Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Today’s task in 31 Days to a Better Diet is aimed at increasing the variety of foods you eat. A common food group that people miss out of their diet is legumes. Lentils, chickpeas, red kidney beans, white beans are just not a regular feature of most peoples’ diet. A little bit of hummous here and there, maybe some lentils in a soup – but for most people, that’s about it. Which is a shame, because “legumes are a …

Read more 28 August, 2008

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

• Fuel prices vs food prices: Interesting read from Crikey. While we’re concentrating on rising fuel prices, it’s food prices which are more worrying. * Easy fish: Another of Mark Bittman’s easy recipes – this time grilled fish with fennel. Only six ingredients and takes about 20 minutes. * Beer-baked beans: One recipe I’m going to make very soon is Cassie’s beer-baked beans from Veggie Meal Plans. * Filo samosas: Wendy from A Wee Bit of Cooking has been …

Read more 25 July, 2008

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

We ate this last week. And it was wonderful. It’s another one pot meal which takes about 10 minutes to prepare and then cooks away in the oven, requiring very little attention from you. I didn’t have a recipe, but instead put this together from ingredients we had in the cupboard, fridge and freezer. It’s another flexible recipe, allowing you to adapt and vary, depending on what you have on hand. You could replace the edamames with white beans …

Read more 11 June, 2008

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

I seem to have bumper list of Quicklinks today: * How virtuous are you?: A gentle poke at dietary snobbery that made me laugh. I am as guilty of this as anyone! * Healthier baking: Sophie from Mostly Eating has written an excellent post with tips on making your muffins healthier. It’s solid and useful advice. * Our diet is killing us?: Michael Pollan was recently in Australia for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. He did an interesting interview on …

Read more 06 June, 2008

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

I’m bending my own rules with this recipe. It’s not quite a one-pot meal. I’ve tried adding more vegetables and increasing the variety of ingredients, but it’s one of those dishes you just shouldn’t tamper with. It’s not a very glamorous dish, or even particularly good looking. However it is one of the best and easiest ways to cook lentils. Five minutes of prep, put it in the oven and it cooks away all by itself. No stirring, sauteeing, ...

Read more 03 June, 2008

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

This is an easy, quick soup recipe that I made on Sunday night. It’s based on this recipe, with a few changes and it’s definitely a soup for garlic lovers. I wanted to include more vegetable in my soup, hence the addition of broccoli. While the original recipe contained risoni pasta, I had some leftover rice and used that instead. I’ve also reduced the amount of olive oil. The combination of beans, rice and cheese give this soup a “high …

Read more 18 July, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

• Family Nutritionist has a recipe for green and orange ribbons with fettucine, a lovely way to balance out the vegetable to starchy carbohydrate ratio. If you can’t get mustard greens you could use silverbeet. * I wouldn’t recommend this approach to anyone, but here’s what happens when a meat addict goes hard core vegan for one month. * I love the sound of these Turkish Red Lentil Balls – I think I’ll be cooking them this weekend. * Chew …

Read more 22 June, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Tonight I’m using some of the white beans from my weekend cooking to make these falafels. I don’t have any chives, parsley or cilantro (coriander). Instead I’m going to add some fresh rosemary and a smidgeon of chilli paste. We’ll be having them with mixed greens – this time a combination of silverbeet, mizuna (from my garden!), fennel tops and beetroot greens. *Update: I also don’t have any spelt flour – so it’s just normal plain flour for me. *Remember …

Read more 20 June, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

After my weekend cook-fest, I have a fridge and freezer full of ingredients. Last night, instead of using the roasted pumpkin in a risotto, I decided to combine it with some of the beans and barley. All the ingredients were cooked, so they just needed to be warmed in a saucepan with a small amount of water. I then made a quick dressing and dinner was ready in minutes. h3. Roast pumpkin with white beans and barley These quantities …

Read more 19 June, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

• Overseas action on junk food advertising to kids: tomorrow the UK parliament is having its second reading of a bill aimed at preventing the advertising on TV of foods high in fat, sugar and sodium before 9pm (when in theory young children have stopped watching and gone to bed). * According to Rudd Sound Bites, Starbucks in the US is about to make reduced fat milk the standard in a lot of its drinks. * I like this breakfast …

Read more 08 June, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

I’ve posted lentil soup recipes before (basic lentil soup and lentil & barley), it’s one of my favourite meals. I usually make it on the weekend, use dried lentils and make enough for that night and the freezer. While we were on holiday and cooking on a small camping stove, I made up a quick and easy version. This soup takes me about 20 minutes from start to finish. I’ve recently discovered the McCormick’s Middle Eastern spice blend and …

Read more 09 May, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

This was my dinner on Tuesday night. Richard was out and I wasn’t in a big cooking mood, but I still wanted something tasty, healthy and home-made. This salad fitted the bill. The original recipe prescribed tinned lentils, but I already had some dried to use up. Rather than fuss around cooking them on the stovetop, I thought I’d try cooking them in my rice cooker. I used one part lentils to three parts water, added a pinch of …

Read more 08 February, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

As you may know, I’m a big fan of legumes. I’ve blogged about their health benefits , how to cook them and also included them in quite a few of my recipes . The latest GI newsletter has a good article on soybeans. While tofu, miso and tempeh are all foods I eat regularly, I hardly ever cook soybeans – mainly because they take a lot longer to cook than most other beans and can taste a bit mealy. However …

