Millet madness — millet bowls and millet burgers

Babysitting is fun.

We recently did a whole bunch of baby sitting for our grandkids while their Papa was out of town and their Mama had to play cello in the orchestra for a multi-night high school theater production at the school where she teaches music. One of our "duties" was to attend a talent show sponsored by Miss E's elementary school. Miss E is seven years old, and she is now brave enough to appear on a stage and perform.

The concert had a number of singers, a guitar soloist, lots of dancers, a couple of cheerleaders, and a hula hoop demonstration performed by Miss E and two friends. I'm not saying hula hooping isn't a talent — it certainly is — and we and the rest of the audience were exceedingly entertained by the performance, but something about it triggered an old memory of a performance her papa gave when he was about six.

He was a Suzuki violin student at the University of Wisconsin School of Music, and the recitals we attended for all the children from the youngest to the most accomplished, were impressive. They took place in a beautiful, small concert hall at the school of music. At the time he was learning violin, he was also obsessed with playing harmonica, and asked me if I thought he could play his harmonica at the violin recital. I didn't think so, but told him to ask his teacher, and the lovely Mary Beth Cullitan, after hesitating just a moment, said yes. Her goal was to encourage a love of music in whatever form it presented itself. So, at some point during the recital of classical string music, future-papa brought down the house with a polished and rousing harmonica rendition of Old Joe Clark. It was a weirdly thrilling parenting moment that I'll never forget.

Roasted carrots and chickpeas plus kale and tahini-umeboshi sauce over millet.

I love when a current happening unearths an old treasured memory, and I get to enjoy it again. It's a little like when a recent event, in this case a trip to San Francisco and Santa Cruz, inspires a string of cooking choices that play on memories, and become new favorites, reminding me in turn of the source of their inspiration. We were recently in Santa Cruz and I loved the lunch bowl I had at Café Gratitude so much I couldn't stop thinking about it. The grain in the bowl was millet, and I've become a little obsessed with millet, as you will see. Millet tends to be an overlooked food here, and in fact, most millet grown in the U.S. is grown for bird seed. Millet comes from a group of seeded grasses and is widely used for food in arid and semi-arid areas of the world. I like it a lot.

When we returned home from our trip, I made a millet bowl with roasted carrots and chickpeas, plus kale, topped with green onions and tahini sauce.It was so good it was shortly followed by a similar bowl with sweet potatoes, black beans and kale. The kale for the bowl partly came from a leftover deli container of PCC emerald city salad. There was just a tiny bit of salad left so I added a bunch more green onion and chopped kale to the container, mixed it with the remains, and used it for my bowl. I also warmed it up. Although the emerald city salad is meant to be served raw and cold, it also makes a great warm salad.

When I made the millet bowl, I made extra millet because I wanted to make millet burgers. Millet has a chewy texture that seems just right as a base for burgers, and the patties were wonderful. I wish I had written down a recipe, but I was using up leftovers that were in the refrigerator, adding spices like a mad scientist, and I have no precise memory of what went into the burgers. I think there were a couple of carrots, a few mushrooms, a bit of leftover kale, some chickpeas, perhaps some ground flax seed, half an onion, and other stuff I can't remember. The burgers were browned on the stove, then baked. This is the way I prefer to cook — without recipes — but then when something turns out well, sometimes I wish I could make it again.

Do you ever cook with millet? I've read both pros and cons about its nutritional value, but I guess that's true of most foods these days. Sigh.

The day I became a vegetarian / Black bean and tomato stuffed sweet potato

©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

We were listening to a re-broadcast of an interview by public radio host Joy Cardine with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of "The Face on Your Plate," "When Elephants Weep," and "The Pig Who Sang to the Moon." The host said she was a vegetarian, and proceeded to relate a brief story of the moment she knew she could no longer eat meat. It got me thinking of the moments we remember in life — usually traumatic national events that we can never forget. But what about the other, more personal life-changing events we experience, like deciding to become vegetarian, for example. Do people remember "the day they decided not to eat meat anymore?" Well, I do.

I was in my 20s and had been going through dietary changes for a while. First I decided to eat healthier. I'd been reading about diet and health and the dangers of the "Standard American Diet" and decided to make a clean sweep of all the unhealthy food in my (and by default, my husband's) diet. I went through the pantry and bagged up all the white stuff — you know, white flour, white pasta, white sugar — all of it. Being a frugal person by nature, I was filled with anxiety about what to do with all this stuff. I didn't want to contribute to another's ill health, but I hated just throwing it away. So, I hauled it across the street to my friend Suzanne's apartment, explained that I wanted to improve my diet and not eat this stuff anymore because I believed it to be unhealthy, and asked if she wanted it. After all, everyone has their own ideas about what's healthy, and can make up their own minds. I told her what I knew. She looked at me intently for a moment, and then said, "SURE!" Then, with great enthusiasm, she started unpacking the bags. I assuaged my guilt by thinking that she would just go out and buy this same stuff anyway.

