Quinoa with Caramelized Onions and Zucchini

Vacations are supposed to be relaxing, right?

Not if you are Rob and me.

We finally picked our vacation destination for the year: Colombia, here we come! (Well in a few weeks…)

Hearing my cousin’s stories about the lovely beaches, vibrant (shifty?) street-life, fabulous hiking and river cruises in the Amazon, we are excited to check out such a diverse country.

One thing Rob and I are planning to do is trek to Ciudad Perdida, Colombia’s Lost City (aka Colombia’s Machu Picchu). It is a stunningly beautiful but grueling 6-day hike through hot and humid conditions. My cousin had tons of stories from his trip – having to stop hiking around noon because it was so hot (over 32C with high humidity) but then swimming all day in the waterfalls, visiting a cocaine farm, stunning vistas, but also being infested by tics, another girl attacked by fire ants and not being able to walk the day following the hike. Hopefully Rob and I are up for the challenge! I think this will be harder than our 2-day 360km bike ride to Kingston last year, but totally worth it. I love this description from Trip Advisor: To enjoy the trek you will need to be relatively fit, not afraid of heights, be sure of foot, not mind cold showers, not mind being dirty, have the ability to fall asleep in a hammock and enjoy mucking in.

I say: BRING IT ON!

While we are still working on our trip itinerary, I love taking cooking classes when I travel. I am scheduling a cooking class in Bogota that promises a trip to the market AND all meals to be vegan.  Rob is quite concerned about the availability of vegan options outside Bogota, but I am hopeful things will work out. For the hike, the tour group promises meals filled with beans, lentils and brown rice for me. I hear the fruits and potatoes are to die-for, though, so I will not pass up the opportunity to sample those. If I bring quinoa, I can teach them how to cook it for me, too.

Legend has it that the Inca army subsisted partially on quinoa, and I see no better way to trek through the Colombian jungles. It is no secret that it is one of my favourite (pseudo)grains.

In honour of quinoa, here is a simple yet delicious salad.  I honestly wasn’t expecting much from such a humble set of ingredients, but they worked so well together. Zucchini and thinly sliced onions are slowly pan-fried with thyme to create a lovely caramelized duo. The zucchini impedes full caramelization of the onions, but it is a much simpler way to create the salad. The purists may want to caramelize the onions solo for 45 minutes and roast the zucchini on a grill for even more flavour! Regardless, my way is great, too. The veggies are then tossed with the quinoa, lemon and parsley. I don’t use parsley much, but its slight (but not overpowering) flavour was quite refreshing here. Top with some toasted pine nuts, and you have a filling dish. I could definitely eat this every day while hiking.

But please help me: Any tips for travelling in Colombia? For trekking in the humid jungle? (help on the last one, please!)

Any favourite travel snacks that can withstand high temperatures?

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Weekend Wellness, to this month’s River Cottage Rocks Veggie Heaven and to Cookbooks Sundays.

Finnish Double Pea Stew with Apples

Guess who biked to work yesterday? With highs of 18C, a nice rain on Monday to get rid of the salt, I was almost feverish in excitement to finally start biking to work!

I know it is only a teaser, though… Warmer weather alone does not make spring. Especially if it only lasts a week.

There are many ingredients I associate with spring: Baby greens. Arugula. Asparagus. Carrots. And peas.

Since the fresh, local produce hasn’t made its way to the forefront just yet, you can approximate springtime with this hybrid of a stew adapted from Love Soup: Finnish Double Pea Soup with Apples (original recipe here). It is a wonderful merriment of a hearty stick-in-your-ribs winter split pea stew combined with a sprinkling of spring with fresh (or in my case, frozen) peas (I used the sweeter petit pois from President’s Choice). Apples also add a hit of sweetness without being too discernible. The vinegar and mustard temper and balance the soup extremely well along with a whiff of nutmeg and coriander. The flavours are not over-the-top but they marry very well.

This is my submission to this month’s My Kitchen, My World featuring dishes from Finland, to This Week’s Cravings (Green), to this week’s Wellness Weekend, to this month’s  Gimme Green event and to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays.

Pickle Soup

You’d think something was up. While I have long given up cheesy bliss, meat-laden meals and sweet desserts*, I have been having a lot of random food cravings. Cabbage. Tahini. And now pickles. When I told Rob I drank the pickle juice after I ate the last pickle, he was concerned. That’s what pregnant people do! No worries on that front. But what’s up with the cravings?

