Simplest Dill Pickles

To me, July means the opening of pickle making season. The Valley has many farms that produce abundant first-rate pickling cucumbers. My garden produces plenty of dill and garlic. (Hopefully this year, I will have some of my own home grown cukes as well.) Pickles are the natural result of all of these riches.

I have been making a variations on a basic dill cucumber pickle recipe for many years. It all started when we had to go gluten-free in our kitchen. We missed good vinegary pickles, so I resolved to make them myself. Like so many people, I thought this was going to be a hard thing to do. I soon learned that with quality ingredients, it’s pretty easy to make good pickles. You also don’t have to make 3 dozen quarts at once. I have a routine down for 3-4 quarts at a time, which works out well. I do this a few times while cucumbers are locally available, and in this way have a nice supply for the year.
Pickling is associated with canning. Canning involves processing the caning jars full of pickles or what have you in hot water to kill any microbes that will spoil your food under non-refrigerated storage. Processing the pickles freaks a lot of people out and I was definitely one of them (I was haunted by vague unsettling visions of dangerous pressure cookers.) It can also go badly if you do it too long, resulting in mushy pickles, which are pointless. The good news is, there are many types of pickles you do not have to process, as long as you keep them refrigerated. I do not process these pickles in hot water after I make them. Once the jars are cooled, they go right in the fridge, where they will keep for over a year and still be quite tasty.

I’m not a pickling expert. Quite frankly, my experiments beyond my basic dill pickle recipe have been mediocre at best (and sometimes just awful). However, I have hope that this summer’s experiments will work out better. I have a new guide: The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. This revised edition came out this past spring. In addition to covering the basics, it is an excellent overview of all sorts of different types of pickles from many cultures. She conveniently includes many recipes on a smaller scale, so you can just make a couple of quarts of something, or even reduce her recipes to make just one quart if you like. Her “Really Quick Dill Pickle” recipe is almost exactly the same as mine, and so I decided to make my inaugural batch to open the 09 season adapting a combo of both recipes. It was really quick – the whole thing came together in less than an hour to make 4 quarts (the recipe in the book is for 3 quarts, but I had another quart’s worth of cucumbers so I adjusted the amounts of the recipe).

Pickle Essentials

4 quart sized canning jars (aka Ball jars or Mason jars) with screw on lids, spotlessly clean and scalded (dunked in boiling water)

5 lbs of freshly harvested pickling cucumbers no larger than 2.5 inches, scrubbed clean, ends trimmed off and quartered (you really do need to look for cucumbers labeled for pickling for the best results)

1 garlic head (about 8-10 cloves) peeled and chopped course, divided into 4 equal portions

8 large dill heads, plus all of the sprigs of dill removed from the stalks, divided into 4 equal portions

6 tsp of pickling spice (1.5 tsp for each jar) OR 40 whole peppercorns (10 to each jar) and 12 whole dried peppers (3 to each jar)
(Whatever you use, make sure you buy it somewhere that has good turn around,old flavorless spices are pointless.)

3 1/4 cups of cider vinegar (Get the best quality that you can find — it makes a difference whether you use the good stuff instead of the generic. Some orchards that make apple cider also make excellent cider vinegar. Lately, I like the vinegar made by Dwight Miller Orchards, just up the road in Vermont.)

4 cups of water–filtered is best

1/4 cup + 2 tbs of pickling salt (Picking salt is a finely granulated plain salt that has none of the added iodine or stabilizers that table salt has. These additives will form a whitish sediment in your pickles that won’t spoil them, but will look funky. If you do not have pickling salt, substitute 1/2 cup of kosher salt–you need more because the flakes are larger and not as packed together.

Bring vinegar, water and salt to a boil, stir to make sure salt is dissolved. Keep warm over med heat, covered. Put one dill head, dill sprigs portion, garlic portion and spice portion in each jar. Put cucumber spears vertically in each jar, as many as will fit in one layer. Top with another dill head.

Ready for the brine

I like to put the jars on a cooling rack, because they do get hot when you add the brine. Ladle the hot brine into each jar to cover the contents, but only as far as the bottom of the ring on top of the jar.

