I passed this by on my first go through, the name seemed so dull to me. But with a couple bean days left I figured I’d try it. So glad I did; it’s much more interesting than the name suggests. Grateful for Mel’s report, totally agree on the dressing. I made a cup of it (instead of 1 1/2) and it was still more than needed. The nuts and garlic in the dressing do a lot of the flavor work here. There is no way this serves 4. Lulu and I polished it off on our own with a roll each on the side. I’ll definitely make this again on Beanapalooza nights, maybe adding some thinly sliced celery for a bit of vegetal crunch.
I loved this. Cut the tomatillos into bite sized pieces, and added avocado on top. Served with whole tortilla chips, not crushed, and Lulu and I scooped. There is no way this could have served more than 2 in our house.
LLD home, and the bean fun is over for a little while. The fact that this book has a full chapter of bean recipes, and that the 3 I’ve tried have been delicious and very easy to put together fills me with happiness.
Another from the bean section. You make a dressing of sorts by combining a pint of kimchi with some rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. You mix in celery and fresh ginger, and some tempeh that was previously broken into pieces and fried. Toss it all together and adjust seasoning. I tweaked a little by using half the amount of celery and adding in some cucumber to fill it out. Just needed to use up CSA cukes. I also added a garnish of cilantro, and served the salad over brown rice. It might be worth noting that my kimchi was from an Edward Lee recipe, and had been aging in my garage fridge for two years. So pretty ripe. Oh, and I also threw in some blister-fried peanuts, just because I thought they’d be nice in there, which they were.
We really liked this dish. Only thing I would change would be not to break the tempeh into uneven chunks as called for, but rather to cut it into cubes or even triangles like in a previous recipe. When the tempeh is broken up by hand, you get individual soybeans popping out, and they will tend to burn before the larger pieces are fully fried. Uniform pieces would just cook up better. But that’s a small quibble. If you like kimchi, this recipe is for you.
BULGUR WITH RADICCHIO AND A LITTLE SAUSAGE (175)
I needed to use up the rest of my faux-rizo, but this one was meh compared to the fantastic farro-date-celery combo. You cook sausage, toss it with sesame seeds, cook bulgur, then toss together with radicchio and cucumber (I skipped the cuke but don’t think it would have made much of a difference) with a tahini-lime-honey dressing. Oh well, they can’t all be stunners. I just felt like it lacked something–I tossed in some kalamata olives.
CHICKPEA-CABBAGE TABBOULEH (81)
Now we’re back on track–this was quite good! It calls for bulgur, but I was bulgured out and used a tricolor pearl couscous. While the grain is cooking, you toast some chickpeas in the oven. I never get this technique right and failed again–mine were popping after ten minutes so I turned them off early. They were not crunchy in the salad, which I made the night before eating, but it was still good. The addition of “warm spices” did not sound appealing to me, but the zaatar alternative did.
You slice and squeeze cabbage as you would kale for salad. She calls for doing so after adding scallions, and since I was using green garlic and it was pretty pungent, I skipped that. I was worried it was going to be too funky, but time and the lemon juice tempered it perfectly. You also add some olive oil. I threw in the zest of the lemons and that was a nice addition. This was zingy and delicious, a perfect lunch!
These were certainly easy enough: you mix together some canned black beans with grated cheese, season with some oregano (I used Mexican oregano) and S&P. You grease a sheet pan, put down four tortillas, pile on the beans and cheese, top with more tortillas, oil the tops, and bake. When I put down the bean/cheese mixture, it didn’t seem cheesy enough to hold the beans in the quesadilla, so I added more cheese. It ended up being double the amount called for in the recipe, and they still weren’t overly cheesy (I used Violife vegan cheddar). Instead of greasing the sheet pan, I sprayed the bottom side of the first four tortillas with avocado oil, and then I also sprayed the tops of the closed quesadillas. I found it took a little extra time for my tortillas to get crisp in the oven. YMMV depending upon your tortillas.
These were OK. They are so simple, we both wanted more flavors in there. I served with guac, and the suggested green hot sauce. Without those additions, the quesadillas would be pretty bland. In the future, I’d be inclined to put more stuff in there. Some pickled jalapeños would be nice.
MY FOREVER CHICKEN & RICE SOUP
Combine chicken broth (Swansons), boneless skinless chicken thighs ( bone-in), rice and bay leaves. Simmer for 20-25 minutes. Shred chicken and add back to pot with butter, lemon zest and lemon juice. Season with salt. For such a simple recipe I managed to make a few mistakes along the way. I will probably try it again sometime. I need to pay more attention and make some adjustments. The flavor wasn’t right. I wanted Avgolemeno with chicken and it was off. I definitely added too much lemon.
You start by frying some chopped chipotle in adobo, sliced garlic, roasted peanuts, and cumin seed in oil. You strain this, saving the oil, which gets tossed with torn up tempeh and chunked mushrooms. The tempeh/mushroom mixture gets roasted, while the peanut/chipotle mixture is tossed with some lime juice. You serve the mushroom/tempeh mixture as tacos with the peanut mixture as a topping.
This was a very good taco filling, which we loved. I’d say this is another worth-the-price-of-the-book recipe. I refrained from serving any other taco go-withs like guac or pico, and was pleasantly surprised that the tacos held their own without them. The filling is fairly dry, which made these tacos easy to eat in corn tortillas (no soggy tortillas falling apart on you). Will definitely repeat.
