Curried Vegetable Chowder of Epic Proportions

Live for them. Love them. I have been a customer of theirs on-and-off for years. When I can afford it, I get shipments of organic vegetables DELIVERED to my house and then life is GOOD, people! Now, due to financial constraints, I am on the every-other-week delivery cycle with Boston Organics. Life is still good...BUT sometimes you have to figure out what to do with a bunch of organic vegetables QUICK before they go bad. This is what I did the other night and it was a thing to rejoice!

Curried Vegetable Chowder
(of epic proportions!)

In fridge/freezer/pantry I found:

• 2 carrots
• 1/4 head of cabbage
• 2 red potatoes
• 1 sweet potato
• broccoli (yuck)
• collard greens (yum)
• 2 onions
• 1 red chili pepper (not sure what kind, but i think it was this)
• a few cloves of garlic
• spices: curry powder, cinammon, cumin, salt, pepper
• olive oil

I also found a large portion of frozen veggie stock I had the foresight to make earlier that week. For a detailed description of how to make your vegetable ends into usable stock, read the play-by-play here.

A quick thing I will add to that epic is leave the skins of your garlic and onions on and also when you take the skins off in your regular cooking, throw em in your stock bag. EVERYTHING goes in except for lemon rind because that will make your stock bitter and inedible. Everything else, fair game. Im talking potato peels here, folks. Also an addendum to Tony's post is - add a shit ton of salt (Can I say shit on the internet? I dunno. I'm sure Dave will bleep me out if need be). (Ed. note: You sure can say shit on the internet. -dave) Like more than you think you need. Just TRUST me on this.

Anyway, now that you have an awesome veggie stock at your disposal, you can move on with your life and make better career choices :). Also, it cures acne.

Things I bought at the store for the curried chowder: Fresh ginger and organic half and half. Amazing! Let's start cooking.

So...take a massive pot and heat up some olive oil. I made a huge pot of soup which I have been eating for days and let me tell you, it gets better every day. So, I probably added about 4 tablespoons of oil to the pot, 2 tablespoons of curry powder, two teaspoons of cinnamon, a teaspoon of cumin, 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and a couple of fierce grinds of black pepper and then turn the heat on low. After the oil spice mixture begins to warm (you can tell by the smell), add the onions, sliced and let them sweat on low while other things happen. I grabbed the ginger, broke off about a half inch, peeled it, minced it, threw it in the pot. Sliced the chili pepper, seeds and all, into the pot and give it a stir. Peeled and minced the garlic, about three cloves, into the pot. At this point in time, your house should be smelling so good that you just cant function.

OK, so stir your aromatics that are in the pot and add the 2 red potatoes diced (don't need to peel, just take out any eyes) and the sweet potato, peeled and diced. Turn the heat up to medium, cover and get those potatoes cooking. Peel your carrots and chop them. I sliced them and found the rounds to be a little imposing, you may want to dice them to the same size as your potatoes. Add them to the pot, stir, make sure nothing's burning, move on. Next, grab that quarter of a head of cabbage, take off the outer leaves if the look suspect and cut off any areas that are starting to brown, shreddddd the cabbage by slicing it thin and throw into the pot, stir. Take your broccoli (yuck), about two big stalks, and start slicing at the top of the florets so the little nibs separate individually and make this heinous vegetable palatable. NO bias here. Once all your florets are macerated, chop a little of the soft, upper part of the stem and save the rest to put into the stock bag. Into the pot, stir.

Okay, folks, we're almost ready. Can you feel the excitement building? Grab your collards and slice about a cup's worth (2 inches, how does one measure collards?), into the pot, big stir, life is good, go grab your stock. Add about a quart of the veggie stock into the pot until the vegetables are covered, but just showing underneath the surface. Add another 2 teaspoons of curry powder (yes, really) another dash of cinnamon, a teaspoon of salt a few more fierce grinds of black pepper an cover. Bring up to a boil and let this mixture boil, covered for about 15-20 minutes until potatoes and carrots are tender. Once this happens, turn off heat and add your half-and-half slowly until you achieve the desired creaminess. I didn't use much-maybe about a cup in total. Stir and taste. Mixture should be just creamy, slightly curried, spicy, delicious and totally like whoa. If this is not the case, add more salt and pepper, maybe another shot of the half-and-half and try again. If it's not amazing at this point then I just don't know. Maybe it's karma from a past life...shake your first at the sky, discard and order pizza.