*Full disclosure: December was filled with chocolate cravings (gosh, those cookies were so good!). I also learned that Clif and Luna bars are deadly addictive. They may be vegan, but they are junk. I have been cut-off.

In any case, I don’t feel that guilty obliging my pickle cravings. Yes, they can be a bit salty, but they can be so satisfying with their crunch and vinegary bite.

After eating more than a few unadorned, I decided to branch out and make Pickle Soup that I had bookmarked from Love Soup eons ago.

Truly, pickle soup is a misnomer. Yes, there are pickles in it but it is not a dominant flavour. Just like vinegar and lemon juice are added to enhance the balance of a soup’s flavour, pickles do the exact same thing here. They add that salty and acidic touch.

So if this isn’t a pickle soup, it is a soup filled to the brim with veggies! It has an Eastern European flavour profile with dill and cabbage but it also has a hint of thyme. The veggies are bountiful, making this a huge pot of soup – leek, delicate oyster mushrooms, celeriac, carrot, turnip, Swiss chard, cabbage, red bell pepper – as well as barley.

While the flavours don’t scream out in any sense, they mingle well together. The pickles add that extra dimension that makes you think about the soup. Use dill pickles, Polish if possible, for the nice tang. Even pickle haters could enjoy the soup since the pickles are hidden amongst the plentiful veggies.

Even though I added in even more veggies than the original recipe, substituting a few ingredients as well (celeriac, baby!), I didn’t tire of this soup.  I usually shun recipes that feed 8 people, but not this time. I relished in it. Sometimes I ate this soup twice a day!

Thankfully I think my pickle cravings subsided after a round of the soup.

What have you been craving recently?

This is my submission to this week’s Healthy Vegan Friday, to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Wellness Weekend, to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes and to this month’s No Croutons Required featuring fresh herbs.

Roasted Celeriac and Lentils with Hazelnuts and Mint

I loved hearing how you decide to share your blog with your friends and co-workers after my last post. As Joanne said, sometimes there are clues that a blog may be lurking in the background, or at least a true love of cooking. Rarely repeated lunches, guilty as charged. Beyond that, I try not to share my profound love of beans with just anyone.  I don’t want to be perceived as preachy once I start talking about my food choices (no meat, dairy, fish, refined flours, refined sugars, white rice and potatoes, etc). You know you are my friend when I discuss the virtues of lentils over chickpeas. Although walking into my kitchen, with its rows of dried beans are a quick giveaway. If you make it up into my study, then my collection of cookbooks is a dead giveaway that I love to cook.

I have a lot of cookbooks. A lot. Recently, I won a subscription to Eat Your Books, a website that indexes cookbook recipes for easier searching. Sadly, my most loved cookbooks (namely my vegan faves) have not yet been indexed (the scourge of Tess’ cookbooks being not-so-mainstream). However, this allows me to check out some of my other cookbooks, that I would not have pulled off the shelf simply because they are not vegan. The best recipes are those that are accidentally vegan. They aren’t trying to be something meaty.

I recently made a delicious celeriac and white bean puree from Terry’s new cookbook. I know her cookbook will get lambasted for using the most isoteric ingredients, but I love it because my kitchen is stocked with all things isoteric and I have bought even more pantry items! I also push myself to try new vegetables. Despite hating celery, I scoped out celeriac, also known as celery root. Sunny’s for the win, after the St Lawrence Market was out that week. And yes, it is now my newest favourite root vegetable. An underdog if you ever looked at it; it is a white/grey/dirty thing all gnarled up in roots. But as a non-starchy vegetable root (not part of the cruciferous gang, sadly), it tastes like a cross between a potato and has the nice parts of celery: a sweet, yet subtle earthy celery taste. It tastes a bit nutty with hints of lemon, too.

So, when I was left with half a celeriac, I turned to Eat Your Books. I found an intriguing celeriac schnitzel in my German cookbook (here‘s Bittman’s version), lots of mashes, a lot of soups, some slaws and salads. I will have to get more celeriac to try all the recipes! However, this time I was drawn to a vegan-friendly lentil salad with celeriac from Ottlenghi’s Plenty (similar recipe here).

