Posts Tagged beans
Friday Feast: Carrot, Pineapple and Soybean Stir-fry
Ok, I know this combination of ingredients sounds weird, but it’s good, trust me. This is one of Yankee Elv’s recipes, and she first made it while she was in the USA. I think it’s some kind of weird US North Pacific Rim fusion sort of meal. Anyway, it’s really easy and tastes great, so give it a go!
Carrot, Soybean, and Pineapple Stirfry
Carrot, Pineapple and Soybean Stir-fry, with rice.
Ingredients:
• 2 tablespoon oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (or as much as you want)
• 2 medium carrots, sliced
• 1 240g (8oz) can pineapple chunks WITH juice – don’t drain
• 1 – 1 1/2 cups frozen green soybeans (edamame)
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (less or more to adjust spiciness)
• 2 teaspoon sesame seeds (optional)
• cooked rice (preferably cooked at least a day before, so it is less sticky)
Method:
1. Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan over medium-high heat.
2. Add garlic and carrots and stir-fry for about 4 to 5 minutes
3. Add the pineapple with the juice. Saute on medium-high until juice is almost gone; about 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, defrost the frozen soybeans so they are no longer frozen (but they can still be cold) by heating them in the microwave, in water to cover, for 1 minute (if you don’t have a microwave, you can do it on the stove).
5. When the pineapple juice is almost gone, add the soybeans, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and red pepper. Heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until the spices are mixed and the beans are warmed through.
6. You can either mix in the rice and cook it some more with the stirfry (gives the rice some extra flavor), or just ladle the stir-fry over the rice.
Optional: sprinkle sesame seeds over the meal for a bit of a crunch.
Add comment June 11, 2010
Friday Feast: Vegan Quiche
I was reading my local Vegsoc forum and came across a thread about vegan chickpea omlettes. The thread included a recipe for a batter based on chickpea flour (rather than eggs), plus a tonne of rave reviews. Apparently, this batter can be used to make lots of things: omlettes, fritters, faux scrambled eggs, pizza bases, frittatas and quiches. Considering I hadn’t had any of this eggy stuff for at least 6 years, I thought I might give it a go. I made a quiche, and it was pretty good! I thought it tasted quite quiche-like. Yankee Elv, who still eats eggs, didn’t think it tasted exactly like quiche, but she liked it a lot anyway.
I made mine in a pie dish, so it was quite shallow. If you wanted a thicker quiche, you could put it in a smaller dish or double the mixture. You might have to increase the cooking time too. I didn’t make mine with pastry, but other people have made it with vegan puff pastry and it worked well. I might try that next time.
Vegan Quiche
My very first vegan quiche (no longer an oxymoron) - made primarily with chickpea flour and topped with pine nuts.
Ingredients
**batter**
- 1 cup besan (chickpea) flour
- 1.5 cups water
- 2 tabs olive oil
- salt/pepper to taste (be generous)
- vegan margarine (to grease the dish)
**my filling** (this is all optional, change as you like – you want to add flavourful stuff though or it will be bland)
- sun-dried tomatoes, finely diced
- roasted capsicum, finely diced
- black olives, finely diced (consider the strong flavour of these when deciding how many to add)
- shallots (green onions), finely diced
- nutritional yeast (I used about 1/8 cup)
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- Italian herbs
- pine nuts (to sprinkle on top)
Method:
- Preheat oven to 200°C (390°F).
- Sift besan flour into a bowl. Add other batter ingredients (aside from vegan margarine) and combine very well.
- Add filling ingredients (except pine nuts) and combine.
- Pour mixture into a greased dish. (Use vegan margarine to grease.)
- Bake for 25 to 30 mins, then sprinkle pine nuts on top and return to the oven.
- Continue to bake for about another 10-15 mins, or until set and golden brown around the edges (and on top, if you want).
2 comments June 4, 2010
Friday Feast: Bean Tortilla Stack
Bean Tortilla Stack is the first food my mother made me after I became vegetarian, about six years ago. It was originally a beef meal, but there were instructions in her recipe book on how to alter it for vegetarians, so she did and it was fantastic! I got the recipe and have made it myself a number of times over the years.It’s kind of like a Mexican lasagne, with tortillas instead of pasta sheets.
