Archive for the 'beans' Category
And we didn’t even order in! I was mighty proud of myself for pulling off the daal and naan, although later on not so proud anymore, having eaten the better part of four fresh naan breads warm from the skillet. Not a good idea. My only consolation was that the rest of the meal consisted entirely of vegetables.
This whole Indian theme came about because I’ve been buying far more tomatoes than is absolutely necessary, and as a result have a few going wrinkly on top of my breadbox. Once, when we lived in Vancouver about 5 years ago, I made a potato curry from my friend Tahera Rawji’s cookbook Simply Indian, and because I didn’t have any crushed tomatoes I whizzed a couple of tomatoes in the food processor that were at the time going wrinkly on my minescule Vancouver countertop. It was one of those minor events that lodged itself firmly in my brainpan, and now whenever I see an aging tomato, I want curried potatoes.
Tomato Curried Potatoes
a variation of “Potato Curry” in Simply Indian
4-5 Yukon gold or baby new potatoes, cut into large chunks (I don’t bother to peel them - a bonus when you use thin-skinned potatoes like YG)
canola oil, for cooking
1 cup crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, or 2 tomatoes pureed in the food processor
2 tsp. paprika
1 1/2 tsp. curry powder or paste
1 tsp. chili powder
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
Boil the potatoes until tender. In a large skillet, heat a drizzle of oil and add the potatoes; toss them around a bit. Add the tomatoes, paprika, curry powder, chili powder, sugar and salt and cook for 5-10 minutes, until the potatoes are well coated and the extra moisture has cooked off.
Serves 4.
Also, I had the most enormous cauliflower you ever saw left over from Ramsay Rocks, where it was supposed to go onto the veggies and dip tray in the volunteer’s tent. I hardly ever buy cauliflower. I’m not a huge fan. Or I wasn’t; I am now. My favorite way to cook any kind of veg is to roast it, so why not cauliflower? I gave it a try, and even W liked it. To roast cauliflower, separate it into florets and toss with canola or olive oil and salt; spread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and roast at 450°F for about half an hour, until it’s all golden and charred.
The daal was something I flipped past en route to the curried potato recipe; it had me at the first line: “in a large saucepan with plenty of water, bring to a boil and cook lentils until overdone and mushy.” Hey, I can do that. Beyond that, the recipe pointed me in the right direction and I went on my way. This is definitely a keeper. Funny that I’ve never made this before, but looking at the recipe it seems so completely obvious.
Daal Curry
1 1/2 cups dried orange lentils
canola oil, for cooking
1 large onion, chopped
2 large tomatoes, chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp. curry paste or powder
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2-1 cup half & half or evaporated milk or coconut milk (optional)
1/2 tsp. garam masala (optional)
a handful of cilantro, chopped (optional)
Put the lentils in a pot and boil for 15-20 minutes, until very well done and mushy. Drain. Meanwhile, heat a good drizzle of oil and sauté the onions until dark golden. Add the tomatoes and garlic and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the curry paste, sugar, chili powder, and salt, then the lentils and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the half & half and cook until it has the consistency you want - they can be runny, or thicken up if you cook it for a few more minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in the garam masala, then sprinkle with cilantro, if you like. Serves 4-6.
The tangy, pillowy naan is from Tahera’s book. It seemed at first to be a little over the top to make naan from scratch, but then again it isn’t any different than making pizza dough. Next time, I’ll brush the outside of the rolled dough with melted butter spiked with garlic before cooking it, and I am so using this as a base for Indian-influenced pizzas on the barbecue. Tandoori chicken, perhaps?
Naan
a variation from Simply Indian
1/2 cup warm water
2 1/2 tsp. instant yeast
1 tsp. sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg, beaten
5 Tbsp. powdered milk (optional - I didn’t use any)
5 Tbsp. plain yogurt
melted butter or oil, for frying
In a large bowl, stir together the water, yeast and sugar and let stand for 5 minutes, until foamy. If it doesn’t foam, the yeast is inactive; toss it out!
