Dosas

Dosas. How to describe the wonderfulness that is a dosa. Okay, it’s true, I’m completely addicted. If you wanted to take me on a date, you should take me to an Indian place and order me a dosa. I haven’t played around enough to know how to make these from scratch, but the Hypermarche in Dakar has this amazing dosa mix. All you need to do is add water and fry them up. Note: you will need a non-stick pan or at least a good quality pan to do this. I tried it with some of the old stainless steel and used to be non-stick pans at the regional house and it failed miserably.

There are so many great ways to eat these! You can fill them with a potato and pea filling, use them as flat-bread to scoop up some lentils, or (because I have no access to corn chips) I have even used them to eat hummus. Honestly, I would be tempted to just snack on them plain. So go to Hypermarche, buy these, and if they are out tell them they need to restock! If you live in Europe, you can buy them online here. Otherwise, check out this store, but it seems a bit pricey?

Lazy (lack of) Dinner

Ok, we’ve all been there. I was just too lazy to make dinner last night and really not that hungry. So here is what I decided to treat myself with: A banana shake and a peanut butter chocolate Macrobar. Please, don’t judge :p Instead, leave a comment with your favorite non-dinner dinner. Is it pudding?

Nutritional Porridge

This year I am fortunate enough to have the opportunity through Peace Corps to work with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) as their Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator in Kedougou, Senegal. I am currently helping them monitor their nutrition program, known as PRN. CRS works in many villages in the region of Kedougou to identify malnourished children and pregnant/nursing mothers. Then we follow-up with them by recommending they visit their closest health structure, teaching them how to make nutritious foods from local materials, tracking their progress, and enrolling them in our program to hand out USAID food if this is available in their village.

Recently, I went to a seminar on how to make nutritional porridge and it gave me a whole new meaning to the idea of cooking from scratch. The porridge is fairly simple, and you could probably whip this up in under half an hour. Basically you combine bean (black-eyed pea) flour, peanut flour, rice flour, and sorghum or millet flour. Then you add sugar until it tastes okay and you have your porridge mix. Next you take a small amount and add hot water until it is the desired consistency. To me this kind of tastes like a cross between porridge and baby food, which I guess it is? Still, it is super nutritious so feel free to eat it or feed it to your loved ones.

It could be a great weaning food. Also, it makes good portable camping food! True, it doesn’t taste amazing, but it tastes good enough and don’t we all need some more hearty easy vegan camping food?

I think you can buy all of these flours at a natural foods store although you might need to make your own black eyed pea flour. I haven’t done this yet, but I think if you roasted the dry black eyed peas for about 20 minutes you could grind them up in a spice grinder or food processor and it would work just fine (check out this post on making mung bean flour). Unless you have a grain mill, and then can we be friends please?

Not having those resources, here is how we made the porridge:

First, we took the peanuts that had already been harvested from the fields and de-shelled and we picked through these to get out rocks, dirt, and missed bits of shell:

Next, we roasted the peanuts a bit over an open fire:

Then, we took off the peanut skin and pounded it into flour:

Now we could move on to preparing the sorghum flour. First the sorghum needed to be pounded down:

After pounding, we shook the husk and dirt out of the sorghum and then washed it:

After drying, it could then be pounded into flour:

Finally we picked out the rocks and then roasted the black eyed peas (we bought these at a store so it was a short cut). After roasting, these were also pounded down into flour. All that was left was to wash and pound the rice (also bought at a store). Then, after a short seminar on the different health benefits and recap of how things were made, we mixed all of these flours in equal proportions and added a good amount of sugar (enough so that it tastes sweet). This flour was bagged up and given to the women; they say it will last fifteen days without refrigeration. Malnourished children and women are recommended to eat four servings of this porridge a day. One serving was defined as one cup of tea (which is about half a cup) of dry flour mixed with hot water until desired consistency is reached. All in all it was a great seminar, and at the end of a long but enjoyable day we walked home:

Oh yeah, did I mention that this village is on top of a mountain and has absolutely spectacular views? I love my job.

Spring Rolls

Until recently I felt like spring rolls where one of those fancy dishes you can buy at a restaurant but are too difficult to make at home. Sadly though, most restaurants don’t serve spring rolls that I’m not allergic too, so I guess I had taken it off the menu. Surprisingly one day here in Senegal my friend Meredith Hickson declared she was going to make spring rolls. Hand made spring rolls, here in Senegal, how? However, she pulled it off and they were amazing! Now this has become one of my go to meals that I whip up quickly when I don’t know what else to make. If you are living here in Senegal and want to make these you just have to ask for ‘nem’ wrappers – lots of boutiques and ‘toubob’ stores carry them. Once you get the hang of it, feel free to experiment with different fillers. Let me know what tastes best to you!

makes 10-20 rolls serves about 1 person (for a meal)

Spring Roll Ingredients:

Rice wrappers

1 cup shredded carrots (about 1 carrot)

1 cup shredded cabbage (about half a cabbage)

ginger paste or powder (1/2 – 1 tsp)

salt

pepper

oil

chives or lettuce (optional)

 

Dipping Sauce Ingredients:

olive oil

balsamic vinegar (import from Dakar)

peanut butter

 

 

 

Sautee carrots and cabbage until vegetables are soft. Add ginger, salt, and pepper to taste. To learn how to roll these spring rolls, check out this awesome blog post on spring roll rolling! Basically you will get a couple of spring roll wrappers wet, then one at a time add a little bit of filling and roll them up. If you happen to have chives or lettuce on hand you can stick a little bit in each spring roll along the edge next to the filling.

