Simple Spinach and Lentils with Rice and Quinoa

I know I like to make a lot of dishes that involve multiple ingredients, lots of prep and lots of pots and pans.  But, sometimes I want something super simple, but hearty, and tonight was one of those nights.

I had leftover golden lentils in the fridge, so I decided to do something with them.  I also picked up a big container of baby spinach after yoga (we go through two containers a week here), and decided I would incorporate that in the dish as well.

To start the dish, I sauteed some minced shallots in Earth Balance.  I then added some tomato paste concentrate.  When the brown bits started to appear in the pan, I added a couple of pours of vegetable broth.  I used Safeway Organic brand, which, unlike some other boxed broths, doesn't contain soy. Pacific Organic's vegetable broth is also soy-free.

I then added a few handfuls of the cooked lentils.  As the lentils integrated with the sauce, I futzed a bit with the dish, adding vegetable broth as I thought it needed more liquid, and tomato paste as it needed more color.  I then added several handfuls of roughly chopped baby spinach.  As the spinach wilted, I added even more to get even more green into the dish.

To season the lentils & spinach, I added some freshly ground black pepper and a few drops of sriracha, a Thai hot sauce that has become pretty trendy over the past few years. It's made of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar and salt. Some srirachas have fish sauce as an ingredient, but the one we use, which is made by Huy Fong Foods, does not.  

Despite the fact that there was salt in the vegetable broth and and in the sriracha, I decided it would benefit from a little bit of sea salt, so I stirred some in.

I wanted some sort of grain to go with the dish, but I hadn't cooked any up in advance.  Situations like this call for microwave bagged rice.  While some microwave bagged rices and grain mixes aren't veg friendly or have lots of unnecessary additives and tons of sodium, I have found a few I like courtesy of Seeds of Change and Safeway Select.  Tonight, I opted for Safeway Select Brown & Wild Rice with Quinoa.  90 seconds in the microwave and, voila, rice

I put the rice in a bowl and then ladled in some of the spinach & lentil mixture and gave it a quick stir.  I was so happy with this dish.  The sriracha had a nice heat that pleasantly snuck up on me, and I loved the texture and combination of flavors.  The warm lentils, rice & quinoa and spinach were very filling and satisfying, the perfect dish for a cold, winter day. 

Adventures in Random Vegetables: Cherry Bomb Peppers

After practicing yoga very regularly the last several years, I've noticed I'll often get odd ideas in the middle of a particularly vigorous class.  Granted, one of these weird ideas was "I don't want to eat meat anymore," and clearly, that's worked out well for me.

Tonight, after a particularly creative warrior sequence, I got fixated on the following idea - "I want to cook with a vegetable I've never eaten before."  Given that I'm an adventurous eater, this was no small challenge. 

However, the Safeway next door to my yoga studio actually has a nice produce section with a variety of more exotic items - rambutans, dragon fruit, quince, etc.  Given the bevy of fruits available, I was confident I'd find a vegetable that would suit tonight's yoga induced craving.

Cherry Bomb Peppers

I decided to go with Cherry Bomb Peppers, which, coincidentally, were featured on a rerun of Chopped I watched this weekend.   I wasn't sure offhand how hot they were, so I only grabbed two.

After I, along with a platform full of red line refugees, was abandoned by an impatient metro driver who shut the doors before all the passengers could even get off the train and left with a TWENTY minute wait for a train (yoga only gives me so much beatific patience - I. WAS. MAD.), I had time to do a little culinary research on the Cherry Bomb before I got home and got cooking. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Scoville Units, it's a measurement of how much capascin is in a pepper.  Capascin is the chemical that gives peppers their "heat."  The higher the amount of capascin, the more heat a pepper has.  According to this chart, a Cherry Bomb has 2,000 Scoville Units, which puts it solidly ahead of a bell pepper (10 units), but still less spicy than other familiar peppers such as Jalapenos (4,000), Serranos (8,000) and Habaneros (200,000).  Since I regularly use Serranos in my guac, I had better sense of the heat I could expect from the Cherry Bombs.

