3 Color Mash

Carrot Potato Mash

This is very good filler on cold Autumn, or winter evenings. High on the beta carotene, pre-biotics, potassium, vitamin E, vitamin C, antioxidants, and of course fiber. I just like it, and in the end that is all that matters.

4 servings

Potatoes: 3 mid-size, cubed

Purple potatoes: 6 small, cubed

Sweet potatoes: 3 big, cubed

Purple carrots: 3 big, sliced

Yellow carrots: 3 big, sliced

Orange carrots: 3 big, sliced

Onion: 1, chopped

Leek: 1, chopped

Basil: ½ teasp.

Chives: 1 tablesp.

Parsley: 1 tablesp.

Thyme: (optional) 1 small pinch

Rosemary: (optional) 1 small pinch

Salt: 1-2 teasp. (to taste)

Chili pepper mix: ½ teasp.

Broth cube: 1

Honey: 1 tablesp.

Sambal Oelek: (optional) 1 tablesp.

Butter: 3 tablesp.

Milk: ½ cup

Peel all your potatoes and cut them to cube of an inch in diameter. Boil them with your broth cube, a dash of salt and a pinch of your chili pepper. You can either boil them until they fall apart, or until you can easily cut them with a knife. 12-15 mins of boiling in most cases. Drain water from the potatoes in a sieve and return them to your pan (make sure it is big enough). Mash the potato mix roughly, you want it a little lumpy, not an equal mass, and add the milk and half the butter.

Wash your slices of carrots well. Melt half of the butter and throw in the carrots. Stir frequently. Add the onion and leek. Stir. Add the herbs, salt, honey, pepper and sambal. Keep stirring frequently, keep on medium high fire until the slices get soft to the touch, and start to get slight crusts.

Once your carrots are “done” (as in soft enough to easily spear with a fork) add them to the potatoes and use the hand masher to roughly mix them all together. I prefer to have it all lumpy, it gives it all a nice texture, but you can also use an immersion blender to mash it all into a smooth paste.

Serve with a small blob of butter on your plate, or gravy, or some bits and pieces of bacon, if you think you need your meat. Any leftovers are perfect for the next day in an oven dish with grated cheese on top and grilled until the cheese has melted to a fine brown crust…or better yet, you can serve it this way the first time around.

Enjoy.

Great High Iron Meal.

Fresh Spinach

I am an extremely picky eater, and getting sufficient amounts of iron in is always a task for me. So I came up with this dish which truly works like a charm, considering Spinach is one of the best sources of iron…remember Popeye? Not that it necessarily holds that much iron, it is just that the kind it holds is the sort your body can work with really well. Considering I add a whole bunch of other stuff to it, like Parsley, which is high in iron as well, only makes the meal more nutritious, and I love that it is so easy to make.

Spinach potato mash:

3-4 persons.

Spinach: (frozen is easiest) 1 kg

Potatoes: 6 mid-size. Diced

Sweet potatoes: 2 mid-size. Diced

Purple potatoes: 4 mid-size. Diced

Leek: 4-6 inches. Chopped

Onion: 1 mid-size. Chopped

Butter: 150-200 gr.

Milk: ¼ cup

Cheese: 100-200 gr (mix of sheep/goat/cow is nicest, but any other melt cheese will do) Grated

Parsley: 1 tablesp. (dried)

Pepper: 3-4 turns (2 knife points)

Salt: 2-3 teasp. (to taste)

Sweet chili sauce: (optional) 2 tablesp.

Peel your potatoes and cut them all about the same size. Cubes of about an inch and a half. Put them all together in a pan and just barely submerge in water. Add a teasp. of salt and a turn or two of your pepper mill, and boil until you can stab a fork into any of them and slide it right out again. Drain of water. Use a fork or hand masher (you can use an immersion blender, but I like it better when the potato mash isn’t all that smooth) to mash the potatoes with half the butter and milk until you have a lumpy paste.

