My stew didn’t turn out very stew-like.  I think of a stew as chunky soup with a really thick liquid base.  But this stew was more like lots of veggies in a little bit of broth.  I used butternut squash the pieces seemed to either alternately undercooked or totally following apart.   Maybe it would have been more stew-like if I had cooked the squash longer, so all the squash pieces were falling apart?  Certainly the rice didn’t add much of a stew-like quality.  That said, I liked the recipe.  It was a bit of a surprise (but not unpleasant) when I bit into a round of sliced ginger!  (Berley never says to take the ginger out, so I imagine you’re supposed to eat it?) I added extra sage but didn’t really notice it in stew.  The stew didn’t really have a distinctive flavor.  It just tasted earthy and like vegetables.  But it made a pleasant (if not very filling) dinner on a cold winter night.  I wouldn’t rush to make it again, but if I had all the ingredients lying around, I would certainly consider it.  But I’d probably add more liquid to make it more of a soup.

Berley  pairs this recipe with a romaine salad, but I think it would be better paired with a dish with a bit more protein, to make the meal more filling.

Rating: B

The soup was paired with a recipe for crispy tempeh strips. The combination sounds good but I couldn’t get myself to deep-fry tempeh. It just seems like such a waste of oil!

Neither Derek nor I cared for this dish very much.  There wasn’t anything wrong with it per se—it just tasted underseasoned. And unfortunately the kale wasn’t a good substitute for the collards.  I guess kale just doesn’t go with these southeast Asian flavors.  Although we didn’t like the dish that much, we had a guest over for dinner who quite enjoyed it.  He said he doesn’t normally like coconut curries, but this one was excellent!

Rating: B-
Derek: B-

• 1/3 cup unsweetened coconut milk

Cook, stirring occasionally, until it thickens and releases a sweet fragrance, about 3 minutes. Add:

• 2-4 Tbs. red curry paste (ideally homemade)

Cook the curry paste for another 3 minutes, stirring as needed to combine curry paste with coconut milk.  Next add:

• rest of the can of coconut milk
• 1 cup unsalted vegetable stock (add more for a more soupy, less rich dish)
• 1 Tbs. brown sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. soy sauce
• 1 onion, thinly sliced (or cut into fat chunks)
• 1.5 – 2 pounds assorted winter vegetables such as parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squash, white potatoes, turnips, peeled if necessary, and cut into approximately 1-inch chunks.
• 1 cup seitan, cut into bite-sized chunks (optional–if you use the seitan you may want to use a smaller amount of veggies)

• 1 cup shredded green cabbage (optional, my own addition)
• 3/4 cup salted, dry-roasted cashews
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• lime juice to taste (or serve with lime wedges)

Let stand for 5 minutes. Serve hot or warm.  Serves 6 to 8 according to McDermott.

My notes:  

• If you cut the onion into thin slices as McDermott instructs, you end up with very soft kind of wormy onions in the final dish.  I find them a bit unappealing, so I often cut my onion into large chunks.  They still end up very soft but not as wromy.
• Carrots are a bit harder than the other veggies, and thus should be cut a bit larger, so that they all cook in the same amount of time.  McDermott says to peel the veggies but I usually don’t, not even the sweet potatoes.  I’d peel only a squash with a very hard skin.
• Other vegetables are delicious too. I especially like cauliflower, but you can also add broccoli or mushrooms.  But make sure you add these quicker cooking veggies only towards the end of cooking, as they will be overcooked after fifteen minutes.
• McDermott calls for only 1 pound of veggies, but that’s just one small parsnip, medium carrot, and very small sweet potato.  Not much for 6-8 servings!  I usually add more, but then you either have to add enough vegetable broth that all the veggies get covered or stir the veggies occasionally while they’re simmering.
• I don’t think the seitan adds all that much in terms of flavor, but Derek likes the textural contrast, and it makes the dish more filling.
• If you like cilantro you can double the amount.  I’ve added a packed 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro before.  I liked it but Derek said it was too much.
• McDermott’s recipe doesn’t call for lime juice, but I think some acid is necessary to balance the sweetness of all the root vegetables
• This dish is soupy but too rich to be eaten as a soup.  I usually serve it over rice.
• If you have curry paste, seitan, and washed cilantro on hand, this dish could be a quick weeknight meal.

