Mango Lassi Ice Cream with Beet Halwa and Crisp Rice-Coconut Laddu

I love, love, love beet halwa -- so I was already thinking of making some from the beets we got from our CSA this week, but when I saw that the latest PPK Chopped/Vegan was a dessert challenge demanding beets as one of the four ingredients . . . I took it as a sign.  

The mystery ingredients were mango, red beets, dried unsweetened coconut, and crisp rice cereal.    I'm a sucker for a scoop of ice cream on top of warm beet halwa, so I made a mango lassi ice cream for the top and a crispy rice and coconut laddu for the bottom.  Here it is:

Not the prettiest picture -- the ice cream was starting to melt from the heat even before I scooped it onto the still-warm halwa -- but I'm just happy to have any picture with my broken camera.

The bottom layer is a coconut and crisp rice laddu.  I know that laddu with puffed rice are delicious, so I subbed crisp rice cereal for the challenge.  The laddu were made from crisp rice cereal and shredded coconut (two of the mystery ingredients), plus ginger, cardamom, cloves, coconut milk, vanilla, and agave nectar.  First you make a syrup over low heat with the milk, agave nectar, and spices  -- then remove from the heat and mix in the dried coconut and rice cereal.  Normally you would then roll the laddu into balls, but I flattened them out into a disc-shape so that they would be a better base for the rest of the sundae.

The middle layer is the beet halwa, made basically the same way as my recipe posted here -- except that I used coconut milk instead of s'milk, left out the cashews, added ginger, and used ground cardamom.  I also toasted a little of the shredded coconut to add to the beet halwa while it was simmering.

The melting top layer is the mango lassi ice cream.  I've been making crazy amounts of ice cream lately, but here's what's in the mango lassi ice cream: mango*, soy creamer, coconut milk, vanilla soy yogurt, tapioca starch, and sugar.  Some of the mango is pureed and mixed in with the rest of the ice cream base, and some is chopped up and mixed into the ice cream for nice little chunks.

In the end, the result was a crispy-crunchy layer, a warm-gooey layer, and a cold-melty-fruity layer.  In addition to the four mystery ingredients, I used the following ingredients: coconut milk, agave nectar, vanilla extract, canola oil, soy creamer, vanilla soy yogurt, tapioca starch, sugar, ground ginger, ground cloves, and ground cardamom.

After taking a few pictures with my broken camera (and hoping that my ice cream sundae would even be in one of them), I suddenly remembered that I was going to get to eat this thing -- how exciting!  Even though I'd been tasting all the parts separately, the combination was somehow different from any of the individual parts -- and in a totally good way.  I managed to secretly eat almost half of it before my daughter caught me and ate the rest.  Ah well.  At least she liked it!

* The challenge called for fresh mango, but I used frozen and thawed mango.  I am embarrassed to tell you how long this mango has been in our freezer, but I'm pretty sure this is the third apartment it's lived in.  Yikes!  Somehow, miraculously, it is not freezer-burned and still tastes just fine.  It's a Chopped/Vegan miracle!

Indian Potato-n-Kale Stuffed Peppers

We got some tasty-looking green bell peppers at the farmers' market last week, but I wasn't sure what to do with them -- maybe stuffed peppers? -- and then inspiration struck. With some red-skin potatoes (also from the farmers' market) and a bunch of kale (from our CSA), I would make an Indian-flavored, spicy mashed potato and sauteed kale mixture to stuff the peppers with.

P chopped up the kale nice and small so that there would not be big chunks mixed in with the smoother texture of the potato, while I chopped and boiled the potatoes until they were soft enough to mash and got the peppers ready -- cutting off the tops and scooping out the seeds inside. I sauteed the kale in a bit of olive oil and some Indian spices, including the hot curry paste I use for just about everything. Once the kale was cooked and the potatoes were mashed, I mixed it all up together -- it already tasted delicious, but I managed to get (most of) the mixture into the peppers anyway.

Once stuffed, I stuck the peppers in the oven at 375 for about 20 minutes, until the peppers were nice and soft -- but not too soft! The texture of the peppers was perfectly balanced between tenderness and crispness, and the top of the stuffing peeking out the top got delightfully crunchy from being uncovered in the oven. Fabulous!

We have one pepper left, and you can bet that we are going to be fighting over it for lunch tomorrow!

Curried Chick Peas, Chard, & Potatoes

One of our family favorites -- you know, the standard meals that we have a million times a year, the one you whip up quickly when you have no time to cook -- is curried chick peas and green peas. Sometimes I throw potatoes in there too, or chik'n pieces . . . however the mood strikes that particular night. Well, we didn't have any peas in our CSA this week, but we did have a bunch of delicious-looking chard -- and some potatoes from the farmers' market. The chard looked super fresh and awesome, and was just begging to be devoured -- so I decided to mix up the ol'favorite with some chard.


The potatoes get diced and cooked first, in a little olive oil and a good-sized amount of curry paste. While P and I use a fairly hot curry paste, you can use whatever level of spice fits your personal taste. After sauteeing a little bit so the outsides of the potatoes are heading down the road into crispy territory (and are well-covered in curry paste), I put the lid on the pan to steam the potatoes for a bit so they can get nice and soft. While the potatoes are cooking, I wash and chop the chard, then open a can of chick peas. The chick peas -- and any stem bits of chard -- get added to the potatoes first, stirred up so they get their own nice thin coating of curry paste. Finally, the leafy chard gets added last, since it doesn't need to cook very long before serving. The whole meal comes together quickly, and is one of my favorites!

