Sweet Potato & Carrot Stew With Chard, Red Quinoa, Salad

[EDITED - to allow insertion of missing ingredient]



About three days ago (?) I had this urge to cook up some lovely root vegetables - I get this way in the autumn, just as I go crazy over Anything Green in the spring. I found a recipe in my slowcooker cookbook, but soon found I didn't have all the ingredients - short on carrot, no parnips, not even half enough mushrooms - oh dear! So the above dish is what I finally made, bearing about as much relationship to the original as a cat has to a dog. The idea for using caraway seeds, however, belongs to the original. Adding green leaves to the pot (in my case chard) was mine. It looked and smelled fabulous, and it tasted lovely, just lovely, with no fancy spices (unless you count the caraway seed), letting the flavour of the vegetables shine through. NOTE: Although I made this in my slowcooker, it could just as easily be cooked on the top of the stove. Your choice.

We had it with red quinoa and preceded it, as usual, with a lovely crisp salad.

What went in the pot:

1 small onion, chopped very fine
3 large stalks of celery, also very finely chopped
3-1/2 ounces mushrooms
2 carrots
1 sweet potato
3 dried mushrooms, soaked for 20 minutes and finely chopped (stems discarded)
1/2 cup TVP chunks
1 Tbsp paprika
1/2 tsp thyme
1-1/2 tsp caraway seed
2 Tbsp wholewheat flour
2 cups homemade vegetable stock
salt and black pepper to taste
1 green bell pepper (red would be nice for a change too, I think), chopped
half a bunch - about 7 ounces - fresh chard leaves, cut or torn into manageable pieces

I put all but the last two ingredients (the green papper and the chard) into the slowcooker and left it on high for three hours. At that time I gave it a quick stir (my it smelled good!) added the chopped green pepper, gave it another stir, then laid the chard leaves over the top, snapped this photo . . .



. . . and put the top back on quickly, timing it for 15 or so minutes, since I guessed the pepper would still have texture at the end of that time and that the chard wouldn't have disintegrated but would certainly have wilted. (Guess who had never done this in a slowcooker before! LOL)

Well, it worked just fine. To serve, I pulled the leaves out with a large fork and laid them a large (in this case square) platter, saving the ones that had been in contact with the stew for the centre of the platter. Then I piled the root vegetables etc. in the centre (yes, the green pepper was just right!) and cut a few wedges of lemon juice for the chard.

We had it with red quinoa and preceded it, as usual, with a lovely crisp salad.

The quinoa is the kind I was writing about in an earlier blog this week. It was the first time I had used it - or even tasted it - and I have been given some hints on how to cook it very nicely by the person behind the counter. I decided, however, that for the first try I would like to see what it tasted like on its own, not 'messed around' with other flavours! It's lovely and nutty and imho a welcome change from plain ol' white quinoa! I LOVE the colour as well as the taste! And I keep thinking what a hit it would be on a buffet table.

The salad is of course another one of my crazy concoctions that helped me to get over my general dislike for 'boring old greens'. Snowpeas, craisins (dried cranberries, to those who live on the other side of the world, maybe) and apple made it a little different - but that doesn't stop me adding onion. I feel greens never taste quite right without at least a little onion, red onion being a favourite of mine (and boo-hoo I was out of them too!) The dressing - can't quite remember that now, but a good guess would be rice vinegar and balsamic vinegar with, maybe, a little pureed fruit? Or did I use a little sherry or mirin? Hmmmmm!

Pasta Bolognaise, Field Greens Salad With Orange & Apple

PASTA BOLOGNAISE

I kinda threw this together yesterday lunchtime, a quick pasta sauce (since my freezer was bare of any at all - catastrophe!) with quinoa pasta, preceded by a Field Greens Salad With Orange & Apple.

About the quinoa pasta: this is really really good! For those who know quinoa, you know how nutritious and tasty it is, and those who don't, well you need to discover it soon! It's usually seen as a tiny grain, and comes usually in white. I discovered the red quinoa recently, and that is a real treat! The pasta I bought is macaroni, made from both red and white quinoa - not together, but half of them are the red quinoa noodles and half made from white. It's delicately pretty to look at and delicious in taste!



The package says to cook for 13 to 15 minutes, but that's far too long imho. I give it around 8 or 9 and find it's good.

Now the sauce:

1/2 cup tvp granules and equal boiling water to rehydrate them
1 small rib of celery, chopped very finely
1/2 carrot, chopped very finely
1 small onion, minced
1 large clove garlic, minced
4 or 5 medium mushrooms, chopped
12 or 14 ounces canned plum tomatoes (and a little of their juice)
Oregano to taste (or an Italian mix of herbs, if you prefer)
black (or mixed, your choice) pepper, freshly ground
pinch of crushed chilies, again to taste
1 Tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
1 tsp vegan Worcestershire sauce
1-1/2 Tbsp tomato paste
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast flakes

I boiled the kettle, poured the required water on the tvp granules and chopped the vegetables.

I put the celery, carrot, onion and garlic into a skillet with enough water to soften them.

While the veggies were cooking, I crushed the plum tomatoes and then used the wand blender to puree around 2/3 or so of them - your choice as to how chunky you want it to be.

When the veggies were softened I added the mushrooms, tomatoes, oregano, pepper, chilies, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. After stirring these simmered until they had blended nicely - it depends how much time you have. We were hungry, but not desperately so, so I guess they got around half an hour in the pan. Part way through cooking I realized it was going to be a bit watery, so I thickened with tomato paste. That worked just fine.

We had the salad (see below) as a first course, so I put those to cook while we had that.

When the pasta was cooked, I drained and tossed it with the sauce and garnished it with cilantro (not trad but we like it!). I used a sprinkle of my own cheezy crumby mixture on top, but vegan parmezan-type cheez would be fine.

And here it is:



About the salad:

FIELD GREENS, ORANGE & APPLE SALAD

This doesn't really have - or need - a recipe, but I figure that I pick up ideas from other people's books and websites and maybe someone who sees this who isn't keen on salads might be attracted to trying some of our combinations. Besides, we all oughta eat more salads, and here I am being a good girl and eating mine and I'm taking their photos and posting them, by golly!

One salad looks pretty much like another once you get it reduced to a tiny photo, and if you eat salad as often as we do, then the trick isn't so much in the mix of things (although variety and a few surprise elements help a lot!) but in the dressing. Not using oil in dressings, I find that the lighter the better, but sometimes I break out. This one took a little sweetener - mirin - and orange juice along with some seasoned rice vinegar. Otherwise, you can see that we love to mix fruit into our salads (and match the dressing to it - or even just use a squeeze of lemon juice or a sprinkle of one of the vinegars we keep in.