Madhu Knits and Cooks

Recipe, knitting, and sewing project notes

Tag: Cooking — Healthy Options

  • Improved Pearl Barley Risotto – Fantastic Spring or Winter Meal

    Having some leftover pearl barley from two recent Ottelenghi recipes, I wanted to use up the remainder before an upcoming move.  It seems like the most popular approach these days, per the internet, is pearl barley risotto, but unfortunately the recipes I found all were a bit more complicated than what I wanted to invest in – particularly with a move coming up.

    I ultimately decided to improve a recipe, and I could not have been happier with the result.  The risotto had a bright herb flavor, and the consistency was substantive and creamy.  I also really liked the pearl barley as the main ingredient as it resulted in a vegetarian risotto that felt like a true main course, instead of the arborio rice versions which always strike me as side dishes.

    Pearl Barley Risotto - Served

    Needless to say, this will be a recipe repeat.  Current recipe below – I will post any updates or modifications as I make them!

    Pearl Barley Risotto

    Ingredients

    • 1.5 tbsp. olive oil 
    • 1/2 onion, diced
    • 1 stalk celery, diced
    • 2 cloves garlic, minced
    • 1 cup pearl barley, rinsed and drained
    • 2 cups vegetable broth
    • 1 cup water
    • 3/4 cup frozen green peas, defrosted
    • 1/3 cup parsley, minced
    • 2 tsp. lemon juice
    • parmesan shavings (optional), salt and pepper to taste

    Directions

    • In a medium pot, heat olive oil on medium-high heat.  When hot, add onion and celery and saute for 5 – 6 minutes or until soft.

    Pearl Barley Risotto - Sofrito Cooking

    • Add garlic and stir for another 30 seconds.  Stir in the pearl barley and saute fairly continuously for 3 – 4 minutes to toast.

    Pearl Barley Risotto - Toasting Risotto

    • Add the vegetable broth, and bring mixture to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, and cook until liquid is almost completely absorbed by the barley.  When that happens, add the remaining one cup of water and cook until partly absorbed.

    Pearl Barley Risotto - Barley Boiling

    • Stir in the peas, parsley, and lemon juice and cook until liquid is almost completely absorbed and barley dish appears creamy. 

    Pearl Barley Risotto - Peas in Barley

    • Add parmesan, salt and pepper to taste and serve while warm.

    Pearl Barley Risotto - Cooked

  • Simple Hard-Boiled Egg Arugula Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette – A Few Firsts

    This salad – which I prepared way back when – provided me a series of firsts.  It allowed me to finally try some fantastic balsamic vinegar a friend had brought us from Modena, to attempt hard-boiling eggs, and to try my first "60-Minute Gourmet" recipe. 

    Arugula Egg Salad

    Until I had stumbled upon this recipe, I was completely unaware of the 60-Minute Gourmet series, Pierre Franey's weekly New York Times column which ran from 1976 to 1993.  It was interesting to find this piece of recent culinary history as I think it may prompt a new exploration in my kitchen – what recipes have withstood trends of modern America and can really live through the ages?

    Part of that new exploration may be because this simple arugula salad with balsamic vinegar was pretty bland for my taste.  The ingredients, which individually were flavorful, didn't quite come together.  Basically, it tasted like arugula with red onions and a hardboiled egg.  With some balsamic vinaigrette on top (tasty vinaigrette though to be clear).  

    In addition to trying a new, solid salad dressing recipe that was pretty easy to put together, I also got to learn how to make a hardboiled egg, which I found easy on my first go after extensive how-to research.  I followed the Simply Recipes approach, which was pretty easy and I will likely default to in the future.

  • The Easiest and Most Delicious Weeknight Black Beans

    When my husband and I recently gorged ourselves on Tex-Mex throughout Austin and San Antonio, my husband remarked that he wasn't sure if black beans could ever be that good if they were truly vegetarian. 

    Instant Pot Black Beans - Cooked and Served

    Taking that as a challenge, and with lots of delicious vegetarian Tex-Mex meals on my mind, when we returned home, I decided to perfect cooking dried black beans as I figured that it's easier to infuse flavor into cooking black beans from dry than cooking them from a can.

