Lately I've been testing ideas from my fellow vegan foodies on Flickr, and today's lunch combined two of those things. First, the kale salad with blackberry and orange vinaigrette that I wrote down in MissPickle's cookbook.
"Where is the kale?" You rightly ask. Sadly, the natural foods store was charging 2.50$ for a tiny wilted bunch of kale, and the grocery altogether ran out. I've been in the habit of trying unfamiliar greens lately, so I decided to go with a great looking bunch of collard greens, since the recipe said I could use any favourite green.
But then, collards are no favourite green of mine.
At least not when they're very lightly steamed and topped with delicious orange-blackberry vinaigrette. Does anyone have ideas for a better use? I still have most of the bunch.
Apart from my mistaken choice of greens the salad is truly delicious, fancy looking, and took 10-15 minutes to make only because I insisted on supreming the orange segments. It would have taken 5 min. otherwise.
Along with the salad I warmed some of yesterday's creation of lentil-tomato pasta sauce. I got the idea from another Flickrer and it looked like a good way to add protein and substance to regular pasta.
For some reason I decided that since I have basil, and basil is used in both Italian and Thai food, I should add red curry paste to the sauce and see what happens. I also threw in some green pepper cubes from one that was lying around.
The final result was a thick, basily, spicy tomato sauce with a bit of a dal-like texture and a strong taste of green pepper. The curry paste gave it the same sort of heat that Italian chili flakes would have, and no Thai taste that I could detect. I would make it again without the green pepper and make sure the lentils got very soft before adding tomato, so that they'd break down the way they do in soup.
I warmed a few tofu nuggets in the sauce and cooked some macaroni, then realised that I couldn't even eat a third of what I'd made.
On the good side, an abundance of leftovers takes care of my biggest excuse for procrastinating.
1 comments:
Hahaha,
I totally bought a bunch of that sad, overpriced kale yesterday. I actually think I paid $2.95 for it too. Such is my love for kale. Oh, and also they charged me $1.65 for some mysterious "frozen" item that I never bought. Ah well, I guess I'm supporting local business...
That salad looks heavenly though! As for the collard greens, I often eat them steamed with lemon, or chopped into thin strips and added to a stir-fry. Also you could incorporate them into a casserole such as the yam pecan bake from Dolce Vegan.
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