101 Salads

The Minimalist column in the New York Times this week features 101 Simple Salads for the Season. V pasted them into a Word document and deleted the very few that had meat -- I'm sure she'll email it to you if you ask her. We've tried a few and so far, DELICIOUS! All are easy and fresh, and most are a tad unusual. Definitely worth a look.

Major kitchen upgrade & some Indian food

I can't seem to manage to take photos of any food (I guess we just eat it too fast)...  So instead, I will show you my very exciting new kitchen.  But I think to fully appreciate it, you have to know what my old kitchen looked like.   So here goes...

Old kitchen:

As you can see, the only counter space is on the little island there that we bought.  We had 3 burners on the stove (who has only 3 burners?).  The oven wasn't big enough to fit a large cookie sheet.  The refrigerator is 3/4 size.  And the sink is kind of small too.  But it worked.  And I did a lot of cooking anyway.

But now, I have this lovely kitchen. With a DISHWASHER, and a relative abundance of counter space, and a large sink, and an oven that could probably fit 4 big cookie sheets.  Plus many new gadgets, pots, knife block:

And so, what have I been up to in this new kitchen?  

Well last night I adapted a Manjula's Kitchen recipe to make my own low-fat vegan zucchini koftas.  (Her recipe is deep-fried and cooked with cabbage rather than zucchini.)  They were delicious.  I highly recommend them.

Here's how it works:

Koftas

2 cups shredded zucchini

1 cup besan (chickpea/gram) flour

1 tbsp ww flour

2 tsp chopped cilantro

1 tsp shredded ginger

1 green chili pepper

1/2 tsp cumin seed

1 tsp salt

TO fry:

canola oil

1/2 tsp mustard seed

1 tbsp sesame seed

Set up your steaming basket, bring water to a boil.  THEN, mix kofta ingredients together to form a soft dough, and drop the dough into the steamer by the tablespoon-full.  (If you let the batter sit too long, the dough gets soggy and you will need to add more besan flour.)  Cover the pot and steam on medium-low heat for 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the dumpling comes clean.

Then remove dumplings from pot.  Heat canola oil for frying in a skillet.  Once hot, add the mustard and sesame seeds and stir fry for 30 seconds or so.  Add the kofta to the skillet.  Fry for a few minutes until golden.

Gravy

3 medium tomatoes or 1 can 15 oz of tomatoes

1 tbsp or so of ginger (or 1/2 inch minced)

1 chili pepper

canola oil for frying

pinch asfetida (hing)

1 tsp cumin seed

1 tbsp besan/gram/chickpea flour

1 tbsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp paprika

2 tbsp (soy) yogurt

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups water

1 tsp sugar (if using unsweetened yogurt--soy yogurt is usually a bit sweet, so I omitted this)

2 tbsp cilantro chopped

NOTE: if you don't have asfetida, you could try to substitute 1-2 cloves of garlic and 1/2 an onion or so, panfried before adding the tomato mixture.  You may want to also slightly reduce the coriander in this case. 

In a blender, puree the tomato, ginger, and chili.  Heat oil and pan fry the asfetida, cumin, and besan for a minute or two, until fragrant and golden.  Add tomato mixture, coriander, turmeric, paprika, and cook until mixture reduces by half.  Add yogurt.  Cook another 2 minutes.  Add 1 1/2 cups of water, and salt.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium/low, and cook for several minutes until thick and reduced.  Add sugar to taste.

Add kofta dumplings to the gravy and let simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Add cilantro.  Serve with yogurt and rice or chapati.  (We made chapati.)

And for dessert?  This low-fat chocolate beet cake, because we got beets in our farm share and neither Josh nor I are crazy for them.  This wasn't the best cake ever, but it hit the spot.  Next time I would either add more sugar or mix in some chocolate chips.  

Cauliflower hummus

Yum! This was really good -- lighter tasting than regular hummus, but flavorful and satisfying. The recipe is on page 68 of Veganomicon. I'll definitely make this again.

