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.

Chickpea Flour Buttermilk Pancakes

Grain-free && Very low fat

Fluffy buttermilk pancakes. Robot compatibility verified.

My pancakes don’t always come out picture-perfectly round, like so many pancakes you may see on the internet. Good thing you can’t taste shapes.

These pancakes are sort of where my fat-free, grain-free baking all began. When I had to cut out grains and fat from my diet because of my gastroparesis, obviously that had no affect on my weekend morning cravings for a warm fluffy stack of pancakes. I had a good recipe for chickpea flour buttermilk pancakes in my copy of the Chickpea Flour Cookbook by Camilla V. Saulsbury (check out her blog https://powerhungry.com/ for lots of great grain-free recipes!), but they contained more fat than I could tolerate as written. So I’d been making them just with the fat cut out, but they seemed to be dissatisfyingly dry; not really a surprise with the fat removed, but, I thought, what can you do? Right around then autumn was getting into full swing and to distract myself from the inevitable disappointment of the end of the summer berry season, I was amping myself up for all the delicious squashes and root vegetables just coming into season. I wanted to make pumpkin pancakes that came out as fluffy and delicious as the chickpea flour buttermilk pancakes I’d been making, but I couldn’t find a grain-free and low- or non-fat pumpkin pancake recipe anywhere (I knew that was a tall order), so I resolved to make one up myself.

That was when I discovered pumpkin, squash, and sweet potato are excellent stand-ins for the fat in a recipe! (Of course I wasn’t the first person in history to discover this, but it was a totally new concept to me, and seems to not be a super-well-known baking fact in general.) The pumpkin/squash/sweet potato (whatever you decide to use) makes these pancakes tender and moist, while keeping them enjoyably light and fluffy. At the time I was a little disappointed the pumpkin flavor didn’t really come through, but that keeps the flavor of these pancakes pretty classic and well-suited for any time of year!

strawberry maple pancake

Cooking pancakes seems so straightforward on the surface: pour batter into pre-heated pan, cook a couple minutes, flip, cook another minute, devour. Pretty much every pancake recipe I’ve seen is written that way. Maybe it’s just me and my obnoxiously persistent attention to detail, but there seems to be a lot more nuance to it than that. In the 13 years since I’ve been making pancakes (yes, apparently I needed to earn a college degree before I could embark on the journey of trial, error, and self-discovery that is pancake-making), I feel like I’ve learned a lot. For years my pancakes were flat and heavy (and that was with regular white flour and as much fat as a normal pancake recipe calls for). Finally my pancakes are actually something to be desired, and part of that is technique, so I figured I’d share a list of pancake-making tips that could have saved me years of floppy lifeless pancakes, if only I’d known! These tips apply to standard grainy/fatty/sugary pancakes the same as they do for my grain-free, no-added-fat, slightly-sweetened pancakes in the recipe below.

Pancake cooking tips:

Batter consistency is important. I saw many a recipe that said the batter should be between spoonable and pourable, whatever that means. A thicker batter will result in taller pancakes, but you risk burning the outsides of your pancakes waiting for the middle to cook through; if you turn down the heat to avoid burning anything, the shock of the heat won’t be strong enough to kick the leavener into action quickly, resulting in heavy pancakes with not much rise. Similarly, if your batter is too runny, there won’t be enough structure in the batter for the pancakes to hold together and rise tall; instead they’ll just spread, and might come out with a light texture, but they’ll be very flat. The way I’d describe the batter consistency that I’ve had luck with is “thick but still pourable”. Hopefully if you follow recipes as written, particularly if you weigh your ingredients, rather than measuring by volume, the batter consistency will come out right. I weigh my ingredients, but sometimes depending on the day of month and the phase of the moon, my batter will come out a little too dry or too wet, and will need some tweaking. Recognizing a good consistency comes with experience to some extent, but feel free to tweak your batter as you cook, if your pancakes are coming out too thick (add buttermilk) or too runny (add flour).
Pre-heat your pan while you make the batter! This will help your first batch come out right, and help ensure consistency between batches.
Pancakes are sensitive to the exact heat of the pan. Every pan and every stove is different, so it will just take some trial and error with your particular set up to know what the best heat is to cook your pancakes properly. Adjust as you go, if needed. Once you find the right heat setting, get out a fat sharpie, make a big mark on your stove dial, and label it in big, delicious letters “PANCAKES”, so you can find the right heat level again easily for future pancake-making (…not really).
The first batch in the pan is always wonky. Is it just me? Maybe. I think it may be the fact that the pans start clean and maybe don’t get coated with an invisible layer of oil/butter/pancake magic that seems to stick around after the first batch. Also, the first batch is really a test batch that you should use to gauge the heat of your pan on the stove and the consistency of your batter. Start with only one or two pancakes in the pan for your first batch, just to be safe and get that pancake magic in there, so your following batches will come out correctly and consistently.
Pancakes take more than the one to two minutes to cook than many recipes suggest they do. “Pancakes are so simple and only take a couple minutes to cook!” Hah. Disagree. That said, they shouldn’t take 10 minutes per side either… If they cook in one to two minutes I’d guess they’ll come out burnt on the outside and underdone in the middle, so turn the heat down. If they take 10 or more minutes to cook they’re going to be flat and you’re going to get very bored very fast, so turn the heat up. Set your expectations properly.
Wait until your pancake looks ready to flip before flipping it. This one’s probably the most useful tip. The tell-tale signs that a pancake is ready to flip are: 1. the edges of the pancake should look dry on the surface, and 2. little air bubbles should be rising up and popping on the surface in the middle of the pancake (which should not look as dry as the edges). Once you see both of these signs, flip away.
Pancakes that wrinkle when you try to flip them likely need more time to cook through on the inside before you try to slip the spatula between the pancake and the pan, even if the outside looks dry and cooked. I’ve found this to be an issue with chickpea flour pancakes in particular. This also brings back into focus the delicate issue of pan temperature; the inside needs to cook through without the outside burning, so if your pancakes wrinkle up when you try to flip them, maybe turn the heat down a hair and given the pancakes an extra minute to cook. But also, don’t worry about it too much; like I said, you can’t taste shapes.
Use two spatulas to lift your pancakes from the pan. Don’t be stubborn about trying to avoid getting extra utensils dirty. This also helps your pancakes not wrinkle.
Don’t keep your cooked pancakes in a warm oven while you make the rest. In my experience this just dries them out. If you really need to, re-heat any cold pancakes in the microwave for a few seconds; they’ll taste just as good as straight from the pan.
Note specific to chickpea flour pancakes: The inside of the pancake tends to firm and fluff up as it cools. If you try biting into a chickpea flour fresh off the skillet, it may seem a bit mushy and possibly even under-cooked. Give them a couple minutes to cool on a plate, and then the texture will be fluffy and amazing! (IMHO)

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Robot-compatible Chickpea flour Buttermilk Pancakes

Note: These pancakes freeze and reheat in the microwave pretty perfectly! I recommend making a huge batch and always having some in the freezer for instant pancake gratification. They’ll keep just fine in the fridge for at least a week too.

Makes about 17 pancakes with about a 5″ diameter (I use a not-quite-full 1/3 cup measure to scoop the batter)

Bits:

Dry:

313 g (2 1/2 cups) chickpea flour
2 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice (I make my own with this recipe: https://thepioneerwoman.com/food-and-friends/how-to-make-pumpkin-pie-spice/)

Wet:

144 g egg whites (or about 3 large eggs, if you don’t mind the fat from the eggs)
325 g (about 1 1/4 cups) roasted and mashed pumpkin / winter squash / sweet potato (NOTE: Canned pumpkin will work too, in a pinch, but roasted pumpkin / squash / sweet potato will make a noticeably softer, fluffier pancake! My favorite is roasted red kuri squash, but I most frequently use roasted sweet potatoes as they are cheap and accessible year round.)
2 cups low-fat buttermilk
2 1/2 tsp sweetener of your choice (I have been using coconut palm sugar lately, because I have some to use up; brown sugar or white sugar will all work fine.)
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp lemon juice
1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Reduced-fat butter (it exists!) for greasing your pan, if your pan needs help to prevent sticking