Stir in the flour, salt, canola oil, egg and powdered milk, and stir until almost combined. Add the yogurt and work into a soft, pliable dough.
Cover with a tea towel and let rise until doubled in size; about an hour or two.
Divide the dough into 6-8 pieces and on a lightly floured surface, roll out each piece into an oval. Brush both sides with melted butter or oil. (Tahera instructs to brush one side with butter, the other with milk.)
Cook each naan in a very hot skillet until blistered and cooked, flipping as necessary.
Makes 6-8 naan.
Print Post
Share on Facebook
June 24 2008 | beans and bread and veg and vegetarian | 2 Comments »
Yes, I know, I am an extraordinarily boring person this week. Sorry about that. Sorry too for the hideously blue bowl I decided in haste to dish my boring chili up in, not even thinking (after 170 days) that I would be required to take a photo of it. I’m particularly proud of my buttered sliced bread garnish - it reminds me of dinnertime images of the 50s when they’d put out a section of Wonder Bread slices in a serving bowl on the kitchen table. (This is not Wonder Bread. It is grocery store sliced bread, but at least it’s whole wheat. Honest. When I see Wonder Bread I can’t not think about Clarissa Dickson Wright’s reference to “slimy white slice”.) Tomorrow promises to get more interesting, as I’m cooking for my Dad’s birthday on Saturday and Ramsay Rocks on Sunday, an event I’m emceeing (and cooking for the volunteers - there will be plenty of food for everyone else though). You should come.
I do have a confession to make: I love anything tomato-saucy with buttered bread. I have been known to make a spaghetti sandwich, just to create a vehicle for the tomato sauce. Sometimes I just scoop up chunky tomato sauce leftovers with bread. W tried to mimic me tonight and made quite a mess of the patio. Lou was happy though. (I mean John Cusack.)
Again, chili isn’t even particularly summery. But it is cowboyish, and Stampede is coming up faster than I care to acknowledge. When I was 12, I won the Calgary Stampede Chili Cook-off. (The adult one, not a special cook-off for kids; let me tell you, there were some mighty unhappy contestants who took their chili very seriously and were not at all pleased to be whupped by a 12 year old girl who sort of threw a bit of this and that in the pot and then didn’t even particularly remember her recipe.) This year, I’m hosting the second annual kids’ chili cook-off at the Stampede on Kids’ Day. We don’t have enough contestants yet, so if you have kids under 14 who are interested in entering their chili - the winner then gets to make their recipe on the ATCO cooking stage and be on TV, if they want to - email me!
I have never used a recipe for chili. There is no reason to. I cook up some lean ground beef or bison with a chopped onion, maybe a red pepper, in a drizzle of canola oil, then add a couple cans of beans, drained to get rid of the salty bean sludge (I like things beany - red kidney beans for sure, sometimes baked beans in tomato sauce, sometimes white kidney or black beans) a big can or two of diced tomatoes (whole is fine too), and about a cup of salsa if I have some. A good heaping tablespoon or so of chili powder - which is really high in fiber, being simply ground up dried chiles - and sometimes a small spoonful of cocoa and/or instant coffee or espresso, just to give it some depth and colour. Coffee is the cowboy way, after all. Decaf works just as well. Simmer it all for about an hour to break down the tomatoes. That’s pretty much it. If you want to add a can of tomato paste, that’s always a good idea - tomato paste is such a great source of lypocene - much higher than fresh tomatoes, as they have been cooked down and condensed. Tomato paste is also great as pizza sauce. It’s nice and thick, and quite sweet tasting, being just pure tomatoes. Kids love it.
The biggest flavour factor when it comes to chili is time - I always let it sit in the fridge for a day or two before we eat it. It’s edible of course the day you make it, but always better after a day or so. It also freezes very well.
For some reason, yesterday’s spaghetti and today’s chili tasted fantastic. No thanks to any particularly stellar culinary skills, but more likely due to the fact that I spent a good 4 hours completely secluded from anything edible in the CBC newsroom beforehand. They are really onto something with this concept of bon appetit.
