Baked Veggie Pie with Millet & Amaranth Crust

Although sweet pies typically feature fruit enclosed by crust on both the top and bottom, savory pies are made with veggies and/or meat and often sport only a top deck. Shepherd’s Pie, for example, is made with beef and veggies on the bottom and a “crust” of mashed potato on top. An English version of the Irish classic is made with fish on the bottom and potatoes on top. Caribbean and Latin American cooks like to layer their meat, veggies, and potatoes to create multi-tiered pies. Either way you top  it/layer it, savory pies are as delicious as they are visually appealing.

For this savory pie, I’ve opted to use grains instead of potatoes, giving the dish a thinner, crispier crust that will take a little less prep work on your part. (No mashing of anything required!) If you don’t have millet and/or amaranth on hand, brown rice would be another great choice. Or quinoa — red quinoa would make an especially beautiful presentation.

Baked Veggie Pie with Millet & Amaranth Crust

Total of 3/4 cup amaranth and millet (OR brown rice OR quinoa)
2 cups free-range chicken broth
1/2 cup lentils (brown or green work best; red cooks too quickly)
5 collard leaves, rinsed and chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1 yellow onion, chopped
2 cups frozen corn (sweet or roasted)
1 T. rice wine vinegar
1 T. tamari (make sure it’s wheat-free if you’re making a gluten-free dish)

Preheat oven to 475F.

Place amaranth/millet and the broth on the stove over high heat. As soon as it comes to a boil, stir well and reduce heat to the lowest setting. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until grains have absorbed the broth and are soft. If you use brown rice, this will take more like 35 minutes.

While the grains are cooking, simmer the lentils in a pot half-filled with water for 20 minutes or until you like the lentils’ level of softness. Drain.

While both the grains and lentils are simmering away, you can do the hands-on part: sautée the collard leaves, carrots, and onion in a large skillet over medium heat with a pat of ghee or butter for 8 minutes or until all are soft and the onions are turning translucent. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in the corn, vinegar, and tamari and continue to cook for another 5 minutes. I used frozen roasted corn and really enjoyed the smoky taste it lent the dish, but you could just as easily use frozen non-roasted corn.

By now your grains will be ready and the oven will be preheated. Mix the drained lentils into the collards and spoon the veggies into a glass 11″x7″ pan. Top with the cooked grains and spread out with the back of a spoon to form a smooth crust. Bake for 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown.

This dish is delightful served hot out of the oven, plus it also makes great leftovers — it’ll keep in the refrigerator for up to a week. Talk about the ultimate easy pack-and-go lunch!

Enjoy!

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins

Now that summer has given way to leaf-strewn fall, the idea of going outside to grill something for dinner has gotten a lot less appealing. So much for mesquite-laced, smoky veggies and meats. (And fruits, too. Ever tried grilled pineapple? Sublime!) Seems like that signature mesquite flavor is only available during the summer months.

…Or maybe it isn’t. It turns out that the same tree that yields mesquite wood for the grill also bears a fruit that can be dried out and ground into flour. Like the smoke given off by the burning mesquite wood, mesquite flour carries a hint of caramel smokiness. It hangs somewhere between sweet and earthy and will probably make you think of campfires. The assertive flavor of mesquite fits best with other assertive flavors: chocolate, peanut, coffee. It’s also one of North America’s indigenous edibles — long before European settlers arrived, Native American tribes were enjoying both the culinary and utilitarian aspects of mesquite trees.

The only downside about mesquite flour is that it’s tricky to find unless you live in Arizona or New Mexico. You can order it online, though, from places like http://www.nutsonline.com/ and http://www.mesquiteflour.com/. And if worst comes to worst and you simply don’t have any way to get your hands on mesquite but still want to make these Peanut Muffins, you can use teff or buckwheat flour instead — those are also nutty, dark, rich flours and pair well with peanut. That plus a little maple syrup drizzled onto the muffins before serving would mimic a little bit of mesquite’s caramel-esque tinge.

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.

1 cup peanut flour OR 1 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup mesquite flour OR 1/2 cup buckwheat flour OR 1/2 cup teff flour*
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re baking gluten-free muffins)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1/2 cup date sugar
1/2 cup palm sugar OR sucanat
1 1/4 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (if you live in Metro Detroit, you’re lucky — we have Calder’s)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 cup unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil

Two notes before we begin:

- If you don’t have date sugar and/or you want your muffins to be sweeter, use 1 cup sucanat instead of splitting it with date sugar. (Date sugar is less sweet than sucanat; both are granulated, not liquid.) -

- If you don’t have peanut flour, use the sorghum flour instead, and substitute 1/4 cup peanut butter for one of the eggs. Having 1 egg + 1/4 cup peanut butter will give you plenty of peanut flavor in addition to helping the muffins stick together. -

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, oats, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Stir the liquid portion into the flour mixture until well-blended. (I like to use a whisk, although this technique is much more effective for gluten-free batters than wheat-based ones — the wheat is more difficult to stir because of its gluten-thickened texture.)