Read more 02 January, 2007

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Onions are one of the staples of our diet – well they’re certainly one of the staples of mine. We always have garlic and onion in the house and I would say about 80% of the things I cook, are started by sauteeing together these two ingredients. Their rich intensity adds so much flavour to even the simplest of dishes. Onions are also extremely good for you. They contain the flavonoid quercetin , which has antiinflammatory action. It inhibits …

Read more 29 November, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Since Sydney has returned to winter weather over the last two weeks, I’ve been craving soups. I’m a big ginger fan and over the weekend I made this beautiful soup, which I’ve adapted from a recipe on the Fat Free Vegan database. It’s another good way of using split peas and is PACKED full of flavour and nutrition. I’ve had some chipotle chillies in my cupboard for the last couple of months, so this was also a good opportunity …

Read more 09 November, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Last night my kitchen was a MESS. One lazy night, followed by one late-home (and therefore cooking late) night meant the stove top was a mess, the dishwasher was full until overflowing and it seemed like every single pan and piece of cutlery had already been used. However, I was home early, which meant I had time to cook and clean up, which made this recipe from Albion Cooks very attractive. While it does take about an hour to …

Read more 08 November, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

I’ve been cooking a lot with split peas over the last two weeks. While I favour split mung beans when making dal, Richard always uses split yellow peas. Some time ago he went through a dal-making craze and and we ended up with a cupboard full of the little critters. Trouble is, I’m not a huge fan, so two large jars of yellow split peas have been stuck at the back of the cupboard for quite some time now. I …

Read more 02 November, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Annatto seeds – have you ever heard of them? Well I hadn’t, until this month’s Tigers&Strawberries Spice is Right challenge, called Back to School. The aim is to use a new spice, one you haven’t tried before or don’t know a lot about. My highly technical spice selection process involved going to my favourite spice shop, starting at the beginning of the alphabet and picking the first spice I hadn’t heard of, which didn’t take long as I discovered annatto …

Read more 16 September, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

As I mentioned, I have a lot of eggs in the pantry at the moment. For the next three weeks I’m going to be eating a LOT of eggs. Which is fine, because I love eggs, plus . . . they’re very good for you. Here is the first of my egg-fest recipes h3. Hard boiled eggs in red lentil curry sauce Serves 4 This is an Anglo-Indian recipe adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible. I’ve simplified the …

Read more 09 September, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

They say pride comes before a fall. Having confidently talked about how good legumes are for you and how easy they are to cook – I now have to blog about what to do when you’re distracted while cooking chickpeas and end up boiling them into a mush. Whups. I was at home yesterday and foolishly thought I’d multi-task by cooking a batch of chickpeas while working. However the distractions of work, phone calls and emails, meant I forgot …

Read more 03 August, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

I’ve had a rather strange time the last two days. It’s cold, wet and windy in Sydney, but I’ve been working on Christmas recipes for one of the magazines I write for. So while I’m planning and testing recipes using asparagus, mango, strawberries and other lovely summer foods, I’m also rugged up at home with the heaters on. The summer ingredients are beautiful, but all I want is soup. I’ve finished the batch of lentil soup I made the other …

Read more 20 July, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

One thing I love about blogs is the way they connect people. Different countries and cultures share interests and experiences via blogs. For example in the food blogging community there are a whole series of events, where participants cook and photograph food, all based around a theme. One of these food blogging events is called the Spice is Right and it’s hosted by Barbara at Tigers&Strawberries. The latest theme ingredient is chillies and this is my entry. Chillies are …

Read more 16 July, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

So having talked about why legumes are so good for you, it’s time to post about how to cook them. While tinned beans and lentils are really convenient and I always have some in the cupboard, soaking and cooking them from scratch is definitely cheaper. It also means you can cook the legumes to exactly the texture and taste that you want – whether that be soupy or more crunchy. Cooked legumes freeze really well, so I always make more …

Read more 13 July, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

I’ve been cooking and eating a lot of legumes recently. That’s pretty normal for me and something I often encourage my clients to do. Most people would benefit from eating more legumes. h3. What’s a legume? Legumes or pulses are a group of foods that include lentils, chick peas, soya beans, red kidney beans and broad beans. They come from the pods of plants in the leguminosae family – hence the name legumes and are the seeds of these plants. ...

Read more 12 July, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Since reading Jocelyn’s post about cabbage dal over at She Spills the Beans, I’ve been slightly obsessing about making this dal. I love, love, LOVE dal and we’ve always got a few tubs of it in the freezer. While I often include silverbeet in my dal and despite being a huge cabbage fan, I’ve never made dal with cabbage. After receiving reasurrances from Jocelyn about how good it was, I decided to make some over the weekend. This was …

Read more 11 July, 2006

Posted by kathryn in Legumes

Since starting my blog I’ve only posted two recipes. It’s not like I haven’t been cooking, I just don’t feel I’ve been cooking anything particularly interesting. Then I was thinking, maybe that’s missing the point. There are plenty of places where you can get recipes for fancy and unusual food, stuff that takes time, lots of ingredients and skill to cook – the food we might make if someone was coming round for dinner. However it’s the normal, every …

Read more 07 July, 2006