Practically Pickles Already

Top with screw on lids and let cool for about 10 minutes. I suggest writing the date on top with a sharpie, plus anything else you want to remember about the batch. (I’ve noted which recipe from the Joy I sort of followed.) Allow to cool completely before refrigerating. Wait at least 2 weeks before eating for best flavor. The flavor evolves with time.

Dated and ready for the fridge

Tempeh for a Big Salad

June and early July mean harvesting lots of lettuce and spicy greens from the garden. I do make a lot of simple green salads with meals. However, I really enjoy having garden fresh greens to use in one of my favorite meal concepts “the Big Salad.” I put together mixes of tofu or tempeh, cheese, cooked veggies, raw veggies, beans, grains and herbs with the greens and suitable dressing for a complete and delicious meal. The trick is not to use too many things, or else the greens get lost. You also want to choose things that will harmonize. For example, vegetables cooked in with Asian style seasonings (soy sauce, ginger and sesame oil) might not go so well with balsamic vinaigrette and sun dried tomatoes. Within these basic guidelines, anything goes!

Spicy Greens

I first discovered the Big Salad concept about 15 years ago in the cookbook that really got me going on creative vegetarian cooking “The American Vegetarian” by Marylin Diamond. I’ve been playing around with it ever since. In the winter, when salad greens are mediocre, it helps enhance that dose of fresh greens that we need. In the spring and early summer when the greens are great, it makes for a delicious meal. I look forward to the “salad days” all year.

Lately, I’ve been inspired anew by the eating at the Candle Cafe and by their cookbook. Their fabulous salads and their recipes reminded me of a technique I had sort of forgotten about: marinating tofu and tempeh. Tempeh and tofu treated this way make a great component to a big salad.

Here is one flavorful way that I like to prepare tempeh to use in these salads.

This is more than you need for a big salad for two, but it is so good as leftovers it is worth it to make extra.

2 8 oz packages of tempeh

1/2 cup of soy sauce, tamari or bragg’s liquid aminos

2/3 cup of apple juice

1/4 cup of agave syrup, or honey or other sweetner

4 tbs of chopped garlic

3 tbs of grated ginger

1 tsp dried chile flakes

fresh ground pepper to taste

Grated Ginger

Combine all of the ingredients except the tempeh in a shallow baking dish or other container. This is your marinade. Cut each package of tempeh into 4 equal pieces and place into the marinade.

You can now do a couple of different things with this. Both methods make for flavorful tempeh.

A. If you made this in a baking dish, you can immediately put the whole thing into a 350 degree oven and bake for one hour, cool slightly and slice for salad.

B. Leave the tempeh in it’s marinade for a couple of hours or overnight. You can then bake the whole thing as above. You can also take the tempeh out of it’s marinade, slice it and saute until slightly browned.

Marinating Tempeh

The big salad pictorial continues here.

Roasted Veggies With Fresh Herbs

One of the things I love best about having a garden is having a seemingly endless supply of top quality fresh herbs to cook with. I do try growing them inside in the winter, and I certainly break down and buy them from time to time when they aren’t garden fresh (because the inside growing never works for long). Nothing can replace freshly cut herbs that have been happily growing outside with plenty of fresh air and sunshine. They just taste amazing.

Sage (Salvia officinalis 'Icterina' - Gold Variegated)

So when I was thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight, I took a good look at my herb patch and decided to harvest sage, thyme, oregano and a lot of garlic chives (aka garlic grass, Chinese chives, ku chai). I already had a decent selection of veggies in my fridge, and plenty of grains and beans in my pantry.

At home I looked through my various cook books and was inspired by various recipes for ratatouille, stewed veggies and the like. I decided to do my own version with my fresh herbs and some of the veggies. I decided to skip the tomato base common to these recipes. Since I had some good fresh tomatoes on hand (thanks to those freaking hydroponic visionaries up there in East Thetford, VT that have somehow managed to bring us good tomatoes at the end of May in western Mass), I thought I’d just chop them up and serve them along side, rather than loose their good flavor and texture by cooking them. I settled on quinoa as my grain of choice. We needed the protein for this meal, and I knew I could start cooking it when the veggie dish was halfway done. I decided to mix in garbanzos and garlic chives with the cooked quinoa to make something of a pilaf.

You could vary this every which way depending on what you have on hand. I noted what I did so I could write about it here. Like the many recipes I looked at this afternoon, I hope that this will provide inspiration.

Preheat oven to 400 (F).

