Welcome to Saturday's Potluck

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

What is new is old, what is old is new, rinse and repeat. Vegetarian cooking waxes and wanes over the centuries for various reasons. Sometimes vegetarian lifestyle are for for religious reasons, other times for health and often forced by economics. I find it interesting in our current economic model in the United States a vegetarian diet is considered more expensive than low cost animal sources of protein.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc52ZVZwTQ0]

The recipe prompting this weeks subject is from a small book Stirring Passages: Healthful Cooking Made Easy published 1941 found in my Grandmother's collection of cookbooks. As in many older cookbooks there is an assumption of skill level and familiarity of ingredients.

Gluten
1 pint cold water
1 3/4 cups flour
Mix the flour and water into a dough and let soak in water for 1/2 hour or longer. Then wash the starch out out until clear. The lump of gluten is then ready for use.

Recipes in the book include options to turn the gluten into fairly typical American meals of Gluten Roast, Pot Pie and Steak. The type of meatless meals we now find in the frozen food section at the grocery or ingredients showing up in the deli section. Making your own does provide more control on ingredient quality and limiting undesired additives. It just takes time which we all have in abundance. Right.

This video does a better job of explaining the process.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyta5H8xHC0]

[video:https://youtu.be/YmRu-RuTmf8?t=2]

________

What is on your mind today?

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studentofearth's picture

from the book
Lentil Patties

1 cup cooked lentils 1/2 tsp salt
2 cups dry bread crumbs 1 tsp sage
3 eggs 1/4 tsp celery salt
1/2 tsp onion powder

mix well, form into patties, fry in hot oil or shortening until crisp and brown.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

enhydra lutris's picture

@studentofearth
tuna patties from canned albacore, egg, rolled oats and green onion and am currently eating a lentil-brown rice conglomeration (with poached egg). This leads me to hypothesize

lentil-brown rice conglomeration + egg + rolled oats + green onion fried in olive oil. Will try later (maybe later today) and let you know if it works.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

sensitivity" having reached almost fad status, that is an interesting recipe to see. Oddly enough, back in my bread machine days, I kept gluten flour (gluten powder?) on hand to help with structure, a tablespoon or two per loaf. I still have some, so I might play with it as well as try to follow the videos. Since it's farmers' market day, won't get to them until later.

Meanwhile, I found a recipe yesterday that I tried out, first still warm on softened corn tortillas and this am, nuked in a bowl, It's a conglomeration of long-grain brown rice and lentils. The authors emphasize green (french) lentils "puy" and long grain brown ricebut I just used plain old store brand lentils (could be green or maybe brown) and Mahatma brown rice, not sure if long grain or not. They used veggie broth and I used chicken stock, slightly diluted, and only made 1/2 recipe. I can see keeping a container in the fridge at all times, has tons of potential uses:

Smoky Instant Pot Lentils and Rice

Ingredients

4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups long grain brown rice (do not sub short grain or white rice)
2 cups French green lentils (also known as Puy; green works if you can’t find French)
2 tablespoons smoked paprika (pimentón; do not sub sweet)
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Instructions

In the Instant Pot, place all ingredients except the vinegar and give them a stir. Lock the lid and place the vent in the “Sealing” position.

Cook the lentils: Press the Pressure Cook button (making sure the “High Pressure” setting is selected) and set the time for 16 minutes. Wait while the Instant Pot cooks. (Note: It takes about 5 minutes for the pot to “preheat” and come up to pressure before it starts cooking. During cooking, avoid touching the metal part of the lid.)

Wait for natural release: After the pot beeps, use the Natural Release method and wait another 16 minutes to let the pot cool down naturally (we set a timer so we don’t forget!). Then vent any remaining steam by moving the pressure release handle to “Venting”, covering your hand with a towel or hot pad. (Never put your hands or face near the steam release valve when releasing steam.)

Open the lid and stir in the apple cider vinegar. Taste and add additional salt as necessary (veggie broth does vary in salt content, so you may need to add more salt). Serve warm. This recipe makes quite a bit and leftovers can be re-purposed throughout the week.

Storage info: Leftovers can be stored in the refrigerator; they do become more dry as they cool, so make sure to reheat them before serving again. Depending on the texture, consider adding a glug of olive oil for moisture.

