Last week, my new cookbook finally arrived. Until this point, I had been entertaining myself by trying to learn how to cook brown rice (I refuse to break down and buy a rice cooker until I can cook it in a pot) and futzing around with ad-hoc creations made with beans, lentils and tofu drenched in sesame oil and soy sauce. (Rule of thumb--everything is tasty when drenched in sesame oil and soy sauce. Even tofu). Anyway, cookbook was here so it was time to start working my way through it.
Just to clarify, though my friend did present this as a Julie and Julia type of thing, given that this cookbook contains over 1300 recipes, and since I have a rather time intensive job, and since there is a limit to just how much I can eat, it is reasonable to assume that I will not be really working my way through it. I'm aiming for a bunch of recipes. As of now, I have officially tried one recipe and it is yummy. The various editorial comments--the ones that don't really sound like they would normally appear in a cookbook? Mine.
I halved
most of the ingredients below because I only wanted three portions as opposed to
the 4-6 is supposed to produce.
2 tbsp oil
1 large
onion, sliced
2 medium
green peppers, cut in strips
2 tsp minced
fresh hot chili pepper or ¼ tsp cayenne (optional—but if you leave it out you
are either a total loser, a non-enlightened Ashkenazi or some combination
thereof)
4 cups
canned tomato pulp or drained stewed tomatoes (I used four chopped, fresh tomatoes;
I would have used eight for the full recipe—and ½ cup water)
1 pound
carrots, cut into thick coins (I didn’t halve this item. I like my carrots. For that matter, I didn't halve the chili pepper either.)
½ tsp salt
(I used more and I added random amounts of cumin and turmeric. And perhaps some dried garlic. It’s hard to
say. It’s all a blur.)
3-5 cups
cooked grain
Heat oil in
a 3 quart pot. And sauté onion and peppers until limp or until the onion is starting to burn and need to add the other ingredients even though the peppers aren’t
limp yet so that you don’t have to steel wool the damn pot again. Whichever
comes first.
Add tomato,
carrots and salt (and other spices) bring to a boil, cover and simmer over low
heat until carrots are tender, 30 to 40 minutes.
If sauce is
too liquid, remove cover and boil gently to thicken or remove from heat and
stir in 2 to 3 teaspoons nutritional yeast (doesn’t exist here in Israel) as
needed, to thicken.
Serve over
grain.
They
suggested serving a bean accompaniment and a side of yogurt, or alternatively,
adding beans to the dish. I went with
the latter and added ½ cup white beans and served over (only half fuzzy) ½ cup brown
rice. Since I was pretty generous with
the chili pepper, after I heated my portion up for lunch, I mixed in a very heaping
spoon (about 60 grams) of 5% soft white cheese (g’vina levana). Yum!
As noted
above, I halved all of the ingredients apart from the carrots. If I were to
make it again, but the full recipe, I would double the carrots. Also, I didn’t
need to add the ½ cup water; the chopped tomatoes had enough moisture. Still
came out very well.