Christmas Lima Lasagna

I've been dreaming about making this lasagna since I first spied the purple-marbled Christmas Limas on Rancho Gordo. That was several months ago, but I finally had the time to cook the beans and the lasagna today. I'm on vacation!!!!

Ingredients
9 pre-cooked lasagna noodles
2 zucchini, thinly sliced
5-6 large leaves lacinato kale
1 jar marinara sauce
3 1/2 (maybe a little more) cups cooked Christmas limas (I cooked a bag of Christmas limas with two diced garlic cloves and 1 large diced shallot)
4 T bean cooking water + 2-4 T water
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 cup Sesame Parmesan (1/2 cup sesame seeds, 3 T nutritional yeast, 1 tsp sea salt)


What to do
Preheat oven to 350 F.

Make Lima Bean Sauce: Cook the Christmas Limas. They become a beautiful purple color (Jacqui's favorite!) Then, place Christmas Limas, bean cooking water + water (as needed), sea salt, and basil in a blender and blend until smooth.

Make Sesame Parmesan: Grind ingredients together in a coffee grinder. Be careful not to overgrind (like I did!) or you'll get a bit of tahini with your sesame parm. But it all tastes good, so don't worry if it happens.

Assemble lasagna: Cover the bottom of your 9 x 13-inch pan with a thin layer of marinara sauce. Place a single layer of lasagna noodles in the bottom of the pan (I used three per layer). Leave a little space between noodles because they will expand when you bake the lasagna. Spread 1/3 of the Lima Bean Sauce over the noodles. Arrange zucchini slices evenly over sauce. Cover with 1/3 of the remaining marinara sauce. Place a layer of noodles over sauce. Cover with a layer of Lima Bean Sauce, then spread the kale in an even layer. Cover with marinara sauce. Repeat with Lima Bean Sauce, zucchini, and marinara. Press noodles down gently to make sure they are covered with liquid. Sprinkle the Sesame Parmesan evenly over the top.

Bake 50 to 55 minutes, or until noodles are tender. Let the lasagna rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing to set. Enjoy!!

Creole-style Yellow-Eyed Peas

For good luck in the New Year!

I had a cup of the yellow-eyed peas that I bought from Rancho Gordo remaining, and New Year's Day upon us, so I decided to use those beans for our good luck lunch. I'm also in love with my pressure cooker, so it makes another appearance here!

Ingredients
First Step
little bit of olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 red pepper & 1/2 green pepper, chopped (I took a bag of pepper strips from my mom's fridge when we left there earlier this week)
1 rib celery and leaves, chopped
1 cup dried yellow-eyed peas, picked, rinsed, and soaked overnight (I'm sure that black-eyed peas would work too)
2 1/2 cups water

Second Step
14-15 oz diced tomatoes (and juice)
1 tsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 scant tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Third Step
1/2 tsp hickory liquid smoke

What to do
Step One
Heat pressure cooker, add bit of olive oil, and saute onion. Add the peppers, celery + leaves, and garlic, and saute some more. Add a bit of water if necessary to keep everything from burning. Add the yellow-eyed peas and water. Cover, and bring to pressure. Cook at pressure for 10 minutes. Let the pressure release.

Step Two
Once the pressure is released, open the pressure cooker and add the ingredients for step two - the spices and tomatoes. Cook for ~20 minutes, until sauce-like.

Step Three
Add the liquid smoke, and cook for a few more minutes.

Serve with brown rice and greens (if you had time to make them, which I didn't). So we enjoyed the beans with brown rice. And Dave added a bit of hot sauce (all the "creole" recipes I saw used hot sauce in the actual cooking, but I did not, so that there was a chance that Jacqui might eat it!

Outcome/Thoughts
Too much hickory smoke for my taste...I will be reducing that if/when I make this dish again.

Dave liked it, as did I. Jacqui tolerated it, which means that she wouldn't eat it by herself, but readily ate it when I helped her. And she drank a lot of milk with it! :)

Here's to the New Year!

Peanut, Sweet Potato, Barley, and Bean Stew

I used up the last of my Rancho Gordo Lila beans in this stew. So good! :)

The impetus for this stew was my sweet potatoes. After being away for five days, one of my (newly bought) sweet potatoes decided to rot. :( Dave just put my bag of sweet potatoes in another plastic bag, and I wasn't able to do anything about it until late Friday night when I got home from work. So, late Friday night, I cleaned and cut off bad spots from my remaining sweet potatoes, and ended up peeling two. (Do I know how to start a weekend or what?) I wanted to use the peeled potatoes up before anything else weird happened with these sweet potatoes, so I used them to make this stew.

The stew uses barley, because J asked for barley while we were looking at the different grains on the table. She chose barley over this cool-looking burnt-umber colored rice I got at Fairways, standard white and brown rices, and kasha. I'm sure any other whole grain would work in this stew too. And next time I'll probably make it with a different grain, because Dave thinks that J has a hard time eating barley (she chews is slowly).

