pareve

Mushroom Barley Soup

Ah, autumn. A wonderful time to review one’s soup recipes.

I originally learned how to make mushroom barley soup from Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook. Here is my current one-pot recipe, which I prepare now by heart without consulting Mollie:

Ingredients

• Mushrooms
• 1 onion
• 1/2 cup barley
• Flavoring: I use a tsp. of miso. You can also use soy sauce and/or 1 tsp. of red wine.
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Water
• Olive oil to cover bottom of pan

Many optional ingredients:

• Root vegetables: chopped carrots, parsnip, and/or turnip
• Garlic clove
• Chopped celery
• Chopped ginger root
• Green leafy vegetables: chopped kale or collards
• Herbs, fresh or dry: dill, oregano, thyme
• Shiitake mushrooms: make the soup all the more healthful and flavorful by using shiitake mushrooms

Preparing the Soup

Saute the chopped onion in a bit of olive oil at the bottom of a large pot. When the onion turns translucent, add the barley. Add more than enough water to cover the barley – about one inch higher in the pot. Cook for about 1/2 hour until the barley is almost tender. Add pepper and salt to taste. Add optional ingredients of carrots, other root vegetables, garlic and celery; add the mushrooms. Pour in one cup more of water. Cook until the vegetables are tender. Add optional kale, dill, other herbs and/or other fast cooking greens. Add soy sauce or miso to give the soup taste. Serve warm.

Coming soon (next week?): a list of soup recipes from around the blogosphere. Also, some suggested soup ingredients. If you have a favorite soup recipe that is on a blog, feel free to leave the link in the comments (thanks to Mrs. S., who last week did just that).

Crunchy Quinoa Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa
• 1.5 cups water (I used leftover broccoli broth)
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 cup shredded carrots
• handful of shredded kale
• 1/2 cup chopped almonds
• 2 chopped scallions or 1 small sweet onion (I used a chopped sweet onion)
• 1/4 cup mekabu
  (tiny wakame – use whatever seaweed you have available – Klara’s recipe used arame; you probably need to soak it first)

Dressing, optional:

• A few tsps. tamari
• A few tsps. mirin (rice wine – Eden makes one with an O-K – a specialty product that is DE-licious)
• 1/4 tahini (I didn’t use – I don’t like tahini, but maybe you do)

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Soak the nuts earlier in the day. Rinse the quinoa, cook it in water or broth, add a bit of salt. Shred the carrots and put them on top of the almost cooked quinoa. Ground up the nuts. Put shredded kale and all other ingredients on top and cook a bit more until the kale is soft.

May be served served warm or at room temperature. Enjoy your quinoa salad!

Basil Pesto, Garden Fresh

My daughter asked, how come you haven’t made this since last year? Because I finally have enough basil to make a pesto! She had no idea that some dishes are seasonal.

Ingredients:

• 40 – 50 leaves of fresh basil
• 1/3 cup of olive oil, cold pressed extra virgin
• 1/3 cup of walnuts (or whatever nuts you choose)
• 1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
• 1 box of rotini noodles
  (or substitute steamed cauliflower if you are on a low or no carb diet or gluten-free diet)

Boil water for the pasta. When the pasta is almost done, put the nuts, olive oil, basil leaves and salt in the food processor. Blend it all until you have a thick, green paste. You can taste it, if you want to be careful about the amount of salt (or just because it is absolutely yummy!). Drain the water from the pasta, put the pasta in serving bowl, and mix in the basil pesto paste. You can either eat this right away or refrigerate it and serve cold the next day.

Optional: the traditional way to make pesto is with parmesan cheese, so you can also had 1/3 cup grated parmesan to your pesto. In addition to experimenting with different nuts, pesto can also be made from sage or parsley. If you have any variations you want to share, please do so.

This is one of my favorite summer treats. It has two healthy fats, olive oil and walnuts. Contrary to popular belief, studies showed almond eaters lost weight instead of gaining.

Tomato Sauce Alternative

Beet Sweet Potato Sauce

Ever want an alternative to tomato sauce for your spaghetti? Here’s an easy recipe if like me you often have a leftover cooked beet and a leftover sweet potato or yam.

