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New Year’s Stir Fry

January 4, 2009 by greg 1 Comment

On New Year’s Day I wanted to use black-eyed peas. There is a tradition in the South that black-eyed peas should be eaten on New Year’s Day for good luck. Instead of the typical peas cooked in a soup or with ham or something, I decided to make a mixed grain and legume base for a vegetarian stir fry. I first just tossed together some Thai brown rice, kamut, spelt, wheat berries, mung beans and black-eyed peas in a bowl and soaked them in water for a couple of hours. I then put everything into my rice cooker and put it on the brown rice setting. An hour and a half later I had this wonderfully healthy grain/legume mixture.

For the stir fry I used baby bok choi and cauliflower. I first steamed them for a few minutes just to start getting them tender and make the stir fry easier. I fried these up with garlic, ginger and red chilis in oil. Near the end it was seasoned with soy, sesame oil and thickened with just a bit of corn starch. It was oh so tasty.

Filed Under: Chinese, vegetarian Tagged With: grains, stir fry

Light and Healthy Asian Inspiration

January 17, 2008 by greg 1 Comment

Talk about low fat, good carbs and lean proteins, tonight’s dinner really fit the bill. This is not really authentic Asian cuisine but it certainly has its inspiration from across the Pacific. I made a soup with onions, kale and konbu flavored with a clam dashi and poached tilapia filets in it. The only fat was a tiny splash of olive oil in the pot to sauté the onions. More on the soup in a minute. I really want to talk about this simple and delicious salad I threw together. There’s a legume event going on over at The Well Seasoned Cook and I blogged about cooking up some whole grains and legumes in my last post. Now these beans and grains were just fine by themselves seasoned with a little bit of salt and pepper, but I really love to eat them cold with fresh crunchy vegetables and a tangy dressing. What you see in the bowl below is a couple cups of those cooked grains, a cup or so offinely sliced romaine lettuce hearts, a half cup each of finely diced celery, carrots, and scallions, three cloves of garlic finely chopped and a good tablespoon of minced ginger. A little salt and pepper, a splash of soy sauce, a couple tablespoons of rice vinegar and the tiniest drizzle of sesame oil was mixed in with these. The result is shown below. I garnished it with sesame seeds.


All right. Let’s talk soup. I love soup and this one was pretty easy to make. I first sautéed one medium onion with a tiny bit of olive oil until it began to brown. Four or five cloves of chopped garlic were added and this was quickly cooked for about a minute to release the flavor. I added a few tablespoons of rice vinegar to deglaze the pan. In went a little bit of dried konbu seaweed and a couple cups of chopped up kale. Salt and pepper was added along with a couple tablespoons of a Korean clam dashi powder. About 8 cups of water was added and this was simmered covered for about 30 minutes until the kale was nicely softened and the flavors were all integrated.

Here in Fargo it is not that easy to get fresh fish so we have to rely on what we can find frozen much of the time. I am, after all, located in the geographical center of North America. There is no other place further from an ocean than North Dakota. Anyway, of the frozen fish I find the mild taste and nice texture of tilapia to work great in a soup. You certainly don’t want to overcook it though. So, I just slip in the thawed filets right before serving and let them simmer in the broth for just a couple of minutes. I only use as many filets as I’m going to serve. I find the fish does not keep that well in leftovers. So, we eat all the fish and any soup that is left can be used later. You can reheat and add more fish or even throw in some tofu. I like to serve the filet whole in the bowl. It makes for a nice presentation. However, you could break it up into pieces as well. It was delicious and the broth perfectly seasoned this time.


Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: grains, legumes, soup, tilapia

Just Grains and Legumes

January 15, 2008 by greg 5 Comments

Ok, maybe not just grains and legumes, but mostly. I like healthy grains and legumes and I often cook up a big batch of mixed things. I like to make a lot and use it for a long time. They stay good in the fridge for a week or so and I package them up into smaller ziploc bags and freeze them. That way I can just pull out some grains to use during the next few days for salads or in other dishes. Whole grains and legumes are fantastic for their healthy complex carbohydrates and they taste so good. I was so happy to see Susan announce a Legume Love Affair event over at The Well Seasoned Cook. I’ll try to use these in a number of different recipes.

On Sunday I made a big batch to use for the next few weeks. I started with the legumes. Shown below from left to right are: black eyed peas, black beans, mung beans, soy beans and adzuki beans. It’s what I had in the cupboard.

Let’s talk legumes. Whenever I am browsing my local health food store or my favorite Asian market I always look to see what kind of cool interesting grains they have in stock. Here are six that I used in this batch. From left to right: whole wheat berries, kamut, quinoa, spelt, coarse bulgar wheat, and Thai brown rice.

I used simple proportions for this – 1/2 cup of each of the 11 items show above. Here is a closeup picture of the legumes all mixed together.

These whole grains from the top left going clockwise are wheat berries, kamut and spelt on the bottom. These will be soaked with the legumes for about 5 hours prior to cooking.

This grain plate contains quinoa on the upper left, bulgar on the upper right and the Thai brown rice on the bottom. These will not be pre-soaked as they cook just fine directly from their dried state.

This picture shows the legumes and the whole grains soaking. These were rinsed well several times first.

I cooked everything together in my rice cooker set on the brown rice setting. I didn’t measure the amount of water I added but simply added enough to have about an inch above the top of the grains and legumes. Here they are all cooked.

For Sunday dinner the grains were served simply as a side dish along with some roasted chicken, steamed broccoli and carrots, and caramelized onion and crimini mushrooms. Dinner was served with a wonderful white burgundy wine.

Filed Under: chicken Tagged With: grains, legumes

To brine or not to brine

December 27, 2007 by greg 2 Comments

That is the question. Well, frankly, I prefer brining my poultry as it makes for a juicier and tastier bird. Here is a simple everyday chicken soaking in a mixture of sugar, salt and spices. For this three pound bird I let it brine for about 3 hours. A very good rinse in lots of fresh water and it was patted down with towels to dry it off. I rubbed the skin with a bit of butter and sprinkled it with salt and pepper. The bird was placed on top of a bed of carrots onions and celery in my favorite Revol chicken roaster. I set the oven to 450F to roast this at a high temperature. Once the internal temperature reached 170F I took it out, covered it with foil and let it rest for about 20 minutes.

This day I also spent a few hours cleaning out my pantry. I have lots of different kinds of dried beans and grains on hand so I thought I would make a medley of healthy grains to serve with the chicken. There’s kamut and red beans and mung beans and bulgar wheat and wheat berries and spelt and thai brown rice and yellow somethings and black eyed peas and black beans and lots of other things I had. These were soaked for a few hours before being thrown into my rice cooker and cooked on the “brown rice” setting.

Filed Under: chicken Tagged With: brining, grains

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