Recently, I decided to try veganising this dish using Bryanna Clark Grogan‘s Melty Pizza Cheese recipe (which I found on pakupaku) to replace the cheese component of the original dish. It doesn’t have the same taste or texture, so don’t expect that or you will be disappointed, but it looks good and it does add a little something-something in my opinion. I’ve only included the link here, since this is a direct copy of someone else’s recipe and I haven’t modified it in any way to make it ‘my own’.
The original recipe calls for a packet of taco seasoning. I don’t find this spicy enough, so I add paprika, chili powder and cumin to taste. In contrast, Mum will make it with only half a packet of taco seasoning if she is cooking for my sister – she’s a spice wimp. It’s really up to you.
The best kind of dish to use for this is a pyrex or ceramic type of dish, the kind that comes with a lid (although you don’t need the lid unless you want to use it when you store leftovers in the fridge). The dish should be round, to fit the tortillas, and high to help the stack keep it’s shape. Pie dishes are too short. The dish I use is a little small; I have to trim the edges of my tortillas. Mum’s is the best. It’s about 25cm in diameter (just under 10 inches), as opposed to mine, which is about 20cm in diameter (just under 8 inches). Still, both worked, so just get as close as you can.
Points to remember:
- The tortillas soak up some of the sauce, so if you have to trim them to fit in your dish, you might want to reduce the amount of sauce you put in, or it will be runnier than it’s supposed to be. Use your judgement! If it’s a bit goopy, don’t worry – it will still taste good.
- The smaller in diameter your stack is, the higher it will be as the sauce layers will spread out less and therefore be thicker.
Now read on, then cook!
Bean Tortilla Stack
Bean Tortilla Stack after a night in the fridge. The layers hold up best after refrigeration.
Ingredients:
**general**
- 450g (16 oz) can refried beans
- 425g (15 oz) can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 5 tortillas (I use wholewheat, but it doesn’t matter what kind you use)
- Melty Pizza Cheese
- oil (cooking spray, margarine, olive oil…)
**for the sauce**
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 cup capsicum, diced
- 1/2 to 1 cup vegetables/mushrooms (like grated carrot, diced zucchini or chopped mushrooms) (optional)
- 425g (15 oz) can crushed tomatoes
- 3-4 tabs tomato paste
- 1 cup water
- 1 tsp vegetable stock powder (Vegeta!)
- 35g (1.25 oz) packet taco seasoning
- paprika, chili powder and cumin, to taste (optional)
Bean Tortilla Stack with smooth guacamole. This slice is fresh from the oven - you can see that it doesn't retain it's shape straight out of the oven.
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
2. Add some oil to the bottom of a large pot or frying pan and combine sauce ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes.
3. Take one cup of sauce out and leave to the side.
4. Add beans (both kidney and refried) and bring to the boil again.
5. Grease a round, tall, oven-proof dish (I use cooking spray oil cos I’m using up my current can). Place one tortilla on the bottom and spread 1 1/2 cups of the mixture over it.
6. Repeat tortilla/sauce step three times.
7. Top with the last tortilla. Pour the extra cup of sauce (sans beans, that you had set aside earlier) over the top and spread evenly.
8. Gently spread faux cheese on top.
9. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until faux cheese has a skin. You can put it under the grill (broiler) if you want to get it a bit brown.
10. Leave for five to ten minutes before serving. (It will be goopy if it’s fresh out of the oven; it holds its shape better after refrigeration.)
Add comment May 22, 2010
Friday Feast: Spicy Bean Chili Stew
I found the original recipe online at epicurious here. It’s a tasty, if somewhat runny, chili with beans, spinach and butternut pumpkin (squash, for Americans). Yankee Elv tweaked it and made it for me.
Now, the original recipe calls for 2 tabs chili powder. I didn’t trust this, because the recipe was on an American site, and chile powder in the USA is way different to chili powder here. Chili powder in Australia is ground chili peppers. Chile powder in the USA is usually Texan or Mexican chile powder, and it’s a combination of ground chili peppers, ground cumin, majoram, mexican oregano, cayenne pepper sometimes… all kinds of things. My point is, it’s nowhere near as spicy. So I told Yankee Elv I thought it would be best to reduce the amount of chili powder. She did so – by half, the first time she made this dish.