Ingredients:

• 1 cooked beet
• 1/2 cooked sweet potato or yam

Put the sweet potato or yam in a bowl with the beet. Mash with a fork. If you don’t mind cleaning your food processor and prefer a creamier sauce, throw both in the food processor.

Mash until you get a lovely orange and pink sauce.

Meanwhile, cook your noodles. I used Eden mugwort soba noodles, which are a lovely shade of green, nutritious and delicious. When ready, mix immediately with your beet and yam sauce so the sauce warms up.

I topped mine with grated parmesan cheese and fresh chopped parsley. Get creative. Basil would be a great topper, too. You could also mix in a few drips of cold-pressed olive oil or some organic butter.

Serves 1-2.

Inspiration: Klara has a beet – carrot – onion sauce that she used to make as a tomato sauce alternative. See her comment on this post for the recipe. Since I often have a leftover beet and some leftover sweet potato, this recipe was a natural for me.

SourDough and Hummus

What could be more delicious than sourdough bread topped with homemade hummus? To learn how to make sourdough starter, visit Mother in Israel’s post. And to find out more about hummus and what makes an authentic chickpea dip (as opposed to some wannabes), visit the Occidental Israeli’s post.

Why sourdough starter?

• Taste
• Health: More in this article on fermented bread. Easier to digest seems to be a top feature. Also, some people have reactions to commercial yeast (my father may have this) and find they don’t have the same reaction with the sourdough.

I’m thinking of doing this in July, as Mother in Israel says it works better in the hot humidity. See also read Mimi’s Oatmeal Sourdough Bread.

Why hummus?

Why not?

Here’s the Occidental Israeli’s comments on common hummus errors:

Another mistake I saw on TV that day, was the host opening a can of chickpeas and simply pouring them into the food processor. When making hummus, you must, MUST, wash the chickpeas numerous times, to make the “hummus” even edible. Moreover, if you want your hummus to be good, even if you use canned chickpeas, you have to boil them and remove most the skins, from most of the individual beans.

The biggest mistake, however, was the lack of tehina (sometimes called tahini). For hummus to be really good it must include tehina. Apparently there are other authentic versions that replace tehina with ful or with labaneh, but simply mashing chickpeas (with other vegetables, no less) does not result in hummus.

Mushrooms with Onions: Warm Food on Shabbat

It is customary for observant Jews to eat something warm on Shabbat; this is because even though we have the prohibition not to cook or to light a fire, we should still show don’t need to eat cold food. Or sit in the dark. The traditional warm Shabbat food that Ashkenazi Jews eat is chulent (see Ilana-Davita‘s and Lion of Zion‘s posts); Sephardim (Jews that were originally in Spain) eat dafina or chamin.

I prefer not to eat chulent, as I find it too heavy a food. So I have a tendency to make lots of salads, and I greatly enjoy those. However, in the middle of this winter I noticed that the food that we had warm on Shabbat was mostly chulent and potato kugel, neither of which are my favorite food. I do sometimes eat a bit of chicken warm. So I started warming up beans cooked with turmeric and other curried flavors. But I really wasn’t in the mood for the beans.

Back to my discussion with Klara: Klara felt that in keeping with macrobiotic teaching, food on Shabbat should be warm. I think there is a conflict here, as macrobiotics seem to suggest food should be eaten warm AND right away (not left on a blech or warming tray for 4 hours). And I wonder how many nutrients a salad-like food such as kale has after 4 hours of re-warming.

My conversation with Klara did spur me on to find this one dish that I liked re-warmed on Shabbat. It is simply mushrooms, onions and something green sauteed in a bit of olive oil.

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1 onion
• 2 boxes of mushrooms, preferably baby bella because they are “meaty”
• a green: parsley, basil, kale, collards, thyme, sage – I used a bit of broccoli rabe

Warm a bit of olive oil. Chop the onion, mushrooms (into slices) and greens (into bits). Saute the onion until translucent. Add the mushrooms. When the mushrooms begin to soften, add your chopped greens. If you don’t add the chopped greens, the recipe will be fine without it. Put it in a small casserole dish (covered) so it can be reheated on Shabbat.