2 med zucchini, chopped coarse (aprox 2 cups)

2 small (italian) eggplant, chopped coarse (aprox 2 cups)

1/2 a med cauliflower, chopped into florets (aprox 2 cups)

1 large red onion, halved and sliced into crescents (aprox 1 1/2 cups)

1 head of garlic, broken into cloves, peeled, larger cloves split in half

Fresh herbs of your choosing

Today, I used the following:

3 tbs of minced fresh oregano

2 tbs of thyme leaves (I just stripe ‘em off the stems, I don’t bother to mince them)

2 tbs of sage leaves (about 5 large) cut into thin ribbons

1 tiny sprig of rosemary ( an inch long)

copious amounts of good olive oil (maybe 1/4 cup?)

lots of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper–enough to coat everything

1 large tomato, diced (optional)

grated parmesan reginato to taste

Oregano,Sage, Thyme stems

Put all of the cut vegetables, garlic and herbs in a baking dish deep enough to hold it all, preferably one with a lid. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss to coat. Feel free to add more oil, salt and pepper if you think it is needed.

Seasoned and oiled and ready for the oven

Cover and bake for about 30 minutes and stir. (Start cooking the quinoa if you’re making it, after stirring the veggies.) Cover and bake for another 30 minutes or so until veggies are very tender.

Taste, and add more salt and pepper if you like. Top with tomatoes and parmesan (and more olive oil if you want) and serve, maybe with the quinoa dish that follows or with some good bread.

Quinoa, Garbanzos and Garlic Chives

1 1/2 cups of quinoa

2 tsp of olive oil

2 1/2 cups of liquid to cook the quinoa (water, stock, wine, what-have-you)

1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans, drained

minced garlic chives to taste, today I had about 1/3 cup (regular chives, scallions or shallots would work fine)

salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Chives

Rinse the quinoa in a strainer (it tends to be bitter if you don’t). Drain well.

Heat olive oil over med-high heat in a medium sauce pan. Add the drained quinoa and toss to coat with oil. Cook, stirring frequently until the grains start to toast and smell nutty, about 5 minutes. Add the cooking liquid and stir. Bring to a boil, lower heat to medium. Simmer, uncovered, until all liquid is absorbed, about 15-20 minutes. Fluff with a fork and let stand, covered, for 5 minutes. Stir in the drained garbanzos and chives. Taste, add salt and pepper if you need it, and serve.

Delicious

The Tangy Harvest Part 2: Rhubarb Crisp

Rhubarb, straight from the garden

Rhubarb is another early treat from the garden that I love for its strong acidic taste. I never tasted it until I was an adult and a neighbor gave me some of their surplus. Not knowing what to do with it, I looked through my cookbooks and came up with a recipe for rhubarb crisp. It became an instant classic in our kitchen.

Oddly enough, I have not yet planted it in my garden. Somehow, through the generosity of other gardeners, I always have enough, and I forget to get crowns for planting in early spring. Maybe next year.

At this point, I can pull this dish together without looking at a cookbook and so I just eyeball everything. I’ve done my best on the measurements.

Rhubarb Crisp

4 cups or so of sliced rhubarb

1 tbs of tapico flour or cornstarch

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 to 1 1/2 cups of sweetener ( I like a combo of rice syrup and agave or honey)

1 cup of gluten free flour mix

3/4 cup of date sugar

1/8 tsp of salt

3/4 cup of butter, cold, and cut into 10 pieces

3/4 cup crushed corn flakes, fruit juice sweetened

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

When you are preparing the rhubarb, keep in mind that many of the stalks have a skin that is rather fibrous and is best removed, similar to the way you remove the strings from a celery stalk by pulling them away with the edge of your knife. If you have very slender stalks it may not be necessary, but the very large stalks from mature plants seem to always have it.

Prepping the rhubarb

Place the sliced rhubarb in a 9×13 glass baking dish or pan of your choice. Sprinkle with the tapioca flour and toss to coat. Sprinkle with cinnamon and the sweetener and toss again to coat.

Sweetened Rhubarb

Place the flour, date sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter, and pulse until the butter in mixed into small pieces. Add the crushed corn flakes and pulse a few times to combine. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can mix the flour and sugar together in a bowl and cut in the butter. Then stir in the cereal.) Spread this topping over the rhubarb.

