Tomato-Basil Garden Soup
What started out as a way to make use of summertime tomato and basil became an exercise in finding out just how useful ground-up lentils can be. (Ground-up dried beans would be equally useful, but lentils are a lot thinner and therefore easier to grind in a coffee or spice grinder.) I like lentils in all forms — red and brown, in soup or pilafs — so I thought I’d see what would happen if I put a handful through my grinder.
Turns out that adding ground lentils to soup is an excellent way to thicken it while making it more hearty and stew-ish … and you wind up with a more protein-rich dish. Besides, since lentils only take 20 minutes to cook under normal, whole-lentil conditions (red lentils have already had their outer layer removed and are ready in as few as 5 minutes), ground lentils cook through in about 3 minutes, making them an easy thickener to throw in at the last minute. Another plus: their flavor is non-assertive enough to allow them to blend into the background rather than commandeer the culinary direction of the soup.
So, the next time your soup or stew is looking too thin for your taste, lentil it! You could even add ground lentils to lentil soup to make it more hearty.
Tomato-Basil Garden Soup with Lentils
Serves 2 for a hearty lunch.
10-12 Roma tomatoes
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp. dried thyme
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 tsp. sea salt (or to taste)
1/4 cup ground red lentils (buzz them through a coffee grinder for 10 seconds or until the majority are coarsely ground)
Fill a large mixing bowl with cold water and set aside, then bring a large pot of water to boil. Gently slide tomatoes into the boiling water. Boil for 10-20 seconds, then lift tomatoes out of the hot water with tongs (you don’t want them to sploosh back into the water and splat boiling-hot water at you!) and slide them into the bowl of cold water. When they’re cool enough to handle, peel off the skins — after their brief blanching, the skins should come off very easily. Discard the skins, chop the tomatoes, and set aside. (If the seeds bother you, you can cut the tomatoes in half, run your fingers along the center to dislodge the seeds, and then finish chopping the now-seedless tomatoes. Personally, I’d rather keep the seeds and all the juiciness they contain.)
In a good-sized stockpot or soup pot over medium heat, sautée the onion in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil for 2 minutes. Add garlic and cook for another minute or until onions and garlic start to soften and turn a very slight golden brown. Add the vegetable stock, the reserved skinless and chopped tomatoes, the basil, the thyme, and the salt. Stir well and reduce heat to low. Let simmer for 15 minutes, then add the lentils and simmer for another 5 minutes.
A sprig of fresh basil would make a nice garnish, as would croutons and/or some grated Parmesan (or other aged Italian cheese). You could also use 1 cup of stock rather than 2 and serve this as a chunky marinara sauce over pasta or chicken. The soup freezes well, too, so if you’re looking for a way to preserve your summer tomatoes and basil for those cold winter months, this is the way to do it!
Enjoy!
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Tags: basil, lentils, marinara sauce, soup, summertime dish, tomatoes
Real Wild Rice with Tomatoes
“Wild rice” is one of those culinary misnomers that says what it doesn’t mean — the true plant grows wild rather than cultivated, and it isn’t rice. And actually, most of what we see labeled wild rice isn’t wild, either, because most of it is a cultivated cousin to the original wild rice. (“Buckwheat” is another misnomer: the plant has nothing to do with wheat and is in fact related to the rhubarb family. It’s also gluten-free.)
True wild rice is an aquatic plant that grows along the Great Lakes; it’s always been an important foodstuff to the Native Americans living in the area. It’s harvested by weaving through the marshy areas in a two-person canoe and knocking the loose chaff off of the tops of the tall grasses as you paddle along. One person steers, one person does the knocking, and the grains are sorted out once the harvest is back ashore.
Cultivated “wild” rice, on the other hand, is grown in paddies in California, where it’s possible to grow and harvest it on a much larger scale. The grains are much darker — almost black — are a bit shorter than the grains of true wild rice, and have a harder bran than their wilder cousin does.
