Econo #WFPB #4 Dal with stems from various leafy greens.

 

Here is a huge bunch of Purslane (Verdolaga), and note below my potato salad with the leaves. 

Next to it, you will see the stems. I cut them up in 1 inch pieces (Verdolaga is fairly soft, and freeze them, and I will have stems from Kale and Collard greens, or Malabar Spinach, and I cut those in 1/4" pieces when I use the leaves, and save them in a ziploc bag until I am ready to make dal again. Or, alternatively I can use various odds and ends to even cook my own vegetable broth one day.

And the last image is a plate of dal, along the lines of the recipe, but including stems of purslane, kale, collard greens and even malabar spinach, but it could be any stems of leafy greens. The stems can be tougher, but when you make the dal, I cook thos stems, cut in small chunks, right along with the onions and peppers to form the base. Then when you add teh lentils and simmer it some more, those stems are pretty soft and they add a lot of depth to the flavor.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp of panch puran
• 1 cup water with Yondu for the sauté
• 1 medium/small Onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 carrots, shredded or sliced thin
• 1 large red bell pepper
• 2-3 Thai chilis
• 1 Jalapeño
• 1 cup red lentils
• 4 cups water
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tbsp parsley flakes or fresh chopped parsley
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp salt-free chili powder
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 tsp chipotle powder (or more)
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes to taste
• 1 tsp cumin, milled
• 1 tsp caraway, milled
• 1 tsp fennel, milled
• 1 piece of turmeric minced, or a tsp of turmeric powder
• 1 14.5 Oz can of diced tomato (fire roasted)
• 1 6 Oz can of salt-free tomato paste

Directions

• Set aside the tomatoes, red bell pepper.
• In a large soup pot, first roast the tablespoon of panch puran, then water sauté or dry sauté the onion, garlic, peppers until translucent, about 8-10 minutes.
• Add remaining ingredients but not the tomatoes, and bring to a boil.
• Reduce heat to medium and cook until lentils are creamy, about 20 minutes.
• Blend the tomatoes, bell pepper and garlic in blender and blend until smooth. Skip this step if you like it chunky.
• a) Place all ingredients in an electric pressure cooker and cook on high for 10 minutes,
  or
  b) place all ingredients in a slow cooker and cook on low for 8 hours.
• Garnish with finely chopped scallions and a sprinkling of Faux Parmesan (or nutritional yeast).

Notes

Optionally, you can make this with more veggies, liek beet greens, chard, and other such. In that case, I left out the tomato puree.

I also made it more spicy and aromatic than the original from chef AJ, but by including veggies, it becomes more of a dal.

Winter Bean Soup #WFPB Improv 005 - Mixed Bean Soup with Summer Savory

 

Ingredients 

1 lb of any version of mixed soup beans, I used this heirloom bean blend, but you can get packages of 13 or 16 bean soup mixes.
1 piece of Kombu for soaking
1 tsp summer savory
8 cups vegetable stock (or 4 cup water, 4 cup stock or all water!)
2-4 onions, chopped yellow or Vidalia onions are great here
1 tsp savory
4-8 cloves garlic, minced
3 chilis minced
1 jalapeño minced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2-3 stalks celery with tops, chopped
2-4 carrots, peeled and cut-up
1 tbsp of Tianjin vegetables
1/2 tsp of ground red pepper
2-3 dried bay leaves
2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme
small bunch of parsley, chopped and be added in the soup at the end, or added as garnish later.
1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, undrained
juice of 1 lemon
 

Braggs Liquid Aminos to taste.
 

OPTIONALLY: other veggies as available, root vegetables such as parsnips, or taro (aka edo, or coco), turnips, ginger, fennel, celeriac, turmeric, potato, rutabaga, can also add in a green veggie like poi leaf or callaloo for the last 5-10 mins.

This time, I had poi leaf (Malabar spinach), taro, a large winter carrot, turnip. and mix of various peppers, not just one red pepper.

 

Preparation

Soak the beans overnight, and pre-cook them in an Instant Pot for 15 mins.

In a separate pot, cook the onions with the garlic, peppers, turmeric, celery, herbs and spices. Stir frying until they are soft, add water as needed. I used a cup of water with a teaspoon of Yondu.

Add the carrot and root vegetables, and the veggie stock - if you use water, you'll need something else for flavor, like Better than Bouillon or miso.

Let it simmer for a half hour and then add the green veggie. I used Malabar spinach this time. 

Evidently, you can fine tune just how hot and spicy you want it.

St. Helena's Communal Meal Prep 10/26/19

This time the theme was leafy greens.

