Monday, January 12, 2009

Tedious and Time Consuming

Here is WWHFDLN...
I think Sundays are becoming soup night. My husband requested red lentil soup, but I just couldn't bring myself to make the same thing again, a week later. So I did the next worst thing, I made the lentil soup I've been making so much this fall and winter!

Middle Eastern Lentil Paprika Soup

1 C brown lentils, rinsed
2 T oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T parsley
1/4 C ketchup
2 T vegetable broth powder
2 T HP sauce
1 T paprika
1 t curry paste
2 bay leaves
1 t salt
8 C water

Saute onion, then garlic. Add everything else except the water and let cook a few minutes. Add the water, bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer 30m.

Made this with my go to bread recipe, left out the vital wheat gluten, let it rise a lot longer on the first rise (do breads with potato tend to have longer rise times, or what?).

Good bread

4 heaping C flour
1/2 C potato flakes
1/4 C sugar
1/4 C oil
1 scant T yeast
1 T salt
2 C water

Preheat oven to 170 degrees. Grease your loaf pans.
Mix 'er all up in your big 'ol mixer, change to the knead hood and knead 3m or so.
Dump out the dough, oil that bowl and put the dough back in, turning to oil both sides.
Cover with a damp tea towel and place in oven to rise 1+ hour.
DON'T FORGET TO TURN OVEN OFF!
Ahem.
Preheat oven to 170 degrees again.
Knead dough for 10m or so. Cut in half, shape into rectangle, roll out into even bigger rectangle. Roll up short side, tuck under ends and place, seam side down into loaf pan.
Cover with tea towel and place into oven, turn off oven. Rise 45m.
Take towel off.
Leave loaves in cold oven, turn to 400 degrees and bake from cold oven for 30m, cover with tinfoil and bake 10 more minutes.

Boy, typing that all out makes it seem so tedious and time consuming.




Okay, here, above, we see the progression of what really occurred when we ate this quick and easy black bean and potato skillet dinner... yes, I do live in Minnesota, why do you ask? Hey, it was very tasty that way! I think it tasted better!! Food snobs...

Oh, and in the background there you can see the homemade tortilla chips I made... mmmm.

Quick and Easy Black Bean and Potato Skillet

1/2 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T oil
5 or 6 small potatoes, scrubbed or maybe 2 med large ones
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 C your favorite salsa
1/2 t cumin

Saute your onion and garlic, add the beans, cumin and salt and mix well. Add salsa and mix well. Cook for a few minutes until salsa liquid has mostly evaporated and then add the potatoes and mix gently.

Serve with chips.

And finally, here we have Chickpea Cutlets from Veganomicon. I paid really good attention to the directions this time (go, me!) and fried them instead of baked them and they were yummy!! Much better than the chewy patties I made before...
Served with some cheezy sauce, sorry, don't have the recipe before me, I think it was my latest incarnation of that bean based one (a can of white beans, undrained, 9 green olives, clove garlic whizzed in blender and heated up).

No news on the "Infinite Jest" front, not much reading this weekend.