Quinoa Tabouli

I love tabouli, but I can't usually afford the pre-made packaged stuff -- even more so because I could eat two of those things in one sitting. Since I've been taking lunches and snacks to work, I've been loving this recipe for quinoa tabouli. The protein-rich and nutrient-rich quinoa and green green parsley and mint make me feel brilliantly healthy as I guzzle tubs of this throughout my day. 

This recipe is adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health. It takes about half an hour to make (less, with a food processor or lots of practice). One batch of this usually only lasts me two, maybe three days, but if serving as a side salad, could probably serve 4. 

QUINOA TABOULI 

1 cup raw quinoa

2 cups water

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon dried mint or 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint

4 scallions

5 garlic cloves

2 or 3 bunches fresh parsley 

3 or 4 tablespoons lemon juice

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and ground black pepper

Rinse and drain the quinoa in a fine-meshed strainer to remove any residue of the grain’s bitter coating. In a covered saucepan on high heat, bring the quinoa, water, salt, and mint (if using dried) to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the water has been absorbed and the quinoa is tender, about 15 minutes. Fluff with a fork and place in a serving bowl.

While the quinoa cooks, mince the scallions and garlic, and finely chop the parsley and mint (if using fresh). Add them to the serving bowl with the cooked quinoa. Pour on the lemon juice and olive oil and mix well. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve chilled or at room temperature. 

creamy vegan pesto, with white beans and braised garlic

Like I promised, here's my pesto recipe! It's almost the same pesto as in my post about white bean pesto and heirloom tomato salad stacks, but it's a complicated (and delicious!) enough recipe that it deserves its own post. (Also, the pictures in that post, other than the tomatoes, leave much to be desired.) 

I depleted my basil plants to make this pesto, and it was worth it! (Especially since they seem to be recovering.) I put it on pizza: I made the same slow-rise crust, spread the pesto on, covered in more tiny, sliced grape tomatoes, and baked. YUM. 

Braising the garlic is optional, as are the herbs, though if you have time, and fresh herbs on hand, it's worth it. Sautéing the garlic so there's not 1-2 heads of raw garlic in the pesto would be a good idea, or leave it out. (And anyway, when basil and pine nuts are pureed together, I find it difficult to go wrong!) 

Other than the braising, this recipe is fast and rewarding. It's recipes like this that make me so, so glad to have a food processor. (There was one time I picked over 3 full grocery-sized bags of basil from my CSA, then spent over 3 hours chopping by hand, and nearly destroyed my computer in the process. Long story.) 

 CREAMY VEGAN PESTO WITH WHITE BEANS AND BRAISED GARLIC

Stovetop-Braised garlic:

1-2 heads garlic 

1 tsp minced fresh rosemary 

1 tsp minced fresh thyme

olive oil

White Bean Pesto: 

1 cup cooked white beans

stovetop-braised garlic, above

2 tsp minced garlic (in addition to the braised above) 

2 - 3 cups fresh basil, or as much as possible!

a handful of chives, snipped

1/4 - 1/3 cup pine nuts

1/4 - 1/3 cup water 

2 -3 tbsp olive oil (optional) 

1 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp sea salt 

To prepare the garlic: Trim the root and top ends of the garlic head. Separate the cloves, but don't remove the peels. Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan (cast iron works best) to almost smoking point, then turn down heat as low as possible. Add the garlic, skin and all, to the pan. Roll the cloves in the olive oil and cover the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes. Then check the garlic: it should be light brown and smell absolutely amazing. Shake the pan to turn the cloves. Cover the pan and cook for another 5 minutes. After this, add the rosemary and thyme, then leave the lid off as you carefully stir the garlic for another 5 minutes. The skins should be falling off as you stir, and be incredibly fragrant. 

If not braising, chop the garlic roughly (it'll end up being pureed anyway) and saute with the herbs, if using, until golden. 

To make the pesto: In a blender or food processor, combine the beans, the braised garlic, minced garlic, basil, chives, pine nuts, water, oil (if using), pepper, and salt and blend until smooth. 

homemade pizza, with bechamel sauce, fresh basil, mushrooms, and grape tomatoes

This pizza is half the white pizza from 500 Vegan Recipes, half the slow-rise pizza dough on vegan yumyum and 101 cookbooks (originally from the completely amazing The Bread-Baker's Apprentice), plus a few extra percentages of my favorite pizza ingredients.

Since that dough is already beautifully detailed and illustrated in two prominent places on the internet, I won't bother repeating it here. That recipe makes 6 small pizzas. I found that making half the batch gave me the amount of dough I wanted to make a pizza for 3 people. You may find otherwise, and besides, if you make the whole batch, you can always freeze what you don't use and then you'll have delicious pizza dough on hand whenever you want.

As for the toppings, these are my favorites. I meant to add pine nuts, but I didn't remember until after I took the pizza out of the oven (we topped our slices with raw pine nuts, and it was just fine). The 500 Vegan Recipes version calls for fresh basil, sliced white onion, and smoked tofu slices as the topping. I'm sure this dough and sauce would be delicious with any veggie toppings you desire!

