Thick Lentil Soup

On these chilly days, I automatically reach for the lentils.

Nothing is as warming as having a big pot of lentil soup in the fridge, ready to be re-heated in the middle of a busy day of gardening, or eaten in the evening by the fire with hot rolls and butter.

Best of all, lentils are a very good source of both soluble and insoluble fiber. They help your body lower cholesterol and keep your colon healthy. And like all legumes, they are good for the heart. They have significant quantities of folate which lowers homocysteine and magnesium which helps your veins and arteries relax.

This is the lentil soup we've been eating this week. It's actually more of a stew than a soup. You can serve it over brown rice, or add a little extra liquid and eat it as a thick soup.

Vary the recipe depending on what's in your fridge. I was going to add turnips, but they seem to have disappeared from the Hollywood Farmers Market. I fried up some cipollini onions, which add a sweet rich flavor, but regular onions would be fine too, or even the small white pearl onions. If you don't have fresh rosemary, use 1 tsp dried. Rosemary is good for the digestion, so it's a good herb to add to bean dishes if you don't eat them enough that your body is used to breaking them down.

Like all good soups, this one gets better with age. So make a big pot and enjoy it throughout the week, knowing that it is good for your body and soul.

Thick Lentil Soup
1 cup green lentils, picked over and rinsed
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped fine
4 carrots, diced
1 leek
4 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and diced
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
28-oz can diced tomatoes
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
8-9 cipollini onions
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp lemon juice

Put the lentils, onion, garlic, carrots, leek, potato, celery and rosemary in a large pot, and cover with a quart of water. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer 45-50 minutes until the lentils are tender.

Add the tomatoes with their juice, tomato paste, salt and pepper. Simmer gently.

Peel and halve the cipollini onions and fry in the vegetable oil until golden brown. Add to the pot.

Stir in lemon juice just before serving.

Serves 6-8

Macadamia Nut Burgers

Sometimes a burger hits the spot.

In this case, a nut burger.

When my grandmother was a vegetarian in 1960s England, you could buy nut rissoles in a tin. I guess they were early gardenburgers, before refrigeration was as reliable as it is today.

These macadamia nut burgers we ate the other night are nothing like the hockey puck called a gardenburger. (I've never seen a nut rissole so I can't compare them.)

They were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, with texture from the nuts and celery.

We ate them with baked sweet potato fries and coleslaw - no buns. It was high protein fast food with a healthy twist.

I adapted the recipe from Rose Eliot's peanut burgers in her book The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine. It contains marmite, a staple of British school children and vegetarians (excellent source of B vitamins and a rich flavor similar to beef broth). You can buy it locally at Lucky Baldwin's Pub in Old Pasadena (along with other essentials like Branston pickle and Bird's custard powder).

The burgers will be good even without the marmite. You might add a little extra soy sauce if you like.

Macadamia Nut Burgers
3 tbsp butter or olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp marmite
1 cup roasted salted cashews
1/2 cup macadamia nuts
2/3 cup fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs
salt and pepper
extra breadcrumbs for coating
oil to coat the frypan

Grind the nuts fairly finely in a food processor or blender. Some large-ish bits are fine. Don't over-pulverize them and turn them to nut butter.

(You can also grind 1-2 slices of whole wheat bread to make the fresh breadcrumbs.)

Melt the butter or olive oil in a large saucepan and sauté the onion and celery until soft, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour and cook another 1-2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup water and stir until thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in the soy sauce, marmite, nuts and fresh breadcrumbs.

Let the mixture cool until it's easy to handle, and then form 4 burgers about 1/3 inch thick. Press them together well, then pat dry breadcrumbs onto the top, turn them over, and pat more breadcrumbs on the other side. (The breadcrumbs will crisp up in the frypan and make a crunchy exterior.)

Warm the frypan over medium heat. Pour in enough oil to just cover the bottom of the pan. Cook the burgers about 5 minutes on each side, until browned and crisp.

