Turkish Lentil Soup

This is part of my on going effort to cook less than three cups of legumes at once. It's easier with lentils because they take half an hour to cook.

Serves 3- and it's better on the second day, honestly.

Chop one onion (or two, if you want) and one carrot. (or two, if you want) Saute in 1 tsp oil until translucenty- 3-4 minutes.

Crush 5 cloves garlic with great force and mash with several pinches of salt.

Add 1 tsp each cumin, coriander, and cinnamon to the onions and carrots. (If you get confused and start adding all of the spices you own that start with C, consider chili and cumin.) Stir. Add the garlic mixture. Stir. Cook for 4-5 minutes.

Add either two chopped tomatoes, 2 tbs tomato paste (if you are the sort of person with open tomato paste in your fridge) or 1/4 cup canned tomatoes, crushed.

Add 1 tbs sugar.

Add 1/2 cup lentils. (I use green lentils {actually mud colored}, but I think French lentils are more authentic. The cooking time will increase to 45 minutes.) Stir rapidly, and then add 4 cups of water or broth.

Simmer for 30 odd minutes, until the lentils have started to come apart in the soup.

Garnish with cilantro and eat.

Vegan Putanesca Pasta

Yes, there are perfectly good pasta sauces that come in jars. No, this one is not markedly better. Yes, I love anchovies and using them would be within the theme of this blog. It's just that half full containers of anchovies tend to molder in my fridge, and eating more than two or three a week is... intense. Also, everyone should have the recipe for whore sauce up their sleeve. (It's a good way to cover the taste of canned tomatoes. Also, if cats eat it they act amusingly unhappy.)

Serves three.

Start boiling water for pasta. Do not start cooking the sauce until the water is boiling.

Peel and coarsely chop six cloves of garlic. Chop 1/2 cup Kalamata olives and 1/2 cup Italian parsley. (If you were using anchovies, you'd soak two in water for five minutes and then chop them as well.)

When you've finished your onerous chopping duties, saute garlic and 1 tsp chile flakes in 1 tbs olive oil until the garlic is blond. (about one minute) Add the olives and 1 tbs. capers. (Or the anchovies.) Stir, and then add a 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes. Simmer for around five minutes- about the amount of time it takes to cook 1/2 pound vermicelli al dente. Add the chopped parsley to the sauce and serve over the pasta.

Eat.

Orange and Jicima Salad

During my quasi-vacation, I researched lots of recipes, cooked lots of food, and took shoddy photos of the things that I cooked. I thought that was a wise way to spend my time, but today's experiences suggest that I should have been clawing my way up cliffs instead. I am dog tired- please enjoy another "sliced things on plates" salad.

Slice one small jicima. (about the size of a large apple) Alice Waters says to slice it into matchsticks, but what does she know? Make the slices as thin as you can be bothered to. Section two oranges- it is vitally important that the oranges be very good oranges. If they are not, put some lime juice and salt on the jicima and call it a day. Arrange the oranges and jicima on a plate. Dress with orange juice from the sectioning, the juice of 1/2 lemon, olive oil, salt, cumin, and... what is that, cilantro? Yeah. Put some cilantro on there. Eat.

Porotos Granados- Hideously Californicated

The bread is most essential.

This is a traditional Chilean summer dish. Or it would be, if I were using fresh cranberry beans instead of dry red beans. And if the corn were not sweet corn and there were less of it. And if the squash were more cooked. And if the tomatoes were not canned and not in the stew but sliced on a plate next to it. And if I didn't include paprika- it's too spicy.

To quote C precisely, "It's nothing like the stew I grew up with, but if you kept making it forever, I would be happy." It's very hearty- it straight up sticks to your ribs. I figure some of my imaginary readers are looking for something that will make them feel full and also warm.

The next set of instructions is for people who still have problems with not cooking their own beans. Feel free to skip this and use two fifteen ounce cans of unseasoned small red beans and two cups of water. (or pinto beans)

Take two cups small red beans and simmer them in 6 cups of water for about two hours. Add water if necessary. When the beans are almost tender, carry on with the recipe.

