Just Another Meatless Monday: Grain Bowls

As the days get shorter and cooler, I keep looking for different hot meals -- although playing around with variations of tahini-miso salad dressings keeps me interested in chopped salads for one meal each day. Last week was crazy, but I did have some time to cook, and I tried some variations on grain bowls. I like one-dish suppers, and a layer of hot grain topped with veggies fits the bill perfectly.

For my base, I've been using a Premium 6 Grain Rice mixture from Kagayaki, which I picked up on a visit to H Mart (a Korean grocery chain) several weeks ago. This mixture contains black rice, purple barley, hull-less barley, rye berries, MG red rice, and short grain brown rice. In the bag, it is a pretty mixture of earthy colors, from light tan to reddish brown to black. When cooked, however, it takes on the dark color of the black rice. It is chewy, flavorful, and satisfying.

For my first version of a grain bowl, I roasted more Delicata squash, plus a quartered fennel bulb. I sliced one quarter of the fennel bulb on top of the grain, and added some of the squash. In addition, I made a mixture of baby greens and canned artichoke hearts, which I adapted from a recipe I found in the Seattle Times online. The original recipe called for using the mixture to stuff baguettes. I eliminated the cheese and made a few other changes. I used items I usually have on hand, so I will probably make some version of this again.

Here's what I did:

Toss ¼ cup chopped walnuts in a hot, dry pan (I used my nonstick skillet) until toasted. Set the toasted nuts aside in a small bowl.

Put a little olive oil in a large, nonstick skillet. When the oil is heated, add layers of 1 pound baby spinach (I used a bagged mixture of baby spinach, baby bok choy, and baby chard), 1 can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped (not marinated!), and a mixture of 1 teaspoon mild Spanish smoked paprika and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg. As the greens wilted, I was able to add more greens until they were all wilted and mixed with the spices and chopped artichoke. Add the walnuts at the end, and serve. This makes a mild mixture. I don't usually add salt, but I'm sure a little salt would perk this up.

 

The combination of greens, fennel, squash, and grain made a filling meal. I liked it enough to try another version later in the week. This one, I made up myself. I wanted to try braising heartier greens, so I bought a bag of chopped kale and filled a produce bag with mustard greens. I also picked up 2 8-ounce packages of sliced mushrooms (they cost the same as whole mushrooms, so why not get the sliced ones?) and some canned cannellini beans. I picked the beans and mushrooms to add some meatiness to the meal.

I defrosted a half-cup of homemade vegetable stock for the bottom of a large, heavy pot, then added 1 sweet onion, chopped fine, plus the mushrooms. When the onion was soft, I began adding the chopped kale and mustard greens, adding more as the greens wilted. I then added 1 teaspoon of the mild Spanish smoked paprika and 1 can of drained, rinsed cannellini beans. I let this cook for about 40 minutes while the grain mixture was cooking. I topped a layer of cooked grain with the greens mixture, finishing it with a good splash of red wine vinegar and a grinding of both pepper and pink Himalayan salt. (It's funny, when you don't usually add salt to food, a little bit added at the end really makes a huge difference.) I can't say that I am a big fan of kale in general (except baby kale, which is OK). But it was an interesting, hearty, earthy dish -- good on a cold night. I plan to experiment with other greens -- maybe I can find some that I like better than kale.  

Try making your own version of a grain bowl with whatever grains, greens, and veggies you have on hand.

 

 

Just Another Meatless Monday: Try Something New

I thinned the leftover Tahini Lemon sauce/dip from last week with water and used it for salad dressing for the rest of the week. It revived my interest in salads just as the weather was getting cooler and I was growing really tired of the salads I had been eating all summer. I usually dress my salads with just vinegar (red wine vinegar most often, but sometimes balsamic).

