SmarterFitter Blog Less diet, more brain

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This afternoon I thought I’d whip together a quick lunch of the Guardian’s “fairly easy” tabbouleh salad with a few chickpeas. The plan seemed quick and painless: while I cooked my soaked chickpeas and soaked the bulgar wheat, I could let the food processor chop the parsley, and hand chop a tomato and some green onion. It should only take a few minutes (cooking time aside). But while I had chickpeas and the food processor going, I thought “why not make hummus“? This would require slicing veggies, which involved washing carrots, celery and cucumber. Tim added that we needed pita bread if we’re having hummus, so off he went to the store. Finally, after dirtying all the dishes in the house, I went to assemble the toubbuleh only to find that I had been soaking couscous, not bulgar wheat, all along. Disaster!

Yesterday I said to Tim, “now that working from home, I don’t imagine lunch will be more involved than what I did for work” (typically a salad I made the night before or leftover dal re-heated in the microwave). It didn’t take me long for me to get trapped in the kitchen.

Here’s the bottom line: I love cooking. Chopping vegetables relaxes me. I think it’s fun to think about different combinations of ingredients and spices. It’s almost an obsession (to which Tim would likely respond, “almost?”). The thing is, there isn’t always enough time in the day to cook elaborate gourmet meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner (and don’t forget about second breakfast). But I don’t have the money or the appetite for fast food or frozen pizza (though I do have a soft spot for the thin crust variety, but again, I can’t hold back from adding fresh-sliced onion and green pepper before putting the pizza into the oven).

John at Pick the Brain probably didn’t have me in mind when he wrote his post How to Prepare Healthy Meals Faster Than You Can Order Takeout. But just like the anti-chef can learn how to cook, food-obsessed folks like me can also learn that it’s okay to NOT cook fancy meals all the time.

For John, meat is a big part of his “slow carb” cooking regime; however, vegetarians can also just as easily learn from these three basic tenets:

• Stock up on food, such as frozen and canned foods that aren’t nasty, like frozen peas and tinned beans
• Prepare foods efficiently by learning a routine, cooking simple meals, and learning to multitask
• Embrace the microwave for defrosting frozen food, heating up beans, and cooking vegetables

Our freezer is a treasure trove of easy meals: I make big batches of dal and veggie chili and cornbread then freeze them in meal-sized portions.

Another great formula for a quick and healthy meal is beans + grains + vegetables. We often do puy lentils, which take about 30 minutes and are delicious enough just cooked with veggie stock. While those boil away, whip up some rice, quinoa or boiled potatoes (~10 mins) and steam some greens (~10 minutes to chop, wash and steam).

What are your quick and health cooking tips?

How to Prepare Healthy Meals Faster Than You Can Order Takeout

I like my dals with something refreshing on the side. Lately, I’m all about this salad, adapted from Das Sreedharan’s “The New Taste of India”, a fantastic cookbook filled with delicious vegetarian recipes from Southern India.

The salad takes a bit of chopping, but it’s totally worth it, both for its flavor, and for the rave reviews it gets everytime I serve it.

Indian Cucumber and Coconut Salad

For the salad:
1 cucumber, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tbsp desiccated coconut (or more to taste)
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 tomato, finely chopped
1 fresh green chilli, finely chopped
a small bunch of fresh cilantro (i.e. coriander), finely chopped
salt

For the dressing:
2 tsp olive oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 dried red chilli, halved
1/2 tsp asafoetida
~10 dried curry leaves
juice from half a lemon

1. Place all the salad ingredients in a bowl and set aside in the fridge.
2. Put the oil in a large frying pan with the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, red chilli, asafoetida and curry leaves. Turn the heat up to medium and wait for the seeds to start sizzling and smelling delicious.
3. When the mustard seeds begin to pop, pour the oil and seeds over the salad. Add the lemon juice and some salt to taste and mix thoroughly. If you can wait, cool in the fridge before serving.