Share on Facebook
June 19 2008 | beans and bison and freezable and one dish | 6 Comments »
Again, no idea what’s for dinner at 5:47 PM. Fortunately, last time I was at Spolumbos I picked up a bunch of extra chicken-apple and turkey-cranberry sausages for emergencies such as these. A few frozen-solid sausages thaw fairly quickly in a bowl of warm water and take about 10 minutes on the barbecue. I know these are a little more well-done than they should be - I like them that way, but I skinned them a bit for W.
I had mixed up a batch of bean salad earlier in the week when feeling a little vegetable-depleted. A can of green beans, one of yellow, one of kidney beans, one of chick peas. A chunk of leftover purple onion and red pepper. The dressing: equal parts sugar and vinegar, simmered in a small pot on the stove until the sugar dissolves, and then the same amount of canola oil stirred in along with a squirt of mustard and a shake of celery seed.
This will keep well in the fridge for at least a week.
Oh how my Friday nights have changed over the past few years…
Share on Facebook
June 13 2008 | beans and on the grill | 2 Comments »
I take back yesterday’s comment about Lou being deserving of homemade peanut butter and cheese treats - this morning, his first order of business was to completely chew up Mike’s glasses. Silly me, here I was worried about our shoes.
The fantastic thing about soup is that it can start from anything. I never would have thought to combine these ingredients in soup, but I looked in my fridge tonight, still full from a late lunch at Aida’s with A (please feel free to hate me for eating so well this week. I would) and found the better half of a can of black beans (leftover from the quesadillas) and two mild Italian Spolumbos sausages that needed cooking. And the storage compartment in the seat of the bench at the kitchen table is beginning to get difficult to close - every time I go to the market I pick up sweet potatoes and add them to the stash, which hasn’t been depleted lately, so I figured sausage, black beans and sweet potatoes might make a fine soup.
Because my other favorite black bean soup is made so much better with a fresh jalapeno pepper (and I say this as someone who is not a particular fan of jalapenos), I minced one (they cost about 3 cents each and last forever in the fridge, so I happen to have a couple) and cooked it along with the sausage. Unlike onions and garlic, a hot pepper’s heat will not be tamed by cooking; if you’re a wuss like me, get rid of the seeds and membranes, which contain the majority of a pepper’s capsaicin. Then I threw in a diced sweet potato, the black beans, a 1L tetra pack of chicken stock, a shake of cumin and about a third of a can of leftover tomato sauce that was also in the fridge. I thought this soup would benefit from a hit of tomato - a bit of tomato sauce or spoonful of tomato paste gives it a far richer and deeper flavour, and the starch in the potato thickens the broth slightly.
Some of you in warmer climates may think such a soup is the exact opposite of what one might want to eat on a June evening. Honestly, Calgary does have its share of 30 degree days, but today it’s damp and chilly; we all huddled into kangaroo jackets in order to go outside and see how the garden is recovering from the hailstorm A and I watched out the window at Aida’s while we finished our ricotta-rosewater cheesecake and baklava. When the forecast calls for a week of rain, I’ll be glad to have a pot of leftover soup in the fridge. Besides, Mike is suffering from a hangover, and I can’t think of much more reviving than a warm bowl of spicy black beans, sweet potatoes and sausage.
Sausage, Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1-2 mild or hot Italian sausages
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1 medium sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can black beans, drained
1 tsp. cumin
1 L chicken or vegetable stock
about a cup of tomato sauce or a big spoonful of tomato paste
In your soup pot, heat a drizzle of oil over medium heat. Squeeze the sausage out of its casing into the pot and cook it, breaking it up as you stir it around, until it’s no longer pink. Add the jalapeno pepper, then the sweet potato, beans, cumin, stock and tomato sauce. Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour, until the potatoes are tender and the broth has thickened a bit.
Serves 4-6.
Per serving, based on 4 servings: 416 calories, 7.7 g total fat (1.5 g saturated fat, 3.8 g monounsaturated fat, 1.8 g polyunsaturated fat), 27.8 g protein, 60.5 g carbohydrate, 30 mg cholesterol, 14 g fiber. 16% calories from fat.