Eating healthy was going well, and I began to think about a vegetarian diet. We'd been attending meditation retreats where there were lots of vegetarians, and I'd been doing more reading and thinking about food issues. Then we went on a camping trip to Canada, and one evening we attended the nature program at the campground where we were staying. A film was shown about the plight of prairie dogs. One of the struggles facing this little animal was its misfortune to be living on cattle ranches, where the prairie dog tunnels cause injuries to the cattle who step into the holes. There were graphic shots of ranchers blasting the prairie dogs with their rifles; no gory detail was spared, and it was horrible. You can probably see where this is going. Anyway, I just couldn't get those images out of my mind.

We were in the supermarket checkout line after our return home, and I was staring at a package of stew meat in our cart. I picked it up. "Do we really want this?" I asked my husband? "Probably not," was his reply, and I took it back to the meat counter. And that was it —the day I decided to be a vegetarian. And do I remember the day I became vegan? Of course, but that's another story for another day.

My first attempts at cooking vegetarian food were pretty grim. The very first dish, chuck full of brewers yeast, got ditched. But it's a lot easier to be vegetarian now, and even vegan, than it used to be. There are countless amazing cookbooks and blogs with recipes and ideas. I recently reviewed Peta's Vegan College Cookbook, and although it wasn't generally suited to my style of cooking, there were a few recipe gems that I really enjoyed cooking and eating. This recipe was inspired by one of them. If you use canned beans and tomatoes, you can throw it together with almost no effort. Or, if you prefer, you can cook dried beans and roast your own tomatoes. I like to make the bean and tomato mixture pretty spicy because I love the contrast between the spicy beans and the sweet potato, but you can just leave out the chilies or jalapeños if you don't care for spicy food.


©Andrea's easy vegan cookingBlack bean and tomato stuffed sweet potatoes (updated 11-21-16)

• 4 medium sweet potatoes, scrubbed
• one tablespoon oil (I like avocado oil) or two tablespoons broth or water
• 1/2 cup sliced green onions, white and green parts
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 15-oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained (or 1-1/2 cups cooked black beans) or 3/4 cup of dried beans, cooked and drained
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
• 1 15-oz.can diced tomatoes with green chilies, (or a can of tomatoes plus 3 tablespoons of diced green chilies from a can, or 1-2 finely chopped fresh jalapeños)
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley or cilantro (opt.)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (if needed)
• fresh ground pepper, lots
• 1 small avocado (or vegan sour cream)
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice, divided

1. Slice a very small piece from the end of each potato. (Or, you can prick them all over with a fork.) Bake at 425˚F for about 40 minutes or until nice and soft all the way through. You can bake them right on the oven rack. I like to use the toaster oven for this unless I'm using the big oven to make other stuff, too. When they are ready, place them on a plate to cool slightly while you finish up the filling.
2. Cook the the onion, garlic and oregano (and jalapeños, if using fresh) in the oil (or broth or water if you don't use oil) for one minute. Add the beans, tomatoes, canned chilies (if using), paprika, salt and pepper. Heat gently until hot. Stir in two tablespoons lemon juice, and the parsley or cilantro. Taste for seasoning.
3. Open the avocado and scoop out the pulp. Mash and mix with two tablespoons lemon juice, a tiny pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper.
4. Split the potatoes lengthwise and gently push the ends towards each other to create a pocket.
5. Fill the pockets with the bean mixture and top with avocado or vegan sour cream.

©Andrea's easy vegan cooking

Spicy peanut stew

Duck, everyone. Here comes another recipe for peanut stew to make its way through the blogosphere. Like we need another, but what can I say? I just had to do it.

After a lovely recent dinner at the home of friends, I decided to exploit Elena's cooking skills and bring home her fabulous recipe for peanut stew. Of course she'd made it up, based on an African version of this dish, since she had lived in Africa. She couldn't remember exact quantities, but she was game to try. She painstakingly recalled all the ingredients, quantities and cooking times, and I carefully transcribed them, hoping to recreate her luscious stew at home and then post the recipe. So where did I put the recipe? It was nowhere to be found. My son convinced me to just make it anyway, since he was in the mood for peanut stew, so I made a list of what I could remember and we headed off to Trader Joe's to fill in the missing ingredients.

