Spanish rice, black beans, peppers & seitan, cilantro "pesto"

Spanish rice, black beans, peppers & seitan, cilantro "pesto"
Originally uploaded by wbajzek

A multi-part preparation... Something I am not always motivated enough to do.

Item one: Spanish rice, made with brown rice, vegetable stock, and a can of stewed tomatoes, the contents of which had been run through the food processor.

Item two: black beans. soaked overnight and then cooked in the pressure cooker.

Item three: Seitan with red, yellow, and green bell peppers, all sauteed with a bit of olive oil, salt, and adobo seasoning. The adobo smelled quite strong, but the flavor was subtle. It's on the old side, so I don't think I can consider that a "rule."

Last but not least, the cilantro "pesto" that I made last night.

We assembled these things artistically into our bowls and had another nice meal on the porch, in the lovely spring cupertino weather. The leftovers were all mixed together for the sake of reducing dish usage. I think it'd make really nice burritos, but I don't think buying bunch of tortillas when we'd realistically only need two or three makes sense, because at the moment I don't expect that any of our other leftovers would make particularly appetizing burritos. 

A bit of cleaning up along the way, and the kitchen is a lot less of a disaster than it could have been considering all the dishes, tools, etc involved. If only I were always so disciplined. 

Pressure cooker madness

I bought an old pressure cooker a month or so ago and have been using it primarily to make rice and beans. The other day, I made some saffron rice in it and then stirred in some ginger, spices, mixed veggies, and raisins to make a pulau kind of dish. It was pretty good. I attempted the same thing today, this time with a chopped up onion added to the rice and some of Angeline's veggie stock instead of water. I also threw in some bell peppers, star anise, fennel and cumin seeds. At that point, it looked like there wasn't enough water, so I added more, perhaps totally 3.5 cups of liquid. It was WAY too much to produce the intended dish, I'm afraid, as the rice was fully cooked while the whole thing was still swimming in liquid. I tasted it and it was pretty good as it was, so I added salt and pan-roasted cashews and served myself a dish of it. Wow! It turned out very tasty in a subtle and complex sort of way. I like it enough that I will probably try to make it this way again sometime.

Angeline made a vegan lasagna, some of which I am also having for lunch. It's pretty great, too, hopefully she will write about it.

Thai curry

I've never really been satisfied with my thai curry... The first time I made it, years ago, I made it from green curry paste and it was quite good, but I've never really gotten it back up to that level yet. I think it's because I got lured in by curry powder, and then later started making my own spice blends, which basically amounted to curry powder anyway. Curry powder doesn't really taste like thai curry.

Using some thai curry paste recipes for inspiration, I set out to cook some of the remaining veggies I had into a tasty dish. At this I succeeded, although it is not quite there yet... I place the blame squarely on my inability to find galangal. I will have to track some down for next time. You can substitute in ginger, but it's not the same. Also, I am not going to put shrimp/anchovy/etc paste or fish sauce into it. Or garlic, for that matter, as I think I am somewhat allergic to it. Maybe I should put in some salt to make up for the lack of these things.

I rode my bike to the market this morning and picked up some tofu, ginger, and coconut milk. Whilst boiling the tofu (cut into triangles) for texture, I threw some red chilis in the food processor with ginger, lemongrass (dried, sadly), cumin, coriander, paprika, and cayenne. In spite of the skin-burning capsaisin in the chilis, they are not all that hot, and I didn't use enough cayenne to make it really hot, although I tried. Anyway, I blended that all up into a paste and sauteed it for a bit, then added onions, carrots, and water, and cooked until the onions went translucent. Then I added two cans of coconut milk, a pile of chopped bell peppers, and the tofu. At this point, I whipped up some more curry paste, because it clearly wasn't enough. I don't think there's an exact science to the proportion, but a basic guideline I can use in the future is two chilis per can of coconut milk.

I'm eating it with some jasmine rice, and enjoying it a lot. It's still not quite right, but it's the closest I've gotten in a long time. Something that worked well once in the past was to deglaze at one point with a cup or so of crisp white whine (like chardonnay) and add in some brown sugar. I think it really needs galangal and fresh lemongrass to really sparkle.

indianish food again

We got another box from the CSA the other day... It took me a while to work up the inspiration to prepare some food, but it turned out pretty well. I sauteed some some usual-suspect spices in ghee (almost gone now) and threw in a few chopped onions and the whey from my soy-yogurt cheese experiment. To this, I added chopped potatoes, cauliflower, carrots, and some frozen peas. Eventually I added more water and then a bit of peanut butter and nutritional yeast to thicken it up. I have to admit that it's not immensely flavorful in spite of having a more salt and cayenne in it than I normally would put, but it is pretty good and has a nice texture to it. Panir or lemon-marinated tofu would have been a nice addition. We're eating it over rice.


Yogurt cheese? Yogurt cheese. I made some soy yogurt as I often do, and am straining it in a sieve lined with cheese cloth. I think that for the full effect, it would need to sit for a few days, but it thickened up pretty well. After I finish dinner, I'm going to mix in some sugar, saffron, and cardamom and serve it as dessert.

Risotto Rules!

Tonight I plan to use some of the great asparagus we received to make risotto. As a reminder to myself, I used this article from Arbor Food as my guide last time I made risotto and I was thrilled with the outcome.

Rice pudding

We're going away for a week, and I decided to try to use up the leftovers & whatnot in the fridge. On Monday night, I made rice pudding from some leftover brown rice. I put 2:1 rice-to-soymilk or so on the stove with a little bit of buttery stuff, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom, and let it simmer for for a while. A little brown sugar is nice, too.

I don't have exact proportions for this; I just cook it longer or add more liquid until the consistency comes out more or less like you'd find at an Indian restaurant.