Last night we were going to have friends over for an Indian feast. Then Tim got the sniffles and I got home late from work. Dinner was off but I was still primed for lentils and Tim’s cold called for some nourishing soup. So I tried out this recipe from the Guardian and dang was it tasteee. It’s made with ingredients I usually have around anyway, and I predict this will become a staple for quick, nutritious meals.

Another day, another lentil. Life is good.

Spicy red lentil soup with cumin and tomato

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for serving
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 litre vegetable stock
300g red lentils
400g tin chopped tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 medium bunch fresh coriander
1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground, to serve (optional)

Put a medium saucepan on a medium heat. Add the oil then the onion, garlic, coriander seeds and cumin seeds. Fry, without colouring, for five minutes. Add the stock and lentils, cover, bring to a low simmer and cook for 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook for 15 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Purée the soup and season to taste.

Serve with a trickle of olive oil, a pinch of freshly toasted, freshly ground cumin, and a sprinkle of cilantro.

Tim and I both agree that this is the best batch of no knead bread ever to emerge from our oven. It’s a perfect balance of sunflower seeds, flax seeds, white and whole wheat flour. The nuttiness of the seeds and whole wheat is buttery and wonderful. The white flour gives the bread a spongy lightness. But everything really comes together with the crust. I coat the entire dough ball in olive oil (a delicious trick I discovered accidentally and is much more effective than Jim Lahey’s cornmeal technique) then sprinkle on a generous dose of sesame seeds.

Seeded Whole Wheat No Knead Bread

300g white flour
170g whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
13g salt
olive oil
sesame seeds

1. In a large bowl combine flour, seeds, yeast and salt. Add 350 grams of water and stir. Add more water a little bit at a time and stir until the dough has the consistency of a shaggy ball. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest in a warm place for at least 12 hours, preferably closer to 24. The dough is ready when it’s about double in size and spotted with big bubbles.
2. Give the counter top and your hands a generous sprinkle of flour. Turn the dough onto the counter. Pull the dough at either end to form a strip. Fold this strip into thirds (like a business letter). Give the dough a quarter turn and fold in thirds again. I’ll refer to these folds as “seams”, i.e., “right now your dough is on the counter, seam side up.” Cover with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.
3. Oil a large bowl with olive oil. Lightly dust the dough ball with flour and put it into the bowl seam side down. Cover with the plastic wrap and let sit for 2-3 hours. The dough is ready when it has more than doubled in size.
4. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, remove the HOT pot and pour in a bit of olive oil. Swirl it around so that oil covers the entire inside of the pot. Now, take the bowl containing the dough and quickly turn it upside down over the pot so that the dough falls in seam side up. Cover the pot with a lid and bake for 40 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake another 5 or so minutes, until the loaf is browned and the sesame seeds are toasted. Cool on a rack at least 45 minutes before slicing.

Some lentils play hard to get. Take the yellow lentil, for instance: even after an hour of cooking she’s still tough on the teeth. But the green lentil, well, she’s a bit of a slut.

Green lentils are fast and easy: they require no soaking, take just 20 minutes to cook, and will go with about any vegetable you throw at it. Better still, they’re high protein, low fat, and full of fiber. Not to mention cheap: according to Cheap Healthy Good, a serving of a similar soup costs just $0.69.

Because they’re so easy to cook, green lentils are ideal for quick soups on cold days. This soup doesn’t really need a recipe: just throw in whatever veggies you have on hand. Carrots and tomato are especially good, as is parsley.

Fast and Easy Lentil Soup

Ingredients

• 250g green lentils
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 1 carrot, sliced
• 2 ribs of celery, sliced
• 1 onion, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 2 bay leaves
• A handful of parsley
• Enough vegetable stock to cover (or more if you desire a soupy soup)
• Ground black pepper

Directions

Put everything together in a pot and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes. Optional: At the end, freshen the soup with a splash of vinegar or squeeze of lemon.
Serve with crusty bread.

