Leaning Vegetarian

Lentils are fabulously quick, so this was another pick for brown bagging.  These are plain green lentils, though red lentils would substitute just fine.

To start, rinse the lentils a few times and pick through to make sure there aren’t any rocks. I use the very scientific measurement of a cup of lentils and then water up to the first knuckle on my index finger.

Bring them to a boil:

When they reach a good boil, cover the pot, turn down the heat to very low, and simmer them until they absorb the water and are soft to the bite.

At this point, I let it cool a bit and then put half in the freezer and half in the refrigerator.

To make the curried lentils, we’ll need the lentils (that’s half of the one cup dry we started with) and

1/2 a small onion chopped
chopped ginger to taste (this is about a tablespoonful)
1 clove of garlic, chopped
carrots, chopped  (these tiny ones are from the carrot patch we should have thinned last month)
2-3 tablespoons coconut milk (We had some leftover coconut milk in the freezer – it keeps quite well this way if you don’t use all of a can.)
1 teaspoon green curry paste (ok, here, a generous knifetipful)

Saute the onions and carrots til the onions are a bit transparent, then add the garlic, curry paste, and ginger, and then the rest of the ingredients to the saucepan.

Bring this to a boil, and it’s ready to eat.

Ever since I saw the Breakfast Club I’ve wanted a Bento box like the one Molly Ringwald had. More often than not I’ve had the ANSI-standard brown bag, give or take a half-dozen fractured thermoses (thermi?) from grade school. Or just the OMG-I’ve-overslept three-can-grab: can of tuna, can of fruit, can of pop. If I was particularly together in my mad dash out the door, I’d remember the can opener and possibly even the fork that I’d need to actually eat said lunch.

I move pretty slowly in the morning, so if lunch requires lots of thought or extensive preparation, well, not gonna happen, so my lunch will have to be something that I can assemble the night before.

I love some of the ideas over at Just Bento – Kaela is fond of onigiri and it’s not complex to make. Cook rice (sticky if you have it, otherwise stir regular rice to make it a bit stickier) and cool it enough to handle. If you’ve got some biscuit cutters or other open-topped cookie cutter molds you can use those as a rice mold; we take a plastic sandwich bag and press rice into the corner, tucking a bit of plum sauce or pickled ginger or sesame seeds with finely chopped nori inside. Turn it out of the bag and wrap a strip of nori around one side.

I love soups too, and I’m lucky enough to have a fridge and a microwave in my office.  The miso soup at the top of this page is just a tablespoon of brown miso, a chopped green onion, and hot water. Normally I’d add some small cubes of tofu, too. The components fit nicely in a plastic bag, and then I can add them to my mug of hot water at work.

So far this week’s selections also include a dollop of the quinoa and chickpea pilaf from last week’s leftovers, plus some of the southern peaches that are out now.

This week I’ve checked Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian out of the library and I’m going to be bringing some of the basic lentil dishes for lunch this week. Check back in in a couple of days and we’ll have our attempts written up.

I’ve heard of brewer’s yeast used as a B-vitamin supplement, but wasn’t familiar with the nutritional yeast referenced in many vegetarian recipes.

Nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast similar to brewer’s yeast. It’s made from a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae that is fermented and dried, and is sold in this flaky powder form.

Nutritional yeast can be used as a cheese replacement – I think the flavor is reminiscent of parmesan. It’s high in protein and B-vitamins (B12 may be added depending on the type of yeast you’re using) and is typically low in fat and sodium.

Rachelle’s used it at school as a cheesy popcorn topping. We used it in the seitan we made a couple weeks ago for the nutritional value and also for a little extra savoriness. For vegans, it’s used in recipes like this queso over at VegWeb.

This base noodle dough is also great for ravioli and pirogi. Posts on those to follow soon.

