Nov 26, 2009: Split pea soup, quinoa, greens, and pear cake

Mmm.. this was a delicious meal if I say so myself!  On the menu this week was: 

• Ethiopian split pea stew
• Quinoa-squash-cranberry salady wonderfulness
• A mess of roasted greens
• Upside-down pear cake 

We had a lot of great and positive feedback from the meal!  Yay!  Scroll down for recipes.  This week's meal was led by Dulcie and myself, Jon, and brought to you by many many amazing volunteers that took time out of the hectic exam and assignment freakout time to shop and chop and bake and serve and clean.   Love!

Our resident photographer, Jono Lung, took some other photos from the day:

(I think that's Dulcie explaining what a vegan is to this wee pup.)

Also, at this week's meal our amazing education and outreach workstudy, Heather, put up a really cool display called "Vegan IT" asking for eaters to scribble up their ideas on what being a vegan is all about.  Strictly speaking a vegan diet is one that contains no animal products.  Hot Yam! serves vegan meals for a number of reasons but primarily because it's very accessible: whether you're an omnivore, vegetarian or vegan you can eat with us; aswell a vegan diet can have a much lower environmental impact than one that includes animal products.  In any case, we'll report back with some of your thoughts on veganism from the activity shortly.

We also put out a survey to our eaters (which you can fill out online if you didn't have the chance to at the meal).  We'll report back about the results once we have a chance to analyse 'em.

Some stats about this week's meal:

• We fed about 160 paying customers, and fed lots and lots of volunteers.
• We had 80 responses to the survey.
• We spent  about $460 dollars on food for the meal.  This doesn't include the cost of the quinoa, walnuts, and flour which had in storage. 
• We made about $180 dollars in profit; or $140 if you subtract the money we spent on non-foodstuffs, like dishwasher detergent.

The big disappointment with this meal was running out of greens part way... that was my fault as my guesstimate of the broccoli needed was way off. It was late when we were shopping, I thought we were going over budget.. I panicked. On the upside, the cake was fantastic!

Speaking about cake, here are the recipes!

Ethiopian split pea stew (kik alicha)

This is probably the easiest and tastiest soup you'll ever make.

3.5 C yellow split peas

10 C of water

3 Onions

half a head of garlic

1/2 C of minced ginger

2 1/2 tsp of tumeric

olive oil

Directions:  First, simmer peas and water till almost tender (30 minutes). Dice onion and mince the garlic and ginger.  Fry the onion in olive oil until the onion goes translucent (about five minutes). Add the garlic, ginger, and tumeric and cook for a couple of minutes. Add a bit of water and cover, cooking on low for 3-5 minutes.  Add peas with a bit of salt to taste and simmer until the peas are very soft.  

Spiced Pear and Ginger Upside Down Cake

Topping:

3 pears

1/4 C margarine

1/3 C brown sugar

Cake:

1/2 C margarine

2/3 C brown sugar

1/2 C light molasses (or we used 1/3 C dark molasses and 1/6 C of agave or corn syrup)

1/2 lb (1.6 C) of all purpose flour (we mixed all purpose, whole wheat and Atta flour we had!)

2 tsp ground ginger

2 "flax eggs"

1/3 C of soy milk

1 tsp baking soda

Directions for making flax egg substitute:

1 Tablespoon flax seeds plus 3 Tablespoons water replaces one egg. Finely grind 1 tablespoon whole flaxseeds in a blender or coffee grinder, or use 2 1/2 tablespoons pre- ground flaxseeds. Transfer to a bowl and beat in 3 tablespoons of water using a whisk or fork. It will become very gooey and gelatinous, much like an egg white. In some recipes, you can leave the ground flax in the blender and add the other wet ingredients to it, thus saving you  the extra step of the bowl.

Direction for the topping:

Preheat your oven to 350 F.  Grease your baking tin. Peel (or don't.  We didn't), and halve and core the pears.  Poach (or don't!  we didn't!) in a simple syrup for 30 minutes until soft.  Cream the margarine and sugar until soft.  Spread on the base of tins.  Place pears cut side down on top of this with the tops pointing inwards.  

Directions for making the cake:

Melt the margarine in a pot with the molasses.  DO NOT LET IT BOIL!  Remove from heat and let it cool a bit.   Mix flour and ginger in a large boal. Make a well in the middle and pour flax eggs and margarine/molasses mix into the well.  Mix until smooth.  

Meanwhile, warm the soy milk.  Add the baking soda. Pour this into the mix and mix well.  Pour the batter over the pears being careful not to disturb them.  

Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife slides out cleanly.  We had to bake them for 50-55 minutes.

Let cool, INVERT, and enjoy. 

Squash Quinoa Salad

We got this recipe from this blog and played around with it by leaving out the kale.  We left out the kale mainly because we wanted to put the kale in the....

