Mujadarah (Middle-eastern lentils, rice, and carmelized onions)

This hearty, flavorful dish has become a staple at our house this year. We have it a couple of times a month and the kids are big fans. This is a great choice for anyone who wants to try something a little different or skip meat once in a while. It’s very “meaty,” and lentils are fast-cooking and uncomplicated to work with. The flavors of cumin and cinnamon are a little bit different but this version of the dish does not have flavors that seem exotic to a picky eater. 

I have most of the short ingredient list on hand most days in my kitchen. One drawback for weeknight meals is that it takes about 40 minutes to make. I sometimes cook the lentils the night before or earlier in the day and just refrigerate until I need them. 

Mujadarah (Middle-eastern lentils, rice, and carmelized onions) 

1 cup brown or green lentils, sorted and rinsed
1/3 cup olive oil (or other  vegetable oil)

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

3 turns of the pepper mill (or about ¼ tsp pepper)

4 medium/small or 2 large onions, sliced thin (rings are pretty but I’ve started using a food processor with the slicing disk.)

½ tsp. salt

3/4 cup rice (white)

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or similar dried ground pepper)

¼ tsp. cinnamon

Juice of ½ lemon, or about a tablespoon of bottled lemon juice

Optional plain yogurt or sour cream for serving

Cook the lentils. Pick through the lentils to remove any non-lentils first, and rinse.

Spread dry lentils on a white plate to quickly sort

Put lentils in a medium saucepan. Add 2 cups water (or more – it won’t hurt anything). Bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer about 20 minutes. Drain. 

While lentils are cooking, cook the onions. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the cumin seeds and pepper. Heat the seeds about 1 minute. Add all of the onions at once. Cook over medium heat, turning every so often, until the onions are mostly brown and carmelized (but not overcooked/burned). This always takes longer than I think – 20-30 minutes.

Remove about half of the onions from the pan and set aside (on paper towels to soak up oil.) Add the cinnamon, cumin powder, and cayenne pepper to the onions in the pan and stir. Add the rice, lentils salt, and 3 cups water and stir. Bring to a boil. Turn heat to low, cover and cook until rice is cooked – about 20 minutes. Add water if needed. 

When rice is cooked, turn off heat and stir in the lemon juice. Taste to see if more salt is needed. Top with the onion you set aside (reheated as needed.) 

Optionally, serve with yogurt or sour cream. Serves 4 generously.

Refried Beans

My kids love refried beans and we buy the vegetarian/low fat canned type all the time. But they don't taste like restaurant-style homemade refried beans. Tom's been playing with this recipe for a couple of years now to come up with a vegetarian version we like that replaces the richness of pork fat or lard with other flavors like lots of garlic, onion and adobo sauce.

This recipe is not difficult and the ingredients are cheap, but it's not something you whip up quickly and the beans should soak overnight. Make it on the weekend when you'll be hanging around the house.

Refried Beans (Tom style)

soaking and boiling step ingredients:

Dried mayocoba beans, about 2 cups (if buying by the pound, about 1 lb.)

Note 1 – if you can’t get mayacoba beans, use pinto or pink beans

Note 2 - for best results, use beans within a few weeks of purchase – they will cook faster

1 onion, chopped coarsely

6 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tblsp. oil

1 tblsp. epazote (optional)

1 tsp. salt (Important: Add salt after boiling, not before)

frying step ingredients:

Olive oil – about 1-2 tablespoons per batch (Note for non-vegetarians – you can also use pork or bacon fat)

(optional) butter to add richness to the olive oil, about 1 tablespoon per batch.

1 onion, finely chopped per batch

2 cloves garlic, minced per batch

Boiled beans from previous step

Adobo sauce (from a can of chipotles in adobo), about 1 tsp. per batch

½ cup queso fresco crumbles, for garnish (optional)

Sort and rinse the beans. Tip for picking through beans – use a white dinner plate, spread out beans (about ½ cup at a time) on the plate so that you can see any pebbles or broken beans easily. Pour the sorted beans from the plate into a colander/sieve. When entire batch of beans is sorted and in the sieve, rinse thoroughly. Put beans into a large pot and cover with about 6 cups water. Soak overnight or for at least 4 hours. (or quick soak: boil beans for 2 minutes, then let them stand for 1 hour).

Drain the soaked beans. Add back to the pot and cover with 6 fresh cups water. Add onion, garlic, epazote, and oil. Bring slowly to a simmer. Cover partially and simmer over medium low heat, stirring occasionally, until tender, 1-2 hours. Check occasionally and if needed add water to cover.

Beans should be a bit soupy but not swimming in liquid. If there seems to be too much, drain off some of the liquid but reserve to add back in. Add the tsp. salt. Using a potato masher, mash the beans (we like them fairly coarse but suit your own preferences.) Heat the oil and (optional) butter in a heavy, non-stick pan (we use a cast-iron skillet).