    Surprisingly enough, by looking at some cookbooks and online Instant Pot websites, I quickly perfected a fantastic recipe.  The beans are well-seasoned, flavorful, and soft – even if not soaked beforehand.

    The only thing that I've had to play with over the past four attempts at this recipe is the Instant Pot high pressure cooking time.  I initially cooked these beans at 22 minutes, but then had to cook the beans for another 3 – 5 minutes to get them to be evenly soft. 

    Instant Pot Black Beans - Set for Cooking

    I think moving forward 28 minutes is the right amount of time – but I'll report back if that changes in practice!

    Instant Pot Weeknight Black Beans

    Ingredients

    • 1/2 cup dried black beans, rinsed and drained
    • 1/2 small onion, halved (red, white, or yellow – it doesn't matter)
    • 1/4 tsp. cumin
    • 1/4 tsp. dried oregano
    • 1 bay leaf
    • 1 cup water
    • salt to taste, perhaps start with 1/2 tsp.

    Directions

    • Put all ingredients in Instant Pot.  No need to stir.

    Instant Pot Black Beans - With Seasonings

    • Set to manual, high pressure for 28 minutes.  Keep on sealed option.
    • Allow for natural release (approx. 22 minutes of keeping Instant Pot on warm after cooking), release to "vent" and taste beans for consistently.  Cook for 1 – 2 minutes further if beans are not to your desired consistency.

    Instant Pot Black Beans - Cooked in Pot

  • Roasted Carrots – A Perfect Potluck Side Dish

    For a recent potluck celebration, I was asked to bring an appetizer or side dish.  Sick of my usual party appetizers, I decided to bring some sort of vegetable side dish.

    But what to bring?  What to bring for a group of 30+ people?  

    Roasted Carrots - Roasted v2

    To Cook's Illustrated I turned, where I found a recipe for simple roasted carrots with lemon and thyme.  I modified the recipe by buying nearly 5 pounds of carrots, omitting the lemon, and significantly reducing the amount of butter to 5 tbsp. instead of the 10 tbsp. called for that amount of carrots.

    Roasted Carrots - Peeled and Cut

    The recipe was incredibly easy to put together with those modifications – melt the butter, peel the carrots, toss with the melted butter and thyme, and then roast. 

    Roasted Carrot - Melted Butter

    Roasted Carrots - Thyme for Baking

    Roasted Carrots - Tossed with Butter and Thyme

    Roasted Carrots - Covered for Baking

    While you may be tempted to end the roasting early when the carrots seem "cooked", I recommend keeping them in the oven for the CI prescribed time or until nicely browned.  The caramelization that takes place during that extra roasting adds an amazing depth of flavor – so follow your timer!  

    The carrots reduced by approx. 20% in size from raw to nicely browned.

    Roasted Carrots - Post Roasting

    The result won rave reviews from nearly everyone at the get-together.  I imagine this recipe will become a regular part of my cooking rotation!

  • Basic Instant Pot Pinto Beans – A Work in Progress

    I never cooked dried pinto beans until the fantastic Cook's Illustrated Drunken Beans recipe.  Wowsa, that's a great approach that develops a really flavorful and interesting pot of beans.

    However, it's not quite a simple recipe as it requires a lot of different ingredients (including two types of alcohol!) and a number of steps to get those oh-so-perfect beans.

    Given that my time is sadly finite, as is my cupboard, I decided to experiment with a simpler Instant Pot dried pinto bean recipe.  While this approach wasn't quite that great (resulted in overcooked, bland beans), it's definitely a start to making a simpler pot of beans.

    To begin this improvised approach, I soaked 1 cup of beans overnight and then cooked the beans with 1/2 white onion (left halved), 2 peeled garlic cloves, a few cilantro sprigs, and 2 bay leaves. 

    I supplemented the above with approx. 2 cups of water and omitted salt for the cooking because I had remembered reading that cooking beans with salt can make them too hard.  However, on a recent Milk Street Radio podcast with Chris Kimball and Sara Moulton, I learned that this is an old wives tale!  So in the future, I'll add the salt to the outset of cooking (if not also soaking the beans with salt as well).

