Meatless Monday: Bhindi Masala and Dal

I LOVE Indian food. It's probably my favorite type of cuisine (although there aren't many types of cuisine I don't love). Indian food is hands-down the best.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I remember eating spicy saag paneer in my best friend Elena's basement.

When I was about 11 or 12 years old, I remember my dad teaching me the rules of football using the items on the table at an Indian food place in a food court near Ohio Stadium.

When I was in college, there was an Indian food restaurant around the corner from my apartment, and a couple of my friends and I would go there almost weekly for buffet. It was a tiny place, with maybe 8 tables and a little room where they'd set out the buffet. It was *so* good. The owner, Kumar, got to know us so well that once when I ordered carry-out on a busy night, he just told me I could pay the next time I came in. When my friends moved away, he would ask after them whenever I ate at the restaurant.

For my birthday, MG and I tried out Indique, a nice Indian place in Cleveland Park. We enjoyed it so much that we went back 11 days later, for MG's birthday.

The summery veg.

Learning to cook Indian food has been one of the great joys of my culinary journeys, because A) Indian food isn't cheap at most restaurants and B) it makes my whole apartment smell awesome. Seriously, garam masala and ginger scented candles would be a pretty great invention. (P.S. if you know of a place where I can get garam masala scented candles, email me immediately).

So far, the best source I've found for accessible Indian recipes is Deb over at Smitten Kitchen.  I've made several of her vegetarian Indian recipes, and they've all turned out fantastic! If you are interested in starting to cook Indian food, I recommend starting there. Some of the ingredients and techniques involved in Indian cooking can be a little daunting, but she does a great job of making them very easy to make at home. And don't be afraid of the initial upfront cost of the spices - if you enjoy cooking Indian, you'll get a lot of use out of them, and the other ingredients are so inexpensive that it's still a very affordable cuisine to make at home.

 

I've been eyeing a recipe for bhindi masala (okra curry) that was posted on The Kitchn a few weeks ago. It was on my list of top 5 things to make before the summer runs out (okra being one of my favorite summer veggies), so I decided it would be an excellent candidate for Meatless Monday. I pretty much followed the recipe as-is, although I omitted the curry leaves and the cilantro (per MG's request).

Bhindi masala is a wonderful melding of spices and heat and vegetables, but since the only veggies are in there are okra, tomato, green pepper and onion, it doesn't have much protein. So, I decided to pair it with the yellow dal from Smitten Kitchen, which I've made before and love. Each recipe made 6 servings and with basmati rice we were both quite full and happy at the end of our meal. And looking forward to leftovers tomorrow! Another Meatless Monday in the books. :)

Delicious, nutritious and colorful!

Farmers' Market Art

Some pictures I took this morning of the vibrant colors at the farmers' market:

We picked up a boatload of produce for some yummy dinners this week: sweet corn, onions, zucchini, summer squash, those pretty cherry tomatoes, peaches, a yellow watermelon and a jar of hot pickled carrots.

Hope these pictures inspire you to go out and make something this weekend with some of the amazing fresh produce that's available now!

The Lunch Box: Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad

For several weeks now, I've been eyeing the beets at the farmers' market. Over 4th of July weekend, MG's aunt made a fantastic roasted beet dish with walnuts and goat cheese, and I've been wanting to do something similar for lunches ever since.  So, when a recipe for a salt-roasted beet salad appeared in my Google Reader feed, I decided to put my plan into action for lunches this week.

Last Saturday morning, MG and I headed over to the Great Commonwealth of Virginia (as a member of the bar there I'm required to call it that) (just kidding) (sort of) to check out the farmer's market at Courthouse and procure some beets. It was great! Not quite as extensive as the one at Dupont on Sundays, but I did notice that prices on some items were a little more reasonable. And breaking from routine is always a fun thing to do on a weekend morning, so we'll probably go back from time to time.

But on to the salad! The recipe I found called for salt-roasting the beets with fresh thyme, and then making a salad of baby spinach, arugula, beets, barley, walnuts, goat cheese, and topping the whole thing off with a creamy lemon and vanilla buttermilk dressing.

Starting off with my produce and other necessaries. (Balcony garden thyme!)

Getting ready to roast, with some kosher salt and sprigs of fresh thyme.

I didn't have barley, but I did have quinoa, which I had yet to cook with. Now seemed as a good a time as ever, and a great way to put some protein into my salad! Turns out it's incredibly easy to make, and a good "blank slate" grain, just like rice or cous cous. I'm excited to try it out in new variations.