Use a large skillet or wok for the Spinach. Melt the remainder of the butter (or use olive oil, if you prefer) and put in the frozen spinach. Mid-heat and frequent stirring will quickly defrost your spinach. Add your leek, onion and Parsley and keep stirring. The spinach will be best if you actually bake it, so increase the heat if you think it is going to slow. Add some Salt and pepper and the Chili sauce if you opted for that and when the spinach is completely defrosted, stir the cheese through it. Let it bake for a bit longer, until the cheese has melted properly and clumps through your spinach a bit. Turn off the heat.

Spoon your spinach mix on top of your potato mash and stir firmly until you have a colorful mash.

Serve with a small triangle of butter on top, allowing it to melt on the mash. I tend to serve this as a main dish, but you can serve it with a hamburger and/or a salad on the side.

High nutrition in one go

Sweet mixes

So, with there being little time, but a least a day or two in the week where you can at least spend a little time in the kitchen, I find this to be an ideal recipe that will easily see you through a week worth of meals for 3 to 4 people (or serve as a big batch for a party snack). You might think that, eeewww, you don’t like to eat the same thing over and over, but I’ll let you in on several preparation methods that’ll keep things interesting.

Warning:

There will be a lot of taste in your mix, but don’t worry about that until you’ve got your paste done for making the burgers; flour will take away a lot of the taste. As usual you can substitute with the flour of choice, but be prepared for a different taste with chickpea/buckwheat/corn flour. Best substitute would be rice flour, it won’t really alter the taste. As for potato flour (as in this recipe), if you can’t get it, get some instant potato mash, it works fine. As to the oats, don’t use raw ones, they’ll be too tough. Get the ones that have been precooked, as those for the quick and easy to fix oatmeal. As to the amounts, they are estimates, there are many factors involved in how much you need, so basically you add the flour/oats until you have a substance you can work with.

This recipe takes about an hour, but then you can just leave it in a bowl in the fridge and get out whatever amount you want when the mood suits you. What you’ll need is a skillet/wok, small cooking pan, blender/immersion blender—with tubular container, spoons, wooden ladle, plates a big bowl and something to deep fry in if that is the option you’re going for in the prep.

High nutritional value is the main thing here. Basically everything you need is in this mix, so if you’ve got a picky kid that doesn’t like eating veggies, or something, this is the way to sneak all the vits and mins in. Basically, if you can stand it, you could easily live quite healthily of this.

Veggie lentil/oat mix

List 1:

Cauliflower: 2 big rose-sized buds. Quartered

Carrot: 2 mid-size. Chopped (no more than ½ inch thick)

Sweet potato: 1 mid-size. Chopped

Leek: 4-5 inches. Chopped roughly.

Green beans: 4-6 chopped

Oats: 1 mug (150-200gr)

Broth cubes: 3-4

Salt: 1-2 teasp. (to taste)

Sugar: 1 teasp.

Pepper: 2 turns (2 knife points)

Paprika: 1 teasp.

Olive oil: 2-3 tablesp.

Sweet chili sauce: (optional)2 tablesp.

Water: 2 mugs. (1/3 liter)

List 2:

Lentils: 1 ½ mug (400 gr) boiled

Onion: 2 mid-size. Chopped

Red pepper: ½ chopped

Yellow pepper: ½ chopped

Italian pepper: 1 mid-size. Chopped

Zucchini: ½ chopped

(Dried herbs in this case. Double if using fresh, except for thyme and rosemary)

Parsley: 2 teasp.

Basil: 2 teasp.

Oregano: ½ teasp.

Rosemary: 1 pinch

Thyme: 1 pinch.

Dill: ½ teasp.

Olive oil: 3-4 tablesp.

Sweet chili sauce: (optional) 3 tablesp.

Tomato ketchup: 1 teasp.

Salt: 1-2 teasp. (to taste)

Sugar: 1 teasp.

Pepper: 2 turns (2 knife points)

Paprika: ½ teasp.

