Inspired by Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood and the 3 Bean Salad (edamame/kidney/garbanzo) by Jason’s Deli. At the risk of sounding snooty, I must say I was rather impressed by the latter. Jason’s Deli – you exceeded by expectations for quality and innovation. Quinoa in mainstream, fast food fare – didn’t see that coming.

Ingredients:

1 c. vegetable stock
1/2 c. red quinoa
1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained & rinsed (be sure to remove any shells)
1 can kidney beans, drained & rinsed
1 c. edamame beans, boiled & drained (I use ones from the freezer section)
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 hatch chile pepper, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1/4 c. cilantro, diced/torn into small pieces
1/2 c. apple cider vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. dried Mexican oregano
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Method:

In a medium saucepan, bring vegetable stock to a boil. Add quinoa, cover and boil gently for ~10 minutes. Remove from burner and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile in a large (large!) bowl mix freshly cut peppers, celery, onion, and cilantro.  Add edamame, kidney beans, garbanzo beans, and finally quinoa.  Mix well – gentle hands to just fine.

In a separate small bowl, whisk together apple cider vingar, olive oil, garlic, oregano, & black pepper.  Pour dressing evenly over beans & vegetables, and using a large spoon mix well.

Can be served immediately, or refrigerate until ready to serve.

Makes 10-12 servings.

I love the look of lentils, especially a mix of red (coral), yellow and brown lentils with beautiful green split peas.  The mixture reminds me of confetti.

See. I think you can even throw it at people like confetti without it hurting too much. Of course, then you can’t eat those lentils which is a definite drawback.

It’s cold again here in Houston; they’re forecasting another freeze with an outside possibility of sleet or snow.  What a long, cold winter.  In these days I can’t seem to get warm no matter what, I’ve taken to using warm beverages and soups to heat myself up from the inside.  Soup, in particular, is a great choice because it’s often nutritious, filling, and relatively low in calories. I can’t say enough good things about soup.

I also love lentils – they’re nutritional power houses with more protein than fish (26 g vs. fish’s 18-21g), a day’s worth of fiber (31g), and 60% of my daily iron.  I find that when I eat lentils for lunch, I’m not really hungry the rest of the day.  I’ve been nourished.

And the split peas give the soup that extra texture and that je ne sais quoi that transforms an okay dish to something with a little more zing.

The base for lentil & split pea is similar to a lot of soups – onions sauteed in olive oil. You can use celery too if you want.  These onions are finely chopped so they’re not bigger than our lentils. I’m also using sliced up baby carrots, but you can use finely diced regular carrots if that works better for you.

While that’s cooking, I get to play with my lentils a bit more.  Behold, lentil & split green pea porn:

(That’ll drive some site traffic!)

What’s different about this recipe than many others is the paprika and saffron, which gives the soup a nice Spanish flavor.  Having company? This is a great dish to make before your guests arrive. Your house will smell warm, inviting, and serene.

The world’s most expensive spice is saffron.  This is Kashmir Mogra saffron from Penzey’s Spices - the finest of the finest. (Everyone else must’ve heard about how awesome it is because it’s not available right now. I’m sure that their regular Spanish Superior saffron is very good.  Penzey’s is the best source for excellent quality spices.)

Wha? You think saffron’s too much of a splurge?  We’re having BEANS for dinner; the least we can do is punch them up with a little fine saffron. The whole meal’s still less than $4, and half of that is the vegetable broth that makes this really a soup.

Speaking of vegetable broth, even though my preferred broth (Central Market Vegetarian Vegetable Broth) uses 50% less sodium than other comparable vegetable broths, I find that my foods can still easily end up with too much sodium.  And we know what happens then: BLOATING like a camel the next day.  No thanks.  So, I work with the sodium inside the broth and don’t add additional salt. And it all turns out fine.

The only drawback to cooking with lentils is they aren’t as colorful and vibrant cooked as they are uncooked.  C’est la vie. Certainly they make up in taste for what they lose in beauty.

The whole meal is ready in under an hour.  Lentils are done in 20 minutes, but the split peas take a bit longer to cook.

The house smells heavenly.

Lentil & Split Pea Soup with Paprika & Saffron

(makes 4 servings)

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons Olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
10 baby carrots, sliced into discs
4 cloves garlic, finely diced
2 teaspoons paprika
1 pinch saffron
4 cups vegetable broth
1 cup equal parts dried red, yellow, and brown lentils plus green split peas (~1/4 cup each)
freshly ground pepper, to taste
1 bay leaf

Method

1. On medium heat, saute onion and carrot for approximately 5 minutes or until onions are translucent.
2. Add garlic, paprika, and saffron, carefully mixing with the onion/carrot mixture.  Cook ~1 minute or until aroma begins to release.
3. Stir in vegetable broth, then add lentils & split peas and bay leaf to the mixture.  Mix well.
4. Bring ingredients to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Cover pot and simmer for ~40 minutes, checking periodically.  If needed, add additional vegetable broth. Cooked lentils are fragile so be careful not to over stir.