Alternative: use Ilana-Davita’s mushroom recipe. She suggests serving it cold, but if you are in the mood for a warm mushroom dish for your Shabbat meal, this one might work.

Stuffed Squash for Pesach with bits of Matza and Mushroom

The idea for this recipe was to create a tasty food that had no meat, no dairy, no egg and would be filling. And I could eat it on Passover.

Ingredients:

• 1 acorn squash
• 1 box of mushrooms (I used shiitake)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 1 piece whole wheat matza, crumbled into farfel (bite size pieces)
• salt and some herb spice (I used thyme)
• a bit of olive oil for sauteeing

Bake the squash in the oven for at least an hour or until tender. Cut it in half. Take out the seeds. Scoop pieces of the squash to mix with the stuffing (I didn’t do this, but I wish I did). Saute the onion until translucent. Add chopped mushroom and celery; continue cooking until soft. Mix in matza, thyme and bits of squash. Stuff it in the squash. At this point, you can bake it in the oven. However, what I did was put it on the warming tray for 3 hours. Serves two.

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In other news, please enjoy this week’s edition of Haveil Havalim, brought to you by the Real Shaliach. Mother in Israel will be hosting the Kosher Cooking Carnival on her blog this coming Wednesday, April 22. That is why I am taking out the time late on Sunday night to type all this up instead of relaxing downstairs with my husband. When I hit Publish, that’s where I am headed. Have a good night!

Sauteed Mushroom Salad

For this sauteed mushroom salad, I used two kinds of mushrooms: baby bella and shiitake. You can choose any two types that are available to you. Shiitake mushrooms in particular have healing properties.

Ingredients:

• 2 boxes of mushrooms, 2 different types (shiitake and baby bella, for example)
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• lemon juice to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 head of bok choy, chopped (optional – you can substitute other greens)

Sauté the mushrooms in the olive oil for about 15 minutes and until the juices of the mushrooms begin to flow. Add bok choy or other greens (chopped kale, chopped collards, parsley or cabbage are all possibilities to try). Add lemon juice, salt and pepper. Cook until the bok choy softens. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Ratatouille

or Rat-Tat-Too-Eeee as it is pronounced and affectionately called

I enjoy making this delicious, warming dish in the cold winter months. You may also serve it at room temperature.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium sized eggplant (see note below for substitutes)
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 zucchinis
• some mushrooms (optional)
• some red wine (or substitute tomato juice or broth)
• 1 can tomatoes (or use fresh ones if available)
• optional herbs: parsley, basil (I don’t usually have these in the winter)
• optional hot stuff: hot pepper (jalapeno), hot pepper sauce, or schug
• olive oil

Note: if you don’t like eggplant or you don’t eat nightshades, you can use squash, yam or sweet potato instead. The taste is a bit different, but it is delicious all the same.

Cube and stir fry the eggplant in olive oil in a large-bottomed pan (I use a wok-like pan). Alternatively, you can bake the eggplant whole, especially if you have the oven on for other dishes. Then chop the baked eggplant and add after the onions are sauteed. Take the eggplant out of the pan and put aside. Chop and sautee the onions and garlic in olive oil and cook until translucent. Add the mushrooms. When the mushrooms soften, add sliced zucchini and a bit of red wine or other flavorful liquid. Add the cooked eggplant and cover. When the zucchini has softened, add the tomatoes and herbs. May be served warm or at room temperature. Easy to re-heat.

More on nightshades (though I don’t know how you could make this without tomatoes)

Speaking of ratatouille, did any of you see the movie? I thought it was OK, but when it comes to mouse/rat movies, I really preferred the recent The Tale of Despereaux. Anyone see that one or read the book?

Stuffed Squash Revisited

Here’s the stuffed squash I made last week. Using Klara‘s idea of using shitake mushrooms, I sauteed some onions and mushrooms to stuff my squash. I also mixed in some chopped celery and sage from my garden, as well as bits of cooked buttercup squash. I didn’t use any animal products, but I must say I might have found it just a tad tastier if it had either a bit of cheese or some chopped meat. We humans do crave fat. On the other hand, my body felt much better eating it this way, a lighter food.

See my Stuffed Squash Workshop.