Ingredients

3 c. (or so) flour (all purpose works; semolina is probably more authentic)
2 eggs
1 tbsp salt
4-5 kale leaves (or spinach, chard, beet greens – pick your favorite sturdy green)

3/4 cup veggie sausage and/or ground beef for the meat eaters (more or less as you like; increase/decrease spices to match)
2 tbsp basil
2 tbsp oregano
1 tsp chopped garlic
bread crumbs

olive oil
sliced garlic and parmesan and/or sauce of your choice

Process

Mix the veggie sausage with half the basil, oregano, and garlic; roll into meatballs.

Fry these till browned in a bit of the olive oil. Mix the ground beef with the rest of the basil, oregano, and garlic and a little bit of bread crumbs to pick up just a bit of the moisture, but not enough that they feel dry. Fry these till browned as well.

Steam or saute the kale until it’s wilted. Put it in a food processor and chop into fine pieces (I like the speckled effect; if you’d prefer a more solid color, take it to a puree consistency).

You can use a food processor for this step, but I have warm fuzzy memories of my grandmother mixing noodles on the counter, so I do it there too.  Pile three cups of flour and the salt on a clean countertop, make a well, and crack your eggs into the center.

Use a fork to beat the eggs in the well, gradually pulling in more flour as you go.

While it’s still pretty wet, add the kale. Keep mixing until you have a sturdy dough that does not readily stick to the counter – you may not use all the flour, or you can add a bit more water as you prefer. Knead this until it feels smooth and mixed.

Roll this into a round, and let it rest.  Set up your boiling pot (I like a dutch oven with lots of water) and start warming any sauce you like. We tried this with thinly sliced garlic, browned lightly in some olive oil, with a bit of parmesan on top, and also with some store-bought red sauce.

Keep rolling the dough out until it’s quite thin – keep checking that it’s not sticking to the counter and sprinkle with flour and flip over as needed. If you’ve got a pasta maker, use that – I don’t, so we do this by hand. I like kind of chunky noodles so I take it down to about 1/16″ – they’ll get thicker as they cook, so take that into account.

I use a pizza cutter to slice thin strips – there’s no requirement that these be any particular length, and only need to be consistent enough in length and width to cook evenly. Also check that yours is as dull as ours is so you don’t cut up your countertop.

If you’re not cooking all the pasta now, you can dry these by draping them over a spoon handle propped between two pots, or bag them for the fridge if you’re using them within the week.

Once the water is at a full boil, add the noodles gradually and make sure they stay at a boil.  This will take around 5 minutes to cook, depending on the size of your noodle – check them often. Drain, flip with a bit of olive oil (or the sliced garlic/oil mix if you’ve done that), add sauce and parmesan to your taste, and top with the veggie or beef meatballs. This is also tasty if you swap out the kale and use roasted red peppers,  or sauteed mushrooms, or black pepper, and we’re going to try a toasted chile pasta here eventually.

I go on baking jags on the weekend. Every so often things surprise me in a good way. These baguettes were one of those things. The rest of the household is out camping today while I mind the menagerie and a few chores. And take time out for a nice meditative lunch with one of the yellow tomatoes from the garden.

I gotta tell you; I was pretty skeptical about the homemade seitan after we’d boiled it and stored the odd-shaped lumps and broth in the fridge. I’d had it before, but boy, this didn’t look quite like an appetizing main dish. At all.

But I figured a stir-fry would mix many tastes together even if it was pretty meh.

Boy, was I wrong. It browns wonderfully in a skillet, and the nice crispy crust and substantial texture worked spectacularly better than I’d hoped.

Start by slicing the seitan into roughly inch square bits, and stir-fry it in a bit of hot oil.

Add a clove of garlic, a dollop of minced ginger, and a green onion to the seitan once both sides are brown. Then add the sliced red peppers and a bit of bok choy, and cook that til the peppers are tender.  Mix a couple tablespoons of hoisin sauce (or to taste) with a bit of water in which you’ve dissolved a sprinkle of cornstarch, and stir that into the pan.  Serve with steamed rice.

Seitan’s definitely a win. Rachelle is considering making a faux chicken salad – I’ll see if I can get her to take pictures and post it.