BECHAMEL SAUCE
1/2 cup earth balance
1/4 cup all-purpose flour 
1 cup plain soy milk
1 tsp garlic powder 
1 tsp dried basil

PIZZA
1/2 recipe slow-rise pizza dough 
1 recipe bechamel sauce (ingredients above)
20-30 fresh basil leaves, or even more if you have them! 
1/2 pound thinly sliced mushrooms
1 cup grape tomatoes, sliced in half
1/4 cup pine nuts (not pictured) 


Preheat the oven to 450 F.

To make the bechamel sauce: in a pot, melt the earth balance. Whisk in the flour until smooth, then add the soy milk and continue to whisk until the sauce thickens (about a minute or two). Remove from heat and add the herbs, and salt to taste.

Roll out the dough according to instructions on either of the slow-rise pizza dough recipes linked above.

Layer the basil leaves on top of the dough. Pour the bechamel sauce over the basil, spreading evenly. Add any other veggies or toppings you're using, in this case mushrooms, grape tomatoes, and pine nuts.

Bake for about 10 minutes, until the crust is golden.

lentil sorrel soup

Soup! Great even when it's over 110 F outside (which it is). This simple recipe is a treat if sorrel is available. I picked every leaf off my sorrel plant that inchworms hadn't reached first! Sorrel is a wonderful, lemony herb. I used to get it from my farmshare, and I've been growing it this summer. 

This is another adaptation from Deborah Madison's The Savory Way. 

LENTIL SORREL SOUP

1/2 cup lentils 

1/2 cup small red onion, finely diced 

1 bay leaf 

salt 

1 1/2 quarts water

3 handfuls sorrel leaves, shredded 

1 to 2 tablespoons soy milk or soy creamer

1/4 cup lemon juice, or to taste 

freshly ground pepper

Rinse the lentils and combine them in a soup pot with the onions, bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and water. Bring to a boil; then simmer, partially covered, for 20-30 minutes or until the lentils are completely soft. Puree half the cooked lentils in a blender until smooth; then return them to the pot. Add the sorrel and cook for another 10 minutes; the sorrel will turn olive green. Stir in the soy milk/creamer, taste for salt and lemon juice, and serve with freshly ground pepper. 

arugula and baby spinach carbon emissions can be as bad as beef

photo via nettsu on flickr

I was so sad when I read this article on boing boing about how bad arugula and baby spinach can be for the environment! Basically, if you don't live near where it's grown, and especially if you live far away and buy it out of season and/or greenhouse grown, the carbon footprint of these delicious, delicious greens is as bad as that of beef (what beef, precisely, it doesn't say). I only learned my love of arugula recently. Fortunately it's in season right now, I don't live crazily far from where it's grown, and when I move to San Francisco I'll grow my own (though I'm cringing thinking of all the baby spinach I bought in winter when I lived in New York). It'll be rad. I'll also grow my own tomatoes so I can food-process up some homemade, extra-spicy salsa whenever I please. Okay Bay Area? Get ready for some arugula salads and rad, homemade, heirloom tomato salsa. 

mushrooms on toast, other snacks

Another favorite recipe from Deborah Madison's the Savory Way, mushrooms on toast provencale style. Pictured above and below with an herb salad, mug of chai, and crispy kale. I had a large, late pancake breakfast and needed something green and filling to keep me from making a meal of and entire pacakge of corn chips and an entire jar of salsa. There are probably as many ways of making crispy kale as there are kale-lovers; mine is only slightly different from the crispy sesame kale recipe in the vegan yumyum cookbook (not on vegan yumyum's site, but the veggie gal has posted the recipe). My herb salad was a mix of store-bought and garden greens: baby arugula, parsley, sorrel, baby spinach, chives, celery, sunflower seeds, and walnuts.

MUSHROOMS ON TOAST PROVENCALE STYLE

Ingredients: (makes 2 generous servings)

1/2 pound firm white mushrooms 

1/4 cup mixed light and virgin olive oils

salt 

coarsely ground or crushed peppercorns 

1 garlic clove, chopped 

lemon juice

2 or 3 slices of bread 

2 tablespoons chopped parsley 

2 teaspoons chopped marjoram and 1/2 teaspoon chopped thyme, or several pinches of herbes de Provence

Cut the mushrooms into quarters. Toss them with the olive oil, a light sprinkling of salt, the pepper, garlic, a squeeze of lemon, and the dried herbs, if using. Set aside to marinate for at least 15 minutes. Just before you're ready to eat, toast the bread. Heat a saute pan, add the mushrooms, and saute them briskly, until they've begun to color. Taste and season with more salt and lemon juice. Add the parsley and marjoram, toss, and serve the mushrooms over the toast. 

A similar salad, with chimichurri on toast. Chimichurri is really a sauce for grilled meat, but I love just spreading it on toast, or serving it as an appetizer with crackers. It's also great on seitan, and probably on fake meat. But on toast! Yum. 

favorite bibliodyssey posts at the moment, and a general link round-up for myself

I'm still in the planning / designing / pseudo-research stages on a new book project. I expect there will be sketches posted on naomese soon. For now, these are the images and sites that are inspiring me right now. 

