Improvised slow cooker posole

Posole (or if you prefer, pozole) is one of the foods I discovered when we visited the Southwest last fall.  It's a soup made with chile, hominy, and, traditionally, something dead.  According to Wikipedia, the original posole was made by the Aztecs and included meat from human sacrifices.  Ew.  After the Conquistadors arrived there were no more human sacrifices, so people used pork, the other white meat.  Still ew.  I make mine with beans -- in this most recent instance, cute little Sangre de Toro beans.

The hardest thing about making posole on the east coast is finding dried hominy.  Canned hominy is easy to find, but canned hominy is gross.  The first posole I made was with blue corn hominy I found at Whole Foods in  Santa Fe.  I haven't been able to find that here.  The closest I've come is at our local mercado latino, where I found Goya brand white and golden hominy, which according to the people at Wegman's (where I searched in vain) is positively loaded with iron.  Who knew?  Goya hominy is not whole kernels, it's cracked, so it's not nearly as dramatic looking, but unless I'm going to nixtamalize my own corn it appears to be the best I can do.

One thing about making posole -- even after you soak it overnight, the hominy takes forever to cook.  Hours.  Longer than beans.   So this time, I decided to try making it in the slow cooker.  I soaked a pound of hominy and a pound of beans overnight, then the next morning I put them in my biggest slow cooker crock with an onion, a bunch of ancho chile powder, some Mexican oregano, a little cumin, and water to fill the crock.  Lots of water.  Plenty of water.  Or so I thought. 

When I got home from work, the corn and beans had slurped up all the water.  Instead of soup, I had a big pot of stew thick enough to stand a spoon up in.  Fortunately, it didn't stick to the crock.

I suppose I could have added some broth and tried to soupify it, but I decided just to eat it as is: 

That's garnished with raw cabbage, a raw bell pepper, guacamole, and a lime wedge.  It was kind of bland the first day, so I added some of my new favorite commercial spice blend, Trader Joe's South African Smoke.  Over the next day or two, the flavors developed, and it was perfect as is.

My girlfriend doesn't like posole -- I think she had a bad experience with canned hominy as a child -- so I ended up eating the whole pot myself, mostly for breakfast.  I didn't intend to make a stew rather than a soup, but I might actually prefer it this way.

Vegan Kheema!

In my last post I said I would be back with a picture of my textured soy protein creation.  Feast your eyes on this Indian yumminess:

That's a bed of cooked millet, topped with Mock Kheema adapted from The Indian Slow Cooker, and surrounded by Punjabi-Style Cabbage from Vegan Indian Cooking.  Anupy Singla, I love you.

I've talked about The Indian Slow Cooker before.  It's not a vegetarian book, but most of the recipes are vegan.  I love, love, love this book because the recipes produce huge quantities of yummy Indian food with very little effort.  The other recipes I've made have all been bean dishes, which I have especially liked because unlike traditionally prepared Indian legume dishes, they do not call for any ghee or oil.

The kheema recipe is different.  Traditional kheema is made with lamb, and apparently it's supposed to be greasy, so there is a full half cup of oil in it.  I never cook with anywhere close to that much oil, but I wanted my first try of the recipe to be at least semi-authentic, so I didn't cut back.  The recipe is so big, and the serving size is so tiny, that I figured out there is only about a teaspoon of oil in each serving.  I've never eaten kheema before, so I don't know how authentic this version is, but I do know it's delicious.

Anupy's recipe calls for packaged "meatless grounds" like the Boca crumbles, but I thought since so many spices were going into the recipe I could use plain textured soy protein.  I figured out that 8 oz of dry TSP, reconstituted, is about the equivalent of four bags of frozen crumbles, which is what the recipe calls for.  Here it is as I adapted it:

8 oz dry textured soy protein crumbles (about 5 cups), reconstituted with an equal volume of boiling water
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, peeled and chopped
1 4-inch piece of ginger, finely chopped in the food processor
10 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped in the food processor with the ginger
1 6-oz can tomato paste, mixed with 2 cups boiling water until smooth
4 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
6 bay leaves
1/4 cup ground cumin
1/4 cup ground coriander
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 T smoked paprika (or regular paprika, if you don't have smoked)
1 T salt
2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp garam masala
2 cups frozen peas

Put everything except the peas into a 6 quart slow cooker and mix well.  Cook on high for 3 hours.  Add the peas and cook for another 10 minutes or so.