Ready for the oven

Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes (check after 30 minutes). The top should be browned and the filling bubbly.

Yummy

The Tangy Harvest Part 1: Sorrel Soup

Sorrel

I have a clump of sorrel in my herb garden. It’s the first thing I get to harvest and eat in any quantity each year and it keeps on producing all season. It has a tangy  flavor that I really enjoy. Over the course of the summer, I mix it in with sauted greens, salads and sauces. My annual tradition is to make that first big bunch into sorrel soup. I go for the most basic version of this soup, which showcases the flavor of the sorrel. I’ve tried making a vegan version with oil and almond milk instead of butter and cream, but I really find that I like the dairy version best.

Sorrel Soup

Sorrel Soup

2tbs of butter

2 cups of veggie broth, warmed

3-4 cups of sorrel leaves, washed, any really tough stems removed and coarsely chopped

2 cups of cream or half and half (good fresh cream will be noticed here)

salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the sorrel and toss to coat. Cook while stirring until it starts to wilt. It turns from bright green to a greenish brown. Stir in the broth and cook over medium for 5 minutes. Cool slightly and puree in blender, food processor or with an immersion blender. Stir in the cream and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook on medium until heated through (do not boil). Taste and adjust seasonings.

that sorrel soup sure was good

Spinach Feta Pizza

I love pizza. More accurately I love good pizza. I’m a pizza snob, I admit it. I come from “Pizza Belt North” (or Apizza as they call it there sometimes). After eating some of the best pizza anywhere in my formative years, I have no patience for frozen or chain store pizza imposters. I’ll have no papas, no huts, no pizzas that come with free cinnamon sticks—none of it.

When we started cooking gluten free, one of the things we missed was pizza. There are commercially available mixes and ready made crusts for the gluten free crowd, but honestly they are mediocre at best. I like a thin crispy crust pizza, just slightly chewy, not all doughy and soggy or altogether too thick.

After much trial and error, I have settled on the yeast pizza crust recipe that I based on the one in The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread. I’ve tinkered with it a bit to suit our tastes. I substitute brown rice flour for white rice flour because I like the flavor and the nutritional value. I also do not use unflavored gelatin or egg replacer, I use soya powder, which adds the protein that the gelatin would have. I also skip the sugar. I do however mix up the dry ingredients in a large enough batch to make a couple of rounds of pizzas. You don’t have to, but it is convenient.

The crust starts out a lot different than wheat crust. It’s very wet, you can’t knead it by hand, it’s standing mixer all the way on this one, unless you have a team of very strong armed people standing by to help mixing. You cannot cook it on a pizza stone. It has to be cooked in a pan, and I highly recommend using a layer of parchment paper to ensure clean release. My pans that I use for the recipe below have a cooking surface of 10″ wide by 15″ long. You can use larger pans, if that is what you have, but the crust will not fill the pan. Even with minimal topping, you have to bake it before you top it until it turns golden to avoid soggy crust. The end result is delicious and indiscernible from regular wheat crust.

For toppings I experiment and improvise, but there are a few clear favorites:

1. Mushroom pizza with a very basic but well-laced -with -garlic marinara
2. Pesto broccoli pizza based on one served at Northampton institution Joe’s Cafe
3. Good quality Mozzarella, Parmesan and Gorgonzola cheeses with lot of slivered garlic
4. Spinach, feta, sundried tomato, and kalmata olive ( a combination sometimes referred to as “Florentine”).

Topping possibilities are endless. The main thing to remember is to keep any wet sauces to a minimum and make sure your other toppings are as dry as possible. I think pre cooking some vegetable toppings is preferable (mushrooms, spinach, broccoli) while others are best left raw (thin slices of red onion, peppers). Quality ingredients are always important for anything you cook and pizza is no exception. Cheapo processed cheese makes for crumby pizza. It’s also really best to shred/grate it yourself. Pre shredded cheese tends to loose flavor and dry out while it sits around in its package and sometimes has preservatives that detract from taste.

It is usually best to make your sauce and cook any veggies before you start the crust. Then you can slice raw veggies and shred your cheese while the crust rests and bakes. However, the first few times you make this, you might want to get all of the toppings ready first, and then make the crust until you get a good sense of the timing involved.

Spinach!

