Category Archives: Plenty

Spiced red lentils with cucumber yogurt

Up until this weekend, when we thankfully received our first rains of 2015, it hadn’t rained in Berkeley in months. With no mushrooms to inspire me, combined with the fact that I’ve been in hardcore dissertation writing mode lately, I haven’t taken as much time to cook. But I’m still a poor PhD student and cannot afford to eat out every night, so I was in search of a dish that was healthy, cheap, and easy to prepare. I turned to my old friend Yotam Ottolenghi for some inspiration, and I found this lovely lentil dish “Spiced red lentils with cucumber yogurt” on p. 221 of Plenty, which can be found online here.

Ingredients for spiced red lentils.

I do not know why it took me so long to discover lentils. Lentils are the perfect food, especially for a PhD student low on funds such as me. Lentils are really healthy and cheap, and when prepared correctly, can be super delicious and satisfying. Let me tell you, this dish prepares them correctly. This dish is THE BOMB. It has flavor and spice up the wazoo. As a fair warning, there are a lot of spices involved, all of which I thankfully already own due to the spice buying investments I’ve been making over the last year. But trust me, this dish is so worth it. You have to soak the lentils in water for 30 minutes prior to cooking, and since I already had the lentils, I placed them in water before heading out to the Berkeley Bowl to grocery shop, so they had ample time to soak.

Limes, cucumbers, ginger, garlic, and onion for the curried lentils.

Upon returning from the Berkeley Bowl, I started by making the chopped onion mix. I cut off the stalks of the cilantro and roughly chopped the leaves and set those aside. Then I stuck the cilantro stalks in my food processor, followed by a finely diced onion.

Onion, garlic, ginger, green chile, and cilantro in the food processor.

Then I added 3 peeled garlic cloves, 2.5 inches peeled ginger, and a fresh chile. I used a serrano chile, which I removed the seeds from, but presumably any green chile would work. This mix is a flavor powerhouse. It smelled so fresh and delicious.

This onion, garlic, cilantro, chile mixture was a flavor POWERHOUSE. It smelled so good!

Place a large pan on medium heat and put the mustard seeds in it and wait for them to pop. They start to sound sort of like popcorn – it’s pretty fun! Then add the 4 tbsp sunflower oil and the onion mixture. This is such a flavorful mix – I’m definitely going to have to start employing it in more of my cooking.

While the onion mixture cooks, I mixed together the spices. Mix 1.5 tsp coriander, 1 tsp cumin, 0.5 tsp turmeric, and 0.25 tsp (sweet) paprika. I used regular paprika since I don’t have sweet, but all in all this is a pretty standard curry mix. The one ingredient I did not have was the curry leaves, which I read online you could substitute with basil and a dash of lemon. After the onion mix has been cooking for 10 minutes, add the spices and leaves and cook for 5 minutes.

Coriander, cumin, turmeric, paprika spice mix

Coriander, cumin, turmeric, and paprika spice mixture.

The spices and onion mixture smelled so good while they were simmering! My whole apartment smelled amazing. Two friends dropped by my apartment to pick something up while I was cooking and commented on how good it smelled as soon as they entered the door. Between you and me, I think they were pretty jealous that they weren’t invited over for dinner!

Onion mixture with spice mix and basil leaves.

While the mixture is cooking, take the time to open up a can of peeled chopped tomatoes or to chop up some fresh tomatoes. Peeling tomatoes seemed like too much work for me so I just threw them in whole, and then I added the red lentils with the water they had been soaking in.

Spice and onion mixture with red lentils and tomatoes.

While the lentils simmer for 30 minutes, mix together the Greek yogurt with diced cucumber and olive oil. Once the lentils are cooked, stir in some butter. Ottolenghi suggests 1/3 cup unsalted butter, but I used closer to 2 tbsp. Squeeze the juice from 1 fresh lime and add that to the lentils, and mix in the chopped cilantro leaves that you had set aside earlier. Serve the lentils in bowls, and top with a dollop of the Greek yogurt mixture. While this may not be the best photogenic dish ever, I swear it tasted divine.

Curried red lentils with Greek yogurt and cucumber.

This is definitely going to be my new go-to for a simple and healthy mid-week dish. Especially when there are no mushrooms around!

Ingredients:

1 cup split red lentils
1.5 cups water
1 bunch cilantro
1 small onion, peeled
2.5 inches fresh ginger
3 garlic cloves, peeled
1 mild fresh green chile
1.5 tsp black mustard seeds
4 tbsp sunflower oil
1.5 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
0.5 tsp ground turmeric
0.25 tsp sweet paprika (I don’t have sweet paprika so I used plain paprika)
10 curry leaves (I didn’t have these so I used basil with a dash of lemon juice, which I read online was a good substitute)
1.75 cups peeled chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned)
2 tsp sugar
0.25 tsp fenugreek (I didn’t have this so I used garlic salt)
pinch of asafetida (optional)
salt
3/4 cup Greek yogurt
3/4 finely diced cucumber
1.5 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup unsalted butter (as much as you like)
1.5 tbsp lime juice

Chard cakes with sorrel sauce

These chard cakes are the perfect vaguely healthy yet super decadent summer appetizer or side dish. They are seriously so good is difficult to describe. It’s this odd sensation of something super healthy and good for you like chard, and then made a little bit sinful by deep frying it, but then it’s covered in this really fresh and light tasting sorrel sauce. The recipe for the chard cakes is on p. 149 of Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty and is also featured online here.

