This soup is easy to make and so good on a cold fall day! I ate it for lunch today and have made it for a family dinner. It’s one of the recipes I know by heart. The ingredients are:
1 cup green lentils
6 cups water
1 onion, chopped
2 tbl tomato paste
1 1/2 tbl flour
1/4 cup fresh dill, chopped
1/4 cup vinegar (I use apple cider or brown rice)
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper
olive oil
Boil the lentils in 4 cups of water for about 40 minutes. In a separate saucepan, saute the onion in olive oil over medium heat until soft, about five minutes. Add the flour and tomato paste but be careful: it will burn easily. Add the lentils and stir. Add the other 2 cups of water and salt and pepper to taste and simmer for about a half hour. While it cooks, mix the vinegar, red pepper flakes, and garlic together as a “sauce” for the soup. When it’s ready to serve, sprinkle fresh dill on the soup and spoon sauce into individual bowls (you may want more than the prescribed amount if you are like me).
Filed under: English | Tags: bratwurst, bucheron, goat cheese, lamb, local, ploughman's lunch, sauerkraut, sourdough, whole grain
This was way too good not to mention. The lunch consisted of:
- Fresh-baked whole grain sourdough from New Pioneer Coop
- Bucheron (French goat’s milk cheese) from New Pioneer Coop
- Organic grass-fed lamb bratwurst from Mint Creek Farm/Green City Market in Chicago
- Home-made sauerkraut (with farmer’s market cabbage)
- Stone-ground mustard
How many other college students in the US ate this today?
Filed under: Italian, dessert, snack | Tags: blue cheese, bread, bruschetta, gorgonzola, honey, Italian, vegetarian
Is that not the most beautiful dish you’ve ever seen? Giada De Laurentiis is responsible for this gem but I’ve made it a dozen times since I first saw it on Everyday Italian. Her recipe is Bruschetta with Gorgonzola Cheese and Honey, but you can use any blue cheese. The gorgonzola is to Italian it up. It is also creamery than other blue cheeses so it definitely makes a difference, but it is not the only way. I used blue cheese that my friend Karl gave to me in the library of all places and ‘creamy’ raw honey that I bought at the farmer’s market in North Carolina. The bread is a loaf of fresh baked 7 grain from New Pioneer Coop in Iowa City. They used Paul’s Grains 7 grain cereal and 7 grain flour in making it!
So here’s what to do:
Preheat oven to 375F.
Slice up a crusty loaf of bread (Giada says baguette)
Sprinkle with olive oil and toast.
When crispy and hot, remove the bread from the oven. At this point you can spread on thick raw honey like I did and then sprinkle it with cheese or you can add honey after it is done baking.
Put the bread back in the oven until the cheese melts. Put honey on or, if you already have, serve warm. This could be an appetizer or snack but I ate it as a meal with sauteed kale and Annie’s Natural Goddess Dressing. Per usual, I licked the bowl clean of the Natural Goddess Dressing.
Filed under: ferment, korean, rice | Tags: bokumbap, kimchi, korean, local, rice, vegetarian
I’ve made this a couple times this week before coming across its real name: kimchi bokumbap. I don’t have an exact recipe, but I heated toasted sesame oil in a skillet, sauteed diced onion until soft, added Paul’s Grains brown rice (and sometimes other vegetables from my CSA like eggplant and kohlrabi), added tamari, and then added kimchi to the skillet just until warm. After emptying this into a bowl, I would fry an egg, usually breaking the yoke and cooking that a little too since I don’t really know how to fry an egg. The egg goes in the bowl too. I added peanut sauce a couple times as well and found this superior to the straight up Korean version. You can use any kind of oil, I just like toasted sesame flavor. This meal was entirely local (either from my CSA or Paul’s Grains) except for the oil, tamari, and peanut sauce and is a good way to incoroporate kimichi into a dish. In most Asian recipes, it is more authentic to use white rice. The only reasons I can think of are that white rice keeps a lot longer than brown rice and that people like the taste and texture better. I prefer brown as it has more nutrituonal value.
Last time I posted that you ought not buy kimchi from the store. This was a false claim. Since then I have found kimchi that I believe still has macrobiotic cultures. Investigate for yourself, but I standy by homemade kimchi has superior in flavor.
