White Bean & Black Rice Soup with Kale

My friend Linda gave me a recipe recently for Chickpea & Rice Soup With a Little Kale.  I made it this weekend for our lunches and dinners this week with some white beans I had on hand and black forbidden rice. That's why mine came out more like a brown sauce stew than soup.  I thickened it with the cashews creme and it came out very nice.  It's a nice hearty stew that will warm the bones in the cold weather this week.  This recipe can be made with just about any beans and your favorite brown rice.

Here's the recipe the way I made it.

White Bean & Black Rice Soup with Kale

I cooked 1 cup and a half of white great northern beans that I soaked for about six hours in a quart of low sodium vegetable broth.  I cooked them until tender and the liquid was most absorbed.  Canned beans may be used - 1 24 ounce can white beans drained and rinsed.

3/4 cup cashews, soaked in 2 hours or overnight
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt
Fresh ground black pepper
3/4 cup forbidden rice
3 ribs celery, thinly sliced
1 cup carrots, diced chunky
5 cups vegetable broth (may need more depending on the desired consistency)

Thinly sliced green onion for garnish

Drain the cashews and place them in a blender with one cup of fresh filtered water.  Blend until completely smooth, scraping the sides of the food processor or blender.

In a large soup pot saute onion in a couple tablespoons water, adding 1 tablespoon at a time to keep from sticking to the pot until translucent.  Add garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and saute a couple minutes more.

Add rice, celery, and carrots and then pour in the broth.  Cover and bring to a boil.  Once boiling, bring down to a simmer, add the beans, and let cook for about 20 - 25 minutes until rice is cooked and carrots are tender.

Add the cashew creme and kale, and simmer until kale is wilted, 3 to 5 minutes more.  You may need to add more vegetable broth or water to the soup if it seems to thick.  Serve topped with sliced green onions.

Veggie Potluck & Potato Corn Chowder

It's been a few months since we've had a vegan/vegetarian potluck in Longview.  We had to find a new home, so we ended up skipping a couple months.  The Youth & Family Link building worked out very well, it's almost too big, but we now have room to grow.  We were starting to get a little squeezed in the produce store.  There were about thirty people together for an excellent meal. We had a nice variety of choices of savory dishes, salads, and desserts.  One of my favorites was a potato corn chowder which I promptly recreated today.  It's so creamy and warm, a perfect rainy day meal.  We caught up with some old friends and met a few new people.  Don Merrick from Northwest Veg came and spoke to us about corporate structures of the food industry and filled us in on some of the specifics and progression of the GMO issues.  Everyone seemed to enjoy dinner and a couple of folks were happy to find something like this in town and said they'd be back again.  Our next potluck is March 23.

 



Potato Corn Chowder
Makes 8 cups
Use 3.5-7 qt. cooker

#1  Blend the following ingredients in a blender 1-2 minutes, until very smooth.  Pour into slow cooker.

1/2 cup water
1/2 cup raw cashews, soaked two hours
1/3 cup pimento
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
3 tablespoons quick or rolled oats
3 tablespoons Vegan chiken seasoning
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste

#2  Rinse the blender with 2 1/2 cups water and add to the cooker.

#3  Add the following ingredients to the cooker and cook until the potatoes are tender.  Average cooker about 4-5 hours on lowest setting.

3 cups peeled potatoes cut into 1/2" cubes
2 cups frozen organic corn
2 cups finely chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion

Garnish with dried parsley, chopped fresh parsley, or chopped green onions.  Add a little non dairy milk or water if the chowder is too thick.

Apple Fig Crisp with Coconut Cashew Vanilla Creme

Last summer my friend Mary told me of a fig tree that was just loaded with ripe figs.  We promptly went to work picking and drying figs that weekend.  I am really glad I did.  I've store my dried figs in the freezer to keep them from molding.  Dried fruit has a shelf life too no matter how well you keep it.  Some fruit seems to do very well when I store it in the freezer.  I took some out and re-hydrated them in filtered water overnight.  They worked out fine, beautiful sweet figs in January.  I made a nice big apple fig crisp.  It was very easy.