Note that the frying ingredients above are a little non-specific. This recipe makes 2-3 “batches” in our skillet. For each batch, heat oil and fry onions and garlic until mostly cooked. Add adobo sauce. Immediately add beans and stir. Fry/turn until beans are heated through and flavors blended, adding liquid as needed so that they don’t become dry. Repeat until all batches are cooked.

Garnish with queso fresco crumbles and serve as a side dish or in tacos, enchiladas, etc. We had them with homemade corn tortillas. This recipe will easily serve 8 people for tacos/sides.

We make tortillas; Grilled Chipotle Flank Steak

Inspired by the Aug/Sept. Mexico issue of Saveur, my husband bought the tortilla press we’ve long been eyeing at the local market. Long been eyeing and not buying because the Little Kitchen’s cupboards have a limited amount of extra space at this point.

But he took the plunge and we found that making corn tortillas is great fun for a kid and an adult, because someone needs to press while the other fries. Milo and I had a cozy afternoon making tortillas. 

 

We bought a pre-made tortilla dough, but we want to try making our own next. The tortillas seemed thicker and chewier than pre-made corn tortillas. They were thinner than a sope, but reminded me of a sope in texture. 

t took us a few batches to figure out what “done” looked like in a tortilla. We learned to wait for the bubbles to start to appear in the tortilla. We used oil in the pan, but we’re going to experiment with that next time as well. 

To fill our tacos, we made homemade vegetarian refried beans (next post) and adapted a recipe from Saveur for grilled flank steak (my version is lazier to make and a lot less spicy.)

Grilled Chipotle Flank Steak (adapted from Saveur’s “Tacos de Carne Asada”)

Flank steak, about 1 or 1.5 lb., cut into large but manageable pieces

NOTE:  our market sells arrachera, which is flank steak that’s been manually tenderized using a machine that chops small holes partly through the meat. If you don’t have access to this, you can use a sharp knife to make little slices against the grain of the meat but not all the way through – or skip it – it will still be yummy although chewier. (Google tells me that there is something called arrachera which is a pre-marinated bagged steak, but I haven’t seen that.)

marinade:

4 cloves garlic, peeled, chopped

3 tblsp. oil

2 canned chipotles in adobo, chopped, and a bit of extra adobo sauce (2 chiles, not 2 cans – but still plenty hot. For a milder version, use the extra sauce but only ½-1 chopped chipotle)

1 small onion, chopped

Juice of 2 limes

Put marinade ingredients in immersion blender cup and puree. Put flank steak into a baking dish and pour marinade on steaks, turning to cover. (you could also use a large zip-type bag.) Allow to marinate in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

marinating

Heat a gas grill to medium-high heat. You may want to put down a layer of aluminum foil and spray oil on it. Brush excess marinade off the steak. Cook (turning once) until done, about 6-9 minutes. If steak pieces are thick, cut to test doneness.

delicioso

Serve in tacos: with tortillas, chopped tomato, cilantro, fresh lime wedges, and your other favorite toppings.

Inch by inch, row by row

Milo and I planted these seeds back in March. 

October harvest

How can it surprise me every time? Gardens are the most spiritual places I know.

Baked with skins on, then cooled, peeled, sliced and sauteed with onions.

Pork chops baked with apples and onion, beets, sweet potato roasted with sage

The Garden Song 

Peter Paul and Mary

Inch by inch, row by row, 

gonna make this garden grow

All it takes is a rake and a hoe 

and a piece of fertile ground.

Inch by inch, row by row 

Someone bless these seeds I sow

Someone warm them from below 

Til the rain comes tumbling down 

Soccer Season Scrambled Tofu

With soccer practices and karate lessons and homework filling our evenings, the past six weeks felt like a whirlwind of activity. Not so much a whirlwind of creative recipe creation, but I thought other people might be interested in this highly-flavored version of my kids' favorite scrambled tofu with soy sauce. Steam a vegetable and some rice while cooking this and you have a simple healthy meal ready in under a half-hour. 

Soccer Season Scrambled Tofu

Oil for sautéing

1 medium or ½ large onion, chopped

Fresh ginger, grated, about 1 teaspoon

Garlic powder, several shakes (1/2 tsp)

Chinese Five spice powder, 2 shakes (1/8 tsp)

Ground coriander, several shakes (1/2 tsp)

Ground lemongrass, 2 shakes (1/8 tsp) 

2 lbs tofu, drained (I used extra firm, but medium would be fine)

¼- ½ tsp kosher salt (depending on how much soy sauce you use)

¼ cup dry vermouth

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2-3 tablespoons soy sauce

Small pour of fish sauce (1/2 tsp?) *** This ingredient is not vegetarian. Technically. ***

About 1/8 cup water

Heat oil in large skillet/dutch oven/wok over medium heat. (Note – it seems to me that tofu needs a little fat to taste hearty. I wouldn’t use a pan spray, but 1-2 tablespoons of oil.) Add onions to oil.  While onions are sautéing, add the ginger and dry spices.  Saute onions until about half-cooked, stirring. Crumble tofu in your hands and add to onion mixture. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tofu starts to brown a bit (I turned up heat to medium high.) While tofu is cooking, mix the vermouth and other wet ingredients in a measuring cup. The water is just to dilute the strong flavors so there’s enough liquid to soak into all of the tofu without making the mixture too intense.  