Elena used cauliflower, cabbage and swiss chard (I think) but I wanted broccoli and Jordan wanted sweet potatoes. I remembered that she'd used a large amount of garlic and ginger. There was peanut butter and crushed tomatoes, and I added kidney beans and hot peppers. I used the frozen "mystery peppers" from last summer's garden, and although I tasted them, I misjudged their heat and the stew was hellishly spicy (in a good way!). Although I was planning to add plain crushed tomatoes, I was attracted to a can of fire roasted chopped tomatoes and green chilies that was on special at TJ's, so that went into the stew. Jordan really wanted coconut milk, and although I wasn't in favor of it, I gave in and added some. I thought the stew tasted better before the coconut milk, and he thought it was better after. Actually, it was fantastic before and after, but I'm leaving it out. It's my recipe!

I cut my sweet potatoes a little too big and I had to simmer the stew nearly an hour before they were soft, which made the total cooking time, including prep, about two hours. I would serve this stew to company on a day when I had time to cook rather than as a busy weekday meal. It's easy to make and tastes wonderful.

Peanut stew (6-8 servings)

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1–2 jalapeños (or 1 red or green sweet pepper if you don't want it spicy)
• 2 stalks broccoli (about 4 cups chopped into bite-sized pieces)
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 large carrot, cut into 1/4 inch rounds, or your favorite way (I like 1/4 "-thick rectangles)
• 5 large cloves garlic, minced fine (about 2 tablespoons minced)
• 1 tablespoon finely cut fresh ginger root
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
• 2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons tamari
• 1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can crushed (or diced) fire roasted tomatoes or tomatoes with green chilies
• crushed peanuts, cilantro or parsley for garnish (optional)

1. Sweat the onions. This means to place them in a thin layer of olive oil (about 1 tablespoon) in a pan (I used a heavy 4-1/2 quart cast iron dutch oven) and cook over very low heat with a tight fitting lid. Stir often and cook until they are somewhat translucent. I cooked mine about 15 minutes. (Probably because that's how long it took me to prepare the garlic and ginger!)
2. While the onions sweat, mince the garlic and ginger. Add them to the pan when the onions are ready, and continue to cook, covered, while you cut the pepper.
3. Add the pepper to the pot and cut the broccoli.
4. Add the broccoli and cook, covered, while you cut the sweet potato. (Don't make the sweet potato pieces too big!)
5. Add the sweet potato and 1 cup of water. Cover and cook while you cut the carrots. Then add the carrots and replace the cover.
6. Open and rinse the beans. Add the beans, tomatoes, cinnamon, cumin and sugar. Stir in the peanut butter. (It's a lot easier to stir in the peanut butter if it's at room temperature.) Add the second cup of water and bring to a boil.
7. Turn the heat to simmer, and add the tamari.
8. Simmer over low heat until the vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally. If the stew seems too thick, add a little veggie broth or water. I like mine thick.
9. Serve over white or brown basmati rice and garnish with crushed peanuts, cilantro or parsley, if desired.

It wasn't this blurry in person!

The second night I served it over rice noodles, and we added some frozen okra. I'm not a big okra fan but Jordan says it's his favorite vegetable.

There are 8 million recipes for peanut stew in the Naked Blogo-City, and this has been one of them . . .

Purple cauliflower soup: fast, easy ... purple

Fall weather always makes me crave creamy soups. Maybe it's because they're so comforting and I need reassurance to face the long winter ahead. Whatever the reason, my youngest son and I decided to cook together, and the menu was to be soup and sweet potato fries. Because we are eating from our CSA box, and because our farmer loves to grow purple cauliflower, that's what I used for the soup. I was more than a little skeptical about what it would look like—I'm used to creamy white cauliflower soup—but game. I cooked it in my pressure cooker, and even though I knew I was cooking a purple cauliflower, when I opened the pot I was still surprised to see deep purple liquid and lavender cauliflower pieces. I went at it with the immersion blender, and it blended into a nice shade of purple.

The next surprise came when I added fresh squeezed lime juice (we have a lot of limes from our CSA fruit share) and as the juice hit the purple, it turned a bright magenta. This was getting interesting. I tasted and seasoned and wrote down approximately what I did. We ended up with a great tasting pot of weird looking soup.