Nutmeg: 1 knife point (a pinch)

Sesame seeds: 1 teasp.

List 3:

Eggs: 2

Flour: 2-3 mugs (Approx 450 gr)

Potato flour: 2 mugs (Approx 400 gr)

Oats: 1-2 mugs (Approx 200 gr)

Last bit:

Breading: 1-2 mugs (Approx 200 gr)

Cornflakes: ½ mug (handful) crumbled

To start:

First put list 1 on a high temp burner in your cooking pan until it boils, then turn down the heat so it can simmer for the duration of the baking that follows. No particular sequence to how you handle list 1. Just throw them all in and boil them. Stir frequently, though, to prevent burning, and add more olive oil if you feel it sticks too much. Leave to simmer until it starts to become pasty/thick.

While nr 1 starts to heat, get going with your skillet/wok. Heat the olive oil a little, you’ll see it shift  on the bottom. Start with onions. Stir, allow for some crusts before you add your peppers, zucchini and then your boiled lentils. Stir, keep the heat up, and then add your seasoning…all of them, no particular sequence to it, although I tend to throw sugar and salt in early on.

Bake until your zucchini starts to get mushy, be carefully the lot doesn’t burn and stick to your bottom…it is something lentils like to do. Add some extra olive oil if you think it is going too fast and lower the heat a little.

Once both boiling and baking is done, turn off the heat and blender both components together. Careful, it will be hot. I used an immersion blender, so I had to do three rounds in a lemonade decanter to blender everything. The mix should look like a thick soup or porridge, having some of your veggies, like pepper and beans still floating in it like small colorful bits, makes it look more interesting, but you can keep blendering until it all one cane-sugar colored mush.

Carefully stir your raw eggs through the mix and then start adding the flours and oats from list 3 until you have a paste that will stand up straight on a spoon without dripping off. If you don’t have enough flour, add more, if you have too much, leave it.

Your basis is done.

Here come the different ways to finish them.

Breaded burgers: 4-6 Persons

The mix: 8-10 full tablesp.

(Optional: Add 2 tablesp. Cottage cheese to the mix.)

Breading/cornflakes: 1 mug. In a small bowl or on a plate.

Use two large spoons. Fill one to full capacity and slide on your corn and breading mix. Using the breading to keep your hands from getting too moist, keep patting the burger until you have a sturdy hamburger sized pattie. You should have enough for 6 burgers.

Deep fry at 190 degrees Celsius: 7-9 mins. Only two patties at a time to a deep golden brown.

Or

Fry in a skillet. Heat butter/sunflower seed oil and bake until the burgers look sturdy and nicely crusted. Similar to a normal burger, really.

Serve on the side of veggies and staple food as meat substitute, on a bun, or with a salad, or just as a snack with some mustard and if you like it spicy Tabasco or Sweet chili sauce.

Pita patties:  4-6 Persons

The mix: 8 tablesp.

Flour: 1-2 mugs (200 gr)

Olive oil: 1 tablesp.

Barley vinegar: 1 tablesp.

Mustard: 1 teasp.

Put your mix into a reasonably sized bowl, add the ingredients above, and start adding flour until you have a dough like substance (like for bread). Soft, but no longer sticky. Separate your dough into golf ball sized balls, and flatten until you have a large pattie about half an inch thick. Bake in a pre-heated skillet to a golden brown. Keep the heat mid-high, but regulate if you feel it goes to fast, or slow. There should be some hissing going on, but no vapors.

Once you’ve got your pitas baked, slice them open and serve with a potato/veggie salad inside, or greens with a dressing, a ratatouille, a spicy chili, or just with cheese. Plenty of ways.

Hushpuppies: 4-6 Person

The mix: 12-14 tablesp.

