Batch Cooking: Quinoa and Beans, Four Meals

When I got back from a trip I was too tired to put a lot of effort into making meals. I just set some beans and chickpeas to soak, and the next day I pressure-cooked them and also cooked a bit of quinoa, then put both in the fridge for later. With these ingredients I made four different meals:

• Nachos (dinner)
• Taco salad (dinner)
• Quinoa parsley salad (lunch)
• Bean stew (dinner)

Together with berrry salad (lunch) and cucumber with feta (lunch), this gave me three days of variation and enough food for the rest of the week. Of course I used other ingredients: kale, tomatoes, tortilla chips, lettuce, sweet peppers, feta, blueberries…but it all fit in one over-the-shoulder shopping bag. Just start with some versatile ingredients and it’s easy to come up with half a dozen different dishes with minimal effort if you have a few things in the pantry, fridge and garden (pasta, corn kernels, olives, spices, cheese) as well. Aside from the taco salad and nachos, there weren’t similarities in flavour, either.

Cauliflower Curry with Yoghurt

Recently I made cauliflower curry with yoghurt (leaving out the potatoes in this recipe) using Romanesco cauliflower. I served it with channa methi masala and my favourite ridge gourd curry.

Sweet Potato Tortellini Soup with Kale

For this soup I made a vegetable broth and cooked kale, sweet pepper and tortellini in it. The tortellini was stuffed with a mix of roasted sweet potato, herbs de Provence, ricotta, Parmesan and salt, while the dough was made with flour, egg, salt and water. This dish is still nice even if you don’t make your own pasta, but the rich, creamy filling of fresh pasta brought it to a new level.

Vendhaya Keerai Mor Kozhambu

I served vendhaya keerai mor kozhambu (fenugreek/methi leaves with daal/lentils and yoghurt) with methi/fenugreek roti and carrot-beet fry.

Winter Greens in Coconut Milk

I made winter greens in coconut milk again, this time using Savoy cabbage, oxheart cabbage, bok choy and beet greens. The latter turned the coconut milk slightly pinkish but the flavour was still good.

 

Indian meal: Eggplant, Peas, Bottle Gourd, Spinach

I served the spinach/bottle gourd dish with baigan ka bharta (eggplant and peas).

Pasta with Courgette/Zucchini

Sometimes dinner is as simple as just throwing together a basic pasta sauce and adding some sweet pepper and courgette/zucchini.