Spring Pea, Bean, & Kraut Soup

Vegan && Non-fat && Grain-Free && 30 Minutes or Less

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I’ve made this soup every spring for the past several years (maybe even going on 10 years now…). It’s feels like the perfect bridge between warm comforting winter soups, and bright fresh spring produce. Plus, it’s really fast to throw together, especially if you’re starting with dried beans that you’ve soaked and cooked ahead, or if you want to make things super speedy with canned beans instead.

I’m just food-obsessed enough (and rely on beans as a super essential source of protein in my diet enough) that I am probably more diligent than most people about soaking and cooking dried beans on a regular basis. But really, if you can remember to do a couple pretty much hands-off steps ahead of time, it’s easy to have cooked beans on hand whenever you need them. And, who am I kidding, I have a hard time remembering too, so I write myself notes when I’m meal planning. I literally wrote myself a note last night for this morning to remind myself to put some dried cannellini beans in a quart mason jar (about 1/3 full) and fill it with water to soak this morning before work. Then when I got home, the jar of soaking beans sitting out on the counter reminded me to dump it all in a pan and start them boiling first thing before anything else. Once my coat and shoes were off, cats were fed (kitty dinnertime is a production at my house, but that’s a story that’ll have to wait for another day), and I started getting the rest of the ingredients out of the fridge, the beans were only a few minutes away from being cooked through.

This soup is adapted from a recipe by Peter Berley, in his excellent book “Flexitarian Table,” and Peter Berley also gets credit for the bean-cooking tip that I am about to impart to you now. Of course step one is to soak the beans first for at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours at room temperature; if you start them soaking but don’t end up having time to cook them by 24 hours, just pop them into the fridge, still in their soaking water. They’ll wait there patiently for at least a few days until you get around to cooking them. The secret tip comes in at step two: pour the beans and their soaking water into a medium sauce pan and set to a boil; boil until they foam, skim off as much of the foam as you can, then strain out the beans, dump the soaking water, and rinse the beans and the pan completely. Then the final step is to put the beans back in the pan and add fresh water to cover the beans by about an inch. Getting rid of the foam and boiling them in fresh water in a clean pot makes the beans a bit easier to digest… even non-cyborgs need help digesting beans sometimes. My own secret bean-cooking tip is to use half broth and half water to boil the beans in the last step; this gives them a little extra flavor and makes them good enough to eat on their own. If you’re me, you’ll sneak more than a few while the rest of dinner is cooking, as a rule.

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I took a couple extra minutes to round out the meal. For my partner, who has no dietary restrictions, I made basically a fancy, but super speedy, grilled cheese sandwich, using a thick slice of sharp cheddar, sliced cherry tomatoes, chopped fresh chives, and a light smear of some grainy dijon mustard. (My grilled cheese secret tip is to start things cooking with some butter in the frying pan with the heat on medium high, and as soon as the bread crisps up, finish the sandwich in the oven at about 400F for a few minutes so the cheese melts and the rest of the filling warms through without burning the bread).

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For myself I made a egg-white scramble (eggs are great for breakfast, lunch, or dinner), into which I threw some chopped arugula, sliced cherry tomatoes, a bunch of chopped fresh chives, and salt and pepper of course, which I then served up with some reheated leftover roasted potatoes (and let’s not forget the hot sauce!).

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All of these were really quick and easy to make, and made for an all-around fresh and filling dinner.

Spring Pea, Leek, & Kraut Soup

Start to finish in 30 minutes or less

Serves 4 as a main course

Bits:

2 to 3 large leeks, white and tender green parts only, cleaned and thinly sliced (about 2 to 3 cups)
2 Tbsp chopped fresh mint, plus extra for garnish
1 tsp salt, plus more to taste
1/4 tsp ground pepper, or to taste
2 cups fresh or frozen peas
1 1/2 cups cooked/canned cannellini beans (or other white beans, if you don’t have cannellini on hand)
2 cups vegetable broth (I like Organic Imagine Vegetarian No-Chicken Broth)
2 cups water
3/4 cups drained sauerkraut + 1/2 cup drained sauerkraut (or kimchi) for garnish

Algorithm:

Add the leeks to a large saucepan or medium stockpot, and dry-fry over medium heat for 4 to 5 minutes, until the leeks get soft and start to turn golden. (Add a tablespoon of water if the leeks start getting too dry and want to stick to the bottom of the pot).
Add the chopped fresh mint, salt, and pepper to the pot. Give it a stir and cook for another minute.
Add the peas, beans, vegetable stock, and water to the pot and bring to a simmer. If using fresh peas, simmer the soup for about 6 minutes until the peas are tender; if using frozen peas, simmer for about 4 minutes until peas and beans are hot throughout.
Add 3/4 cups of the sauerkraut and simmer for another 2 minutes. Take the pot off the heat and add more salt and/or pepper to taste.
Ladle the soup into serving bowls. Garnish with additional fresh mint and extra sauerkraut (or use kimchi instead of the extra kraut for a little extra spice and tang!). Slurp and enjoy.

