Mmm ... bowl of spicy soup

After the long, tiring week that was, I felt like starting this week's cooking adventures off with a soup. So, we started perusing one of my favorite soup books Best-ever Soups by Anne Sheasby. We landed upon this spicy moroccan lentil soup - actually an old-time favorite, but I figured we'd make it a little differently this time using some of the ideas from Anne's recipe. We chose to skip the garbanzo since it often tends to overwhelm the flavors and I really enjoy the dominant flavor of puy lentils in a spicy soup. The whole process took us only about 30 minutes, cooking the lentils (20 minutes) just happened in parallel with the cooking of the veggies.

Simple, straightforward, stellar flavor!

Spicy Moroccan Lentil Soup

Servings: 3 giant bowls


1.5 cups of dried puy lentils
1/2 red onion - sliced
1 carrot - diced
2 medium tomatoes - chopped
1" ginger
4 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno
1 t olive oil
1 t cinnamon powder
1 t fennel seeds
1/2 t turmeric powder
1 t lemon juice
2 T chopped fennel
kosher salt

Cook the lentils in 3 cups of water in a pressure cooker. If cooking them on the stove, use about 3.5 cups of water.
Grind the ginger, garlic and jalapeno into a fine paste, adding water if needed.
In a large saucepan, saute the fennel seeds and onions in the olive oil for about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, carrots, ginger+garlic+jalapenos. After about 2 minutes, add the turmerc, cinnamon and salt. Stir occasionally and simmer covered - for about 15 minutes.
Once the lentils are done, throw them in, stir for a couple of minutes before taking off the stove. Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle with the chopped fennel and a few drops of lemon juice.

And if you love the spice (like I do!), maybe you'll add a dash or two of hot sauce! :) We had some onion pita bread from Trader Joe's on hand - we toasted these for dipping in the lentil soup. Got to love that TJs!


With all the fennel that this soup has plus the fact that it came from my veggie patch, it has got to be a Weekend Herb Blogging entry! (WHB #103)

Roasted vegetables + Spicy polenta = close to perfect meal

I could term this a perfect meal, but nothing's perfect, right? :) Wait, the last post was about a perfect seafood meal ... hmm, guess that was just marred by the totally imperfect picture!

I've kind of rediscovered The Complete Cookbook in the last few weeks - this is one of my oldest cookbooks and I've used several recipes from it, but it seems like I've also skimmed through a lot of other truly mouthwatering recipes. As I was flipping through the pages yesterday, this roasted vegetable salad totally caught my eye - it seemed like another of those "let's get into Fall" recipes and we had most of the workings for it :) Turned a few more pages and we stumbled upon a polenta recipe that seemed like a good match.

The veggie salad called for parsnips along with dutch potatoes, onions and carrots - Hmm ... no parnsips! We just went with a bell pepper and some pearl onions instead. Worked pretty well, especially with the killer dressing we made for it!

Roasted Vegetable Salad

5 baby dutch potatoes - halved
20-25 pearl onions - soaked in hot water and peeled
4 carrots - cut into 4" long strips
1 green bell pepper - quartered
2 t poppy seeds
1 T olive oil
a few pieces of brie

Toss the vegetables in the olive oil and bake uncovered in a greased pan at 400 F for 50 minutes. Once the veggies are done, toss them with the poppy seeds and set back in the oven for 5-7 minutes. This browns the poppy seeds a bit and makes them even crunchier.

Dressing:
========
1/3 cup orange juice (the pulpier the better)
1 T horseradish paste (dijon mustard would work too, but we liked this flavor better)
1/4 t thai red chilli paste
1 t sesame oil
kosher salt

Whisk all the ingredients together and toss with the vegetables. Top with the brie once these are laden onto the plates.


We started working on the polenta as the veggies were being roasted. Again, the original recipe called for leeks, but we didn't have any on hand. So, we went with a bunch of green onions instead - a worthy substitute!

Spicy polenta with green onion topping

1.5 cup of cornmeal
6 cups of water
1 t garam masala
1/2 t chilli powder
1 t cumin seeds salt
3-4 oz fontina cheese - finely cubed
7-8 green onions - chopped

Saute the green onions in about 1/4 t of butter and set aside.

Once the water boiled, we poured the polenta in a fine stream, stirring constantly to avoid lumping. Well, we didn't avoid it - but we worked at it with a vengeance till it got smooth again. Phew! Stirring polenta is such a pain! But this was worth the effort. We tossed in the spices and kept stirring - about 20 minutes till it was finally done. I doled it out on a plate - kind of like a mound and topped it with the green onions and a few cubes of fontina. After the stirring workout, it tasted delicious! :)

Halibut meets grape leaves

This was one of those perfect seafood meals. It was also one of those "Damn! The camera is on the fritz!" meals! :)

While poking around for interesting fish recipes, I came across JenBlossom's post about halibut with lemon butter. Soon, I was trolling the Food&Wine recipe collection looking for other halibut recipes. This one about halibut roasted in grape leaves caught my eye. We haven't had grape leaves in a long while, and this recipe sounded really simple and quick. In one of those rare instances, we pretty much followed the recipe, except for using halibut fillets with the skin on - not a problem since it peeled off real easily once they were baked.

We really wanted to get all pieces of our meal ready at the same time, it truly sucks when an entree sits around getting cold while the sides are still being worked on! After a little juggling, we figured out how to create a packet of grape leaves, drizzle it with olive oil and chopped thyme and seasoning and wrap the halibut in it. Soon, 4 pretty pouches went into the oven :) In the meantime, we chopped up some yukon gold potatoes and sauteed those with vidalia onions - seasoning was a dash of cayenne, some cumin powder and rock salt. And this time, we seasoned it with a bunch of italian parsley instead of the usual cilantro. It worked really well!

