Spicy Lentil Hummus with Chapati

I’ve embarked on a recent journey toward the world of fresh and dry legumes, parting ways with my former reliance on canned beans. While I miss the ease of reaching into the cupboard and relative ease of opening a can (our can-opening device is slightly defunct), I can adjust to the lifestyle of dried beans. Types that need a good soak before cooking require more planning, but they are truly superior in taste to canned versions. Creamier on the inside, firmer on the outside – I don’t know anyone that likes the soggy mushiness of canned beans after having tasted a fresh batch. Even bean purees are much tastier, which is what lead to this Indian version of a middle eastern staple.

As for my health tangent of the day – most of us keep hearing about BPA as the latest bizarre and potentially harmful compound invading food packaging for whatever reason cheapie commercial manufacturers give. BPA is illegal in many countries and linked, however convincingly, to a whole gamut of maladies. And not so good ones to boot. Despite many companies having stepped up to discontinue the use of BPA in plastic bottles, canned food is still BPA strong and stubborn due to lack of strong evidence of its adverse affects. I don’t care how many studies it takes to make the FDA buck up and lay down the BPA law, I can live without it. So long my BPA-laced convenience!

Back to the beans: we were having a couple of people over last minute for the 4th of July and because of the late notice, I had not spent my typical 3-5 days planning the edible entertainment. The crowd was small and wasn’t going to be starving or expecting food, but in my house any guest equals food and I still needed to eat. My default in this case: hummus, chips and salsa, and fresh fruit. Going back to the fact that beans take some planning…I didn’t have any soaked chickpeas or canned beans. My ready-to-cook selection consisted of mung beans and lentils. I love mung beans, but they are not the best chickpea stand-ins for hummus. Lentils however were a fabulous alternative.

Having recently attended a vegan cooking class at a superb Indian restaurant in Houston, I learned a few lovely spice combinations during my time at Indika. What better opportunity to apply new knowledge than a small gathering where people may or may not eat? It takes the pressure off of the testing phase, and a chance at fusion made it even more thrilling. Aside from spices, we also got an impromptu lesson from the chef herself about making Indian flatbread made from garbanzo flour. Though I had garbanzo flour, which I used in the hummus recipe, I decided to try it with plain ole whole what flour. Zero leftover and a double batch the next day….pretty good results.

Spicy Lentil Hummus with Chapati

Makes 2 c. Hummus and 8-9 Flatbreads

Total Prep Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

For the Hummus
½ c. Lentils, dry or 1 ½ c. cooked*
¾ c. Chickpeas, cooked or canned (drained & rinsed if using canned)*
1 ½ T. Tahini
1 T. Lemon juice, freshly squeeze
1 T. Garlic, chopped
1 T. Jalapeno, chopped
¾ T. Fresh Ginger, chopped
½ tsp. Ground cumin
½ tsp. Sea salt
¼ heaping tsp. Garam masala

For the Chapati
1 c. All purpose or whole wheat flour
¼ tsp. Salt
Water
Olive oil

* I cooked dry lentils and used the cooking liquid with Bob’s Red Mill garbanzo bean flour instead of actual chickpeas. To do it this way, bring 1 cup of the lentil liquid (or add enough water to lentil liquid to make 1 cup) to a boil and whisk in ¼ cup of garbanzo flour. Lower heat to medium low and simmer about 3-4 minutes – clumps are ok. Pour into food processor with lentils.

Directions

For the hummus: If lentils are dry, cooking in 3 cups of liquid by bringing lentils and water to a boil with a pinch of salt and 1 bay leaf. Cook until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain lentils (reserving liquid if using method above) and place in food processor. Combine remaining ingredients in food processor and process until completely smooth. Adjust seasonings to taste, using more or less jalapeno depending on your spice preference.

For the chapati: In a medium mixing bowl, combine four and salt and mix well. Slowly add ¼ cup water at a time until you have a stiff dough. If dough is too sticky, add 1-2 tablespoons of flour. If too stiff, add 1 tablespoon of water at a time. Knead dough for 5 minutes. Roll into a ball and place in refrigerator wrapped in plastic for 1 hour.

Once the dough has sat, knead again for another 5 minutes. Tear off a hunk of dough and roll into a ball about 1 ½ inches in diameter. Repeat with the rest of the dough which should yield 8-9 pieces. Coat dough with cooking spray or olive oil and roll each ball out into a small flat disk, about 1/8 inch think and 5 inches in diameter. Heat a dry electric or stovetop griddle over medium heat. Place however many pieces you can easily fit without crowding. Cook 30-45 seconds on the first side and flip over. Cook until golden spots appear on other side. Flip once more and press each chapati with a cloth until if puffs up. Repeat with remaining chapati.