Chickpea Flour Flat Bread (+Caprese Sandwich)

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Very low fat && Grain-free && Vegan option

Giving up grains does not have to mean giving up bread! At least, if your definition of bread is a little flexible. I can’t say I have a recipe for sourdough or a nice crusty french baguette that will fool you into thinking you’re eating regular wheat flour bread, but this chickpea flour bread still unmistakably bready, and versatile enough to fill in just about wherever you need it. It’s light enough to use for a sandwich, and perfect for topping with chutneys or spreads and dipping into soups. My partner (human, with no dietary restrictions) isn’t really a fan of beans (I still don’t know how that’s possible), but he voluntarily gave this bread a taste; he said it’s “passable” and he’d eat it without complaint if served to him… coming from him, that’s a big success!

A couple of the keys to making this recipe work so well are the milk and the roasted yam (always!). You can still make bread if you use water instead of milk and omit the yam, but the bread will be a bit more dry and will taste more reminiscent of beans, so I recommend using milk and yam if at all possible. At this point I’ve just been keeping some roasted yam in my fridge at the ready at all times, since it’s so useful in baking with 100% chickpea flour. It’s super convenient to have handy whenever the need to bake strikes me, and it’s also tasty on its own, mixed into some dal, or as a side in a larger meal if I find I have extra leftover.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Chickpea flour flat bread with “spicy red pepper jelly” from my local deli

Lately I’ve been craving a good savory, juicy sandwich (which is a little weird because I’m not normally much of a sandwich person), so I used the flat bread recipe below to build a reasonable facsimile of a caprese sandwich (see further below): tomatoes, basil, strained low fat cottage cheese (in place of the fresh mozzarella), and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, plus a extra sprinkle of salt and pepper for good measure. In my pre-cyborg days when I tolerated fat better but not at all tomatoes, I’d make myself caprese salads and sandwiches with fresh mozzarella but subbing thick slices of roasted beet for the tomato; it’s not exactly the same, but it’s quite delicious in its own right. Try it out if you can’t have tomatoes, or if you want a new spin on a classic caprese.

I’m hoping to develop a grain-free yeasted loaf bread recipe, and I think I’m close to having a 100% chickpea flour quick-bread that could be sliced and used like sandwich bread too. Stay tuned!

Chickpea Flour Flat Bread

Makes six 4″x 4″ “slices”, or two large naan-style flat breads

Note: About 1h 30 mins total time, including 1 hour rise time.

Bits:

1 cup nonfat milk, warmed to about 110ºF (warm to the touch, but not hot; I microwaved a cup of cold milk from the fridge for about 40 seconds) (Substitute plant-based milk for vegan option)
½ tsp sugar
1 tsp (half packet) active dry yeast
270 g (2 ¼ cups) chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp ground cumin
90 g (about ½ cup) roasted, mashed yam (optional, but recommended)

Algorithm:

In a small bowl, combine milk, sugar, and yeast. Set aside for 10 minutes for the yeast to wake up. If using water instead of milk, you should see some foam on the surface, but foam will be harder to see if using milk.

Sift the chickpea flour into a medium mixing bowl. Add the salt and cumin, and mix through. Pour in the milk-yeast mixture and add the mashed roasted yam into the chickpea flour and stir gently by hand until you get a very wet dough.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot for 1 hour; the dough will rise a bit, but not quite double in volume.

Put a large baking sheet into the oven and preheat the oven to 425ºF.

Tear off a large piece of parchment paper about the size of your baking sheet and set it on the counter. Take a large pinch or two of chickpea flour and rub it around the surface of the parchment paper; a very fine layer should stick; discard excess flour.

