Spicy Lentil Sauce Recipe (Vegan)

I'm always looking for new ways to make quick and easy and healthy weekday meals.
And we all know that rice and legumes is the most frugal way to feed a family, almost anywhere in the world!

So with that in mind, and armed with the knowledge that my family doesn't love their foods pre-mixed for them - they prefer to mix it themselves (or not) - I started serving rice bowls.

That is, rice, and things to go on top of the rice. Because this way, everyone can choose how much of each thing they want to mix into their bowl. Or they can choose to eat each thing separately on a plate. And I don't have to spend any more energy thinking about whether this one eats onions but that one doesn't, and that one eats dairy, but this one doesn't...

So this spicy sauce worked really well with long grain brown rice and roasted veggies (yes, I roasted each vegetable in its own pan, to keep the everything "clean"). I filled up my rice bowl with rice and roasted veggies and then ladeled this on top, and it was just right!

So here's my spicy lentil sauce:

1 cup lentils (picked over and rinsed)
3 cups water
lots of sliced or diced garlic
harissa (hot pepper sauce I buy in a can) to taste
tomato paste (I used about 100g)
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
black pepper to taste
salt to taste
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper powder

Cook the lentils with the water and the garlic till soft.
Add the rest of the ingredients, mixing well.
Simmer for about 5-10 minutes.
Serve hot!

picture taken with my junky phone, sorry

Today's red lentil and tomato soup

Had to quickly come up with a soup to share with a friend's family who could use a hand right now. So I ended up making this soup, it was so yummy! I ate 2 bowls of it for lunch.




Red Lentil and Tomato Soup
makes approximately 16 servings

1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
1 large red pepper
olive oil
500g red lentils
1 large can tomato paste (580g, 28-30 Bx)
water
salt, pepper, hot pepper flakes



Dice the vegetables and saute in olive oil in your (large) soup pot . When beginning to carmelize, add rinsed lentils and lots of water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes, until the lentils start to break apart. Add tomato paste, more water, and seasonings to taste. Bring back to a boil, then simmer for another 10 min.
Serve piping hot. It's perfect with a nice crusty bread!

Flavorful Lentil Patties

I wanted to make lentil patties with a lot more zing! to them. My old standby recipe was just not doing it for me anymore. Especially because my kids had gotten completely bored by them. But THESE were eaten happily!

So here's my new take on lentil patties:

Ingredients:

oil for the pan (I used a small amount of olive oil)
1 large onion, diced
1 large red pepper diced
2-4 cloves garlic, diced
1 cup cooked green lentils
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 T. sesame seeds
1/8 - 1/4 cup flour (this will vary depending on the size of your onion and how "wet" your lentils were, and the humidity in your house... you want the mixture to hold its shape once you've made it into patties!)
salt, pepper to taste

Directions:

Heat oil in a large skillet, and saute the onion, pepper, and garlic until softened and a browning.

Transfer onion, pepper, and garlic to a mixing bowl (if you have a stick blender) or the bowl of your food processor. Add lentils, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds. Blend or process till you have a sticky mixture. It's ok if you still see pieces of things. Mix in flour, salt and pepper, using a large spoon.

Heat more oil in the pan. Shape the mixture into patties and lightly pan fry on both sides.

Or, if you want to bake them, form patties and place them on a lightly greased baking sheet and spray the tops with oil from your olive oil sprayer . Bake at 200 C  till done (I haven't timed it, sorry!)

Enjoy! 

p.s. I serve these with rice, or in a bun, or any which way. You can crumble leftover patties, if you want, and mix with a tomato-based sauce for a great vegetarian "meat" sauce for pasta.

Sloppy Sams Recipe

I've mentioned "Sloppy Sams" (a.k.a vegan sloppy joes) numerous times on this blog, but I've never actually devoted a post to the recipe for them!

I originally got my inspiration for Sloppy Sams from Recipes for a Small Planet, one of the first vegetarian cookbooks I'd ever owned. (In case you didn't know, I was a vegetarian for about 12 yrs - from 1993-2005, and when I started out I had NO idea what vegetarians ate. I just ate dairy. But after a while, I knew I had to expand. That's when Recipes for a Small Planet and The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest entered my life - and changed it forever!)

Over time, I've adapted the old sloppy sams recipe to fit my family's preferences better.