Drain on paper towels, then serve hot.

Serves 4.

(Store the leftovers in the fridge. They reheat well in the toaster oven. The uncooked burgers will last a few days in the fridge. Cook as needed.)

Macadamia nuts

I was strolling through the Hollywood Farmers Market a few weeks ago when I was brought up short by small boxes of round wooden things. They were macadamia nuts - in the shell.

I had never seen the whole nuts before, so of course I had to bring some home. They're organic macadamias grown near San Diego.

I suggested to Larry that he crack a few so we could try them.

Two nut crackers and much grunting and cussing later, Larry was on wikipedia searching for macadamia-opening strategies. Place the nutcracker on the round spot, crack them on the little line - whatever he tried, it didn't work. After much struggle he shared one shelled macadamia nut with me and mum. It was very good, but I can see why they're usually sold without the shells.

The following week I stopped at the stall where I'd bought the nuts to ask how they opened them.

It turns out the secret trick is to wrap a nut in an old towel and tap it with a hammer.

So yesterday I sat on the concrete floor of our garage with an old towel, a hammer, and the macadamia nuts. Tap is a relative term - some nuts require more bashing than others. And the towel is essential, not just to soften the blow from the hammer, but to contain the nut shells. They are hard and thick and could definitely do damage.

I managed to remove all the nuts from their shells without harming me or the floor. Some of the nuts split in half, but a remarkable number stayed whole and just popped out of the shell. The towel, however, got holes in it from the broken edges of the nutshells. Did I mention they're hard?

Now I have a half cup of shelled macadamia nuts. What to do with them?

I confess to not having eaten many macadamia nuts in my life. The main recipe I know is for white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, which seems a little like overkill, especially after the holidays.
So instead I'll be using them in Rose Eliot's recipe for nut burgers. I'll let you know how they turn out.

Winter Fruit

Winter fruit is extra high in Vitamin C, very useful in cold and flu season.

We juice oranges on Sundays, and take tangerines and apples in our lunch bags.

Our bowls of morning fruit are full of the excellent grapefruit we get from Jorge at the Hollywood Farmers Market - both pink and white. I add color with pomegranate seeds, and an extra zip with kumquats from the dwarf meiwa tree mum gave me for Christmas. The fruit is a little larger than a regular kumquat, and a little sweeter.

All these vitamins help us feel stronger during this virus and bacteria laden season. And eating the fresh fruit is much more fun than swallowing a vitamin pill.

Isn't it cute? This is the dwarf meiwa kumkuat we got at Bellefontaine Nursery in Pasadena. It was tough to come home with only one citrus tree - talk about a place of temptation!

Sweet Potato Biscuits

As I mentioned in my last post, I served a root vegetable soup to celebrate the Winter Solstice, and to encourage the sun to return after the longest night of the year.

What I didn't mention was that with the soup I served sweet potato biscuits - in round sun-like shapes of course.

Both my mother and my husband declared this to be the best use of sweet potatoes ever.

(It's a recipe from the a book I recommend to all bakers, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Easy Artisan Bread by Yvonne Ruperti. Her naan recipe is great too.)

Sweet potatoes are high in beta carotene and other antioxidants that are particularly good for the digestive tract. They are high in anti-inflammatories, and are also being studied for their ability to minimize the negative affects of heavy metals on the body. We should all be eating them regularly.

If, like mine, your family balks at eating these excellent orange tubers, try these biscuits. Serve them hot with butter and a healthy soup, and even the most reluctant sweet potato eater will dig in.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

1 large sweet potato (to make 1 cup mashed)

1 3/4 cups flour

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

8 tbsp unsalted butter, very soft

1/2 cup buttermilk

Scrub sweet potato well, and then prick it several times with a fork. Bake on a cookie sheet in a 425°F oven 30-40 minutes until soft. Let cool completely (about 45 minutes) then peel and mash. Keep one cup for this recipe and save any leftovers for another use. (Using too much sweet potato will make the dough wetter and harder to handle.)

