Strawberry-Avocado-Black-Bean Salad, and Hunger

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On the way home from work today I listened to a story on NPR that brought tears to my eyes. It was about an exhibit by photographer Michael Nye called "About Hunger and Resilience."

Nye spent five years traveling around the United States "documenting the faces and voices of hunger." His subjects are almost surprisingly diverse -- from a Khmer Rouge escapee to a survivor of incest who stopped eating to a homeless artist who couldn't work after an accident.

"Once you start listening, you find that it's really about ourselves," Nye says. "That it's not about those people, but it's about humanity."

To most of us, hunger is a tiny inconvenience that can be easily and unthinkingly satisfied with a quick trip to the kitchen, vending machine or, perhaps, a restaurant. But for too many people in the developing world and even in the world's richest country where unemployment today stands at nearly 10 percent, hunger is an all-consuming, voracious reality that haunts and threatens their very survival. More heartbreaking, a large number of the world's helplessly hungry are children.

"How do you explain to a 2-year-old or 4-year-old there's nothing to eat?" says Kathy, a homeless mother, in her recording at the exhibition.

"All they know is that they're hungry. And the pain in their stomach. And you try to sit there and say, 'Honey, I'm sorry. I don't have anything to cook you. I don't have nothing to give you. I have nothing.'"

A government report last year said more than a million children regularly go to bed hungry in the United States. The World Health Organization estimates that half of all children's deaths in the developing world are due to malnutrition.
 

Doodhi Halwa

If I could wish for something absurdly impossible and food-related, I'd wish for the Vegan Midas Touch. Y'know, where all the foods I love would just magically turn animal-free, after which I could eat them until I could eat no more.

That touch could be particularly useful for veganizing some Indian sweets. Like the pedha, a classic Indian treat that looks like a plump disc and is made entirely of reduced milk and sugar.

Pedhas are unusually delicious and they are special because they are almost always accompanied by good news. Engagements, weddings, births, exams passed...there is no happy occasion that a pedha can't sweeten just a little bit more.

A while back a reader asked me for a vegan pedha recipe. The attempts I've made have ended up deliciously edible but without any resemblance to a real, actual pedha as I remember it. So I'll keep trying, and when I do hit upon a recipe...I'll share the good news with a pedha.

Methi Wara Chawar

Methi Wara Chawar is one of a handful of Sindhi dishes I know how to cook, and it has been one of my top favorites for many years now.

Part of the appeal of this dish, to me, is the fact that it is made with methi or fenugreek leaves. These pleasantly bitter greens are health superstars and taste great in subzis and curries. Paired with rice they are simply and stunningly delicious.

I would usually make Methi Wara Chawar with white rice, but this time, to make it healthier, I went with brown rice. It did take longer to cook because brown rice does need more time to tenderize than white, but the result was worth the wait.

Orange-Walnut Biscotti. And M. F. Husain

I love dunkin'-- cookies, chaklis, even toast. Any sweet or savory crispy snack just tastes better to me when I can take it for a quick swim in a cup of coffee, tea, or soymilk.

So you can imagine how I must love biscotti, those elegant, finger-like, crunchy Italian cookies that were just made for dunking.

I make my biscotti at least a little guilt-free by making them partially with whole-wheat pastry flour. This time I also added to them some nuts, full of heart-healthy fiber and protein, and some orange juice and zest which just about kicks everything up, ahem, a notch.

Baghare Baingan Naan-Pizza. And A Winner

It's time to announce the winner of last week's giveaway. But first, let me tell you about my Baghare Baingan Naan-Pizza.

Yes, that's what it is. And if that sounds odd, trust me, odd can be beautiful. And delicious.

The Baghare Baingan Naan-Pizza was inspired by Lavi's unique event calling for pizzas topped with Indian flavors. I considered sending in my tandoori-tofu-topped pizza, but then I found these tiny, egg-like eggplants that I love at my Asian grocers' and wham!...a brainwave.

Baghare Baingan is a spicy, mouthwatering dish from Hyderabad in southern India, and I had long ago posted a recipe. I decided to use the baingan as a topping for my pizza, and because I wanted the Indian flavors to run through, I chose to make a naan instead of a pizza.