Looks kind of like cous cous! But yummier. And healthier.

I could not resist these suckers at the farmer's market. 

So sweet and flavorful, you'd wonder how anyone could NOT realize they are actually a fruit.

After roasting, the recipe said to "slip skin from each beet." 

Turns out this is just as easy as it sounds - they just peel right off!

Gloves would not have been a bad idea here. 

I didn't have gloves, hence the Dexter-like appearance of the kitchen counter.

All packed up the night before for an easy Monday morning.

The final product: spinach, red onion, roasted beets, quinoa, walnuts, goat cheese, yellow cherry tomatoes. Although I enjoy a good creamy dressing from time to time, I felt like the dressing in the original recipe would be too heavy for the different flavors already in the salad, so, sticking with the lemony theme, I whisked together a simple vinaigrette with lemon juice, red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.  Light and acidy, it worked perfectly!

Salt Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad

Inspired by the Guilty Kitchen

Serves 4.

1 lb. beets, whole with skins on and tops and tips removed
3 sprigs fresh thyme
kosher salt
1/2 cup quinoa, uncooked
4 oz. crumbled goat cheese
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 whole red onion, thinly sliced
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
6 cups baby spinach
juice of 1 lemon
1-2 tbsp red wine vinegar (I eyeballed this)
2-3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (I eyeballed this, too)
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400F.

Spread a thin layer of kosher salt in the bottom of a glass baking dish.  Place the beets and the thyme in the baking dish, cover with aluminum foil and bake for one hour.  When the beets are done, you should be able to easily insert a knife into them. Allow the beets to cool for 10-15 minutes, then peel off the skins. Chop into bite-sized pieces (not too specific here...it's your salad!)

Meanwhile, prepare the quinoa.  Put 1/2 cup of quinoa and 1 cup of water in a medium pot and bring to a boil.  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 10-15 minutes, until all the water has been absorbed. The cooked quinoa will still have a bit of a bite to it, but shouldn't be overly crunchy. Allow to cool completely before preparing the salad.

When the quinoa and beets are done, prepare your salad! This is the fun part. For mine, I put about 1.5 cups of spinach in my bowl, and topped it with 1/4 of the cooked quinoa. Then I put on my sliced onion, the beets, 1 tbsp of chopped walnuts, 1 oz of goat cheese and halved my cherry tomatoes before putting them on last. I really like the way my combo came out, but you can absolutely play with the ingredients. Like pecans instead of walnuts? That'd probably be good too.

For the dressing, I just whisked together the lemon juice and red wine vinegar in a small bowl, and then slowly streamed in the olive oil while whisking to make the emulsion. Dress the salad and enjoy!

A couple of notes on making this salad for work lunch: 1) it's a good one to take to work, because you can assemble it the night before. I put the dressing in a separate small tupperware so that the salad wouldn't get soggy. 2) However, the beets are, well, beets, so while the salad held up nicely, the goat cheese was a little more purple when I opened up my lunch on Monday than it had been the night before. Not a problem for lunch, but if you're making the salad to serve guests, you might want to wait until the last minute to top with the goat cheese. 3) There are a lot of awesome flavors going on in the salad, so I found that a little of the vinaigrette went a long way. 4) The quinoa, nuts and cheese make this a pretty protein-rich salad, so I found that I didn't need anything on the side besides a small plum! But, of course, a slice of whole-grain bread would be delicious too, you just might find you're too full to finish it!

This salad was definitely a winner and will be making it into the summertime work-lunch rotation. If you make it, let me know what you think! And now, I'm off to eat up the last serving of my salad.

The Secret (Balcony) Garden

OK, it's not really a secret, but we do live on the 6th floor, so you'd have to be looking up to see it.

My last apartment had a balcony too, but it was north-facing, so I didn't bother trying to plant anything on it.  Our current apartment is south-facing, however, so as soon as we signed the lease we started plotting what we might grow.

Our hot hot jalapenos.

Seriously.  These things are freaking hot.  Ask MG.

Over Memorial Day weekend we put our plan into action and bought some seedling plants at the farmers' market in front of our building.  

Rosemary.

We wanted an assortment and we wanted them to be edible, so we went with fairytale eggplant, basil, dill, chives, thyme, arugula, bell peppers, rosemary and jalapenos.  We later acquired mint and stevia plants that we received as guest gifts at a wedding we attended in June (coolest wedding favor ever?  Possibly). 

Cute little baby bell peppers!  I can't wait to eat you!