Keep oven at 425°F.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir in the mashed potato, soft butter, and buttermilk until just combined.

(I can't find organic buttermilk, so instead I squeeze a couple of teaspoons of lemon juice into the bottom of a measuring cup, and then pour in regular organic milk to the 1/2 cup measure. I let it sit a couple of minutes before adding to the mix. It won't look like buttermilk, but it has the right chemistry to help the baking powder reactions that make the biscuits rise.)

On a well floured surface, pat or roll the dough to a rectangle 3/4 inch thick. This is a moist dough, so it's easier to just cut the rectangle into 12 squares. However, to make sun biscuits, cut rounds with a well-floured 2 1/4" cookie cutter. Push the cutter straight down and then up. Don't twist it or the biscuits won't rise as high. Push the trimmings together to make a 13th funny-looking biscuit.

Place the biscuits on a lined cookie sheet and bake 25 minutes until golden brown and set.

Makes 12-13 biscuits.

Root vegetable soup

I made this golden soup on the Winter Solstice to remind the sun to come back after the longest night of the year. (As you can see, it worked.) I floated a slice of golden beet on each bowl as extra encouragement.

This simple root vegetable soup was inspired by the baby rutabagas and turnips and the golden beets at the Flora Bella and Finley Farms stands at the Hollywood Farmers Market. 

Because I had run out of vegetable stock, I used a base of onions and garlic cooked in olive oil and butter - similar to the way I start risotto. I usually depend on good stock for well-flavored soup, but the flavors of the roots shone through in this dish.

I added protein in the form of pinquito beans, tiny little beans native to southern California that I buy at the Hollywood Farmers Market. You could use adzuki beans instead, or any other small bean.

Don't wait until next Winter Solstice to try this yummy dish.

Solstice Root Vegetable Soup

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp unsalted butter

3/4 cup diced onion

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/2 cup dried pinquito beans

3 golden beets

5 small turnips (5 oz total)

7 very small rutabagas (8 oz total)

2 carrots

5 cups water

1 tbsp salt

Cook the beans in a large amount of boiling water until cooked, 2-3 hours. Drain and set aside.

Scrub the roots, take off the tops and ends, and chop them in 1/4 to 1/2 inch dice.

Sauté the onion and garlic in the olive oil and butter until tender and fragrant. Stir in the remaining ingredients and simmer, covered, until all the roots are meltingly tender.

Serve hot with fresh pepper to add as desired.

Serves 3-5.

Brazilian collards

Collard greens are a great way to get the health benefits of brassicas without eating cabbage. Not that there's anything wrong with cabbage, or broccoli for that matter, but it's nice to have a simple green that cooks quickly and is full of good nutrition.

Collards are exceptional anti-cancer greens. They are full of anti-oxidants, anti-inflammatories, and sulfur-containing nutrients that help the body ward off cancerous changes in the breast, prostate, bladder, colon and more.

I read in Maria Baez Kijac's fascinating book, The South American Table, that collard greens are the traditional side dish to serve with feijoada, the Brazilian black bean and meat dish. I used the same simple technique on New Year's Day, and served the collards with hoppin' john — black-eyed peas and brown rice. An excellent combination.

If you find collards at the market, pick them up and try this simple recipe. If you don't like soft mushy greens, it will be a revelation.

Collard Greens
1 bunch collard greens
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper

Wash the greens and cut out the heavy stems. I do this by placing the leaf flat on a board and cutting down each side of the stem with a long knife. I then cut the leaf through at the top to make two half-leaves. I threw the stems in the compost. Although they can be cooked and eaten, this dish is best with just the leaves. Roll a few half-leaves into a cigar shape, and cut them across in fine slices. You will get thin ribbons of greens.