The first step is to rehydrate the sundried tomatoes in hot water.   While the tomatoes are hydrating, you start boiling 1 cup of lentils and saute onion, carrot, celery, and garlic.  When the lentils are cooked you toss them with some olive oil, then mix in the sauteed veggies and rehydrated tomatoes, chopped parsley, and a few tablespoons of lemon juice or red wine vinegar.

We tried to reduce the amount of olive oil (and hence also the vinegar), but the salad tasted quite bland.  We ended up adding 1/4 cup of olive oil (slightly less than the 1/3 cup in the recipe) and just under 2.5 Tbs. of red wine vinegar.  There was plenty of vinegar, but still the salad was bland and kind of muddy tasting.  In addition to the flavors being off, our salad had serious textural problems.

Berley says to cook the green lentils using the pasta method.  More specifically, you boil green lentils, uncovered, for 15 minutes.  You add salt and boil for another 10-15 minutes.  Berley says the lentils should still hold their shape, but half of our lentils totally fell apart and the other half were a tad undercooked.  I wasn’t sure if the lentils didn’t hold together because of the type of lentil or because of the cooking method.  I looked up lentils on Cook’s Illustrated and they do say that the green/brown lentils maintain a relatively firm texture when cooked, and so they’re good for salads.  So I suppose the cooking method is to blame.  I’ve never seen another recipe that suggests cooking beans or lentils at a rolling boil!

To try to save the dish, I braised some seitan in the soaking liquid from the sun-dried tomatoes.  When we threw the (quite tasty) seitan and some kalamata olives into the salad, it was better.  Even though the original recipe didn’t turn out so well, I really like the idea of the recipe, so please post a comment if you have a better recipe for a warm lentil salad with Mediterranean flavors.

Rating: C
Derek: B-

I made sweet potato wedges again a few days later, except that I sprinkled on a little salt and some olive oil.  The wedges ended up both a bit more moist and a bit more crisp than the previous time.  Delicious!

The technique is pretty simple.  You mix 2 1/2 cups of sifted chickpea flour with 4 1/4 cups of water, adding the water slowly and whisking to prevent lumps from forming.  You then heat 5 Tbs. of oil in a small 2 1/2-quart pot and throw in curry leaves and then sliced onions.  You add garlic, ginger, cumin, turmeric, cayenne, and water, and stir-fry for about 1 minute.  Then the chickpea flour batter goes in and you bring it to a boil, stirring all the time.  You reduce the heat to medium-low, stirring vigorously until the mixture seems to leave the sides of the pot.  Jaffrey says that this should take about 20 minutes.  At the end you add salt and lemon juice, and pour the mixture in a 9×9-inch cake pan.  Sprinkle the top with cilantro, green chilies and grated coconut.  Once cool you cut it into squares and serve it as a snack or as part of an Indian meal.

I only had ~1.5-2 cups of chickpea flour, so I had to cut the recipe down.  I also cut back on the oil, using about 2 tablespoons I think.  But I used the full amounts of all the seasonings.  I’m not sure why (could have been that I cut the oil?), but my chickpea flour mixture never came to a boil.  It went from a liquid to pretty solid, without ever coming close to boiling.  Once it was pretty solid it was almost impossible to keep from sticking and burning to the pan.  So I didn’t end up stirring for anywhere close to 20 minutes.  I quickly gave up and poured it into an 8×8 pyrex pan.  But I mixed most of the chilies and cilantro (and some diced raw onion) into the batter, rather than sprinkling all of the garnishes on top.  Only the coconut was reserved for the top layer.

The final dish didn’t get too much flavor from the chickpea flour.  Mostly it tasted like curry leaves, ginger, garlic, coriander, coconut—all the different seasonings used in the recipe.  The chickpea flour is essentially just a carrier for the Indian spices.  Derek said that the texture was a bit strange, but flavorwise it was quite good. I also didn’t love the texture, an the flavor was a tad too intense for me.  Maybe I should have cut back on the seasonings since I didn’t have enough chickpea flour.  And maybe the texture would have been better if I had added all the oil, but I’m not sure about that.

Rating: B-
Derek: B

I don’t know why the recipe calls for yellow mustard seeds instead of the black ones that most Indian recipes call for.  And they’re not popped in hot oil.  I’ve actually never cooked with whole yellow mustard seeds before.  I had to go out and buy some!

I ended up using the juice of two lemons, which made the soup quite lemony.  The first day it was perhaps a bit too much lemon, but as leftovers it was fine — the lemon seemed to mellow down.

