Chickpea Crepes with Black Eyed Peas and Spinach

I like an easy dinner. I guess everybody does.

I like chickpea crepes because they are basically two ingredients:
chickpea flour (or gram flour, or besan), and water. Stir together about two parts water to three parts chickpea flour, and let it sit for about fifteen minutes. You are looking for a batter the consistency of, uh, of crepe batter.

Liz likes chickpea crepes with dark greens like kale, and soyrizo. Well. I didn't have any of the usual fixin's, but this is a versatile philosophy, the crepe, so I made do.

I had some potatoes, and a couple heads of broccoli, and some spinach. I found a can of black eyed peas in the cupboard, - hey, that sounds good.

Some oven fries and broccoli florets went into the oven to roast with a splash of olive oil and salt and pepper.

Some fresh spinach, sauteed with garlic and chili flakes, with black eyed peas and a little secret splash of barbecue sauce.

When it's dinner time, get a nonstick pan over medium-high heat, spray it with nonstick spray, and dollop in about a half-cup of crepe batter. Swirl in the pan. When the top is set, run a spatula around the edge and bottom.

Gather all of the courage in your heart, steel yourself, and holding the handle of your pan firmly, like a tennis racket, flip the crepe over.

Take a single, deep, calming breath. That bitter taste in your mouth is adrenaline.

Two cups of chickpea flour makes about five crepes, and we had about just enough filling for four crepes, so that meant that I had to make a fifth, unfilled crepe, and just eat it hot, out of the pan, like a wild animal.

Serve up some some oven fries and ketchup on the side of your plate and tuck in!

Pasta with White Beans and Kale

The holidays are an indulgent time, and when we made it back, weary from our travels, we wanted something for dinner that:

1. Had a lot of dense, green vegetable content, and
2. was only going to take, like, two minutes to make, because we were pretty tired.

Well, let's get some kale. And let's make some fettuccine with white beans and kale.

This is easy stuff: cook you up some long noodles, and, while the noodles cook, wilt up a whole mess of chopped kale.

Throw a pinch of chili flakes and a couple cloves of chopped garlic into some oil in a big pan, like a wok. I just used a wok.

After the garlic is just fragrant, heap up a mound of kale and stir a little, just so the garlic doesn't burn. Keep adding kale as your pile wilts down. When it's all dark and dense and cooked, tip in a can of cannellini beans and a splash of olive oil and toss with your pasta.

Serve it with some hard Italian cheese or a sprinkle of nutritional yeast.

Garbanzo-Quinoa Burgers

I had some veggie burgers at the local co-op that listed quinoa as an ingredient, and it got me thinking that it seemed like a solid plan.

Since I started buying chickpeas by the case, because that's basically all we eat anymore, I thought: chickpea-quinoa burgers.

To start out, you rinse

• 1/2 cup quinoa

and set it up in your rice cooker with a cup of water, a hefty pinch of salt, and a drop of oil.

Next, you get the savory portion of your burger going by sauteeing

• 1/2 a medium onion, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 carrot, peeled and diced, and
• 1-2 tablespoons of good olive oil

Until soft and delicious. Next, mash up

• 1 15 oz can chickpeas

with a potato masher until smooth, and, in a spice grinder, process

• 1 1/2 tablespoons flax seeds

into meal. You could also just use 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of already-ground flax meal, but then your dinner wouldn't be as much work, which means it wouldn't be as rewarding.

Everything you cooked up goes in a bowl with

• 1/2 cup uncooked rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1-2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• salt and pepper to taste

and, if you are looking for some next-level secrecy,

• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika

Mix into a delicious glop with your hands, and let it rest while you heat up a flat surface. I griddled these bad boys in a little cooking spray, maybe 5-6 minutes a side. This makes six (6) pretty good-sized burgers.

For vegan burgers, they held together pretty well. I'm sold on the quinoa thing, I'mma try it again, maybe with red quinoa and black beans.

We plated this up with some farmstand-fresh ears of corn and some wilted chard. If you're a pro, you'll have buns, but I am totally bush league and - alas! - had only slices of bread on hand. We topped them with some bread-and-butter pickles, but, you don't need me telling you what to put on your dang burger.

Ratatouille "Lasagna"

Okay!

Getting back into the routine of cooking after a crazy cross-country move has been very easy given the robust natural bounty of the Sacramento valley.

