cooking

Canal House Lentils

by

Yep, been on a cooking roll lately.  Three good recipes in one week!

This is actually a kind of breakfast lentil, originally a Japanese one. It’s pretty satisfying while being light. You can use it for more than breakfast – I had it for dinner with some polenta and cowpeas.

The 3 servings proposed are hearty servings more akin to a dinner. For a light breakfast break it into 4-6 servings.

Makes 3 servings.

Ingredients

  • 1 medium leek, white and light green parts, chopped.
  • 3 cloves garlic (1 tbsp) crushed.
  • 1 medium tomato, seeded, finely chopped.
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 cup green or brown lentils.
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • black pepper
  • scallions
  1. Place leek, garlic, and tomato in pot and dry sauté, mashing the tomato as you stir. Add water as needed to keep ingredients from sticking.
  2. Continue sauté and mashing until the leeks are soft and the tomato is well mashed.
  3. Add water and lentils. Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer.
  4. Cook, covered, stirring occasionally until lentils soften (depending on the kind you use it can be 25-40 minutes), but are still al dente.
  5. Remove from heat. Stir in soy sauce.
  6. Serve. Sprinkle with scallions and black pepper to taste.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Cocoa Peanuts

by

(Yeah been on a roll lately)

This is a simple recipe – and you can substitute any kind of nuts or seeds in for the peanuts. I like it as a healthy snack – the maple syrup doesn’t add many calories unless you’re really slamming it (keep it to about ¼ a cup or so).

You can scale this one up easily – just multiply the recipe.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup peanuts, unroasted, unsalted
  • 1 Tbsp maple syrup
  • 1 Tbsp cocoa powder
  1. Preheat oven to 325
  2. Mix peanuts and maple syrup in a bowl until peanuts are coated.
  3. Sprinkle cocoa powder into syrup/nut mixture gradually, stirring until it is mixed in with the syrup, and the peanuts are coated thoroughly. It will form a thick brown liquid that covers the peanuts.
  4. Pour mixture onto a cookie sheet and spread out.
  5. Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes until the nuts are dry – the pan may be a bit sticky still, but the nuts will be dry.
  6. Remove sheet, stir one more time to unstick. Allow to cool, then store in an airtight container.

Notes:

• Make sure you use a good non-stick pan – the mixture bakes on, but it comes off with a bit of soap and scrubbing.

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Leftover Vegetable Kofta

by

I love good Kofta, those delicious spiced spheres from Indian cooking.  There are many different versions, of course, and I’ve tasted some wonderful personalized recipes (one local restaurant uses rasins).  I never tried making any until now

I came up with this after realizing that making vegetable broth meant that I wasted vegetables, so I began exploring recipes.  I realized that vegetarian kofta, which are basically balls of vegetables and flour, would be perfect to make use of these leftovers.  Plus I’ll look for any excuse to use chickpea flour, which is just amazing stuff.

These came out pretty good.  This is the second time I’ve tried this, and though they’re a bit chewy, there’s definitely something here.

One note is that I’d pick out most herbs if you use a bunch of them. Some are powerful, some taste bad if there’s too much, some may trigger allergies en masse, some are so loaded with specific vitamins that they may not be good for people taking supplements, and so on.  Parsley and peppercorns (which I both use in my vegetable broth) are stuff you want to watch out for.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups of pureed, boiled vegetables (you may be able to use cooked vegetables and roasted vegetables with a little broth or water). Be sure to pick out most herbs if you used any.  This is 2 cups after being pureed, by the way.  The more different vegetables the better, and you could probably use leftovers pretty easy.
  • 3 cups of chickpea flour.
  • 2 tsp ground cumin
  • 2 tsp ground coriander.
  • 1 tbsp garlic (two if you used no garlic in the recipe)
  • 1 tbsp curry powder or garam masala
  • 2 Tbsp baking powder.
  • Olive oil (or good nostick pans)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400. Use a towel/cloth to lightly coat small muffin tins with oil. You’ll want enough to make 18-24.
  2. Puree vegetables in a blender/food processor. The mixture should be reasonably thick
  3. Pour the vegetable puree into a bowl. Slowly stir in the chickpea flour bit by bit, sprinkling it on the mixture (about ¼ a cup at a time), stirring, and repeating. This is needed as chickpea flour can lump up easily – with the last ¼ cup, stir in the baking powder.
  4. After stirring in the chickpea flour there may be lumps. I use a large spoon to mash the mixture against the side, stir it in, and repeat.
  5. Place about 1-2 tablespoons of the mixture in each muffin hollow. You should get around 18-24.
  6. Place in oven and cook for 8 minutes.
  7. Remove the tins and use chopsticks to flip each kofta over. Place back in oven for another 5 minutes.

 

I want to tweak the spices a bit, probably add one more tablespoon of baking powder, and a bit more chickpea flour to make sure the dough is less sticky – turning these over was tough.  Probably much like bread dough you can just add a bit here and there until it’s more powdery than sticky.

I want to try these with my various sauces . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.