Jordan made our usual oven sweet potato fries, with the addition of spicy chipotlé powder, and they were superb. In fact, we ate them before I remembered the camera!

Creamy cauliflower soup (in the pressure cooker)

• large head of cauliflower (white or purple), separated into medium chunks
• medium onion, sliced
• one stalk celery, sliced
• 2 to 3 small white potatoes, peeled and cut up (for body)
• water
• one clove garlic, minced fine
• 1/2 teaspoon of either truffle oil, olive oil, chili oil or no oil
• one lime, juiced
• sweet white miso, to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
• thinly sliced green onion, parsley or other green for garnish

1. Sauté the onion and celery in a small amount of olive oil in the pressure cooker until the onion is translucent.
2. Add the cauliflower and potato and enough water to come about 3/4 up the cauliflower.
3. Bring up to pressure, turn the heat down and cook at pressure for 4 minutes.
4. Run cool water over the lid to bring the pressure down. Open the pot and add the miso, lime juice and oil. Blend in the pot with an immersion blender, or in batches in a conventional blender. Stir in the garlic. Adjust seasonings. Garnish. I used baby arugula because that's what I had on hand.

Sweet potato hash browns

On our little camping trip to Whidbey Island, we had just spent the night in our mini-tent, woke up refreshed in the clear morning air, and made the four-mile trip to our son's campsite for breakfast. I reveled in my good fortune at being just about to enjoy an open-air breakfast that I didn't even have to cook! Food under these circumstances always tastes better, and my steaming bowl of oatmeal confirmed this. It was absolutely plain—no raisins, no soymilk—and it tasted fantastic. I was savoring each mouthful when my son offered me some leftover sweet potatoes he'd brought from home and heated up. "Uh, no thanks," I said. I know sweet potatoes are nutritionally superior, but there's something about them that doesn't appeal to me. Maybe it's the sweetness. I like the color. : ) I like them garlicky and baked into fries. But, there in the quiet of my yummy oatmeal bliss, they looked like ... sweet potatoes. It was clear, though, that he REALLY wanted me to try them, so I plucked a small piece from the pan and whoa, there was a burst of delicious flavor that I didn't expect. "These are really good!" I said. "I should post the recipe on the blog."

Sweet potato hash browns

• 3 sweet potatoes, washed, peeled, small diced
• 1 medium red onion, diced
• 3–4 cloves garlic, minced
• oil
• habanero pepper sauce (Noah likes Marie Sharp's Belizean Heat but any habanero sauce will do)
• salt and pepper

1. Heat a cast iron skillet and add some oil (1 or 2 tablespoons) Sauté the onion and garlic about a minute. (Don't burn the garlic!)
2. Add potato and continue to cook until the potato is soft. (If potato mixture gets too dry, add a couple spoonfuls of water to the pan.)
3. Add habanero sauce, and salt and pepper to taste.

Chipotle black bean burgers / oven sweet potato fries

We just had a family cooking session. Our son makes great black bean burgers, and we invited him for dinner hoping he would make them. He came for dinner and ended up making the main dish — his excellent-tasting black bean burgers. I was the chopper and transcriber, running back and forth between the cutting board and the notepad trying to chop things one minute and write down the ingredients he was adding to the bowl in the next. My husband manned the oven and also made green beans. Our son does some extra stuff I don't do when I make burgers - I'm lazier than he is. He sautés the onions and garlic before adding them to the mix and I add them raw. He usually adds chopped mushrooms but we didn't have any. He added extra hot sauce and I don't. He always cooks the burgers on the stove and I often bake them. Are his better? Maybe.

Spicy Chipotle Black Bean Burgers
1 can black beans
1/2 cup frozen corn
2 cups dry bread crumbs (stale sourdough is the best) or about 6 slices crumbled up whole wheat bread)
1 very large onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 large stalk celery, chopped fine
1/2 to 1 cup chopped mushrooms (optional. see note)
1/4 teaspoon paprika
3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced (These come in a small can. Save the rest of the can for another use.)


Put the beans, crumbs, corn, chipotle and bread crumbs in a large bowl. Sauté the onions, celery and garlic for a few minutes in a small amount of oil. Add the paprika and mix. Add the sauté mix to the beans and mush up well with your hands until you have a cohesive mixture. If it's too soft, add more crumbs. Form into patties and cook on a non-stick griddle in a very small amount of oil until browned and firm. Serve on whole grain buns with lettuce and toppings of your choice.