We recently played host to Liz's sister and I wanted to make something hearty and festive. I thought, hey, maybe a lasagna, but maybe lighten it up a little.

Liz had read about swapping out the noodles for zucchini, and I had some boss Japanese eggplants, and I thought, hey, ratatouille is pretty standard summer business, what if I layered it up with some tomato sauce and cashew-tofu ricotta and served it up in delicious layers.



I got some quick tomato sauce started in a pan by sauteing down

• 1/2 a small onion
• 1 carrot
• 2 stalks of celery, and
• 3 cloves of garlic, with
• a hearty dollop of olive oil.

I added

• 1 sprig of fresh thyme and
• 1 sprig of fresh rosemary and mixed in the contents of
• one 28-oz can of whole peeled tomatoes.

After this simmered for a while, I splashed in

• 1 to 1/2 oz dry vermouth

and hit it with the immersion blender.

This didn't seem to be enough sauce, so I added

• 1 8 oz can of tomato paste and
• a half-cup of water.

Next time I'll just make a double batch, and just deal with any leftover delicious sauce, oh no...



In the meantime, I stemmed and halved

• four Japanese eggplants

and set them in the steamer to soften. When they were ready, I sliced them into strips along with

• about five smallish zucchinis.

I chopped up a handful of kalamata olives I found in the fridge and food-processed up

• 1 batch of cashew-tofu ricotta, (recipe forthcoming).

Then, I set the oven to 400 and started layering in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan.







Sauce, then eggplant, then zucchini, then tofu, then some olives and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast. Repeat these layers once and top with whatever tomato sauce you have left. Bake, covered with foil, at 400, until the zucchini is soft, and then uncovered for about 15 minutes.

It turned out great!

Polenta with Rustic Tomato Sauce and Roasted Asparagus

According to Wikipedia, the word polenta comes from the Latin puls or pulmentum.  Those roughly translate to grain mush or gruel.   That's why we prefer the Italian polenta - it just so much tastier, even if it is the same thing.

In Roman times, it was made with farro, chestnut flour, millet, spelt, or chickpeas.  Lucky for us, at the same time, they were cultivating corn in North and South America, so if you've had polenta, you've likely had it made with corn meal.  And you likely know that like many other grain-based dishes, it goes with just about anything - including, as we re-discovered last night, rustic tomato sauce and roasted asparagus.

Polenta (inspired by How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman)


You'll want to get the polenta started first, because it takes the longest.

1 cup course cornmeal (we used Bob's Red Mill Corn Grits)
Heavy pinch of salt and pepper
2 1/2 cups water
1 Tablespoon sunflower oil

Combine cornmeal, salt and pepper
Bring water to a boil








Once the water is boiling, add the polenta in a steady stream, whisk as you add it to avoid lumps

Turn the heat down and simmer for about 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently

This is where you have a choice to make.  Polenta can either be served as a porridge or grilled.  If you're serving it as a porridge, you can stop when it gets to the consistency you want it.  We decided to grill it.  If you're going to grill it, make sure it is fairly thick, about the consistency of thick oatmeal.  Coat a loaf pan with cooking spray, and pour the hot polenta into the pan.  As soon as you take it off the heat, it will start to solidify, so you'll have to act fast.  Let it cool for at least another 10-15 minutes (it can sit for longer if you want to make it ahead of time).


 When you're ready to eat it, cut into about 1/2 inch slices, brush with olive oil, and put it in a hot pan or on the grill until it's crispy on the outside.

 Rustic Tomato Sauce


28 oz. Trader Joe's canned whole plum tomatoes with basil
3 cloves of garlic
1/4 onion
1 Tablespoon of olive oil
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 red dried chile (can use 1/2 teaspoon dried red chile flakes)
1 Tablespoon capers
1 capful of Vermouth
salt and pepper

Saute onions and garlic in the olive oil until they're fragrant

Add tomatoes and spices

Bring to boil then simmer for 30 minutes

Blend with an immersion blender until it's the consistency you want it.  We left it pretty thick.  (If you don't have an immersion blender, you can blend it all in the food processor before cooking it.  It would also be good in big pieces).

Add the capers and vermouth.