Eating leafy greens, either raw or cooked 4-6 times a day is the standard recommendation of Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn for it will keep your arteries flexible. Chewing the leafy greens will convert nitrate and with the enzymes from your saliva ultimately it will produce the nitric oxide that helps your bloodvessel stay limber.

Some of the best foods for this are:

1. Beets
2. Garlic
3. Leafy greens
4. Pomegranate
5. Nuts and seeds (but.. we want to go light on those because of the high oil content).

Two Salads

Green Salad

• 1 Green lettuce
• 3 Vine tomatoes
• a can of black-eyed peas (or whatever beans or peas you can find)
• some quinoa
• yellow, red, green peppers
• a can of sliced beets
• a carrot sliced thin (we skipped this because we already had the veggie spaghetti salad with carrot)
• capers
• olives
• a red onion, cut up.
• a pomegranate
• 1/2/3 dressing: 1 measure maple syrup, 2 measures Dijon Mustard, 3 measures Balsamic Vinegar, and lemon and lime juice to taste
• add milled flax seed and/or chia seeds for Omega-3's

Endless variations on the above are possible, and depending on the addition of quinoa and beans, you can make this a meal salad.

 

 Veggie Spaghetti Salad

We made this with a mandolin, but you could use a spiralizer of some sort. Taste is the same, but the long spaghetti strands present better - maybe.

For a dressing we used some 1/2/3 dressing with thyme and some Veggie Mayo (see below).

• Shredded Zucchini
• Shredded Daikon
• Shredded Green Papaya
• Shredded Carrot

Veggie Mayo

• 1 package of Silken Tofu
• 1 tbsp maple syrup (or date sugar)
• 1 tpsp red wine vinegar or fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp of Dijon Mustard

 Drain the tofu on a paper towel, and mix the ingredients with an immersion blender.

Leafy Greens Galore

It was Khokon, the owner of Neerob Restaurant, who taught me to make a medley of green leafy vegetables.

The message is that you can make either pure spinach, or Malabar spinach (poi leaf for the Bangladeshis), or Swiss chard, or any other green leafy vegetables by itself, or you can make a medley.

You can create a simple and delicious flavor with caramelized onions and garlic, some turmeric (preferably fresh) and perhaps Panch Puran or other spices.

 The way to build it up is to caramelize the onions first:

• cut up the onions finely
• optionally: cut up some chilis
• roast dry for 5 minutes - just until the onions start turning brown and sticking to the bottom of the pan.
• mince some garlic
• mince turmeric
• 1/2 cup of veggie broth 
• now stir-fry for five minutes, keeping it liquid with the broth.

• meanwhile cut up the stems of your leafy greens if they have heavy stems.
• now stir-fry another 5-7 minutes with the stems.
• cut up the leaves into 1-1/2" strips and add
• cook on medium until the leaves are al dente

The above is just perfect for making green leafies as a side dish. Alternatively, you can make dal, as follows:

• after stir-frying with the stems, you add more water and red lentils (hulled red lentils) in about 2:1 proportions water to lentils, let it cook about 10 mins then add the green leaves and let it cook for five minutes.

In other words, you start the same way for making green leafies as a side dish or the dal with green vegetables.

Butternut Squash

The last thing we made was butternut squash. We cut one in half lengthwise and put two garlic cloves in the hollow, and filled it up about half-way with veggie stock.
30-40 minutes in the oven at 400F, until soft.

Desert was grapes, which were also delicious.

It seemed everyone enjoyed the meal.

From the money dept

We had eight people, or $120 in funds, and we spent $87.31. In short, we are donating $32.69 to St. Helena's. There was plenty of food, even considering that two people did not show up. 

Another Bengali Meal Prep in September

Bengal cuisine offers such rich possibilities for cooking with spices more than salt.

Today's cooking class was another lesson in a @WFPB version of traditional recipes.

We start with Brown Basmati Rice, which was cooked in advance with a Zojirushi NP-NVX18 Rice cooker on the GABA Brown Rice setting, meaning it is germinated brown rice, that germinated for 2 hours at 105F and then cooked under pressure with an Induction Heat system.

Our new friend from Queens, Katerina from Queens was there once again. Somehow we lost count, because two people could not make it in the last minute, and we ended up inviting other people in the church to share our meal with us, and a good time was had by all. Not to mention many of us ended up taking more home with us.