To go with the burgers I cut some sweet potatoes for oven sweet potato fries. Cut them into 1/2 thick fingers and mix them with 2 to 3 finely minced cloves of garlic. (about 1 tablespoon) Spread them in a single layer on an oiled baking sheet, spray them with olive oil (or toss with a tablespoon of oil before spreading on the sheet). Bake in a pre-heated 475˚ oven for about 40 minutes or until soft but slightly crisp. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

note: These burgers had a slight tendency to break apart but they tasted great. I had some leftover cooked buckwheat that we substituted for half of the crumbs and maybe that had something to do with it. Or maybe they weren't mushed up enough. Also, last time we had these there was about 1 cup of chopped mushrooms in the sautéed mix and they added good flavor and texture. I would definitly recommend adding them.

Tofu and kale burritos

We had something similar to this dish many years ago in a wonderful restaurant in Santa Fe. They were so yummy that I re-created the recipe when we returned home. It's been so long since I've made them that I can't clearly remember the original taste, but I was thinking about how delicious they were and, inspired by the memory, I made them for dinner tonight. The recipe made enough for two very overstuffed (as in hard to pick up but very satisfying) burritos. I think you can probably make more than two. These are really fast and easy to make even though the recipe looks long, and they taste wonderful. They go perfectly with oven sweet potato fries. (1/18/08 post)

Tofu and kale burritos
Makes two to three large burritos.
sauce:

• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon rice syrup
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika

Put the mustard into a glass measuring cup. Add the other ingredients and mix. Add enough water to make about 1/3 cup.

Filling:

• 1/2 (or more) large bunch kale, about 6 large leaves
• 1/4 lb. firm tofu (water packed or vacuum sealed in plastic, not the kind in the box)
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 minced chipote pepper in adobo sauce (Freeze the rest of the can in blobs for other recipes. Once frozen, store the blobs in a plastic bag.)
• 1 peeled carrot
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
• 1 or 2 chopped green onions

1. Strip the kale from the ribs. (Hold the stem in one hand with the leaf's underside facing up and just slide the thumb and finger of your other hand firmly along the rib, taking the leaf off as you go. You should end up with a bunch of bare ribs for the compost or soup stock.) Put the leaves in a large bowl of water and swish them around to clean. If the water looks dirty, do it again (and again). Shake off the excess water and mound the leaves on a cutting board so you can shred through them with a knife. Move the leaves a bit and slice some more until they are roughly shredded.
2. Cut the tofu into 1/2-inch cubes and saute with the garlic in a wok or skillet in a small amount of oil until the tofu starts to brown. Add the chipotle and about a tablespoon of sauce and toss and cook a minute longer. Remove tofu from the wok. 
3. Add the kale and cover the wok so the kale can steam in the water clinging to it. Turn the heat down a little so it doesn't burn. When the kale is nice and tender but still firm (in other words, don't cook it until it turns to mush - just until you can bite it easily — you want to retain some bulk and mouth appeal) grate the carrot directly into the wok and toss in the corn. Cover for a minute to heat the corn and the carrot. The carrot can stay crunchy. Add the tofu, the onion and the rest of the sauce, and flip it all together.

note: I love raw onion but it tends to upset my stomach so I add the green onion to the wok just before the tofu is finished cooking, to take the raw edge off. You can add it just before filling the tortillas if you wish.

Tortillas: I used to use whole wheat tortillas from Whole Foods or from our co-op, but now I use a gluten-free alternative. Warm them on a nonstick griddle flipping the tortilla until it softens. When it's ready, lay it on a plate, put the filling in, fold in one end and roll it up. Enjoy!

Optional add-ins: 
sliced black olives
avocado
hot sauce
parsley or cilantro

Red lentil soup

What could be easier than a simple soup of red lentils. The leftover roasted sweet potatoes in the fridge will add a rich, sweet taste, and some cauliflower cut in small pieces will add nutrition. Just me tonight and I want enough for dinner and lunch tomorrow.

Red Lentil Soup
I rinsed a cup of red lentils and put them into a 1-1/2 quart enamaled cast iron pot with the leftover, roasted sweet potato (about a cup), a small, whole hot pepper, the cauliflower (about a cup) and a minced clove of garlic. I filled the pot halfway with water and brought it to a boil then turned it down to the lowest simmer, covered the pot and went to hang out with the dog. I came back about an hour later to a creamy pot of cooked soup. I added a little water as it was kind of thick. I added some salt, fresh ground pepper and a dash of umeboshi vinegar for tang to balance the sweetness. And I removed the pepper. It tasted great with a piece of homemade toasted bread.