Easy Everyday Mujadara and Moroccan DIY Spice Blend

A few months ago I mixed up a batch of chai spice blend to liven up my green smoothie making. There really isn't a simpler or more economical way to wake up your food than to make your own spice blends. You probably already have tons of individual spices if you are preparing your own healthy meals. And those little dashes of spice used in each recipe mean that oftentimes jars of spices need to be replaced before they ever get used up. Why not mix up spice blends for yourself and even for gifts?

The second homemade spice blend to scream my name was a Moroccan Spice Blend. I made it at 5 am this morning. Sad, I know.

Moroccan Spice Blend

makes 8 Tbsp

5 tsp ground nutmeg
5 tsp ground cumin
5 tsp ground coriander
2.5 tsp allspice
2.5 tsp ground ginger
1.25 tsp cayanne pepper
1.25 tsp cinnamon

Mix together and store in an airtight container.

What to do with this you ask? How about a big batch of Mujadara? It's a Lebanese dish that, if you make this way, is extremely low in fat, is full of fiber, protein and iron, AND is exceptionally delicious! If I have frozen brown rice and packaged cooked lentils on hand, it's the easiest thing I can cook up for dinner when I'm tired and I just don't feel like cooking. In fact, this dish has become quite a staple in my house for just those reasons!

Ridiculously Easy Mujadara
Makes about 10 one cup servings

Printable Version

2 large sweet onions, diced
vegetable broth
2 1/2 cups brown or green lentils (Not red lentils or french lentils! I used one package of Trader Joe's cooked lentils.)
4 cups cooked brown rice (Trader Joes and Whole Foods sell frozen brown rice)
2 Tbsp Moroccan Spice Blend
salt to taste

Heat the largest skillet you have over medium heat and cover the bottom with vegetable broth. When broth starts to bubble, add chopped onions and saute, stirring every few minutes, for 35-45 minutes or until onions are very, very soft. Reduce heat and/or add broth to deglaze the pan as onions start to stick too much. Do not let the onions burn. Buy the end of the process, your heat will likely be on low and your onions will be very soft.

Meanwhile, cook the rice and lentils separately according to the package directions. If you have the TJ's packaged lentils, just open the package! If you are cooking your own lentils, they should be tender but not smushy or soupy, they should retain their shape.

When onions are ready, add brown rice, lentils and Moroccan spice blend and mix well.  Heat everything together until fragrant, warm and combined.

You can serve Mujadara with some toasted pine nuts or chopped parsley.

Have you made any of your own spice blends lately?

What do you make for dinner when you want some good food but are too tired to make a complicated dish?

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Is It Just Me or is Everyone Becoming a No Added Fat Vegan?

It's probably just me, but does this vegan thing seem to be catching on? Joel Stein over at Business Week Magazine seems to think so, at least among rich, powerful men. Read all about it here. Folks like Alec Baldwin, Russell Simmons, Mike Tyson (really?) and many, many more are proclaiming themselves to be vegan.

Pretty cool, huh?

And if you are a vegan, or moving in that direction, I want to highly recommend the following cookbook, Clean Food by Terry Walters. The more I cook from it, the more I think that it will be my new bible. The recipes are not simple, but also are not overly time consuming or complicated either. The result is restaurant quality, interesting vegan food at home. I'm impressed.

This week I prepared a stuffed squash recipe that I would feel comfortable serving guests for a dinner party or even Thanksgiving. So it was a real treat for us just to have it on a Monday night! Both husband and 10 year old gave it the thumbs up.

Winter Squash Stuffed with Brown Rice and Chickpea Pilaf

serves 8

based on a recipe from Clean Food

4 softball sized winter squash (acorn, kabocha, etc), washed, sliced in half, seeds removed

2 cups brown rice

4 cups water

2 thumb sized pieces Kombu (what's Kombu?)

2/3 cup currants

2 tsp ground allspice

vegetable broth for sauteing

1 large onion, chopped

2 15 oz. cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

3/4 cup toasted pine nuts

1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

juice of 2 lemons

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place rice, water, kombu, currants and allspice in a rice cooker and cook. Alternatively, place same ingredients in a pot, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until water is absorbed. Remove from heat.

Line 2 cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Lightly spray the squash halves with cooking spray. Place squash, cut side down, onto cookie sheets. Roast 25 minutes or until soft (time will vary according to size of squash).

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, pour in enough vegetable broth to barely cover the bottom of the skillet. When broth is bubbling, add onion and saute until translucent.

When rice is done cooking, remove kombu and discard. Add rice mixture and chickpeas to onion and saute for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and mix in with parsley, pine nuts and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Spoon rice mixture into cooked squash halves and serve.

Clean Food is also packed with healthy, seasonal, vegan dessert recipes. Pictured above is a Vegan Pumpkin Pie that was incredibly easy to make and even better tasting. I used a prepared graham cracker pie crust that I got at Whole Foods, but you could make your own pie crust with Ms. Walter's recipe or use any pie crust recipe that you love.

