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!
Local co-op Mississippi Market has a few housemade treats that I get on a pretty regular basis: the vegan muffaletta, which is fresh and delicious, and the curried lentil-rice salad, which is full of curry goodness. I've been meaning to try my hand at replicating this recipe for ages, and I finally got around to it recently, with reasonable success. The main difference between mine and the co-op's is that mine was drier, even though I kept whipping up extra dressing and adding it in. I guess I'm condemned to buying and eating more of their salad in the service of stealing their recipe.
Curried Lentil-Rice Salad
1 cup rice
1 cup french green lentils
Half a head of cauliflower
1 red, orange, or yellow bell pepper, diced
3/4 cup currants
1/2 an onion, minced
3/4 cup cashews
Get the rice cooking and cook the lentils in a few cups of water until they are tender but not mushy. Break the cauliflower into little florets and lightly steam them--again, mush is not welcome here.
Then attack the dressing. Whisk together:
1/4 cup olive oil (the market's ingredient listing also uses peanut oil, but I didn't have any)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar (or rice vinegar--again, didn't have any on hand)
1 tsp of good quality curry powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
A healthy plop or two of apricot fruit spread. In fact, eyeball all of these measurements, because I was completely playing it by ear. The dressing looked like this when I made it:
Dump the currants into the dressing to rehydrate a bit. Get to chopping your veg, if you haven't already. I also whisked the onion into the dressing, to mellow it out a little bit. When the rice and lentils are cooked and cooled slightly, mix them together with the cauliflower and bell peppers. Pour on your delicious dressing, add chopped cashews, and salt to taste.
It was imperfect, but I ate this every day for a week. Serve room temperature or cold.
