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Category: vegetarian

food planning for my week – Chili, Coconut Rice

Okay, so after this weekend, I have a lot of meals ready to go:

already cooked
chili
mashed potatoes
coconut rice

thawed/thawing
vegetable lasagna
2 chicken leg quarters in an indian marinade

perishable
1 large sweet potato
collard greens (leftovers)
spinach
1 zucchini

Monday: George Takei talk
Chili
(buy more cheese)

Tuesday: not going to dance practice, possibly going to Film Festival closing night part 6-7pm
cook chicken
coconut rice
spinach or zucchini on the side

Wednesday: not watching Lost, first night of Passover
cook greens with bacon rind (for Passover)
bake sweet potato
leftover chili

Thursday: second night of Passover
vegetable lasagna (buy cheese)

Friday: third night of Passover
mashed potatoes
cook greens with bacon rind (for Passover)
any leftover veggies

Wow – I totally lose at Passover.

Now do I want to buy a box of Matzoh so I can look pious in front of my two jewish coworkers? Sliced ham and mayonnaise is really good in a matzoh sandwich.

ETA: And we have Godiva chocolate at work today because it was a gift from the dental librarian. Later in the week, my boss has promised truffles because she has to clean them out of her house before Passover – score!

ETAA: Why don’t I also give you some recipes?

Chili
I make chili from a mix. But it is the best packaged chili mix ever because it doesn’t come out as a single powder. Instead, they put each spice in its own little packet.

I always use chunks of meat instead of ground beef. And I always have to add real onions and garlic.

Then, when I am adding the spice packets, I have started not using the salt packet and only adding a little salt by taste at the end. I’ll add extra black pepper, powdered thyme, worcestershire sauce, a bay leaf (removed later), and a pinch or two of sugar. This time, I also added a couple cap-fulls of Manischewitz wine.

Awesome

~*~

Coconut Rice
Yeah, I totally made this up with no idea whether it would work.

1 part long grain rice
1 part water
1 part (whole) milk
no butter
instead, a chunk of coconut cream, well – a chunk of the fatty solids on top and a dollop of the liquid below. Note – this is different from coconut milk
a pinch of salt
more sugar (about 2 tsp sugar/cup rice… but I didn’t measure)

cook.

Carrot and Ginger Soup & Mediterranean Lemon Chicken

I made two tasty things this weekend, and I don’t think I have posted these recipes before. Both were inspired by fairly different dishes at restaurants.

Carrot and Ginger Soup
based on the Carrot and Ginger Soup at the Hershey Hotel buffet lunch… their soup was smooth and creamy and the sort of thing where the directions tell you after cooking to put everything through a processor and strain it. I so don’t understand why people think it is such a good idea to transfer boiling hot soup through several different containers and processes, so this one all went into a Cuisinart (because the kitchen I was using had one!) before being added to the soup.

Step 1: Soak a cube of Knorr’s vegetable bouillon in 2 cups of hot water. (Or have real stock available, but we didn’t at the time.)

Step 2: Melt butter in stockpot (minimum of 2oz, but feel free to add a lot more). Chop 2 medium onions in Cuisinart and 1 clove of garlic (only 1 because I don’t think the original soup had any, but I found myself unable to make savoury food without any garlic). Dump onions into pot and rinse the Cuisinart.

Step 3: Peel carrots (7? A bagful? A bunch o’carrots) and put them in the processor (ETA: in retrospect, it would be better to precess the carrots after. There were tiny grainy bits (that weren’t a bit deal but could be improved) in the final product). Peel ginger (1.5-2 inches), slice it against the grain to break up the fibers, and put that in the processor. Dump into the pot. Stir around to just fry it all in fat a bit and then add the stock/bouillon.

Step 4: peel half a normal-sized sweet potato (or one small one), put it in the processor, and then add it to the soup for smoothness. Peel, process, and add one apple, too.

Step 5: Let cook covered until there is no resistance on your tongue.

Step 6: Reduce heat, and finish off with whole milk and/or cream until it looks sexy to you.

~*~

Mediterranean Lemon Chicken
inspired by those Moroccan nine-course dinner places with belly dancers… usually one course is really sexy chicken, and this is the closest I can get to the flavour.

Ingredients
Garlic – as much as will – a minimum of 3 pods, but one of those large jars of peeled garlic cloves will be very useful here
3-5 lemons
chicken parts
white wine
(olive oil)
8-10 olives (not in vinegar, not in cans, and not in jars either – go somewhere with a fancy olive bar and look for wrinkly black olives in oil that smell dark and musky – they should add a nice flavour to the chicken without making it olivey)
optional fresh herbs (rosemary works well, and you only get to pick one herb and stick with it for the dish)

Directions
Choose a casserole dish that will fit your chicken pieces laid out flat – and deep enough to hold juices.

Cover the bottom of the casserole dish with peeled garlic cloves. No, that’s not enough, I said *cover* the bottom – 1 solid layer.

Put chicken in dish. If you are using both dark and white meat, but the white meat to the center and the dark meat around the outside (and, I have a theory that if you are doing both, the dark meat should be pulled from the fridge and the breasts from the freezer, but I haven’t tested that theory yet).