I made a trip to H Mart (a large local Asian grocery store) on Friday, mainly to get some miso. But I also checked out their produce department, because they have very good prices on produce I get at the Giant or Harris-Teeter, plus they have more unusual ingredients that I can't get at my usual grocery. When I saw the large, knobby lumps of celery root or celeriac, I got one to try it. They also had some very good looking parsnips. The squash in the picture is a Delicata I picked up at Trader Joe's. Their flyer said that the skin, when cooked, is edible, so I thought I would try that, too.

This afternoon I cut up all three vegetables and roasted them in the oven at 400F. I roasted each separately, just in case they took different amounts of time to cook, but they each took about 15 minutes to get soft, although some browned better than others in that amount of time. The Delicata squash was easy to prepare. I just cut off the stem end, then cut it in half lengthwise and scraped out the seed goop with a spoon, then cut it into half-moons.

I also made a tahini-miso dressing (which is why I was at H Mart for miso). It's based on several recipes I found on the internet, but not exactly like any one of them. Here's what I mixed together in a small bowl for the dressing:

about 2 tablespoons tahini
about 1 tablespoon red miso
juice of  1 orange
juice of 1 lemon
about 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

I used a fork to mix, because both the miso and the tahini needed some mashing and smashing to get the lumps out of the dressing. It turned out thin in consistency, but very tasty. White miso has a more delicate flavor than red miso, so you might want to start with that if you're not sure you like the taste of miso.

I used some of the roasted vegetables in a green salad along with my typical cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, canned artichoke quarter and canned hearts of palm, plus some kidney beans, and dressed it with the tahini-miso dressing. It was just what I needed for an autumn salad dinner. I loved the sweetness of the roasted parsnips, Delicata squash, and celeriac with the tangy dressing.

I had never had celeriac or Delicata squash before, and this was my first purchase of miso, too. Sometimes I need to shake things up and try something new. I'm glad I did. I see many more autumn salads with roasted vegetables in my future.

Just Another Meatless Monday: Lemon Tahini Sauce

If you like hummus, try this sauce/dip. It is like hummus without the chickpeas. I found the recipe in the Washington Post a few weeks ago when they did a feature on cauliflower. They called for deep fried or roasted cauliflower to dip in the sauce. I made it yesterday, and it was so good that I had run out of roasted cauliflower by the time I took a picture tonight -- it is that good!

Tahini is ground sesame seed paste -- similar to fresh peanut butter. It is not low calorie or fat-free. You will usually have to stir in a layer of oil floating on top before you use it. So it is not something to eat with abandon, but it has its place in a healthy diet, just as nuts do.

Here's the basic recipe:

Blitz in a blender (or food processor) the following ingredients:

1 cup tahini
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup water
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons kosher salt (I left this out)
dash hot sauce (I used Sriracha)

Jerusalem: A Cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, which I used last week, has a similar recipe that also uses fried cauliflower. But this recipe mixes the tahini sauce in a bowl rather than a blender or food processor. The proportions are a little different, as it uses 3/4 cup tahini rather than 1 cup, but they are essentially similar. In addition to the ingredients listed above (except the hot sauce), the sauce includes 2/3 cup Greek yogurt and 1/4 cup each of chopped parsley and mint, plus some ground black pepper. And instead of using it as a dip, this recipe adds the fried cauliflower (2 heads, divided into small florets) and some fried green onions (8, divided into 3 long segments) to the tahini sauce, so that it is more like a dressing for a salad. The dish is finished with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses and chopped mint.

Between these two recipes, I can see using this in many different way as a dip or dressing for vegetables -- raw or roasted. I think the sauce would be wonderful drizzled over steamed broccoli, for example. It would also be good drizzled over chickpeas, as it has the basic flavors of hummus already. Or use a mixture of chickpeas and veggies for a one-dish meal. I could also imagine thinning it with more water (or yogurt, if you use it) to make a dressing for a green salad.