The dish is ready when the split green peas are soft.  A little soup goes a long way, so serve in small bowls.

Enjoy!

Last weekend my in-laws came over to have breakfast with us before helping out on some stuff for our respective companies.  (Graham may have been replaced by his mother as the best assistant ever. He’s understandingly disappointed, but he’s hoping for other C-level opportunities inside the same company. For her party, Marcia may be promoted.)

Not sure what to make, and not too keen to venture over to the grocery store, I made cinnamon rolls with ingredients I had on hand. I mixed dough together Friday night using 1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour and 2 cups all purpose flour — a bold move considering I’d never eaten a whole wheat cinnamon roll and was going to be serving them to my in-laws.*  I really wasn’t sure how it would turn out.

* I should mention my sister-in-law is an award winning pastry chef and my mother-in-law an accomplished cook herself. I’m amateursville compared to these ladies.  AND YET, I make bold moves like whole wheat flour substitution, a move of distinct culinary chutzpah.

I let the dough rise overnight in the fridge; the next morning I got up early and rolled it out.

I’m a huge fan of Penzey’s Spices and they’ve got a huge collection of cinnamon varietals.  Have you ever compared cinnamon?  If not, you should. It’s a fun, enlightening activity (for kids and adults!) that’s really worthy of its own blog post. Anyway, I had Chinese Cassia, Ceylon, and Vietnamese cinnamon on hand.  Generally my favorite (hands down) is Vietnamese cinnamon, but I had a bottle of Chinese Cassia with a broken lid.  And since it’s recommended for cinnamon rolls anyway, that’s what I went with.

Had I to do it all over again, I’d double – maybe triple – the amount of cinnamon. Graham and I love tasting cinnamon rolls from everywhere we can, and one of our favorites is from – are you ready – IKEA.  Seriously.  It’s not the dough, which is somewhat bland and unmemorable; it’s not the icing, which is passable but not extraordinary.  It’s the liberal use of cinnamon that gives IKEA cinnamon rolls their real zing….. (And probably why they sell so many.  The siren call of cinnamon rolls cooking in IKEA while you shop. Brilliant!)

I had hazelnuts on hand from the holidays, so instead of Texas pecans or walnuts I added the leftover hazelnuts.  Not sure, I’d do that again because hazelnuts are so strong.  Paired with the whole wheat dough – itself a distinct flavor – the combination completely overpowers the already lacking cinnamon.

I also added golden raisins, mostly because that’s what we had.  (Must be economical!)  I didn’t notice a difference.

You can’t see it here, but it took me a bit to get the right thickness on cutting the cinnamon rolls. The recipe I followed directed me to cut the dough into 15 equal cuts, but I set aside a portion of the dough (there’s just so many cinnamon rolls 4 people should eat in the course of a week), so I wasn’t sure on the desired thickness. In the end, I was most pleased with a 1.5″ thickness.

Bake, bake, bake, bake – DING! The result:

We can’t forget the icing! I totally MADE UP my icing recipe using powdered sugar and leftover maple syrup – introducing yet a third distinct flavor to work with the whole wheat and hazelnuts. Maple’s probably great with whole wheat and cinnamon (for sure!), but again the hazelnuts hung us up here.  Also, because I free-formed the recipe, we could taste the powered sugar. I wonder if that’s why some recipes introduce vanilla and milk (sometimes even coffee!) into the icing recipe instead of just using powdered sugar and maple syrup.

Don’t my cinnamon rolls look yummy?!

There’s a lot of promise here.  The dough, first of all, is nice and flavorful.  My father-in-law’s first comment: “Marsh! They’re whole wheat!” I took that as a vote of confidence – no need to throw out the frozen portion of dough, though in future iterations I’ll have to come up with a way for it to be less “yeasty” as Graham put it.  The hazelnuts are a no-go.  Increase the cinnamon A LOT. Consider following a recipe for the maple icing.

Otherwise – hooray, cinnamon rolls!

As I mentioned last week, I’m a huge fan of soup for dinner. It’s easy to make, good for the waistline, and good for the body. And it’s just the thing for the cool fall/winter nights. (Yes, even though I’m in Houston, it gets a bit chilly here. To be sure, it’s no Iowa, but overnight temps now regularly visit the 30′s.)