Here's my recipe:

Sloppy Sams

olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1-2 celery stalks, diced
1 small summer squash, diced or shredded (this can be omitted or replaced with any vegetable you like)
1-2 red/orange/yellow peppers, diced or chopped coarsely
4 cloves garlic
500g red lentils, sorted and rinsed
4 (or so) cups water
300g tomato paste
1/8 cup maple syrup or sugar, or more or less, depends how sweet you want it!
apple cider vinegar, to taste
pinch of cinnamon
salt, pepper, to taste

Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and vegetables, stirring occasionally. Add garlic after a few minutes. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, till everything just begins to brown. Add water to pot, then add lentils. Stir well, and raise the heat. Bring mixture to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer for 10 min or so (until the lentils soften). Add water as needed. When the lentils are soft and the mixture is still liquidy, add tomato paste, maple syrup/sugar, vinegar, and seasonings. Mix well. Simmer for another 5 minutes or so. Serve warm on rolls or in pitot.

This recipe is really versatile, you can leave out or replace vegetables with others you prefer. You can add shredded carrots and omit the summer squash. You can leave out the peppers if you don't like them... the possibilities are endless. Enjoy!

Update: I started eating the leftovers, cold, as a dip with crackers or tortilla chips, and it's a big hit!

Let me know if you decide to make my Sloppy Sams for your family!

Lentil and Vegetable Skillet (with egg noodles)

I had to make a quick lunch, that would be filling and relatively nutritious, and here is what I came up with:

1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, diced
3 medium carrots, cut up
1 large potato, diced, or cut how you like!
1.5 cups uncooked green lentils
water to cover, and more
seasonings: I used salt, pepper, turmeric, and cumin
egg noodles, broken into small pieces (I used about 1/3 of a package, but your skillet and veggies could be a different size, so you may need more)


Heat oil in a large skillet, add diced vegetables. Cook, while stirring occasionally. When the vegetables are softened and browning a bit, add lentils, water, and seasonings. I used enough water so that it looked very soupy. Bring to a boil, then simmer. When the lentils are fully cooked (about 20 min), add the egg noodles, and cook for another 3-5 min. Serve hot.

Pasta with lentils and carmelized onions

I made my son take over some of the cooking.

In particular, I let him know that he needs to know how to cook food he will eat, so we are starting with food for Shabbat. He's a vegetarian, and even though the rest of us are weekday-vegetarians, he's also a vegetarian on Shabbat.
And that means that sometimes I end up making a TON of different foods, with the hope that he'll agree to eat enough to satisfy his 14-year-old-boy appetite.

But it's just a lot of cooking, and my thought was that if HE prepares something, maybe he'd eat more of it. He's a little suspicious of food he's not familiar with, especially anything with more than one ingredient, so what better way to be familiar with it than to PREPARE it?

He agreed to make this pasta with lentil dish that I suggested, as I was trying to make sure he got some protein into him over Shabbat (this was after he looked through one of my vegetarian cookbooks, On the Road to Vegetarian Cooking, and declared that there is nothing there to try).

Pasta with lentils, carmelized onions, and garlic

Ingredients:
1 small onion, sliced in strips
1 T. olive oil
1 cup green lentils, dry, sorted and rinsed
1/2 pkg of pasta (he used spirals)
salt, pepper, granulated garlic (or you could use fresh garlic, crushed and roasted in olive oil), and another tablespoon of olive oil

Bring a pot of water to a boil, and add the lentils
While the lentils cook, heat 1 T. olive oil in a cast iron frying pan (over medium heat), and cook the onions in it, stirring from time to time, till they brown. Set onions aside.

Once the lentils have cooked for about 10 minutes, add the pasta to the pot. Simmer till pasta is fully cooked.
Strain the pasta and lentils and toss in a serving bowl with the carmelized onions, more olive oil, and seasonings.
Serve warm, although I suspect it can be served cold as a pasta salad too.

He ate it readily!
And the other kids all sampled it too, and most liked it. Most of all, they were impressed that their big brother cooked something REAL...

Lentil and Vegetable Sloppy Sams

Tonight's supper started out early, with really good intentions.

I mixed up some bread dough WAY earlier in the day, so I could make fresh bread for supper.

And then, I got distracted. I forgot about supper and decided to try to make chocolate chip mandelbread without eggs.

The mandel bread worked out JUST FINE. Actually, more than just fine. Really yummy!

Funny thing, people still thought we should have supper!

So I threw that bread dough into the oven as dinner rolls, and then quickly made sloppy sams.

Sloppy Sams (Lentil and Vegetable)
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 small red pepper, diced (use green, they are cheaper, I just had one in the house for some reason)
any other vegetables you want to use up, diced.
Cook veggies in a large skillet in olive oil, till onions are browned.
Add 2 c red lentils (sorted and rinsed)
tomato paste, water, and spices/seasonings of your choice (I repurposed some leftover sweet and sour sauce from earlier in the week, and added some cayenne pepper)
More water
Simmer it all together till the lentils are all soft. You will likely need to add some more water while it's cooking, unless you have a really huge pan to begin with...

Serve on dinner rolls, and ENJOY!