But anyway, our soup was incredible, spicy, organic, delicious, dinner, lunch, lunch, dinner. So good. Also, google the health benefits of turmeric, found in curry powder, and feel pleased with your meal choice and morally superior to others. I kid. Seriously though, this soup is amazing and life is good.

Until next time,
A

madtasty twenty minute meal

So, I've been having far too many Rachel Ray evenings lately, where I can barely bring myself to cook.  This meal is for me a step up from "my version" of the quick fix that Alana made.  The key is relying on exceptionally tasty (probably very high sodium, I'm afraid to look at the back of the box) rice-in-a-box:

For accents and some protein, I'm all about the crisp green goodness of shoots.  In this case, pea shoots:

 Since everything I make turns into a curry regardless of whatever I'd hoped to make at the start, this time I actually made on on purpose.  Have a look at some of our curry recipes to learn how.  I focused on cauliflower, carrots, white beans and corn in this one.

 The rice takes an exact twenty minutes to simmer, which gives you just enough time to chop vegetables, throw on a medium high heat and get to currying.  And I can't get over how great the pea shoots look when you're plating things.  They look good even if you just use one or two for garnish.  And they last forever in the fridge. 

  But there you go.  Twenty-five minutes from start to finish.  Rachel Ray can go climb a tree.

quinoa, the sneaky protein

So dear readers, today I give you more of an idea than a full on recipe, but please consider this ingredient in your culinary adventures if you haven't already: quinoa. Say it with me: KEEN-WAH. I usually use this kind, you can get it in the fancy organic grain section of your supermarket. Check out its nutritional analysis here (and compare with white rice and couscous). Basically, think of quinoa as an opportunity to put some protein into an otherwise starchy meal. It adds body to soups as well.

In the attached pictures, I added red quinoa to a vegetarian curry for added protein. So if these pictures have managed to put you in the mood, please visit my other curry posts here. Ignore the first post, unless you want to read about that one time I thought it would be a good idea to try making fennel.

(edited to explain accompanying curry photos ... please notice use of quinoa in photo below)

reluctant admission: mad yucky

Vegetarian Curry with Carrots & Roasted Fennel

So apparently the only thing that I make when I'm taking photos is a curry, which means that plenty of you may be bored of them at this point. All I can say is that it was inspired by a recent couples cooking class me & JaBootay took at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, where we got schooled in an array of Indian dishes. I promptly butchered the carrot recipe they used , and well, my fennel was awful. I'm hoping that I can lay out what I did and folks can point out where I went wrong.












The curry came out fine. I used this recipe minus the coconut milk, kidney beans and lentils to focus more on zucchini and potatoes. It worked pretty well. It was hearty without being too spicy. It was also the only pleasant thing I tasted that night, so I might be biased,

The carrots looked great but tasted like burnt. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe a hint of ginger. I think I let them sit too long while I was hoping for the fennel to get better. It didn't. I even tried to do a wine reduction to change the burnt to more of an earthy, herby taste but no dice.

...and the damn fennel. I cut it just like Barbara Kafka said, put it in a roasting dish with a leek, a lot of garlic and some olive oil. But it came out of the oven almost gamy, unpleasant and painful to put in front of guests. If anyone has ever used fennel for good instead of evil, please let me know in the comments.

carrot & zucchini almost-curry

ingredients

• 2 spring onions
• 4 decent sized carrots
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 1 large zucchini
• (i didn't use the red onion in the end so ignore that part of the picture)
• 1 cup of red lentils
• 1 cup of red quinoa
• 3 cloves garlic
• a handful of spinach
• some green beans
  
• 1/4 cup of raw pepitas
• a few poppy seeds for texture
• 1 cup of milk
• basil, salt, paprika, parsley to taste

This impromptu dinner was born of whatever vegetables were at hand, and bears some similarities to the curry I made for you earlier. The garlic and onions go into oil first, then the lentils with the quinoa along with two cups of water. While the water is boiling down, peel and cut the carrots, wash and cut the zucchini.