Print Post
Share on Facebook
June 06 2008 | beans and freezable and one dish and soup | 6 Comments »
OK, so this was really lunch. But it was late in the afternoon, close to dinner. This evening I was emceeing a fundraiser for a school for autistic kids, and it was a (fairly utilitarian) buffet dinner, not much interesting to write home about, so I opted to default back to lunch.
We were out doing some running around most of the day, and starving. The plan was to pick up a couple of slices of pizza at Wicked Wedge, but when traffic got far too difficult to fight, I told Mike to head home and I’d stir up something great I’d just read about.
I was romanced by the idea of this chickpea salad by Molly at Orangette. Molly calls this a salad, (and who am I to argue with Molly?) and I suppose technically it is what with the oil and lemon, but my idea of a salad usually includes a few more base ingredients. I can’t really go so far as to call it a recipe; it’s more like seasoning a can of chickpeas. She once said something along the lines of “one of life’s greatest skills is the ability to doctor up a can of beans”, and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve adapted this a bit, partly because it’s easier around these parts to find a 19 oz can of beans, and partly because I like it with pepper.
It wasn’t as earth-shattering as I hoped, but Mike called it “deeelish“, and I found myself thinking about the leftovers in the fridge. It’s one of those last-second formulas that can round out a meal or create a perfect picnic or lunch at work instantly.
Alongside, some sautéed spinach with garlic. I picked up a bag of local Hotchkiss spinach the other day, thinking about that poached egg on toast with sautéed spinach that was so good so many months ago. The combination was good when you got a bit of garlicky spinach on your fork and anchored it by spearing a few chickpeas.
Chickpeas with Lemon and Parmesan
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil or cold-pressed canola oil
1 Tbsp. lemon juice (about half a lemon)
salt & pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Stir everything together; serve right away or put in the fridge to chill. Can be kept overnight; makes a great portable lunch.
Serves 2-4.
Print Post
Share on Facebook
May 31 2008 | beans and salads and veg and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
I took so many photos today. Of the roasted chick peas and chard, of the lemon potatoes, of the smoked lamb on and off the smoker, and drizzled with a dark blend of Worcestershire, vinegar and molasses on our ciabatta buns. All in the idyllic setting of our friends’ airy backyard veranda. The photos were stellar, on account of the fabulous food and setting of course, but when I got home and downloaded them, they disappeared from my computer and camera. It’s likely that I did something in my sleepy stupor, but damn. It.
So yes, we went for dinner at Mike & Natasha’s, so that we could finally try out the smoker we kept hearing so much about. They smoked a leg of lamb, and let me tell you, it was fantastic.
When I heard lamb was in the smoker, I figured roasted lemon potatoes were in order - something I’ve been meaning to try, but never got around to. I searched epicurious for one (sometimes I’m too daunted by the sheer number of cookbooks on my shelves) and came up with a recipe for Roasted Potatoes with Garlic, Lemon and Oregano, excerpted from Aglaia Kremezi’s book The Foods of the Greek Islands. Definitely a keeper, although I may increase the amount of lemon juice next time.
I surfed on, seeking inspiration for something side-dishy to bring that went with lamb. I’ve been trying to revive a bunch of chard I bought last weekend in a glass of water on the countertop, but it is not responding well to treatment anymore, so I searched for something using chard and came across a recipe for roasted garbanzo beans and garlic with swiss chard, and thought I’d give it a go. Another success. As always, I changed it drastically, and if you follow the original recipe I don’t recommend doing it all in advance, as it offers as an option. The chick peas were wonderfully crunchy and soft when they were fresh from the oven, but hours later were a little pasty. Also, the recipe calls for far more olive oil than I think is necessary. You end up draining it all off anyway - and there’s no need for the beans to boil in oil. (The original called for 1 1/4 cups with the chick peas - I used about 1/3 cup.)
And fresh mint mojitos to wash it all down.