Vegan Pumpkin Pie

serves 8

based on a recipe from Clean Food

1 prepared pie crust
12 ounces silken tofu, firm or extra firm
1 15 ounce can pumpkin puree
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Wrap tofu in paper towels and press to remove excess water.

Place all ingredients (except pie crust) in a high powered blender or food processor and blend until smooth, scraping down sides of container as necessary. Pour into pie crust and bake for 50 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven, cool and serve.

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Healthy Convenience Food

Every once in a while an idea comes across my path that really makes a difference in my life. Well folks, the idea that I am about to share with you fits that qualification. The concept was presented to me last week at Whole Foods Market, where, as most of you know, my ten-year-old daughter and I have been participating in 28-day Engine 2 vegan food challenges. We're now well into our second challenge and still loving it and learning a lot.

At last week's meeting bowls of various foods were laid out on tables and we were given a container to concoct our own unique dinner on the spot. What was in those bowls was so simple that it could be categorized as follows:

(1) cooked whole grains (brown rice, whole wheat pasta, quinoa, barley, whole wheat cous cous, etc., etc.)

(2) canned beans (kidney, black, canelli, garbanzo, fava, etc., etc.), drained and rinsed

(3) cooked or raw vegetables (cooked broccoli, corn, string beans, spinach, chopped tomatoes, etc., etc.)

(4) seasonings (any dry spice/herb, any salt free seasoning, low-sodium soy sauce, and vinegar)

What resulted was surprisingly delicious. I started my bowl with whole wheat shell noodles, added a variety of beans, cooked broccoli, corn and string beans, and topped it all off with a dusting of sesame seeds. That's all. And it was good. Real good.

And I thought, this would be the perfect equation to prepare a never ending variety of hot lunches for my kids! Yipee! Eureka! (Those of you trying to prepare healthy lunches for kids every day know how challenging this is.)

So my first attempt at home involved the following:

one bag of frozen brown rice from Trader Joes, cooked

one bag of frozen broccoli from Trader Joes, cooked

one can of pinto beans, drained and rinsed

1 1/2 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce

1 Tbsp mirin (a Japanese wine vinegar)

I just mixed everything in a large bowl. It was tasty and delicious. It went in my daughter's lunch box. But then, the leftovers became . . . DINNER! 

I had made a batch of Choosing Raw's Cheesy Red Pepper Hemp Dip in the morning. I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but the recipe intrigued me and I had faith that something good would come of it. Well, it was delicious served over the leftover mix of brown rice, veggie and bean. So delicious that I find that I am craving the whole business right now as I type this! Served with a side of roasted acorn squash, it was a perfect healthy vegan meal!

Roasted Acorn Squash

1 squash generally serves 2 people as a side dish

acorn squash, washed, cut in half, seeds removed

cooking oil spray, I used coconut oil

salt

maple syrup or agave syrup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Place acorn squash halves, cut side up, on cookie sheet. Spray lightly with cooking oil spray, sprinkle lightly with salt, and drizzle syrup lightly on top. Bake in oven for one hour. Serve immediately, but keeps nicely in the refrigerator and tastes great cold too!

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Vegan Indian Brown Basmati Rice Pilaf

It was an Indian cooking hey day in my kitchen leading up to my vegan pot luck dinner. The clear winning recipe was this one, so I decided to post it next. It was also tweaked/inspired from a recipe from The Candle Cafe Cookbook, More than 150 Enlightened Recipes from New York's Renowned Vegan Restaurant.  

Traditionally, rice pilafs in Indian cuisine are made with white basmati rice. I thought I would take a risk and substitute in a brown basmati rice, which is much healthier. The results were fantastic!  And there's lot's more vegan Indian dishes to come in the days ahead.

Indian Brown Basmati Rice Pilaf

Printable Recipe

2 cups brown basmati rice

1 1/2 tsp brown or yellow mustard seeds

1 1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds

1 Tbsp coconut or safflower oil or cooking spray

3/4 cup diced onion

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 tsp whole cloves

1 Tbsp chopped or grated fresh ginger

2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp turmeric

3 1/2 cups water

blanched cauliflower florets from 1/2 head of cauliflower

1/2 cup shredded carrots

1/2 cup currants

1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds

2 Tbsp mirin (Japanese rice wine)

Rinse and drain rice to remove some of the starch.

Coat the bottom of a large pot with 1 Tbsp cooking oil or spray. Heat the on medium and add the mustard and cumin seeds.  Cook, stirring often, until they begin to pop. Add the oil, onion, garlic, cinnamon stick, cloves and ginger and saute over medium heat for about 4 minutes.

Add the rice, salt and turmeric and cook, stirring, until the rice is completely coated, about 1 minute.  Add the water, stir, cover and simmer over low heat about 45 minutes.

When the rice is tender add the blanched cauliflower, carrots, raisins, toasted almonds and mirin and stir well.  Keep warm until serving.

