Good Morning Hungry people of the internet! It’s our favourite hashtag of the week #tastytuesday ! Time for @foodyfeasts to show off what we made this previous week! Serving up a healthy dose of #foodspiration & #fitspiration at the same time. . A modified dish for a new “kosher-ish” customer (we are not a kosher business but we can certainly maintain kosher rules for our customers) : lemon pepper Basa fillet served with red rice and cauliflower rice served with sautéed peppers and onions. #kosherish #prepmeal #mealprep #healthymealprep #toronto (at Toronto, Ontario) https://www.instagram.com/p/B2OqrL3g_dU/?igshid=19ptqs8ipee6t
A simple vegan meatless one-pot meal with seared mushrooms, chickpeas, spinach and seasonings, topped with sunflower seeds.
I love this site, and I love this recipe. It's simple, vegan, gluten-free, and pleasing to a wide variety of palates.
This is a low-spoon recipe for me because there's no (no!) chopping. The main ingredients do need to be rinsed and drained, however, so either make sure you have prep bowls and space, or quick reflexes!
I find this to be a fairly gentle recipe as far as digestive complaints go, and have even served it to a friend as her first real post-surgery meal. (She loved it.) If you have trouble digesting beans, however, I'd maybe keep this to a side dish. If you can't digest/tolerate alliums (garlic, onions, and the like), you could probably leave the garlic out without losing too much of the richness, because the mushrooms are pretty awesome. You could try experimenting with a little bit of white wine and/or chopped celery and or/celery seed, or use both sweet and smoked paprika.
Note: the recipe calls for a large sauté pan with lid, which I don't technically own. I usually cook this in my stir fry pan (like a wok but flatter) but I have also made it in a 6-qt soup pot when I didn't have anything else. You must have a pot big enough to let the mushrooms fry in a shallow layer and deep enough to hold the mushrooms, chickpeas, and raw spinach. It must have a lid. Beyond that, it doesn't really matter.
Serves 3-ish as a main dish or 6-ish as a side, depending on whether or not you doubled anything. This recipe is extremely forgiving and flexible, so feel free to experiment.
Ingredients
3 tbsp olive oil
8 oz sliced white mushrooms
I often double this because I love mushrooms. I've also made it with 10 oz or 12 oz of mushrooms. Baby bellas also work if they're on sale.
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or more to taste
Meh. You won't miss it if you don't care for spicy things.
1/2 tsp dried basil
Use more if you increase the mushrooms, or you feel like it.
1/2 tsp paprika
Use more if you increase the mushrooms, or you feel like it.
1/2 tsp crushed garlic
I always use 2 to 10 times as much garlic as is called for. I use minced garlic from a jar for everything, because why not? For this recipe, I use a dinner fork's scoop of garlic, which is probably a bit less than 2 tsp.
2 cans chickpeas/garbanzo beans (15 oz. each), drained and rinsed
3 cups spinach or baby kale, tightly packed (5 ounces)
I always use exactly one package of prewashed spinach. I think it's 8 oz.
Use this. It's good. Just don't go overboard or you will drown out the flavor of the actual dish.
Heat olive oil in a sauté pan over medium till hot but not smoking. Place the mushroom slices into the pan. Let them fry undisturbed for 3 minutes. (I always disturb them. What fun is cooking if you can’t poke things with a spoon? But do try to mostly leave them alone. Get your rinsing done now.)
Stir and continue frying till the mushrooms are golden brown. Season with salt and pepper. Add the dry spices. Stir to coat the mushrooms. Add the garlic. Stir and cook for 1 minute till fragrant.
Stir in the chickpeas till all ingredients are well combined. Let the chickpeas heat up for 2 minutes, stirring as they warm.
The recipe here calls for adding 2 tbsp water. I always have liquid in the bottom of the pan, from the wet chickpeas and the cooked mushrooms. If your mixture is bone-dry, add 2 tbsp water now, otherwise, just bring the liquid in the bottom of the pan to a boil, then dump the fresh spinach on top of the chickpeas.
Reduce heat to medium low. Cover the pan and allow spinach to cook for about 5 minutes, or until wilted (sad and shrunken and bright green and limp). Stir the spinach into the chickpeas and mushrooms. Season with more salt and pepper to taste.
Turn heat to medium and let the mixture continue to cook till excess liquid has evaporated. (I generally cook for a few minutes, then get annoyed and turn the heat off and eat it as fast as I can, because the house smells good and I'm hungry. If you don't cook off all the excess liquid, you won't suffer.)
Sprinkle with roasted sunflower seeds (optional, and red pepper flakes, extra optional) and serve
On Mondays, Kristen Swensson of Cheap, Healthy, Good swings by these parts to share a healthy and delicious recipe with us. Today, a new dressing for eggplant. One of the great drawbacks to dieting is the repetition of foods. Often,...