Roasted Chick Peas with Garlic and Chard
Chick peas:
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chick peas (also known as garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
1 head of garlic, separated into cloves and peeled
2 shallots or 3 green onions, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
1/3 cup olive or canola oil
Chard:
2 Tbsp. olive or canola oil
1 large bunch Swiss chard, center stems removed and leaves coarsely torn
6 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 cup vegetable, chicken or beef broth
Preheat oven to 400°F. In a baking dish or cast iron skillet, combine the chick peas, garlic, shallots or green onions, bay leaves and oil. Roast for about 45 minutes, shaking the pan once or twice, until everything is golden.
If you used a cast iron skillet, pour the chick pea mixture into a bowl and set the skillet on the stove top. (Otherwise, pull out a skillet.) Drizzle with oil and when it’s hot but not smoking, saute the chard and garlic for about 5 minutes, until it’s wilted. Pour the stock overtop, cover and cook for another 10 minutes, until the chard is tender. Remove the lid and drain any excess liquid away.
Add the chick pea mixture to the pan, season the whole thing with salt and pepper, toss around (add a little extra oil if you need to) until heated through, and serve.
Roasted Potatoes with Garlic, Lemon and Oregano
3 lbs. Yukon gold or baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 cup olive or canola oil
4 garlic cloves, crushed or thinly sliced
1 1/2 tsp. dried oregano, crumbled
1 tsp. salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup beef or chicken stock
1/3 cup lemon juice
chopped fresh oregano (optional)
Preheat oven to 400°F. Spread the potatoes in a single layer in a 9″ x 13″ baking dish and pour the oil over them. Add the garlic, dried oregano, salt and pepper to taste and toss well to coat with the oil.
Bake the potatoes for 15 minutes. Add the stock, toss and bake for 10 minutes more. Add the lemon juice, toss and bake for 10 to 15 minutes more, or until the potatoes are golden and cooked through. If you like, sprinkle with fresh oregano.
Print Post
Share on Facebook
May 17 2008 | beans and veg | No Comments »
Eureka!
I love it when I learn how to make something I’ve never made before, especially when it’s dead easy, and even good for me.
I was grumpy when I got home. I didn’t have a plan for dinner. I wanted so badly to order Inglewood Pizza. As is often the case, my mind was changed by wilting produce - in this case a bunch of cilantro in the fridge that was worth about 58 cents. One of my biggest pet peeves is buying produce, letting it go slimy in the fridge, and throwing it in the compost bin.
I had the idea about a week ago to stuff a chicken with crumbled falafel, and the thought has been rattling around in my head ever since. I’ve only ever made falafel with a mix, so I looked up a recipe on epicurious. Turns out it’s as easy to make falafel as it is to make hummus. Of course - why wouldn’t it be? I just never really thought about it. This particular recipe called for fresh parsley and cilantro, and I just happened to have both. I’m sure you could get away with using either, or neither.
The recipe I used was a good one, all it required of the cook was a few pulses in the food processor, but we found it far too salty. (It called for a full teaspoon of salt, and canned beans are always saltier than dried - rinse them well to get rid of as much sodium as possible.) As I was patting myself on the back for making falafel from scratch in under 15 minutes, I came to the line: “Turn into a bowl and refrigerate, covered, for several hours.”
#$@!$#%@#$%!!
So as any sane person would do, I ignored it. The falafel turned out perfectly. They might have been better after a rest, who knows. I put out a plate of them with some whole wheat pita, tzatziki, chopped tomatoes and cucumbers. They were too garlicky and salty for W, but worked for us. (The original recipe called for a full teaspoon of salt - in this version below I’ve cut it down to 1/4 tsp.)
Falafel
(adapted from Epicurious, where it was reprinted from The Foods of Israel Today)
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chick peas, rinsed and drained
1 small onion, chopped
2-4 garlic cloves, peeled
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. salt
pinch dried chili flakes
1/4 cup all-purpose or whole wheat flour (plus extra, if needed)
1 tsp. baking powder
canola oil, for frying
Put the chick peas, onion, garlic, parsley, cilantro, cumin, salt and chili flakes in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until combined but not smooth. Add the flour and baking powder and pulse until you have a soft mixture that you can roll into balls without sticking to your hands. Add another spoonful or so of flour, if you need to.