This is how much I love swiss chard

I don’t think I’d ever cooked with swiss chard before starting this blog, but now I’ve cooked at least 4 recipes featuring it. It is just so good the way that Yotam Ottolenghi suggests making it, and it is especially well complemented by Greek yogurt, which I think has been a key ingredient in every swiss chard recipe I’ve made so far (I especially really loved the swiss chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts, featured here).

Here I am contending with my mountain of swiss chard

Unfortunately it’s summer and dry as a bone, so I don’t have any mushrooms or a mushroom lesson for you today, but I made this recipe for the first time with my friend Rachel, who is a fellow microbial ecologist and has started a blog herself teaching people about microbes – so check it out if you want to learn some microbial ecology :)

Ingredients for the sorrel sauce – sorrel, garlic, Greek yogurt, dijon mustard

As for the chard cakes, the first step is to make the sorrel sauce, which requires either a food processor or a blender. I used a food blender while making it at Rachel’s house and I used an immersion blender when I made it again at home. Personally I think the immersion blender was a bit easier but either works. Make sure to start boiling the water for blanching the Swiss chard while making the sauce because the sauce doesn’t take that long to make and you might get hungry while waiting for the water to boil!

Sorrel leaves

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked with sorrel in my life before! It grows wild all over California and my other friend Rachael, who I took mushroom hunting with me in Point Reyes, was pointing out and collecting the wild sorrel growing along the trails. Next time I will have to collect it myself in the woods, but this time I bought it from the Berkeley bowl. Blend the sorrel leaves, Greek yogurt, garlic clove, olive oil, and Dijon mustard until smooth.

Mixing together ingredients for the sorrel sauce

It makes a beautiful bright green sauce that I will have to find other uses for this week since we had a lot of extra! I think it would be good on cous cous or steak and would probably go well with grilled porcinis :)

Sorrel sauce in the immersion blender

I felt like I would totally fit in with all of the Berkeley and Oakland hipsters when Rachel gave me a mason jar to store the sorrel sauce in:

Sorrel sauce

Isn’t it beautifully bright green?

Sorrel sauce in mason jar

After the sauce is made the next step is to blanch the swiss chard. While the swiss chard is blanching, sautee pine nuts in oil. This is another repetitive theme in the Ottolenghi books and it is delicious! Pine nuts add such a nice decadent crunch to all of these dishes and they are so good toasted!

Blanched swiss chard with toasted pine nuts

Next add the egg, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and cheese. I had no idea where to find kashkaval cheese but a quick google for substitutions on my iphone while at the grocery store found me mozzarella. Rachel, who has made the recipe before and said she went out of her way to find kashkaval cheese at a specialty cheese shop, said it tasted way better with mozzarella. The mozzarella was creamy and stringy which held together the cakes very well. Then came the fun part – mixing everything together and molding the cakes with my hands! While mixing the cakes we started heating up canola oil in a pan.

Adding the mozzarella cheese

Mixing up the chard cakes

Once the oil was hot we fried the cakes in the oil for 2-3 minutes on each side. This was pretty much my first time frying anything!

swiss chard cakes frying in oil

Don’t they look pretty when they start to brown?

Swiss chard cakes browning

Rachel didn’t have any paper towels but she did have leftover napkins from Halloween which we put to good use!

Chard cakes with lemon wedges and halloween napkins

These cakes tasted super decadent and delicious. They were satisfying and surprisingly not that unhealthy tasting given they were fried in oil.

Chard cakes fried to perfection

You have to make them yourself. Seriously, just go do it. You won’t regret it! Here is the ingredient list to help you out :)

Sorrel sauce:

3 cups sorrel leaves, washed
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
salt

Cakes:

1.25 lbs Swiss chard
1/3 cup pine nuts
1 tbsp olive oil
4 oz kashkaval cheese, coarsely grated (I used mozzarella)
1 egg
6 tbsp dried white breadcrumbs
1/4 tsp salt
black pepper
vegetable oil for frying

Brunch time! Green pancakes with lime butter

Yesterday I decided to make brunch for my friend Valerie. Valerie and I met at sleep away camp when we were 10 and have been friends ever since! One of the first recipes that caught my eye when I bought Plenty, by my main man Yotam Ottolenghi, was the green pancakes with lime butter from page 150. I am SO glad that I finally made them because they are DELICIOUS. The pancakes are savory and taste like a Chinese egg roll – pancake fusion, or perhaps similar to Jeon, if you are familiar with Korean food.

Green pancakes in all their savory delicious glory

I decided to accompany the pancakes with scrambled eggs with you guessed it, yes MUSHROOMS. My blog has been sadly bereft of mushrooms as of late, so I decided to add them in to my scrambled eggs. Even though they were just regular button mushrooms from the Berkeley bowl, any mushroom is better than no mushroom in my opinion, and I’ve always thought the button mushrooms get a bad rap. Did you know that Agaricus bisporus, the common grocery store button mushroom, is actually the same species as cremini and portabella? Yes, you thought you were being fancy buying portabella mushrooms, but in fact it’s just a button mushroom grown larger. I’m not saying they aren’t still good though..look how pretty these babies are:

mushrooms!