Spinach, feta, sundried tomato, and kalmata olive pizza

CRUST MIX

• 4 cups brown rice flour
• 2 cups tapioca flour
• 3 tbls xanthan gum
• 4 tbls soya powder (not soy flour, soy powder for baking)

Mix all dry ingredients together into a container with a tight light. Shake until well combined. This makes about six cups of pizza crust mix, enough for 4 medium sized pizzas.

CRUST

dry ingredients

• 3 cups of pizza crust mix (see above)
• 1/3 cup nonfat dry milk powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 packet dry yeast granules

wet ingredients

• 4 egg whites
• 3 tbs plus 1 tsp olive oil (plus extra for the pans)
• 1 tsp vinegar (I usually use cider vinegar, any will do)
• 1 1/2 cups, approximately of warm water (hot from the tap is fine
• cornmeal to dust pans (optional)

TOPPINGS

• 2 to 2 1/2 cups of cooked spinach (or frozen and thawed) squeezed as dry as possible in a clean kitchen towel, and chopped medium
• 1 cup of sun dried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes or so until reconstituted, drained and patted dry and chopped medium
• 10-12 kalamata olives, pitted and chopped medium
• 3 medium cloves of garlic, sliced thin (or to taste). I usually blanch the garlic for 30 seconds and drain and cool before slicing, this keeps a nice garlic flavor without total garlic overload
• 6 -8 oz of part skim mozzarella shredded
• 6-8 oz of feta cheese

1. Preheat your oven to 400. Adjust the racks to the two middle positions.
2. Blend dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.
3. In the bowl for your mixer, mix the wet ingredients and 1 cup of the water. Turn the mixer on low, and add the dry ingredients, about 1/3 cup at a time, mixing for a few seconds between additions. Add more water if you need it to have a firm dough that can be spread (you might not need all of the water). Once all of the dry ingredients have been added, beat on high for 3 minutes.
4. While the dough beats, prepare your pans. Line two cookie sheets or baking pans with parchment paper, brush with a little olive oil, and if you like dust with some cornmeal.
5. Grab a rubber spatula and use it to dump the dough out as evenly as possible between the two cookie sheets. Spread out into a thin layer over most of the pan, leaving a half inch or so from the edges.
   

   GF pizza crust ready for the oven

6. Let the crust rest for 10 minutes while you make sure you’ve turned the oven to 400 and work on preparing your toppings.
7. Place the untopped crusts in the oven and bake for 7 minutes. Rotate the pizzas from top rack to bottom rack and bottom to top and bake another 7 minutes until golden.
   

   Baked GF Crust

8. Top with spinach, tomatoes, olives and garlic. Crumble feta over the veggies and then sprinkle the mozzarella over the feta. Bake six minutes, rotate the trays again and bake another six minutes. Keep checking every couple of minutes after that until the top pizza starts to brown. You’ll probably need to move the bottom one up to the top rack and let it cook a little more til it browns.
   

   Pass the crushed red pepper

Oden for Vegetarians

Oden is a traditional Japanese one pot dish that combines vegetables with meat and seafood cooked in a soy sauce broth. I have been looking for a way to come up with a vegetarian version without much success– until now. In addition to making it veggie, I also wanted it to be tasty and interesting without relying on too many hard to find specialty ingredients. The appeal of this dish is the wide variety of textures as well as flavors that comes to you all in one bowl. After a series of fairly mediocre attempts, I’ve finally hit upon the right combination of flavors and textures. I’m sure this recipe will continue to evolve.

Dashi stock is super easy to make from scratch. I think that Just Hungry has the best advice for vegetarian dashi variations. The only required ingredient is kombu, dried kelp. Other variations include dried bonito (tuna) flakes, ginger and dried shitakes. Instant dashi powder works just fine, too. You can find it in Asian markets. I know Mom’s House Chinese Food Market in Amherst carries it (they don’t have a website).

You can vary the stuff you put in it to suit your tastes and what you have around. I think you could use most vegetables, you’d just have to vary the timing of when to add them (probably not tomatoes, though). If you do want to throw in some meat or fish in, hey go for it. I do suggest frying the tofu. I also suggest seeking out the mochi, a japanese style rice cake that bakes up puffy and chewy. Most health food stores carry the Grainaissance brand in the refrigerated section (make sure you don’t accidentally buy the cinnamon raisin variety!)