Mess 'o greens

But it turns out that Ontario kale is rather hard to find at this time of year.  Le sigh.  So instead we bought whatever local greens we could find and roasted them up.  This is about the easiest thing you can do short of just eating these things raw (also recommended!).  

We used:

• Broccoli
• Bok Choi
• Green Peppers (donated!)
• Onions
• Garlic.

Chopped the greens up into medium sized pieces, minced the garlic, mixed it all and drizzled on some olive oil and roasted them in a shallow pan at 425-450F until they had cooked but still had a bit of crunch.  Salt, pepper, random spices and voila.

We got the greens and most of the other produce from the wonderful folks at 4Life Natural Foods in Kensington Market!  Go check 'em out!

April Fools' Meal!

This week at the yam we kicked it up a notch, cooking for over 150 people!
Here's what we made:

Cauliflower Steak with Quinoa and Basil Oil
based on a recipe from Dan Barber via Dulcie's favourite book.

Here's what you need (Serves 4):
1-2 cauliflower cut into 1 inch thick steaks
olive oil for cooking
1 cup quinoa
1.5 cups vegetable stock
2 shallots
1 leek, rinsed and chopped
1 apple, diced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup zucchini, diced
1 tsp fresh thyme
1 tbsp fresh chives, chopped

Basil Oil (makes more than you need, but it's delicious on soups and salads)
2 cups basil
1 cup chilled grapeseed or olive oil (we used olive)

Here's what you do:
Dan and I diverge a little on this because he's not cooking for 150 simultaneously. He's also a better cook so this is an easier way!

At the largest part of each cauliflower head, cut two cross sections to create 2 1-inch thick steaks. In a large saute pan coated with oil, brown the cauliflower steaks on both sides. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

On med-low, cook the quinoa in 1 tbsp-ish of oil until it smells nice and nutty and is a little darker. Add the vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat to low, simmering until the quinoa has absorbed all the stock. You can tell if the quinoa is done because 1) it won't be crunchy when you eat it and 2) the "curl" of the quinoa will have separated from the rest of it.

Meanwhile, saute shallots, leek, zucchini, apple, and garlic. Add the leftover cauliflower florets and season with salt and pepper. Now here's where Dan and I diverge. He puts all this stuff in a blender and then adds a bit of it to the quinoa later. I've done that once, and it's delicious, but not doing that works out to (especially for 150). Anyway, blended or unblended, set aside this vegetably goodness.

Once the quinoa is ready, either mix in the un-blended veg or a big spoonful of the blended veg (you can use the rest to make a delicious cauliflower soup). Add thyme and chives, and drizzle with basil oil.

To make the basil oil: Optional: blanche the basil and shock in ice water (or save some water and soak it for a few minutes). Dry the leaves. Not optional: In a blender, puree basil and oil. Strain (or not).

How to plate: Place cauliflower steak on a bed of quinoa mixture and drizzle basil oil around the plate.

Yum!

We also made baked apples with cinnamon raisins.
To be honest, we just made up the recipe, but here's what you do:

Preheat oven to 350 C.
For each apple, you need the following mixture:

1 tbsp margarine (we like Earth Balance)
1 tbsp brown sugar
some raisins
dash of cinnamon
dash of nutmeg

Mix all that together. Taste it. Good? Good. Carefully cut the bottom bit out of the apple. Then core the apple (ideally you don't want to cut a channel through the apple, but we did, and you didn't notice, did you?)
Stuff the apple with the cinnamon-raisin-sugar mix. Place on a baking sheet and cook in the oven for 15-30 min. (keep an eye on it).

Pour the sugar mixture that leaks out onto the pan back onto the apples.
Enjoy.

Black Bean Soup (serves 6)

Materials:

3 cups of black beans

1 tbsp olive oil

3 cloves minced garlic

2 onions, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 tsp chilli powder

2 tsp chopped fresh or pickled jalapeno pepper

1½ tsp dried oregano

1 tsp ground cumin

½ tsp aniseed

6 cups vegetable stock

1 14 oz can stewed tomatoes

¾ tsp salt

¼ tsp pepper

4 tsp lime juice

Method:

Rinse black beans. In a big pot, cover in 3x volume of water and bring to a boil for 2 min. Remove from heat and let soak 1h. Then drain.

In a large pot, add oil, garlic, onions, and celery and saute for 5 minutes until the onions are softened.

Add chilli powder, aniseed, oregano, jalapeno, and cumin. Cook, stirring occasionally for 1 min.

Add beans and vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 1h 15 min or until beans are very tender.

Next, add the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Simmer 10 minutes, and blend it a bit with your choice of blender (we used a handy submersion blender (immersion blender? I never know) leave some texture though 'cause it's nice).
For a final flourish, add the lime juice.

Serve hot! This soup would be delicious with tortilla chips for a black bean burrito-soup fiesta.

*Disclaimer: This post is tagged with "gluten free". We're pretty sure it is, but no guarantees!