Served with a salad of CSA lettuce, topped with CSA tomatoes, avocado, and a chipotle/garlic dressing.
End of the week, low in food, but found 2 recipes I can make with this book!
Heated up some olive oil to cook 4 smashed garlic, pepper flakes and 3 spoonful of tomato paste, cooked about 4 minutes. Added a can of crushed tomato and 1.5 can of water, added generously salt and pepper and brought it to a boil and cooked for another 10 minutes or so until it was a bit thickened. Stop the heat and added 3 spoonful of tahini, mixed the soup with a hand mixer and served with a drizzle of olive oil.
“Two eternal comforts, shakshuka and kimchi fried rice, finally meet.” A promising tagline of the recipe. So did it work?
Cooked the rice in a pan or in my case, a cast iron pot, with water, chopped kimchi and scallions (I used shallots), added some salt, brought it to a boil and cooked for 17 minutes covered and with lowered the heat. When the rice was cooked, made holes on the rice where the future eggs would go and the heat was increased and a few spoonful of oil (I use grape seed) was poured into the holes and the side of the pot, I added the eggs when the oil started bubbling and cooked for a few more minutes. Added more shallots (or scallions as in the recipe) and soy sauce.
I see the potential of this dish, but I think the recipe needs some tweaking. Since the kimchi was cooked with the rice, all the goodies of kimchi went into the rice, kimchi ended up and became just cooked cabbage. I think either you need to add a lot of kimchi in the cooking to make this dish good or you put half of the kimchi to cook with the rice initially, and extra kimchi on the top when serving. The crunchy rice at the bottom was very nice though. Maybe will make this again.
To make these, you put two cans of bean and their liquid in a skillet with some spices (cumin, coriander, smoked paprika), scallions, and minced green chile, and simmer, mashing them up a bit as they soften. Near the end of cooking, when they’ve thicken up, you stir in some butter, then top with grated cheddar and cook covered for a bit to melt the cheese. Top with pepitas, and more scallions and chile.
We served this spooned into warm tortillas with pico de gallo as tacos, and then once the tortillas were gone we dipped in with chips. As a taco filling, I prefer refried beans. This is one of those cases where I don’t really see the point of making the beans this way, as refrieds aren’t really any more difficult and actually take less time. As a dip however, this concoction was quite good, and I would prefer it to refrieds. So I would actually make it again if it were a dip I was after.
LLM has already described the method, so I’ll just say where I deviated. I used fewer cloves of garlic, but minced them. I used tofu feta. And I used two tablespoons of harissa instead of two teaspoons, because seriously? Two teaspoons? C’mon! After 20 minutes in the oven the dish was still a little soupier than I wanted, so I turned it to broil for a few minutes, but did not raise the oven rack. This got rid of excess liquid, but put minimal browning on the tofu. Like LLM, I did not find I needed to add salt. The combo of canned beans, capers, and feta was salty enough. Keep in mind if you taste before it goes in the oven, that the liquid is going to evaporate and be more concentrated in the final dish.
I served this with some homemade bread and called it a meal. We liked the beans very much. I had considered throwing some greens in at the very end, and might do that in the future, or serve with something green on the side.
When I saw Valadelphia’s review it immediately appealed to me as something I could make for Lulu’s lunches. Somehow in the book I’d turned the page with no interest (that seems to be a thing with me and this book - and I’ve found some great things thanks to this thread - I’m grateful). Given that the chickpeas didn’t really roast the way Valadelphia wanted them to, and that Lulu is used to unroasted bean salads in her lunch, I went the lazy route and didn’t bother with that step at all. Lulu is a big fan of cinnamon in her savory (me not so much, but this is for her), so I used coriander and a little cinnamon, and a couple shakes of cayenne, but skipped the allspice. No scallions in the house, so I slivered some red onion. No bulgar so I copied V and used Israeli couscous. I wish I’d added celery like she did, because that seems really appealing. End result is not my favorite ever bean salad, but definitely good, and I’d do it again, maybe changing up the spices, just to change things up a bit. I took a bite, then another bite, then another bite. So I think that’s a hit.
Delicious. I found some turkey salami at Trader Joe’s and figured I’d give this a try. Lulu was very skeptical, turns out she’s never had salami (I’m not a big fan, but I’m surprised it never happened elsewhere). She was a big fan of this dish. Like hirsheys, I just stirred the garlic and lemon in. I used a whole stick of butter instead of 6tablesoons. Used penne rigate instead of rigatoni. Served with a side of fennel salad, and it was a great meal on a chilly evening.
Well, this was a disappointment. I love shrimp, shishitos, glass noodles, and gochujang. But somehow this was blah. I think there just wasn’t enough of the gochujang, soy sauce, honey, sesame oil sauce for me. It had a bite, but not much of the flavor. No one was interested in their plate the night I made this. I think doubling the sauce would help a lot, but I’m not going to be the one to do it.
Despite being a vegetarian for decades, I’ve never mastered tempeh. I grab some a couple times a year --sometimes it’s great, sometimes not. It has a distinctive flavor, but strongly spiced recipes like this mute that.
I had been craving a reuben since I saw this report. I skipped the salad in the recipe and made a grilled sandwich on rye bread with sauerkraut and gouda. It satisfied the craving and will hopefully put better tempeh dishes in my repertoire!