Of course, I adapted the recipe. Instead of boiling the celeriac, I opted to roast it. I also decreased the dressing, making it less oily and I tried to play up the hazelnut flavour by pairing the hazelnut oil with a mild rice vinegar (it would be interesting to try this with a balsamic, me thinks). However, the majority of the hazelnut taste came from the roasted hazelnuts, instead. I liked the juxtaposition of warming hazelnut with the roasted celeriac, earthy lentils and bright mint. It is a nice, unassuming salad and a great way to introduce someone to celeriac.

This is being submitted to this month’s Monthly Mingle featuring Heart Healthy Meals.

Jamaican Tofu Chowder with Collards

There are very few purchased spice blends in our house.

I made my own dukkah and za’atar. Rob made panch phoran to quickly whip up this Cauliflower Dal.

I used to make my own garam masala until I discovered Arvinda’s garam masala, which is what Rob had in his kitchen. It tastes really good so we’ve stuck with it until our stash runs out.

Just as I have been averse to dishes named curry, I have been avoiding dishes calling for “curry powder”. I will typically substitute garam masala.

But this time was different. I forged ahead and tried some higher quality Madras curry powder. I knew that even if I hated it, there was a good chance Rob would adore this – a coconut curry is definitely up his alley! Of course, I wouldn’t be sharing the recipe here if I didn’t love it as well.

While there is definitely an Indian influence to this curry, this is a Jamaican curry that I spotted in Big Vegan. Lime-marinaded tofu chunks, sweet potatoes and carrots are combined with collards in a coconut-curry sauce spiced with thyme.  Caribbean dishes can be quite spicy, but I still used 1 tbsp of curry powder. The coconut milk helps to tame the heat. However, I omitted the Serrano pepper in lieu of my favoured Aleppo chili flakes.

Even though this wasn’t from Terry’s new cookbook we’re testing, we’ve started to rate all our meals as “love”, “really like”, “like”, “just ok”, “not good” as per our cookbook testing guidelines. As Rob put it: On the love-like scale, I give this a love. I gave it a really like, and let Rob polish off the rest of the leftovers. There are bigger battles to win!

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this week’s Weekend Wellness, to this month’s citrus love blog hop and to My Kitchen, My World for Jamaica.

Chickpea Piccata

While I typically bring food when I eat out, when I went home for Christmas, my Mom didn’t want me to cook. She wanted this to be a relaxing visit and thought that if I was cooking in the kitchen, I wouldn’t be on vacation. Trust me, I relish cooking, but it was wonderful to know that my Mom had already prepared some meals for me to enjoy.

Prior to arriving, at her request, I suggested a few possible meals. Some dishes that I had already made myself, but mostly dishes that I had bookmarked for a special occasion. My mom was so awesome that she went out of her way to make I didn’t feel left out: when everyone had her delicious quiche for brunch, she made my Mediterranean Crustless Chickpea Flour Quiche for me. For Christmas Eve, she made beef bourguignon for the gang and beans bourguignon for me.

For Christmas dinner, I had Chickpea Piccata on the menu. My recent meal at Candle 79 in New York City was a definite highlight with their delicious Seitan Piccata and I was itching to try something similar at home. But with much less work!

With a simple mise-en-place, this Chickpea Piccata from Appetite for Reduction, was easy for me to whip together as my Mom tended to the spaetzle to go with the rouladen.

Thankfully, this Chickpea Piccata did not disappoint. It had the perfect blend of flavours, with a not-too-tart lemon-caper-shallot sauce overtop braised chickpeas. I served it over spinach with a side of mashed parsnips. To be honest, for such a healthy meal, there is no need to reserve this solely for a special occasion. This definitely gets filed in the “You Can Make this For Me Anytime” category.

This is being submitted to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes, to this month’s citrus love blog hop and to Ricki’s Weekend Wellness.

Trinidadian Black-Eyed Pea Stew

As I said, I don’t really do anything different around January 1.

I had a long list of things I wanted to do over the holidays, though, but didn’t really conquer much of the list. Other than spend time with family and friends… and with myself. Sometimes, it may be more important to get a good relaxing vacation instead of worrying about work and other deadlines.

Rob and I had planned to do some spring cleaning, going through some of our stuff downstairs, but we procrastinated instead…

I know some people are really good about cleaning out their pantries of old food, but I tend to accumulate instead of purge. However, I’ve had 2 recent cooking mishaps from stale spices, so I am urging you not to follow my footsteps into the same fate! Toss those old spices!