Roll the dough into meatball-sized balls, and if you like, flatten each into a little pattie. I like doing this for maximum surface area, which equals more crunch. (They also cook through more quickly as the distance between the middle to the exterior is shorter.)
In a shallow pot or skillet, heat about 1/2″ of canola oil until it’s hot but not smoking. Test it with a bit of falafel mixture or a scrap of bread - the oil should bubble up around it. Cook the falafel for a few minutes per side, without crowding the pan (which will cool down the oil), until they are golden. Transfer to paper towels. (You could get away with using just a skiff of oil - if you do this, best to leave the falafels round, so that you can roll them around in the pan to brown all sides.)
Serve in pitas with tzatziki, chopped cucumber, purple onion and tomato.
Makes about 20 falafel balls or patties.
Tzatziki
Regular yogurt, preferably thick Greek yogurt, is far superior to the runny low fat or fat free varieties that are most commonly found at the grocery store. Even ‘full fat’ yogurts generally only contain about 3 grams per half cup, and it’s much more delicious and satisfying.
1 small English cucumber, unpeeled
1 – 2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 cups good quality plain yogurt, preferably Balkan-style
Salt & pepper to taste
Grate the cucumber with a box grater onto a double thickness of paper towel. Gather up the cucumber in the towel and squeeze out as much excess water as you can. (If you don’t mind runnier tzatziki, you can skip this step.)
Combine cucumber, garlic, yogurt, salt and pepper in a bowl and stir until well blended. If you like, add a squeeze or lemon. The garlic flavor will intensify the longer it sits.
Makes 2 1/2 - 3 cups.
Per 1/3 cup: 45 calories, 1 g total fat (0.6 g saturated fat, 0.3 g monounsaturated fat, 0.1 g polyunsaturated fat), 3.5 g protein, 5.6 g carbohydrate, 3.7 mg cholesterol, 0.3 g fiber. 20% calories from fat.
Print Post
Share on Facebook
May 06 2008 | beans and sandwiches and vegetarian | 6 Comments »
I can feel the beta carotene coursing through my veins. I think my eyesight is improving. Is that a gnat on the window in the next room?
As I may have mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been working on an article for City Palate on the subject of carrots. Not the most inspiring ingredient, but it’s always interesting what I come up with when faced with a deadline! It’s a timely assignment, actually; as of late my house has been littered with wilting carrots, their tips chewed off in gleeful homage to Bugs Bunny. W can’t say his own name, but is able to clearly enunciate “eeeeh… what’s up Doc?” At least he has his priorities straight. (An interesting tidbit: Bugs Bunny’s blasé carrot-munching demeanor was inspired by a scene from the movie It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable leans nonchalantly against a fence, eating carrots while talking to Claudette Colbert.)
And here’s something else you should know: although carrots seem relatively low-maintenance, it’s important to note that fruit (apples in particular) should not be stored alongside carrots; fruit expels ethylene gases that are easily absorbed by carrots, making them bitter.
If you’ve never tried couscous (not a grain, but teeny bits of pasta) before, come on, it’s the most amicable starchy dish out there. So much easier to make than rice. You pour boiling water over it in a bowl (1 1/4 cups water to 1 cup couscous), lid it with a plate and leave it for 10 minutes. You get extra points for buying the whole wheat stuff, which (unlike other pastas) tastes exactly like regular couscous.
Moroccan Braised Carrots, Squash & Chick Peas with Couscous
a drizzle of canola or olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
2 tsp. sweet paprika
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/8-1/4 tsp. dried chili flakes
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can diced tomatoes, undrained
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 small butternut squash, peeled and cubed
3-4 carrots, peeled or scrubbed and sliced ½” thick
1 19 oz. (540 mL) can chick peas, rinsed and drained
1/3 cup golden raisins
plain yogurt, for serving with (optional)
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro or mint, or toasted sliced almonds to sprinkle overtop (optional)
1 cup couscous (plain or whole wheat)
In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Sauté the onion for about 5 minutes, until soft. Add garlic and ginger and cook for another minute. Add the paprika, salt, pepper, cumin, turmeric and chile flakes and cook for another minute.