Algorithm:

Preheat a large, ideally non-stick, frying pan on medium heat on the stove (see pancake-cooking tips above).
Sift flour into a large mixing bowl. Add remaining dry ingredients and stir to combine.
In a medium mixing bowl, combine wet ingredients except the butter. Stir together, mashing as needed to be sure the pumpkin/squash/sweet potato is smoothly mixed through.
Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and stir gently / fold vigorously with a rubber spatula until combined. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl when mixing, to ensure there are no surprise pockets of dry ingredients.
Put reduced fat butter if needed into your frying pan in order to prevent sticking. Make sure the surface of the pan is coated evenly. The pan should be heated such that butter should sizzle, but not immediately brown when added to the pan.
Use a scoop (I use a 1/3 cup measure) to pour batter into pan. The pancake is ready to flip when the edges look dry, and air bubbles rise up and pop in the middle (see tips above). Flip and cook each pancake for another minute or two. The pancake is done when the spatula slides easily under the pancake and the bottom is golden brown.
Top with jam, fruit, or maple syrup, and enjoy!

North-African Spiced Dal with Lime and Curry Leaf Roasted Vegetables

Vegan && Grain-free && Very low fat

North African Red Lentil Dal w Curry Lime Roasted Veggies - top

Like the dish from the previous post, this started as two disparate recipes, but I realized they would probably go quite well together. I’m already a little bit obsessed with dal of any kind, and roasting is pretty much factually and provably the best possible way to cook a veggie. The spices and fresh leaves are the icing on the cake. When I first tasted this dal with the roasted vegetables together all in one bite I had a full-on Ratatouille moment. You know the one, where Remy the rat shows us the magic of two great tastes that taste even greater together. Somehow the result is more than the sum of its parts. Yeah, that was this, for me.

Fresh curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves can be a bit hard to source, but they are definitely worth seeking out. Especially fresh curry leaves; they’re one of my all-time favorite ingredients and I don’t think there is really any good substitute for them. Even dried curry leaves only have a tiny fraction of the flavor you’ll get from fresh or frozen. Fortunately if you can find fresh curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves, they usually keep for at least a couple weeks in the fridge, and for several months in an air-tight container in the freezer! (So stock up when you find them!) In Seattle I’ve found fresh curry leaves and kaffir lime leaves at H-Mart, though to be honest, the curry leaves there can be a little sad-looking (the leaves should be bright green, not brown). My absolute favorite place to get fresh curry leaves is a little Indian grocery in Shoreline called Indian Sweets & Spices. Definitely check them out if you can. They’ve got a nice selection of organic dals, grains, and spices as well.

Don’t be intimidated by the long ingredients list; half of it is just spices. Both parts of this dish are pretty easy. Most of the time to make the roasted vegetables is hands-off, so you can use that time to put the dal together.

North African Red Lentil Dal w Curry Lime Roasted Veggies - side

Adapted from KCET’s Red Lentil Soup with North African Spices and Yotam Ottolenghi’s Curry Roasted Root Vegetables with Lime from his (genius, amazing, beautiful) book Plenty More

Serves 6 generously, as a full meal (more if you add rice)

Prep and cook time: about an hour

Bits

– Roasted Veg

4 large carrots (about 900g), peeled and sliced into 1/2″ x 2″ batons
4 medium parsnips (about 750g), peeled and sliced into 1/2″ x 2″ batons
1 rutabaga (about 400g), peeled and sliced into 1/2″ x 2″ batons
Oil in a spray can (optional)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
3 Tbsp lime juice
2 Tbsp curry powder
4 fresh or frozen kaffir lime leaves (2 stems), finely sliced
30-40 fresh or frozen curry leaves still on their stems
5 green onions, white and green parts, sliced on the diagonal
small handful chopped parsley