Our amazingly resilient arugula plant, on the right.  Seriously, this thing has survived both the temps and a very hungry green caterpillar that was feasting on its leaves.  Also a very hungry blogger and her boyfriend that were feasting on its leaves.

Minty fresh.

Despite the heat waves we've had this summer, they are all thriving!  (Well, not the dill, but even that appears to have made a come-back.)  We've been taking advantage of all the fresh herbs as much as possible.  So far we've used balcony garden harvest in:

-Lemon Thyme Bars

-Grilled Eggplant with Chives, Thyme, Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

-Fig, Arugula and Cheddar Melts

-Thyme and Goat Cheese Frittata

-Mint Chutney

-Fattoush

-Chicken Curry

-Caprese Panini

-Egg Salad Sandwiches with Bacon and Arugula

-Rosemary-Lemon Chicken Kebabs

-Roasted Eggplant with Cous Cous

-Moroccan Carrot Salad

-Greek Salad

-Simple Roast Chicken with Herbs

-Tuscan White Bean and Tuna Sandwiches

Pesto waiting to happen.

Mini eggplant!  Hey there!

Some internet research informs us that our fairytale eggplant are ready to be eaten, so we have Spicy Roasted Eggplant and Tofu with Sesame and Honey on the menu for this upcoming week.

A view from above.

Chive flowers are so pretty!

Peeking through the foliage.

I love our balcony garden!  Do any of you do any urban gardening?  What do you grow?

The Lunch Box: Chicken Tomatillo Soup

Packing my lunch most days for work has been a huge factor in weight-loss (and it’s helped slim down my dining expenses, so bonus!) Last year I would eat lunch out 2-3 times a week, but now I almost always brown bag it.  I try to save my daytime dining out for work lunches or the occasional Fojol Bros. treat.

Because I get tired of eating the same thing, I rarely have dinner leftovers for lunch. Sundays I often cook a separate meal to take to work during the week and put some in the freezer so I can mix it up. Keeping lunch interesting but also portable and healthy can be a challenge, so I thought it would be fun once a week to share some of the best lunches I’ve brought in my lunch bag (and I’ll be honest - sometimes the laziness strikes. Hello Kashi microwave meals!)

This week I had two definite successes. Over the weekend I made the aforementioned egg salad, and had that for lunches two days this week. When I ran out of whole wheat wraps, an English muffin did the trick just fine.

Note balcony garden arugula. And BACON.

The star of the week, however, was the Chicken Tomatillo Soup. I’ve been eyeing this recipe for a while, so when we went down to the Dupont Farmer’s Market on Sunday I was on the lookout for tomatillos. The recipe also provided an excellent opportunity to use up two ears of fresh corn that MG picked up from the farmers’ market by his office, a jalapeno from our balcony garden, and some of the chicken we froze after our roast chicken feast last week.

The farmers' market bounty.

Fun tip: if you want to avoid painful mishaps involving fingers in eyes and essence of jalapeno, wear latex gloves.

I made the soup on Sunday evening, but today was the first day I had it for lunch. It was...delicious. I love tomatillos because they have this awesome tanginess, and even add a certain creaminess to the soup - almost as if there was some melted cheese in there, but there isn’t (although there could be.  I always advocate for some melted cheese).

I enjoyed mine with some multigrain tortilla chips.

Tomorrow we’re doing a work lunch outing and Friday I have lunch plans with a friend, but I have 3 more servings of this in the freezer to look forward to over the next couple of weeks. Excellent!

Tangy tomatillo-y goodness!

Chicken Tomatillo Soup
Adapted from Heat Oven to 350

Yield: seven 1.5 cup servings

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 pounds chopped tomatillos
1-2 jalapenos, seeds removed, minced (I just used one, because ours are so freaking hot!)
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup chopped cooked chicken
1 14.5 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1-2 ears of corn, husks removed
1/8- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (depending on how spicy you like it - I went with the 1/4 tsp)
1/2 tsp hot pepper sauce
1/4 tsp cumin
Salt and pepper to taste

Optional Toppings:
cheddar cheese, shredded
tortilla chips
chopped fresh cilantro - I omitted this, because MG doesn’t like cilantro (“It tastes like dirt”)

While you’re chopping up your tomatillos, onion, garlic and jalapeno, place a steamer basket upside down in a large pot. Fill with about 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil. Place the ears of corn onto the steamer basket, reduce heat, cover, and steam for 15 minutes. When the corn is done, allow it to cool enough to be handled, then using a sharp knife, remove the kernels.