Serves 4.
Per serving: 282 Calories (kcal); 1g Total Fat; 18g Protein; 51g Carbohydrate

Nutrition information derived from the USDA food database.

Link to other high protein vegan foods

Blood oranges are in season! How I wish I could package their juicy essence and enjoy the ruby sweet pulp all year round, but that would defeat the purpose: these sublime beauties deserve to be eaten raw.

Blood oranges also deserve the attention they’ve been getting around the the interweb. At World’s Healthiest Foods, there’s this post on their superior nutritional profile:

These anthocyanins are flavonoid pigments that provide blood oranges with their crimson color. Blood oranges also contain vitamin C in more concentrated amounts than conventional oranges. These fruits-native to Italy and Spain-can typically provide between 150-200 milligrams of vitamin C per cup of juice. The amount of vitamin C in a cup of juice from conventional oranges is typically between 75-125 milligrams.

That’s interesting and all, but the best thing about blood oranges is their flavor - sweet, ripe and ready for a recipe extravaganza! Here are a few that have cropped up in recent weeks:

Blood orange recipes

• Tamarind, Orange and Mint dressing from Veggie Meal Plans
• Mini Coconut Blood Orange Bundt Cakes (say that 5 times fast) from VeganYumYum
• Blood Orange Sorbet by David Lebovitz (does not require an ice cream maker!)
• Blood Orange Margarita
• Roasted Beet and Blood Orange Salad from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks
• Blood Orange Salsa from Kim O’Donnel of The Washington Post

I’ve been meaning to try the mint dressing, but I keep eating all of the oranges before I get around to making it. If only all of life’s problems were this good…

When I made the list of High Protein Vegan Foods, tempeh stood out as most mysterious. I mean, what is it? The dense speckled brick looks more like a diseased internal organ than food. But in fact, tempeh IS food, and a highly nutritious, protein-rich food at that.

Like tofu, tempeh is made from soybeans. However, unlike tofu, which is made from soy milk, tempeh is made from whole soybeans, fermented through a natural culturing process that binds the beans into a cake. Because tempeh retains the whole bean, it is higher in protein and fiber than tofu.

My easy tempeh recipe is an evolution of my Auntie Jo’s sloppy joes, a quintessential American food for sure, traditionally made with ground beef, onions, tomato sauce, and bbq seasoning, then slopped on a bun and eaten with lots of napkins. You don’t need to make this with tempeh - my mom makes hers with MorningStar Farms soy crumbles. I tend to prefer cooking with unadulterated whole ingredients and the tempeh does a nice job of crumbling into the sauce and soaking in the flavors.

The hardest part about this recipe is finding vegan bbq sauce; many sauces contain Worchestershire sauce (i.e. anchovies), honey, and dubious processed ingredients. The only bottled vegan bbq sauce I’m aware of is Annie’s Naturals BBQ Sauce. Of course, you can always make your own, which would make this recipe less easy, but probably much tastier!

Tempeh Sloppy Joes

serves 4

200g tempeh, roughly crumbled
100g bbq sauce
1 tbsp olive oil
2 sticks celery, finely chopped
1/2 green bell pepper, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 can of stewed tomatoes
A dash or two of liquid smoke
salt to taste

1. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan
2. Add the onion, celery and green pepper and sauté until tender
3. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes or more (the longer the better, the tempeh will crumble more as it cooks)
4. Serve on hamburger buns with lettuce, tomato and sliced onion (if desired). Or, for a tidier sandwich, stuff it in a pita, or wrap it in a tortilla!

Per serving: 200 Calories (kcal); 9g Total Fat; 11g Protein; 22g Carbohydrate
Per serving (with whole grain bun): 310 Calories; 12g Total Fat; 15g Protein; 41g Carbohydrates

Approximate total cost of preparation, including buns: £6.30 (£1.60 per serving)

Nutrition information derived from the USDA food database.

• Link to all High protein vegan foods
• The Flickr photos tagged with “tempeh” are lookin’ mighty tasty
• Lots of information at Tempeh.info