I sauteed some mushrooms with half a red onion for the eggs while Valerie got started on the lime butter, which is a magic combination of butter, lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, and chile flakes. Here is Valerie making the lime butter:

Valerie making the lime butter with lime zest, lime juice, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, and chile flakes

Here is the completed lime butter before we rolled it up in saran wrap and stuck it in the fridge to chill:

lime butter with lime juice, lime zest, salt, pepper, cilantro, garlic, chile flakes about to be chilled

How beautiful are all of these green ingredients for the green pancakes?

Green onions, cilantro, and limes for the green pancakes with lime butter

The next thing to do is to wash and wilt 0.5 lb of spinach in a pan, drain it, let it cool, squeeze out the moisture, roughly chop it, then set it aside. For the pancakes, Ottolenghi calls for self-rising flour, which you make by adding 1.25 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt to 1 cup of regular all-purpose flour. Melt 4 tbsp of butter in a pan and then add it to 3/4 cup self rising flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 egg, 0.5 tsp salt, 1 tsp cumin, and 2/3 cup milk in a large mixing bowl and whisk until smooth. Finely slice the green onions, then add them and the wilted spinach to the pancake mixture along with a green chile. Ottolenghi called for 2 fresh green chiles but he did not specify which kind and since I’m not huge on spicy I used one large jalapeno pepper. I removed the seeds from the jalapeno pepper before adding it to the pancakes but if you are a big fan of spicy, by all means go ahead and add more! Here is what the pancake mixture looks like:

Pancake mixture with flour, baking powder, egg, butter, salt, cumin, milk, green onions, spinach, and green chile

The next step is a bit complicated – you are supposed to whisk an egg white to soft peaks and gently fold it into the batter. What exactly is a soft peak?? I had no idea about this but luckily Valerie seemed to know, but unfortunately she said my whisk stinks and she could not whisk to soft peaks with it. Luckily the pancakes still turned out gorgeous even with the poorly whisked egg whites:

Green pancakes browning in the pan

Heat a pan to medium high heat, add olive oil, and add 2 tbsp of pancake batter for each pancake and cook them for 2 minutes on each side. Here are the pancakes with lime butter:

Green pancakes with lime butter

For the scrambled eggs, I cracked and whisked up 5 eggs, added salt, pepper, and basil flakes, and added them to the sauteed mushrooms and onion:

Green pancakes with lime butter with scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions

Valerie brought over some fresh lettuce from her mother’s garden and we made a simple lettuce and tomato salad to accompany the pancakes and scrambled eggs. Here is the completed meal:

Green pancakes with lime butter, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and onions, and lettuce and tomato salad

Here is Valerie enjoying the lovely meal:

Valerie and her delicious brunch of green pancakes with lime butter and scrambled eggs with mushrooms

Next time you are thinking of going out to one of those trendy brunch spots and waiting over an hour in line to be at the hippest spot in town, think about making this brunch at home instead. Delicious high quality and way cheaper brunch fair all from the comfort of your own home – plus you get to keep the leftovers. I highly recommend it :)

Ingredients:

Lime butter
8 tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
Grated zest of 1 lime
1 1/2 tbsp lime juice
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
1/2 garlic clove, finely chopped
1/4 tsp chile flakes

1/2 lb (about 8 cups) spinach, washed
3/4 cup self-rising flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 egg
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
2/3 cup milk
6 medium green onions, finely sliced
2 fresh green chiles, thinly sliced
1 egg white
Olive oil for frying

Cheesy mushroom lasagna

I’ve never made a lasagna before but this seemed like a good use for the Italian Velvet pioppini mushrooms, and I thought the Trumpet royales would be a nice meaty addition. I found this recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty, and he claims that it’s the very best cheesy lasagna, and who am I to argue with Ottolenghi? This is definitely not a dish to make if you are watching your waistline, since it involves LOTS of butter and LOTS of different kinds of cheeses. I usually prefer to cook the lighter middle eastern themed dishes, but I figured I should include at least one rich, decadent, creamy recipe with my mushrooms! Besides, this is a great dish to feed a crowd, which was great, since I invited 5 lovely ladies to enjoy the meal with me.

Toasting to ladies and mushrooms!

This dish is also pretty involved and requires lots of different components and long cooking times, so we enjoyed some wine and crostinis with butter and sauteed mushrooms while the food cooked. Ottolenghi suggests using porcinis and assorted mixed mushrooms for this dish, but the Velvet pioppini and Trumpet royale mushrooms worked great! First I preheated the oven to 350 F, then I cut and sauteed the Trumpet royale mushrooms in butter:

Trumpet royale mushrooms

I used some of these for the appetizer crostinis, and the rest I saved for the lasagna. Next I cut and sauteed the pioppini mushrooms in butter and added a few springs of thyme.

Once the mushrooms were cooked, I added 2 tbsp chopped tarragon and 4 tbsp chopped parsley, and set it aside for later. Don’t the mushrooms look tasty with all of the bright green herbs?

Sauteed mushrooms in butter, with thyme, parsley, and tarragon.

