Lentils over rice

Hearty and quick

We came in from a cold day out in the nature reserve watching the bald eagles and the migrating swans. I hadn’t ever really thought about it, but hey, swans are white for the same reason polar bears are white – most of the year they live in the snow! Except when they come south to Oregon for the winter, apparently. Everyone was cold, but after spending the day with the swans and ducks nobody wanted meat for dinner. This hearty lentil stew with carrots and cauliflower was perfect!

How to make lentil stew:

First start the lentils: one cup of lentils with 3 cups of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for fifteen minutes, or until the lentils begin to get tender.

Meanwhile start the rice (or use leftover rice from something else like we did): 1 1/2 cups of rice to 3 cups of water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer until the water is all absorbed, about ten minutes.

Now heat 1/4 cup of olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and saute one chopped onion, three crushed cloves of garlic, two chopped carrots, and half a head of cauliflower for about five minutes. Add a cup of tomato sauce, the lentils with their water, 1 tsp. salt, a pinch of black pepper, 1 tsp. cardamom, 1 tsp. oregano, and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon. Add enough water to cover the vegetables and simmer uncovered for fifteen minutes or until the vegetables are all soft. You could add mint instead of the oregano and cinnamon for a different flavor, too. Finally, add the rice and stir it all together and serve.

We ate this stew with sauteed spinach on the side, pretty simple. But we did have cheesecake for dessert!

Vegetarian or vegan

Just naturally vegan! Enjoy!

Can I keep this for later?

Sure. Put the leftovers in a tupperware in the refrigerator, and the flavors will blend and it will be even better than it was at first. You can reheat it for about four or five days. You might need to add a little salt after reheating to bring out the flavors.

Or try this spicy lentil stew with sweet potatoes

Lentil soup

Halloween

The first time I make lentil soup in the fall is usually for Halloween, when the kids are just itching to be off trick-or-treating and I want them to have something solid in their stomachs before they start eating all that candy. Lentil soup can simmer on the stove, so if anything upsets the dinner schedule, or somebody arrives late, I can still give them a good bowl of soup.

How to make lentil soup:

(This takes about an hour.)

Chop an onion, two stalks of celery, two carrots, and two cloves of garlic. Pour 1/4 cup of olive oil into a large saucepan and heat over medium-high heat, and saute the vegetables in the olive oil until they begin to get brown – about fifteen minutes. Add four cups of leftover miso soup or chicken soup, or water if you don’t have any frozen soup, with 1 teaspoon of cumin. Add 1 1/4 cups of lentils and two tomatoes cut into quarters (or two frozen tomatoes, or some frozen tomato sauce). Simmer until the lentils and carrots are soft, about 35 minutes. If the soup gets too thick, add more water.

When the lentils are soft, season with salt and pepper to taste, and add a tablespoon of red wine vinegar to bring out the flavor and brighten it up. Serve hot, with a dollop of Greek yogurt on top of the soup in each bowl, and sliced bread and sliced apples.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Lentil soup is vegan unless you use chicken broth or put in the Greek yogurt when you serve it. To make it meatier, saute a few slices of chopped bacon with the onions.

Can I keep this for later?

Yes, lentil soup will be good reheated the next day or two, but you may need to add more water if it gets too thick. It won’t freeze well.

Leek and Pancetta Sauce

Leeks for St. David’s Day!

At least since the 1700s, the people of Wales have celebrated St. David’s Day (March 1st) by wearing a leek in their hats or on their clothes. Why a leek? There’s some story about a battle in a leek-field, but clearly the main reason is that leeks are actually growing and available on March 1st, when not much else is. You can plant leeks in the summer, and they’ll overwinter in the ground getting bigger and bigger, and then you harvest them in early spring. That’s why this recipe belongs to the early spring.

How to make Leek and Pancetta Sauce:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Heat 1/4 cup olive oil in medium-sized oven-safe frying pan over medium heat. Chop 1/4 pound of pancetta (it’s inbetween ham and bacon) into little pieces and saute in the olive oil. Cut off the white part of two leeks, slice thin (discarding the roots and the green part), and add the sliced leeks to the pancetta. Put the whole pan in the oven and roast for half an hour.