My inspiration for including the peanut butter was J and our breakfast this morning. I made us some Bob's Red Mill 10-grain cereal and she wanted me to add peanut butter to our hot cereal, in addition to our standard soy milk, pumpkin seeds, pecans, and dried cranberries. It creamed up really well and the little chunks of peanut tasted great in the cereal. So, I thought, why not try it in the soup. Not to mention that every recipe I've ever seen for African stew includes peanut butter and sweet potatoes or yams!

The main part of the stew is the beans. The delicious, and now finished, Lila beans.

Ingredients
1 cup dried Lila beans, soaked overnight or two nights
2-3 in piece of Kombu
water
2 T freshly ground organic peanut butter
handful of whole organic peanuts
2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 cup pearl barley
1 square no-chicken vegetable bouillon (optional)
1 bunch Vitamin greens

What to do
Soak the beans. (Start on Friday night, get too busy on Saturday to make anything, and finally get to cook them on Sunday.) Cook the beans in a large pot with the Kombu. If the beans need more water as they cook, add boiling water to the pot to keep the beans from getting hard.

After the beans are finished cooking, add the sweet potato cubes, barley, and peanut butter. Add enough more water - everything should be covered. Don't dump the bean cooking water -- it's the broth for this stew. The barley will soak up a lot of water as it cooks, so make sure to add enough. Also, you can add the bouillon if you are using it now. You can add the peanuts now or right before serving, up to you. ( I added them earlier so that they could cook with everything else. I was also not sure if I would get to add them otherwise, as my little A was requiring lots of attention and nursing.) As the stew cooks, stir it regularly to break up the peanut butter and the bouillon and distribute evenly throughout the stew.

While the stew is cooking, chop the greens (including stems). Put them in a pan with some water, cover, and sweat for 5-7 minutes, adding water as needed to keep the greens from scorching.

To serve, put the stew into a bowl and top with the greens. See J's bowl below. That's her cheesing it up for my cell phone camera (we can't find our camera since our trip to Maryland! Have you seen it?).

Thoughts
If reheating, you'll probably want to add more water, as the barley continues to soak up the broth. We have one serving left of this, which J will get for a meal this week.

I have the coolest kids. J asked for the greens for her snack this afternoon (D asked, J, do you want a cookie. J replies, no, I want greens!). And A had some of the greens for dinner tonight. Heehee.

Three Roots & Beans Soup

My attempt at a cute name for la soupe du jour. :P The soup has three beans (yellow wax beans, green beans, and pink Lila beans) and three root vegetables (golden beet, Yukon gold potato, and red potatoes), along with some other yummy ingredients.

This morning was an early morning. Not because I had to get to work early (like Friday and Monday), but because the girls have gotten used to waking up early with me. We just need to adjust their other sleeping times to make up for the hour they are losing in the morning.

I asked J, as we were making breakfast sandwiches with the pumpkin biscuits, slices of Tofutti cheese (orange for J, white for me), and Yves faux Canadian bacon, what she wanted to do. She wanted to make soup! So, we made soup, in the slow cooker.

I dreamed of minestrone for some reason last night. This soup is by no means a minestrone (not sure what makes a soup a minestrone...must figure that out...), but it's a very full (and hopefully filling) soup.

Ingredients
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, chopped (part of our Fairway haul)
1 large clove garlic, minced (EO)
1 golden beet, chopped (EO)
6 small red potatoes, chopped
1 medium Yukon gold potato, chopped (Fairway)
1 - 1/2 lbs green and yellow wax beans, ends snapped off and broken into 1 - 2 inch pieces
1 cup tiny orange/yellow tomatoes (J picked them Saturday at the market)
beet greens, washed and cut into small pieces (EO)
5 cups water
1 square not-chicken vegetable bouillon
1/2 cup pastini (stars!)
1 cup cooked Lila Rancho Gordo beans (grown by Mexican farmers participating in the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project)
Splash of apple cider vinegar

What to do
It's a slow cooker soup, so bring out the slow cooker and plug it in. Put it to hot. W hen it's a little warm, add the olive oil.
Chop the onion and garlic, and add to the warm pot and olive oil. Stir.
Chop the root vegetables and add to the pot. Stir.
Add the water and the bouillon square. Stir.
Wash, trim, and break the yellow and green beans into 1 - 2 inch pieces, and add to the pot. Stir.
Wash and add the tomatoes to the pot. Stir.
Add the Lila beans. Stir.
Take the beet greens off the stems (J helped here), wash them, and cut them up. I used kitchen sheers because I was holding A by this point and couldn't use a knife. Add the greens to the pot. Stir.
After 10-15 minutes (give the greens time to wilt), add the pastini. (Add more water if you think you need it at this point too.) Stir.
Add the splash of apple cider vinegar. Stir.
Wait until lunchtime, and serve!




Thoughts
Any bean would probably work here. I had made these beans up over the weekend and have been eating them as I need beans. They are quite good, with a depth of flavor that I'm not used to in my normal beans. That's why I paid the big bucks for them though -- the taste of RG beans is supposed to be outstanding!