Next I made the bechamel, which of course I had never made before. It involves – you guessed it – lots of butter! After melting 5 tbsp of butter and adding a chopped shallot, which I cooked for a minute, then I had to add 0.5 cup flour and stir continuously for 2 minutes. This is the part where things got a bit tricky and I’m not quite sure I did everything right. You are supposed to add 2.5 cups of milk, 0.5 tsp salt, whisk until boiling, then simmer for 10 minutes. This seemed to reduce a lot and didn’t make nearly as much bechamel as I thought I was supposed to have for this lasagna. Granted, we were supposed to add 6oz of Gruyere to the bechamel, which I did not do because one of my friends accidentally brought smoked Gouda instead of Gruyere and I thought the smoked Gouda would overwhelm the dish so I just left it out. Perhaps that would have made a large difference in volume and I would have had a lot more ooey gooey lasagna. So this lasagna only had 4 types of cheese instead of 5! Oh well :) The bechamel is supposed to coat the bottom of the lasagna pan, and is supposed to top every layer of the lasagna, but we definitely did not have enough to top every layer. Here I am chopping the butter for the bechamel:

Cutting up butter for the bechamel

For the next layer of the lasagna, I mixed 13 oz of ricotta with an egg, 3 tbsp of the bechamel sauce, and 5 oz of feta. For the noodles I substituted whole wheat lasagna for spinach lasagna, which I could not find anywhere. My friend Stella graciously boiled each lasagna noodle for a few minutes before I layered them into the lasagna. There seems to be a lot of room for flexibility when it comes to layering a lasagna. Clearly it depends on the size of the pan you use and the size of the noodles, so my lasagna only ended up having 3 layers of noodles and one layer of bechamel sauce to coat the bottom. After coating the bottom with the bechamel, then adding a layer of lasagna noodles, I then spread the ricotta/feta/egg mixture on top.

Spreading the ricotta/feta/egg mixture on top of the lasagna noodles

Next, I added the mushroom and herb mixture.

Mushrooms sauteed in butter and herbs layered into the lasagna

On top of the mushrooms we added shredded Mozarella:

Lasagna noodles layered with ricotta/egg/feta mixture, mushrooms and herbs, and shredded mozzarella

I made two such layers, then added another layer of noodles and topped with more mozzarella and some parmesan (told you this recipe involved lots of cheese!). Then I covered the lasagna in foil, and baked it for 40 minutes at 350 F (thankfully I had preheated the oven!). After 40 minutes you are supposed to remove the foil and leave in for another 10 minutes. At this point the parmesan came out nice and golden:

Mushroom lasagna topped with shredded mozzarella and parmesan

After 40 minutes my friends were a bit antsy, and it was not very easy getting them to wait the required 10 minute resting period after the lasagna came out of the oven. I fed them arugula and tomato salad while they waited for the lasagna, which was a nice pairing (thanks to Ottolenghi for the tip!). Here’s all my friends eating the salad while they eagerly awaited the lasagna:

Stella, Claire, Simone, Lauren, and Meera waiting for the lasagna to come out!

Needless to say, they were very excited once I finally let them cut into it:

Mushroom and cheese lasagna

The lasagna was very cheesy and rich:

Overall, it was a very fun night filled with decadent cheesy mushroom lasagna, wine, and good friends. Here’s to mushrooms and girlfriends – two things I could definitely never do without!

Chickpea saute with Greek yogurt and couscous with tomato and onion

Ok, so yes, I know you are thinking – why is this girl calling herself fungi foodie when all she cooks is middle eastern food? Well guess what everybody – it’s been raining! A lot! In Berkeley! So I’m going to go mushroom hunting this weekend :) So with any luck I will have a delicious wild mushroom recipe for next week! Yay for wild mushrooms :)

But in the meanwhile, I’m continuing on my theme of cooking healthy, delicious vegetarian recipes from Jerusalem and Plenty. This week, I cooked the chickpea saute with Greek yogurt from pg. 211 Plenty and featured online here and the couscous with tomato and onion from pg 129 of Jerusalem and featured online here.

These dishes were on the less complicated side for Yotam Ottolenghi and my trip to Berkeley Bowl for groceries was one of the easiest and shortest trips yet! Either I’m getting much better at this whole grocery shopping thing or I am indeed choosing simpler recipes :P Here are all of the lovely fresh ingredients for the chickpea saute – look at all those fresh herbs and veggies! I really need to consider getting some potted herbs!

Ingredients for the chick pea saute

The first step is to separate the green part from the stalks of the chards – I’m totally falling for this stuff! It’s so pretty!

Swiss chard centers

So you blanch the chard stalks for 3 minutes in boiling water, then add the greens and blanch them for 2 more minutes, then remove from boiling water, rinse in cold water, and drain. Then you heat up 1/3 cup olive oil in a pan – Dan was appalled at this amount of oil – but I reminded him that olive oil is good for you :) He remained unconvinced but I decided to stick to Ottolenghi’s guidelines despite Dan’s rumblings. So you peel and chop up the carrots and saute them in the olive oil, then add caraway seeds. I’d never used caraway seeds before cooking from these books but they are such a good spice! I bought them super cheap from the bulk spice section at Berkeley Bowl and I’m totally hooked.

carrots sauteeing in olive oil with caraway seeds

So after the carrots are cooked, add the blanched chard back in, add in the chick peas (yes I used canned – perhaps a faux pas but after the disaster of trying to cook fava beans from scratch, I’m sticking to canned. It’s just so much easier!), add in garlic and fresh mint and parsley.

carrots with swiss chard, chicken peas, garlic, and herbs

Look at this ginormous bowl of vegetables!