Put the pan back on the stove-top, being extremely careful to remember that the *handle is hot*. Add a cup of white wine, a cup of chicken broth (leftover chicken soup, strained, or a cup of water and a chicken bouillon cube), half a cup of whole milk, half a cup of whole-fat Greek yogurt, and half a cup of grated Parmesan cheese. Simmer until the flavors blend a little, about five minutes, and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot, over fettucine, with a green salad, or broccoli, or brussels sprouts, or spinach on the side.

Will leek and pancetta sauce keep?

Not really. It’s better fresh.

Leek and potato soup

A base for many soups

Leeks are, like celery and chives, one of the first plants available in the spring, because they’re stalks and not leaves. So leeks are a great seasonal food for early spring. Leek and potato soup is great by itself, but it’s also a good base for many other soups. Add chopped carrots with the potatoes to make carrot soup, or add frozen peas to make pea soup. Or mix carrots and peas. Spinach, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, arugula, or sorrel will all work too.

How to make leek and potato soup:

Put a large saucepan on medium heat with an eighth of a cup of olive oil in the bottom. Take two leeks and cut off the roots and the stalks (everything beyond where they turn from pale green to darker green). Slice the leeks into quarter-inch slices and toss into the olive oil. Stir frequently for about ten minutes until the leeks soften.

[If leeks are too expensive, onion and potato soup also works and tastes good.]

Meanwhile, peel three potatoes and cut into eighths, and toss them into the saucepan as well. Stir for another ten minutes, and then add about four cups of water or leftover miso or chicken soup (there’s not really any need to defrost it, you can just add it to the soup as a frozen block and it will melt in the pan, but add some water too).

Simmer over medium-high heat until the leeks and potatoes are soft. Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender, or just mash with a potato masher. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot, with a couple of spoonfuls of full fat Greek yogurt in each serving if you like. You can sprinkle some chopped parsley or chives over the top to make it look prettier.

Serve leek and potato soup with crackers or bread, or with a green salad.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Leek and potato soup is entirely vegan, unless you add the yogurt at the end. If you don’t want yogurt, try adding a little tarragon to give the soup more flavor. If you like meat, you can add a chopped strip of bacon with the leeks at the beginning of the recipe.

Will leek and potato soup keep?

Soup will keep in the refrigerator in a closed tupperware for about a week. Reheat it in the microwave. You may need to add more water if the soup gets too thick. You can also freeze leek and potato soup in tupperwares for a couple of months.

Lasagna

Make it quicker by making your own pasta

I used to feel lasagna took too long for a family dinner, because you had to first boil the noodles, then assemble the lasagna, and then bake it – too many steps. But now that I can make my own pasta, it’s a snap.

How to make lasagna:

(takes about an hour, but you can do something else for the last half-hour)

First add some olive oil to a medium-size saucepan and saute a chopped onion with three cloves of garlic until they are soft. Add five cups of spinach (in batches if they won’t fit) and saute until they wilt.

Then make the pasta: in a medium size mixing bowl, mix 3 cups of flour and a teaspoon of salt with 1/3 cup of olive oil and 3 eggs. Add water as needed. Mix until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl and forms a ball.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for five minutes. Divide into three balls and roll out each ball with a rolling pin until it is the size of your lasagna pan. I usually use a 9×12 roasting pan. (If there isn’t room you can roll them out as you go.) Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Now assemble the lasagna. Cover the bottom of the lasagna pan with olive oil. Spread tomato sauce over the bottom, then lay the first of your three sheets of pasta down. Spread another layer of tomato sauce, then a layer of mozzarella cheese and a layer of ricotta cheese.

[You can make your own ricotta cheese by heating about a half-gallon of milk in a saucepan. When it feels warm, add 1/4 cup of white vinegar. It should curdle quickly; if it doesn’t, add a little more vinegar. When it is all curdled, strain out the whey through a cloth and squeeze it a little. That’s ricotta. ]

Then a layer of the spinach and onions. Add another layer of pasta, and repeat the layers. Add your top layer of pasta, spread the last of the tomato sauce on top, and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Bake for half an hour covered (I just put a cookie sheet over the pan), and then uncovered for ten minutes more.

Vegetarian or vegan

Lasagna is vegetarian, but not vegan.

