moroccan chickpea salad

The final amazing meal in this Prep Ahead Week 4 menu is Moroccan Chickpea Salad.  This salad features chickpeas marinated with dried apricots in a garam masala sauce. It is then added to greens and steamed rapini. The salad is served with Seasoned Pita Wedges and is completely unique and delicious.

The sweetness of the apricots mingled with the spices from the marinade, meld perfectly with the bitterness of the rapini. There is plenty of sauce to act as a marinade and a dressing and everything is whole foods plant-based.

I loved this salad and even my husband, who does not care for fruit in his savory dishes, loved this as well. The almonds add a light crunch and the pita wedges help scoop everything up.

This is very easy to throw together on the Prep Ahead menu, but in this case, I recommend allowing the chickpeas to marinade overnight.

Moroccan Chickpea Salad
Serves 4 

Marinade ingredients:
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (2 lemons)
1/4 cup vegetable broth
1 tablespoon tahini
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon sweetener
1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
1/4 cup parsley (1/4 bunch), minced
1/4 medium onion, chopped
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas (about 2 cups, cooked)

1 bunch rapini (or see below for substitute)
Marinade chickpeas
3/4 cup almonds or 1/2 cup pepitas
2 heads romaine lettuce, chopped

4 pita breads.
1 tablespoon vegetable broth

1. In a medium storage container, combine the lemon juice, vegetable broth, tahini, garam masala, smoked paprika and sweetener. Mix very well. Add the apricots, the parsley, the onion
and the chickpeas. Mix well and cover. Refrigerate overnight. 
2. Steam until tender, about 5 minutes, and chop. 
3. Taste and adjust seasoning of marinated chickpeas.
4. Toast the almonds, if desired. Chop the almonds (not pepitas). 
5. Divide lettuce among 4 bowls. Add the steamed rapini. Add the chickpea salad and the almonds. 
6. Brush the pitas with the broth. Season with salt and pepper. Add to a baking dish and broil until toasty. Cut into wedges. Serve the salad with the pita.


Substitute 1 bunch watercress for the rapini. Do not steam the watercress. Add it on top of the romaine lettuce.



© 2017 Copyright Zsu Dever. All rights reserved.

vine and dine + lentil and rapini stew

This selection of Vine and Dine, courtesy of Tami Noyes, is straight out of Bryanna Clark Grogan's new World Vegan Feast cookbook. The selection, Lentil and Rapini Stew with Vegan Sausage, was excellent! David and I both love rapini and this was no exception. This is a simple recipe with really great flavors. I found it needed more broth than just the 2 cups called for in the recipe, but that might have been because my lentils were a little old (I had to use both French and brown varieties) and  they needed a bit longer to cook.

Also, since I love my rapini with tons of garlic, I added a few more cloves to the onions when they were cooking than the four that Bryanna calls for. Since David is not averse to garlic, this works out just fine. 

This is the third recipe I've made from this cookbook and it continues to impress. Great choice, Tami.

Here is David with the wine:

Tonight’s Lentil and Rapini Stew turned out to be hearty fare with bold flavors!  The fact that the wife added 20 cloves of garlic instead of the 4 that were called for may have capitalized Bold but we both love garlic.  We chose an organic La Rocca Vinyards, 2008 Chenin Blanc to pair with the earthy flavor of the lentils and the spiciness of the vegan sausage.  We were surprised by how well the complex structure of the wine, combined with it’s light hint of fruit (it made me think of pears as I savored the first glass) truly enhanced the bold and earthy flavors of the stew.  We don’t usually partake of white wines but, on this occasion, I’m glad we did because it turned out to be a delightful accompaniment for the evening’s meal.