I skipped the onion powder and fennel seeds (don't keep them on hand), might add chopped onions to next batch, but can always add raw to finished product. I alos skipped the cider vinegar, tasted fine without it, might try in next batch.

Instant pot, so quick and easy. Original recipe here: https://www.acouplecooks.com/smoky-instant-pot-lentils-and-rice-pressure... also has video, but I didn't watch and can't comment

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

studentofearth's picture

@enhydra lutris notice a slight taste difference, texture is more noticeable. Once the spices and other ingredients are added to taste my palate is not sensitive enough to notice a difference between the dishes.

Lentils are surprisingly forgiving to different storage and cooking methods. Generally make a batch eat some and freeze several small containers for quick meals or ingredients in more complicated dishes. Like how the recipe above easily adjusted to ingredients on hand. Not tried them as a patty yet. Surprising how many recipes used beans, lentils and peas as ingredients for sandwich spreads and baked loafs prior to the rise of the burger joint.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Lookout's picture

...but I use flax meal instead of bread crumbs and add a pretty good dash of cayenne to zing it up. Same approach with salmon patties, a more typical dish in our household.

The rain has finally given us a break. Lots of catching up to do with mowing, road grading, and garden harvesting, processing, and storage. Trying to deal with the last of the cabbage (Kraut), broccoli and collards. Still awaiting the brussels sprounts.

Maters, peppers, sweet potatoes all growing well. Harvesting raspberries and soon to have the job of blueberries (we have quite a few bushes). So staying busy as I'm sure is your case as well.

Take care and thanks for the OT!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

studentofearth's picture

@Lookout Which ironically here cuts down the outside work. The irrigation schedule can be a little more relaxed. Taking the time to plant a few more perennial fruit, vegetable and ornamental plants to ease spring planting rush in the future.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Have grown both here (coastal plain, sandy soil, latitude of Atlanta...) and become more interested generally in staples/perennials/fruit. Most people don't realize that you could grow a fair bit of wheat - for example - on something the size of a typical American lawn and the growing bit is often not that hard. Processing and storing are another matter but straight economic considerations aside there is something gratifying about producing on your own something you may have regarded as strictly a store-bought, preprocessed item.

Can do winter wheat (or barley or rye) in my climate zone - just plant in the latter part of October and there's very little to be done besides putting up some netting to deter birds till harvest in May.

Haven't made serious tries with sweet corn, although it's developing into quite a local specialty crop around here, but have done a couple N. American varieties of shell corn - one tall, white dent Appalachian variety 'Hickory Cane" and another shorter, smaller-eared SW US or N. Mexico 'Indian corn' type.

Need to up my game with tortillas and cornbread, though.

Also succeeded with black soybeans grown from a package I bought at the local farmer's market.

Ended up using very little of the corn (don't have a proper mill) and none of the soy, figure the latter will be OK for chickens if I end up getting some. Am thinking to have another go at the soy this year and this time to get serious about trying to make some tempeh - which is a pretty versatile meat alternative and doesn't look all *that* hard to do. Anyone here done it before?

Plum trees are pretty common around here but they are generally varieties meant for 'umeboshi' - the sweet/salty/sour semi-dried plums and are not that great for just eating. A lot of people don't use them if they have them, not wanting to go to the trouble.

There are a couple trees next to my house and I hadn't noticed much fruit on them, but after a rain a lot had dropped and after another rain some more. So, gathered those, peeled and cut away the pits, mixed in a few stalks of rhubarb (mostly unknown around here, but my couple of plants are doing well) threw in some water, a bit of honey, bit of molasses, domestic brown sugar and simmered it on as low a flame as I could manage for several hours adding some cornstarch here and there (didn't have any pectin or agar).

Result was a dark golden brown something between a sauce and a jam - not too bad for a first attempt. Need to give some to Japanese friends and students so they can have some idea what rhubarb tastes like - I've found it pretty much impossible to explain...

Making umeboshi:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMJKoWkIP2s]

Making tempeh:

Standard made w/soy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxG_S0Q-bAg

Alternative - other than soy:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKmwcLfWL-k]

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