Sassy Sushi Rice & Lazy Sushi Salad

Just because I don’t eat fish, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the fresh taste of a well wrapped roll chalked full of crisp vegetables and dunked into a muddy swamp of wasabi and soy sauce. What is sushi without the raw fish you might think? Well few of you may know that sushi actually refers to the rice, not the fish – it literally means “seasoned rice.” So there. Seasoned rice is vegan rice and just as important to perfect as any other tuna topped tidbit. With a good batch of rice, you can have just as much fun on sushi night without the guilt of supporting overfishing and/or unsustainable fish farm operations… Sorry had to put in some kind of plug to remind myself of why avoid it.

I came across a great idea for sushi in Vegan Lunch Box, an excellent cookbook containing fun vegan recipes that are mostly kid and picky-eater approved while also maintaining a pretty impressive nutritional profile. Though I love a good sushi happy hour, I have to admit to feeling a little iffy about eating so much nutritionally void white rice. Quality sourdough bread or prefect baked baguettes invoke the same sentiment – so delicious, but not much going on apart from the addictive properties of processed foods. So I set out to make a healthier rice to roll around some seaweed, but doesn’t that almost seem to betray sushi tradition? Absolutely. Real sushi chefs would shake their heads and spit on my alternative. Whatever - they butcher fish, I butcher recipes.

This rice was so good I forgot it was healthy. I like chewier rice, but the texture didn’t even remind me that this was a nutritionally superior version. The trick to any rice intended to be used for sushi is twofold: 1) use the right rice; 2) get the seasoning right. Black, brown or white, the rice you use must be short grain or sticky rice. None of this medium or long grain business – save those for your curries. The seasoning is simple, but you can’t over or under do it. “Seasoning” makes it sound more complicated than it is. The seasoning is simple sugar dissolved in rice vinegar with a tiny pinch of salt poured over warm rice. Using too much will give you gloppy rice, but using too little will give you tasteless rice. So you just have to keep tasting while you make it!

 The wonderful thing about all of these ingredients is the freedom you have to make your own concoctions. Make a maki, make a hand roll, or be lazy and just throw them in a bowl to make a salad like I did for lunch with the leftovers. Use whatever you have on hand or try a fun new ingredient you’ve never tasted before. This is open to any and all preferences to whoever decides to step up to the countertop. Make a night out of it – have some people over and let everyone bring something and choose their own edible destiny for the evening. Just provide some good sake.

A few tips: when you prepare the rice, make sure the vinegar mix is at room temperature before you mix it into the rice, and make sure the rice is still warm. However, the rice must be COOL before actually uniting it with nori. Lightly steam or blanch any vegetable that is super hard in its raw form. And no matter what – no matter how poorly you roll or how sloppy you cut your veggies – always eat it! Never throw away good sushi. That’s the rule.

Sassy Sushi Rice & Lazy Sushi Salad

Makes about 2 cups
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Prep: about 2 hours (with cooling time)

Ingredients

For the Rice
½ c. Brown rice, short grain or sticky variety
2 T. Amaranth
2 T. Red quinoa
2 T. Rice vinegar
¾ tsp. Sugar
½ tsp. Salt

For the Accompaniments
* All of these are optional – be creative.
Asparagus
Avocado
Carrot
Cucumber
Pickled radish
Radish sprouts
Summer squash, green or yellow
Sweet potato
* These are a must.
Nori sheets
Seaweed flakes or seasoning (dulse, kelp, bonito, etc…)

Directions

For the rice: Bring the rice, amaranth and quinoa to a boil in 1 ½ cups of water. Lower the heat and simmer until rice is tender, about 40 minutes. Transfer to a stainless steel or type of large mixing bowl. While the rice is cooking, mix the vinegar, sugar and salt in a small bowl. Heat mixture in microwave in 10 second spurts, stirring in between heat waves until the sugar has dissolved. Let cool to room temperature before mixing into rice. When the vinegar has cooled, stir into rice and mix well. Set rice aside to cool (but do not put in refrigerator.

For vegetables of choice: Cut avocado, carrot, cucumber, radish, squash and sweet potato into 5-6” matchstick pieces. Blanche asparagus, carrots, or sweet potato and plunge in ice water to stop cooking.