A Texas favorite is tortilla soup. For years, I missed out on it in restaurants and “easy-make” versions, though, because my strict vegetarian food choices conflicted with the liberal use of chicken and chicken stock in most recipes. Even once I added fish and discovered a meat-free version at a local fine grocery store, I still felt the meal lacked “umph.” A couple of veggies, some veggie broth, and oodles of boiled tortilla shells isn’t exactly the bastion of nutrition.

Imagine my delight when, strolling the soup aisles during a recent visit to Central Market, I discovered South of the Border Tortilla Soup by Frontier Soups. No chicken broth listed in the ingredients, and a substantial base corn and black beans. Sweet.

South of the Border Tortilla Soup (Frontier Soups) - Our tortilla soup mix is a sure-fire winner! This chicken tortilla soup is so good it may call for a party. Add chicken, salsa and chips for this Mexican specialty. ($6)

I modified the directions on back, and boiled the ingredients in vegetable broth instead of chicken broth. I made Graham a separate pot of boiled, shredded chicken to include in his bowl, but I wondered if there was something more I could add to give it a bit of umph for me. Since I added fish into my diet a year ago, I wondered if a bit of shrimp would work. (Until now, I’d never heard of shrimp tortilla soup. This version sure looks good too, doesn’t it? )

The choice of salsa the recipe calls for is huge. I used a roasted habanero salsa that was HOT, but added a nice roasted flavor to the meal. This particular salsa was completely pureed, so we did not have small bits of tomato floating about in the soup. The 8 oz of salsa the recipe calls for (about 1/2 a jar) is really a matter entirely of personal choice, and I could envision a scenario where I made each batch of this soup differently.

The soup itself cooks up nicely. In previous soups I’ve used with dehydrated black beans, despite cooking for the prescribed time period, the black beans remain grainy and dehydrated. Not so with the Frontier Soups version, which cook up quite nicely and provide an extra bit of fiber to the meal.

As for the addition of shrimp, that stroke of genius worked out marvelously.

Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup

Shortly after we married, Graham found an article in the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of soup. High in volume, but low in calories. From my perspective, soup’s also a huge time saver. I can easily make a couple of different pots over the weekend, and because the flavors have time to meld, they taste even better on Tuesday than on Sunday. Plus I always know what we can have for dinner on weeknights, and reheating is fast and easy. If I want, I can also easily freeze individual servings, though I always wait until after the flavors meld.

This is particularly true of one of my very favorites – Spicy Black & Red Bean Fire Roasted Soup. It’ll warm you to your bones in the winter months, but its hearty enough that I feel like I got some good protein and fiber for dinner.

I have my aunt to thank for the recipe. Years ago, she sent me a recipe from the the November 1998 Cooking Light magazine. I modified the recipe, adding in jalapeno and chili powder for a bit of extra kick, and using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock to make it vegetarian friendly. My Texas sensibilities cannot fathom the canned chopped green chilies in the original version, so I opt for 1-2 fresh jalapenos instead. The final version is a vegan, and packed with fiber and flavor.

Ingredients:

Ingredients: black beans, kidney beans, no-salt diced tomatoes, fire roasted tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, garlic (not pictured), olive oil, vegetable broth, salt, pepper, chili powder. OPTIONAL: fresh crinkle cut carrots, frozen whole kernel corn.

You’ll need 1 can each:

• Organic Black Beans
• Organic Kidney Beans
• Muir Glen Organic No-Salt Added Diced Tomatoes
• Muir Glen Organic Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilies

The most important ingredient: Muir Glen Organic Fire Roast Tomatoes with Green Chilies

I’ve tried other Fire Roasted Tomatoes on the market, and every one seems to fall short of Muir Glen’s flavor. The only problem is that they can be a little hard to find. Locally, they’re available at Central Market. If you love the recipe as much as I do, buy in bulk on amazon, where a pack of 12 cans will cost you $24.80 – a great deal. In a pinch, you can also use a can of Rotel Tomatoes with Green Chilies, but the result won’t have the fire roasted taste that really kicks the recipe up a notch. You’ll still have lots of good flavor though.

You’ll also need these fresh, whole ingredients:

• 1/2 yellow onion, diced
• 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how much heat you like)
• 2 tsp minced garlic (not pictured)
• 2 TBSP olive oil
• 3 cups vegetarian vegetable broth
• dash salt
• pepper to taste
• 2 TBSP Penzey’s medium chili powder

You can also use any of these optional ingredients

• 1 cup fresh crinkle cut carrots
• 1/2 cup frozen whole kernel corn

Enjoy!