Having finally gotten my hands on a bag of true wild rice (thank you, Zingerman’s!), I can say that both varieties of wild rice are delicious. They’re so different that you’d have the classic “apple-vs.-an-orange” scenario on your hands if you tried to directly compare them. The cultivated variety has more crunch, has a much more pronounced nutty flavor, and visually stands out in any dish — when fully cooked, its almost-black grains split to reveal an inner white core. The original wild rice, on the other hand, has a smoother, gentler flavor, has more elongated and elegant grains, and is a much lighter color. While still chewy, it doesn’t have quite as much crunch power as the California-grown variety. Either grain could be the perfect fit for your dish — it all depends on what you’re looking for.
So, there you have it! If you come across a bag of wild rice marked “grown in Minnesota” (or another Great Lakes region) that costs four times as much as the other wild rice on the shelf, now you know why — you’ve just found the WILD wild stuff. If you’d like to sample something different, bring it home and give it a whirl in grain salads, pilafs, soups, anything you’d use whole grains in. Just be sure to store it in the refrigerator to lengthen its life. Might as well make your walk on the wild side last as long as possible!
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Tags: food story, side dishes, wild rice
Mung Bean & Rice Curry with Fresh Cheese
Mung beans are the cutest beans you can imagine! They’re my latest little favorite finds in the Grains & Legumes department. I’ve been wanting to make a dish with them ever since an Indian friend made a wonderfully simple lunch for us involving mung beans, paneer cheese, and cauliflower. I hadn’t had mung beans before, but they reminded me of lentils…except that the mung beans are even more deeply flavorful than their flatter, smaller lentil cousins.
Despite their relatively small size, however, dry mung beans do take at least 45 minutes to cook. (Red lentils cook in as few as 5 minutes.) The 45-minute time frame turns out to make mung beans the perfect pair with brown rice, though, since the latter also needs about 45 minutes of simmering time to be tender to the tooth.
Thanks to the beans, rice, and spices, this recipe is fragrant and hearty, plus it’s even better left over than it is the first time around. And don’t let the cooking time throw you off — once you’ve done your initial sautéeing and added the rest of your ingredients, you can let the curry chug along on the stove and finish making itself.
Mung Bean & Rice Curry
This serves 4 as a main course and can easily be doubled.
2 large onions, chopped
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 large bell pepper or 2 small peppers, chopped
2″ piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 cup mung beans*
2 c. chicken stock, preferably from pastured chickens
1/2 cup raw brown rice
2 tsp. turmeric
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. sea salt (or less, depending on the saltiness of the broth)
In a large soup pot, sautée onions in 1 T. extra-virgin olive oil or coconut oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until onions are beginning to turn translucent. Add tomatoes, peppers, and ginger and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, stir, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and let curry cook for about 45, stirring it occasionally and checking to see if there’s enough liquid in the pot to continue cooking the beans and rice. If the mixture starts looking dry, add another 1/2 cup of broth (or water) to prevent the curry from scorching onto the bottom of the pot.
When the rice and beans are tender to your tooth, remove the curry from the heat and serve. I spooned mine over some fresh mozzarella cheese, but you could simply eat it as it is, serve it over chicken, or serve it alongside mixed sautéed vegetables.
Enjoy!
* If you don’t have mung beans, you can substitute lentils for the mung beans. Just add lentils at the appropriate time during the simmering process: since the rice will take about 45 minutes, calculate backwards to figure out when to add the lentils. If they’re red lentils, add them during the final 5 minutes of cooking the curry; if they’re standard brown or green lentils, add them during the final 20 minutes of cooking.
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Tags: brown rice, curry, ginger root, indian, mung beans
Cranberry-Cardamom Vanilla Cupcake
Now that we’re heading into fall and then winter, jamming and canning are on a lot of people’s minds. Mine, too — it sure would be great to enjoy summer’s ripe fruits in January! I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to jam or can full-tilt (although both are near the top of my to-do list), but I have figured out a way to do the next best thing: quick jamming. The kind of jam you mean to consume within a few days, the kind that you know you won’t be hoarding through a blizzard or two. Quick jams don’t have to be carefully preserved and sealed in jars because they’re going to be eaten in a few days.
The biggest perk of making a quick jam is that it’s quick, of course. Another is that it’s nearly a chutney — in fact, if you keep the chunks of fruit big enough and throw some vinegar or extra lemon juice in towards the end of the simmering time, you can easily swerve your culinary course from a sweet dessert jam to a savory, tangy chutney.