I made a few changes to the recipe. First, I roasted the cauliflower and used half as much cauliflower as called for (that's all I had); it fit perfectly on the little pan that goes in the toaster oven. I bet this would be good with the full amount of cauliflower, but it might take more seasoning than the recipe calls for (I didn't adjust that down at all).
The other change I made was to substitute cilantro for the parsley. I've made hummus with parsley before and it's delicious, but I didn't have any and I love cilantro. So there you go -- it was really good in this dish!
Here it is with all the fixings. We dipped the veggies in it, too.

Everyone who can post to this blog should now be getting email notifications when a post is made. That way you don't have to keep checking -- you'll be told when there's something new to read. If you don't want to get a notification, go to the email section of the settings, remove your email address, scroll to the bottom and click "save."

Beets -- and testing notification

I just put in JJ's, V's, and my email addresses to send this post via email (I don't have Ribbit's and Jasmine's emails) and wanted to test it. Thought I'd share these beet photos I took last summer as long as I was posting.
Isn't this a lovely variety? They were just gorgeous and tasted great, too.
We don't eat beets many ways except roasted. Those are sooooooo good in a salad! Roast some beets when the oven is on, and then you have them for several days in salads.

A few years ago I made a wonderful beet with beet tops dish using fresh baby beets and a recipe in the Victory Garden Cookbook. I got that cookbook around 1982 and it's fabulous. Still available on Amazon, and with 46 reviews it has 5 stars.

Asparagus Soup

Sorry, no photo! But I had to post anyway because this is an

A W E S O M E

soup! (As you can see, I'm throwing in an asparagus green font to make up for the lack of a photo.) We had this in mugs as a first course before dinner (while watching What Not to Wear, but that's another story). B, V and I all loved it! Creamy and delicious. You can get the basic recipe here. Once again, it's from Eating Well magazine, one of my faves. I did make some minor changes to the recipe:

• Veggie broth (from bouillon, I don't like the ready made stuff as it's too overpowering) instead of chicken broth
• Skip the prosciutto and garnish each mug of soup with 3 cooked (I nuked them) asparagus tips

This is extremely quick, extremely easy, and extremely delicious! Try it!

Y U M !!!

Super Fast Indian

I would never say that this compares to fragrant, homemade Indian food, the kind that simmers all afternoon and drives you crazy with the smell. But it is good and, sometimes even more important, it is fast and easy.
About a year ago I bought two jars of Indian sauces at Trader Joe's. There has never been a time I wanted to use them, guess I just thought they couldn't be that good. Finally, because we had some other leftover Indian, I decided to try one to round out the meal. It's really tasty! I took a pound of tofu, cubed it like paneer, and browned the pieces in a little oil. I poured the sauce over and let it simmer a few minutes then served it over rice. Tasty! This jar was Trader Joe's Masala sauce. I also have a jar of TJ's Korma sauce, which I'm now eager to try. Seems like these might be good shelf staples for last-minute meals.

Caramelized Onion Pizza

Some food is so good that if you don't get a photo the second it comes from the oven...
...you don't get a photo at all. We had this pizza as an appetizer for company a couple weeks ago and everyone just snarfed it down. Even Otto, only 11 months old, dove into his mom's piece.
We had it again tonight. Easy peasy. Here's how to do it:

Caramelize 4 medium onions. I used 3 yellow and 1 red, but you can use whatever. (To caramelize, slice the onions and cook in a tablespoon or two of oil over medium low heat, stirring from time to time, until they get soft and yummy. It takes about half an hour, but you can do other things while they cook.)

Roll out refrigerated pizza dough onto a baking sheet or pizza pan. Spread Trader Joe's Artichoke Antipasto over it (or use pesto or even just a thin coating of garlicy olive oil). Sprinkle on some herbs and, if you wish, a bit of crumbled feta. Top with the onions and bake according to the directions on the pizza dough package. (425 for 16 minutes worked for me) So good!!