The result is rich and spicy (but not too hot) and wonderful.  I figured out that a serving is 1/3 cup -- that contains the same amount of protein as a cup of cooked beans, about 14 grams. This recipe makes a lot.  I may end up having to freeze some.

Here's what it looks like close up:

  
My girlfriend thought the texture was scarily similar to ground beef.  I don't actually remember what ground beef is like, so to me it is just yummy.  Put it on top of a bed of cooked grain and mix it in.  Om nom nom.

I think next time I will cut back on the oil somewhat -- although my girlfriend begged me not to cut back too much.  I might try 1/3 cup, certainly no less than 1/4 cup.

How do you say "bon appetit" in Hindi?

Fare thee well, Towson Farmer's Market . . . .

. . . . see you in June!

I went out at lunch time to return some library books, and walked right into the final farmer's market of the season.  I had forgotten all about it, but today is the last day.  I couldn't resist picking up a butternut squash, an enormous cabbage, a big bag of potatoes and a bunch of kale, even though we are going out of town Wednesday morning.  I was going to nuke some frozen broccoli for dinner tonight, but I think instead I will cook up the remainder of the enormous cabbage I bought last time.  Last night I made mung beans with balti masala, so I am thinking I will saute the cabbage in a little coconut oil with some salt, turmeric, and panch phoron.  Just real simple.  Maybe chop a tomato up in there.  Mmm, this is sounding good.

Hunkering Down

Hurricane Sandy is upon us.  Girlfriend and I are both off work today and tomorrow because of the storm, and when we woke up this morning we decided we'd better do some cooking while we still had power.

The cooking actually started last night, with chickpea curry from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, The Indian Slow Cooker by Anupy Singla.  This is not a vegan book (although Anupy has another book, Vegan Indian Cooking, that is also excellent), but most of the recipes are vegan.  I love these recipes because a) the quantities are huge, and b) most of the recipes involve dumping everything into the slow cooker at once and ignoring it for a long, long time -- 14 hours in the case of the chickpea curry.  I woke up this morning to the smell of delicious curry, and first thing I added my finishing touches.  This curry comes out very soupy, so I thicken it up and turn it into a complete meal by adding cooked rice, a pound of frozen spinach, and a pound of frozen broccoli.

My Farmer's Market Haul

I am very fortunate in that my house, my office, and the farmer's market are each about a five minute walk from the others.  Every Thursday from June through November, I try to make it to the farmer's market at lunch time.  I haul my fruits and veggies home, eat lunch, and go back to work.  It's a great setup.

Here's what I bought yesterday:

  

Kitten included for scale.  Actually, kitten included because there was no way he wasn't going to be included.

 That savoy cabbage weighs almost 7 pounds!  That's a lot of cruciferous goodness for just $3.00.  I don't know what I'm making with it yet -- probably several different things.  It's a good thing cabbage keeps well.

All these poblanos for $5.00!

Looks like I'll be roasting poblanos again this weekend.  There are probably more refried beans in my future, or I may get decadent and make a cream of poblano soup.  Or both.

Empire, Liberty, Nittany -- from left to right.

 Finally, I bought about 9 pounds of apples.  Empire is my favorite eating apple.  I asked the apple man if he would be selling any Rome apples this fall, and he said most of those go for juice, but that if I like Rome I should try Liberty.  So I bought six big Liberty apples for baking.  At first I was thinking dessert, but then it occurred to me that I could stuff them with something savory and have them be an entree.  I found a bunch of meatful recipes that involve stuffing apples with sausage, so I'm thinking I'll be making some sausage crumbles this weekend, either with frozen tofu or with TSP.  Still not sure what I'll be doing with the Nittany apples.  In the past I've baked them.  Mostly I just thought they were pretty.

These ingredients will be appearing in blog posts for the next week or so.  I also have a big bag of potatoes from a previous week's market, so expect some potato dishes.