Once the tofu has started to brown, whisk the vermouth/soy sauce mixture and pour over the tofu, stirring to mix flavors. Keep cooking/stirring as tofu continues to cook (about 10-15 minutes all together).

Serve over rice. Top with chopped green onion or some red bell pepper for color. Good served with steamed broccoli or green beans.

Grannie Annie's Blueberry Buckle

When my husband was a kid his family had a summer place not far from a wild blueberry patch. He and his siblings would go with buckets and picnic lunch and come back with sticky faces and overflowing bounty. They had so many berries that his mom had to get creative to use them all up, in salads, pancakes (of course) and this summer favorite. 

I’ve never been able to visit that wild blueberry patch but our farmer’s market gave us the next best thing with 5 and 10 lb. boxes of Michigan blueberries available the past couple of weeks. Bliss! Eleven months of the year, blueberries are my least favorite grocery store fruit – small, sour and priced like gold. Thank you, my blueberry-loving neighbors who offered to split a box! It felt decadent to have more fresh, ripe berries than we could possibly eat.

Why is this a “buckle?” I think the batter is supposed to buckle in the middle after rising as it bakes, although this recipe actually kept its shape pretty well. It’s similar to coffee cake, but we had it as dessert.

This makes a 9x9 cake, or double the recipe for a 9x13 or 10x13 pan. The batter is very thick (kind of like cement – don’t worry, you didn’t leave out anything).  If you have one, use a stand mixer with flat beater attachment, switching to a wooden spoon to fold in the berries.

Grannie Annie’s Blueberry Buckle

Cake

¾ cup sugar

¼ cup shortening

1 egg

½ cup milk

2 cups flour

½ tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

2 cups blueberries

Mix sugar, shortening and egg. Add milk. Sift dry ingredients and then mix into wet. Blend in berries. Pour mix into a greased 9x9 square pan. Sprinkle with streusel topping. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

Streusel Topping

½ cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

¼ cup Oleo [J copied from original recipe – you can use butter or shortening]

1 tsp. cinnamon

Mix all ingredients until crumbly [use a pastry blender/pastry knife if using cold butter] and sprinkle onto buckle.

Asparagus Three Ways

This was one of our Easter side dishes. Isn’t it fabulous? 

 

The kids didn’t care much for the charred outsides, although that just left more for the adults. The grilled prosciutto turns into a crisp, thin crust of intense salty flavor wrapped around the sweet juicy spears. YUM. 

Look for a grocery store that keeps fresh asparagus upright (tips up) with stems on ice or in water. Some asparagus is thick and some thin, but the larger ones are not tough or old; just a different kind. Try to use asparagus within a day or two of purchasing it. 

You should trim the tough bottoms of the asparagus spears before cooking. To tell where the “tough” part starts, choose one spear and bend it near the bottom. Where the tip is tough, it will bend, but where the crisp, fresh part of the spear starts it will snap. The snap point is more or less where you want to trim the whole bundle. 

Grilled Asparagus (With and Without Proscuitto)

My husband's technique. Heat grill to high heat. Wrap prosciutto around end of spears if desired. Coat all of the asparagus spears with olive oil. Sprinkle with some kosher salt. Cook over direct heat for about 5 minutes, turning twice with tongs until done.

Asparagus My Kids Will Eat (steamed, with butter and lemon juice)

My mom’s recipe. Use a large (12 inch) skillet, large enough that the stalks can lay flat on the bottom. Put asparagus flat in the pan. Add about ½ inch water (it’s going to mostly steam, so you do not need to cover the stalks.) Cover pan and turn heat to high. Don’t leave the kitchen – I don’t have a trick for how to tell when it is done other than to test after about 4 minutes. You should be able to test doneness by poking one of the spears somewhere near the middle.

Blanching: Who are we kidding? I do not have a blanching lifestyle. But if you want to keep the bright green color after cooking, Google that term for more info. 

Put a couple of paper towels on a large plate and use tongs to remove the asparagus from the hot water onto the plate. Allow to drain for a few seconds and remove damp towels. Season: butter (about ½ tblsp), lemon juice of half of a lemon and kosher salt to taste. Any leftovers are good chopped and cold in a salad for tomorrow’s lunch (also my mom’s tip.)