We're having some melon to go with this, too.

mid-week meal

Just a quick write up of a simple frugal, mid-week meal:

Oven-baked rice (I actually have started adding some ground flaxseed to the rice when I cook it this way)
Green Lentils (saute onion and garlic in olive oil, add lentils and liquid (water or soup stock), simmer till most of the liquid is absorbed)
Cottage Cheese Pancakes
Make your own salad (we have avocado, tomato, carrots, and cucumbers today)
Watermelon

It's a bit of standing over the stove, but not horrible. I wonder if I could figure out how to make the lentils in the oven... have you ever managed that?

Lentil Salad

I know lots of people serve lentils. All the time. Green ones, Red ones, Almost Black ones...

One of my favorite ways of serving lentils in the summer is this salad:

1 onion, diced
2-3 red/yellow/orange peppers, diced (the key is COLOR)
3 cloves garlic crushed
Any other vegetables you feel like (you could dice some eggplant, for example)
Pan-roast these veggies, one at a time, in some olive oil in a cast iron pan (onion and garlic can be done together, and it's extra-good to add a generous amount of oregano when cooking the onion and garlic)
Cook the amount of lentils you want (I use either French lentils - the tiny dark ones, or regular green ones for this recipe. Red ones get too mushy), in water or soup stock, till they are soft but not mushy.

Chill all ingredients.

Combine right before serving. Add salt and pepper if you want, but you don't need to.

Very yummy....

Sorry I don't have a picture today. I am actually out of lentils at the moment, but I promised the recipe... so here it is, even though I didn't cook it today!

Cornbread Muffins and Lentil Stew (Vegan Recipes)

It seems that even if you're sick, if you're the mother, everyone still expects  you to do everything, be everywhere, and take care of everyone. Sigh. Just can't get a break, although I haven't been running around as much with the kids as usual, just too tired (because I'm sick).

Funny thing, everyone needed to eat, and I could barely wrap my head around food.

So I threw together a lentil stew

Diced onion (1 medium)
diced garlic (3 cloves)
2 carrots, sliced
3 smallish potatoes, diced
1/2 bulb of fennel, diced
1/2 red pepper, diced
Cook with 1 Tablespoon of olive oil in a large soup pot, stirring often. When it's all smelling fragrant, add:
500 g green lentils, sorted and rinsed 
water to cover
salt, pepper, and oregano to taste.

Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 45 min.

And the kids said, "Is that all there is for lunch?" So I threw these cornmeal muffins together and they baked while we slowly ate our stew...

2 cups cornmeal
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt 
2 T. baking powder
1/3 c. oil
1 c. sugar
2 cups water + 1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 c. ground flaxseed
1/8 c sesame seeds (they were sitting on the counter and I decided to toss them in)

Mix well, pour in muffin cups, and bake at 350 F for about 25 min.

I had a little bit of batter leftover so I cooked that bit up like pancakes and my girls LOVED them.

This post was shared with the Hearth and Soul Blog Hop on April 24, 2012

Why this is a great frugal meal - green lentils are CHEAP and filling. Combined with all those vegetables (most of which were purchased for under 2 NIS/kg) it's a filling, really inexpensive stew. The cornmeal muffins are cheap, too. and no eggs in them to bring the cost up! And it all tastes REALLY good. No one will guess you are cutting back on your food budget when you serve tasty, filling foods like this. You can add a salad to round out the meal, if it doesn't feel like "enough" to you - but my kids who were hungrier just helped themselves to more stew...)

Carrot and Red Lentil Soup

Today's menu was focused on easy:

I had a bit of vegetable soup left from Shabbat, but not enough to stretch for the whole family, so that served as a basis for my soup:

Carrot and Red Lentil soup (2 onions, diced, 2 cloves garlic, diced, 1 potato, diced, 5-6 carrots, diced. heat olive oil (1 T.?)  in soup pot, add diced veggies, and cook, stirring often, for about 10 min. Add 2 c. red lentils, sorted and rinsed, soup stock - and leftover vegetable soup!, and season to taste. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10-15 min. till the lentils are all soft. Serve hot) 

Whole Wheat Couscous (I love that this is like instant food, but still wholesome!)

Sliced Tomatoes


Veggie hot dogs (gasp! I bought them on sale and my kids love them so I serve them once every couple weeks) with ketchup. My kids won't put them in buns, so no bread.

This post was entered into My Legume Love Affair #44 
More info about the MLLA hosts here

Lentil Sloppy Joes

My lentil sloppy joes while cooking

Despite my cooking burnout, we still needed supper. So Lentil Sloppy Joes came to the rescue!

Here's how I make them:

olive oil, heated in a large sauce pan

1 onion, diced

1 green pepper, diced

4 cloves garlic, diced

Cook, stirring frequently, till onions are done enough for you. Some people like them just limp and translucent, and some like them browned and carmelized. I went with browned and carmelized!

