Veg-tastic Voyage

Last week I bought dried lentils and barley and thought I'd experiment with them. I found an easy seeming recipe for the lentils called Mjeddrah. It was pretty easy and simple. And I had just made my miso dressing so I was excited to try it with it. It was good and hearty and made a lot more than I needed. And since my fabulous roomie is on the meat end of the diet spectrum, she's no help to make it disappear. So the idea of lentil veggie burgers rolled around in my head for a while. Until finally today I looked up recipes. I basically followed this one, plus the video was fun to watch.

How I made them was, I toasted four pieces of cracked wheat bread in the oven. Ground them up in the food processor along with black pepper, granulated garlic, cayenne pepper and some shards of Parmesan cheese. Yes I cheated and didn't make it vegan. But I happened to have the cheese on hand from last nights pasta and figured I'd try it out. Then I added the left over mjeddrah to the food processor and a few squirts of Braggs and mixed it all up. Put a little bit of safflower oil in a pan and got it fairly hot and dropped gobs of the mixture into the pan. I let them cook for a long time and kept kind of pushing them farther down so they would get more browned. They don't get super firm as they are a pureed mixture, but as they were cooling they felt like they were getting firmer. I tried the little one and let the others cool and then froze them. I had a little mixture left over so I made little patties and then halfway through I broke them up and cooked them. So now I have veggie crumbles for salad or wraps.

Yesterday I made pasta for my awesome friend S. It was red kale, butter beans, sun dried tomatoes and a can of Italian tomatoes and probably 6 or 7 cloves of garlic and spices tossed with whole wheat linguine and shards of Parmesan cheese. Basically sauteed everything together, starting with the garlic and kale. I ended up smashing the beans once they had simmered a bit. I think it made a nicer thickness and got rid of the canned bean taste. It was pretty tasty. She liked it and when a different friend came over later she had some and she liked it as well. It's always nice to know that other people like my food. I have such weird tastes and usually lovey roommate looks at me a little weird when I create stuff. So ha! Normal people liked it! Yay!

My miso dressing. My fave sister in Seattle always makes me make her a huge batch of it when I visit. I don't follow a recipe, I made it up so it's all by sight and taste. But these are the ingredients if you want to try it out. In order of amount, btw.
Oil - I use safflower or Enova, whatever you like. A little flax seed oil is great.
Vinegar - Rice, red wine, or apple cider is good. Even balsamic but it'll change the over all taste.
Dijon Mustard - This is magic. One it tastes goood. Two, it acts as an emulsifier.
Maple Syrup
Miso - I've only used white. Usually three tablespoons or so.
Garlic - Usually two-four cloves, I use a garlic press. Best invention ever.
Black pepper
Cayenne pepper

So basically put it all together and whisk till the miso is dissolved. I haven't used my food processor to make this yet but that seems like a pretty handy way to get it all emulsified and the garlic chopped up.

The next culinary ideas I have rolling around are breads, soy milk and Moroccan stuffed peppers. The peppers are for this Sunday dinner. HDot and I have decided to have Sunday dinners with her lil G man. I'm pretty excited to have someone to cook for and to hang out with her more. And her little dude is seriously the cutest kid on earth.
The soy milk I've made before. I own a soy milk maker. I don't know if it still works, it's been shipped back and forth between here and Kansas a few times. But I bought soy beans, and damn they're hard to find!, and if it works I'll be making some. If not, I'll be buying cheesecloth and making some.
Breads. I want to know how to make bread and have it be good. My mother was born in her fathers bakery in France. He baked bread every day up until he died. One of my only memories of him are his big arthritic knuckles covered in flour kneading dough. It's in my genes somewhere, I just have to cultivate it.