Anyhow, I decided to finely dice my Cherry Bombs with my Oxo chopper.  I didn't get them as small as I'd like, but had I been less hungry and cranky from my metro debacle, I  would have worked at them a little more.  I then put some minced yellow onion in olive oil and let that cook up, and then added the peppers, shredded kale and black beans.  I seasoned the mixture with a healthy amount of cumin and oregano.  We put it on top of brown rice that my husband made in the rice maker while I was stuck waiting in tunnel and hungry (yes, still bitter two hours later), and I put some mozzarella daiya on mine to balance out the heat a bit.

Husband was a big fan - he finished his meal before I even got halfway through mine, and I'm usually the faster eater.  I liked it also but I think it would have been improved with more of a "sauce."  I was hoping to use some vegetable broth to make one, but our carton in the fridge smelled off, so I didn't use it.

As for the heat, it was satisfying, but not overwhelming.  My lips are still a little tingly a few hours later.  If you like hotter salsas or spicy guac, you'll enjoy cooking with Cherry Bombs.

Yet Another Concoction

It was time to use up what was in the fridge yet again, so dinner was a concoction.  Tonight's experiment involved roasted brussel sprouts (30 minutes at 425 - make sure to coat them with olive oil and season with salt and pepper).  In a saute pan, I worked some shallots, sliced mushrooms and garlic in olive oil.  After that was done, I stirred in leftover wild rice, the brussel sprouts and some parmesan cheese.

Vegetable Enchiladas

My soon to be in-laws were joining us for lunch today, so I decided it was time for a treat: vegetarian enchiladas.

When I attempt something new, I futz around on the internet until I find a recipe that looks interesting, and then I play with it a bit.   I decided to start with this Food Network Recipe, which was from Rachel Ray's $40 a Day show.  Rather than use pre-made green chile sauce, I decided to make my own green salsa recipe using Simply Recipe's Tomatillo Salsa Verde.  And, we decided we needed some "yellow rice" on the side, so I found this recipe from TammysRecipes.com.

How Do You Raja a Pepper?
Cooking 101: Read your recipe and read it again.  So, before I started cooking, I read the at the enchilada prep and it said to prepare the peppers "raja style."  Frankly, I had no clue what this meant.  Google was my friend again here - I found this helpful article that told me to roast them, sweat them, and cut them up.  Ah, easy enough.  Even though the recipe said only to roast the poblanos, I thought it would be nice to also roast our friends the bell peppers, which I thought would add a nice flavor element to the dish.

Behold, the beautiful poblanos and bell peppers before I stuck them under the broiler:

I won't lie - I am lousy at timing things.  My mother's adage about how long things should be cooked?  "Until it's done."  Hence I never got in the habit of looking at a clock.  But I can tell you I rotated them with tongs until each side was nice and charred.  I could have probably let them go longer, but I am impatient.


So, What is a Tomatillo?
If you've gone to Chipotle, or eaten salsa verde, you've had a tomatillo.  But, since I promised my future father-in-law I'd look it up, here it is, per Wikipedia:

The tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica) is a plant of the tomato family, related to the cape gooseberry, bearing small, spherical and green or green-purple fruit of the same name. Tomatillos, referred to as green tomato (Spanish: tomate verde) in Mexico, are a staple in Mexican cuisine.

The salsa recipe gave the option of roasting or boiling them, and I decided to roast for enhanced flavor.  I also cut it down to one serrano - it was fine and had plenty of kick.  I also left out the sugar - I'm trying to use as little refined sugar as possible when I cook (baking is another story :) ) and I didn't see the need for it.

Finished Product and My Vegetarian Tweaks

  I made the following additional switches & subs:

• For the enchiladas themselves, I swapped out mushrooms for black beans - we wanted the added protein and the color oomph.
• Also, I was going to use yukon potatoes per the original recipe, but, frankly, I got lazy and decided not to bother.  It was fine without them.  I (meaning Balducci's) also didn't have the hoja santa or espazote.
• For the rice, I used olive oil in lieu of butter, and vegetable broth in lieu of chicken broth.  We also used brown rice.  The tumeric got it nice and yellow - you honestly wouldn't know the difference.

I did use Monterey Jack cheese, but, if you wanted to go vegan, you could use a soy cheese or Daiya.  Personally, I'd recommend the Daiya - it does melt well and tastes more like cheese.

 Everyone had two servings, so I am considering this a success!