In my case, I inherited a nice spice drawer when I moved into our new house. The drawer is lined by rows of jars with spices. Some new to me, like anardana, and others that I had never used before like marjoram, and others that I just didn’t have like chili powder and ground mustard. I quickly added in some of my own spices that were missing like smoked paprika, parsley and mint. While I know how old my spices are, I wasn’t sure how long the inherited spices had been there… but when this recipe called for ground mustard, low and behold, I had some and plundered on.

This is a recipe for a Trinidadian Black-Eyed Pea Soup from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian (recipe also posted here).  In addition to inheriting spices, I also was (very kindly) lent a slow cooker. This soup looked simple enough to simmer away in the crockpot, so I pieced it together and timed it so it would be ready by the time I got home after work. Since I was to be sharing this with a bunch of friends, I doubled the amount of black-eyed peas, carrot and spices, turning this into a stew instead of a soup.

There was so much stuff in the slow cooker, I was worried it would boil over! Thankfully, by the time I made it home, the stew was ready and Rob had already started to dish it out.

Everyone said they liked the stew, but I thought something was missing. The fresh cilantro and chives were important for flavour but the stew needed a bit more depth of flavour. I wasn’t happy with it. Someone ended up adding a spicy Dijon mustard and said it was superb. When I ate the leftovers, I agreed that the mustard really helped. But I thought to myself, I know I added the ground mustard – why can’t I taste it? So I went back to the ground mustard in the spice drawer… dipped my finger in it and tasted it. And what did it taste like? NOTHING! It definitely needed to be tossed!

Combined with lackluster results from Chili Lime Roasted Chickpeas due to stale chili powder, this has really gotten me to think about tossing the old spices! Out with the old and in with the new!

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to this month’s Bookmarked Recipes,  to Ricki’s Weekend Wellness, to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Chez Cayenne,  and to this month’s No Croutons Required featuring black eyed peas.

Caramelized Onion and Cabbage Chowder with Sweet Potatoes and White Beans

January. The New Year. Time for resolutions.

Or not.

Personally, I don’t need a special day to reflect on where I’d like to be. I try to continually re-assess where I am and where I’d like to be.

Why else do you think I started a quest to eat more cruciferous veggies in November?

Cabbage is a cruciferous veggie that is routinely shafted as a diet food. Ever heard of the cabbage soup diet? Well, I think it has to do with eating a lot of cabbage…

Cabbage is filled with antioxidants and other nutrients, yet is low calorie. The NY Times dubbed it one of the top foods you aren’t eating (yet!).

Please don’t let the odd association with diets prevent you from trying delicious cabbage soup. I was positively smitten with the smokey Russian sauerkraut soup (Shchi) that I tested for Vegan Eats World. I really, really, want to share the recipe because it was that good!  But it is top-secret for now. (hint- veganize this soup and you are halfway there). Instead, I will share yet another cabbage soup that is equally delicious yet completely different. Surprisingly delicious in its simplicity.

This is a spoof on the typically cheese-laden French onion soup from Vegetarian Times (September 2011) with inspiration from Joanne. With my variations, though, you would have to look harder to find its original basis (especially since I omitted the cheese croutons) but it is tasty. Caramelized onions are beefed up with braised cabbage in this thick chowder spiced with apple cider and thyme. Like Joanne, I opted to add sweet potatoes, but also white beans to make it more of a meal-in-a-bowl soup.  Everything worked so well together, with the subtly sweet caramelized onions and apple cider with the sustenance from the sweet potatoes and beans.  Good the day it was made but even more delicious as leftovers. The thyme was a nice flavour but I can’t wait to try Joanne’s version because she used pomegranate juice and rosemary.

Here are some of my other favourite cabbage recipes:

Braised Cabbage with Chorizo Seitan Sausage
Chinese Sweet and Sour Cabbage with Tofu
Cabbage and Kohlrabi Salad
Mexican Cabbage Stirfry
Braised Cabbage with Onions and Carrots
Quinoa and Red Lentil Kitchari with Cabbage

This is my submission to Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice for this week’s Magazine Mondays, to Ricki’s Weekend Wellness and to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays.

White Bean, Quinoa And Kale Stew with Fennel

For once, my Mom could snicker that her grocery store was better than mine.

You see, I was on a mission to buy parsnips to make this stew. My trusty Sunny’s didn’t have any.