Chick pea saute

But the finishing touch that really completes the dish is adding the Greek yogurt sauce on top. It just makes it so much tastier! And it adds a ton of calcium and protein – win-win :)

The greek yogurt on top really takes it up a notch!

chick pea saute with greek yogurt

So to accompany the delicious and healthy chickpea saute we made some couscous with tomatoes and onions. The first step is to dice and sautee an onion, then add sugar and tomato puree. Then dice two tomatoes (I added 3 because I love tomatoes!) and add them to the pan.

sauteed onions with tomatoes

In the meanwhile, add boiling vegetable stock to some couscous and leave it to sit in a bowl covered in cling wrap for 10 minutes. Once the couscous is cooked, then you mix in the tomato and onion mixture and wipe off the pan and add some butter to it. The next part gets a little bit complicated…at least for a novice like me….making the couscous crispy was no easy task! You are supposed to add butter then put the couscous back in the pan and cover it and let it steam for 12 minutes. Well, I did this and it was not quite crispy. Probably I should have let it steam for longer but we were hungry so I decided to just go for it…What followed was an EPIC FAIL where I flipped the couscous onto a dish and some of it landed on the floor but luckily most of it made it to the dish! I think I need to buy bigger dishes….

cous cous with tomatoes and onions

Ottolenghi has an amazing way with making vegetarian dishes that are completely satisfying and don’t make you miss meat one bit. These dishes are healthy, relatively cheap and easy, and super flavorful and fulfilling. The only complicated step that I utterly failed at was getting the couscous crispy and then flipping it over “expertly” onto a dish – so I did not manage to get that beautiful crispy crust that they claimed makes this dish. I still think it tasted amazing, but I think I will have to practice some more with the crisping and flipping..Here is my couscous with a corner of it looking crispy…it still tasted really good without the crispy crust but I will definitely need to practice with this one..

couscous with tomatoes and onion

Here is my completed meal :) It was a totally satisfying, healthy, flavorful, and fulfilling vegetarian middle eastern inspired meal. Thanks Ottolenghi for two more great dishes :)

Bon apetit! Healthy vegetarian mediterranean inspired meal!

Parsnip dumplings in broth

This was one of the first recipes that I marked as one I wanted to try when I first bought Yotam Ottolengi’s cookbook Plenty. Soups are known for being cheap, easy, and healthy, and also a good way to use up wilty looking vegetables. I’ve been wanting to get into making soup for a long time! The problem with this soup is that you have to make the vegetable broth from scratch, which requires 1.5 hrs of simmering on the stove, so it seems like a good thing to get started on midday. So making soup seems like a perfect sunday afternoon activity! You pretty much have to make the broth and dumpling batter in advance, and then you are ready to go to make the soup 5-10 minutes before you want to eat it.

Ingredients for vegetarian Parsnip dumpling soup

I went grocery shopping in preparation for this last night, and decided to make this broth after going to brunch this morning. The online recipe appears here but since it looks pretty different than the one from the book here are the ingredients listed in the book:

Ingredients for the broth: 3 tbsp olive oil, 3 carrots, peeled and cut into sticks, 5 celery stalks, cut into chunks, 1 large onion, quartered, 1/2 celeriac, 7 garlic cloves, peeled, 5 thyme sprigs, 2 small bunches of parsley, 10 black peppercorns, 3 bay leaves, and 8 prunes.

Ingredients for the dumplings: 1/2 lb russet potato, peeled and diced, 1.5 cups peeled and diced parsnips, 1 garlic clove, peeled, 2 tbsp butter, 1/2 cup self rising flour (to make self rising flour, combine 1 cup flour, 1.25 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt), 1/3 cup semolina, 1 egg, salt and pepper.

I had never heard of a celeriac before, so I looked it up on wikipedia. Apparently it a variety of celery with a bloated root, and looks something like this:

Celeriac, a variety of celery with a bulbous hypocotyl.

Thankfully Berkeley bowl has strange things like this, and hopefully your grocery store does too!

Celeriac sold at Berkeley bowl for $2.99/lb!

The spice aisle in the bulk foods section also came in handy for this recipe as I was able to buy just enough black peppercorns and bay leaves for the broth for 25 cents each, enough prunes for 80 cents, and semolina for the dumplings for 38 cents.

Here is what 80 cents of dried, pitted prunes looks like

Ok so the prunes are not very beautiful, but all of the root vegetables for the soup were quite lovely.

Root vegetable bounty

To make the broth, I heated up the olive oil in a pan and got to work cleaning and washing my vegetables. I cut off the skin parts of the celeriac and diced it up and added it to the carrots, celery, and onion.

Chopped and peeled carrots, chopped celery, and quartered onions for the broth

I didn’t want to bother peeling 7 garlic cloves so I just mashed them up in my garlic crusher – I figured that was okay. Let’s hope so! Here is the mirepoix (fancy french term for carrots, celery, onion) plus the celeriac and the prunes:

Mirepoix and prunes for soup broth

Luckily Berkeley bowl also had fresh thyme springs – I’m considering starting a little herb garden now with some mint and basil and thyme since I’ve been using so many fresh herbs in my cooking these days. I’ve heard they are easy and do not require too much of a green thumb! I grow lots of plants for my research but the plants we choose to grow for research are known for being easy and I have a greenhouse staff to help me out with pesky things like watering them :) I added the rest of the herbs, covered it in cold water, and then left it to simmer for 1.5 hours.