I realize this recipe is full of multi-tasking, but that’s just the kind of cook I am. Please break this down into one thing at a time if you need/want to.

Vegetarian Oden

The stuff
1 lb block of firm tofu
rice flour or cornstarch to coat the tofu
neutral vegetable oil to fry the tofu (canola, corn, or peanut)
1 lb of red or yellow potatoes, peeled and diced ½”
2 medium sized carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
1 ½ to 2 cups of broccoli, stems peeled and diced ¼”, crown cut into ½” florets
8-10 button or crimini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 package of mochi, about 6 oz., preferably a savory flavored variety, cut into one inch square

The Broth
4 1/2 cups of dashi
5-6 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for at least 10 minutes
6 tblspoons of good soy sauce or tamari
4 tbs of sake or 1/3 cup of white wine
4 tablespoons of mirin
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into thin rounds

The mustard dipping sauce
1 tsp or so of wasabi powder
4 tbs or so of dijon mustard
1 tsp black sesame seeds (optional)
or
japanese mustard sauce -the kind they use at japanese steakhouses, another thing to look for in Asisan markets and there are many recipes out there

Start by making your dashi, either by soaking your kombu or from instant powder.

Take your tofu out of the packaging, wrap in a clean dish towel for about 20 minutes (to remove excess moisture)

Meanwhile, combine the potato, 2 tbs soy sauce, 1/2 cup of dashi and a little more water to cover the potatoes in a big soup pot. Cook over med-hi heat until tender. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon, keeping any leftover liquid in the pot.

While the potatoes are cooking, coat the tofu in flour and fry in oil in a small pan. Drain on paper towels.

Heat the oven to 450. If you are making the mustard sauce in this recipe, mix wasabi powder with a little water to form a paste. Set it aside.

Add the rest of the cooking liquid ingredients to the pot (include the soaking water from the mushrooms). Bring to a boil and then lower heat and keep at a simmer for 20 minutes. Then add all of the vegetables except for the broccoli florets. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Put your squares of mochi on a cookie sheet and put in the oven. Add the broccoli florets to the broth. Simmer your soup and bake your mochi for another 10 minutes. Take the mochi out of the oven, they should be puffy brown and crisp. Turn the heat off of the soup and fish the dried mushrooms out of the broth. Squeeze the water out of them with tongs backinto thre soup and slice very thin (discard any stems that are too touch). Return slices to the soup.

Stir dijon mustard and sesame seeds into the wasabi powder.

To serve, ladle soup into bowls, place a couple of pieces of tofu and a couple of poieces of mochi on a small plate with a little dish of the mustard sauce. Take one piece of tofu or mochi at a time, let it sit in the soup for half a minute and then take out and dip in the mustard sauce to eat. Alternate with spoonfuls of soup. I like to use chop sticks to eat the tofu/mochi and eat the veggies out of the soup.

My new fave veggie burgers

I’ve been making veggie burgers for a long time. I’ve only posted one of my recipes so far, because I try to make recipes a bunch of time before I post.

Trouble is, I have a day job and a life, so sometimes that stuff gets in the way.

I generally make some sort of veggie burger on a weekly basis. In the case of veggie burgers, I’ve got to admit, I’ve been completely distracted by this recipe by Heidi Swanson. Her website is incredible, if you are a vegetarian cook you should be looking at it.

Here is her Ultimate Veggie Burger recipe. I’ve decided it’s my total fave veggie burger recipe, other than some really specific stuff dependent on seasonal garden fresh items that I’ll blog about in spring and summer.

Normally, I have a lot of things to say about other people’s recipes and I pick them apart. This is recipe is perfect how it is. I don’t have anything to add.

I also was unable to take any pictures today, so I will let the picture on her website stand as the best one.

Baked Lentil Croquettes

I wanted to come up with a recipe for a bean based “meat ball” that wasn’t just smaller bits of bean burger mix. I really wanted something that was especially designed for the smaller ball shape.

I was inspired by a few different recipes, but mainly by the bean cake and bean croquette recipes in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and by the Lentil and Rice Balls in the Vegan Lunch Box cookbook.

I used lentils du puy, because they are my favorite lentil. I love their flavor and they tender yet firm texture when cooked. Plus they are pretty.