Cheese:  1 mug (150 gr) grated (I would go for a melt cheese but parmesan works too)

Breading: ½ - 1 mug

Stir your cheese through the mix and make small meatball-sized balls. Roll them through your breading until they look just right and then deep fry in 190 degrees Celsius for about 5 minutes. No more than 6-8 balls per fry. You should have around 18 of them, depending on the size you went for. Keep them small, though, otherwise the center might not be done.

Serve as party snacks with mustard, or other preferred dips, or serve with your pasta meal as a meat substitute.

As time passes, I will try this mix for different varieties, so check back every now and then if you’re curious.

Bon appétit.

Buckwheat filler

Buckwheat seeds

It took me a while to like buckwheat, but then a friend introduced me to a rather splendid recipe, which I adjusted, as I am prone to do, and ended up with this. It's very tasteful, filling, and high in nutritional value. It is a very healthy substitute for wheat (no gluten) so if you replace the flour in the recipe with either buckwheat flour or chickpea flour, you are set to go gluten free.
Buckwheat has loads of magnesium in it, iron, copper and lots of fibre. It is good for people with diabetes, is low in cholesterol, and on the overall just an excellent form of nutrition. You should try it some day. It goes well in soups and salads as well.

Buckwheat patties:

Buckwheat: 400 gr.

Onion: 1 small. Chopped

Bell pepper: ¼ chopped.

Broth cubes: 3-4

Hotchpotch spice: ½ teasp. (composition below)

Salt: 3-4 teasp. (To taste)

Pepper: 1-2 knife point.

Sugar: ½ teasp.

Garlic powder: ½ teasp.

Water: 1 ½-2 L.

Sweet chili sauce: 2-3 tablespoon

Egg: 1 (optional)

Cheese: 200 gr. Cubed or grated.

Flour: 1/2 -1 mug.

Boil the buckwheat (if the dry buckwheat covers about in inch of your pan, fill it up with water up to at least one inch from the top) in a non-stick pan with everything except the cheese, egg and flour. Keep stirring while boiling until the buckwheat is soft, easy to mash between your fingers. If it is not soft enough when the water is gone, add more water until the mix is much like a porridge. Turn off the heat once there is only a slimy moisture between the mushy kernels left. Put your buckwheat mush in a big dish, adding the egg, cheese, and then the flour until it is sturdy enough to have a spoon stand in it.

To make patties, use a large tablespoon filled completely to deposit the mix in a skillet and spread out until you have a thin hamburger. Bake on mid-range to high-range. Both sides need to be a gold-dark brown, flattening the pattie some more while baking until no more moisture sizzles from it. Then your patties are ready to serve. Serve as meat substitute, a veggie burger on a bun, or just a quick snack. Buckwheat fills well, so one or two per person should do the trick in most cases.

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Hotchpotch spice: 

(This is to fill a small spice pot, based on an old Dutch recipe. You will get more recipes to use it in, so don’t worry.)

Dried herbs only, all ground to powder already. If you don’t have them all, or can’t get them all, go for the top six if you can manage it…or else just those you have, the top one being the most important. If you’re going for the individual spices, just pinches, mind you.

Nutmeg: 2 teasp.

Paprika: 1 teasp.

Black pepper: ½ teasp.

Ginger: ½ teasp.

Cinnamon: 2/3 teasp.

Cloves: ½ teasp.

Liquorice: 1 knife point

Mace (spice): ½ teasp.

Anis: ¼ teasp.

Cardamom: ½ teasp.

Koriander (root): 1 knife point

Substitutes

The good stuff

I know I often have specific ingredients in the recipes, but they aren’t, not really. Cooking is no exact science, no matter what the experts say. If you treat it as science, you will end up with the exact same every single time, which will lead to boredom at some point. Also, it takes the fun out of it, so if you read something about the ingredients you see here and think, “That is way too much” or “That is way too little”, try it once (the measurements are after all Samaya’s Back to Basics, and who knows you might like that) and if you don’t like it enough, leave something out, or add something the next time. Experiment! This is as much about learning about new stuff as it is about nutrition. Have fun! That is what I do every time I try something new…also, as the blog progresses, I will occasionally start adding stats of certain ingredients that I use often so that you will actually learn the kind of nutrition you’re getting into your system.