Ingredients for the vegetable broth simmering

After I got the brother set up, I started on the dumplings. I diced the whole potato and parsnip as I figured exact measurements didn’t matter for this kind of recipe.

Diced potatoes and parsnips for the dumplings

I diced and boiled them in water with a garlic clove and tested them out with a fork to see if they were soft.

Boiling parsnips and potatoes for the dumplings

When soft enough, I drained them into a colander in the sink.

Boiled parsnips and potatoes for the dumplings

Then I quickly washed out the pan and put them back in the pan on the stove and added 2 tbsp butter. Yum!

Boiled parsnips and potatoes with 2 tbsp of butter

Next, I mashed the potatoes, garlic, turnips and butter. It smelled so good!

Mashing the potatoes, parsnips, and butter

I quickly made some self-rising flour with 1 cup flour, 1.25 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

Self rising flour with baking powder and salt added to regular all purpose flour

Then I added the flour, semolina, egg, salt and pepper to the mash and mixed it all well. It smelled so good!

Mashed potatoes, parsnips, butter, semolina, flour, egg, salt, and pepper for the dumplings

I transferred it to a plastic mixing bowl, covered it in plastic wrap, and moved it to the fridge.

Dumpling batter

Dumpling batter ready to be chilled

So there you go, make the broth and the dumpling batter far in advance, and then you are ready to go to make the soup fresh whenever you want. So admittedly, I’ve never made a vegetable broth from scratch before. What do you do with all of the vegetables after you strain the away from the broth? Here they are, don’t they look so pretty?

Vegetables strained out to make the broth

I asked my chef friend and she says she just throws them out. That seems sort of wasteful to me, so I decided to remove the thyme and bay leaves, add water, and blended them up with my handy immersion blender and make vegetable soup. It looked pretty ugly so I will spare you the picture of it :P But here is the completed vegetable broth after I strained all of the vegetables out of it.

Vegetable broth

So when you are ready for the soup, reheat the broth and ring some salted water to a light simmer in a separate pan. Dip a teaspoon into water and use it to spoon out the dumpling mix into the water. Once the dumplings come to the surface, leave it to simmer for 30 seconds, remove from the water and place into broth.

Dumplings simmering in broth

And here is the final product, parsnip dumpling soup!

Parsnip dumpling soup

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad and Brussels sprouts and tofu

So for the last Saturday of January I prepared the broccolini and sweet sesame salad from p. 94 of Plenty and also featured online here, and the brussels sprouts and tofu dish from p. 105 of Plenty and featured here. I’ve been totally obsessed with Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty and these two asian inspired meals captured my attention. After cooking and eating them I realized that everything I had made was vegan, except some might want to swap agave for the honey in the broccolini sauce. So here you go, a healthy, delicious, and an unintentionally vegan feast :)

Me showing off the unintentionally vegan feast

As any reader of Plenty will know, some of the ingredients are seriously difficult to source. There’s no quick dash to the grocery store when it comes to these recipes. I looked all over and let me tell you, as far as I’m concerned, nigella seeds don’t exist in grocery stores. I even looked up alternative names on Wikipedia such as black caraway, and Roman coriander, but the Safeway spice guy was at a loss. It appears that the internet is the way for these supposedly delectable seeds (I wouldn’t know quite yet) and here is a nice cheap version of the seeds.

Me checking in with Ottolenghi to make sure I’m getting everything right!

So the first step of the broccolini and sweet sesame salad is to make the sauce, which involves whisking together tahini paste (I bought this from the Middle eastern store down on San Pablo and University but I’m sure regular grocery stores have it too), water, a garlic clove, tamari soy sauce (not sure exactly why tamari soy sauce is specified here, but I took his word for it and bought it), honey (substitute agave if you are vegan), cider vinegar, and salt. Next, you have to blanche the vegetables. So as you’ve probably figured out by now by my tales of bumbling around the kitchen, I’m a total novice at this. I’m sure many more could manage to blanche broccolini, grab it out of bowling water and rinse it off and boil the snow peas and green beans in the same water more adeptly than I, but basically I used a plastic tong to grab the vegetables out of the boiling water and dumped them into a colander in the sink. I think I need to buy one of those scoopable colanders if I’m going to keep up with this! So basically you blanch the vegetables then rinse and dry them, add some oil and sesame seeds, and then mix in the sauce, and voila, delicious hearty salad! It’s really a very tasty and hearty salad and you can see I had a lot of fun making it despite the difficulties blanching the vegetables :)

Mixing in the tahini and sweet sesame sauce with the broccolini, green beans, and snow peas

And here is the completed dish!

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad

Next I put some white rice in my handy rice cooker, and started onto the brussels sprouts and tofu dish. I must say, this is one of the most delicious ways I’ve ever had tofu or brussels sprouts before. Bravo, Ottolenghi! This dish is pretty easy too. I had never bothered to marinate and sear tofu in this way before (usually I just throw it into a stir fry and add teriyaki sauce or soy vay) but the marinade on this dish is so good. It definitely takes an investment into buying a lot of asian sauces (see below), but hopefully I will find a use for my giant bottle of sweet chilli sauce! I’d actually never used sunflower or peanut oils before so I had to buy those for this dish as well, but less than a month later and I’m already almost out of my sunflower oil so it’s definitely a useful oil to have on hand!