A naan dough is not very unlike a pizza dough, and I have in the past substituted one for the other. This time, I went with my grilled naan recipe, but I substituted 1 cup of the all-purpose flour with whole-wheat flour, making my Indian pizza healthier. I also cut up the baingan into quarters, instead of leaving them whole as I did for my Baghare Baingan, so it would be easier to lay them out on the pizza.

Chickfree Biryani

I don't cook with meat substitutes often but sometimes I like to experiment because I know many vegans do enjoy them. Both because they offer tons of healthy protein without the fat usually found in meat, and because they simulate the texture of meat.

The secret to cooking with meat substitutes is to infuse them with tons of flavor-- or else they end up tasting like, well, substitutes for the real thing and that defeats the purpose of it all.

For my Chickfree Biryani I used seitan, a wheat-based protein that's got a really chewy texture and that's quite popular even with some lacto-vegetarians I know. My memory of seitan was for a long time tainted by a dish I once had at a popular vegetarian restaurant here in the DC area. The dish was called "Kale Infinity" and as the name suggests it was packed with an infinite amount of almost-raw kale and flavorless slices of seitan.

Despite my adamant refusal to waste food, I am ashamed to say I did end up throwing most of that mess into my compost heap.

So when I decided to try my biryani with seitan, I wanted to make sure I put into it as much of a punch as I could pack. Which was not difficult because there are so many dashing and brilliant flavors you can add to a biryani.

Usha's Slow Cooker Dal Makhani

I bought a slow cooker/crockpot years ago when I used to eat meat, tempted by all those promises of perfectly tender stews that cooked up by themselves while you slept or went to work. I probably used it a half a dozen times and then, once I turned vegan, it went right into the kitchen graveyard along with my poultry roaster, turkey baster and tenderizing mallet.

Then recently, browsing through Usha's blog, I saw her recipe for Dal Makhani made in a crockpot. I had been looking for a recipe to send to Nupur's Blog Bites: Cookers event, and I love Dal Makhani which I usually just make on the stove top, so everything seemed to be just fortuitously coming together.

I've never used my crockpot for cooking beans, partly because most recipes I saw require you to boil the beans and lentils beforehand which -- I think-- pretty much defeats the purpose of one-pot cooking. But in her recipe, Usha just asks you to soak the beans and lentils for about eight hours, which sounded doable. (You do need to saute the onions and tomatoes and spices separately before adding them to the lentils in the crockpot).

I made just a couple of changes to Usha's recipe. For one, I added a handful of kasoori methi leaves to the makhani halfway through the cooking, at the stage where she recommends adding salt.

And of course, since mine is a dairy-free kitchen, I finished the dish with a tablespoon of vegan butter or margarine (I use Earth Balance), which gave it a creamy flourish that was just perfect.

The makhani was rich and flavorful, and the slow cooking really enhanced the richness of the lentils and the spices while also allowing them to meld smoothly with each other. Wonderful.

Thanks, Usha, for a delicious recipe. And thanks, Nupur, for your motivating event!


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Since it's St. Patty's Day tomorrow, I couldn't help but repost a link to my totally vegan, totally delicious whole-wheat Irish soda bread. Enjoy it with a pat of vegan margarine or by itself.

Enjoy, all!

Broccoli with Fenugreek (Methi) Seeds: Treats From Other Blogs

Of all the things you can eat, fenugreek (methi) seeds are perhaps among the healthiest. These tiny brown gems are an Indian cook's weapon against long- and short-term ailments. Stomach upsets, colds, diabetes, cancer: there is practically no illness that fenugreek cannot cure or at least alleviate.

You may have seen me cook with fenugreek leaves on this blog (the delicious greens that sprout from these seeds), and I sometimes use very small quantities of the seeds in other dishes, including powdered masalas. They tend to be selfless background players, offering their delicious and healthful goodness without demanding center-stage.

So when I saw a recipe for Broccoli with Chana Dal and Methi Seeds on Jagruti's blog last week where these seeds are the stars, I was really excited. Not least because it also incorporated two other favorite ingredients: broccoli and chana dal.

Golden Plantains (Kelyache Kaap)

Here's a dish straight out of my mom's kitchen.

On hurried nights, she would sometimes put it together using either plantains or potatoes, capitalizing on the natural, starchy deliciousness of these vegetables to make a perfectly sumptuous side-dish in very little time.