Can I keep lasagna for later?

Yes, this will be better the next day, and you can keep it in the refrigerator, well sealed up in a tupperware, for a week. It won’t freeze well though.

Lamb stew

Housewarming party in January:

What to make for fifty people coming to a housewarming party in January? We made a great deal of finger food, but we also wanted to have a hot stew that would do for dinner if people didn’t eat before they arrived. I came up with this stew, which has very little meat in it but tastes exciting, and can sit on the stove all evening without any problems.

How to make lamb stew:

Chop a quarter of a pound of lamb shoulder meat into bite-size pieces. Also chop an onion, two peeled parsnips, two peeled turnips, two peeled carrots, and two peeled sweet potatoes. Heat 1/4 cup of olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and brown the lamb, along with the onion and three cloves of minced garlic. When the onion begins to soften and brown, add four cups of water and the rest of the chopped vegetables. You can also add a quarter of a chopped cauliflower if you feel like it. Also add two teaspoons of mint, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and two teaspoons of fresh grated ginger. Finally, add 1 cup of chopped dried figs and half a cup of chopped dried apricots. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer about 3/4 hour, or until the vegetables are soft, even mushy, and most of the water has been absorbed or cooked off.

I don’t serve this over rice or anything: there’s enough starch in the turnips and parsnips to make this a filling stew without a separate starch.

What if I want this to be vegan?

Just leave out the lamb. You might want to add some red lentils, and extra dried fruit.

Can I keep lamb stew for later?

Yes, lamb stew will be better the next day, and you can keep it in the refrigerator, well sealed up in a tupperware, for a week. It won’t freeze well though.

Lamb meatballs with plums

Not quite Ottolenghi

This is another in the series of recipes adapted from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem – this one, a way to use up some summer plums and basil. Ottolenghi’s version called for dried figs, if that sounds better, and for mint and cilantro instead of basil. This takes about an hour.

How to make lamb meatballs with plums:

Put a pound of ground lamb in a medium-size mixing bowl and add one finely chopped onion, most of a bunch of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of salt, a large pinch of black pepper, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of allspice, three cloves of chopped garlic, and an egg. Mix well (might be best to use your fingers). Microwave a cup of cranberries for a minute and add them, mix, and shape into small meatballs on a plate (or two plates, really).

Heat olive oil/cooking oil in a large frying pan and brown the meatballs, turning gently with a spatula. Meanwhile, put on rice to cook. When the meatballs are browned – but not before then – add a cup of white wine, a cup of chicken broth, twenty Italian plums pitted and cut into quarters, a handful of thyme, and some more salt and pepper. Simmer about half an hour or until the sauce begins to thicken and get gummy. Serve over the rice, with plain yogurt on top. Sprinkle chopped fresh basil mixed with tarragon on top. We had it with lettuce and sliced tomato, though I think grated carrots would have been good.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Neither vegetarian nor vegan, sorry. These are meatballs. However, you could do the recipe with mashed black beans and mushrooms and it would not be all that different. Use miso in place of the chicken stock, if you go there.

And will lamb meatballs keep?

Yes, if you have any left, which we didn’t. They’d keep for a few days in the fridge. Reheat in the microwave, but you’d better make fresh rice.

Hot and Sour Soup

Chinese soup

Half an hour, one pot and a small frying pan, and mostly stuff you already have lying around your kitchen

How to make hot and sour soup:

Start half an hour before dinner. Put a saucepan half full of water or chicken broth on the stove (enough water to make soup for everyone), and add 1/4 cup of white vinegar, 1/4 cup of soy sauce, a teaspoon of anchovy paste, a pinch of red pepper flakes, a pinch of black pepper, a couple of cloves of garlic (crushed), and a couple of thinly sliced mushrooms. Let that come to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat and simmer.

While the soup is heating, make crackers.

While the crackers are cooking, in a small frying pan, heat some cooking oil and saute a thinly sliced chicken breast or a piece of pork and a teaspoon of sesame seeds (crushed) until mostly cooked. Add that to the soup.