Scatter olives evenly among the meat.

Slice the lemons into slices of any thickness, leaving the ends chunky. cover the surface with lemon slices and put the ends around the edges of the dish.

If you want, take some herbs, still on the stems, and just lay them over the chicken and tuck them under some of the lemon slices.

Add a little white wine to give it some juice as it starts cooking, but no more than will cover the layer of garlic.

If your meat is predominantly white meat, then drizzle some olive oil over the top as well.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake until it is cooked. If you have all thighs, then you might need to check it halfway through and see how the level of liquid is doing… you might need to drain some. After it is cooked though, uncover it, and let it go a few more minutes to get some color.

Furthermore, these dishes have been given the AprilKat seal of approval.

Greekish Eggplant

This was a thought experiment. I can’t remember whether I actually made this.

Greek-ish Eggplant (not served at moot)

Ingredients:
2 medium eggplants, trimmed, peeled, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
1 tablespoon salt
2 medium-size red bell peppers
8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1-2 canned tomatoes
3/4 cup chopped fresh Italian parsley
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano

(maybe olives, but in a removable format)

Dice eggplant.

Roast peppers. Peel and seed peppers; cut into 1/2-inch-wide strips and set aside.

Heat 6 tablespoons oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add onions and sauté until light golden, about 10 minutes. Mix in garlic. Add eggplant, tomatoes, half of parsley, bay leaves, 1 teaspoon pepper, sugar, oregano, and cumin. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes. Add bell peppers and olives; cook uncovered 10 minutes longer, stirring occasionally. (Can be made 6 hours ahead. Chill. Rewarm before continuing.)

Sprinkle with cilantro before serving.

Baigan Bhartha

Pretty sure this if from Indian Epicure: Classic Recipes from North India by Meera Taneja, but my cat isn’t letting me up to check.

Ingredients:
2 large round aubergines
1/2 lb onions
1 inch root ginger, chopped fine
1t cumin seed
1t salt
1/2t chilli powder
1 green chilli, chopped fine
1lb fresh or canned tomatoes
2-3T oil

Scorch the aubergines under the grill until the skin has charred. Set aside to cool. Peel off the charred skin and chop the aubergines. Chop the onions finely, heat the oil in a deep frying pan, add the onions, green chilli, ginger, cumin seeds and chilli powder and fry until the onions are light brown. Add the aubergines and tomatoes. Cook slowly, stirring frequently. The aubergines will absorb the oil from the onions, so cook until the aubergine, tomato and onion mixture releases the oil slightly – about 15 minutes. Serve very hot. [also good with some yogurt mixed in at the very end.]

Mostly Vegetarian (+butter) – Butternut & Apple Soup, Indian String Beans, Apple & Cabbage

I am having my lovely neighbors over for dinner, and am making vegetarian food. Since I have been planning and thinking about this all day, I am sharing with you.

Butternut & Apple soup (recipe source)
– melt 2 tablespoons butter
– finely chop 1 onion, and throw that in the butter
– cut squash in half, scoop out seeds, remove skin, and cut up (well, this was what my recipe said, but I suspect life would be easier if I had just popped the squash in a pan with some water and pre-cooked it in the oven)
– by now, your onions are lovely and translucent, so add a teaspoon or so of curry powder and cook a bit more, stirring often, but also taking time to dice one apple
– add about 3 cups of stock, squash, apple, and bring to a boil.
– cut up 3-4 sage leaves, add to soup
– reduce heat, cover, simmer for a while
– now here is where I have philosophical differences with cookbooks. The cookbook has you taking the soup and putting it in a blender so everything is smooth. Then it has you cleaning the pot to remove any traces of foam, and slowly reheating the soup. In my world, that’s a big no. I don’t have a blender. If I did, it still wouldn’t be worth the mess, besides — I usually make more then one blender’s worth of soup at a time. In my world, you cook the soup for hours instead of minutes, preferably for more than one day, and the ingredients get mushy enough to become homogeneous all on their own (and anything you don’t want homogeneous, goes in nearer serving time).
– So — cook, cook, cook
– Season to taste with salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, and a dash of thyme (the last three were not in the cookbook, but were tasty additions).
– when the liquid got a bit low (cause I forgot to re-cover the pot while I made this entry initially), I also added some whole milk and apple cider.
– when serving, top with a sour cream flavored with curry powder and horseradish sauce (but not too much, because the black pepper in the soup actually makes it kinda spicy, and the cream should cool things off)

Indian String Beans (recipe lost… from allrecipes.com?)
– melt ghee
– fry black mustard seeds until the pop a bit (I also fry a bit of asofoetida)
– add sliced garlic
– add parboiled string beans

Chinese Cabbage (recipe from Meghan, a friend who is neither vegetarian nor sushi)
– Melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter over as high a heat as will not burn the butter
– throw in a couple cloves of chopped garlic, and then almost immediately
– toss in shredded apple and shredded chinese cabbage
– season with pepper
– cook until almost mushy, but not quite

ETA: this was even more tasty with some pepper, soy sauce, and a splash of red wine… and might have been good with a teensy bit of white vinegar as well)

I forgot to eat breakfast, and now it is too close to dinner time to snack much. Buggery.