The other side was an old favorite - fresh green beans sauteed in a soy sauce+rice vinegar+grapeseed oil+sesame seeds reduction. Tasty, like always!

Once the fish was out, we unwrapped the grape leaves and drizzled the lemon-mustard dressing over the halibut - it was so yummy, can't wait to try it on some veggies next time!

It was a fabulous meal, but the camera was out to lunch, so all we have is this one sad picture!


End result: Autumn was happy! Very happy! :)

Pooch Treats!

After everything that Vodka has been through over the last few days, he deserves loads of treats and many swims in the lake! The latter is yet to come, but we figured we'd get started on the yummy treats part :)


Pretty amazing how a bunch of fruits and some oatmeals makes for fabulous doggy cookies. Actually, they're pretty appealing to the human palate too, I snuck one when Vodka wasn't looking!

Apple'n'Pear cookies

2 honey crisp apples - diced
1 pear - diced
1/3 stick of butter
2 cups of oatmeal - softened in warm water
1/2 cup of milk

Melt the butter, mix in the fruit chunks, add the oatmeal and milk, mix it all up. Drop spoons of it onto a greased baking tray. Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes.


Vodka says *drool*!

Rice Mixup, mon?!

Indian rice dishes are among the best out there, what with pulao and biriyani and bisibela and vangi bath, the list just goes on! But then there are the fiery latin and caribbean flavors that arouse all the senses - the paellas and beans'n'rice and arroz con something or the other!

Last night was definitely a rice night, after poking around Didi Emmons' book, we stumbled upon this yummy looking Jamaican rice mixup recipe that we morphed to work with what we had. Instead of using regular long-grain rice, we use this nutty rice and lentils mix that I found at PCC a few weeks ago. With 3 kinds of wild and brown rice as well as red lentils, it ends up bursting with flavor and blends really well with strong spices like cumin and coriander. All the stores seem to be teeming with squashes right now, so we settled for this Delicata squash - even as I cut it, it seemed to be redolent of sweet potato rather than squash. Well, wikipedia seems to think the same! :) We went with onions and spinach, but skipped the usual black beans since our rice mix already had lentils.

Jamaican Rice Mixup

1/2 large red onion - minced
5 cloves garlic
1" ginger
1 jalapeno
1 delicata squash - peeled and diced
20-25 leaves of baby spinach - cut into long shreds
1.5 cups of wild/brown rice + red lentils
chives for seasoning
salt'n'pepper

Spices:
1 t coriander powder
1 t allspice powder
1 t saffron

Cook the rice in 2.5 cups of water. In the meantime, saute the onions in 1 T of olive oil. Grind up the ginger, garlic and green chillies and throw them in. Once the onions are translucent, add the squash along with 1/2 cup of water. Add the spices and simmer covered till the squash is cooked. Add the cooked rice along with the spinach. Stir in the salt and pepper and cook for 1-2 minutes longer.

Garnish? Chives fresh from the veggie patch :)


I was hankering for a side for this and wasn't quite sure what would go with it. We finally settled on a raita. Since this rice had strong flavors like indian food, the raita ended up being the perfect complement. And it took all of 5 minutes! One grated carrot and a spoon of mango pickle stirred into 2 cups of buttermilk. Done! :)

Fusilli e Bean Casserole

Today felt like a non-desi comfort food day. Hmm ... mac'n'cheese? No, I was craving something more nutritious than that! :)

After poking around several cookbooks, I finally embarked on making a veggie-filled pasta bake. As the fusilli cooked, I started gathering the makings for the base. A bunch of green beans were on hand, a ripe'n'ready-to-burst tomato was waiting too. And maybe some olives?

Fusilli e Bean Casserole

3 cups fusilli - cooked al dente
1 large ripe vine tomato
1/3 lb green beans - parboiled
10 green olives
1/2 cup nonfat milk
2 T all purpose flour
1/3 cup light havarti cheese - grated
2-3 t chopped chives
1/2 cup of breadcrumbs (or) crumbled flatbread, which was all I had on hand
red pepper flakes
salt to taste

After pureeing the peeled tomato, I added the minced olives in. The next step was to make a nonfat white sauce by roasting the flour in a dry pan over heat and adding the milk, constantly stirring to avoid clumping. I figured chives might give the sauce a good flavor - especially since I was skipping onions and garlic this time! It only took about 2-3 minutes to get a sauce consistency - I mixed this into the tomato puree, added the pasta, beans and cheese. The last step was to toss the mixture with salt and red pepper flakes before pouring into a baking pan and sprinkling with the flatbread crumbs.

It only took 15 minutes of baking at 375 F to finish cooking the pasta goodness!

Spicy eggplant!

Eggplant is one of those weird vegetables - it seems to take a lot of thinking to find the "right" recipe for it. And it either turns out fabulous or really crappy, no in between!

I was looking for a side to go with some dosas a few days ago, and realized I had some really fresh indian eggplant waiting to be cooked up. After much dithering, I decided to go with a simple, straightforward recipe - stuffed & baked. After slicing off the tops of the little eggplants, I made a cross cut lengthwise in each of those - for filling with the stuffing. I had some sambar powder that I'd made a few days ago - seemed like the perfect filling. I loaded up the eggplants with the powder+salt, spritzed them with some oil spray and baked them for about 15 minutes at 400 F. For the first time ever, I garnished these with some chopped fennel - the combination of flavors was awesome!


Hmm ... this is an odd picture, these look more like dates than eggplants!!! :)