yogurt

Bring 6 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan, add the lentils, and cook for about 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.

While the lentils are cooking, make the saffron yogurt by combining the saffron threads and boiling water in a tiny cup. Let the saffron steep for a few minutes. Now stir the saffron along with the liquid into the yogurt. Mix in the salt and set aside.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a heavy soup pot over medium heat, then add the onion, carrot, and spices and saute until tender, a couple minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, lentils, and water and continue cooking for a few more minutes, letting the soup come back up to a simmer. Stir in the chopped greens, cooked beans, and wait another minute. Taste and adjust the seasoning if need be. Ladle into bowls, and serve with a dollop of the saffron yogurt.

This soup hurts so GOOD!!  It has a little kick to it, but the saffron yogurt is cooling.  To make less spicy, just put in less of the hot stuff up there silly!  I of course added Frank’s Red Hot to this before I served it.

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Posted in Recipes, Seasonal Ingredients, Soup, Vegetarian

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