Quickly spoon the batter into the waiting cups and bake for 22 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you wish to make wheat-based muffins, substitute spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour for the peanut/sorghum and brown rice flours.

Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls

Imagine chocolate crinkle cookies. Now think about Russian teacakes — you know, those cute little balls covered with powdered sugar that are the mainstay of holiday cookie swaps. Then let your mind flit over to oatmeal-raisin cookies. What do you get when you put them all together? Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls. Or, if you prefer, Chocolate, Raisin & Oat Balls. Made with 100% whole-grain and no refined sugar, of course.

I was inspired to come up with this recipe when a friend said that his two favorite cookies were chocolate-chip and oatmeal-raisin. Seeing as I was completely out of my beloved 85% chocolate bars (a crisis that I’ve since remedied by means of restocking), I went with the chocolate crinkle approach of using cocoa powder instead. And since I happened to have oats and dried cherries on hand, I threw those in as well. Necessity is the mother of culinary invention, too!

Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls
Makes about 64 cookies.

1/2 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff flour*
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably non-Dutched/non-alkalized (the baking soda will react better if the cocoa is still in its natural acidic state)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Dash sea salt
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re making gluten-free cookies!)
6 T. butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold and Organic Valley are great choices), softened
3/4 cup to 1 cup sucanat
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1 cup dried cherries OR raisins
1/2 cup cocoa nibs (optional)
Powdered sucanat for dusting/rolling (optional)

Preheat oven to 400F and cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, and oats. In another large bowl, cream the softened butter for at least a full minute. Note that if you use butter from grass-fed cows, the butter will soften in about 10 minutes when left at room temperature since the butter naturally contains less saturated fat (which is very stiff when refrigerated). If you use conventional butter, plan on letting the butter sit out in the bowl for at least an hour to soften.

Gradually add sucanat to butter, creaming as you go. If you want not-so-sweet cookies, go with 3/4 sucanat; if you want cookies that approach a more traditional sweetness, use 1 cup. (I used 3/4 cup.) Beat in vanilla and eggs, then beat in flour mixture. If you are using wheat-based flours, stir in the flour rather than using an electric mixer. Either way, finish by stirring in the dried cherries and nibs.

Refrigerate the dough for 20 to 30 minutes to get it hard enough to roll into balls without the dough unduly sticking to your hands. Shape into balls 1″ across and place on parchment-covered sheets. Bake for 11 minutes. You’ll need to do two batches, so while the first one is baking, go ahead and shape the second half into balls and put them on a waiting plate. When the first batch is done, let the sheets cool for about 5 minutes or until you can comfortably touch them, then reload and rebake.

If you’d like to roll the cookies in powdered sucanat as a finishing touch, run some standard sucanat through a spice or coffee grinder while the first batch of cookies is baking. Put the powdered sucanat in a small paper bag. Drop the fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies into the bag 4 at a time, scrunch the bag closed, and gently upend the bag so that the cookies roll around inside and become coated with sucanat. Remove cookies and repeat with the remainder.

Let cool completely before storing the cookies in an airtight container. Warm cookies can be eaten immediately, of course.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d like to make a wheat-based version of this recipe, use equivalent amounts of kamut, spelt, and/or whole-wheat flours instead.

Curried Corn & Chickpeas

I used to think the term “curry” meant a specific blend of spices used in a particular way. That turned out to be semi-true. “Curry,” an Indian chef told me a few years back, “simply means ‘sauce.’ A curry can be what you make it.”

The way we think of “curry,” then, is kind of like the way we think of “salsa.” To us, salsas are chopped tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro, and peppers mixed with lime or lemon juice; to someone from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America, a salsa is a sauce. It might be red (the one we think of), green (salsa verde), even brown (mole). So while your family might have a specific way they make their favorite curried dish — which is what your aunt might mean when she says “curry” — everyone has their own version and vision of curry. You can blend your own curry powder, or you can opt for a pre-blended mix.