The linked version of this recipe says it’s adapted from the July 2007 issue of Gourmet. I don’t think I’ve ever followed the recipe as written, so here’s my changes.
This is a low-spoon recipe for me because it has minimal prep and almost no active cooking. If you have motor difficulties you might find it more taxing. I also use a rice cooker to cook the quinoa, which speeds things up and makes it easier, but I have done it on the stove with not much more effort.
This recipe is easily doubled, but to make more than double this you will need either a very large rice cooker or to cook the quinoa on the stovetop.
As written, this makes enough for a side for 5-6 people plus leftovers, or a main for at least 3, depending on your variations. It keeps well in the fridge for a few days, and doesn’t need to be reheated. I like it sort of lukewarm but it’s good cold too.
Ingredients
Grated zest and juice of 1 lime
(If you can’t chop or grate easily, sub 2 tbsp bottled/packaged lime juice, or more to taste)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
(Microwave this, or cook on the stove in a nonstick pan over low heat so it doesn’t brown)
If you’re vegan, increase the oil below to 3 tbsp, or replace just the butter with another, richer oil -- avocado oil could be good.
1 tablespoon oil
(I usually use olive; anything without a strong flavor would work)
Salt and cracked black pepper to taste
1 cup dry quinoa, cooked according to package directions
1 (15ish ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 (15ish ounce) can of sweet corn, rinsed and drained
(Could substitute frozen corn or fresh corn chopped from the cob if you’re extra fancy)
2 medium tomatoes or one large beefsteak tomato, diced
If you can’t chop, substitute a cup of pico de gallo here and omit the scallions below.
4 scallions, chopped
(I literally never include this but it’s good if you’re a scallion fan)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
(Freeze dried would probably also work. I also never include this but it is nice)
Cook quinoa according to package directions.*
Shortly before the quinoa is finished, make a dressing by whisking together lime zest and juice, butter, oil, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Don’t throw all the lime juice in at once if you don’t like super tangy dressing like I do -- squeeze half the lime in with the rest of the ingredients, taste, and then add more to your liking.
Dump beans and corn in a large bowl.
Chop tomato (and scallions and cilantro, if you want). Dump these in the bowl with the beans and corn.
When the quinoa is done, dump it in the bowl. Stir everything together.
Pour half the dressing over the mix. Stir everything together. Pour the rest and stir again.
Put in bowls. Eat.
Alternatively: Put in bowls. Top with crumbled corn chips. Eat.
Alternatively: Use as burrito filling. Eat.
Alternatively: Add chopped avocado (and probably a little extra salt?) to the bowl or burrito. Eat.
Alternatively: Substitute the quinoa with cooked ground meat (or half rice and half cooked ground meat). Do the rest as written. For kosher purposes, if you use meat, substitute out the butter as noted for vegans above.
* If you are anti-quinoa, you could substitute another grain -- I’ve done this with brown rice, and other stuff would probably work, but I do like quinoa. (The jury seems to still be out on whether quinoa is a capitalist crime against humanity or colonial beneficence.)
Celiac & Kosher(ish) Food on the go: Wegman’s Sushi
One of the most difficult things about having celiac is finding food when you’re out and about that you can eat safely on the go. Compound that with trying to eat kosher - or at least ‘avoid treif’ - and it becomes nearly impossible.
I eat a lot of bananas when I’m out of the house, I’ll put it that way. Bananas and string cheese.
But! I discovered the other day that there is a solution (as long as, you know, you eat the right kind of seafood and aren’t picking up octopus or anything):
Wegman’s ready-to-eat sushi.
According to the head chef at my local Wegman’s, the following things are true:
None of their sushi uses gluten-containing ingredients including the vinegar, which is rice vinegar, not a malted vinegar (which is pretty common in sushi prep).
Nothing else is prepared where the sushi is prepared (eliminating the likelihood of cross-contamination).
The rice for the sushi is prepared in rice cookers which are only used for the sushi and not for their hot bar food or anything like that.
None of the knives or other utensils used for preparing the sushi are used anywhere else (to avoid ‘raw fish’ cross-contamination - but that’s great for us celiacs bc it means the knives weren’t used on anything containing gluten).
Even the little packets of soy sauce in their sushi containers are gluten-free soy sauce!
Obviously you’ll want to talk to the chef at your local Wegman’s (if you’re lucky enough to live where there is a Wegman’s) to see if this holds true, but I wouldn’t see why it would be different elsewhere. This is a recent change in their labeling and some of their practices - six months ago the soy sauce in the boxes wasn’t gluten-free, I know that for sure - and so I can have kosher(ish) and gluten-free food on the go. It’s not cheap, but, you know, for an occasional ‘ugh we’re out doing errands and I don’t want to go home to make food or drive to Red Robin and spend even more’ it is a good thing to know about!