Note to self: See ‘what we learned in the first month’, especially the ‘plan ahead’ part. I love baking potatoes then mashing them for the nicer roasty taste, but hey, it’s already 9 pm; boiling will have to do.

I think this dish was originally made using cabbage, but I love kale in it.  I found this recipe on Steph’s excellent blog Wasabimon (when all else fails, cook) (go see, we’ll be here when you get back) and remembered that I hadn’t had it in forever. It’s also pretty quick to fix, especially if you have (erm…) planned ahead and have some baked potatoes ready to go. The guys have this as a side dish with a bit of kielbasa or bratwurst.

[Side note: Colcannon is also a splendid Celtic band out of Boulder, Colorado - keep an eye out for them as they travel; definitely worth a pint and a listen.]

Cut up your potatoes, and put them on to boil while you chop onions and garlic. Set those on to saute with a healthy dollop of butter or olive oil.

Chop your kale finely, and add it in with the garlic and onion mix. Isn’t this an awesomely fabulous emerald green?

When the potatoes are soft enough, add them to the kale and mash with a bit of milk.

Add salt and pepper to your taste, and enjoy.

When my co-workers Verna and Marti Lea took me over to the Lotus Pond restaurant for a vegetarian lunch many years ago, I was most puzzled by one of the main ingredients in the buffet there: wheat glutens.

This turned out to be seitan, a cooked and flavored wheat gluten. It had a surprisingly sturdy, chewy texture reminiscent of chicken. Seitan is high in protein and very low in fat; some store varieties have a dab of iron as well.

It can be prepared at home from flour and water, kneaded and run under water to remove the wheat starch, and marinated. There are recipes for simmering it, baking it, and frying it, all of which result in different textures.

What you see here is taken from the Post Punk Kitchen recipe (these amounts are halved – we didn’t have enough vital wheat gluten to make the full recipe).

Vital wheat gluten (the same gluten that bakers add to make bread chewier), nutritional yeast, garlic, soy sauce, and water are mixed to form a stretchy dough, and then boiled.

In this recipe, I’ve rolled it into sausages with the intention of slicing it later to incorporate into a stir fry or to pan fry the slices. I’ve also read preparations that form it into a cutlet shape for frying.

After the broth with the seitan is brought up to a boil, it’s simmered for an hour. The small sliceable shapes are, well,  a lot larger by this point:

I’ll store these in the fridge with some of the broth for use later in the week.

When we decide on a dish, I’ll post the recipe and our taste test in a few days.

It’s become a bit of a tradition when I travel to see my brother that we all get together and make these egg rolls.

Why Sloan’s Lake? When I was in my early teens, there was a flea market? food court (before there were food courts)? group of craft stalls? in a big building by Sloan’s Lake in Denver. (Yeah, I know.  It’s Sloan Lake. Whatever; I’ve never heard a native call it that.) One of the vendors was frying egg rolls on the spot, and they were fabulous. Mom and I went home and recreated the recipe as closely as we could, and they do indeed taste like I’ll just have maybe one more, thanks.

It’s also a recipe that lends itself well to variation and preferences – other than a lot of ginger and a good bit of garlic, I suspect you could swap out just about everything to your taste.

Before you start, be sure you have some time free since the assembly process does take a good chunk of time. The mixed veggies can marinate overnight without problem, but once they’re wrapped they should be fried right away – they get just a bit soggy and tend to develop holes if they’re filled and then frozen without cooking.  Also they stick together like a mofo if they’re touching while they sit.

Ingredients

The only required ingredients are pretty much the cabbage, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and green onions. Everything else is to taste or optional, and if you want to add chopped green pepper, go for it.

This makes about 40 egg rolls.