* A note for the culinarily curious: while curry powder is a blend of dried spices, there is also an herb called a curry leaf. Indian chefs often include curry leaves in simmered curried dishes the way American chefs use bay leaves in our traditional favorites: place one or two dried leaves in the dish while it’s cooking to impart flavor, then pull out the leaves before serving the dish. I’ve never been fortunate enough to find curry leaves Stateside, but perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough. If you do come across curry leaves, feel free to simmer one into this recipe to add extra flavor.

Curried Corn & Chickpeas
Serves two very hearty portions or four medium ones. If you add chicken and rice, this easily makes dinner for four.

4 carrots, peeled and cut into thin rounds
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
15 oz. canned diced tomatoes
15 oz. canned chickpeas (I prefer Eden since they’re in BPA-free cans and are seasoned with sea salt and a bit of seaweed)
1 T. curry powder
2 cups frozen corn OR 2 ears corn simmered for 3 minutes

Melt a pat of ghee or butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add the carrots and onions. Sautée for 5 minutes or until the onions are starting to turn translucent. Add garlic and continue to cook, stirring often, for another 3 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, chickpeas, (I include the water from the chickpeas, too, since I like the way Eden flavors their chickpeas and other canned beans), and curry powder.

Reduce heat to medium-low and let the curry simmer gently for 20 minutes, reducing heat to low if the curry boils. If you’re using fresh corn rather than frozen, now’s the time to simmer those ears for 3 minutes, then let cool enough to handle before slicing off the kernels and discarding the cobs.

Stir in the corn. If you’re using frozen corn, keep simmering for another 5 minutes; if you’re using freshly cooked corn or completely thawed corn, just simmer for another minute or two. (By not overcooking your corn, you’ll wind up with refreshingly crunchy kernels rather than mushy ones.)

Serve immediately. If you’d like, serve over a bed of brown rice and/or with sliced chicken sautéed in butter and curry powder.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Mesquite Cookies

Mesquite: it’s for more than just burning. And providing shade if you’re in the Arizona desert. Turns out that the pods the tree bears are edible (just as the wood is burnable), so if you let the pods dry out and grind them up, you have flour. A fragrant, fine flour that will make you think of caramel and barbecuing at the same time. That kind of hauntingly familiar smoke-edged flavor doesn’t go with everything, but it sure is an ideal companion whenever dark chocolate is involved!

Even if you don’t have mesquite flour on hand (I ordered my latest batch from aptly named Mesquitery in Arizona), these intensely dark chocolate cookies will still be a hit. Combining whole-grain flour with freshly ground almonds means these cookies will be crunchy, crisp, and light-textured — the perfect cookie all around, mesquite or no mesquite.

Chocolate Mesquite Cookies
Makes 60 cookies

1/2 cup mesquite flour* (if you don’t have mesquite, use teff — it has a rich, nutty flavor that also pairs well with chocolate)
1/2 cup almond meal (grind sliced almonds in a food processor or spice grinder, or buy almond meal)
1 cup brown rice flour*
1/4 cup sorghum flour*
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt

4 T. softened butter, preferably from pastured cows (Kerrygold is my reigning favorite, partially because of its amazing flavor and partially because it’s soft after 5 minutes of standing at room temperature thanks to the fact that it’s made from cream from grass-fed cows — their grassy diet means that their milk has a lot less saturated fat in it than milk from conventional grain-fed cows does)
1 cup sucanat
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/4 unrefined hazelnut oil OR 1/4 extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract

8 oz. dark chocolate (at least 70% dark; I used two 85% Lindt bars), broken into small pieces

Preheat oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, almond meal, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter for 2 minutes or until creamy. Gradually beat in sucanat. Beat in one egg at a time, then beat in oil and vanilla extract.

If you’re using gluten-free flours, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and beat it in until you have a smooth dough. If you’re using wheat, stir in the flour. (The gluten-free way is quicker since you don’t have to worry about overbeating the gluten present in the wheat.) Either way, stir in the chocolate chunks last.

Shape the dough into small balls about 1″ in diameter and place them in neat rows on the parchment-covered baking sheets. My sheets are rectangular, so I wound up with 4 rows of 5 balls across or 20 cookies per sheet. Since the recipe makes 60 cookies, stash the remaining dough in the fridge until you have a free sheet to use.

Bake cookies for 17 to 18 minutes or until they’re lightly brown on the top and brown on the bottom. (Flip one of them up to peek at its underside.) Let hot baking sheets cool completely before pulling the remaining dough out of the fridge and making the remaining cookies.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you would prefer to make wheat-based cookies, substitute whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flours for the gluten-free flours.