Ingredients:

• Onion
• Garlic
• Peppers
• Tomato
• Cilantro
• green chilis
• turmeric
• Panch Puran
• Bay Leaves
• Yondu or Bragg's liquid aminos
• Water

• Water squash
• Cauliflower
• Egg plant
• Eddo
• Green Papaya

Instructions:

The first steps are actually the same for both dishes, so we made a large batch of onions, and then split them in two and put on the vegetable medley first, since it needs a longer cooking time.

• Caramelize the onions 
• add in the chilis, turmeric, panch puran, minced garlic, cut up peppers and add some water with Yondu or Braggs to continue - we used 1 tsp Yondu for a cup of water.
• add in the lentils and more water
• add in the harder veggies first, for they need longer to soften
• add in the softer veggies later (e.g, tomato), also cilantro.
• add water as needed.
• add some bay leaves

Three Greens Medley Dal

No, dal is not an airline. It is the typical sauce made from lentils, and you can consider it a soup or a sauce, depending on the occasion. Any three green leafy veggies will do... according to the season today we picked this:

Ingredients:

• onions,
• garlic
• pepper
• cilantro
• turmeric
• panch puran
• green chilis
• Yondu or Bragg's Liquid Aminos to taste.

• lentils
• poi leaf (aka Malabar spinach)
• spinach
• callaloo

Preparation:

For the first step, see above about caramelizing the onions, again we did the onions once for the two dishes and then split them up.

We added water to the caramelized onions

We had young baby spinach, so we did not need to cut it. The callaloo and Poi Leaf we cut in about 1" lengths.

There were grapes for desert. Unfortunately, our friend Khokon unexpectedly could not make it so we will have to do it again and learn to do it even better, but it was a good lesson in a basic dish that you can vary almost endlessly according to the season.

If the group had been bigger, we would have made a salad. The plan was for spaghetti salad from green papaya, carrots, daikon, and zucchini, with a 1/2/3 ddressing (1 measure maple syrup, 2 measures dijon mustard, 3 measures maple syrup) with lemon and lime, dill, parsley, pepper. That 's an invention of Shamim, who is Khokon's cousin and sometime chef.

Practicing plant-based on a budget:

We always donate the overage to St. Helenas, and this week it was almost half of the money we collected. We spent about $8 per person, so our donation to St. Helena's is $7 per person this week. If we had made the vegetable spaghetti salad, our spend per person would have been $10 or so.
On top of that several of us took leftovers home and we actually fed 10 people not the five people who signed up in the class, for some of the other staff and one of the priests joined in. Or rather they were not given the chance to leave without eating for we had more than we could handle.

These numbers can swing from one month to the next, depending on when we buy certain staples, nevertheless, this is always a good lesson in how economical plant-based food can be. Meat is expensive, even while it is heavily subsidized. 

More Bengali Inspiration #1

I will be recreating the recipes we prepared at the last class, and give some more detailed instructions.

Meanwhile, if you want to get your information from the source, you can of course ask the Bangladeshi greengrocers on Starling Ave (aka Bangla Bazaar), or, there is a series on youtube, Village Food Life, which allows you to study some of the Bangladeshi cuisine in a fairly authentic village setting. I will use one of the videos below.

Recipes

While you can vary these recipes endlessly, some of the basic patterns and spices are very helpful to understand and I will break them out here, for they are the building blocks.

With lentils, you can make a quick sauce or a soup. We will make one here, but there are many kinds of lentils, so you can vary this endlessly and fine tune it to your own taste.

Poi Leaf

Here is a recipe about Malabar Spinach, or Poi Leaf, which is available year-round. It is a bit like spinach, but it has a richer taste, and soon enough you will figure out when Poi is more suitable than spinach. As it says on the site I linked here, it's like there are hints of citrus and pepper in the flavor.

At our recent cooking class, we just made boiled poi leaf, but on this occasion, I am going to make more of a stew with it, using the stems as well.

Caramelized Onions are the start

I started my cooking with a frying pan to caramelize 4 to 5 medium-size onions finely cut-up, with some finely cut chilis, and a jalapeno, plus garlic, while adding slowly about 8 oz of veggie broth and about a tablespoon of Braggs Liquid Aminos. The key is to not stir the onions at first, until the bottom begins to brown, and then, before they would char, you start stirring them, and you will gradually see a glaze form in the pan. You can then use water, or veggie broth, or vinegar to deglaze the pan, so that instead of sticking to the pan, the onions are nice and moist.

Note, the article I linked here, suggests caramelizing in a hot frying pan, which is the best. It will take 5 minutes or less. Here is an article that describes a slow method, which also works, but is inefficient because it costs too much time. If you do it over high heat, you just need to watch it closely. If you go the medium temperature method, it will take 25-30 minutes.