Add the tomatoes and then a full can of water (use the tomato can), the lemon juice, squash, carrots and chick peas. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.
Stir in the raisins, taste and season with salt and pepper. At this point you can cool it completely and refrigerate for a day or two, to allow the flavors to meld; rewarm on the stovetop or in the microwave. To make the couscous, put it in a bowl and pour 1 1/4 cups boiling water overtop; cover with a plate and let sit for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork.
Serve hot over couscous (or rice or quinoa), topped with a dollop of yogurt and a sprinkle of chopped cilantro or toasted almonds.
Serves 6-8.
Print Post
Share on Facebook
April 23 2008 | beans and one dish and vegetarian | 3 Comments »
This afternoon was K’s baby shower, so from 2-5 W and I grazed on party snacks: crispy, deeply toasted sesame and caraway crackers with cheese, grapes and pineapple from the fruit plate, sliced sausages on little colored sticks (mostly W’s department), cookies and chocolate covered peanut butter balls. By 6 we weren’t much in the mood for dinner. By 7 I realized Mike was about to make eggs and toast for himself, and although I likely ingested enough calories to count as dinner, I still wanted something warm and dinner-like, and W probably needed a bit of a nutritional boost.
I evaluated the contents of my fridge and came up uninspired, so decided to chip away at the contents of my freezer by boldly grabbing the first frozen-solid yogurt container within reach and thawing it for dinner.
Although it was labelled ‘pesto chicken’, it was in fact antipasto.
The second, however, was marked ‘beans: march 1/08′. (Mike gets full credit for labeling it.) It went into the pot to work its way back to its former state.
I grabbed a couple of Yukon gold potatoes, still on the counter from last night’s trip to Lethbridge, diced them small (so that they would cook more quickly without boiling) and threw them in my skillet with a little olive oil. While the potatoes cooked the beans thawed, and in about 20 minutes we had something warm that resembled a meal.
Share on Facebook
March 30 2008 | beans and leftovers and vegetarian | No Comments »
I’m just finishing up an article on the subject of picnic food for the summer issue of a Toronto kids’ magazine, and in it one of my menu suggestions is a heartier version of pasta salad - one made with stuffed tortellini instead of the usual rotini or penne or whatever. The recipe says cheese tortellini, but when I ran over to Safeway to buy some so I could take a photo, they had smoked chicken tortellini (just the Safeway brand - I’d pull out the package to refer to, but when I went to boil them I turned on a burner, changed my mind and used another burner, turned the first one off and then mindlessly set the plastic package down on top of it) so I bought that instead (it looks identical to the cheese version, so you won’t be able to tell in the photo anyway), and a package of feta. Boiled the tortellini, ran it under cold water and drained it, then tossed it in a bowl with a drained can of red kidney beans, a few chopped sun-dried tomatoes, a handful of crumbled feta and a couple spoonfuls of pesto (on account of it being W’s magic elixer; also flavorful and works instead of vinaigrette, and won’t spoil as easily as mayo-dressed pasta salads in the hot sun). I left half in the fridge to marinate, and packed the other half to bring on our impromptu road trip to Banff. It was perfect to pick at in the car, and when we got to the hotel we found it has a little fridge! So W picked at it in the bath, lining the tortellini up along the edge of the tub, I picked at it at the little hotel-room desk, and I just noticed it’s past dinnertime (the boys are at the pool) and we don’t really have a plan. Chances are, the tortellini (it’s still not finished) and assorted car snacks will suffice.
I did take photos. But it seems I can’t upload them on my laptop… you’ll have to wait!
Share on Facebook
March 25 2008 | beans and one dish and pasta and salads | 1 Comment »
Next »