For “sandwich bread” squares, pictured above, scoop the dough out onto the parchment. With a rubber spatula, spread the dough out into a large thin rectangle, about 8″ x 12″ and 1/4″ thick. For large naan-style flat breads, scoop the dough into two equal mounds on the parchment paper. With a rubber spatula, spread the dough out into ovals about a 1/2″ thick.

When the oven is done heating to 425ºF, remove the baking sheet, slide the parchment with the dough on it onto the sheet, and place back in the oven. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until top is fully set, but don’t let it brown. Remove from oven and let cool on the hot baking sheet for 10 minutes. For sandwich bread, slice into six equal 4″x4″ squares (and slice off any rough edges, if you’d like). Top as desired, and enjoy!

110010 Birthday Cake

Grain-free && Refined-sugar-free && Soy-free && Dairy-free && Egg-free

(+ Nut-free Option + Vegan Option)

This cake was something I made for a (human) friend’s birthday; she has some stringent dietary restrictions and was lamenting several weeks ago over not having had the simple pleasure of biting into a soft crumbly piece of cake in years. Since her birthday was coming up, I thought I could probably figure out how to make a tasty chocolate cake that fit with her restrictions: no grains (and no chickpea flour!), no soy, no refined sugar, no dairy, and no eggs. Even though the fat content was way too high to be robot-compatible, I knew making up the recipe would be to be a fun challenge for me, and the end result was (I think) a sweet surprise for her.

I made several test cakes before arriving at the recipe below. (Thanks to all my guinea pig taste-testers!) I still want to iterate on this recipe to make it more user friendly… I know that idle cyborgs with an inexplicable penchant for baking even incompatible cakes (*ahem*) are probably the only ones who just happen to have both lentil flour and coconut flour just sitting around in their cupboards. Hopefully recipe simplifications will be forthcoming, but for now it is what it is. I suggest some substitutions for some of the more obscure ingredients in the list below that I suspect will work fine, but they are untested suggestions, as yet. (But then, where’s the fun in baking if there’s no risk?)

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110010 Birthday Cake

Makes one 8″ or 9″ double-layer cake

Bits:

Date Syrup (if not using store bought. Triple recipe and use in place of honey to make cake fully vegan — untested but I think it would work, and sounds tasty.)

200 g pitted dates
1 ½ cups + 1 Tbsp boiling water

Cake Dry Ingredients

320 g lentil flour (substitute chickpea flour if you can eat chickpeas)
80 g coconut flour
80 g hazelnut flour (store bought, or grind whole hazelnuts in a food processor or spice grinder; use 80 g additional coconut flour to make nut-free — untested but I think it’d work.)
96 g (1 cup) non-alkalized (not Dutch-processed) cocoa powder
2 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Cake Wet Ingredients

150 g (2/3 cup) coconut oil + extra for greasing
341 g (1 cup) honey
1 can full-fat coconut milk
½ cup date syrup (store bought or homemade from ingredients above)
¼ cup water
2 tsp vanilla extract

Frosting Ingredients (note: I made 2/3 this much to leave the sides of the cake “naked”. Make the below amount if you want to frost the sides.)

144 g (1 ½ cups) cocoa powder
1 cup + 1 Tbsp (2 sticks + 1 Tbsp) Soy-Free Earth Balance vegan butter, softened
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
256 g (3/4 cup) honey
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp date syrup (store bought or homemade from ingredients above)

Algorithm:

Make the date syrup (if not using store-bought): Bring water to a boil, and pour over pitted dates. Let sit at least 15 minutes. Blend soaked dates with their soaking water, preferably in a high-speed blender, until you have a smooth paste. You should end up with a bit more than a cup.

Cake Prep: While the dates are soaking, grease either two 8″ or two 9″ cake pans with coconut oil. (I baked cakes of both sizes with success; the 8″ version turns out quite tall and is what is pictured above. Next time if I make two layers, I’d probably opt for 9″ rounds.) Preheat the oven to about 325 F. Take the butter for the frosting out of the fridge, if you plan to frost the cake soon after it cools.

Make the Cake: Sift the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Be sure to sift the hazelnut flour, if you’re grinding your own in a food processor or spice grinder.

Melt the coconut oil just to the point that it all becomes liquid, and put it in a medium mixing bowl. Add the remaining cake wet ingredients, and stir to combine. If ingredients don’t combine smoothly when stirring by hand, get out the hand mixer and mix until smooth.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined. Divide the batter evenly between the two greased cake pans. Drop each pan about 50 times from a height of about 3″ above your counter top to get the big air bubbles out of the batter.

