For a few weeks, all I've been doing is eating various squashes and kale, potatoes and kale, whatever and kale. The CSA is done and I guess I haven't quite gotten back in the hang of buying vegetables, especially green ones. My backyard kale is still going strong, so my tendency has been to chop it fine and throw it into everything, in the manner of stealth vegetables. It's hard to be stealthy with kale, though. Fortunately no one around here really minds.
Anyway, grocery shopping. I'm just not on top of it yet and it seems like there aren't a lot of ingredients in the house, at first glance. But I had a batch of roasted and pureed green tomatoes in the freezer, and I started thinking they'd make an interesting base for chili, or stew, or something.
What's that you say? You've never roasted green tomatoes? Well, I hadn't either, until a month ago or so. We had loads of tomatoes in the garden, but many, many of them never ripened. I window-ripened some.
In fact, I still have a few in the window right now, and they have actually turned red. But overall, I was pretty disappointed with our tomatoes; they were Jet Stars, and I just didn't like the variety for eating raw. So I roasted and/or froze LOTS of them.
To roast green tomatoes, cut them into wedges, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and put them in the oven for 20-25 minutes at 350 or 375. When they come out, you can eat them straight up--they are delicious, melty, caramelized little things--or puree them. I did a bit of both. The puree is super-tangy, without the sweetness of ripe tomatoes. And it's great in a simple curry, like this one I'm about to drop on you.
Roasted Green Tomato Curry with Chickpeas and Brown Rice
Oil for the pan
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 pinches red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons of your favorite curry powder or sambar (I used both)
2 cups roasted green tomato puree
4 cups water
3/4 cup brown rice
4 carrots, diced
1 large can of chickpeas
A dash of agave or other sweetener
Salt to taste
In a medium soup pot, saute the onion in oil until translucent, then add the garlic. Let that cook for a minute or two, then add the red pepper flakes and spices and cook a minute or two longer. Dump in the puree, water, rice, and carrots, and bring the whole mixture to a low boil. Turn the heat back to a simmer and do something else for awhile, while the rice cooks--say 25 minutes or so. Add chickpeas and simmer awhile longer. Taste for salt and sweetness and add agave and salt accordingly. Serve with a dollop of yogurt and some cilantro, if you have them on hand. If not, eat it straight up.
Fresh green tomatoes would probably work just fine in this. I'd just chop them and let them cook down with the onions, garlic, and spices for awhile before adding water and rice. This would also be great with some fresh spinach tossed in at the end, but then I'll put spinach in anything.
Picture to follow, when it's not pitch black outside. Siiiiigh--that's the bad thing about Falling Back.
ETA: here it is, in lunch form:
and with the rest of Mr. Bento:
I didn't really learn to cook properly until I stopped eating meat, and I wouldn't have learned to cook very well at all without the Moosewood Cookbook (and its sequels). When I was a newly-minted vegetarian, Mollie Katzen's Gypsy Soup was one of the first recipes I ever tried, and my curried chickpea stew reminds me a lot of her recipe. Or maybe it's just a straight-up ripoff. You can decide. The Gypsy Soup recipe is also one of the only recipes I've ever managed to bollocks up twice in exactly the same way. That recipe calls for paprika; I inadvertently reached for cayenne, and the result was inedibly hot. (You'd think this would be a good argument for labeling your spice jars, but I still buy in bulk and go by smell.) My boyfriend at the time actually bought me two different fancy varieties of paprika after that, as a gently mocking gift--which reminds me, I really ought to buy more smoked paprika. It's delicious.
Anyway, you might call this a "stewp," since it starts out like soup and ends up like stew the longer it sits and absorbs the liquid. It's definitely more delicious the next day. And it is easily veganized, and goes great with nooch.
Curried Chickpea Stew
Olive oil for the pot
1 medium onion, diced
1 big carrot, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
3 fat cloves of garlic, minced
1 fat inch of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 big can of tomatoes
2 potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
1 can chickpeas, or 1.5 cups cooked if you are a good planner
1/3 c quinoa (optional: I had this on hand and like it for the extra protein and texture.)
1-2 T curry powder (this depends on your taste and your curry powder. I added 2 T and it is a bit much.)
1/2 c plain yogurt/soy yogurt (optional, but tasty)
2 good plops of ketchup. You may judge all you want, but ketchup might be the magic secret ingredient here. You could also stir in some tomato paste and maybe a bit of honey or agave, but this does need a little something sweet.
A big handful (really, as much as you like) of dark greens (kale, collards, spinach), chopped
In a big soup pot, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, carrots, and celery, and saute until onions are translucent. Add garlic and ginger and cook for a minute or two longer.