Make the dipping sauce by combining all ingredients and stirring till emulsified. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Now you can either fry the spring rolls a second time, or eat them fresh. Either way, serve with dipping sauce and enjoy.

Tomato Sandwich

I think this is my mom’s favorite sandwich. When she found out the date I was coming home to visit the first thing she said was “I’m going to go get you some soy-free veganaise so you can have a tomato sandwich from the garden before the frost comes”. I thought she was a little too excited about this, then I had one. Oh man, I am completely addicted. I want to eat these all day long (I did for a few days then I realized I should probably vary my diet a bit).

Ingredients:

1 or 2 slices of fresh tomatoes (tomatoes out of season don’t taste good)

generous amounts of soy-free veganaise

1 or 2 slices of gf bread or gf english muffin

basil (optional)

mustard (optional)

Toast bread. Slather mayonaise. Place tomato. Place Basil (optional). Eat like this, or add a second slice of bread to close the sandwich. Put mustard (optional) on this second slice if you want to switch things up a bit.

To me, this is the taste of summer.

Now that gardening season is here in Senegal I can’t wait to grow some tomatoes, anyone want to send me some veganaise?

Kothimbir Vadi

I found this recipe on findingvegan.com, and am so glad I stumbled across it because it is a gem! This is kind of like a frittata or fried polenta made from chickpea flour and cilantro. When I made it I didn’t use garlic pods or chilis (because I didn’t have them), although I threw in a little cayenne pepper. I think it came out good, a bit mild, but I don’t like spicy food.

The next day I served it with some black lentils I had cooked up and they went great together for a protein heavy lunch. It also makes a great alternate “tea cake” to serve with chai (-:

To make this in Senegal ask for “Persi Sinioux” at the local market: that is cilantro. It is also called coriander (to clarify, what we call cilantro is really just the leaves of the coriander plant). Chickpea flour can be found at Hypermarche, it is unmarked but found in the Indian Foods aisle. They have been out of stock lately, but promise it is coming soon. Ask for “Ble de Pois Chiches”. Most of the spices you can find in Dakar, but feel free to substitute if you don’t want to spend the money. I found ginger and garlic in the market, and then just used curry powder instead of the correct spices. It is not as good, but still very tasty.

Baked Green Tomatoes

Cleaning out my mom’s beautiful garden before frost hits, we found ourselves inundated with green tomatoes.  What’s a girl to do?  So, I decided to try fried green tomatoes for the first time.  Honestly, I was feeling a bit lazy so I baked them in the oven instead, which resulted in less oil. I love the way these came out.  My non gluten-free family said the bread crumbs were a bit too crunchy when I served them for dinner, but the next day for lunch they loved them.  Next time I think I will try to make them ahead of time, chill, and re-heat.  Or, it’s time for me to find better bread crumbs (I used Gillian’s Original). My mom also recommended spicing the tomatoes before breading – maybe just some salt and pepper, I don’t know how this would work out but I’m going to give it a try next time.

Ingredients:

5 green tomatoes

1.5 cups bread crumbs

1/2 cup cornmeal

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 cup coconut milk (or any alternate milk)

1 T canola oil (or olive)

Extra oil

Slice the tomatoes to about a 1/4 inch thickness.  Mix your bread ingredients and spices.  Separately mix one tablespoon of oil into the coconut milk.  Dip the tomato slices in the milk/oil, then coat in the breadcrumbs and place on oiled baking sheet (or use parchment paper).

While you are doing this, preheat the oven to 400.

When you have finished breading all of your tomato slices, spray the topside with oil.  If you don’t have spray on oil, then try to brush or drizzle the tops with oil.  Cook in the oven for 10-15 minutes.  Flip all of the tomatoes and spray the second side, then cook again for a final 10-20 minutes (until tomatoes are soft and the breading is browned).

Cool slightly and serve with Pesto Mayonaise Sauce my mom came up with:

Ingredients:

Fresh pesto

Soy free Follow Your Heart mayonaise

Cayenne pepper

Mix ingredients together until you get desired taste.  We only used a small amount of cayenne because it is spicy!

Halloween Party Mix

Another winner from Vegetarian Times: this is a tasty snack to take to work, send with the kids, or have around to munch on while carving pumpkins.

Sesame Bok Choy

This sweet grilled salad makes a great side dish and reminds me of my days in Taiwan.  I adapted it from the Microwave Gourmet, a cookbook my grandmother was excited about.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons Oriental sesame oil
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
ribs from 2 bunches of bok choy (preferably baby bok choy), chopped
2 tablespoons mirin
2 tsp sugar

Combine oil and seeds in sauce pan and heat until seeds brown.  Add bok choy.  Cover and simmer until bok choy is tender.  Add mirin and sugar and stir until all the bok choy is well covered.  Serve and enjoy:)

Candied Nuts

This recipe came to me from Victoria Frost and it makes a great appetizer to a fancy diner party, a tasty dessert, or just a sweet snack throughout the day.  This recipe would probably work with other nuts as well.

Ingredients:
2 ½ cups walnuts
2 ½  cups pecans
vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
1tsp cinamon
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

Heat nuts in moderate oven (375 deg.) for 5 minutes, stirring once.  oil sides of heavy 2-qt. saucepan.

In saucepan, combine sugar, water, cinnamon, and salt.  Heat and stir till sugar dissolves and mixture boils.  Cook without stirring to soft-ball stage (236 deg.).  Remove from heat.  Beat by hand 1 minute or until mixture just begins to get creamy.  Add vanilla extract and the warm nuts.

Stir gently until nuts are well coated and mixture becomes creamy.  Turn out on buttered platter or cookie sheet.  Separate at once using two spoons or forks.  Makes about 2 pounds of crunchy sugared nuts.