FNF - stuffed chicken with smoked mozzarella, rapini and roasted tomatoes

           

Food Network Friday

FNF, hosted by Tamasin Noyes of American vegan Kitchen, Grills Gone Vegan and an upcoming sandwich cookbook, is recreating Robert Irvine's Stuffed Chicken with Smoked Mozzarella, Rapini and Roasted Tomatoes. Irvine happens to be one of my favorite Food TV chefs mainly because he isn't afraid to cook vegetarian. On the Dinner: Impossible show, he has always made sure to have at least one vegetarian option, as lame as his choice sometimes happen to be.  When he was replaced by that clod "Iron Chef," Michael Symon, my blood boiled - only Emeril and Paula beat him out for being more anti-veg.

This recipe was another something-stuffed with something and then baked.  I have posted two stuffed seitan recipes: one that was braised and one that was baked. I chose the straightforward approach here and just  baked the stuffed gluten with the smokey Daiya and roasted rapini and tomatoes. There are no commercially available smoked vegan cheeses, but it is a simple matter of adding a few drops of liquid smoke to the gluten stuffing. The gluten was very pliable and soft (another gluten recipe that needs more testing, but for which I will post the recipe as is). After stuffing, I rolled the gluten in some panko crumbs and baked them for about an hour. You must make sure to seal up the raw gluten around the filling very well otherwise you will wind up with more melted cheese on your pan than in your seitan.

The potatoes that accompany Irvine's recipe are simply roasted in the oven along with the seitan. I sprinkled ours with smoked salt to echo the smoke in the gluten rolls. They turned out buttery and creamy with just a slight smokey flavor.

The kids, especially Kate, really enjoyed this. In fact, while Mikel and Cat were picking out the strings of rapini stems, Kate casually glanced over as she meticulously cut her stuffed seitan and nonchalantly commented that, "Honestly, you can't even taste the rapini." As an adult, I can testify that you can indeed taste it, but as far as I am concerned, if it isn't discernible to a ten year-old, that's just fine by me.


Cost Breakdown

gluten: $1
olive oil: $1
tomato, rapini: $7
Cribari Tokay: $15
(Opici Marsala is vegan - thanks, Tami!)
shallot, veg stock, thyme: $1.50
Daiya: $5
potato, butter: $2.50
chives: $.25
Total to make 6 servings:
$33.25

stir-fried beans with bitter greens

Asian Night

Stir-frying green beans is commonly done, but how often do you come across stir-frying legumes?

Another really easy and quick meal, this stir-fry of aduki beans and vegetables was wonderfully delicious. I used asparagus, yellow pepper, and a bunch of rapini. I love rapini's bitter flavor and it was complemented especially well with the sweetness of the beans and peppers. You, of course, can use whatever greens you personally love.

The whole stir-fry took at the maximum of ten minutes to cook, so, again, make sure you have all the components of the dish at hand. And start cooking your brown rice before you start prepping everything else so it can all come together at the same time.

Cost Breakdown

onion, garlic, chili pepper: $1

asparagus, yellow pepper: $2

aduki beans: $2

rapini, green onions: $3

tamari, sugar, sesame oil: $.50

rice: $1

Total to make 4 servings:

$9.50

Stir-Fried Beans with Bitter Greens Recipe

baked pasta with rapini and shitaki

As I was perusing the Food Network for research, I came across an Ina Garten recipe for baked pasta. She used 6 T of butter, 3 c of cream and several different varieties of cheeses. Except for the quantity of fat and cholesterol, the dish sounded good. Veganizing it was easy and cutting the fat was a breeze. The dish doesn't really look that photogenic, but it is fabulous! Crunchy on the top because the pasta was baked for 10 minutes, but creamy on the inside. So good.

 I subbed whole wheat pasta for the macaroni, used rapini instead of radicchio as well as switching everything out but the sage and shitaki. The kids thought the rapini was too bitter (nothing new there), although ate pretty much everything else. Whatever wasn't eaten by the kids was taken care of by David who volunteered to be the human food-disposal tonight.

Cost Breakdown:

cashews and Earth Balance: $2

rapini: $3

shitaki: $3

pasta: $3

sage: $1

nutritional yeast, Follow/Heart, Daiya: $4

Total to feed a family of 5 + Dad's lunch:

$16.00

(Food TV recipes tend to be expensive, it seems.)