While you can make jams with any kind of fruit, the best jams are made with pectin-rich fruits like apples, pears, and hard berries (cranberries, gooseberries, currants, etc.). Once the jam has been allowed to cool and set for an hour, you can use it any way you’d like: spread it on toast, spoon it onto ice cream or yogurt, use it as a topping for cakes. My favorite way to use jam is in muffins or cupcakes. What a way to bite into a sweet surprise! Just fill your muffin cups one-third full with batter, then scoop on a small teaspoonful of jam, then top it off with enough batter to fill the muffin cup two-thirds full. This works with any of your favorite muffin or cupcake recipes.
Here’s a quick jam to get you started:
Quick Cranberry-Cardamom Jam
10 oz. bag of cranberries, fresh or frozen
Zest and juice of 1 lemon (finely chop the zest)
Spoonful of honey
4 cardamom pods
Place all ingredients in a small saucepan, then add just enough water to cover the berries. Simmer on low for 30 minutes or until thick, stirring occasionally. Resist the urge to turn up the heat! You’ll get plenty of tiny burbles on a low setting. Those suckers can froth up quickly, believe me, and you don’t want sticky jam on your stove top. (Yup, been there, done that, and had to use a lot of elbow grease to make my stove sparkle again.)
Towards the end of the 30 minutes, taste the jam to see if it’s sweet enough. Add more honey if you’d like. Fish the cardamom pods out of the jam and discard, then mash the berries with a potato masher until you have a semi-smooth jam.
Remove jam from heat and let cool for an hour before using it.
Happy jamming!
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Buffalo-Milk Mozzarella Caprese
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again because it’s just too delicious to ignore: real-deal mozzarella cheese, made from buffalo milk. Like the fresh mozzarella made from cow’s milk, Italian mozzarella di bufalo is also a cheerful roundish knob of cheese that is packaged in its whey. (The whey is the cloudy liquid that naturally drains off certain dairy products, like Feta cheese and yogurt.) The whey keeps the cheese fresh and supple, plus you can reserve the whey to use in other culinary settings: as cooking liquid for rice or noodles, as an addition to sweet or savory smoothies, or used in place of the water or milk called for in a recipe. Drained-off whey will keep for at least a week (probably two) in the refrigerator.
Now that tomatoes are in full swing, it’s the perfect time to try out some mozzarella di bufalo: just cut off a few slices of the cheese, add a few sliced tomatoes and some strips of fresh basil, and drizzle on a little bit of extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar. (In this instance, I choose to use red and golden sweet tomatoes from my garden.) Voilá! You have an insalata caprese, or an Italian Caprese salad. Or you could just enjoy the mozzarella all on its own — the kind made from buffalo milk has a richer, creamier, fresher taste than type made from cow’s milk. Of course, fresh mozzarella is far, far superior to processed, block-style mozzarella regardless of whether the milk came from a buffalo or a cow. The freshness quota of the former is off the charts compared to the salty, rubbery nature of the latter.
Those resourceful Italians make several kinds of cheeses from buffalo milk, actually, but such delicacies are tough to find; you’re more likely to spot a container of mozzarella di bufalo at your local market than any other kind of buffalo’s-milk cheese.
Happy tasting!
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Tags: basil, buffalo milk, insalata caprese, mozzarella, tomatoes, whey
Nectarines & Macadamia Nut Butter
Given my recent preoccupation with macadamia nut butter, I’m sure you knew another mac butter recipe would be on the way. How could it not? The stuff is simply fabulous! I’m in a bit of culinary mourning right now, actually, because I polished off my jar this morning when I stirred the last spoonful of mac butter into my last spoonful of applesauce. (Organic applesauce lives up to its lively freshness by growing mold in about 2 weeks, so the rule there is “use it, don’t lose it!”) But I’ve had quite a few delicious treats with the mac nut butter, so I’m mourning in a satisfied kind of way.
This fruit-and-mac idea works with apples, pears, nectarines, peaches…pretty much any kind of fruit that can be neatly sliced. Nutmeg or ginger would also work in place of the cinnamon.