Nut, Seed & Fruit Granola with Palm Sugar

I’m always on the prowl for new unrefined sweeteners — not only are they a healthier alternative to heavily processed white sugar, unrefined sweeteners like maple syrup and honey have flavor instead of just being super-sweet.  It’s fun to play with flavor pairings to see which sweetener you like with what.  (I think honey is a natural fit for cornbread and blueberry muffins; maple syrup is delicious with chocolate.  Date sugar is wonderful sprinkled onto fruit and cobblers.)  And since unrefined sweeteners retain more of their complex nutrients than refined sugar does, unrefined sweeteners contain fewer calories per teaspoon.  Once again, taking the quality approach addresses the quantity one.

My latest unrefined sweetener find is palm sugar.  It’s made from the sap of a palm tree in a process that’s much like making maple syrup: tap the tree, collect the sap, and boil it down to a thick liquid.  The difference is that the palm sugar is more of a gritty, thick paste than a pourable syrup.  Some palm sugars — including coconut sugar — are then poured into molds to dry and wind up being sold in blocks.  (Jaggery is an Indian sweetener typically made of palm sap or sugarcane juice and sold in hardened blocks or swirls.  Latin versions are made from sugarcane and are known by various names, including rapadura and piloncillo. They’re often sold as cones.)

Despite palm sugar having less than a quarter of the calories of white sugar (10 per tablespoon instead of 45), palm sugar is surprisingly sweet!  It also has a very faint caramel flavor.  So far, I’ve stirred it into hot chocolate and made a sweetened granola with it, and I’ve really enjoyed the results.  You could also use it in baked goods that work well with liquid sweeteners, like cakes and muffins and quick breads.  (Cookies would be too thin and would spread out too much if you used a liquid sweetener in them — I use sucanat and date sugar for my cookies.)  I found palm sugar at Whole Foods, but you can probably find it at other natural-foods-oriented groceries as well.  And since palm sugar is often used in Thai cookery and other southeastern Asian cuisines, Asian grocery stores tend to stock it.

Nut, Seed & Fruit Granola with Palm Sugar
You can use any combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruits, grains, or other trail-mix-friendly ingredients in your granola. If you use salted roasted nuts, you don’t need to add any sea salt to the recipe, but if you use unsalted nuts, you might want to sprinkle in some sea salt to taste.

2/3 cups roasted pistachios
1/3 cup roasted peanuts
3/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 cups unsweetened puffed brown rice OR puffed millet
1 1/4 cups rolled oats (make sure to get gluten-free oats if you’d like gluten-free granola)
2 T. roasted sesame seeds
1/4 cup cocoa nibs, optional
Pinch of sea salt, optional

3/4 cup palm sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients except for the final three together in a large bowl. Gently heat the palm sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla in a small pot on the stove. It should only take a minute or two of stirring over the low heat to get the palm sugar to fully liquefy.

Drizzle palm sugar over the granola mix and stir well with a wooden spoon. Spread the mixture out on an ungreased baking sheet to dry, then store in an airtight container when cool. (If you’re going to keep it for more than three or four days, refrigerate it.) You can eat the granola as it is for a snack or for breakfast, or you can pour it into a bowl and add your choice of milk to make a traditional bowl of cereal.

Enjoy!

Egyptian Lentils & Rice

I just love northern African cuisine — it’s fragrant and nuanced, yet easy to prepare and dependent on inexpensive staples like rice, lentils, and legumes.  You may need to purchase a few spices to make your dishes more authentic, but spices last for six months to a year if you store them in a cool cupboard away from any light.  (Frankly, I keep my spices until there’s a significant loss of flavor.)  And in the summertime, it’s easy to grow your own key northern African ingredients, like mint and greens and cucumbers.

More and more grocery stores are offering a better variety of spices, but if yours doesn’t stock the more exotic ones like fenugreek and sumac, you can always resort to Internet spice shops.  Penzeys has brick-and-mortar locations throughout the U.S., too, or you might have a spice shop in your hometown.  (To all my fellow Detroiters: Spice Miser recently opened a shop in downtown Birmingham.  I haven’t checked it out yet, but judging by their booth at Eastern Market, they offer a great variety of spices and herbs.)  A little spice can go a long way!

Egyptian Rice & Lentils
Serves 2 for a hearty meal; if you include a good amount of hummus, you can easily serve 4.  This meal would also pair well with lamb or chicken.

Extra-virgin olive oil, preferably a nice fruity one
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2-3 tsp. ground cumin (I like a lot of cumin, so I use 3)
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground fenugreek (optional)
1 tsp. sea salt
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 cup cooked chickpeas
1 cup cooked brown rice
1 cup cooked lentils
Several leaves of Romaine lettuce, chopped (or chopped curly spinach)
Hummus and sweet paprika for topping (optional)

In a large frying pan, heat oil for 1 minute over medium-low heat. Add onions and cook for 5 minutes or until onions are starting to brown. Add garlic and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring often to prevent garlic from burning. Stir in spices, salt, and tomatoes. Reduce heat to low and let simmer for at least 10 minutes to allow the flavors to marry.