I found parsley root, with beautiful parsley leaves attached to it. It looked almost identical to a parsnip, which to my eye, is a white carrot. However, they don’t taste the same. Good thing I didn’t buy it!

I had to venture to a “normal” grocery store. Or T&T, since they have parsnips. I bet the Farmer’s Market would have some, too.

While we’re at it, let’s push the boundaries some more (truthfully, parsnips are not that adventurist for me). I don’t like licorice but like tarragon. Why not try fennel? I am so happy I tried it, because I loved this stew, fennel and all!

Continuing with my white bean kick, and my abundance of kale, I modified Isa’s Quinoa, White Bean And Kale Stew from Appetite for Reduction. I thought it might be plain and boring, but it was anything but. It was sublime. A great, comforting stew with tons of mellow flavours without bogging you down.  I substituted the leek for onion and fennel, swapped the white potatoes for sweet potatoes, upped the carrots and parsnips and used up the last of my kale including the stems, which was only 1/2 lb.

Thankfully, this soup makes a ton. I will be slurping it up all week and then some!

I honestly had a hard time deciding which white bean and kale soup to make, and here are some other soups that caught my eye:

Turkey Sausage and Quinoa Pasta Soup (veganized of course) from Shape

White Bean, Roasted Garlic and Kale Soup from The Domestic Vegan

Tuscan White Bean Soup in Rebar

This is my submission to this month’s Simple and in Season, to this week’s Healthy Vegan Friday, to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend and to both Ricki and Kim’s vegan SOS challenge featuring parsnips.

Brazilian Black Bean and Vegetable Stew

Be prepared for some serious veggies this month. Last month was beans. This month will feature loads of greens. A spotlight on the various ways of eating delicious cruciferous vegetables, which include veggies as seemingly varied as kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and daikon (white radish). Each one loaded with vitamins and many of them top my superfood chart. Trust me, they do not need to be boring. Anything but!

Here we go, case in point here. A party in my mouth.

Brazilian food tends to do that for me.

Just like Moroccan food, Brazilian cuisine is known to be meat-heavy. However, there are endless recipes for delicious vegan alternatives.  In my own kitchen, I can create quite the flavour fiesta.

While selecting a random recipe for this month’s No Croutons Required, I was thrilled when this Brazilian Black Bean and Vegetable Stew from The Tropical Vegan Kitchen was an option. It marries two other dishes I have made: a hearty feijoada with black beans and mushrooms as well as a a black bean soup spiced with cinnamon and mango. The results could not have been better – both in the flavour department and in the colour department!

This stew is filled to the max with colourful veggies (sweet potato, red pepper, green pepper, tomato, kale) on a background of black beans. Garlic, cumin and thyme flavour the broth. While I cooked the stew, it was also spiced with orange zest.  I was worried it would be overpowering. It wasn’t until I added the final hit of lime juice that I was seriously satisfied with my beautiful and delicious stew.

This is my submission to this month’s Simple and in Season, to this month’s Sweet Heat featuring chilis in soups, to Ricki’s Wellness Weekends, to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays and to this month’s No Croutons Required (co-hosted by Jacqui and Dom) featuring random cookbook recipes.

Braised Cabbage with Chorizo Seitan Sausage

Last year at this time, I was neither a vegan, nor a vegetarian. Now I eat vegan without refined sugars and flours and haven’t looked back!

Last November, I partially participated in Vegan MoFo, in that all my recipes that month were vegan. But I didn’t do any daily posts. I wasn’t nuts.

This year, I AM nuts. OK, I always was nuts, but this time, I decided to take the plunge and join the multitude of blogs celebrating Vegan MoFo. The month of vegan blogging, of daily (weekday) posts, oh my. I hope I can keep up, and signed up hoping to dislodge my backlog of recipes I still really want to share.

Seeing I made vegan sausages last year, I figured it would be fitting to kick-start this month with a quick and easy braised cabbage dish with chorizo sausages from Appetite for Reduction. While my favourite braised cabbage takes at least 2 hours in the oven, this is a great alternative.  Garlic, thyme and pepper flakes flavour the cabbage well, but choose your vegan sausage wisely. The chorizo seitan sausage from Viva Vegan packs a serious punch of flavours. This is what makes this a spectacular dish.

Squirrel the sausages into your freezer, so you can whip this up the next time you are wondering what to do with your cabbage.

Quick, tasty and healthy, what’s not to love?

