Deb's Lunch ... and dinner and breakfast too » rice

Dinner at the Co-op Board Meeting

DebS — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:39:20 +0000

The head chef at the co-op went all out to create an upscale vegan dinner for us: Himalayan red rice, with a squash and coconut milk stew to ladle over; red peppers stuffed with walnuts, corn, and I think a soy product; and a spinach salad with roasted tomatoes, portobello mushrooms and a basil balsamic vinaigrette.

The stew was nicely spicy, and coconut-ty, like Thai curry; the salad was just fine, but the peppers were the tastiest – I didn’t even take one on the first pass through the food line, but then went back for a half, and another half.

Now the main problem is that I saw Peter Gabriel on Letterman one night last week, and he did (a pretty impressive version of, a full orchestra and like 27 people on stage) his song Red Rain, and on the mention of red rice the song starts going through my head. Good thing I like it OK.

Red rice in a bag on the counter

Thai Red Curry

DebS — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 03:01:58 +0000

Used up the patty pan squash and spinach from my veggie box. This is the type of recipe where you’re supposed to mix Thai curry paste – that you’ve either prepared yourself, or, like I did tonight, spooned out of a jar – with canned coconut milk to make the sauce, then add meat or fish or vegetables. I always think the sauce is too thin, and I like to saute the meat or vegetable, rather than simmering, boiling really, in the sauce. This recipe called for sweet potato and tofu and spinach. Since sweet potato is sweeter than the patty pan that I was using, I browned tofu, like this tofu topping (minus the scallions). I dumped the tofu out of the skillet, cooked the onion and the patty pan, and dumped those out, too. I mixed coconut milk, Thai curry paste, and some veggie broth in the skillet for the sauce, and then I let that mixture boil down til it reduced and thickened. I put in one spoonful of the peanut butter and melted it, and then added the veggies back to the pan. Last addition was about half a pound of spinach, stemmed and cleaned. When that was wilted, voila, dinner – over rice.

Thai curry

Finally used

DebS — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:22:59 +0000

There was this container of cooked brown rice sitting in the fridge forever, and I was itching to use it up. I tried on a few tentative plans for it for size, but they were all falling into the category of when you buy $20 of additional ingredients to use up 97 cents of leftover food. The compost was starting to look like the best option. Finally, on Monday I got home from a contentious meeting on whether the food co-op should build another driveway, and turned it into sweet sour brown rice with mushrooms and cashews. This is based on a recipe of Mollie Katzen’s. In the original Enchanted Broccoli Forest (1982), she had a recipe for sweet & sour tofu with mushroom and cashews. The sauce was made out of lemon juice, soy sauce, tomato paste and honey, seasoned with ginger and garlic. To me, the combo was somehow especially delicious, and it was something my kids (who didn’t come along until later in the ’80s, 1987 & 1988) would eat, too. In the rewrite (2000), Mollie changed the recipe all around, to include pineapple and oranges – I have never tried it – it might be equally delicious – but doesn’t have the appeal to me of the old version, so I’ve had to keep my old, cover detached copy of the book.

Sweet & Sour Brown Rice with Mushrooms and Cashews

1/4 cup lemon juice
2 TBLS soy sauce
1/4 cup water
3 TBLS – 1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup tomato paste
half a large onion, sliced
2 TBLS minced ginger
2 garlic cloves, smashed or put through a press
2 TBLS vegetable oil
2 carrots, peeled and sliced thin
3-4 cups of sliced mushrooms
3-4 cups of cooked brown rice
3/4 cup roasted cashews

For the sauce, whisk together the lemon juice, soy sauce, water, honey and tomato paste in a small bowl and set aside. Pour the oil into a wide skillet and heat. Add the onion, garlic, and ginger, salt them, and stir fry until softened. Add the carrots, and cook them until they’re softened, and then add the mushrooms. Mix all together and cook for a few minutes until the vegetables are releasing their juices. Add the rice, mix again, and then make a well in the center and add the sauce. Mix well, and cook until the rice has soaked up the sauce and everything is nicely combined. You can cover it for a few minutes if you like – you can cover it earlier to help the carrots get done, too. Add the cashews, mix well, and eat.