I probably would have put in straw mushrooms as well, but the love of my life can't stand them so they stayed out. Because these will provide the "meat" of the dish, cut them chunky (carrots) and in thick rounds (zucchini). Next add the milk, the spinach and the green beans. The heat should be medium-high at this point. Season and add seeds. Simmer for another while until the milk is absorbed by (mostly) the zucchini and starts looking like a proper sauce.

Your colours should be tasty looking green, yellow and orange:

I served it with rice this time because I didn't have any greens in the house, but it could also pair well with salad or chicken.

[dave]'s vegetarian curry

ingredients

• 1 cup of red lentils
• 4 medium-large potatoes
• 1 pepper
• 1 large onion
  
• 3 large carrots
• three cloves of garlic
  
• a handful of baby spinach
• 1 can dark red kidney beans
• 1/4 cup of raw sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup of pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup of toasted sesame seeds
• 1 can coconut milk
• cumin, paprika, basil, cilantro to taste

I know we'll have another vegetarian curry up here soon, so I thought I'd throw up (um, ew) my version from a few weeks ago first. Nothing like a bit of competition, right? So first dice the onion fine and throw that and the garlic into oil in a decently large saucepan. When the garlic is nice and permeated and you get that smell all up in your kitchen, throw in the potatoes (which should be cut into smallish chunks and may be boiled beforehand to reduce cooking time). Next put on the lentils and two cups of water, then turn the heat on high so that the water boils down and cooks the lentils while you do more prep work. I cut the pepper into strips rather than dicing it so that there'd be something of a different size to break up the dish visually (left to my own devices I dice and chop everything if not careful). The carrots get peeled and then chopped. The kidney beans get drained and washed.

When the water has boiled down a bit, turn down the heat and throw in those three things along with the spinach and modest amounts of the spices. Sometimes I like to do my seasoning in two stages, reserving judgement for when the dish is nearly done rather than over currying or over chili-ing and not being able to do anything about it. When the whole mess begins to look more like a curry and less like a stirfry, which is typically when the lentils puff up a bit and stop being little red discs, I pour in the coconut milk and add all my seeds. The seeds add a smattering of protein and a whole lot of texture, with the intention of this being a crunchy vegetarian curry. Add the finishing seasonings, simmer for anthother ten minutes or so and serve.

three course vegetarian

Wednesdays often see me cooking something more extravagant than usual since I have at least four guests. A few weeks ago I put together this three course vegetarian option. There are a few short cuts, namely store-bought gnocchi, but overall it plated well and served up a good balance of flavors. The salad is a mainstay of mine, held together by a classic dressing that we'll break down in a future post. The food photography will be an ongoing learning process.

i: curried beans with tomato

ingredients

• 3 shallots
• 3 cloves garlic
  
• 1 red pepper
  
• 1 can of chickpeas
• 1 can of cannellini beans
• 1 large can of tomatoes
• cumin, paprika, garlic salt to taste

instruction

1. simmer garlic in olive oil
2. slice and simmer shallots, then red peppers
   
3. drain and wash beans, add to pan
4. add seasonings, allow beans to "dry" a bit
5. add tomatoes, finish seasoning and serve

ii: gnocchi with pesto & spinach

ingredients

• 1 package of trader joe's gnocchi (a steal at $1.99)
• 2 handfuls of spinach
• two tablespoons of pesto
• butter to taste

instruction

1. boil a big pot of water
2. add gnocchi; they're pre-cooked, so they'll rise in 5 minutes and be cooked in ten
3. drain
4. add butter to frying pan
5. add spinach with a splash of water, then pesto at low heat
   
6. when the pesto and butter have melted, add the gnocchi
7. when the gnocchi seems to be coated in spinachy/butter goodess, remove & serve
   

iii: signature salad, variation one

ingredients

• a significant amount of baby spinach
• 1 red onion
• 1 red pepper
• 3 spring onions
• a handful of raw sunflower seeds
• a handful of raw sesame seeds
• a block of feta
• simple vinaigrette (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, mustard, lemon & salt/pepper)

instruction

1. wash spinach, put in serving bowl
2. cut red onion in generous strips, put in bowl
   
3. dice red pepper & spring onions finely, put in bowl
   
4. cut in feta into cubes of desired size
5. add seeds & dressing
6. toss & serve