Wish me luck on a month of vegan cuisine!

This is my submission to this month’s Simple and in Season and to this week’s Wellness Weekends.

Baked White Beans with Roasted Garlic, Lemon, and Herbs

While I have baked beans in the middle of the summer, during the biggest heat wave of the summer, no less, I actually try not to use the oven in the summer.  The Mango BBQ Beans, which appeared a few times this summer, were perfect because they were cooked on the stovetop. Why would I want to heat up my home with the oven when I am actively trying to keep things cool at the same time?

Last week, it was still summer; this week it is definitely fall. The lows at night were 6C and I was worried about frost in my garden. I kept adding more layers each morning as I froze while riding my bike to work. I am sad to say that I think I brought winter home with me from Iceland.

Since I ate primarily raw while in Iceland (courtesy of a fabulous resto, Glo, right across from our hotel in Reykjavik), I was craving comforting, homey dishes upon my return. Thankfully, I had some meals that I had frozen before we left for vacation, and Rob eagerly whipped up a batch of dal bhat.

When my jetlag finally subsided enough that I was ready to tackle the kitchen, I peered into my bean collection, glanced out at my garden brimming with herbs, and figured a light, lemony, baked bean dish was in order.

Bright and summery with the herbs and lemon, zippy from the chili flakes, yet comforting with the creamy white beans, this was a perfect dish to throw into my oven on a lazy weekend afternoon. The house smelled great, the kitchen warmed up and my belly was decidedly content.

Baking the beans allows a more even cooking temperature that results in creamy beans, but also roasted the garlic and herbs together into a sultry sensation. I modified Kim’s recipe to use the herbs in my own garden and used less oil, but this is completely malleable to whatever strikes your fancy. Pick your favourite herb or herbs. I was a bit perplexed about the baked lemon, but in the end, I kept it with the beans and found I could eat it, too, seeds and all!

This is being submitted to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Astrid from Paulchen’s Foodblog.

Spanish Green Bean and Lima Bean Stew

Rob and I just returned from a week-long vacation in Iceland. I hope to do a more complete post in a few weeks about the trip (wonderful! beautiful! stunning!), after I frantically try to put my life back into order with work and research commitments. My blog will go into autopilot until then.

I will tease you, though, and let you know how great the trip was and a week was certainly not long enough for the quaint island. Despite the stunning views and vistas, it was cold. While the daytime highs could be 8-20C, with winds beating us fiercely at 80 km/h, the windshield was brutal. It reminded me how it is truly fall.

Even before I left, I knew summer was slowly coming to an end at home. I was worried I would return to Canada to find fall, but instead, thankfully, it is still in the mid-20s.

However, there are other signs. The mornings are now dark when I get up and if I cook after work, it can be dark by the time I finish. Butternut squash, a surefire marker of fall, is making a come back!

After the cold winds of Iceland, I was hankering some warming stews and soups. Summer or fall, stews are great any time of the year. In fact, this stew doubles as a salad which is how I ate the leftovers. See how perfect this is for end-of-summer meals?

Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health (recipe posted here), this is a flavourful medley of vegetables (red bell pepper, green beans, tomatoes and butternut squash) with a light broth spiced with sweet paprika. Spurred by Cara’s recommendation, I used butternut squash instead of sweet potatoes but both would work well here.  This is great with the large, buttery lima beans, but feel free to use your favourite bean.

Moosewood recommended serving this with a romesco sauce on top, but I found I preferred the thickened leftover stew over top baby spinach with a sprinkle of toasted slivered almonds.   After throwing my sweet and sour lentils overtop arugula, I am learning that most bean dishes can be thrown overtop some greens for a lovely salad.

This is being submitted to this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Graziana from Erbe in Cucina (Cooking with Herbs).

Skillet-Toasted Corn, Tomato and Anasazi Bean Salad

Buying a dozen ears of corn on impulse means lots of corny recipes!

Eating corn as a simple side is delicious right from the cob, but my specialty is one-pot meals. Preferably with beans. I have started to feel that a meal isn’t complete if there are no beans. I miss them that much.

I already knew this was going to be the year of the bean, but I have been slow on trying out my heirloom beans. I have a hard time using up an ingredient that will be nearly impossible for me to replenish. But after reorganizing my kitchen into a virtual bean library with rows of Mason jars housing my beans, it became apparent just how many beans I have! Lots! And I should really start to cook with them. It will be ok, even if I love them to bits. It will just give us an excuse to wander back to New York or San Francisco.