I could also see mixing up a smaller quantity in a bowl rather than using the blender, because I have lots left over even after the cauliflower is gone. Just aim for the consistency of honey when you mix it up this way. I look forward to trying variations with chopped herbs. Also, the 3 cloves of garlic were very strong. I love garlic, so it was not a problem for me, but you might want to start with one clove of garlic for your first batch and add more in future batches if you like more garlic.

This addictive sauce is going to become a staple in my kitchen.

Just Another Meatless Monday: Mejadra

Somehow, I heard about Jerusalem: A Cookbook, by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. The New York Times had an article on the cookbook in July, discussing how popular the cookbook had been this year. I put my name on the "hold" list at the library and waited, and waited. I finally got it last week. It is a large, beautiful, cookbook with lots of recipes that look really good, and if the one dish that I did cook is any indication, they taste wonderful. But most of the recipes include meat or other animal products, so I won't be cooking them before the book goes back to the library. There are still 18 people in the "hold" list, so it will go back soon.

The one dish that I have cooked is Mejadra, which is something that we ate at Jerusalem Gardens in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on our last trip. It is a simple dish -- basically lentils, rice, and fried or caramelized onions, plus spices. The first time, I followed the recipe as closely as possible. It called for partially cooking the lentils, then adding them to the uncooked rice and spices and cooking the rice and lentils together. The onions were thinly sliced, 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour were sprinkled over them and tossed, then fried in batches in 1 cup of oil. The onions came out very crispy. When the lentils and rice were done, half of the onions were mixed in and half were sprinkled on top.

I liked the dish, but I really wanted to minimize the oil in the mejadra. So I omitted the oil from the rice and spice mixture, and caramelized the onions in 1 tablespoon of olive oil instead. The result is still a tasty dish. I also cooked the lentils and rice completely separately, as I wanted to use brown basmati rice and I had had some trouble getting the rice cooked properly once the lentils were added.

Here's what I did.

I completely cooked 1 1/4 cups brown lentils (green lentils could also be used) in lots of water, then drained them.

Meanwhile, I toasted 2 teaspoons cumin seeds and 1 1/2 tablespoons coriander seeds in the dry pot in which I planned to cook the rice, then added 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric, 1 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice, 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and lots of freshly ground black pepper. I measured all these spices in a little bowl so I could just toss them in the pot once the seeds were toasted, then I quickly added 1 cup brown basmati rice and stirred to coat with the spices. The cooking instructions I have for brown basmati rice call for rinsing it, then soaking for 1/2 hour, then cooking in 1 1/2 cups water, so I followed those instructions.

Meanwhile, I sliced 1 1/2 pounds of onions very thinly, broke the slices into rings, and fried gently in a nonstick skillet with 1 tablespoon of olive oil until they became very brown.

When the lentils, rice, and onions were all done, I mixed them all together in the large skillet. The result was a delicious -- but very, very brown -- dish. The coriander seeds and the onions really make the mejadra. I ate it plain, but I also used it as a base for some cooked vegetables. Either way, it is great.

Colorwork

It's a gray, rainy day here, with temperatures in the 50s, which makes me think of pulling out the winter clothes and finally putting away summer things.

I've wanted to do stranded colorwork knitting for a long time, but it seemed so intimidating for some reason. In an early attempt (a baby blanket based on this pattern) I carefully twisted the yarns where colors changed to prevent holes. In a later attempt (my Spectra by Stephen West) I tried to follow the directions for picking up the color change from beneath the working yarn to prevent holes at the color change. Sometimes I did it correctly, and sometimes . . . not.

This summer I bit the bullet and tried again with a really cute (and free!) little pattern from Churchmouse Yarns & Teas. I made the Houndstooth Cuffs with navy and gray Palette yarn from Knit Picks. I finally wrapped my head around picking up the yarn from beneath for the color change and loved the finished product. A woman who was selling cuffs at a craft show told me that research showed that keeping your wrists warm where the blood vessels are close to the surface can help keep you warmer. Sounds reasonable to me -- and cuffs are small projects that knit up fast. They could be my new favorite project.