That stuff still burned me to death. I was literally crying, I had to eat with a box of tissues beside me, blowing my nose every other bite. Now, I’m wimpy with spiciness, but not THAT wimpy. This was hardcore. Even Yankee Elv (who I think has a mouth made of teflon or something) thought it was spicy, although she was less affected than me. It was also more liquidy than a chili normally is, so every breath I took, a little of the liquid went to the back of my throat and threatened to go up my nose… so even that part of me was burning.
We drained it and tried it as a pasta sauce. I stirred sour cream into it (I was still eating that back then, but I’m not now). I ate it with cornbread. These things helped, and they tasted good too. My mouth, however, still felt like it was on fire.
But oh, if you could get past the burn, it tasted SO GOOD!
So next time, Yankee Elv reduced the amount of chili powder to about 1 tsp. That was still pretty spicy for me – but yummy spicy, instead of crying spicy.
Try it if you dare!
Spicy Bean Chili Stew
Spicy Bean Chili Stew with Cornbread
Ingredients
- 2 tab olive oil
- 2.5 cups onion, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2.5 cups butternut pumpkin (butternut squash if you’re American), peeled and chopped into 1/2″ cubes
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 3 x 400g cans beans, drained (black beans if you can get them, but we used kidney beans, butter beans or cannellini beans and mixed beans)
- 2.5 cups liquid vegetable broth (don’t make this up using dry stock and water because it turns out too salty)
- 400g can diced tomatoes, with juice
- 3 cups fresh spinach, coarsely chopped
- Salt and pepper to taste
Method
- Heat oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.
- Saute onions and garlic until tender and golden (about 10 mins).
- Stir in pumpkin pieces and cook for about 2 mins.
- Stir in the chili powder and cumin and cook for about 1 min.
- Stir in the beans, vegetable broth and tomatoes. Bring to a boil.
- Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for about 15 mins, until the pumpkin is tender.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Add spinach and combine. Cook for another 5 mins. (Don’t allow the spinach to get too wilted).
- Serve with rice, pasta, toast, cornbread , tortillas, corn chips, guacamole or whatever else takes your fancy.
Note: This dish freezes well, although the pumpkin gets a bit mushy.
Add comment January 23, 2009
Friday Feast: Chana Masala
This is the first Friday Feast post. Basically, on a Friday after a long week at work, I anticipate needing a break. A vegan recipe is a helpful, yet quick and easy post. And reducing your meat, dairy, poultry and seafood consumption helps the planet!
So here’s the first one: Chana Masala.
Yankee Elv found this recipe on Vegweb, but modified ages ago it so it suited us better. She’s made it lots of times now, and it always works well (unless you get a dodgy can of chickpeas, so they don’t soften up properly, but that’s not her fault and besides… it still tastes good, just the texture is a little weird).
This is a totally vegan recipe.
Chana Masala
Ingredients
2 tabs olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 – 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 tab curry powder (we use Keen’s)
1 tab tomato paste
400g can chickpeas, drained
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
1 tab vegan margarine
1/3 cup coconut milk (approximately – it’s 3 tabs at one point, and 5 tabs later)
Method
1. Heat oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat.
2. Fry onions until slightly brown.
3. Reduce the heat to medium and add garlic, curry powder and tomato paste. Combine and simmer for about 2 mins.
4. Add chickpeas, 3 tabs of the coconut milk, lemon juice, salt and pepper to the pan. Simmer for 5 -6 mins, stirring occasionally.
5. Add margarine and stir to melt and combine.
6. Add the other 5 tabs of coconut milk and stir to combine. (Add more or less coconut milk than this depending upon how creamy you would like the dish to be).
7. Simmer for about 5 more mins, or until the chickpeas are softened.
8. Serve with basmati rice (and enjoy the yummy goodness, according to Yankee Elv).
FYI: tabs means tablespoons. tsps means teaspoons.
6 comments January 9, 2009