The apple cider vinegar is to combat the bitterness of the greens. I know that J likes the greens (we've eaten them before), but I cook them with a splash of vinegar to take the bitter edge off. So, I added that splash to the soup. Should work.

I ate this soup for dinner. By the time I got home tonight, as you can see from the pictures, the soup was more of a stew. I think that D must have left it on high for most of the day and not turned it to low or warm after lunch. Oh well. Still delish! :)

Yellow Eye Barley Stew

I finally received my beans from Rancho Gordo! I had ordered two packages of Yellow Indian Woman Beans, but I received two packages of Yellow Eye Beans. When I contacted Rancho Gordo, they said to keep the Yellow Eyes and they would ship me the Yellow Indian Woman Beans. I took this as a sign that I should make something immediately with the Yellow Eyes.

I really wanted a thick, earthy stew, so I chose barley as the grain to match with the Yellow Eyes.

I've also been reading a bit lately about the "traditional" preparations/soup bases, especially in European cooking. A mirepoix is the basic French base for soups: onion, carrot, celery. So, that's what I started with vegetable-wise.

The beans were soft and delicious. This soup doesn't overpower them, and all the vegetables went very well with the flavor of the beans. The barley was a good complement too.


Ingredients
1 cup uncooked Rancho Gordo Yellow Eye Beans, soaked overnight
1 small yellow onion, chopped (KF*)
1/2 - 1 cup organic celery, chopped (KF)
1 cup organic baby carrots, chopped (KF)
1 1/2 T organic extra virgin olive oil (KF)
4 large organic cabbage leaves, cleaned, rolled, and chopped (EO*)
1 organic golden beet, chopped (EO)
2 organic purple turnips, chopped (EO)
6 very small organic red potatoes, chopped (KF)
1 cup uncooked pearl barley (KF)
1/2 cup sliced exotic mushrooms (FW*)
1 heaping T organic no-salt seasoning (C*)
1 organic Rapunzel no-chicken bouillon square (NYN*)
water

What To Do
Soak beans overnight. Cook in soaking water, plus more water if needed, for 45 - 60 minutes.
Start with the mirepoix: heat large LeCrueset, when warm, add olive oil; when olive oil is warm, add onion, carrot, and celery and saute for 10 minutes. It took me a little longer because I used frozen chopped celery, which brought a bit of water into the mix. Although, I should add that if the mirepoix starts to stick, you should add a little water to keep everything from charring on the pan.
Add a bit of water and the bouillon square, and stir to mix well and break up/dissolve the bouillon.
Start adding the other vegetables, ideally the ones that take the longest to cook (potatoes, beet, turnips) first. I did not put anything in the right order, and it still turned out great. :)
Add in more water (to cover vegetables) and seasoning. Add the rinsed barley, make sure the barley is covered by the water, and cover.
When the Yellow Eye Beans are almost done cooking, add them and the cooking water to the stew pot. Cover and cook. Barley needs approximately 45 minutes to cook. The stew should simmer for at least that long; longer will make it even tastier!

Serve and enjoy -- it's a perfect stew for a rainy Saturday. This stew should make 6 servings. J and I ate it for lunch, and I had four servings to put into the fridge for meals later this week. Like most of my stews, this will need some water added when reheated because the barley will soap up the broth. I guess it could be eaten as a not-stew if you didn't add the water when reheating.

*KF - Key Food; EO - Evolutionary Organics (my favorite farmer at the market); FW - Fairway; C - Costco; NYN - New York Naturals (my local natural market).

Heirloom Beans

This past week, I discovered heirloom beans (on the internet, not in real life...yet!). Same idea as heirloom tomatoes, with which everyone is familiar, but BEANS!

I found a few sites that sell heirloom eating beans to the public. I'm placing a (pretty big) order with Rancho Gordo today that includes I think 10 different types of heirloom beans. I'm going to check out Becky and the Beanstalk for ideas on cooking with them.

Rancho Gordo (California)
Native Seeds
Seed Saver Exchange
Phipps Farm (California)
Zursum Beans (Idaho)

I like this idea of preserving beans. And from all that I've read, they should taste much better than the standard bean. They cost more (obviously) and the shipping can get to be expensive, but hopefully the taste will be worth it. Also, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears out for some East Coast heirlooms. I read about heirloom beans in NC and Tennessee, but didn't find any information on buying them. And I'm pretty sure that the beans sold at my farmers' market, while organic, are not heirloom. (They sell kidneys, pintos, garbanzos, and black turtle beans. Those are all standard beans.) Maybe I can make it out to the Union Square farmers' market during the week some day and see if any heirloom beans make an appearance.

J helped me pick through and soak some organic black turtle beans last night. I wanted to make a black bean chili today, but was not up to cooking the beans this morning (I just wanted to stay in bed), so if I make the black bean chili, it will be tonight. Oh, did I mention I want to include orange (sweet potatoes or winter squash) to make a Halloween-themed chili? I really need to get on that tonight! :)