To prepare a sushi roll: Lay a sheet of nori, shiny side down, on a bamboo sushi mat. Makes sure to keep your hands moist or wet while handling the rice, as it gets very sticky – keep a small bowl of water in easy reach. Place about ¾ cup sushi rice (more or less to preference) in palm and form into a loose ball. Press the ball all over nori, spreading the rice into one thin layer. At this point, you can either flip the sheet over for an inside out roll or lay your veggies on the rice for a regular roll. Place 3-4 pieces of each desired veggie and a few sprouts on top of rice or nori. Pick up nearest side of the sushi mat and fold nori over the vegetables. Be sure to press the mat both evenly and very tightly as you roll forward, sliding the mat inch by inch as the nori rolls underneath until you’ve reached the end. If you are making an inside out roll, sprinkle the seaweed seasoning on the outside over the rice. If you are making a regular roll, cut the roll into 6-8 pieces and lightly sprinkle seaweed seasoning on top of each piece.

To prepare a lazy sushi salad: place a ½ cup of sushi rice into a serving bowl. Top with desired vegetables as prepared above. Sprinkle with seaweed seasoning, drizzle a little soy sauce on top and finish it off with a generous pinch of sprouts. A dollop of wasabi can be applied as desired.

Summer Quinoa Salad with Fresh Okra

Oh my Okra - I had been waiting for this green, starry gem to appear on the farmers’ tables since it hit 100º a couple of weeks ago. And to my pleasure, it arrive last week. Okra grows well in high heat and drought conditions, so naturally I became quite familiar with it when I moved to Arizona. I had no idea what it looked or tasted before relocating. When I signed up to receive a weekly share from a local farm, it became quite obvious that only certain things will grow well in the desert during the middle of August. Okra, okra and more okra. It was love at first bite – after I got over the shock of pearly seeds in the middle. I had done my research upon receiving my first batch and picked up a few tips that helped to fight the common misconceptions regarding this pretty pod.

Poor vegetable – such an underdog. When it comes to popularity and general reaction when mentioned in passing conversation, okra does not have a good reputation. Slimy, hard to cook, bad texture, weird seeds....it saddens me to think this is the only view some have of the tender tube. Okra is much like brussel sprouts or beets – highly misunderstood, commonly overcooked, and full of potential. I always feel compelled to rescue a misjudged food from neglect and damnation such as this sorry but scrumptious bunch. I’ll feature beets at dinner parties or serve caramelized brussel sprouts for someone who couldn’t recognize them on a plate for a million bucks but still thinks they are nasty. With a few tricks up my sleeves, I was ready to rejuvinate the okra aura.

Okra is at its best when prepared in the simplest of ways or eaten raw. Selecting okra is a skill no one should ignore as it’s easy to develop and critical to enjoying it. Some pods tend to be very fibrous – you’ll feel like you are chewing on tiny sticks. If you are careful when you select them, you’ll feel which ones will be tender and which might be more like bamboo floss. When preparing them, you only need to know one thing…don’t overcook it. Overcooking okra is what makes it slimy, mushy, and tasteless. Southern cooks would probably shake me like a shake n’ bake if they caught me saying this: okra does NOT need to be stewed. Not in gumbo, not in jambalaya. Do not boil it for 10 minutes; do not stew it in a sauce for a half hour. It doesn’t need to absorb spices or flavors, because its flavor is so delicate and light. Okra can simply be sautéed with salt and pepper for a few minutes, until bright green and just tender. Add it on top of a nice southern stew or gumbo for a good crunchy touch.

In this recipe, the okra is left raw and sliced into small chunks. The smaller the pod, the better it will be in raw form. Even raw okra has a touch of “slime” to it when you start cutting, but you won’t notice it in the salad. This recipe also features yellow pear tomatoes that also grow well in hotter temperatures and tend to be included in the same share from the farm. If you have to pass on the raw okra, at least try it sautéed or in its very best form….southern fried okra.

