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.

Chickpea Black Fungus Patties

These are simple patties which hold their shape acceptably when made small enough. I served it with kale and potatoes mashed together with a little salt (stamppot).

Origin

I had no particular dish in mind when I made this.

Ingredients

• oil to fry
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 250 grams chickpeas, cooked and drained
• 5 mu-err mushrooms, soaked and drained
• salt to taste

Process

Chop the mu-err mushrooms into very fine pieces. Mince the garlic and add it to the mushrooms.

Heat a small amount of oil in a pan. Add the cumin seeds and let them sputter. Turn down the heat to medium and add the mushroom and garlic to the pan. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Completely mash the chickpeas and stir in the cooked mushroom-garlic mixture. Add salt to taste.

Form small patties and on medium until lightly browned on each side and warm in the middle.

Purple Pea Coconut Curry

What do you do when you encounter a vegetable in a novel colour? If you’re me, you buy it. This is how I ended up with purple peas.

These purple peas became a curry with coconut, which I ate with kidney bean curry and spelt-flour roti.

Vegetable Beer Stew

Beer gives a rich flavour to this vegetable stew. I have listed the vegetables I used, but of course you can use any vegetables you like, so long as they all hold their shape. I just used the vegetables I had on hand. I used a German ‘landbier’. The colour of the stew comes from the beet; avoid this vegetable if you’d like a more traditional colour.

Origin

I had half a bottle of beer left from making pizza crust, so I decided to use it in a stew.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 70 grams tomato paste
• 250 ml beer
• 2 carrots
• 3 stalks celery
• 2 potatoes
• 1 purple yam
• 1 beet
• 6 mu-err mushrooms
• 1 teaspoon vegetarian Worchestershire sauce
• salt to taste
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 2 tablespoons flour

Process

Set the mushrooms to soak in water for at least a half hour. Rinse them well and set aside.

Cook the onion in the oil in a medium pot over medium-low heat until soft, about 10 minutes. While the onion is cooking, peel the root vegetables and chop them into bite-sized pieces. Tear the mushroom into pieces. Chop the celery into pieces.

Add the tomato paste to the onions and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.

Pour the beer over the tomato paste and stir well. Add all the vegetables and enough water to barely cover them. Bring to a simmer. Keep the heat low and simmer for an hour, until all the vegetables are cooked.

Remove the lid. Add the salt, thyme and Worchester sauce. Mix the flour with a little water and add the paste to the stew. Turn up the heat and cook on medium for about 10 minutes or until thickened.

Serves 4.