    I set the timer to 25 minutes on manual / high pressure and let the pot depressurize naturally.

    Simple Pinto Beans in Instant Pot

    Unfortunately, this is where the problems started.  Pressure cookers do not need nearly the amount of water as standard stove-top cooking and I learned this lesson yet again the hard way.  Way too much water in the pot, such that sauteing it down wasn't going to be sufficient.  So I scooped out some of the extra water (which probably had a decent amount of flavor in it) and threw it down the sink.

    I also learned that 25 minutes was WAY too long for pre-soaked pinto beans.  I think I should half the time next time to not get horribly mushy beans.

    Simple Pinto Beans - Close Up

    The beans were also incredibly bland.  So lots of salt next time, and maybe that many more herbs as well. Will report back as I continue to refine this "simple" pinto bean approach!

  • Ottolenghi / Jerusalem Parsley & Barley Salad – Delicious Despite My Lazy Modifications

    I recently picked up Yotam Ottolenghi's Jerusalem at the local library on a whim, and have been randomly picking out recipes to try while I have it.  My first recipe was the Parsley & Barley salad, which featured an ingredient I've never cooked with before – pearl barley.

    The pearl barley was much easier to find at the local grocery store than I expected, and so to the stove I went!  

    Ottelenghi - Pearl Barley Tabbouleh Cooking

    After cooking the barley, it had a nice chewy and bouncy texture.  I then added the recipe ingredients I had on hand – parsley, green onions, garlic, bell pepper, cumin, etc.  I omitted the coriander seeds largely because I didn't want to go through the effort of toasting them, and the lemon I thought was in the fridge wasn't, so no lemon juice.  I also didn't have any zaatar, so just used parsley to help marinate the feta.

    Ottelenghi Pearl Barley Tabbouleh

    Despite my best attempts to not follow this recipe, it turned out wonderfully.  The marinated feta added a nice tartness to the fresh flavors of this herb-filled dish, and the pearl barley provided a really nice bite to each bite.  I look forward to using more pearl barley (and parsley) in the future!

  • A Winning Vegan Red Beans and Rice Recipe

    While I have struggled in the past trying to create the perfect red beans and rice recipe, I now have a fantastic solution – a slightly modified Vegetarian Times recipe that produced incredibly flavorful and complex red beans.  The approach found fans among vegetarians and meat-eaters alike, which is always a great outcome!

    Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice - Cajun Trinity

    Instant Pot Red Beans and Rice - Beans in Pot

    The only challenge I had with this recipe were my somewhat uneven attempts to prepare the recipe in my Instant Pot.  I initially used the beans setting to try to cook the beans from dry, but it ended up not being a sufficient approach for dried beans.  I then had to do two additional high pressure cooking rounds to get the beans to be creamy and tender. 

    In the future, I think using the manual high pressure setting for approx. 30 – 35 minutes for 1 pound or 2 cups of dried beans will be the right cooking approach. 

    I also added a few more seasonings on top of the original recipe – a few shakes of ground cumin, white pepper, and oregano.  I also added a healthy amount of salt after the beans were done cooking.

    The final result was so flavorful that I didn't need to serve it with parsley and hot sauce, just plain over rice.  Yum!

  • Vegan Tofu Gumbo – Delicious Albeit (Likely) Inauthentic

    My recent Mardi Gras / Lunar New Year dinner party (see prior post for background on the unlikely pairing) was anchored by two vegetarian versions of New Orleans favorites – a tofu gumbo and a vegan red beans and rice (post forthcoming).  The tofu gumbo turned out much better than I expected, though I'll admit that my impression is that it's far from the "real" thing.  I use the term "my impression" though because as a vegetarian, I've never actually tried a traditional gumbo!