Kelyache Kaap are not too unlike that delicious Mexican dish, fried plantains, except that we add some typically Indian spices to our version: turmeric and red chilli powder. But the basic ingredients and technique are the same: plantains fried to deep, delicious, golden goodness on a skillet with a little bit of oil.

When I shop for vegetables I tend to get excited and buy more than I can possibly cook in the short term, which means I leave them sitting around until I can find the time to get to them. So for me one of the best things about this dish is that I can make it with a plantain at almost any stage of ripeness, except, of course, when it is over-ripe. This time the plantains were just beginning to turn yellow and when I tasted a piece as I chopped it up, it was just mildly sweet and still very starchy. Perfect.

Breast-Milk Cheese: Why Not?

I posted an article yesterday on Holy Cow's Facebook page about a New York chef who made cheese with-- hold your reflexes!-- his wife's breast milk.

One reaction to that post succintly went: "Ewwwwwww." Someone else thought it was a cool idea.

Ewwwww is pretty much how most of us would respond. To most adults, the idea of consuming human breast milk sounds disgusting,  even though we did spend our early months on earth grabbing for it. And while that was a perfectly natural and wonderful thing while it lasted, I for one sure am glad I don't remember it any more. :)

Still, if you think about it honestly, isn't human breast milk a better fit for us than cow's milk ever can be?

After all we are human, not cows (at least not literally). And it's not healthy for any animal to gorge on the milk of another species-- if you have a cat or a dog you know, for instance, that vets advise against giving them cow's milk because they cannot digest it.

The only reason we don't think of cow's milk as gross is because we are weaned into it early in our lives. Humans have an infinite capacity to overcome disgust for foods, and milk-- the smelly stuff that comes from a cow's teats -- seems perfectly palatable just because we are so used to it.

There are other reasons that make human milk preferable -- like the fact that the human is more able to make a conscious decision to give her milk, whereas the cow is being forced into a life of slavery and into giving up the milk that was meant for her calf (who will be killed for veal).

Spicy Potatoes and Methi Malai Matar: Treats From Other Blogs

I run almost every day into recipes on other blogs that I want to make, and one day this week I found two that sounded delicious and healthy and, luckily, I had on hand all the ingredients I needed to make them.

The great thing was, although I bookmarked them from two separate blogs, they sounded like they'd make a perfect meal together.

Jaggery Dosa and Barley-Oat Scones

It is possible to have your scone, or your jaggery dosa, and eat it too. And today I'm going to show you how.

My Jaggery Dosa is a traditional South Indian snack, and it's one of the easiest treats to throw together on a busy afternoon. Jaggery Dosa is quite healthy by itself, made as it is with whole-wheat flour, rice flour and jaggery, an unrefined sugar used in many Indian sweets. I made mine even healthier by using brown rice flour.

For those who are not familiar with jaggery, this is a golden-brown sugar usually sold in blocks and sometimes cubes in Indian grocery stores everywhere. Eaten by itself, jaggery is almost cloyingly sweet. But added to traditional Indian sweets it has a richness and depth that sugar just cannot emulate.

A favorite snack in Maharashtra, the state where I grew up, is to eat a handful of roasted peanuts with a smidgen of jaggery. One of my uncles, Bhau mama, loved it so much that as children we would know he was about to visit, even without being told, when my mom would put the tava, a slightly curved griddle, on the gas stove to roast peanuts. His eyes would twinkle, literally, when she put the plate before him.

Desi's eyes twinkle when I put before him my jaggery dosa, because it is a snack he grew up eating in his Tamil home.

Jaggery is great in sweets because it forms a perfect marriage with cardamom, the intoxicating spice so integral to so many amazing Indian sweets.

Spicy Cauliflower Subzi

It was almost a week ago that I made this dish and it is long gone, but looking at these pictures as I got ready to post them now got my mouth watering!

The amazing thing about this subzi is, it is really simple to make-- in fact, I made it with a bag of frozen cauliflower florets and a few old spices. It took a minimum of effort, delivered a power-packed flavor punch and tons of nutrition because -- like its cruiciferous siblings broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, collards and kale-- cauliflower is a super-veggie that can help you ward off cancer. Now those are my kind of eats.