Bake the cakes for 40 minutes, give or take a few minutes, rotating once half way through. Cake is done when a toothpick poked into the center just comes out clean (keep a close watch and be careful not to over-bake!). Cool the cakes for 15 minutes in the pans, then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.

Make the frosting: Add frosting ingredients in a deep mixing bowl, and blend with a hand mixer until smooth.

Frost the cake: Frost the top surface of the bottom layer cake and put into the fridge for 15 minutes to set. Remove from fridge, set the remaining cake layer on top, and frost all around. This frosting stiffens up well if cool enough, and would be suitable for piping if you have the piping bags, tips, energy, and inclination.

Not Mac ‘n’ Not Cheese

Grain-free && Very Low Fat && Easily Veganized

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This simple mac ‘n’ cheese recipe is made without traditional macaroni and without cheese, but still tastes cheesy and satisfying like the old classic! The “mac” is replaced with pasta made from chickpea and/or lentil flour, which I’m seeing around more and more these days (such as this and this). You may have to be careful if you can’t tolerate grains though, because I’ve seen some chickpea and lentil pastas that also have rice flour in the ingredients. The cheese-free cheesy taste comes from a combination of nutritional yeast and spices, which won’t be any surprise to vegans.

The addition of fresh chopped tomatoes and some basil or arugula puts this dish over the top for me. If you can’t tolerate tomatoes in your diet for whatever reason, I feel your pain; I had to give them and other acidic foods (and coffee!!) up for about six years until after I got my gastric pacemaker a couple years ago. Fortunately, this recipe is nearly as great, in my opinion (maybe better, in your opinion) with another vegetable mixed in. My go-to substitute for tomatoes in any recipe always used to be roasted red peppers, which I think would work perfectly well here. Really you can mix in anything you want; any combination of fresh herbs, cooked broccoli florets, cubed roasted sweet potato, or roasted fennel would be quite tasty. Or don’t mix anything in, and keep it classic (and more kid-friendly)!

Finally, I make this recipe with some skim milk to keep the final recipe nearly non-fat, but if you are vegan and can handle fat, you can easily substitute the alternative milk of your choice to veganize it.

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Not Mac ‘n’ Not Cheese

Serves 3 hungry adults as a main course

Bits:

Optional veggie mix-ins (pick one, or none):

1 pint halved cherry or plum tomatoes + handful roughly chopped basil leaves
2 large roasted red peppers, chopped + handful arugula
½ lb roasted or steamed broccoli florets
1 lb roasted sliced fennel + small handful roughly chopped fresh parsley
1 ¼ lb cubed roasted sweet potato or butternut squash + small handful roughly chopped fresh sage

For the pasta:

8 oz box of chickpea or lentil grain-free pasta

For the sauce:

Dry:

¼ cup chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
½ tsp garlic powder
Large pinch of chipotle chili powder (more or less depending on spiciness preference)
½ tsp chili powder
½ tsp dried thyme
½ tsp smoked paprika
3 Tbsp nutritional yeast

Wet:

1 ¼ cup milk of choice (skim cow milk to keep the dish nearly non-fat, or alternative plant-based milk to make vegan)
¼ cup water
½ tsp of Dijon mustard
1 ½ Tbsp tamari
optional if you can eat fat: 1 Tbsp olive oil

Algorithm:

If adding a vegetable/herb mix-in, prep that first. Roasted vegetables can be roasting while you make the pasta and sauce. If using fresh sage, either dry-fry it or fry it in a little bit of oil to crisp it up.
Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
Combine dry ingredients for the sauce in a small mixing bowl and set aside.
Combine wet ingredients for the sauce in a small sauce pan, and turn the heat on medium-low. Stir continuously until almost simmering. If you let it boil, cow milk might split, so take care.
Remove pan from heat and slowly pour a little bit of the pan liquids into the dry ingredients, and stir to form a paste. Gradually continue to add a little more at a time of the pan liquids into the dry ingredients, stirring as continuously as you can, until the mixture in the mixing bowl is smooth and runny. Add the mixing bowl contents back into the sauce pan. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat. Stir continuously, until the mixture has thickened to a cheese-sauce-like consistency; this should only take a few minutes.
Divide pasta between serving bowls, and pour equal amounts of sauce on each. Add vegetable and herb mix-ins to each bowl, and gently stir until vegetables and herbs are distributed evenly. Devour while still warm.