    Vegan Gumbo - Final Cooking

    I used a Vegetarian Times recipe for the occasion, and largely followed it with a few notable exceptions.  First, I didn't quite like the way my roux was turning out (probably because I eyeballed the ingredients), so I used only 1 tablespoon of it leading to more of a soup than heavy stew consistency.  I also didn't have any dried thyme on hand, so I substituted some shakes of Italian seasoning instead.  Finally, I also subbed olive oil for the peanut oil because of my allergy, but I don't know if that would have made a difference in the final result given the volume of flavors in the dish.

    You start the dish by marinating cubed tofu in an onion / garlic / dijon mustard mixture for 2 – 24 hours.  

    Vegan Gumbo - Onions and Garlic

    Vegan Gumbo - Tofu Marinate

    Vegan Gumbo - Tofu Marinating

    After the tofu is mostly marinated, start prep on the main dish which starts with sautéing your Cajun trinity mix in olive oil before adding in canned tomatoes, stock, and a few herbs.

    Vegan Gumbo - Seasonings

    Vegan Gumbo - Vegetables Cooking

    As this mixture starts to cook down, you then individually saute the chopped okra and tofu in a separate pan and add them each to the gumbo after they brown.

    Vegan Gumbo - Okra Cooking

    Vegan Gumbo - Tofu Browning

    The final result had lots of rich herb and tomato flavors, making it a likely recipe repeat.  To offset the potential lack of roux in future attempts, I may add in some beans or lentils to give most heft to the stew.  Heresy, I imagine, for gumbo lovers (both "lack of roux" and "lentils") but I've gotta work within my constraints!

  • Perfect Broccoli Side Dish for Any Chinese Meal

    Except for an Indian broccoli dish that I sometimes make, I rarely saute broccoli.  Instead, my default is roast it using a few different, largely hands-off techniques.  

    That default may change with my discovery of a new stove-top preparation technique from Cook's Illustrated.  This approach cooks the broccoli on high heat, with a small bit of sugar, for approx. 8 – 10 minutes before adding in the flavorings and broth / water for a completed dish.

    CI Sichuan Broccoli - Broccoli in Pan

    CI Sichuan Broccoli - Sauces

    CI Sichuan Broccoli - Spices and Garlic

    CI Sichuan Broccoli - Sauce Close Up

    CI Sichuan Broccoli - Broccoli with Spices in Middle

    Given that this approach takes under 20 minutes from start to finish, this is really the perfect, healthy side dish to your main course preparation.  It also produces a crunchy, yet cooked broccoli – my preferred way to eat my favorite vegetable!  

    CI Sichuan Broccoli - Cooked

    (Oh, and the Cook's Illustrated Stir Fried Broccoli with Chili Garlic Sauce recipe itself is also quite good)

  • Quinoa Salad with Bell Pepper and Cilantro – Easy and Healthy Side Dish

    Cook's Illustrated keeps bringing me back with their seeming limitless online supply of amazing recipes and techniques.  My latest CI recipe attempt was the Quinoa Salad with Red Bell Pepper and Cilantro, which turned out fantastically despite a number of modifications I made.

    CI Quinoa Salad - Complete

    First, I shortcut their recommended quinoa preparation approach by washing the quinoa and then bringing it to a boil with 1.5 cups of water instead of toasting, parboiling, and then drying it out on a baking sheet.

    CI Quinoa Salad - Quinoa in Water

    CI Quinoa Salad - Cooked Quinoa

    Second, I used whatever ingredients I had on hand instead of following the recipe ingredients and amounts precisely.  That resulted in using approx. 2/3 of a green bell pepper instead of 1/2 red bell pepper, lemon juice instead of lime, and omitting the red onion entirely.  

    CI Quinoa Salad - Herbs Chopped

    I also didn't quite measure the dressing ingredients, rather eyeballed the amounts.

    CI Quinoa Salad - Dressing

    Despite my best efforts to seemingly produce a sub-par dish, the output was really great and a perfect accompaniment to my work lunches for a few days.  The dijon mustard-based dressing was delicious, the bell pepper added a great crunch, and the cilantro added a nice herbal flavor.

    I even ate the quinoa salad for breakfast one day because I was looking forward to it that much.  I look forward to making variation of this dish again and again!