Imagine how excited I was to find a salad for both corn and heirloom beans. Martha called for Jacob’s Cattle Beans. I went downstairs to soak them.

Except I couldn’t find Jacob’s Cattle Beans. My beans are organized by use, and the heirloom beans by colour… not alphabetically. I scoured my list of beans I bought from Kalustyan’s and turns out I don’t have Jacob’s Cattle Beans. Drats! I googled a bit and figured Anasazi beans could substitute as they are a sweeter, mealy bean similar to Jacob’s Cattle Beans. Colourfully dappled when dry, they sadly loose their fun colours after cooking. Anasazi beans are quick cooking, and apparently don’t need any pre-soaking (although I did anyways). Pinto beans could easily substitute if you are heirloom-less.

Now that we had our bean selection under control, I got the beans simmering the next afternoon. Each component of the salad was meant to shine, so meanwhile, I toasted the corn kernels in a skillet over the stovetop. Next, I cooked down some cocktail tomatoes with thyme. I tried to cook the tomatoes in a non-stick wok without oil but they stuck anyways. If you add oil it may not be a problem for you, but to capture all those browned bits, I deglazed the pan with some the broth from the cooked beans. I threw in the beans and corn to help meld the flavours. The dressing was simple, with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chili flakes and salt and it rounded out the salad nicely. Served on top of your leafy green of choice, you have a typical one-pot Janet bean salad.

This is my submission to Deb for this week’s Souper Sundays, to Ivonne at Cream Puffs in Venice for this week’s Magazine Mondays, and to this month’s Monthly Mingle featuring Scintillating Salads.

Grilled Portobello Mushrooms with a Garlic-Thyme White Bean Puree and Sweet Corn

Can you tell I have a few foodie crushes?

Tess Challis, the obvious choice.

You could possibly surmise I love Ottolenghi‘s recipes.

You don’t yet know how much I adore Denis Cotter’s recipes, because I haven’t posted them yet, but I am loving his latest cookbook, For The Love of Food.

There is something so unattainable about cookbook authors.

Then there’s Sarah at My New Roots.  I adore her approach to whole, natural foods and want to make everything on her blog. Plus she’s seriously cute and makes adorable videos. And equally unattainable since she doesn’t respond to my emails. (turns out she has just been UBER busy!)

I have become smitten by her food, instead. So far, her recipes have not let me down: the raspberry dream cake, the sultry peaches and blueberries, the 11-spiced lentil salad, the raw tacos with walnut meat, cashew sour cream and a cherry tomato salsa and the chickpea salad with the Mexican mango dressing.

So when I wanted a recipe for grilled portobello mushrooms for the barbecue, I quickly turned to Sarah’s blog. There were heaps of meat for everyone else, so I only made one burger. No worries if it didn’t work out. But of course, there were no failures. The mushroom burger was fabulous. I shared it with Rob so he, too, could relish in the culinary delicacy he had just grilled for me.

While I only modified her recipe by decreasing the oil and using fresh herbs, this would also be good with dried herbs when I don’t have them blooming on my patio. After grilling, you have a nicely spiced  meaty burger with a balsamic glaze. It didn’t taste like a mushroom, so you could possibly convert mushroom-haters, but you won’t be able to fool anyone into thinking this was meat. But it was surprisingly filling!

However, I had one problem.

I made one mushroom; I ate one mushroom; I did not photograph said mushroom.

Thankfully I had some more portobello mushrooms, so after the hubbub of the party subsided, Rob offered to grill me up some more burgers the next day.

However, this time, I chose to smear it with a white bean puree spiced with thyme and garlic, from Power Foods (recipe also here) and then I sprinkled some leftover corn kernels on top. Now we had a complete meal. And a photograph!

Rob prefers hummus to this bean spread, but personally, I found it to be a great twist to a bean spread. The baby lima beans made it creamy with only a touch of oil. The garlic and thyme heightened its flavour, making this a nice and bright spread. Use it just like you would hummus, though: it would be great with raw vegetables, crackers or in a wrap.

This is my submission to this month’s My Legume Love Affair, hosted by Preeti, to Ricki’s Summer Wellness Weekends, to this month’s Ingredient Challenge Monday for mushrooms, to this week’s Summer Favourites potluck party, and to this month’s Simple and in Season.