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When Life Hands You Lentils, Make Fat Free Vegan "Mujadara"

It's Pot Luck Season here in Northern Ohio and that fortunately  affords me an opportunity to share my love of healthy food with other people.  In a matter of one week, I have four pot luck dinners to plan for, prepare for and attend .  That's probably why I have been so quiet on the blog these days! So much good stuff going on!

For yesterday's event I decided that I was going to tweak a recipe out of The Engine 2 Diet called Candle Cafe Brown Rice and Lentil Burgers. The tweak was that I was planning on making balls instead of burgers to make a vegan "meatball."  When it came time to roll the balls and I tried doing so, nothing was going to hold the mix of ingredients into a ball shape (I guess I missed the part of the recipe where it said to add whole wheat flour if the mix wasn't sticking together--oh well, it was a happy accident). So I tasted the concoction and decided that it was delicious as is, added a bit more brown rice, and brought it to the party as a warm salad. No hassle with rolling into balls! Yipee!

I loved it, my husband loved it, and so did all of the party goers. I brought along a bowl of Kale Butter and it was a great pairing. We just spooned the kale butter on top of the brown rice and lentils. When a guest at the party, who happens to be a local vegan chef, tried the dish, she immediately exclaimed that, "It's Mujadara!"  Mujadara (also spelled Mujadarah, Megadarra or several other variations) is a delicious, inexpensive, and simple to make Lebanese comfort food.  My version's spices are not the traditional cumin, cinnamon and allspice, but the results were just as spectacular.

Wendy's Warm Brown Rice and Lentil Pilaf

7 cups water
1 cup dry lentils, rinsed and drained
2 cups uncooked brown rice or 4 cups cooked brown rice
4 garlic cloves
2 medium red onions, chopped
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped
2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp chili powder (or, for traditional Mujadara, use 1 tsp cinnamon and 1 tsp cumin)

In a saucepan, bring 3 cups of the water to a boil.  Add the lentils, reduce the heat, and cook until the beans are softened, about 15 minutes (check for doneness, the lentils should be soft but not falling apart, this may take longer than 15 minutes).  Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, in another saucepan, bring the remaining 8 cups of water to a boil, add the rice, reduce the heat, cover and simmer until the rice is tender, about 40 minutes. Drain and set aside.  (Or, microwave two Trader Joe's frozen brown rice pouches to yield 4 cups of brown rice.)

In a saute pan, water or broth saute the garlic, onion, and carrots over high heat until lightly browned.  This may take a while. If mixture starts to burn, lower the heat a bit.  In a large bowl, combine the lentils, cooked rice and vegetables.  Add the salt and chili powder and mix well.

Delicious served with a dollop of kale butter on the top. http://healthygirlskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/05/day-8-and-janes-kale-butter.html

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No Added Fat Vegan Eating: Chickpea Burgers and My First Engine 2 Salad Dressing

One of the fun new foods you will want to discover if you are experimenting with vegan eating is the bean/grain burger. They are fun on a bun, but also a great way to turn a salad into a meal. Just pop a few on top of a green salad or serve some up next to an alternative type of salad (like a tomato, corn and avocado salad).

There are probably hundreds of variations of this type of vegan burger if you do a search for them on the Internet. Here's my take on one that I found in Experience Life magazine. My big change to the original recipe is that I substituted 3 tablespoons of vegetable broth for 3 tablespoons of olive oil. And I have to say, the finished product didn't miss the olive oil or the added calories that would have come from it. Winning!

Middle Eastern Chickpea Burgers

makes about 10-12 burgers

2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp ground coriander

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp minced fresh ginger

3 tbsp vegetable broth

2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 1/2 cups cooked brown rice

3 tbsp diced carrot or red bell pepper

1/4 cup loosely packed, minced, fresh flat leaf parsley

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

Combine the chickpeas and all ingredients down to the lemon juice in a food processor and process until smooth and well combined, scraping the sides occasionally. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and fold in the rice, carrot or bell pepper and parsley.

Moisten your hands to keep the mixture from sticking, then shape the mixture into 1/2 inch thick patties about 4 inches in diameter.  Place them on the prepared baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, until the patties start to get dry and crisp on the outside.  They will firm up as they cool.

The following salad dressing recipe is from The Engine 2 Diet book by Rip Esselstyn. One of the principles of this way of eating is to eliminate added fat from your diet. But most people are so used to only eating salad dressings made primarily with some form of fat, like olive or canola oil. So what to do when you are following a no-added-fat vegan diet? Try making dressings like this one. It has a lot of ingredients, but at this point, like me, you may have them all in your pantry. And after eating it on my salad with dinner, I'm not missing the oil at all!

E2 Basics Dressing

2 Tbsp nutritional yeast

1 Tbsp tamari

1 Tbsp mustard

2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon, lime or orange

1 Tbsp agave nectar, honey or maple syrup

1 tsp vegetarian Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbsp wheat germ

Water to desired consistency (I didn't use any)

Whisk the ingredients together in a bowl.

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