Swiss chard with lentils and rice

 

I had bought a big bunch of chard, which doesn’t keep very well, so was looking for another recipe using it. I have, in my collection, a recipe for a baked rice and spinach/chard (with cheese and eggs); I have a recipe for whole lentils and spinach/chard; I have several recipes for lentils and rice, but to my surprise, I realised that I had none that combined all three. I therefore decided to create a recipe which would. My lentils and spinach recipe is vaguely Middle Eastern, so I decided to make this one vaguely Middle Eastern too, but with the spices giving it a ‘lift’ rather than dominating. There is plenty of precedent for this: lentils, in one form or another, and rice are frequently combined from the Eastern Mediterranean’s Mojadarra, through Iran’s Pulao and Egypt’s kushari to India’s (similarly-named) kitchari: I dare say that there are a zillion recipes similar to this, available on the Internet.

This is much simpler than most of those I’ve just mentioned, and I was very pleased with the result – there is just enough seasoning to stop it from being bland, which is what I wanted, this day. It’s also quick and easy to make. When one buys Swiss chard, it tends to come in fairly large quantities and while the green part disappears in much the same way as spinach does once you cook it, the stalks are more noticeable. I like the stalks and don’t always want to put them aside for another meal: this recipe combines both parts of the chard very acceptably. However, the combination of dark lentils (I used green), brown rice and dark green chard don’t make for a visually very exciting meal!

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 medium onion, sliced

olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

2 or 3 large cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp harissa powder

1 tsp za’atar

1/2 cup whole green lentils

1/2 cup brown basmati rice

Swiss chard – about 5 or 6 large leaves.

black pepper

Method:

• Slice the onions as you prefer – I did them fore and aft rather that in half moons – and add them to the pressure cooker, together with a generous amount of olive oil. Sprinkle over the salt and fry until they are softened, as brown as you wish.
• Add the chopped garlic, cumin, harissa powder and za’atar and mix well. Fry for a minute or two until the spices are fragrant.
• Now add the lentils and rice and mix until they are coated with the spice mixture. Add a cup of water, put the lid on the pressure cooker and bring up to pressure. Cook for 7 mins.
• While this is happening, trim the base of the chard stalks and then cut them away from the leaves. Chop the stalks into 1cm/1/2 in pieces and set aside. Put the leaves in a stack and slice them four or five times lengthwise. Then cut these across into narrow strips.
• Let the pressure reduce at room temperature. Open the lid and stir the contents. If the mixture looks too dry, add a couple of tablespoons of water. Then put all the chard into the pressure cooker, on top of the rice-lentil mix. Bring up to pressure for 1 min and let the pressure come down naturally.
• Season with generous amounts of black pepper and serve hot.

Notes:

• If you don’t have green/Puy lentils, then use beluga or small brown lentils. The big, flat brown lentils won’t give as pleasant a result and split lentils will end up a mush. Mung beans could be used at a pinch.
• If you don't have za'atar, use dried thyme instead.
• If you have no harissa, use some form of chill.

Variation:

• Add red chilli flakes or a chopped red chilli for a hotter dish.
• Some chopped carrots would go very well in this recipe and make it a little more colourful, too.

 

You will find many more rice recipes here

Spicy peanut dip

Blender alert!!

I discovered something similar to this on the Minimalist Baker blog, when I was looking for a 'store-cupboard' ingredients, quick and easy recipe.  The blog suggested a 5-minute, vegan queso. Not having had a lot to do with Mexican food, I thought they were suggesting some sort of quick, vegan cheese; however, it turns out that ‛queso’ is short for ‛chilli con queso’ and is a runny, spicy, cheesy sauce, which is served warm, with tortilla chips. It sounded a bit like fondue! I didn’t want anything that liquid, or anything warm, but the seasonings looked interesting and I was short of time. So I took the recipe and adapted it to end up with a spicy, thick dip, ideal for spreading on crackers.  Indeed, it was quick to make and has proven popular; nor does it taste of peanuts!

 

Assuming conditions aren't too rough to use a blender, this is a great voyaging dip, because everything will be in your lockers.  At the other end of the scale, it's ideal for taking to another boat for sundowners.