Nectarines with Macadamia Nut Butter & Cinnamon
Slice a nectarine and fan it out on a plate. Top with a spoonful of macadamia nut butter and a sprinkling of cinnamon, then serve immediately. (Figure on one nectarine per person.) You could also serve with a dollop of plain Greek yogurt and a drizzling of honey, or you could cut the nectarine into smaller pieces and use this idea as a topping for ice cream.
Enjoy!
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Tags: breakfast, cinnamon, dessert, macadamia nut butter, nectarine, snack
Watermelon & Tomato Salad
What the heck — tomatoes and watermelons are both pink and round summer fruits, so why not put them together? I admit, I had to be prodded into the idea by a tomato-watermelon gazpacho recipe I spotted in this month’s edition of Food & Wine, but once I started thinking about pairing the two, I agreed that it seemed like a good idea. Tomatoes certainly straddle the fruit-vegetable worlds, after all; it seemed like watermelons might be able to do the same thing. A few ears of freshly cooked sweet corn and some snippets of aromatic chives in this dish tie it all together.
Watermelon & Tomato Salad
Serves 2 for lunch.
2 ears fresh corn, husked
About 20 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
2 cloves of garlic, sliced thin
About 2 cups chopped watermelon (about half of a small, thin-skinned watermelon)
Fresh chives, snipped
Using a sharp chef’s knife, cut the corn kernels off of each ear and into a large bowl. This works best if you point the ear point side down into the bowl, then hold the knife at a 45 degree angle to the corn so that you’re cutting into the ear halfway between parallel and right down onto it. Slice off the kernels in one direction (starting about 1/3 of the way down the ear), then flip the ends and cut off the remaining kernels. If you get your knife too deep into the kernels and the blade get stuck, just pull out your knife, readjust your angle, and try again. After a few slices, you’ll have mastered the exact angle you need.
Drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil into a large skillet and heat over medium heat for 1 minute. Add corn and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes or until the corn is just beginning to shade from golden to light brown. Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low, add tomatoes, and cook for another 2 minutes.
Remove from the corn mixture from the heat and spoon it all into a large glass mixing bowl. Toss with fresh watermelon cubes and snipped chives and serve immediately, garnishing with an additional long blade or two of chives if you wish. (Crossing them to form a decorative “X” over the plate is always a classy touch.)
Enjoy!
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Tags: chives, corn, salad, summer dish, tomato, watermelon
Mesquite & Corn Tortillas
Food is like fashion: trends keep coming back. In the case of fashion, that’s not always welcome (the current resurgence of 80s-style Spandex pants — c’mon, folks, not a good look then, not a good look now!), but when it comes to food, reclaiming traditional ingredients is a wonderful thing. We’ve gotten so enamored of exotic foods that it’s too easy to overlook our backyard exotica. Heck, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m more drawn to an aged goat’s milk cheese from France than I am to an American Cheddar. (Farm Country Cheese House in Lakeview, Michigan has gone a long way to change that perception, though — they use milk from Amish farmers who let their cows live the way cows should live, and wow, does it make a difference in how the cheese tastes!)
But I digress … back to traditional ingredients. I recently stumbled across a unique-tasting one that’s been used by Native Americans since time immemorial. I’ve only begun to explore its uses and flavor pairings, but so far I’ve found it to be a fantastic ingredient in sweet settings and even a few savory ones. I’m talking about mesquite flour. Yep, mesquite — the same tree that yields wood we like to use when grilling foods also bears pods that can be ground into flour. Like the wood, the pods impart a sweet, caramel-ish, molasses-ish flavor. They’re also a little bit crunchy.
Mesquite flour is absolutely fantastic in cookies (especially ones that involve chocolate) and quick breads with lots of aromatic spices (pumpkin bread, zucchini bread). Just substitute 1/4 of the flour specified in the recipe for the mesquite flour. Its rich caramel tones will accent and highlight your baked good. Besides, not only will whatever you bake taste fabulous, you’ll get to take advantage of the high calcium, iron, and zinc content of the mesquite flour.