1 small/medium head of Napa cabbage or a medium Savoy cabbage
3 good-sized cloves of garlic
1 generous chunk of ginger (say an inch)
4-5 green onions
1-2 cups of whole mushrooms (something like a cup when chopped)
1 cup bean sprouts
1 8 oz. can bamboo shoots
1 8 oz. can water chestnuts
~3 Tbsp. soy sauce
Two packages egg roll wrappers
1 egg or cornstarch or flour for sealing

If you’re making it for both vegetarians and meat eaters, add

1 cup small shrimp, or
1 large chopped chicken breast or 1 cup ground chicken, or
1 cup sliced or ground pork

Preparation

To start, take a generous bit of ginger root. Now double that. Really. I use a chunk about the size of my thumb for a large mixing bowl’s worth of fillings.  Grate or finely chop this with the garlic, and add a generous splash of soy sauce. You’re aiming to get the flavor distributed without it being wet enough to cause the oil to spit at you unduly.

Chop the cabbage and green onions, slice the mushrooms, cut the bamboo shoots into small sticks, run your knife through the bean sprouts to get shorter segments. Mix this in gradually with the garlic, ginger and soy, taking care to distribute the flavors well.

If you find that the mixture isn’t fine enough to roll easily, run your knife through a few more times. I like a bit of texture to my egg roll contents; you can probably go so far as to buzz these all quickly in the food processor but I just chop roughly. Do take them down to small bits, though – rolling them is much easier if you don’t have crisp whole bean sprouts poking holes in the wrappers.

If you’re using egg to seal the wrappers, whisk an egg with a fork in a custard or teacup. If you’re using cornstarch or flour, mix a couple tablespoonsful in with the water. Use enough water to make a watery paste.

Open one package of wrappers and carefully peel one off. Cover or close the opened package – these dry out pretty quickly, so if you have extras when you’re done, seal it in something airtight.

Flip the square flat onto your work surface so the diagonal points toward you. Take a couple tablespoons of filling and place it on the corner nearest you.

Fold this corner over towards the center.

Holding that corner so it won’t unroll, tuck each side point in to the center, doing a bedsheet-hospital-corner tuck-in of the extra before those points come together.

Use your fingertips or a pastry brush (but I have filling and egg up to my elbows by the time I’m done, so why wash another implement) to smear the egg on the remaining corner, and roll up to that point. If there seem to be any gaps, dab a bit of paste on and squeeze the wrapper together. If you need to patch holes, use a bit of the final corner or a spare wrapper and some of the paste. The holes don’t really hurt anything if they’re small, but the cooking veggies will make the oil spit at you and the oil will be harder to drain.

Heat a generous half-inch of oil in a skillet (I like my cast iron pan, or a saucepan works too) until a corner of one of the egg rolls dipped in bubbles nicely.

Use a slotted spoon or tongs to place a few in the oil. Let the first side cook for a couple of minutes.

They’ll cook quickly, so be prepared to check the bottom and turn when they brown. Take them out when browned on both sides, and drain as upright as possible on a plate lined with several paper towels.

These are best hot but they freeze well – reheat in a 400° oven for crispness; they’re fine in the microwave too though they lose the crunch.

I prefer these with a bit of soy sauce and some dried yellow mustard mixed with water and a couple drops of vinegar to a thin paste. Wasabi is pretty good too. If I’m feeling particularly elegant, I’ll set up tiny sauce dishes for dipping.

This is another recipe from the terrific Veganomicon.

The version Rachelle made a couple weeks ago is here on the Quinoa page – it has plain quinoa; today’s is made with red quinoa.

I was tickled to be able to go out and pick some of the coriander seed from our garden – there’s one advantage to being slow on the cilantro harvest; you get coriander seed.

After starting off by sauteeing the onion and garlic in a bit of olive oil, we added a couple tablespoons of tomato paste, cumin, coriander (crushed), salt, and pepper, and then the red quinoa. When that had cooked a bit we added the broth and chickpeas and set that to boil.

The recipe calls for 18 minutes to simmer/steam while the quinoa absorbs the liquid – I found it took much longer. Just keep an eye on it, stir it every few minutes, and wait until the texture is to your liking. It’ll gradually get fluffy.

Our meat-eaters have this as a side dish, and it’s our main course. I’m tempted to add a bit of chile to add a little bit of heat as well (yes, I am a hot food fan), but cooking the quinoa in the spices gives it a nice depth of flavor.