Stir in chickpeas, rice, and lentils and warm through. Stir in Romaine and heat for 1 minute or until the leaves just begin to wilt. Remove from heat and let stand for another minute to finish softening the lettuce.

Serve piping hot, topped with a scoop of hummus if you like. Sweet paprika makes a tasty and eye-catching garnish.

Enjoy!

Pomegranate, Almond & Brown Rice Cereal

If I could wave a magic culinary wand and make one aisle in the grocery store disappear, I’d probably make the cereal aisle vanish.  Even when you find a cereal that truly is whole-grain, unsweetened, and tastes as good as it is healthy, you’re going to be paying a lot more for store-bought cereal than you’d pay for self-created cereal.  A 2-pound bag of brown basmati rice costs $3 and contains 20 servings, for example, which comes out to about 14 cents per bowl.  Nuts, dried fruit, seeds, and fresh fruit aren’t pricey either, especially when you consider that you don’t need many to pour out a nice bowl of DIY cereal.  Chances are you already have some or all of those ingredients on hand.  And your homemade cereal is going to be much, much fresher and healthier (and more delicious) than an out-of-the-box version.

And to make it even better, pomegranates — a winter fruit — are ideal for DIY cereals.  To get the seeds out, first cut the pomegranate in half on a cutting board that won’t stain.  (Wood will soak up the pigment and stain; glass and plastic will not.)  Then fill a large bowl with cool water and submerge one half of the pomegranate completely in the water, holding it seeds-down.  Pull the seeds out with your fingertips as you slowly turn the half inside-out, letting the seeds sink to the bottom of the bowl.  Repeat with the other half.  (This underwater technique will prevent the pomegranate juice from spurting out and staining anything it touches.)  Skim the floating pith off the top of the water and drain the seeds.  You can store the seeds in an airtight container in the refrigerator for about 3 days.  Use them in cereals, atop desserts, as a simple snack, or even with savory dishes as a garnish.

Homemade Cereal

Cooked brown rice or any other cooked whole grain (cooked grains can be stored for up to a week in the refrigerator, so you can just cook one big batch of grains per week and enjoy your cereal every day)
Sliced almonds or any other nut
Pomegranate seeds or any other bite-sized/cut-up fruit (see above paragraph on how to extract the seeds from a fresh pomegranate)
Spices like cinnamon, allspice, or nutmeg (optional)
Drizzle of honey or maple syrup (optional)
Your choice milk (dairy, coconut, nut, grain, etc.)

Combine whole grains, nuts, and fruit in a bowl. Top with sweetener and milk. Note that you can stir the nuts directly into the cooked grains and store them that way, thus making your cereal that much easier to put together in the morning. Pomegranate seeds, blueberries, small seedless grapes, and other bite-sized fruit are the easiest to include. Other good options would be seeds and/or dried fruit.

Enjoy!

Indian Pilaf with Poached Egg

I know not everyone is going to be with me on this one, but poached eggs have always been my favorite.  Scrambled eggs are nice, and so are hard-boiled eggs, but for me, the creamy poached-ness is where it’s at.  Poached eggs are easy to make, too: just crack an egg into boiling water, set the timer for 3 minutes, reduce the heat to medium, and let the egg gently bob about in the pot.  Skim off the foam that rises to the top — if you don’t, it’ll run down the sides of the pot and onto the stove — and then gently lift out the poached egg with a slotted spoon.  A snap.

But you know what’s even easier?  Cracking an egg onto a leftover stir-fry or pilaf, covering the pan, and just stepping back for 3 minutes.  Just be sure to turn down the heat to medium-low to avoid overcooking the egg.  It’s a simple, delicious way to use up leftovers.  It’s also an amazing way to make breakfast in 5 minutes flat.

You can use whatever leftover pilaf or stir-fry you have on hand to make this recipe — just skip to the part where you start to re-warm your leftovers and go from there!

Indian Pilaf with Quick-Poached Egg
The starting pilaf serves about 4 for dinner, so if you have 2 diners, you’ll have plenty of leftover pilaf for the next day’s breakfast.

