Veggie Lentil Loaf

Need a recipe for Meatless Monday?  It's not just meatless but vegan and gluten-free to boot!

A couple of months back I kept running into recipes for vegetarian versions of meatloaf.  They all sounded so delicious but the ingredients weren't practical for me.  Egg replacers, textured vegetable proteins, nutritional yeast...I don't have a problem with any of these items, I just wouldn't use them again in the immediate future.  And being as frugal as I am, I couldn't justify these purchases for one recipe.

But alas! The April/May issue of Kiwi included a recipe for veggie lentil loaf.  Not only were the ingredients "everyday" foods, but things I had in my own refrigerator and pantry.  And it called for French lentils.  I love lentils, but those lovely little lentils are nothing like their khaki cousins.  They're tiny and speckled, keep their shape and are firmer, and have much, much more flavor.  I changed a couple of things, but mainly, it's the same recipe.

Veggie Lentil Loaf

2 1/2 cups French lentils, rinsed and picked over
2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for greasing the pan
1 large yellow onion
2 green bell peppers, seeded and diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp plus 1 tsp cumin
1/4 cup tahini
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2/3 cup white rice flour
salt and pepper
1/4 cup vegan barbecue sauce (I highly recommend Annie's Naturals Organic Smoky Maple      BBQ Sauce)

1.  Place the lentils in a medium saucepan, and fill the pot with enough water to cover the lentils by 2 to 3 inches.  Cover, bring to a boil, and simmer for 25 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

2.  While the lentils cook, prepare the vegetables.  In a large skillet, warm the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onions and sauté 5 to 7 minutes, or until soft and translucent.  Add the peppers and cook 5 minutes more.  Add the garlic and cumin, and cook 1 minute more.

3. Transfer the vegetables to a food processor and pulse until very finely chopped.  Place in a large bowl and set aside. 

4.  Add the cooked lentils, tahini, and lemon zest and juice to a food processor and process until mostly smooth.

5.  Add the lentil mixture to the vegetables and stir to combine.  Fold in the rice flour and season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste.

6. Lightly grease two 9-by-5-inch loaf pans and spoon the mixture into it.  Use a spatula to smooth the top.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes, or until the top of the loaf is just beginning to brown.

7. Remove the loaf from the oven and spread the barbecue sauce over the top.  Bake for another 15 minutes at 400 degrees, then allow the lentil loaf to sit for at least 10 minutes before slicing.

The Verdict: And the cheese stands alone.  I thought it was super and my husband and son thought it was Torture in a Loaf Pan.

They didn't hate it that much, but nor were they jumping for joy.  In their defense, I guess lentils aren't everyone's bag.  Favorite foods are often described as moist, juicy, succulent...and a lentil can't ever snag one of those adjectives.  Even the fancy French ones are dry.  And no matter how many vegetables and spices you add, or how much you whir the ingredients around in a blender, they don't magically become meat.  Which is a mean slight of hand trick to meat lovers.

But let's ignore them, shall we?

The original recipe calls for a single loaf pan.  Unless I fell asleep at the stove, which is entirely possible in my new baby state, this recipe makes a humongous amount of lentil mixture.  No worries as it freezes well.  It also called for ketchup instead of barbecue sauce.  Meh.  I thought, because lentils aren't quite as tasty as ground meat, it called for a little something extra.  But if you prefer ketchup, knock your socks off.

Now, speaking of this recipe making a boat load of lentil mixture--you are faced with a bit of a conundrum if you don't have a food processor and use a blender.  Yes, for all the cooking I do, I don't have a food processor.  Crazy, right?  But if you're a poor soul like myself, you'll have to blend your foods in batches.  Lots of batches. 

If you're a safe cook, the two items that might seem a little outre are rice flour and tahini.  Whole Foods generally sells rice flour by the pound, so you could potentially buy just a bit if you have one near you.  Otherwise, regular white flour would work, I imagine.  It just wouldn't be gluten-free anymore.  If you were to buy a larger amount, you can use the rice flour in rice pudding.  It's how my husband makes it and now that I write it, I'll have to get that recipe for you all.  As for tahini, it's great to have on hand to make homemade hummus.  There is nothing easier or more delicious than homemade hummus.  Substituting it might be a bit tricky; it's a bit like nut butters (almond, cashew) but if you don't have tahini, you probably don't have nut butters laying around.  Peanut butter is a possibility, but peanuts are fairly strong.  I can't guarantee how much it would change the taste.

If you're a fan of lentils and enjoy lots of vegetables, I think you'd love this recipe.  If you're feeding it to serious carnivores, don't even try to sell it as meatloaf.  It's nothing like meatloaf.  And even your honesty might not convert the meat lover.  Don't tell me you weren't warned.