Turnip Soup, Take Two

Emboldened by the rousing success of the Indian turnip & chickpea soup, I decided last night to try a turnip soup without the help of Indian spices. Unfortunately, I really didn't have enough turnips to pull anything off; P remarked that he'd never heard anyone say "I don't have enough turnips" before, and he doubted he would hear it again. But that didn't stop me from trying! I left out the carrots, the chickpeas, and the curry powder from the other version -- and added a few cloves of garlic and some black pepper instead.

We sliced up some delicious bread from the farmers' market to eat with our soup, and set to eating.


It was a far cry from the deliciousness of the last soup. I thought it was . . . fine. Edible, anyway. But not good. P didn't even think that highly of it. He said it was like someone made hot cocoa, only instead of chocolate, they used turnips.

I ate my bowl anyway, but P was not about to eat his. And I was not about to let the soup be a waste. His main complaints were that it was too thin . . . and that it tasted like turnips. So I doctored up the soup: thickening it up with some cornstarch, then adding a can of chickpeas and some curry powder that my friend Charlotte sent me.

As you can see, the soup looked a lot different after that. Yellower, lumpier, thicker. Also, spicier and tastier.


So I guess the lesson was learned: if I'm going to make turnip soup, it had better not be just turnips.

Vegan Beet Halwa

With our Indian-themed dinner, we needed an appropriate Indian dessert. Conveniently, we had a bunch of small beets in the CSA share -- perfect for beet halwa! Halwa is typically made from a ton of ghee and milk . . . not exactly vegan; this version uses canola oil and s'milk instead. There's also usually sugar, but a bit of agave nectar works just fine.

Once all the beets were grated, it yielded about one and a half cups, but there's no reason you couldn't scale this recipe up or down.

Vegan Beet Halwa

• 1 1/2 cups grated beets
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 1 1/2 cups soy milk
• 1 tbsp agave nectar
• 3 cardamom pods
• a handful of cashews

Fry the grated beets in the oil for about two minutes. Add the milk and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the beets seem cooked. Stir in the agave nectar and cardamom pods, then simmer until the liquid is gone, still stirring occasionally. Once the liquid is gone, remove from the heat and add the cashews (I crushed them into smaller pieces first). Serve warm or allow to cool.

Indian Turnip & Chickpea Soup

I have to start off with a confession: I am totally afraid of turnips. Or I was anyway -- until tonight's soup changed all that. It's not that I never had turnips before, it's that I never liked how they were prepared. So tonight I gave turnips one more chance -- but I was still skeptical.

To use up half of the turnips from this week's share, I decided to make an Indian-flavored soup featuring chickpeas and turnips; Indian food is my favorite, so I figured that if anything was going to salvage turnips . . . Indian spices would be it!

Still, just to be safe, I fried some tofu in an Indian sauce to make sure there would be something else to eat in case the soup turned out horribly wrong. It turns out my precautionary measure was totally unnecessary -- the soup was awesome.

All four of us -- me, P, my dad, my brother -- had seconds; some of us even had thirds. The tofu got eaten, but only as an afterthought. Let me say it again. The soup. Was. Awesome.

Granted, it isn't terribly photogenic . . . but I am willing to forgive it on that point. You can see a bit of the tofu peeking out from behind the bowl, as if trying to remind me that it was there. Sure, sure. I see you, tofu. But getting back to the soup . . .


Indian Turnip & Chickpea Soup

• olive oil
  
• 1 spring onion bulb, chopped (regular onion would be fine too)
  
• about 2 cups of turnips, chopped into small chunks
• 2 15-oz cans of chickpeas, drained
• 2 small carrots, chopped
• about 2 tbsp curry powder, to taste
• a dash of salt
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 1/2 cups plain soy milk
  

Drizzle a bit of olive oil in the bottom of a pot big enough to hold the soup, sautee the onion until brown. Add the turnips through the salt, stirring to make sure the spice is distributed well; add the vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, then allow the soup to simmer covered for at least 20 minutes until the turnips are soft and tender. Remove two cups of soup to be pureed in a food processor or blender, then return to the soup. Add the s'milk and mix everything back in. Gently warm up the soup to make sure it is heated throughout, then serve.

Curried Lentils with Kale

Tonight, after the Celtics game, we wanted to eat something quick and easy for dinner. We had a huge bunch of kale from the CSA this week and still had a bit left, so I decided to use the rest of it with dinner. The quickest thing I could think of, after a consultation with the pantry, was to make a big pot of lentils to go with the kale. I'm partial to Indian food, so curried lentils and kale seemed like the best way to go.


The lentils were fantastic. I didn't measure out anything exactly, so the measurements in the recipe below are approximate. The kale was also delicious; it was sauteed with some olive oil and a few diced cloves of garlic -- nothing fancy. We still have a ton of lentils left, even after seconds, but it'll make a good snack later this week!


Curried Lentils

• 2 cups of lentils
• 8 cups of water
• 2-3 tsp turmeric
• 2-3 tsp coriander
• 2-3 tsp curry powder
• 2-3 tsp cayenne pepper
• 2-3 tsp ginger
• salt to taste

After rinsing the lentils, simmer for approximately 20 minutes until most of the water has been absorbed. Stir in the spices and simmer for another 5 or so minutes. The lentils should be soft enough that they stick together a bit and scoop easily. The cayenne pepper makes the lentils spicy, but could be safely left out if you don't want the heat.