Serves 2 to 4 as a dip

Ingredients

1/2 cup hot water

1/2 cup blanched peanuts

1 clove garlic, chopped OR 1/4 tsp garlic granules

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder OR 1/4 tsp cayenne

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

2 tsp harissa

Instructions

• Add water, peanuts, garlic, yeast, cumin, chilli, salt, paprika and harissa to a blender, and blend until creamy. You may need to add a little more water, depending on the required consistency.  
• Taste and adjust flavour as needed, adding more nutritional yeast for cheesiness, salt to taste, cumin or paprika for smokiness, chilli powder or harissa for heat, or garlic for zing. It should have plenty of personality, so don’t be shy. If you don't have any harissa, use extra chilli, cumin and paprika. 
• Serve with crisps, crackers or bread. Garnish with additional harissa and olive oil, if you like
  

Note:

• If you're not in too much of a hurry, you might like to soak the peanuts for a while, to make them easier to blend into a smooth paste.

Annie's Mushroom 'stock' powder

 

Blender alert!! 

Personally, I don't think home-made soups need anything added by way of stock: the intrinsic ingredients have enough flavour in themselves.  However, sometimes I feel a recipe needs a touch of je ne sais quoi, and I reckon this mushroom 'stock powder' fits the bill.  Unlike commercial stock powders, not only does it contain no artificial ingredients, it doesn't even have any salt.  All that it is is ground up, dried mushrooms such as the Chinese ones which are available in most supermarkets.

Makes about 1 cup

Ingredients

1 pack dried mushrooms 

Method:

• Remove the mushrooms from the package and shake the residue into a blender cup.
• Break or cut the larger pieces of mushrooms down to around 2 cm/1 in, so that the blender can more readily cope with them.
  
• Add all the mushrooms into the cup and grind them until they are a coarse powder.
• Put into a clean jar and keep in a dark place.

Notes:

• I always use 'white' mushrooms for this 'stock powder', rather than a pack of mixed mushrooms.  That way they don't darken the sauce, soup, or whatever you're adding them to.

Variations:

• To make this more like a stock powder, add a couple of teaspoons of salt 
• Add mixed herbs: you might find a couple of teaspoons of my blend suits.  The drawback of this is that you will have flecks of colour in your food and you might prefer to have a white sauce.  The herbs may not suit your recipe, either.

  

 

 

Mushroom and barley soup

 

For the past several weeks I have had no appetite to speak of.  This isn't a good thing for a food blogger, but it is a miserable state of affairs for someone who usually wakes up in the morning, anticipating eating a very hearty breakfast and already wondering what to cook for dinner.  Admittedly I have lost quite a bit of weight, but I am one of those rare and lucky people who actually quite likes my body the size and the shape it is.  (At my age, this is a sane and sensible place to be!)  Apart from fruit and yogurt, at the moment the thought of any Indian food, which I usually eat several times a week, appalls me; the idea of pasta makes me feel squeamish and the only things which seem slightly appealing are bread and potatoes, preferably fried.  Sometimes I can face a few florets of broccoli, but an aubergine I bought nearly a month ago - one of my absolute favourite foods - will probably have to be thrown out.  If you knew my views about throwing food out, you would realise how bad I am.

However, a couple of weeks ago, I reckoned I could probably fancy some soup.  To be appealing it had to be thick, not to have too many ingredients, be very lightly flavoured and not too colourful.  I tried a simple lentil soup and that was a success.  I ate a whole bowl of it without any problem, which felt like quite an achievement.  None of my other recipes seemed at all tempting, so I decided to try and make something which would fit the bill, and this is the result.  The barley I buy here in New Zealand is hulled, but not 'pearl and is perfect comfort food.  I actually found the soup really enjoyable and again ate a whole bowl without difficulty.  It's obviously the perfect soup for an 'invalid'!!

