Chana Dal with zucchini and cabbage. 4/21/20

Posted on April 21, 2020 by Beebamom

Chana dal is made with dried split chickpea in a pressure cooker or Instant Pot. I do not know which of my dals I like better Chana dal or Afghani dal. They are both delicious. Chana dal is a little more time consuming but not much. This time I had bought a can of petite diced tomatoes with jalapeños by accident. It was a very happy accident as it gave our meal a little more spiciness. I think I’ll add my mistake in the future!

Chana dal on rice with zucchini and cabbage

Chana Dal

Ingredients
1 cup Split Chickpeas
2 cups Water for soaking
2 tsp. Oil
1 tsp Cumin seeds
3/4 cup Onion diced
1/2 tbsp Ginger minced
3 cloves Garlic minced
1 can petite diced tomatoes with jalapeños (or plain)
1.5 cups Water for cooking
1 tbsp Lime juice
Spices
1 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Ground Turmeric
1/2 tsp Red Chili powder
1 tsp Coriander powder
Cilantro

Instructions
Soak split chickpeas in the water for soaking for 30 minutes.
Start the instant pot in sauté mode and heat oil in it. Add cumin seeds.
Once the cumin seeds start to change color, add the onions, garlic, ginger and saute for 2 minutes.
Add tomatoes and spices and stir them well. Drain split chickpeas and add along with water for cooking. Stir it all up. Set to pressure cook for 15 minutes and close the lid with vent in sealing position.
After the instant pot beeps, let the pressure release naturally. Add lime juice and give a good stir.
Garnish with cilantro and serve over rice.

Posted in Indian, Instant Pot, Legumes, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sheet pan turkey sausage. 4/20/20

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Beebamom

The other day the NYTimes Cooking site had a recipe for sheet pan sausage and vegetables with a mustard sauce. I thought it looked easy and could be adapted to our personal style of eating so I decided to give it a try. In my rendition I used much lower calorie smoked turkey sausage and cut down the amount of oil. Turns out this is a dead easy way to cook a bunch of food and you just need to know about how long each of your ingredients take and thus stagger putting items on the sheet pan. I learned this by totally burning the garlic which was supposed to be on the sheet pan for at least 30 minutes and was burnt after 15 minutes. Maybe a whole bulb of garlic is a better way to go.

For my sheet pan for two people I used about 5oz. of smoked turkey sausage, 7 new potatoes, a large onion cut into 8 pieces, part of a head of cabbage, and 2 carrots. It cooked for about 20 minutes at 425F.  I served it with a mustard sauce made of Dijon mustard, lemon juice, parsley, and diced onion thinned out with a couple tablespoons of water.

Sheet pan rutkey sausage with vegetables

Most any type of vegetable that you happen to have could be used. Just watch out for the cooking times as noted above. Also I think that tofu, chicken or especially salmon would be good as a substitute for sausage.

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Tired veggies soup. 4/20/20

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Beebamom

This is a super simple delicious vegan soup you can make out of bits and pieces of vegetables in your refrigerator.

Celery/broccoli/potato soup

Ingredients:
Half of an onion, roughly chopped
Clove of garlic, smashed
1 medium to large waxy potato, chopped
Half of a bunch of celery, roughly chopped
Stalks of three broccolis, roughly chopped
3 cups of vegetable stock (or chicken stock)
An herb (I used thyme)
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil for garnishing
Celery leaves for garnishing

Sauté onion and garlic in olive oil spray. Add the vegetables, herb, and the stock. Simmer for 20 minutes ( or until everything is cooked through.) Put in blender and purée. Adjust seasoning. Serve with garnish. Can be eaten warm, room temperature, or cold.

Really you can do this with any vegetables you have getting old in the refrigerator but you do need the potato for a creamy texture.

Easy and delicious!

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Weekly Menu April 19-25, 2020

Posted on April 19, 2020 by Beebamom

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Grilled shrimp, new potatoes, broccoli. 4/18/20

Posted on April 18, 2020 by Beebamom

Grilled shrimp, new potatoes, broccoli

I put the potatoes on to steam and when they were half done (ten minutes) John lit the grill. The potatoes were finished by the time the grill was hot. While John cooked the shrimp, I took the potatoes off the heat and then used the same pan to cook the broccoli. I cut open the potatoes and plated them along with the broccoli and shrimp. A healthy squeeze of lemon went over everything. Lemon juice is surprisingly good on potatoes! This was definitely a half an hour meal from beginning to end.

