Kohlrabi sautee with mustard and Spicy sweet potato fries

Just a tiny inspirational post…

Coarsely grated giant kohlrabi sauteed together with sliced onion on some pumpkinseed oil, with a pinch of salt and mustard mixed in at the end

Sweet potato cut into fries, drizzled with oil, salt and cumin, baked in the oven until crispy, turning at times

Rice pressure cooked with amaranth and sprinkled with gomasio

Store-bought seasoned tempeh baked together with the fries

🙂

Carrot and onion with whole cumin seeds

This is really almost not worth posting, but it was droolworthy in its utter simplicity:

Brown rice

Green peas cooked until creamy with some salt and apple cider vinegar

Sliced caramelized onion, sauteed on oil and whole cumin seeds, then added carrot slices and sauteed some more

The whole cumin seeds add a wonderful fragrant touch I wouldn´t expect and it´s very different than ground cumin 🙂 Anyway, it´s one of my favourite spices!

One-pot rice and black bean dish

One-pot meals are my big love – so soothing, warming, easy to prepare, and so little to clean up afterwards! Oh and a great way to use up any leftovers and odd pieces of vegetables sitting for a long time in the fridge, not to forget that!

Here I tossed into one pot: leftover pressure cooked rice with chestnuts (I was using dried chestnuts, so they were first soaked overnight and then cooked with the rice the usual way), leftover cooked black beans, chunks of carrot and parsley root and hokkaido pumpkin. I seasoned the dish with some nutmeg and ground cumin, and probably some extra salt found its way there too…

Lentil burdock soup

I love lentil soup, it brings this comforting feeling of a cold day, when you can enjoy being inside with a warm bowl of filling hearty soup instead of having to be freezing outside… 😀

For the soup I sauteed some onion half moons on oil and when the onion browned a bit, I added sliced carrot and burdock (best is to make rather thin diagonals that align with the growth pattern of the roots) and sauteed for a while longer. Then I added already cooked dark green French Le Puy lentils. To make the lentils, I soaked them overnight, drained and rinsed. Then I cooked them until soft with a bayleaf and about one teaspoon of cumin powder, and seasoned them with ume plum vinegar when they were already cooked.  To finish the soup I poured enough water into the soup pot  to cover all and cooked for a few minutes, at the end checking the taste and adjusting with ume plum vinegar and salt.

Middle Eastern Lentil Soup

First of all I have to say – sorry for the picture! It´s very hard to take pretty pictures of soup unless you have a good camera and good surroundings/lighting – I have none of that! 😀

Better move on to the recipe!

First sautee half of a bigger onion, chopped into half moons, on some olive oil, with a pinch of salt to bring out juices and sweetness. Then add cubed carrot (one bigger carrot should be enough for two people I am guessing) and sautee for a bit longer. Add half a teaspoon of ground coriander, half a teaspoon of ground cumin and some more salt, stir for a minute. Rinse half a cup of red lentils (I also first soak mine for a couple of hours and discard the soaking water) and add to the pot with vegetables. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer the soup until the lentils are soft, usually red lentils totally desintegrate! 😀 Towards the end I added three cloves of garlic, pressed in  a garlic press, and simmered only shortly so that the garlic flavour is distinct, but if you like milder garlic flavour, add the garlic already at the beginning, use less of it or cook it longer at the end…  Blend the soup with an immersion blender or regular blender to get a creamy smooth consistency. Serve drizzled with a little bit of olive oil.

Cumin flavoured seitan and glazed sweet and sour beets

I just love how the colours combine in this dish, so elegant! And the seitan tempura is rich enough to satisfy even those who think macrobiotics is a very bland tasteless diet.

For the tempura I covered the seitan chunks in a batter made of wholewheat flour mixed 50:50 with organic white flour, water, a pinch of salt, a pinch of aluminum-free baking powder (adds extra crunch) and the secret ingredient – cumin powder. Add as much as you think is suitable for your condition and tastebuds 😀 The more you add, the more tasty the seitan will be, of course, but don´t go overboard. The batter should not be runny so that it doesn´t slide off. Deep-fry each piece in hot oil and place on napkinks to soak excess oil.

For the glazed beets cook sliced beet (or bite-sized chunks) slowly in a small pot on a low flame with water to barely cover and a good pinch of salt. Towards the end season with mirin (rice cooking wine), ume plum vinegar and rice vinegar, the beets should be a bit more tart than sweet. Mix a spoon of kuzu starch in a bit of cold water and add at the very end, while stirring to prevent lumps, be sure to let the kuzu boil for a while and thicken.

I served the meal with a pressure cooked rice/barley mixture with gomasio and quickly water-sauteed greens (curly cabbage and white cabbage with some salt and dried oregano to lightly flavour).

Millet pilaf

I reeeally love millet made into a pilaf, I rarely use millet as a simple sidedish grain as it tends to be a bit too boring on its own. Unless it´s sweet millet, the sticky variety with larger grains, that one I truly love, especially with chunks of pumpkin 😀

For the pilaf I first dry roast the millet for a few minutes until it releases a nutty flavour and gets a deeper golden color (first wash it thoroughly in a strainer though to get rid of the millet´s natural bitterness!), then I add the prepared veggies – in this case chunks of carrot and burdock root, plus chopped up garlic and a generous amount of sesame seeds. On a separate pan I sautee (on a teeny bit of olive oil) coarsely sliced (into squares or rectangles) pointed cabbage, red cabbage and leek, seasoned with cumin and grounded coriander. When the millet with the veggies are both a bit roasted, I add water (1:3 grain:water), cover with a lid and simmer at least 20 minutes. It´s good to let the millet rest under the lid after it´s off the flame, for a few minutes, so it can soak up the remaining water and unstick from the bottom of the pot. Then you can mix in the oil-sauteed vegetables, and if you want, you can add dry roasted almonds, or rucola (arugula) or chopped fresh parsley or all (like I did) 😀