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/4 cup gram flour

2 cups water

5 mushrooms, diced

1/2 cup barley 

1 tsp dried onion powder

1/4 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp za'atar or 1/4 tsp thyme

1 tsp Annie's mushroom stock powder

salt and pepper 

•  Put the gram flour into your pressure cooker and add about 1/4 cup of water.  Mix very, very thoroughly to remove all the lumps, adding more water as you go.  Gram flour doesn't tend to form lumps while it's heating in the way the wheat and cornflour do, but any lumps remaining in the original mixture are hard to get rid of.
• Now add the mushrooms, barley, dried onion powder ground coriander, za'atar/thyme, salt and pepper.  Add the stock powder, too, if you have any.
• Bring to the boil stirring pretty often to make sure the flour paste doesn't stick to the pan - it will thicken as you go.  The 2 cups of water should be enough for the gram flour and the barley.
• Put on the lid, bring up to pressure and cook for 10 minutes, to thoroughly soften the barley.
• Let the pressure reduce at room temperature, remove the lid and stir the soup.  If it seems too thick, add more water - I wanted a very thick soup.
•  Serve as is, or with bread.

Notes: 

• use diced onion, if you prefer: I couldn't face it!

 

 

Bengali Five-Spice Blend - Panch Phoron

 Panch phoron is a spice blend used in Eastern India, in Bengali, Assamese, and Oriya cuisine and also in Bangladesh and Nepal. It is a blend of black mustard, nigella, fennel, fenugreek and brown cumin seeds and, really, it couldn’t be easier to make!

 

According from which region the blend is made, the five spices can be added in equal quantities or vary slightly. I make mine with equal quantities of mustard, fennel, cumin, and nigella seeds and half the amount of fenugreek seeds, which have a bitterness that can be a bit overwhelming for some people, although I love it. Panch phoron is typically fried in hot oil, which causes the spices to start popping to release the flavours and temper the oil.

 

This spice blend is worth having to hand when you are in a bit of a hurry and want something that tastes good, but without putting in too much effort. Make a simple dal or vegetable dish, by frying the usual garlic, ginger and diced green chilli together, with a chopped onion, if you want. Then add the dal/vegetables and cook to your taste. You can then fry a tsp of panch phoron in some oil and add this tempering to the dal or vegetable dish before serving.

 

Makes about 3 tablespoons

 

Ingredients

 

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp fennel seeds

2 tsp black mustard seeds

2 tsp nigella seeds

1 tsp fenugreek seeds

 

 Combine the whole spices and store in an airtight container.

 

Breakfast avocado

Smashed avocado on toast is a very popular breakfast/brunch/snack.  This is really a variation on it that I dreamt up while trying to create an acceptable substitute for scrambled eggs.  There isn't one, in my opinion, although I've achieved a passable result using peanuts, but this avocado recipe is very good in its own right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't tolerate rubbery, dried out scrambled eggs, but as this is how they are generally served, I assume that other people think differently.  To be fair, it is very difficult to keep scramblers in that lovely, soft, curdy state, because they carry on cooking in their own heat, so have to be put on a plate the moment they're ready.  The advantage of this avocado 'substitute' is that the avocado doesn't soften with heating: the drawback is that the avocado has to be at the perfect stage of ripeness for the recipe to work and it won't work if the avocado is too firm, nor if it has started to go stringy.  I am lucky to live somewhere where I can buy avocados very cheaply, so it isn't a disaster if I cut one open and it's the wrong stage of ripeness.  However, if that happens, you can always resort to smashed avocado on toast, after all.

 

 Ingredients

 

1 ripe avocado

olive oil

1/4 tsp garlic granules or 1 finely minced clove of garlic

2 tbsp water/yoghurt/cream

1/8 tsp chilli flakes - optional

salt and pepper

Method:

• Cut the avocado in half, remove the stone and peel it.  If the peel is very stiff, as it so often is with Hass avocado, cut the fruit into quarters; it should then be easy to peel.
  
• Carefully chop the avocado into chunks. 
• Heat a little olive oil in a small saucepan;  move it carefully around in the pan until it starts to get warm.
• Now add the water/yoghurt/cream and garlic.  Turn down the heat and stir the avocado very gently so that some of it gets mixed into, and thickens the liquid.  You don't want to mash it into a purée.  
• Season with salt and pepper and some chilli flakes if you like them.  Gently stir them in.
  
• While the avocado is heating, slice a couple of pieces of bread and toast it.  Put it onto a warmed plate and tip the avocado mix over it.  Serve hot.

Notes:

• The avocado needs to be properly ripe - a firm one won't produce the desired effect.
• Instead of, or as well as, the olive oil, you might like to add chilli oil.  In this case, omit the chilli flakes.