Cowboy Pie

The past two weeks have been crazy.  Just in general as well as in the kitchen.  I decided to do huge batches of dishes to freeze for after our baby's arrival and spent many, many hours slaving over a hot stove, literally barefoot and pregnant.  While I didn't spend all that much for what should amount to over a month's worth of dinners, I did realize halfway through my cooking that I didn't spend--and therefore buy--anything for the coming week.  But rather than panic and run back to the supermarket (and throw my husband into convulsions as he already thinks I spend too much on groceries, which is not true, and a subject for another day), I decided to go with what I had.  And that was scraps of leftovers from my giant batch cooking.

A couple of the recipes called for ground hamburger, so I bought the "holy crap, Batman" sized pack, leaving a good two pounds of meat free.  I also made a chili I adore with dried beans, which I never use.  Wow, that's a nice way to save money and get lots of meals.  I had oodles of leftover pinto beans.  So night one of "creative kitchen cooking": Cowboy Pie.

Cowboy Pie

1 lb ground beef
2 cups pinto beans
1/2 cup medium onion
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup canned or frozen corn
1 cup canned crushed tomatoes in puree
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 cup grated cheddar
1 package instant corn bread mix, prepared according to instructions

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Heat olive oil over medium high heat.  Add onion and cook until tender and translucent.
2.  Add hamburger and cook until no longer pink, then add beans, corn, tomatoes, chili powder, and cumin.
3.  In a bowl, prepare cornbread mix as directed on package.  Set aside.
4.  Grease a 9-inch pie plate.
5.  Spoon bean and meat mixture into the pie plate and top with "blobs" of corn bread.  Carefully spread to cover.  Top with cheddar cheese.  Bake 30-35 minutes or until corn bread is golden brown. 

The Verdict:  This is a fun meal.  If you like chili and corn bread, you'll like this.

You can obviously use canned beans and buy a pound of hamburger to make this, but it was pretty economical and easy to have all the ingredients ready in the fridge.  As I'd said, we used the beans and meat for chili, shepard's pie and meatloaves, but there are about 8 zillion other recipes you could find that you could batch cook with hamburger and beans.

You can probably tell from the picture, but I forgot to sprinkle the cheese on the pie before it went in the oven.  Boo!  Is there anything better than hot, gooey cheese?  Not really. 

Probably even more delicious is if you make your own corn bread.  In these final weeks (and now days) of pregnancy, I don't have the time or energy for that kind of cooking.  A good ol' package of Betty Crocker or Jiffy will do just fine if you don't want to get too fancy in the kitchen. 

This meal works well for my son.  He loves meat and beans and will often eat corn with no complaints.  He also loves cornbread, but was suspicious of it on top of his food.  We make it quite often in our bread machine and I guess that's his favorite.

Not in a rush, but would definitely make this again.

Cozy Cabin Casserole

I recently loaded up on cookbooks and cooking magazines at one of my favorite local haunts.  This included the best of 2010 slow-cooker recipes from Fix-It and Forget-It.  When I got it home I was chagrined to learn that there were tons of dishes featuring "cream of" soups.  I can only name a handful of recipes I like that feature canned soup.  Maybe I've catapulted into being a true food snob, but I just feel like "cream of dinner" is a gyp.

But I marched forward, reading through the recipes and dutifully cutting out those that looked appealing.  One of them was this recipe: Cozy Cabin Casserole.  Since round steak is so cheap, it's nice to have recipes on hand that enhance the tough cut.   I opened up my cans and got slow-cookin'.

Cozy Cabin Casserole

1 lb. lean round steak
2.2-oz. envelope dry beefy onion soup mix
10 3/4-oz can cream of mushroom soup
10 3/4-oz can cream of celery soup
1/2 cup sour cream

1. Layer first 4 ingredients in slow cooker.

2. Cover and cook on high for 1 hour and then on low 4 to 6 hours or until meat is tender.

3.  Stir in sour cream 10 minutes before serving.

The Verdict:  Well, there were many thoughts on this dish...

My son liked it just fine.  He saw meat on his plate as well as potatoes.  (I served it with diced potatoes and onions sautéed in olive oil and seasoned with smoked paprika.)  As our son eats like a middle-aged American man, there were no complaints from him.

My husband said that eating this dish was like a "food adventure."  The sauce was "creamy and wet" and the meat was easy to bite into but "oddly dry" as you began to chew it.  The flavor combinations were strange but there was still something about it he liked.

My first impression was, "Well, I believe this is what prison food looks like."  Brownish, glossy, gloppy.  And the flavor combinations were odd.  Sweet?  Savory?  Sour?  In a subsequent serving as leftovers, I learned that I liked scrambling the meat (which fell apart like hamburger) and putting it over the potatoes.  Well, not liked it as in, "Yum, we're eating this again tomorrow night!" liked.  It was better.

Nope.  This won't be made again anytime soon.  And I'm nervous for Fix-It and Forget-It if they're touting this as one of their "best slow-cooker recipes."  Let's just hope I chose the dud.