For about 1.5 lbs of poi leaf, I used about half the onions and added a piece of turmeric, cut-up in thin slices. I cut up the stems in 1/4" pieces, and cooked them with the onions, adding a little more water. Once the stems were soft I threw the leaves on top and let them wilt over a low flame, about 15 minutes. Then I mixed the whole thing together. It was delicious.

Lentil Sauce

I used a 3 lb Deshi squash (water squash) and 1 lb of split red lentils.

Water Squash

Starting with the caramelized onions, I added some turmeric, and a few bay leaves and a bunch of cilantro cut up fine and the squash cut-up to about 1/4" thick 1/8th wedges. Then I added about 1 lb of lentils and water to cover and about a table spoon of liquid aminos (in lieu of salt) and that cooked for about 30 mins. With a wooden spoon I could practically pulverized the squash, and make a smooth sauce out of the whole thing, while removing the bay leaf.

With that, I had enough sauce left over to freeze two quart bags for another day, and that still left me enough for about two more days, which I could keep in the fridge. You learn to cook in batches.

A Lovely Green and Yellow Recipe

Since leafy green vegetables are a staple of the WFPB diet, it is good to be handy with different possibilities of preparing them.

The following is a sauce based on the Southeast asian cooking tradition which has become a source of inspiration for me through the Bangladeshi community in my neighborhood.

Ingredients:

• a few onions, chopped
• a few garlic cloves, chopped
• optionally some chilis, chopped
• some turmeric, peeled and sliced fine, or turmeric powder
• a quart of vegetable broth.
• a cup of split chick peas (chana dal)
• your favorite green leafy vegetable: spinach, malabar spinach (poi leaves), callaloo, chard, you name it.

Preparation:

•  Start to stir fry the onions, with the cut-up chilis dry, until they start to caramelize (about 4 mins), and then add some tablespoons of veggie broth.
• add in the garlic and the turmeric, let it simmer for about 5 mins
• add the remaining vegetable broth, bring to a slow boil
• add the dal and let it simmer for 45 minutes
• blend this mixture with an immersion blender
• add in your green leafies and let it simmer until the vegetables are soft. Note: alternatively, you can cook the green leafies on the side and add them cooked. This may be necessary with things like callaloo where you have to cook the stems longer than the leaves.

The result is a yellowish sauce with green accents, and it is absolutely finger licking good. Serve over GABA brown basmati rice. You can serve along with almost any other vegetable dishes.

Overall, the whole secret of cooking without added Sugar, Oil or Salt is to use the natural flavors, including various herbs and spices, and soon you will find that everything tastes better and more natural.

And another WFPB supper at Packsun

At the end of February, we had a great meal at Packsun, and the bottom line is our friend Khokon, the owner, has a secret. How do you cook a great meal? You put your heart into it! That is his answer forever.

As it was, I am guessing a bit about the details of our meal, but it consisted of:

• a simple tomato dish - fresh tomatoes cooked with onions, garlic and some spices.
• a dish of yellow lentils with Malabar spinach (Poi leaves) with turmeric, onions and garlic and bay leaves.
• a dish of cauliflower also with a sauce of onions, garlic, turmeric and other spices
• GABA brown basmati rice

For starters we had a nice and very spicy salad of cucumbers, purple onions, with some chilis, hot, but not too hot - cucumber also cools you down.

Khokon showing off brown basmati rice

Yet Another #WFPB Supper at Packsun

This week we had another lovely #WFPB Supper at Packsun...

Simple and sumptuous.

Three veggie dishes and GABA Brown Basmati rice

The dishes were simple:

A lentil stew with poi leaf (Malabar Spinach) with onions, garlic, turmeric, cardamom, bay leaf and chilis, be sure to add some black pepper because it potentiates turmeric, and you can use some Braggs Liquid Aminos in lieu of salt to finish it to taste.

A side of cauliflower with onions, garlic and turmeric.

Khokon and father David before digging in, I was taking the picture

And another side dish with broccoli, onions, garlic, turmeric and cardamom.

Khokon is also starting to eat more plant-based food and has lost weight that way. Father David estimated his weight loss in the first 6 months was about 80 lbs and 8" on his belt size, and the whole parish is noticing that he looks so much better. I keep joking with him that he will run the marathon yet.

The most important ingredient in any successful meal according to Khokon: put your heart into it.

On Friday of this same week my cardiologist (Dr. Robert Ostfeld of the Montefiore Cardiac Wellness Program) fired me: "I wish all my patients did so well!"