1/2 cup long-grain brown rice (basmati is best, jasmine is another good choice)
1 cup mung beans OR brown lentils
Ghee or butter for sautéeing (ghee is a traditional Indian cooking fat — it’s just clarified butter — so if you want maximum authenticity, stick with ghee)
1 small onion, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons canned jalapeño pepper OR 1 fresh jalapeño pepper, chopped
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. turmeric
Eggs for poaching

Note: If you’re not such a fan of spices, only use 1 tsp. of each spice.  If you don’t like spicy foods, cut the amount of jalapeño in half, too.

Place the rice and 1 cup water in a medium pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover the pot, and cook the rice for about 30-40 minutes or until the rice has absorbed the water and is fluffy. In another pot, simmer the beans with 2 cups water for about 15 minutes or until the beans have reached the tenderness you like. Drain and set aside.  Note that you can use leftover cooked rice in this dish if you have some on hand!

Heat the ghee over medium heat in a large saucepan. Add onion and rice and cook for about 5 minutes or until rice is turning golden brown and onion is almost translucent. Stir in beans, jalapeño, and spices. Reduce heat to low and cook for 3 minutes or so to let the flavors mingle.

At this point, you can serve the pilaf for dinner or keep on going and poach an egg over individual servings…or serve half and keep half for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Place an individual serving of leftover pilaf in a small saucepan with a small pat of ghee or butter. Cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes or until pilaf has warmed through. Crack an egg on top of the pilaf, cover the pan, and reduce heat to medium-low. Let cook for 3 minutes undisturbed.

Serve immediately. If you like, garnish with a bit of freshly chopped cilantro.

Enjoy!

Green Tea Soup with Shrimp & Green Onions

Remember Mrs. Grass Chicken Noodle Soup?  I used to love that stuff when I was a kid.  The egg-shaped bouillon “Golden Flavor Nugget” was weirdly fascinating.  (I still find it weirdly fascinating, but in a clinical what-the-heck-is-IN-that?? kind of way rather than a let’s-have-it-for-lunch! kind of way.)

It turns out that you can take a few of the basic principles from Mrs. Grass, add a few things of your own, and wind up with a very simple soup that tastes much better and is a much better idea nutritionally.  The secret?  Good-quality chicken stock — either your own or one made from free-range birds — and green tea.  Yep.  Green tea is great for making more than just tea: the Burmese ferment the leaves and include it in salads, Thai and Japanese recipes sometimes call for cooking rice along with a few tea leaves, and mochi ice cream is often made with matcha, which is powdered green tea.  (Mochi refers to cakes or other items made from sweet rice flour.)

If you’re a green tea aficionado, you’ll love the familiar flavor that the leaves impart to the broth.  If you haven’t tried green tea before as a beverage, use your leftover tea leaves to brew yourself a pot!

Green Tea Soup with Shrimp & Green Onions
This recipe serves 2 for a light lunch. You can easily double it or include cooked chicken pieces in the broth to make it heartier.

2 servings brown rice spaghetti noodles, broken into 3″ or 4″ pieces*
2 cups chicken stock, preferably made from free-range chickens
2 tsp. loose green tea leaves
5 oz. can of tiny shrimp (or frozen rock shrimp)
2 green onions, white ends discarded and green ends minced

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and add noodles. Cook according to package directions, then rinse well and set aside. (Brown rice noodles are especially starchy and need to be well rinsed.)

In another medium pot, bring stock to a boil. Reduce heat, add tea leaves, and let simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in shrimp and reserved noodles and heat through. Ladle servings into pretty bowls and top each one with minced green onions. If you have wide, flat-bottomed Asian-style soup spoons on hand, offer your diners those rather than traditional Western soup spoons.

Enjoy!

* This is a gluten-free dish. If you’d prefer to make a wheat version, use whole-wheat spaghetti or udon noodles.

Mexican Salad with Sweet Lime

Something new — at least, new to me — is going on the citrus world: sweet limes.  Citrus fruits have long been cross-it-over favorites, of course, like the tangelo.  (Although I haven’t seen those in a while, I can still remember when they were the “in” fruit.)  That deliciously juicy hybrid is a combination of tangerines and pomelo grapefruits.  And there are lots of less-common species like kumquats and ugli fruits that aren’t on our citrus radar.

Sweet limes just cropped up at my favorite produce market, so of course I had to see if they really were sweet or lime-ish.  The verdict?  Much sweeter than lime-ish — sort of like a toned-down cocktail grapefruit.  They’re so mild and sweet that you can drink the juice straight, actually.

Their sweetness makes them useful in salads, too, where you might normally use orange juice.  Mexicans typically use the more traditional sour limes in their dishes, but sometimes it’s fun to put a naturally sweeter spin on dressings.  For this salad, you could use either sweet limes or standard limes, whichever your taste buds desire.