Slice, seed, and peel about two cups of winter squash. (They do sell the prepared squash in the frozen section now, if you don't have a half squash moping around the fridge.) Simmer with the beans (and a bay leaf) until the squash is fully cooked and on its way to disintegration.

Slice 1/2 onion and saute in oil until tender. Add 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/2 teaspoon paprika, and 1 cup corn. Saute briefly- until the corn is coated with spices. Add to the beans with a 15 oz. can of diced tomatoes. Simmer for about 15 minutes- the texture should be something like chili, so add water if needed. (Or steal the broth with a spoon and wander around sipping a mug of bean juice.) Eat with lots of bread. No, more bread than that.

Kale Gomae

Gomae is traditionally made with spinach, but I don't like spinach. C doesn't like kale, but he was born to suffer.

Put a large pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Wash and stem one bunch of dinosaur kale. (I think pretty much any kind of kale would work, though purple kale might be strange.) When the water is boiling, cook the kale until tender- 2-5 minutes. (Frequent tasting is necessary. Also, this is possibly a waste of very delicate kale. Make tabouli.) Drain the kale and rinse with cold water to cool. Squeeze out the water, leaving the kale in ever so appetizing green wads. Cut wads into half inch slices.

Toast 3 tbs sesame seeds over medium heat. Reserve 1 tbs and crush the rest lightly with a spoon. Mix 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tsp water, 2 tbs soy sauce, and 1 tbs mirin until the sugar dissolves. (If you don't have mirin, add a full tsp of sugar and an extra tsp of water or white wine or sake.) Add crushed sesame seeds and mix with kale. Arrange dressed kale on plates and garnish with remaining sesame seeds. Add two drops of toasted sesame seed oil to each plate. Eat.

Vegan Cranberry-Orange Muffins- Bad Idea Saturday

C and I roshamboed for who got to be the DD last night, and I lost. You know what everyone loves? Hungover baking. I was gonna replace the egg in these simple and tasty muffins with ground flax seed and water, (1 tbs ground flax seed, 3 tbs water) but our food processor doesn't handle tiny amounts and I couldn't find the coffee grinder. Attempts to grind seeds by whacking them with a spoon proved ineffective. After using up my January quotient of expletives, I used egg as an egg substitute. Please try it properly and get back to me.

Makes 12.

Mix 1 cup white flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, one teaspoon baking soda, and two teaspoons baking powder. (Seems like a lot of leavening, but then *you* won't be getting lifting power from the egg.) Add 1 and 1/2 cups fresh cranberries and pretty much the entire zest of one orange. Stir.

In another bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 1 cup orange juice, 1 egg or 1/4 cup egg substitute, a dash of vanilla, and 1/2 cup vegetable oil. (I think the mention of 1/2 cup oil is a sign that the recipe used to contain butter.) Stir.

Mix the contents of the two bowls until all the dry ingredients are moist- and no further. Gluten should stay inside the flour particles when muffins are concerned. Measure into a muffin tin filled with those cute little papers. If you don't have cute little papers, the cranberries will stick to the pan something fierce. Of course, by the time they need washing, you'll have some muffins and orange juice in your stomach, and the world will not seem quite so unpleasant.

Bake at 375 degrees for twenty minutes, or until they pass the toothpick test. C said that they're better when they're a little bit burned, but C wanted to survive the morning.

Winter Salad

This salad was originally going to be named something that cast all sorts of aspersions on people who don't have winter produce. I changed my mind because my evil laugh didn't carry over to text. Instead, we have a friendly, accessible title.

I love frisee (death to accents) but I have trouble finding recipes for it. (Yes, there is the salad where bacon fat replaces olive oil. It's January. We don't eat like that anymore.) I also love other winter fruits- and C eats mandarins like other people eat Cadbury cream eggs. Clearly, all of these things need to become a salad.

Tear one head of frisee into bite sized pieces and put in a medium sized bowl. Add seeds from 1 small pomegranate. Peel two small mandarin oranges and add the segments. Slice in one avocado.

Make a dressing from the juice of one Meyer lemon, a teaspoon of chopped shallot, 1/4 cup olive oil, and a little bit of salt. Dress the salad. Eat. Cackle.