When you are ready to eat, warm the olive oil in a wide pan over medium heat. Using the flat side of your  knife, mash the garlic on your cutting board with the salt and pepper. Stir it into the warm oil, then add the collards and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and let simmer, stirring occasionally, 5-10 minutes until the greens are done to your liking. They will retain their shape, and are best with a slight crispness. Taste for seasoning and serve immediately.

Serves 2-4

Welcoming the New Year

Even though I've never lived in the south, I've adopted the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. I use a recipe from Diana Shaw's book, Vegetarian Entertaining, which combines the peas with brown rice and smoked cheese for a protein-rich comfort food dish that helped ease us into 2013.

(I'm sure true Southerners would blanch at calling this decidedly untraditional dish hoppin' john.)

I used dried black eyed peas that I buy at the Hollywood Farmers Market. I find they cook in about the same time as the brown rice so I don't pre-soak them. If your beans are older, soak them overnight or for a few hours in cold water, then drain them before adding them to the pot. I suppose you could use canned beans, stirring them in at the end to cook through, but I'm not sure the flavor would be as good.

The color comes from a roasted red pepper. Since pepper season is finished here in southern California, I pulled a roasted pepper from my freezer. Each fall when organic peppers are overflowing at the Tutti Frutti stand, I buy dozens to roast and freeze. (Click here for my post on roasting peppers.) They defrost well for any cooked dish, and have that great roasted flavor.

For the liquid I used one cup of my roasted vegetable stock and 3 cups water.

The final touch is the smokiness of the cheese stirred in at the end. Diana calls for smoked mozzarella, but I prefer smoked firehouse Mike cheddar from the jersey cows at Spring Hill Organic Farm (sold at the Hollywood Farmers' Market). It adds a little kick along with the smoke.

With this gooey, soft dish (which Larry says is very hard to photograph attractively), I served Brazilian-style collard greens and an Indian flatbread. Later we sat by the fire with port and stilton, and felt very well-fed by vegetarian dishes from around the world.

Hoppin' John
1 large onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tbsp oil
1 large red pepper, roasted, seeded and chopped
1 cup black-eyed peas, picked over and rinsed
1 cup long-grain brown rice, rinsed
4 cups water or vegetable stock
1/3 cup minced parsley
3/4 cup diced smoked cheese

In a large pan, sauté the onion and garlic in oil until soft. Stir in the red pepper, black-eyed peas, rice and water or stock. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer over low heat until the beans and rice and cooked through, 45-60 minutes. Add liquid if needed. If the beans and rice are cooked and too much liquid remains, remove the lid and cook until it evaporates.

(It can sit off the heat now until you're ready to eat. Reheat gently before stirring in the cheese.)

Stir in the parsley and cheese. Serves 6.

Reheats well and makes great leftovers.

Saying good-bye to 2012

I could think of no better New Year's Eve dinner than a feisty dish of wild arugula and gorgonzola.

The arugula is lightly sautéed with mushrooms and diced tomatoes. The gorgonzola melts when tossed with hot pasta, and the ingredients meld together to create a dish that is even better than the sum of its parts.

It was a great way to see 2012 out with gusto.

Penne with Arugula and Gorgonzola
16-oz package penne
3 tbsp olive oil
6 oz crimini mushrooms
14-oz can diced tomatoes
1 bunch arugula
6-8 oz gorgonzola

Cook penne in a large pot of boiling salted water according to the directions on the package.

Cut the mushrooms in quarters (or sixths if they're large). Wash the arugula, remove the bigger stems, and tear it in large pieces. Sauté the mushrooms in the olive oil for five minutes. Drain the tomatoes, saving the juice for another use, and add them along with the arugula. Sauté another couple of minutes. Spoon into a large serving bowl. Cut the gorgonzola in large dice and stir it into the vegetables.

Drain the pasta well and add it to the bowl. Add freshly-ground pepper and toss well.

Serves 4-6.

It even looks like health food (before the pasta and cheese are added).