Be sure to really mince (or grate) the ginger – I was in too much of a hurry to chop it small enough, and biting into those big ginger pieces is not fun – that’s what those bits on the side of my empty bowl are – picked out ginger.

The hazards of eating

DebS — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:13:02 +0000

I’m sitting at the hair salon listening to the singer from 10,000 maniacs – oh Natalie Merchant; only took me 2 hours to recall her name – with a lotta horns behind her, dabbling at my bleeding mouth. I wolfed a slice of toast in between getting home from work and getting in the car to drive here. The crust of the toast stabbed the corner of my mouth and it bled – my mouth that is, not the toast – a shocking amount. It was my home made bread, with Swiss cheese and Siracha, so I still enjoyed the toast despite the blood. I have always been sort of disappointed at how difficult it is to put me off food - I wish I was a frailer flower, or someone who could just forget to eat – I’m sure I’d be pounds lighter. I almost always eat.

Case in point, I came home from the haircut and enjoyed a light pre-symphony supper of chex mix, tea, and rice pudding. I could blame some of this on a non-drinking boyfriend – but that wouldn’t be very nice. Maybe I should just say it’s because we’re Midwestern hicks. Other, more sophisticated people, would head downtown and have a pre-symphony cocktail at the art museum, but not us. Not tonight, anyhow. The pudding’s from Waitrose, maybe that ups our sophisticate rating just a touch …

Slow baked rice pudding

Dinners en famille

DebS — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:31:26 +0000

This weekend is supposed to be a somewhat cooking-free one for me. Plus I’ve been trying to clean out old stuff from closets, use up leftovers, etc.

Last night (Friday) I made mulligatawny soup, from a recipe I printed out from Cooking Light years ago. I’ve let my Cooking Light subscription lapse; I wonder if I could still link to it – let’s see – yep, here it is, not to mention various and sundry other re-posts.

I made the soup with chicken pulled from 5 chicken thighs, that I had cooked according to a recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking – Shahi murgh, Royal Chicken Cooked in Yogurt – Sunday night. I bought this cookbook because it was recommended by the TidBits folks, Adam & Tonya Engst, way back in 1999, when their son, Tristan, was new (he is now about 10 years old) as a good resource for cooking quick, family dinners when both of you work (and, if you scroll down on the worldCat page for the book linked to above, Adam’s Amazon review from 1999 is still there). I added some additional spices, cinnamon & coriander, and lemon juice and a spoonful of honey. I made a salad, with lettuce leftover from the one-dish dinner, doused with a bit too much of the Cafe Flora ranch dressing, and topped with a bit too much of the leftover corn and roasted squash cubes that were an enchilada filling – kind of soggy, but eliminating dribs and drabs of this and that from my fridge. And I hauled an envelope of pappadums out of the pantry closet and microwaved them to crispyness.

Stack o' Pappadums

Continuing my clearing and cleaning craze, tonight we had fried rice, leftover from Tuesday night, supplemented with these good egg rolls that the co-op sells, LingLing brand

Ling Ling brand cute panda

Dead of winter

DebS — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 04:27:00 +0000

So all the weather guys are talking about how the whole world’s in the deep freeze – even Letterman just made a joke about how they should let Rush Limbaugh out of the hospital because we could use the hot air.

I made fried rice for dinner – looks like I posted my recipe a little over a year ago.

Fried rice at the kitchen counter, Nov. 2008

I made it pretty much the same tonight but with tofu instead of chicken – I bought a package of some kind of Asian seasoned tofu because I thought it’d be nice & chewy. Instead it was soft and cooked liver-like in texture. Don’t think I’ll buy that kind again – it was WestSoy – the company doesn’t even list it on their web site.

Instead of eating my fried rice seated at the kitchen counter with a beer, while reading the New Yorker, I sat on the couch and watched Johnny Depp in Public Enemies. I still enjoyed the beer – a Hopalicious, local microbrew, that I usually find a little bitter, but it was good with the rice. My cats were just as desparate as always to get a taste of the rice, too.

posted from my iPhone