Dump in tomatoes, chickpeas, potatoes, quinoa, and curry powder, plus an extra cup or two of water (start with one; you can always add more later). When it starts to bubble, reduce the heat and simmer until the carrots and potatoes are tender. Taste the broth and add ketchup and salt to taste. Stir in the greens and cook until wilted. Add yogurt last of all. Taste to adjust the seasonings and serve with crusty bread.
This soup makes excellent leftovers, as evidenced by this picture:
Note the sad office lighting and industrial desk. At least the food is tasty!
My cooking and eating life have been completely consumed by the CSA box lately. The CSA box more or less dictates what I eat, and it's been really nice. But it's also been a lot of salads and slaw and stir-fried veg and sauteed greens with pasta, and not so much creative recipe action. Did you know you can eat pretty much any vegetable top sauteed if not raw? It's true. Here are some novel greens I have eaten in the last few weeks:
-Kohlrabi
-Radish
-Carrot
-Broccoli
-Cauliflower
I weep for all of the supermarket vegetables, denuded of their greens, and I weep for the many years I was too dumb to think of cooking and eating the greens attached to my vegetables. I'm telling you, you can eat just about anything sauteed in olive oil with garlic and some red pepper flakes and salt and pepper and maybe a squeeze of lemon.
In non-CSA ingredient news, I whipped up the following brilliant little snack a few weeks ago:
I've made green pea hummus two ways: with and without chickpeas. If you want a completely raw snack, do all peas; if you enjoy the chickpea action, use half chickpeas and half green peas. It's delicious either way, and a little lighter, sweeter, and springier than traditional hummus.
Green Pea Hummus
2 cups frozen green peas, thawed (I just soaked them in water for 15 minutes or so), or fresh ones if you're lucky and industrious (the shelling, you know)
2-3 tablespoons raw tahini
2 small minced cloves of garlic, or more to taste
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
a sprinkle of cayenne
olive or flaxseed oil as needed--not mandatory, but rather tasty and smooth
Whip it all up in a blender and serve with veggies, crackers, or your fingers.
It's been the week of the chickpea here at the makeshift kitchen. Several days ago I cooked up a huge batch with no real plan for them, but it's been nice to have cooked beans on hand to use as I wish (and with which to make yet more Chickpea Cutlets). I just cooked an even larger batch of aduki/adzuki/azuki beans, so stay tuned as I explore their manifold uses.
Anyway, this slaw thing just sort of came to me after I shredded a bit of beet for a variation on the house salad the other day. I love beets in all forms, but I have to say I haven't done a lot of raw beet goodness apart from the occasional trip to a juice bar (my favorite: carrot apple beet juice with lots of ginger). This recipe totally remedies that situation. It also made use of an old-ass apple I had in the fridge. You know that one apple? It's gotten a little too wrinkly to eat as a snack, but you only have one of them, so you don't want to make applesauce? Here's one way to use that apple.
Carrot Apple Beet Slaw with Chickpeas
Mix up a vinaigrette:
1/4 cup olive oil
a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
a healthy plop of dijon mustard
a few squirts of Braggs Liquid Aminos (or plain old soy sauce)
1/2 tsp of thyme
1/2 tsp basil
Whisk together in a medium bowl and add 2 cups cooked chickpeas. Let that all mellow together and work on your veggies.
2 large carrots, grated
1 medium beet, grated
(Note: I just scrubbed the veggies really well instead of peeling. They're organic and there's good stuff in the skin, you dig?)
1 apple, peeled and grated
1 rib celery, chopped, including the leafy bits, why not?
1 scallion, chopped
Mix it all together with the vinaigrettey chickpeas, add salt if you need it, and garnish with black pepper and pumpkin or sunflower seeds or serve over lettuce.
I used to make this stuff all the time, especially when I lived by myself, and have no idea why it fell out of rotation because it's the easiest meal ever, endlessly adaptable to whatever you have on hand. The only thing you really need is chickpeas.
Chickpea Hash
Olive oil
1-2 smashed and diced cloves of garlic
A big pinch of chili flakes
A few big pinches of dried basil
A can of chickpeas, or a cup and a half of cooked ones
One big quartered and sliced zucchini
A few big handfuls of fresh spinach, chopped
Saute the garlic and herbs in olive oil. Add chickpeas and toss to coat, then add zucchini and cook until tender. Throw in spinach and saute another minute, just til wilted. Salt and serve. That's it.
The next day, I added to the leftovers a cup of frozen corn (cooked), a chopped fresh tomato, and a sliced Quorn cutlet. And some baguettes on the side, from the New French Bakery.
Chickpea Hash is also great with crumbled tofu, veggie sausage (cook separately and mix into saute), diced bell peppers (raw or cooked), a little chopped onion, salsa, chili powder and oregano instead of basil, feta cheese, etc. GO NUTS.