With the success of the cuffs, I forged ahead with another colorwork pattern -- the Chromaticity Cowl by Miriam L. Felton. This is also in Knit Picks Palette. It was a lot of fun picking out the colors. I loved the result, but I didn't really look hard at the pattern before I bought it. It features several rows where the color blocks change in which you knit with three colors of yarn. Yikes! What a mess that was untangling the twisted strands! But there were no holes at the color changes and my floats inside look OK, so I am happy. It was a bit of a challenge, but I really want to do more.

I confess: several years ago, in a burst of enthusiasm for colorwork, I bought one ball of each of the Knit Picks Palette colors then available, so all of this was knit from stash. It's what I wanted to do when I bought the yarn, and now I am doing it. There's more colorwork in my future.

But right now, I am still knitting on my Hitchhiker in lace weight yarn.

It's great TV knitting and I've got nearly 40 points on the serrated edge. I'll have to hold it up to my fingering weight Hitchhiker soon to see how much more knitting I have to do. The pink and orange stripe is very subtle (but the color is not). I love how it is turning out.

Just Another Meatless Monday -- Bean Salad Template

The weather was a summer-like almost 90 degrees this weekend, so I didn't feel much like eating hot food. But I did want something more substantial than the chopped salads I was eating for most of the summer.

You can find recipes in unlikely places sometimes. A recipe for bean salad on the back of the Kids Post section of the Sunday newspaper caught my eye this summer, and I clipped the recipe "just in case." Unfortunately, we stopped at the grocery store yesterday morning on the way home from a weekend trip, so I couldn't consult the recipe before shopping. But I remembered enough of it, and made up the rest out of what I had and a few things I picked up at the store. If you keep canned beans in your pantry (or home-cooked beans in your freezer), you'll always have the base for a quick salad that is good for a meal or a side dish.

Just drain and rinse 2 or 3 cans of beans, chop some veggies, dress the salad, and pop it in the fridge to let the flavors mingle.

Here's what I used:

1 can black-eyed peas
1 can chickpeas
1 can cannellini beans
2 carrots, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 cucumber, chopped
juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon herbs de Provence
lots of freshly ground black pepper

I juiced the lime first, and let the herbs de Provence hydrate a bit in the juice while I made the salad. Then I dressed the salad with the herbed lime juice. I ate a bowl of this for lunch, with grapes for dessert, and then used it in as an ingredient in a chopped salad for dinner, too.

I think a nice vinaigrette dressing would be perfect for this, if you are not avoiding oil. I could also see going in different directions with this -- Southwestern with black beans and corn as a base, with a spicy dressing, for example.

The weather is going to be cool and rainy today, so I think our Indian summer is at an end, but I am going to have lots of fun playing with this template when the weather warms up again. I hope you have fun with it, too.

Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival

On Saturday I went out to the Eighth Annual Shenandoah Valley Fiber Festival at the county fairgrounds in Berryville, Virginia. It was a beautiful day and a lovely drive. There was lots and lots of fabulous spinning fiber and yarn at the festival, as well as lots of animals.

I really enjoyed the sheepdog demonstration. Here, Pete herds four sheep under the watchful eye of his master.

Most of the vendors were indoors, but there were quite a few outdoor vendors, too.

And there were several food vendors and a pavilion of picnic tables. I had a lamb sausage sandwich and enjoyed every bite.

In addition to the usual varieties of fiber festival animals -- alpaca and many varieties of sheep -- there was a two-humped Bactrian camel.

There was also music. What else can you ask for?

I have so much stash yarn, I decided not to add to the stash, although I was very tempted to do so by the hand-dyed and breed-specific yarns that you can't find in just any yarn store. I did buy a magazine that I had been wanting -- the Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits.

I look forward to going to this yarn festival again next year.