Roasted Asparagus

1 bunch of asparagus

1 Tablespoon of olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 500 degrees

Prep the asparagus - if you have woody stalks, cut those off, and peel the thicker stalks so that all of the asparagus is about the same thickness

Drizzle oil over the asparagus and sprinkle salt and pepper to taste

Roast in the oven for 8-10 minutes

Enjoy!

Eggplant Tomato Curry

When domestic eggplants finally come into season and I can get them at the store for less than three bucks a pound, a kind of eggplant mania sets in.

This is really the same as my mania for asparagus, tomatoes, avocados, summer squashes, winter squashes...

I have always been curious about using the pressure cooker to make curries, because I have watched numerous videos and read numerous blog posts and articles, but have had little direct experience.

A recipe for eggplant and tomato curry caught my eye, and, since I had two big beautiful globe eggplants and a ripe red tomato, I figured I would go for it. It turns out to be very easy.



So, I prepped:

• two hefty globe eggplants, peeled and cubed
• one fist-sized tomato, sliced
• a couple inches of ginger, grated
• four to six cloves of garlic, mashed
• half an onion, diced
• two ounces of tomato paste, or basically whatever's left over from the six-ounce can you opened for something else

I also got some curry spices: cumin seeds, mustard seeds, turmeric, red chilies, garam masala, salt and black pepper to taste.



Then, the rest of the recipe is pretty standard currying procedure for me:



With a couple tablespoons of neutral oil, fry the whole spices, then the onion, then the garlic and ginger, then the powdered spices.

Then you dump in whatever you're currying and cook it all together. I save the tomato paste to stir in after the vegetables cook. Is this necessary? I'm not sure, that's just how I do it.

The eggplant had to go in two batches, to soften enough in the oil to even close the lid on the pressure cooker. When everything was in the pot, I added about a half-cup of water, closed the lid, brought it up to pressure, and gave it about eight minutes.



The eggplants cooked up all soft and delicious, but it looks like I added just a little too much water out of pressure-cooker-explosion paranoia. Next time, a quarter cup. I stirred in the tomato paste and let it simmer with the lid off for a couple of minutes.



I plated this with some saffron basmati and a fistful of freshly chopped cilantro and mint.

Mint Pesto

One of my favorite parts of summer is all the fresh produce, especially fresh herbs.

Matt bought a huge bunch of mint this week.  Of course, my first reaction was Mojitos! but in an attempt to find some more, um, productive uses of mint, we were inspired by Mark Bittman to try mint pesto.

It's a pretty straightforward recipe:

2 loosely packed cups of fresh mint

Salt to taste

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons walnuts

Put it all in a food processor, and presto, you have pesto! (Sorry, I couldn't help it).

I served it over whole wheat spaghetti, but it is good over any kind of pasta, or grilled veggies.

Pesto can really be made with any fresh herb or green.  It's traditionally made with basil, but you can use mint or dill.  I've even had it with spinach and arugula.  If you have access to them, pine nuts can be swapped for the walnuts.  Most recipes include a clove of garlic.  I didn't use it here because the mint is pretty sweet, and I thought it would taste funny, but with a more savory herb, I would definitely recommend it!

Vegetarian Sloppy Joes

So we just got back from a week out of town -- four days of which were spent on the Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania turnpikes -- an environment not conducive to vegetarianism per se.

Anyway, now we are home, and perhaps we can indulge ourselves in a little junk food after thousands of miles of highway billboards for tacos and hamburgers.

Not too junk-y, though, I still have to get some whole grains and vegetables into our bodies somehow. To that end: vegan sloppy joes.

So they're not really sloppy joes, they're really just glorified beans on toast, but they were really good and I will totally make them again.



It's almost too simple to be a recipe, but here you go:

• half an onion, diced
• 2 carrots, grated or diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 8 oz button mushrooms, diced
• 1 Tbsp molasses
• 1 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• 2 oz tomato paste
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 4-6 oz water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 can Heinz vegetarian beans

Sweat the veggies in a little olive oil, then add everything else. You win!



I got six sangwiches out of this. It might not even have needed the beans, but I like beans, sooo...

Scoop some up on a roll, such as these whole wheat kaiser rolls, with whatevs on the side: some french fries, perhaps, if you are not recovering from a nutritionally dubious American road trip.



We had a little green salad with some tahini-mustard vinaigrette. It was excellent.