 

Posted in American, Easy, pescatarian, Shellfish, Vegetables | Tagged | Leave a comment

Red lentils, brown rice, and zucchini. 4/17/20

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Beebamom

Following up on last night’s vegetarian/vegan dinner, here is another main course that can be totally vegan or vegetarian depending on your enhancements. I used light butter with canola oil to round out the flavors but you could use olive oil and I topped the lentils with yogurt which is easily omitted. Red lentils which are actually kind of coral colored cook through to a warm yellow in about 15 minutes. The lentils along with garlic, onion, ginger, and spiced with turmeric, cumin, and cayenne cook in chicken or vegetable stock and are finished with a little lemon juice and salt to taste. The resulting dish has the consistency of a thick soup. To go along with our lentils we had some leftover brown rice and I made zucchini with onions, garlic, and celery.

Red lentils, brown rice, and zucchini

Posted in Afghan, Easy, leftovers, Legumes, rice, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tagged | Leave a comment

Leftovers For Dinner. 12/17/20

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Beebamom

It is one of those weeks where you become so busy that just grabbing something out of the fridge seems like the best way to get dinner on the table. Luckily we have a lot of leftovers this week, enough for LFD on Thursday and more LFD on Saturday.

Lentil and chickpea soup

This is a combination of Chana dal from Monday which was pretty soupy to begin with and the lentils and turkey sausage from Wednesday. It is not pretty but it was tasty and filling. I thought it was a bit too sweet so I fixed it by using one of my secret weaopons, fish sauce. Salty and bitter, fish sauce fixes too-sweet in a few drops along with giving the whole dish a depth of flavor. Don’t go over board with it, though, or else your dinner will end up smelling like fish!

We have defrosted the shrimp so we are going to have to use them on Friday in Shrimp Scampi and omit the salmon for this week. As we get closer to Christmas I imagine that there will be a lot of re-jiggering the menu as I am busily wrapping presents and do not want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

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Whole grain penne with asparagus. 4/16/20

Posted on April 16, 2020 by Beebamom

We had penne with asparagus for dinner on Thursday and, boy, was it good! Here is a tip to make preparation super easy. While your salted pasta water is coming up to a boil, snap the ends off the asparagus (if you are being fancy you can peel the asparagus first for a slightly higher yield), cut the stalks at an angle about the same size as your penne, and leave the tips separated. With two minutes left on your pasta toss all the pieces into the boiling water except for the tips. Reserve a cup of pasta water.  Drain the pasta and asparagus when the pasta is ready and throw in the tips. The heat of the pasta, asparagus, and some of the reserved pasta water is enough to cook the tips. Stir the pasta, asparagus, and enough reserved pasta water  to make a thin sauce. Put in bowls with a drizzle of good olive oil and some grated Parmesan cheese if using.

One pot, super easy, simply delicious!

Whole grain penne with asparagus

Posted in American, Easy, Italian, Kitchen tips, Pasta, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Tarragon chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli. 4/15/20

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Beebamom

We had a small change-up to our classic chicken dinner this week. Our daughter has tarragon growing in her garden and we asked her to bring some home. When John sous vide the chicken breast he added some leaves of tarragon, some olive oil, and a bay leaf in the vacuum sealed bag and set the circulator for 160F. We let it cook at that temperature for around 1.5-2 hours.  It came out with a mild tarragon flavor and we also used the tarragon-y juice from the chicken with some additional stock as a gravy. It was great on the mashed potatoes which were leftover from last week. Basically all I had to do was cook the broccoli which only took a few minutes. Easy dinner for me!

Tarragon chicken with mashed potatoes and broccoli

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Red bell pepper stuffed with brown rice and ground beef. 4/14/20

Posted on April 14, 2020 by Beebamom

Back at the beginning of the lockdown due to the pandemic, we bought some ground beef and portioned out into 5 ounce servings. That is enough for one hamburger or enough as a flavoring in a larger dish. So on Tuesday I defrosted one portion and made a stuffed pepper that contained a mixture of brown rice, onions, mushrooms, and the 5 ounces of beef. That equals about one-ish ounce of beef in each pepper half that I filled. I made my own tomato sauce so I could control what went in it and we each enjoyed one half of a pepper. It has been sometime since I made stuffed peppers this way and it was a streamlined comfort meal for me.

Half of a red bell pepper stuffed with ground beef, brown rice, onions, and mushrooms served with tomato sauce

Posted in American, omnivore, Vegetables | Tagged | Leave a comment