This recipe is a staple side dish of mine that I’ve adapted and modified at length through the years. Both colorful and flavourful I think it creates a texturally interesting background for spicy curries and other East Indian flavoured entrees.

Coconut Rice with Lentils and Cashews
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 lb. basmati rice
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon stone ground mustard
1 teaspoon urad dhal or brown lentils
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon madras curry powder
2 ounces fresh coconut, grated
1 ounce unsalted roasted cashews
salt and pepper
METHOD:
1. Put the rice in a sieve and rinse under cold …

Oops! It almost slipped my mind to let you all know the wonderful dal recipe that I used with yesterday’s Dosas.
This Tridoshic dal comes from a cookbook that I’ve been using for years called The Ayurvedic Cookbook.
I’m always interested in learning about the culinary traditions and philosophies of other cultures. Eastern cuisines in particular often fixates on the concept of warming and cooling foods. Maintaining a balance of the two within a meal, or strategically stimulating or calming ones system where imbalance is detected. This approach to balance …

Finally! I have completed (and posted) a Daring Cooks Challenge on time! I have been cooking along with this most recent adjunct to the Daring Bakers community but have always ended up missing the deadlines for one reason or another. No more!
This time around the challenge was Indian Dosas. I’ve made dosas before but this was my first time doing so with gluten-free flour. Two suggested accompaniments were also given; a curried chickpea filling and a coconut curry gravy. I decided to use the recommended filling but broke away …

This is a recipe whose origins have become lost to the sands of time (and disorganization), however it is fast, nutritious and never fails to please. It’s a regular part of my Purim menu because of the prominent role that chickpeas play in that festival. In Trinidad cuisine chickpeas are routinely served curried or fried. Rarely do they get to shine, relatively unadorned, as the main star. This dish has definitely helped to change that for me!

East Indian Chickpea Salad
INGREDIENTS:
4 1/2 cups garbanzo beans, cooked
6 scallions, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons …

Hummus is a never-fail crowd pleaser and so deceptively easy to prepare! I love to offer hummus as a starter at Purim because chickpeas figure so prominently in the Purim story. This recipe comes from one of my favourite cookbooks The Sephardic Table: The Vibrant Cooking of the Mediterranean Jews (you can read my review here). Although I have tried many hummus recipes and am not opposed the occasional variation, this is the one I return to time and time again.

Hummus
Source: The Sephardic Table: The Vibrant Cooking of the Mediterranean …

Without a doubt this is definitely one of the best bean soup recipes that I have tried. I have no idea where I got it from, it’s been floating in my recipe file for more than a few years. One of the reasons why I think I avoided it was because parts of the instructions seemed off putting to me. For example, cooking the beans in PLAIN water or 90 minutes seemed totally UGH! However that is all in the past now. I am glad now however that I tried …

Made on a rainy night, this spicy vegan peanut soup was a cinch to throw together. The flavours of peanut and ginger combine to create a spicy, sweet and silky texture and the crisp, cool crunch of the bean sprouts prevents the overall flavour profile from ever becoming cloying. This is a rather non-traditional (in this part of the world) take on comfort food. Although I used supermarket beansprouts when I first made it, now that I have started sprouting my own beans, I can’t wait to give it another …

Don’t you just love when a recipe has superlatives built right into the title? This recipe for ‘Best Ever Lentil Soup’ was one that came bundled with my copy of MacGourmet and comes from the beautiful vegan blog Vegalicious. In the past the only lentil soups that I’ve tried have had either a West Indian flair, or an East Indian slant, so the first few sips of this version came as quite a shock to my tastebuds. Instead of the sweetness of plaintains, or the aromatics of cumin, …

“A navy bean is bigger than it seems put it on and don’t ask what it means
Parade around” – Tracy Bonham

Am I the only one who remembers Tracy Bonham, that alt-singer/violinist from the late 1990’s? I loved her first CD and really think she should have gotten a lot further. The above quotation from her song ‘Navy Bean’ started my fascination with the idea of this simple bean. At the time I had no idea what it was, or if it even really existed, but the imagery in her lyrics …

This light salad is simple enough to assemble in minutes yet elegant enough to serve to company.
The lemon juice really gives the beans much needed ’sparkle’. Be sure to sprinkle liberally with sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper for even more flavour and flair