Add:

500 g. lentils, rinsed and sorted (I used green)

4 c. water

200 - 400 g. tomato paste

1 T. apple cider vinegar

1 t sugar

1 t prepared mustard

salt, pepper, to taste

cayenne pepper (if desired)

Bring mixture to a boil, then simmer, stirring occasionally, about 40 min, till lentils are soft. Add water as needed while cooking.

Serve in rolls, in pitot, or over rice.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I didn't really make supper tonight - too busy! So I'll share my lunch menu instead!

Enjoy!

Toasted Cheese Sandwiches (I must admit, I bought expensive whole wheat bread, I couldn't muster up the energy to bake my own)

Red Lentil Soup with onions and red peppers (I actually took my leftover red lentil sloppy sams from the other day and made it into soup. It worked!)


Tomato Slices (got tomatoes cheap last week - bought unripe ones that are now ripe)

Honey cinnamon oranges (oranges from our tree, but they are cheap everywhere right now, so enjoy them!)

Monday, December 12, 2011

I am bored with our food choices. I feel like we have hit another rut. My kids are happiest with pasta...

Today I decided to improvise an onion soup (got onions cheap last week).

But I have no idea what to make with to go it!

We'll probably have rice and red lentils...

Ideas are appreciated!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

I've been doing well with the pantry challenge so far - we bought milk (as predicted), bananas (do your kids eat bananas like mine do?), and fresh yeast. And we're keeping a list of all those things we discovered we're out of and we've been making do and improvising!

Tonight we are having another hearty soup! I love serving soup. While cooking, it warms up the kitchen, and while we're eating it, no one is asking me to turn on the heater! (They may ask right before and right after, but not while they are actually eating it!) And if it's a thick soup, it fills everyone up and I can cook fewer dishes and wash fewer dishes, too. Win-win!

So here's the menu:

Homemade dinner rolls

Lentil soup with rice (I'm posting the recipe and pics soon!)


Carrots, cucumbers, green peppers

What's on your table tonight?

Tuesday Nov 22, 2011

I THOUGHT I would just make pizza baguettes and salad and call that supper tonight, with those 2 NIS baguettes from Mega, but alas, I did not make it to Mega. By the time the heater repair tech finished, it was getting dark and I was no longer looking forward to walking over there!

So - it will have to be pushed off until tomorrow or Thursday.

Here's my thrown together supper:

Potato Bourekas (I still had a frozen package from the last time I found a decent sale

Savory Cottage Cheese Pancakes - these are made of eggs, cottage cheese, flour, and spices.

Green lentils prepared with onion, garlic, and red pepper

What are you serving up?

Tuesday Night, Oct. 4, 2011

Another crazy day, and I pushed off the supermarket run until tomorrow!

Here's what we came up with for supper tonight:

Potato Bourekas

Pitot with Red Lentil Sloppy Joes

Avocado

Rice with Broccoli (and soy sauce)

Sunday, Sept 18, 2011

My cupboard is bare!
Help!
I couldn't find anything to make for supper after a slightly busy day, so here's what I scrounged up...

Whole wheat spaghetti

Tomato, red lentil, and vegetable sauce (kind of like my sloppy joes from last week)

Mango (found some for 3 NIS/kilo. must use them before they are mushy!)

Tuesday night, Sept 13, 2011

I haven't been posting so much because I still haven't really stocked my pantry very well! And I'm slightly overwhelmed... but I still need to get back to meal planning. No one has been happy with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lately (we've been resorting to that FAR too often)!

So tonight I'm trying to get back to some bit of meal planning. Please bear in mind that my pantry is kind of bare (purposely, really, since I have to figure out how to keep the ants out of it. I was not happy to discover them there...)!

Here goes!

Lentil based sloppy joes (no real recipe, I just improvised this time. I used lots of onion, garlic, red pepper, tomatoes, and red lentils, tomato juice (had some in the fridge to use up), spices, water)

Pitot and Baguettes (some members of the family prefer one over the other, so we're serving both)

Steamed corn
 
Oatmeal Bread (really cake like) - the kids didn't finish off the pot of oatmeal this morning so I turned it into a treat for tonight!

Tuesday Night, July 26, 2011

We are down to the wire! Moving day is very soon and I'm behind schedule.

Tonight's supper plan takes into account that since it's so hot, I have given in and we're running the a/c.

Took stock of the contents of my kitchen, and here's what we'll have:

Pitot with cheese (toasted, cut into triangles, perfect for little hands to hold)

Barley, Rice, Lentils, and Mushrooms in the crockpot (put it all in the crockpot in the morning, with water to cover, and season to taste. I generally use salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano)

Cucumber and Carrot sticks

Watermelon

What's your dinner plan?