Spiced Sweet Potatoes

I heart sweet potatoes. And if you want the sweet-potatoiest sweet potato, go for the garnet variety, which I tend to find in the organic section (all the better!).

Here, I peeled and sliced them. (When you do so, be prepared to get some sugary starch on your hands from the potatoes. It's a little difficult to get off, though vinegar and salt helped me scrub it off. Or wear gloves.) Then I placed them in an olive-oiled tray and roasted them.

When the potatoes are almost done, crush a bunch of garlic and grind some (toasted if you like) cumin and coriander. Cook the garlic, cumin, and coriander in some olive oil (or butter) and add to this some chili powder, cinnamon, and salt. This will form a sort of cooked-down paste, which you will then brush on the potatoes. Let the potatoes roast until done and enjoy!

Cranberry Relish

This is an extremely easy cranberry dish to make; so easy, in fact, that I learned to make it 25 years ago in my kindergarten class. It's been a family favorite ever since. My Uncle Louis, in particular, is an ardent fan.

You need a food processor; about equal amounts of (washed, of course) red apples, oranges (preferably navel), and fresh cranberries; and sugar. Roughly chop the apples and oranges, keeping the skins and peels on, but taking the stems and seeds out. Then fill the processor with about equal parts apple, orange, and cranberry, and some sugar. Process the fruits until they achieves a relishy consistency. There's no way to tell you how much sugar you'll need; it depends on your personal taste, as well as the sweetness and tang of the particular fruit you're using. Just add the sugar bit by bit, until you achieve a balance you like between tart and sweet. If you make a batch that's too sweet, make the next batch less sweet and mix the two batches. 

This relish tastes even better the next day, so you may want to make it (and refrigerate it) a day before you serve it. It makes an excellent sweet, tart, cold counterpart to warm, savory turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Tortilla Soup

Most tortilla soups are made with chicken, but this is a vegan one.

I started by making a vegetable broth of green and red bell peppers, onions, garlic, pablano peppers, ancho (dried pablono) peppers, salt, black pepper, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, oregano, basil, and chili powder. Sautee all these ingredients in some olive oil until they've cooked down, then add some boiling water and let everything simmer for a while.

Next, add cooked beans (I used black and pinto), corn, fire roasted tomatoes, and some slices of corn tortilla or tortilla chips, and let them all cook in the soup. Squeeze in a bit of lime juice. And that's it!

Many people eat this with cheese or sour cream (or other garnishes), but since I am 98% dairy-free, I added a few more chips, and raw tomato and onion.

Snap Peas With Ginger and Garlic

Ginger and garlic, one of heaven's pairings. This time, I used them to make a quick lunch, combining them with snap peas, tamari sauce, and sesame oil.

Most soy sauces have wheat in them, so you have to choose a wheat-free soy sauce, which is often labeled "tamari" in the American market. But that doesn't mean all tamaris are gluten-free; in fact, I have seen some that contain wheat. Make sure your bottle of tamari explicitly says "gluten-free."

Do these snap peas look a little wrinkly? That's because, once cooked, they are! If you see photos of cooked snap peas that look perfectly green and smooth, then they're stylized, not real. Just like people, real ones have some wrinkles!

Stuffed Grape Leaves

In my last post, I said that if you are presented with the simple sauteed insides of a zucchini, then you should know that something more complicated is not too far away. So here it is, stuffed grape leaves (waraq 'inab) with stuffed zucchini.

This is a labor intensive dish, especially because my family does not make it with ground beef like most people do. Instead, we are among the minority of Arabs who cut the meat by hand into tiny, bean-sized pieces (which takes a bit of time), and then mix it with rice, salt, pepper, olive oil, and spices. If you're including zucchini, you must also hollow those out.

Then comes the actual stuffing and rolling of each leaf (about 150 for a large pot), and the filling of the zucchinis. As you make a batch of rolled leaves, you carefully line them up in the pot. This is not so bad when there are 2 or 3 people working together, but because I insist that I prepare every detail of everything featured on this blog, I took on this endeavor by myself last weekend. Needless to say, it was a long Saturday night. But I hope you enjoy the photos of my efforts. :)

The potatoes you see are used to line the bottom of the pot so that the bottom layer of grape leaves doesn't get stuck. They are optional, and if you don't use them, then this dish is totally nightshade-free.

Lib al Kousa

Arabs have a thing for stuffing leaves and vegetables, one of the most common being zucchini. And when you hollow it out, you're left with a bunch of zucchini (kousa) insides (lib), which you sautee in good olive oil with diced onion, garlic, salt, and lemon juice. Also included is a zucchini that didn't make it through the hollowing process intact.

Sure, it looks simple, and it is, but it's also healthy and delicious. And do know that whenever you encounter this humble dish, it signals that something more sophisticated is not far away. But that's for the next post.

Mujadara

Lentils are among the most ancient of foods, especially in the Middle East. They are also one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Rice and lentils paired together create a complete protein (Google it). Though they are an excellent source of iron, you need to have some vitamin C with your lentils, so that it can aid your body in absorbing the iron. 

When I was young, I considered mujadara to be a very boring food, just boring lentils and boring rice. I ate it,  but I wasn't excited about it. Things have changed. Now I love it!

Mujadara is made simply of lentils, rice, salt, water, and a touch of olive oil. It is then topped with onions browned in olive oil. You can play with the ratio of lentils to rice. Though these photos make  it look like there is more rice than lentils, I actually used a little less rice than lentils.

Because of its earthiness, mujadara is always served with a crisp salad for freshness. Plus, the vitamin C in the salad's vegetables and lemon juice help in iron absorption. Mujadara also pairs very well with yogurt, but if you do eat it that way, know that the vitamin D in yogurt blocks the body from absorbing the iron.