Meanwhile, in a stockpot or Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Saute onions until translucent, 3-4 minutes. Add garlic and saute until fragrant, 30 seconds (be careful not to let it burn!) Add tomatillos, jalapeno and chicken broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Puree the soup using an immersion blender (my preferred method) or transfer to a conventional blender or food processor to puree in batches.* Return to pot and add cayenne, hot pepper sauce, cumin, and salt and pepper to taste. Add chicken, black beans and corn and simmer until heated through.

Serve with desired toppings and enjoy! (P.S. I bet this would be good with some diced avocado on top. Hmm...I guess I’ll have to make this again to test my theory...)

*Blending hot liquids can be dangerous because they want to expand and go all over the place. I know from personal experience. It involved sweet potato bisque and it was embarrassing. Anyways, a couple of steps you can take to minimize the likelihood of getting hot tomatillo soup all over your floor and your body are to only fill the blender halfway, and to remove that little cap in the lid to allow the hot steam to escape. Just make sure to hold a clean dish towel over the opening.

Gooey Goodness

One of my projects this summer was to use the little balcony that came with our new apartment to grow some fresh herbs and veggies.  We've been pretty successful so far: our jalapeno plant is going in full-force (it is HOT!!), we have little baby bell peppers appearing, along with a small eggplant variety, arugula, basil, chives, thyme, rosemary, mint, and stevia.  The only failure so far seems to be our dill plant - it was doing well for a while, but the last week I think it gave up on life.  I did get one good Greek salad out of it though, and put some fresh dill on my salmon burger last week, so it wasn't all in vain.  I'll post some pictures when I remember to take some pictures during daylight :)

One of my favorite ways to use some of our balcony greens this summer has been on variations on grilled cheese made on the panini press MG bought me last year.  The winner so far is definitely the Fig, Arugula, and Cheddar Melts we made a few weeks ago.

We started with some yummy whole grain bread from the Dupont Farmers' Market, and topped it with some onion balsamic jam.

Where the gooeyness comes from - dried figs and some Cabot 75% reduced-fat cheddar.

Sandwich assembly line - note the leafy greens!  Arugula from the balcony!

And after the longest five minutes on the panini press, plus an even longer five minutes waiting to cool a bit, time to eat!

Fig, Arugula and Cheddar Panino

Adapted from The Kitchn

2 slices of your favorite whole wheat bread

1 tbsp balsamic onion jam (available at Whole Foods, but probably other places too)

1 oz Cabot 75% reduced fat cheddar

3-4 dried figs, thinly sliced

1/2 cup arugula

Spread 1/2 tbsp onion jam on each slice of bread.  Layer on the figs, arugula, and cheddar.  Grill on panini press for five minutes - if you don't have a panini press, just place the sandwich in a skillet or saute pan, put another pan on top, and weigh it down with a couple of soup cans.  Once the cheese is nice and melty, remove from heat and allow to rest for a few minutes (if you're like me, a "few" minutes doesn't last very long when you're hungry and there is melted cheese involved).   Slice and enjoy!  I think MG and I had a glass of red wine with this, and it worked really well with the peppery arugula. 

Food Filled Sunday Funday

My first "real" post! Today was a really fun, but busy, day.

We got up early this morning to go to the Dupont Farmers' Market - we had some produce to buy, but also we volunteered to bake things for a bake sale to benefit the D.C. State Fair. MG made NY-style crumb coffee cake and I made S'mores Cookies (!!) We accidentally left one of the bags of cookies at the apartment, so I guess we'll have to freeze them for a sweet treat later.

S'mores Cookies!

After a successful tour of the farmers' market and the acquisition of some tomatillos, stone fruit, and rhubarb, we headed back for lunch before going to see Harry Potter. I had a fantastic egg salad wrap with bacon and arugula, thanks to a recipe from the Big Girls Small Kitchen blog. I substituted fat-free Greek yogurt for mayo (+protein, - fat!) and accidentally improved the recipe by reading 1/2 tsp Dijon as 1/2 tbsp Dijon (Dijon = yum). The recipe made a ton, so I'll be having that for the next couple of days.

Tonight I'll be cooking up some Tomatillo Chicken Soup using leftover chicken from our roaster, a jalapeno from our ridiculously hot jalapeno plant, and my farmers' market tomatillos. Can't wait to have that for lunch along with some basmati rice pudding MG is cooking up using our leftover basmati from Friday's night's chicken curry dinner. Not a bad way to end the weekend!