This soup is more Indian tasting than my other two red lentil soup recipes.  Derek said it tasted similar to other dals I’ve made in the past, but I thought all the lemon juice made it taste a bit unusual.  This recipe has a lot of turmeric and salt!  I used kosher salt but still I found the soup a tad too salty for my taste.  Derek was happy though.  He ate the soup for breakfast several days in a row.

I’ll definitely throw this recipe into my red lentil soup rotation.

Rating: B
Derek: B+

Ingredients:

• 2 roasted, peeled, seeded, vinaigrette-marinated bell peppers (ideally one red and one yellow–see below)
• 2 Tbs. olive oil (preferably Greek)
• 1 leek, chopped
• 1 carrot, thinly sliced
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• 2 cups steamed wild rice (see below)
• 1 cup cooked large white beans (I used 1.5 cups cannellini beans)
• 6 cups rich vegetable stock (I used water)
• 2 Tbs. minced fresh oregano
• 2 Tbs. minced fresh savory, thyme, or rosemary (I used a mix of thyme and rosemary)
• sea salt to taste
• freshly ground pepper to taste
• 12 Greek Amphissa olives, pitted (or use kalamata olives)

For the wild rice:

• 2/3 cup wild rice
• 2 tsp. unsalted butter or unrefined sesame oil
• pinch of sea salt
• 1 1/2 – 2  1/4 cups of water

Instructions for the rice:

1. Put the wild rice in a bowl of cold water, scrub lightly between the palms of your hands for about 5 seconds, and pour the rice into a strainer to drain.
2. Combine the water, butter, and salt in a heavy saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil.  Add the rice and return to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer, covered, until some kernels have pulled and split open with the pale inner core visible and most of the liquid has been absorbed.  Remove from the heat and let steam, covered, for 10 minutes.
3. The amount of water needed will depend on the source of the grain and how it was processed.  For this recipe it’s probably easiest to just use the large amount of  water and pour any unabsorbed liquid into the soup.

Instructions for the soup:

1. Heat 2 Tbs. of oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Add the leek, carrot, and celery and saute for 5 minutes, or until soft.
2. Add the rice, beans, stock, oregano, 1 Tbs. of the savory, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.
3. Drain the peppers and add to the soup.  Stir in the olives.
4. Taste and adjust the seasoning.  Garnish with the remaining savory.

• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1 Tbs. red wine vinegar
• 2 Tbs. olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

My notes:

This soup was beautiful indeed, despite the fact that I used all red and no yellow peppers.  I also really liked the mix of different flavors.  I didn’t detect too many pungent flavors (maybe a little from the olives), but the sweet, sour, and salty flavors all came through well.  This soup would make a nice one pot dinner, since it has vegetables, beans, and starch from the wild rice.  Although you have to cook the rice separately, I’d even consider it a quick and easy weeknight recipe if you use jarred peppers and have cooked beans on hand.

Rating: B+

Derek: B

Berley often calls for caraway seeds in his recipes, but usually I feel like the amount is so small that I can’t really taste them.  But in this recipe the caraway really comes through.  Berley says that he includes the caraway because (like cumin and fennel) it helps us digest sulfurous vegetables like turnips.  I don’t know about that, but I really like the combination of the flavors. It reminds me a lot of the cruciferous caraway cumin soup, which is also based on a Berley recipe.  The main difference is that this soup is chunky, not pureed.  Also this recipe calls for chard, which added a nice green color and more textural contrast.

I don’t normally like turnips or rutabagas that much, but I quite enjoyed both these soups.  For this soup, though, the one problem was that it seemed a little greasy (from 3 Tbs. of butter).  But we tried only using 2 Tbs. of butter and by the time the leeks were sauteed there wasn’t enough free fat left to saute the garlic.  Maybe we need to start with only 1 tablespoon and then add the second tablespoon with the garlic.  Also, the broth in this recipe seemed a little watery tasting.  Maybe it would be better to use vegetable broth, or at least a bouillon cube?  It needed something.  Derek suggested sausage or bacon or something like that.  Maybe a little smoked paprika?  I wouldn’t want to muddy up the clean flavors though.

Berley suggests serving this soup with grilled gruyere and red onion sandwiches, but I think that combination is too starchy.  Potatoes and turnips and bread? I would instead serve the grilled cheese with a salad or less starchy soup (maybe tomato), and serve this soup with something higher in protein.  Derek suggested making it with Berley’s barbecued tempeh.

Rating: B+
Derek: ??