Ingredients for brussels sprouts and tofu dish

You have to whisk together 2tbsp of sweet chilli sauce (I bought this at Safeway in a ginormous bottle for under $3), 1.5 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sesame oil (this stuff is really really good, definitely worth buying), 1 tsp rice vinegar, and 1 tbsp maple syrup. I learned the importance of real maple syrup while living on a farm in Vermont in high school (it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup! Tapping trees is hard! Real maple syrup is wayyyy better than the fake stuff!) so I always happen to have real maple syrup on hand. So whisk together the ingredients for the marinade, place the tofu in it, and set aside.

Making the brussels sprouts and tofu dish

Sauteeing shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and chile

This dish actually called for mushrooms, so of course I loved that :) After sauteeing the brussels sprouts in a ton of sunflower oil and getting them super crispy in one dish, I had to chop up onion, a red chile, and mushrooms to saute in a different pan. I was super nervous chopping up the red chile so I was a nerd and put plastic bags on my hand. I’ve heard enough horror stories of friends cutting chiles with their bare hands and then burning their eyes while taking out their contacts to know to be careful! Next, add the tofu to the pan and let it caramelize.

Brussels sprouts with tofu and mushrooms

These dishes complemented each other really well and resulted in a hearty, substantial, tasty, healthy, vegetarian dish. It was the kind of food that just made you feel healthy and good about yourself eating it!

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad, brussels sprouts and tofu, and white rice vegetarian meal

Very full tart

My friend Rachel, another microbial ecology grad student, was the inspiration for me to buy the book Plenty. I went to a very fun tater tot and milk shake themed birthday party at her house and discovered Plenty on her book shelf. Rachel is a way more experienced and fancy chef than myself, and her subletter was a professional chocolatier (omg does it get any better than this??), so of course I invited myself over to cook a dinner at her house :) Rachel decided to make the Sabih from Jerusalem (pg. 90), and I made the very full tart from Plenty featured here.

Rachel chopping tomatoes for cucumber tomato salad to go with the Sabih

Her roommate Michael, who is also a professional chocolatier and cooking school graduate, showed me the proper way to chop an onion and made us delicious french onion soup.

Michael making french onion soup.

Michael’s french onion soup

I set to roasting the red peppers for my tart:

roasted red and yellow peppers for the very full tart

After chopping and roasting all of the vegetables, I added them to a frozen pie crust (to Rachel and Michael’s definite dismay).

Very full tart with roasted vegetables, cheese, and cherry tomatoes

Next I had to add the cream and egg mixture, which was a bit of a disaster to say the least. The recipe doesn’t mention anything about pie dish size- but save yourself the pain and get a super deep dish pie crust! They were not kidding when they called this a very full tart! Luckily Michael is very experienced in these matters and saved the day with a baking sheet to catch the overflow.

Very full tart explosion

Since Rachel is super fancy, she made her pita for the Sabih by hand. Next time I will be fancy like Rachel and make my pie crust by hand too :)

making pita from scratch

Rachel’s beautiful home made pita

This was a decadent meal to say the least, and also a bit incongruent – filled with dishes such as the Middle Eastern Sabih, Mediterranean savory vegetable tart, and French onion soup. And finally finished off with an incredibly decadent chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup made by chef Michael , which unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of, but I can assure you it was delectable :)

Sabih with zhoug, cucumber tomato salad, and eggplant

Not the best picture ever, but here is everyone enjoying the meal at Rachel’s house.

Enjoying the feast at Rachel’s house

The very full tart is definitely one of the richer dishes I’ve made so far from Plenty, and not quite as light and healthy feeling as the other middle eastern and asian themed dishes. But if you are in the mood for a decadent and hearty savory vegetarian dish, this might do just the trick!

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Very full tart

Mee goreng

Mee goreng – vegetarian Malaysian street food – super healthy and easy dish!

I decided to remove the stress from Valentine’s day this year and cook a delicious meal for some girl friends. I was grading papers all day so I needed something that was relatively quick and easy to make. While my love for Yotam Ottolenghi runs deep, the recipes in Plenty can be filled with complicated ingredients that are time consuming to source – so I picked out the vegetarian Mee goreng – see recipe here – http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/01/mee-goreng-yotam-ottolenghi .

Ha that doesn’t sound like something that would be simple, does it? I’d actually never even heard of it before but it’s a Malaysian street food that is designed to be cheap and fast to make – so it was perfect! I must say Mr. Ottolenghi did not disappoint :)

Lauren and I took a trip to the Berkeley Bowl to grab the onions, bok choy, green beans, lettuce, tofu, egg noodles, bean sprouts, and the slightly more esoteric sambal oelek, which is a savory chile paste. Luckily the Berkeley Bowl basically has everything, so it wasn’t hard to find :) I’m finally getting to the point where I have a nice baseline of spices and oils so I didn’t have to buy the peanut oil, soy sauce, coriander, and cumin because I already had them at home! I also had lemons and green onions, which I figured could substitute for shallots.

onions, green onions, lettuce, green beans, bean sprouts, and lettuce washed and prepped and ready to go!

key to making this dish as stress-free as possible: prep station!

