Lentils and Walnuts Pâté & Zucchini Salad

So, it’s been a while, but I have a few very easy, quick and healthy recipes for you. Check them out.

Red Lentils and Walnuts Vegetarian Pâté

What you’ll need:

– 1/2 cup walnuts- toasted and thinly ground

– 1 cup of red lentils

– 1 1/2 cups water

– 1 onion finely chopped

– 1 ts turmeric

– 1 ts paprika (hot or sweet or both)

– 1 tbs sumac

– Salt and pepper to taste.

– Olive oil

– Lemon

How to make:

Rinse the lentils and cook them in boiling water until tender. There’s no need to soak red lentils in water before cooking. Cook them until they’re very soft and all the water are dissolved, for this recipe they don’t need to be ‘Al-dente’, so you can over cook.

Meanwhile, saute the onion in olive oil until it begins to brown, then add all the spices to the onion: turmeric, paprika, sumac, salt and pepper and mix well. Add the cooked lentils to the onion and spices and mix over low heat.

Toast and grind the walnuts, add the lentils mixture to the walnuts and grind everything together.

Add a dash of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. Taste and fix seasoning if necessary.

Refrigerate for a couple of hours.

Serve on bread, toast or pita bread. Like most pates it tastes better than it looks.

Raw Zucchini Salad:

– 1-2 zucchinis, uncooked, unpeeled, but washed of course.

– A bunch of cherry tomatoes (you can use different kinds)

– Olive tapenade (about 1 tbs)

Shave the zucchini into thin strips, using a vegetable peeler; halve the cherry tomatoes and toss everything together with the tapenade.

Enjoy,

Gal.

My Quinoa and Antipasti Salad – Revisited

Following my previous quinoa salad recipe, which was quickly devoured (ok, especially by me), I’ve decided to make it again but with a different twist.

Now with pumpkins, sweet potatoes, basil, greens and Parmesan, it tastes completely different (in a different, good way.)

We ate this salad with salmon, but I think it could also make a great vegetarian meal by itself

Ingredients:

– 1 cup quinoa

– 2 cups water

– 1 large sweet potato

– About 500 gr pumpkin

– A generous bunch of chopped fresh basil leaves

– A generous bunch of micro green leaves, or other baby leaves

– Grated Parmesan cheese

– Salt and pepper

– Olive oil

– Lemon squeeze

– Rosemary and sage

Preparations:

– Peel the pumpkin and sweet potato and slice into thin slices (about 1 cm thick).

– Put the slices in a baking dish, pour some olive-oil on them and give them a nice rub to cover them in olive-oil from both sides.

– Add some rosemary and sage leaves and sprinkle with coarse sea-salt and grounded black pepper.

– Put in the oven for about 30 minutes, 200 deg. Celsius, on grill.

– After 15 min. of cooking, flip the sweet potato and pumpkin slices upside down and continue cooking. If you see they’re getting too dry, you may add some more olive-oil.

– Meanwhile, cook the quinoa in water and let it cool for a while.

– Chop a nice bunch of fresh basil leaves and add to the quinoa, add some micro greens, or other greens, such as arugula or baby leaves.

– Season the quinoa salad with lemon squeeze, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

– Add grated Parmesan cheese to the quinoa.

– When the antipasti are out of the oven, let them cool for a little while,

– Then arrange them nicely on a plate and top with the prepared quinoa salad.

-Nom nom nom.

Pandas like quinoa too.

Quinoa and Antipasti Salad

Light but filling summer lunch. Ingredients:

– 1 red pepper

– 1 zucchini

– 1 aubergine

– 1 cup quinoa (I used organic tricolor quinoa)

– 1.5 cups water

– 2 tomatoes

– 1 cucumber

– a bunch of parsley

-1 lemon

– Olive oil

– Salt and pepper

– Coarse salt and grounded black pepper

– Tahini (raw tahini mixed with lemon juice and a bit of water to make tahini sauce).

Preparations:

Heat the oven to 200 deg Celsius on grill.

Slice the red pepper, zucchini and aubergine to slices about 1 cm thick and place in an oven dish, sprinkle with olive oil, coarse salt and grounded black pepper.

Put in the oven for about 15 minutes, turn the vegetables slices upside down and put back in the oven for another 15 minutes or until they’re cooked.

Cover the quinoa with water and let soak for about 15 minutes. Rinse under the sink.

Boil 1.5 cups of water and add in the quinoa, cook for about 15 minutes, until the quinoa is soft and turns transparent.

Put the quinoa in a large bowl and let it cool.

Add in chopped fresh vegetables: the tomatoes and cucumber, and the parsley.

Season with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add the antipasti on top and finish with the Tahini sauce.

Beef Sirloin Slices & Beets-Potatoes Salad

First, a confession; Not all of my experimental cooking turn out so good. Some things can go terribly wrong in the kitchen. My husband and my family are usually being used as guinea pigs, so the recipes that pass this tough committee of fastidious eaters will be published here. So, I’d like to thanks my faithful husband and family that patiently endure my experiments.

Now, lets get cooking…

Beef Sirloin Slices:

Ingredients (for two people):

– 400 gr of good fresh beef sirloin, with the fat, in room temperature

– Thyme

– Pepper

For grilling on the stove it’s best if you have a cast iron skillet. The skillet should be very very hot before you put in the meat, and the meat should sit outside the refrigerator for a while before you grill it. Don’t add salt before grilling because it will dry the meat.

Preparation:

Slice the sirloin into thin slices (about 1/2 cm thick)

Preheat a cast iron skillet, don’t add any oil, the fat on the meat is enough.

When the skillet is very hot put in the sirloin slices and season with pepper and thyme (you can salt after the meat is done cooking), grill on both sides to your degree of choice. If you like it raw you’ll only need to grill it for a few minutes, depending on the thickness of the slice and on the amount of fat on it.

Take out and eat. The meat is tasteful on its own, but you can also add sauce to it, for example:

Sauce:

Mix:

– 3 tbs sour cream

– 1/2 ts dijon mustard

(Sorry I didn’t have pictures for this one, had problems with the camera, but you’ll have to trust me it looks as good as it tastes…)

Beets and potatoes salad:

Ingredients:

– 2 beets

– about 4 medium potatoes

– Fresh herbs: thyme, mint, hyssop, parsley…

–  Olive oil and juice from one lemon

– Salt and pepper

Preparation:

Cook the beets and the potatoes.

Peel the beets and potatoes and slice them into cubes.

Chop and add the herbs and season with olive oil, lemon and salt and pepper.

The sauce prepared for the meat also goes well with this salad.

That’s it.

Those beets were multifunctional, as you can see in the next post.