-Dal

1 large onion, finely chopped
1/2-inch thumb of ginger, finely diced (1 heaping tsp)
3 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 green chile / jalapeño, de-seeded for milder spice if desired, finely diced
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp rasam powder (or substitute 1 tsp curry powder)
2 Tbsp tomato paste
3 cups water
3 cups vegetable broth (I really like Organic Imagine Vegetarian No-Chicken Broth)
2 cups red lentils, rinsed in several changes of water, until water runs clear
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp lemon juice
2 sprigs (or to taste) fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped

Algorithm

Roast the vegetables:
- Heat the oven to 425F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Toss carrot, parsnip, and rutabaga batons together and spray lightly with oil, if using. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, 1 1/2 Tbsp lime juice, and curry powder, and toss to evenly coat.
- Roast 30 minutes, tossing once half way through.
- Add lime leaves, curry leaves on their stems, and green onions. Roast about another 10 minutes until the green onions have softened, but remove from oven if the curry leaves start to brown.
- Remove curry leaves from their stems; discard the stems and add curry leaves back to the baking sheet with the vegetables. Sprinkle over the remaining 1 1/2 Tbsp lime juice and cilantro, and toss everything together once more.
Make the dal while the vegetables are roasting:
- Add onion to a large sauce pan, or dutch oven over medium heat. Stir for about 5 minutes until onion starts to become translucent (moisture released from the onion itself will keep it from sticking and burning in the pot; no oil needed!).
- Add ginger, garlic, and chile; cook for 2 more minutes, stirring occasionally to keep anything from burning. Add the spices through the rasam (or curry) powder, and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Stir in tomato paste, and cook for 1 more minute.
- Add water, broth, and lentils. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and partially cover. Simmer vigorously for about 15 minutes until the lentils are starting to fall apart.
- Stir in salt, lemon juice and the mint. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired.
To serve: Ladle the dal into deep bowls. Top with a generous serving of roasted vegetables. Sprinkle with any extra mint or parsley, as desired.

Fennel, Kale, and Chickpea Skillet with Citrus Baked Polenta

Vegan && Grain-free && Very low fat

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This is a harmonious mish-mash of two great recipes I came across recently, along with some changes of my own, of course. My partner always tells me to make a new recipe as written the first time, and then make whatever changes I want the next time around; it makes sense to experience the recipe as intended and go from there. Out loud I usually respond with a “Yeahhhhh, you’re right”, but then quietly I make my changes anyway. I have no regrets. I won’t judge if you want to take your own spin on any of my recipes the first time you make them either.

No regrets!

Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Oven-Baked Creamy Polenta (my go-to polenta recipe!), and the Kitchn’s Couscous with Chickpeas, Fennel and Citrus

35 Minutes

4 Servings

Bits:

– Polenta

3/4 cup medium grind polenta
zest and juice (~1/4 cup) of 1 navel orange
zest and 1 Tbsp juice of 1 lemon
2 3/4 cups water
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1-2 Tbsp milk of choice, depending on preferred consistency

– Skillet

1 large fennel bulb, fronds removed and reserved
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp rasam powder, or curry powder
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1 small bunch kale
3 cups chickpeas, canned or cooked from dried
1 Tbsp lemon juice, plus more to taste
Small handful of parsley leaves, roughly chopped

Algorithm:

First make the polenta. Preheat the oven to 425F. In big flat baking dish (mine is 10″x10″) with a lid, combine all the polenta ingredients except for the milk. Give everything a quick stir, and put in the oven with the lid on. Bake 15 minutes, stir, and bake 15 more minutes. At the end of the 30 minutes stir in the milk, using more or less depending on the consistency you like.
While the polenta is baking, make the skillet.
- Quarter the fennel bulb from top to bottom, and cut out the dense core from the bottom. Slice cross-wise into ~1/2-inch slices. Place into a large (10-12″) non-stick skillet and dry-fry for 7 to 9 minutes, stirring occasionally, until it starts to turn a caramel-y golden color; add a tablespoon at a time of water as needed if it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Add the ground coriander, rasam powder (or curry powder if you don’t have a good rasam), and salt. Stir and cook for about a minute until fragrant.
- Slice the kale greens off of the central stems, and slice cross-wise into 1-inch strips. Add these to the skillet; stir and cook about 3-4 minutes until they start to wilt.
- Add the chickpeas to the skillet and cook a couple minutes until warmed through. Take a taste and add more spices as desired.
- Add the lemon juice to the skillet, give everything a final couple stirs to mix through, and remove from heat.
Spoon cooked polenta onto serving plates or into bowls and top with the skillet mixture. Generously garnish with chopped parsley leaves (normally I’d say parsley is an optional garnish, but it really adds something to the finished dish here!).

Robot-Compatible Chickpea Flour Banana Bread

Grain-free && Very Low Fat

Beep bop boop. Banana bread ready for ingest.

I developed this recipe to be grain-free, almost-non-fat (the only fat comes from the natural fat in the chickpea flour), and only lightly sweetened, in order to be compatible with my many dietary restrictions. The challenge, after taking grains, fat, and most of the sugar out of a baked good, is ending up with something that doesn’t taste like cardboard.

One (perhaps surprising) trick I learned through trial and error when baking with chickpea flour is that including some roasted mashed sweet potato helps keep the final product moist (though too much and it can become stodgy), while tempering the beany flavor that can sometimes come through with chickpea flour. The second trick I learned is specific to banana bread (thanks to the Banana Bread recipe on Serious Eats, which I recommend for humans with fewer dietary restrictions!): a banana’s characteristic flavor comes from a chemical compound called eugenol, which is also found in clove and nutmeg. So including those spices in banana bread actually amps up the banana flavor and the flavor of the spices themselves conveniently fade in into the background!

The result is, at least to me, a surprisingly tasty, moist and crumbly, satisfying substitute for a traditional banana bread. If you can handle it, I’m sure it’d be even better with lightly toasted pecans and/or chocolate chips mixed it. Otherwise, this is probably the healthiest banana bread you’ll actually enjoy eating!

(Helpful tip, if you don’t already know: If those bananas sitting on your kitchen counter start to get riper than you like to eat fresh, throw them straight into the freezer! They’ll keep just fine, frozen in the peel, until you’re ready to thaw them out and use them to make this banana bread!)

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Makes one 9″x5″ loaf

Prep time: 30 minutes, Bake time: 1 hour

Bits:

– Dry:

1 1/4 cups (172 g) chickpea flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/8 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp cinnamon)
1/4 tsp cloves

– Wet

12 oz (340 g) peeled VERY ripe bananas (about 4 medium; from frozen is fine)
2 Tbsp (41 g) roasted mashed garnet yam
2 Tbsp (30 g) egg whites
1/4 cup (75 g) nonfat greek yogurt
1 Tbsp (20 g) date syrup (I use The Date Lady‘s)
1 Tbsp (17 g) lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Algorithm:

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 9”x5” loaf pan with parchment paper.
Sift chickpea flour into a large mixing bowl (don’t skip the sifting, chickpea flour tends to clump!). Add remaining dry ingredients and stir to combine.
Measure out and mash ripe bananas in a medium mixing bowl. Mash in the yam, stir until mostly homogeneous.
Combine wet ingredients except the yam and banana in small mixing bowl and stir with a hand mixer or whisk until pretty much smooth. Add the mashed banana and yam and stir to combine.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Fold/stir until combined.
Bake ~60 minutes. A wood skewer / toothpick inserted into the bread where it splits WILL NOT come out clean; it should have some wet crumbs stuck to it. Check after 20 minutes and put a foil hat over the top of the loaf if the top is starting to develop dark spots.
Remove from oven and let cool fully in loaf pan. Remove and slice only when cool!