You can also use mesquite in savory settings: to make these tortillas, I combined equal amounts of mesquite and corn flour, whisked in a pinch of salt, and added enough cold water to make a dough that was soft/firm enough to shape into balls and then smash into flat circles. All that remained was to heat some butter or ghee to medium heat in a nonstick pan and carefully cook the mesquite-corn tortillas over medium heat until one side and then the other flipped-over side were beginning to brown. The molasses-like flavor of the mesquite deepened with the heat; the resulting tortilla was slightly sweet and crunchy, with a uniquely appealing taste.
The only problem with mesquite flour is that it’s tough to find (although it’s probably more prevalent in the Southwest states than it is in the Midwest region). Online food stores like www.barryfarm.com are probably your best bet.
Happy discovering!
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Tags: baking, cookies, desserts, mesquite, mesquite flour, quick breads, tortillas
PB & Soy Carrots
Some side dishes are place holders — they just occupy a parcel of real estate on the side of the plate without actually contributing anything to the property. (White buns, anemic iceberg lettuce, bland mashed potatoes…) But then some side dishes are so dang good you wish they were the main dish. This is one of those.
Thanks to the inclusion of umami-rich soy sauce and (nearly) universally beloved peanut butter, you get a huge flavor return on your efforts. And for a main course, you could double or triple the sauce and cook strips of chicken or beef along with the carrots. Brown rice would make a nice accompaniment. So much for those dull buns!
PB & Soy Carrots
Makes enough for 4 side dishes. Use wheat-free tamari instead of soy sauce if you’d like to make them gluten-free. (Most tamari is made from soy beans, salt, and water; soy sauce is usually made from soy beans, wheat, salt, and water.)
8 medium carrots, preferably organic (they really do taste better!), peeled and cut into 2″-long matchsticks
1/4 cup 100% peanut butter, salted or unsalted depending on your taste buds
2 T. soy sauce or wheat-free tamari
2 T. maple syrup (check the ingredients list to make sure it really is maple syrup!)
1/2 c. water
Place all ingredients into a wide-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir to make sure the peanut butter is evenly distributed, then cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Check to make sure there’s still enough liquid to cook the carrots — if the carrots are getting dry and starting to stick to the bottom of the pan, add another 2 T. water. Continue simmering for another 5 minutes and then poke one of the carrots with a knife tip to make sure your desired level of tenderness has been reached. You may wind up simmering the carrots for as long as 25 minutes if you like them fairly soft.
Serve warm or cold. These carrots are equally delicious cold out of the refrigerator the next day, so you may want to double or triple the recipe and then enjoy the leftovers as snacks. Carrots will keep in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Enjoy!
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Tags: carrots, gluten-free, peanut butter, side dish, soy sauce
Banana-Macadamia Coconut Milk
As my regular readers know, when I discover a new ingredient or a new way to use a tried-and-true ingredient, I go on a [fill in the blank] kick. This time, it’s macadamia nut butter. I started out dipping 90% dark chocolate squares into it (UNbelievable!), then made salad dressings out of it, and now am making smoothies with it. I’m sure there will be more macadamia nut butter variations to come…
Seeing as macadamia nuts are so smooth and creamy, they would work with any fruit and any kind of milk (dairy, nut, grain, etc.). I just happened to have bananas and coconut milk on hand, so I went with that, but feel free to use whatever fruit and milk you have handy!
Banana-Macadamia Coconut Milk
Serves 1 big breakfast-sized serving or 2 small snack-sized ones.
1 banana
1 big spoonful of macadamia nut butter
1/2 cup whole coconut milk*
1/2 cup water
Pinch of ground cinnamon or ginger
2-3 organic strawberries** (optional, but they turn the smoothie a lovely pink)
Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth, then serve immediately. A single strawberry perched on the edge of the glass would make a nice garnish.
* Note it makes more sense to buy whole coconut milk and then dilute it yourself: you’ll get a product that tastes much better, you’ll save money, and nutritionally speaking, you’ll get a far better product. The same logic applies to dairy milk.
** Since strawberries are one of the most heavily sprayed crops in the U.S. and since we eat their skins, it makes sense to buy the organic version.
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Tags: banana, breakfast, coconut, macadamia nut butter, smoothie, snack