When the soup has simmered for a little while, mix 1/4 cup of hot soup with a tablespoon of cornstarch – stir well with the back end of a spoon, or with a fork – and add that to the soup to thicken it. I don’t usually cook with cornstarch but it did seem to make a difference on this one. Then crack three eggs into a bowl and mix with a fork, add them gradually to the soup, and stir. Don’t forget to take the crackers out when they are done.

Chop green onions with their stems, serve the soup, and scatter some green onions on top of each bowl as a garnish, and serve.

Can I keep this for later?

Sure. Put the leftovers in a tupperware in the refrigerator, and the flavors will blend and it will be even better than it was at first. You can reheat it for a couple of days. Serve with the leftover crackers.

Grilled cheese

Working too many hours

You know you’re too busy when you feel you always have to cook everything on the highest possible heat so it will go as fast as possible because dinner is always late. And a lot of things get burned because they just need medium heat and slower cooking.

That was me a few years ago. I never made grilled cheese then, because if you cook grilled cheese on high heat the bread will blacken before the cheese melts. It only takes about fifteen minutes to make grilled cheese sandwiches, but you have to do it over medium heat.

How to make grilled cheese sandwiches:

Butter one side of ten slices of bread (either store bread or homemade). Set a large frying pan over medium heat and arrange five of the buttered slices of bread in it with the butter side down. Quickly slice or grate a pound of cheese. My kids like cheddar, but I like swiss or muenster cheese better. Gruyere or emmethaler taste good but will take longer to melt properly.

When the bread begins to be toasted on the underside, put the other piece of bread on top to make a sandwich, but *put the butter side facing up*. Press down the top slice of bread to stick the sandwich together, then use a spatula to flip the sandwiches over and toast the other side. When both sides are toasted, the grilled cheese sandwich is done. If the bread is toasting faster than the cheese is melting, turn down the heat.

You can put other things on your grilled cheese sandwich before you put on the top: sliced avocadoes or tomatoes are popular choices, or bacon for meat-eaters.

If you want this to be a whole dinner, serve it with tomato soup. The canned kind is fine if you’re in a hurry, but then if you’re in a hurry, maybe don’t make grilled cheese.

Vegetarian or vegan

Grilled cheese is vegetarian, but if you want it to be vegan use vegan cheese instead of real cheese.

Galette with zucchini

Zucchini and tomato galette

Got a lotta zucchini?

If you’re tired of stuffed zucchini and stir-fried zucchini and everything else zucchini – and especially if you have some sauteed zucchini left over from another night – this is a happy new way to eat up all that zucchini. If the zucchini’s already cooked, this galette doesn’t take long, is cooking when your guests arrive, and makes a good fancy vegetarian dinner (or serve with sliced chicken or pork on the side to make it a meat meal).

The filling:

If you don’t have any zucchini already cooked, start by sauteeing three medium sized zucchini in olive oil in a medium-sized frying pan. You can slice them any way you like, but I did mine in ribbons to be fancier. As they fry, mix in a teaspoon of salt and a handful of thyme; you could add chopped onion too.

The galette:

Preheat the oven to 400. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix 3/4 cups of whole wheat flour, 3/4 cup of white flour, and a large pinch of salt. Drop a stick of butter on top and microwave about 2 minutes or until pretty melted; mix. Add two teaspoons of lemon zest. Add an egg and mix; if the result doesn’t hold together in a ball add more flour or water gradually until it does. Turn the dough out on the counter and knead a little, then form into a ball and squash it down with your hands on a baking sheet until it forms a disk about 12 inches in diameter.

Filling the galette:

Spread a soft white cheese – ricotta, or goat cheese, or Greek yogurt – on top of the galette, leaving a margin of a couple of inches all the way around. On top of the cheese, sprinkle 3 cloves of chopped garlic and a generous handful of thyme. By now the zucchini should be soft; sprinkle them over the top, and add a handful of sliced cherry tomatoes on top. Now fold over the edges of the galette – they should not meet in the middle – brush on some olive oil, and bake until browned, about 40 minutes, while you enjoy a glass of wine with your guests. Let stand 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven; slice with a knife and serve like pie, with a salad or meat on the side.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Naturally vegetarian, but you’d have to experiment with substitutes for the butter to make it vegan. Note: this is also lactose-free.

Will it keep?

Yes, it’s fine microwaved the next day for lunch, but it won’t keep very long without getting soggy.