Mexican Salad with Sweet Lime
Serves 2 for lunch, but can easily be doubled or tripled, or you can add more ingredients to make a heartier main dish.

Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved OR 2 medium Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 avocado, chopped
About 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped (or however much cilantro you like — I prefer a good amount)
About 1 T. chopped white or green onion
1 cup black beans, drained
1 cup cooked brown rice (optional)
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 sweet lime
1 tsp. chili powder

Toss all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, adding the beans and rice to make a more filling dish. Serve immediately.

Note: You could also add chopped cooked chicken or fish, or you could use this salad as a salsa and serve it alongside a main meal. It could also be a chunky dip for corn tortillas.

Enjoy!

Gingersnaps

Most cookies are meant to be eaten alone, but a few cookies have so much flavor and are so sturdy that you can do all kinds of things with them: process them into crumbs and then make pie crusts out of them, crumble them into coarse chunks and layer them with fruit and yogurt to make parfaits, or leave them whole and press a scoop of ice cream in between two cookies to make an ice cream sandwich.

Gingersnaps can be all of those things!  And now that autumn is firmly in the air, molasses-laced gingersnaps are the perfect cookie to bake.

Whole-Grain & Gluten-Free Gingersnaps with Teff & Almonds
If you’d like to use whole-wheat flour instead of gluten-free flours, substitute 1 3/4 cups whole-wheat flour for the gluten-free flours.

1/2 cup teff flour (the smallest grain on earth, teff is nutty and crunchy and can be found at health-food stores and well-stocked grocery stores)
1/2 cup almond flour OR 1/2 cup freshly ground almonds (I used the latter — I just ground sliced almonds in my coffee grinder)
3/4 cup brown rice flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 T. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
Pinch of sea salt
3/4 stick butter (6 T.), preferably from grass-fed cows (Organic Valley and Kerrygold are good choices)
3/4 cup sucanat (this stands for SUgar CAne NATural — it’s sugarcane that is far, far less refined than white sugar and can be found at any whole-foods-oriented grocery store, including health-food stores)
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens
1/4 cup blackstrap molasses
1 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two baking sheets or line them with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flours, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter for 2 minutes or until it has turned pale and creamy.  (Beating the butter well to aerate it at this stage will give you crisp, light-textured cookies.)  Beat in sucanat for at least a minute, then beat in egg for another minute.  Beat in molasses and lemon juice until the dough is well-blended.  Add about half of the flour mixture and beat on medium speed until you have a smooth dough.  Repeat with the second half of the flour mixture.  Note: if you were working with wheat flour, you wouldn’t want to work the dough too much, because you’d overdevelop the gluten and wind up with tough cookies.  Seeing as this is a gluten-free recipe, though, you don’t have to worry about that!  Yet another benefit of baking gluten-free.

Place small rounded spoonfuls of dough on the prepared cookie sheets.  A standard 14″ square sheet will hold about 4 or 5 cookies across and 4 or 5 cookies down.  Try to leave a bit of space around each dollop of dough to give the cookies room to spread as they bake.

Bake cookies for 12 minutes or until they’re brown around the edges.  Pull out of the oven and let cool on racks.  If any of the cookies have spread into each other, immediately and gently separate them by pressing down on their seams with the edge of a flexible spatula.  Allow cookies to cool completely before removing them from the baking sheets.

Store in a cool place in an airtight container.  Cookies will last for 2 weeks, but I daresay they’ll be gone long before then!  Remember, these make great ice cream sandwiches, parfait toppings, or pie crusts.  For an easy autumn dessert, you could also bake an apple, crumble a cookie over it, and drizzle with a dash of maple syrup.  ‘Tis the season!

Enjoy!

Brown Rice Crispy Treats

Is there anyone who didn’t love Rice Krispy Treats as a kid?  Even the thought seems un-American.  Rice Krispies and S’mores: the two best desserts you could make yourself, both entailing minimum fuss and maximum delight.  Nowadays, even though I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I still savor the memories of crunchy RKTs.

It finally occurred to me that what I really liked about RKTs was the texture, not the taste.  (There really wasn’t much taste beyond “SWEET!”)  Given that brown rice cakes are also crunchy — and more flavorful and far healthier than heavily processed Rice Krispies — why not use them as a base?  And seeing as trail mixes are also crunchy and even occasionally chewy/soft from thanks to dried fruits, I thought it’d be fun to throw some of that in, too.  The final texture kick would be keeping the Crispies in the freezer, where they’d get even crunchier…and be a fun alternative to ice cream once in while.