Our friend Stella, another ecology grad student, met us at my apartment and brought the wine. After busting open the bottle of pinot noir and toasting to good friends, we washed and cut all the vegetables while grooving to Lauren’s favorite new tunes by Eric Church – Lauren’s from eastern Washington and has a thing for country, and I decided to humor her.

Lauren is very happy to be grooving to Eric Church, drinking wine, and getting a delicious meal cooked for her :)

Since we got dried noodles and not fresh we cooked all the noodles first which I had to do in batches because there were a TON of them and my pot isn’t that large.

cooking the noodles

Luckily the cooking goes pretty quickly after all the prep is done. I didn’t realize that I needed to heat the pan before adding the peanut oil – whoops! It smoked as it heated – oh well, next time I will get it right :)

tofu and green beans cooking in peanut oil

I ended up making two batches because the recipe says it serves two and there were three of us, but the servings in the recipe are super generous. I mean, I like big portions, but these are crazy big. Luckily I got to practice on the first batch, and decided that the noodle to vegetable and sauce ratio was way off and used half the noodles in the second batch.

Lauren too excited to wait for me to get the noodle to vegetable ratio correct in the second batch, showing off the first batch with glee!

I accidentally sort of burnt the green onions as there were many pans to keep track of at once and we were laughing too much while preparing the dinner… Despite the burnt onions the dish came out super delicious and refreshing tasting, and the fresh lemon squeezed on top added a lot. Turns out that wine, Mee goreng, and good friends is the recipe for the perfect Valentine’s day :) Of course, no meal is over without dessert, so we rounded it off with red bean mochi that Lauren and I had bought at Berkeley bowl and orange and chocolate Milanos that Stella brought over. Thanks Plenty for another great dish :)

Sambal oelek (savory chili paste) and lemon wedges to accompany the Mee goreng

Stella says hand over the noodles!

Lauren and Stella happy and enjoying the dish :)

Ingredients:

2 tbsp peanut oil
½ onion, peeled and diced
220g firm tofu
100g green beans, trimmed and cut in half on an angle
100g bok choy, leaves and stems, cut into large chunks
300g fresh egg noodles
1½ tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp sambal olek (or other savory chilli paste), plus extra to serve
2 tsp thick soy sauce
2 tsp light soy sauce
50g bean sprouts
1 handful shredded iceberg lettuce
1 tbsp crispy fried shallots (available from oriental grocers; alternatively, use dry onion flakes)
Lemon wedges, to serve

Sweet winter slaw and soba noodles with eggplant and mango

Last Saturday (Feb 1, 2014) my friend Lauren who is a fellow graduate student in my department was feeling a bit down and her foot was really hurting from a running injury, so i forced her to get up and come cook with me. Having been on the Mediterranean train for a while, I chose two yummy sounding asian style dishes from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. I must say, I’ve expanded my sauce and spice collection exponentially since I started cooking from these books! I figure I am in the investing stage right now, but pretty soon I will have a nice baseline so shopping for every new recipe will not be as big of an endeavor. We made the cooked soba noodles with eggplant and mango from page 112 first. Lauren has an inexplicable love for chopping, so I set her to chopping the eggplant into beautiful diced pieces while I prepped the soba noodles.

Lauren loves chopping!

This was my first time cooking soba noodles – they are very flavorful! We got the water boiling first and there was a lot of eggplant so we ended up frying it in 4 batches and then straining it.

eggplant about to be stir fried

soba noodles with eggplant prior to adding the mango and herbs

After cutting up the mango, herbs, and onion, we mixed mixed all the noodles and mango and eggplant and herbs and onion together at once.

soba noodles with mango and egglant

Unfortunately we didn’t realize you were supposed to let it sit for 1-2 hrs before, so we ate it right away and leftovers tomorrow will probably be even better! It was a super light refreshing flavorful and zesty dish with herbs that I would definitely never have bothered to use before but make everything taste so much better!

Who did it better? Me or Ottolenghi :) ?

To accompany the soba noodles, we made the sweet winter slaw from page 102 featured here. Here are all the ingredients for the dish:

ingredients for the sweet winter slaw

I don’t like papaya, so we used a single mango instead. We made a few blunders during the cooking of the dish – we accidentally placed the red chile into the dressing before placing it on the stove! We decided to go with it and mixed the rest of the ingredients for the dressing into the ban, boiled them, let them cool, and strained it in a makeshift manner using my vegetable steamer and a bowl to get rid of the lemongrass pieces.

lemon grass, chile (whoops!), maple syrup, vinegar, and spices reducing for the dressing

We washed and chopped the savoy and red cabbage and mango while the dressing was reducing.

Mango, savoy cabbage, and red cabbage for the sweet winter slaw

I mixed together the cabbage and mango in a bowl and added the reduced part of the dressing before adding the oil, and was wondering why it looked like so little! No worries, I added the oil to the cabbage mixture and mixed it all super well.

Sweet winter slaw

The absolute most amazing part of this dish is the caramelized nuts. We couldn’t find macademia nuts at the Monterey Market, so we used cashew nuts instead, and they were incredible! I had never caramelized nuts before in sugar and butter and salt and chile but it made them super delectable (unsurprisingly!).

caramelized cashews with sugar, salt, butter, and chile

These dishes were super refreshing and delightful, and despite the rough start to her day, Lauren ended up a very happy camper that evening :)

sweet winter slaw and soba noodles with eggplant and mango

Lauren enthusiastically digging into her dinner