The images above are from the bibliodyssey post botanical beasties.

The image below is from tribes of Burma.

Other bibliodyssey links I'm looking at right now: imagining midwifery; the pseudo-apuleius herbarium; Kyushu medical books two; early herb and gardening books. 

Onto other, non-visual links and quotations. From the history of birth control:

In German folk medicine marjoram, thyme, parsely and lavender in tea form were used. The root of worm fern was used by German and French women and was also prescribed by a Greek physician in the time of Nero; in French it was called the “prostitute root”. Other ancient recipes called for a paste of mashed ants, foam from camels’ mouths, tail hairs of blacktail deer dissolved in bear fat. In modern times, women have been reported to use turpentine, castor oil, tansy tea, quinine water in which a rusty nail has been soaked, horseradish, ginger, epsom salts, ammonia, mustard, gin with iron filings, rosemary, lavender, and opium.

From Ailments and Cures of Medieval Women:

To abort a fetus at three months, the following receipe was used: 1 drachma each of cardamom seeds, wallflower (or stock,) myrrh, and wormwood. Let a woman insert it before taking a bath and drink pennyroyal wine. (Riddle, 1992, p.62) ... In addition to abortions, there were some natural anti-fertility medicines to avoid pregnancy. Some of these included fenugreek, mallow, pennyroyal, rue, birthwort, cyperus, arum root, cassia, reed, valerian, calamint root, and myrrh. 

From Birth Control in Antiquity: 

The Greeks used Silphium, known commonly as giant fennel. Its pungent sap was good in cough syrups and gave food a rich, distinctive taste. These plants were also known to have contraceptive and abortifacient properties. ... The demand for the plant was so great that by the third or fourth centuries, Silphium was extinct. Related plants survived, but were less effective.

The seeds of Queen Anne's Lace (a wild carrot) may have also been effective. Studies in rats show that the seeds inhibit both fetal and ovarian growth. 

Other links: Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance; abortion in the ancient and premodern world; natural herbs for contraception and abortion; silphium on wikipedia.

And one more pair of images, these are from a post titled aggregate.

 

pasta with handfuls of herbs

When I have access to lots of herbs, this dish is a standby of mine. It's based on a recipe in Deborah Madison's the Savory Way, though much of the fun of it is playing around. This is what Madison has to say about this recipe:

A pasta for summer, when herbs are most prolific. Handfuls of herbs, at least a couple from fairly small hands, are what it takes.... If you grow herbs, you can make this pasta easily and frequently, varying it each time according to fancy or what is coming into leaf or flower. If you don't, you can make a simpler version drawing on the herbs that supermarkets carry, basing the mixture perhaps on parsley and adding basil, marjoram, thyme, and a shallot or scallion. A few narrow slivers of lemon zest will provide the tang that the sorrel does. You'll need about a cup of chopped leaves in all.

PASTA WITH HANDFULS OF HERBS 

what I used:
12 regular or lemon thyme branches or a mixture
a couple dozen large parsley branches
4 sorrel leaves
6 basil leaves
celery greens from 1 bunch supermarket celery
1/2 of one onion and 1 clove garlic, finely diced
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil 
1 tablespoon more oil for sauteing 
2 to 3 tablespoons earch balance
1/2 cup wheat germ 
salt
pepper
dried marjoram
8 to 10 ounces pasta

note: Madison called for 6 fresh marjoram branches, 3 lovage leaves, bread crumbs instead of wheat germ, half as much parsley, 2 small shallots instead of my onion-garlic combo, and no basil or celery leaves. I used the celery leaves since I didn't have lovage. she didn't call for cooking the shallots, but I don't like the taste of raw onion so I cooked it a bit with the wheat germ. 

chop the herbs fairly fine, but leave some texture. put the herbs into a bowl with the 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil and 2-3 tablespoons of earth balance and set aside.

bring a pot of water to boil for the pasta. while it's heating, heat the sauteing oil in a frying pan, add the onion, garlic, and wheat germ. cook until the wheat germ is warm and crispy, the onion is getting transparent, and the garlic is getting golden. mix into the herb mixture.

when the water boils, salt to taste and add the pasta. cook until al dente. drain or scoop it out of the pot and add it to the bowl with the herbs, oil, butter, and wheat germ. season generously with pepper and toss well.

herbs & caterpillar

Last weekend my mother helped me pick out some herbs: sweet basil; spearmint; and sorrel. My recently re-potted herbs are accompanied by my mom's dill, cilantro, parsley, basil, rosemary, and thyme. 

I became addicted to the herbs sorrel and lovage last summer when I had a local CSA with Upstate / Paisley farms.  Sorrel has an amazingly pungent, lemony taste, while lovage looks something like Italian parsley and tastes like the freshest, crispiest, tastiest celery ever, but better. I wanted to grow lovage but it's out of season (as was the kale I was hoping to grow!). My mother's dill plant was visited by that little critter, which I think is a monarch caterpillar. Except mine looks like his stripies are yellower.