Brown Rice Crispy Treats (a.k.a. Frozen Trail Mix Deluxe)
You can double or triple this recipe as you wish.  I wound up nibbling on the amount specified here for several days, so I would say it’s about 5-6 servings.

1/2 cup hazelnuts, chopped
1/2 cup honey, preferably local/raw
1/4 cup cocoa nibs (optional, but delicious!)
1/4 cup raisins, preferably organic Thompsons
4 brown rice cakes, broken up by hand

Note: you could use any combination of chopped nuts, including walnuts, pecans, almonds, cashews, macadamias, etc. Likewise, you could use coffee beans instead of/along with the cocoa nibs, or any kind of dried fruit instead of/along with the raisins. Dried unsweetened coconut would also be a tasty inclusion.

Place a piece of parchment paper over a baking sheet OR grease the sheet well. Set aside.

Dry-toast nuts in a large skillet over medium heat for 3-4 minutes or until nuts are fragrant and slightly browned. (Different nuts take different amounts of time.) Stir in honey, lower heat to medium-low, and let cook another minute or two. The honey will lightly bubble and will become thinner. Stir in remaining items, cook for one last minute, and turn mixture out onto baking sheet. Let dry for at least an hour, then gently tuck the cooled Crispies — still on their parchment paper — into a freezer-safe tin or container. If you didn’t lay them out on parchment paper, you might want to line the tin or container with wax paper.

Crispies will keep for several weeks in the freezer, although I doubt they’ll last that long.

Enjoy!

Baked Wild Rice with Roasted Eggplant & Toasted Walnuts

Toasting and roasting.  Both techniques are simple and add incredible depth to whatever ingredient you’re emphasizing or dish you’re serving.  Recently, it occurred to me that toasted nuts have such a deep flavor that they could probably stand in for cheese.  I’m a huge cheese fan, but for those who can’t have cheese, toasted nuts are a much better option, and besides, even if you share my cheese exultation, sometimes it’s just nice to try something different.  I’m happy to say that my idea was as good in practice as it was in theory: toasted nuts do indeed take on a decidedly rich, creamy, almost cheesy flavor when baked into casseroles!

This dish was inspired by the classic Greek moussakas, those lovely eggplant-and-tomato based dishes that are normally topped with an eggy smooth sauce and a briny salty cheese like Kasseri.  (Think the Greek version of Italian lasagna, minus the noodles.)  I’ve taken the liberty of including mushrooms and wild rice in my version…and toasted nuts, of course.

Baked Wild Rice with Roasted Eggplant & Toasted Walnuts

3/4 cup raw wild or brown rice
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2″-thick rounds
1 small eggplant, cut into 1/2″-thick rounds
1 small onion, cut into 1/2″-thick rounds
40 cherry tomatoes, halved
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
8 oz. button mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup milk (dairy, grain, nut, coconut, whatever you like)
2 T. whole-grain flour (brown rice works beautifully and is gluten-free)
2 T. butter or ghee (the latter is lactose-free)

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease an 8×8 glass baking pan and set aside.

Prepare rice according to package instructions. (Wild rice takes 40-50 minutes to cook; brown rice takes more like 35-40.) Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper OR use ones you don’t mind staining. Place zucchini, eggplant, onion, and tomatoes on the baking sheets.  Drizzle them with oil and sprinkle them with salt — using your fingers to distribute the oil and salt evenly — and then roast the veggies for 20-30 minutes or until they’re crinkly and golden brown.

Sautée mushrooms and a drizzle of oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until the mushrooms start to shrink and turn golden. Add garlic and cook for another minute or until garlic is fragrant. Tumble the mixture into a large mixing bowl. When vegetables are ready, add them to the bowl, too. Reduce oven temp to 350F.

Place walnuts in a dry nonstick skillet and toast them on the stovetop over medium-low heat for about 4 minutes or until the walnuts are browned and fragrant. They burn quickly, so shake the pan often and keep a close eye on them to make sure they aren’t turning brown. In my experience, they can go from perfectly fragrant to blackened and burnt in about 10 seconds. (Eek!) Add the nuts to the veggie mixture and stir in the cooked rice.

To make the sauce, melt the butter over low heat in a medium saucepan. Add the flour, whisking constantly, and let the mixture cook for about a minute. Slowly pour in milk, still whisking, and cook for another minute or so. The roux will bubble and thicken as it cooks.

Pour the sauce into the veggie-and-rice mixture and stir well, then scoop the entire thing into the glass pan. Bake at 350F for 25 minutes. Serve immediately…and note that you can also store the dish in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Talk about luscious leftovers!

Enjoy!

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 minutes, 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.