Summer Quinoa Salad with Fresh Okra
Serves: 3-4

Prep time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

For the Dressing
3 T. Red wine vinegar
2 tsp. Walnut or olive oil
2 tsp. Thyme, dried (or 1 T. fresh)
2 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. Agave nectar
¾ tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Freshly ground black pepper

For the Salad
2 c. Quinoa, cooked
1 can or 1 ½ c. cooked chickpeas (drained & rinsed if using canned)
1 c. Okra, sliced into ¼ inch pieces – stems discarded
1 c. Yellow pear tomatoes (or another small, mild variety)
¾ c. Red bell pepper, diced
¾ c. Carrots, grated
¾ c. Corn, fresh or frozen
¾ c. Cucumber, diced

Directions

Whisk all dressing ingredients together in a small bowl. Adjust seasonings to taste – for a less tart dressing, add more agave and additional salt & pepper to taste. Set aside

Combing all salad ingredients in a medium or large mixing bowl. Drizzle with dressing, stirring to coat completely. Season with additional salt and pepper if necessary.

Curried Kale Salad with Roasted Cauliflower and Apples

Silly admission # 473 (yes they happen that often): I’ve been craving legumes like normal people crave ice cream. During the month of May in which my token omnivore voluntarily followed a vegan diet, I avoided making too many bean dishes so as not to deter him from the already….windy side effects of eating so much fiber. While I didn’t omit beans entirely, I certainly treaded carefully seeing as though he has a natural aversion to the magical fruit. He’ll eat certain kinds so long as they aren’t cooked to absolute mush, but I didn’t want to overdo it during his vegan trial for fear of exhausting him on the beany buggers. Now that he’s back on the flesh wagon however, I don’t feel bad reintroducing beans as my vegan superstar ingredient. Packed full of iron and healthy fiber, my body was screaming for the little pearly pockets of yum. And part of me wants to overdo it now since his body is probably going through some nutritional withdrawal since his sudden reversion to cholesterol and saturated…I mean meat.

Well that’s a little off track for this recipe, but it leads to my inspiration. I hadn't soaked any beans and for dried beans that cook quickly, mung beans were the only option. I’ve made them time and time again, but as hard as I try to be creative, the dish always ends up tasting the same. This time was no different. Always delicious, but always the same. Mung beans stewed with potatoes, carrots and tomatoes with a generous pinch of cumin seed and crushed red pepper. If I try to get fancier, it complicates the dish which ends up tasting rather blah. Since I knew what the dish was going to taste like, I thought I could at least make a well-paired saladn to get creative. Trying to think of something that would go well with a stewed dish, I recalled working at the Afghan restaurant in Madison. Kabul had a killer curry salad dressing that was the talk of the town. Made with raw eggs, tons of oil and about a pound of sugar per batch, patrons rarely knew what was coating their lettuce. Tasty nonetheless. So I attempted to recreate a healthier, vegan version.

Raw eggs and lots of oil - sound like anything familiar? Perhaps a well-known American condiment? Hello mayonnaise. For the Memorial party, I had made my own vegan sour cream that sort of morphed into mayo after the leftovers spent a few days in the fridge. Since real mayo shares many similarities with the original dressing ingredients, I figure this would be a good stand-in. Instead of adding a ton of oil, I used some leftover broth that didn’t make it into the stew with just a touch of walnut oil. Agave replaced white sugar of course and the tiniest pinch of turmeric gave it that signiature yellow hue that comes from the egg yolks in the old recipe. My version was every bit as tasty. The crunchy roasted cauliflower was perfectly matched by sweet apple slices. The curry tied it all together. The mung beans were fine, but the salad was delish!

Curry Kale Salad with Roasted Cauliflower and Apples
Makes 2 side salads

Prep time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 c. Cauliflower flowerets
½ tsp Salt
½ tsp Freshly ground pepper
2 tsp. Nutritional yeast
Cooking spray

¼ c. Vegetable broth, from bouillon
2-3 T. Vegan mayo
1 T. Lemon juice, freshly squeezed
½ T. Mild tasting oil (walnut, avocado, canola)
¾ tsp. Curry powder
¾ tsp. Agave nectar
1/8 tsp. Turmeric
Salt and pepper to taste

3-4 Large kale leaves, ribs cut out and sliced thinly into ribbons
½ Medium apple (gala, pink lady, or other sweet varienty), thinly sliced with slices cut in half

Directions

Preheat oven to 400˚F.

Place the cauliflower in a medium mixing bowl and coat completely with cooking spray. Season with salt, pepper and nutritional yeast. Roast for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and crispy on the outside. Remove from heat and set aside.

While the cauliflower roasts, prepare the dressing by whisking the next 7 ingredients together. Season with additional agave if too acidic and salt and pepper to taste. In a separate mixing bowl, pour ½ of dressing over kale and apples. Let sit while cauliflower finishes cooking.

To serve, divide salad into 2 portions and top each with half of the roasted cauliflower.