Lentils du Puy

It took me a while to decide what to call these. They are kind of like a replacement for meat balls, I guess, but somehow “lentil balls” just isn’t appealing. I decided I could call them croquettes even though they are baked, rather than the traditional croquette deep fry. I was really trying to come up with a recipe that I would make frequently, and frying is just too messy to do very often. I also like baking these because I can cook enough for a meal in one step. If fried, I would have to cook them in batches.

I made a simple marinara to go along with these while the lentils and rice cooked.

Baked Lentil Croquettes (PDF)

1/2 cup of lentils du puy

1/2 cup of short grain brown rice

1/2 small red onion,minced

3 tbs of fresh parsley, minced

1 medium garlic clove, minced to a paste

3/4 cup of fresh bread crumbs (more if needed)

1 egg

3 tsp of ground cumin

1/2 tsp of ground coriander

salt and pepper to test

olive oil

Put the lentils and the rice in a saucepan of water to cover. Bring to a boil, lower the heat to a brisk simmer and cook for about 30 minutes until both are tender. ( I was skeptical that you could cook the lentils and rice together, but it works nicely and saves dirtying an extra pan.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mince the onion, garlic and parsley. Make your breadcrumbs if necessary. Put all of this in a large bowl

Make or start making your tomato sauce or whatever sauce you might be serving these with.

Once the the lentils and rice are cooked, drain thoroughly and allow to cool enough to be handled.

Rice and Lentils, looking good enough to eat on their own

Once cooled, add the lentils and rice to the bowl with breadcrumb mixture. Add the egg and seasonings. I found it worked best to mix it with my hands, but a rubber spatula works okay of you don’t want to get your hands dirty. Add more breadcrumbs, a little at a time, if you think it needs it. Once the whole thing is throughly mixed together, coat your hands with olive oil. Form the mix into walnut sized balls and place them on the prepared baking sheet.

Bake, turning occasionally with tongs, until golden and crisp on all sides, about 30 minutes.

Baked up nice and crusty

Serve with lots of sauce.

Served with sauce and roasted cauliflower

More pictures here.

Sopa Seca

I first encountered this recipe in the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook The Quick Recipe. This has become one of our favorite dishes. Sopa Seca is essentially a Mexican casserole, based on pasta or sometimes rice. The pasta or the rice is browned before being combined with liquid and other ingredients and baked.

The recipe we like is made with pasta. Traditionally, the pasta used is fideo, a coiled vermicelli (sometimes fideo also refers to a dish similar to sopa seca.) I just use gluten free spaghetti. Tinkyada is the best brand that I have found.

The browning of the pasta was a surprising technique to me at first. (It also freaks out anyone who may be in the kitchen with you when you are cooking). It adds a rich nutty flavor that stands up nicely to the other strong flavors in the dish.

Browning the pasta

It works best to brown the pasta a handful at a time, so that you have more control. It can go from brown to burnt quickly. As each batch browns, transfer it to a baking dish.

All the browned pasta

Once all of the pasta is browned, you can use the same skillet to saute the onions and spices (cumin and chipotles). After a few minutes I add beans and veggies (in this case spinach and shredded zucchini, or sometimes broccoli chopped small) to make this a one dish meal. Then in goes the liquid that will cook the pasta, in my case veggie broth and the liquid from the tomatoes. Once it’s come up to bubbling, carefully pour the whole thing over the browned pasta.

Black beans, onions, garlic, chipotles, cumin, tomatoes, and shredded zuccini

You just have to have faith when you brown the pasta in the first step, and you just have to hang in there for the next part as well. When you pour the broth and veggies over the pasta, all of the veggies and the beans just kind of sit on top of the still hard noodles. It really doesn’t seem like it’s going to work at all.

The hot onion bean and tomato mixture goes over the noodles

After it’s been in the oven for 15 minutes or so, the liquid is absorbed by the noodles. When you give it a stir, you can see that the noodles are soft.

The pasta has cooked

Once the pasta has softened, you top the whole thing with some shredded cheddar or Monterey jack (pepper jack if you fell like having a really spicy dish), and return it to the oven for another five minutes. Creamy, spicy and delicious, I like this with some cilantro, avocado, a little sour cream and a big squeeze of lime juice. Make a big batch, it reheats nicely.