Fig and Apple Crisp

1 1/4 cups dried figs, stems removed and diced
1/2 cup apple cider or fresh apple juice
3/4 cup spelt or whole wheat pastry flour + 2 tablespoons
3/4 cup turbinado sugar + 2 tablespoons (your favorite dry sweetener will work)
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
6 tablespoons vegan margarine, I used Organic Earth Balance
3/4 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped
2 pounds Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and sliced 1/2 inch thick

Combine the figs and apple cider in a large bowl and let stand 30 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally. This will work fine with more moist dried figs, but if they are very dry like mine are, I would soak them for 2 - 4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350º

To make the topping, whisk the 3/4 cup flour, 3/4 cup sugar and spices together in a medium bowl.  Using a pastry cutter, a fork, or your fingertips, blend in the margarine until the mixture is crumbly and forms moist clumps.  Stir in the pecans.

Mix the apples, 2 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of sugar into the figs.  Transfer the mixture into a lightly oiled 8 x 8 x 2 baking dish.  Bake for 40 minutes, then cover loosely with foil and continue to bake until the apples are very tender, about 20 minutes longer.

Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

I made a quick vegan cream I like using the solid potion of a can of chilled coconut milk.  I put the coconut creme in my blender with about a half cup of cashews, the seeds from half a vanilla bean, and about a cup of powdered sugar.  I used about 2 tablespoons of the liquid coconut milk to get the desired texture.  Then I chilled it for about an hour to thicken a little.  Very Nice.

Penne Pasta with Mushroom Onion Gravy & Marinated Tofu

Sunday was another warm day inside watching it rain.  I managed to create a couple more items for our meals this week.  I am enjoying the place I've gotten to with vegan cooking.  It's as natural to me now to put together a meal by looking around the kitchen at the supplies on hand as it was when we were not vegan. I remember being able to tell someone how to cook a chicken a hundred different ways off the top of my head or create a fun dessert.  But put together a variety of vegan meals for the whole week was not easy at first.  I had no idea how to satisfy the appetite or how to get the right nutrients.  Very nice we have the internet now, I didn't have it in the beginning of this journey.  I've read so much and been able to attend educational functions by wandering around the vegan websites and blogs. I think that may have been how my husband found the first immersion cooking class I took with Chef Al in 2006.

I looked around the kitchen at what we had.  It didn't take long for an idea to emerge. I put together a nice pasta dish with a mushroom and onion sauce.  I started by sautéing a couple sliced Portabello mushrooms just until they were browned on both sides.  I used just a teaspoon of olive oil in the pan and didn't add salt until I turned them.  Somewhere I learned that the salt would bring out the moisture too much and they don't brown as well. Better to put the salt on after the browning.  I also had some super firm tofu around so I cubed it, marinated it in a little tamari, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar for about 15 minutes and sautéed those cubes as well.  I removed them from the pan and added a couple tablespoons of filtered water to sauté my onions.  I used two large onions, sliced thinly in half moons.  Added to the onions was four cloves of garlic, minced.  I cooked the onions and garlic until they were nicely caramelized adding water 1 tablespoon at a time to keep them from sticking to the pan.


To the onion mixture I added:

1/4 cup wheat free tamari
2 cups filtered water
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
about a quarter teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
a dash of cayenne

I let that simmer for a couple minutes and then added a roux I made with 2 tablespoons spelt flour and 2 tablespoons olive oil.  I added the browned mushrooms and tofu cubes back into the pan and let it all simmer and get thick, about 5 minutes.  I also had some organic peas in the freezer, thought that would be a nice touch so I threw them in too. I mixed all the sauce with a pot of hot penne pasta.  An easy vegan meal with everything I need:  protein, grains, and veggies.

And it's really good warmed up today.