Mostly this list is because I know that not everyone has the same ingredients in their fridge and cupboards, so if you don’t have a particular ingredient, you can go through this list to see if maybe you can substitute it with something else. This list goes either way, really, and if you find some way to add to it, let me know and I’ll add it.

Cream:

Milk, soy milk, butter milk (careful this will make your meal sourer) coconut milk, almond milk…with the last two be careful, they have a taste on themselves that might change the meal. Also they are sweeter.

Egg:

Cream, Cheese, Coconut butter, Yogurt.

Oil:

Olive oil, sunflower seed oil, sesame seed oil, peanut oil, butter.

Yogurt:

Cream, milk, butter milk, coconut milk, soy milk, soy yogurt, soy pudding, kefir, cream cheese, fresh cheese.

Yeast:

Baking soda, barley vinegar, cider vinegar, egg, yogurt, whole milk, butter milk.

Vinegar:

Cider vinegar, barley vinegar, lemon juice.

Spinach:

Chard, arugula (rukola) Chinese cabbage, lettuce romano, white endive.

 

Apricot jam:

Peach Jam, plum jam, apple compote, mango chutney, mango juice, peach juice, tropical juice, honey…for the latter, half the amount because honey has a lot of taste.

Sweet chili sauce:

Ketjap manis (sweet soy sauce), sweet&sour sauce, tomato chutney, apricot jam, plum jam, mango chutney.

Cane Sugar:

Sugar, brown sugar (half the amount, it has a strong taste) honey, fructose, agave syrup, maple syrup, palm sugar…increase the amounts by ¼ to ½ since these are less sweet. Stevia…as in the actual plant leaves. It alters the taste of your dish, though, so be careful.

Rice:

Lentils, chickpeas, buckwheat, potatoes, quinoa, millet, barley, brown rice, wild rice, cauliflower, sweet potato, pumpkin…in some cases you can substitute it with Asian noodles, or even pasta, but it will depend on your veggies and sauce.

Onion:

Shallots, leek, chives, garlic…if opting for garlic, use 1-2 cloves per onion.

Flour:

Whole wheat, buckwheat flour, chickpea flower (they have a strong taste, so be prepared) almond flour, rice flour, corn flour, Maizena.

Potato:

Sweet potato, plantain, yucca, cauliflower, pumpkin.

Herbs:

If you do not have the individual dry herbs that I often use, or just don’t feel like filling up your cupboards with the whole mess of little pots, mostly any basic Italian or Sicilian herbal mix will do the trick. If not, leave them out altogether and bake your meal with a shallot or two, once done just sprinkle some parsley or chives on your meal and you’re done.

If you’ve got green fingers, and the space to grow them, go for individual fresh herbs, they are the best. Just remember to triple the amounts when transferring the measurements from dry to fresh.

Spices:

I basically have a selection of turmeric, cumin, coriander, paprika, cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and cayenne, if you don’t, get a mild or spicy (depending on your taste) curry mix and garam massala mix and you should be able to make most of the meals that will come by on this blog.

If you’re also planning on doing desserts (yes, I will get around to some at some point) also make sure you have nutmeg, and cinnamon besides your curry and garam massala.

Bell pepper:

All colors are interchangeable or mixable. If you hate bell peppers, add some celery, zucchini, or cucumber instead (a ¼ of the indicated amount, no more) and add some sugar.

As for vegetables, most you can just leave out or replace with one that has similar taste and/or structure. This is more about common sense than anything. If the recipe calls for cauliflower, you can most likely replace it with carrot, sweet potato, pumpkin and in some cases not in mixes, but as a separate veggie for sure. Same goes for the other way around.

Well, that’s it for now. As I come upon different combinations and interchangeable ingredients, I will post them in this blog, so check in every now and then to see.