Leaping Lentil Loaf, Batman!

I did it.

I crossed the border into hippy territory.

How? First, by deciding to make a meatloaf, sans meat. I have absolutely no clue why I desired to make meatless loaf, other than the fact that I was curious when I saw the recipe here. I was intrigued - could this really taste the same as the many previous childhood loaves that I'd eaten before? Or would it turn out tasting too 'crunchy granola'?

As I got the ingredients out, I realized I had a choice of lentils. Red, green, brown, yellow? I stuck with the third, thinking that it would increase the visual appeal. I was cooking this for my folks, too, ya know - so it had to be at least sort of visually similar. As I was perusing the ingredients list I then decided that I was going to throw a lot of the ingredients out - I was going to make this exactly the same as a regular meatloaf. More importantly, how was I going to get a lot of umami out of this thing for a meaty sensation?

Since lentils themselves supposedly have some earthy umami in them, I had a good start. I heard that combining 2 or 3 umami sources in one dish magnifies the sensation, so i threw in a four ounce can of portobella mushrooms (chopped). Hard cheeses have a hell of a lot of umami as well, so I added a 1/4 cup grated parmesan. I finished this off with some worcestershire (also high in that delicious element).

Here's what I did.

-2 cups cooked lentils

-6 slices bread (torn)

-2 eggs

-1/4 cup of italian breadcrumbs

-3 cloves garlic, minced

-1/2 of a large white onion, chopped

-1 T worcestershire sauce

-1/4 cup parmesan or other hard cheese (I used Locatelli)

-a couple squirts of ketchup

-salt and pepper to taste (probably not so much salt, b/c the breadcrumbs, ketchup and W. sauce have it in there already)

-2 T onion soup mix

-1/2 cup water

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

2) In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients together. The feeling of raw eggs and cooked lentils was almost as bad as mixing the former with ground beef. YECH.

3) Check to make sure dachshunds are still cute.

4) Scoop that loaf mixture into that greased pan. Cover the top with more ketchup. Bake for 40 minutes. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

Result:

Oh my god, was this good. It tasted like meatloaf, only a little bit earthier. And here's the kicker - lentils are incredily good for you. High in fiber, a great source of protein when combined with brown rice or whole grains, and a ton of B-vitamins. And they don't need to be soaked overnight, just toss 'em immediately into a pot of boiling water or broth. They're high in iron, zinc and calcium (important things found in red meat!). The other thing - they are CHEAP. AS. HELL. You can find lentils in your grocery store right now - probably for 99 cents a pound.

I'm going to try to substitute lentils for ground meat one night a week from now on, I'll let you know how it turns out.

c

muffiny goodness

Oh man. Long time since the last update. Alas, that's what job hunting, writing academic papers and squeezing in a week at the beach can do to you.

Anywho, I wanted to talk about this crazy new idea I stumbled upon - using yogurt instead of oil in baked goods. Yes, we've all seen the back of the Duncan Hines package and you can use applesauce instead of oil, but I've been experimenting with yogurt. And I'm liking the results.

Things that yogurt does to (most) baked goods: increase in chewiness, moistness; decrease in saturated fat, cholesterol. I love the idea of better-for-you baked goods without oil, but some may ask, "what about the buttery goodness that we'll miss out on?" There's a solution: use a mix of yogurt and butter.

So how do you do it? For oil, I find that you can generally get away with subbing the same amount of oil. For butter however, A Taste of Home recommends that you subsititute half the butter with half as much yogurt. That means instead of using one cup of butter, you use 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup yogurt.

I was getting bored of having cereal, so I figured I'd bake something for breakfast this week that was healthy(-ish). I stumbled upon a muffin recipe that uses yogurt, but I made some tweaks to add a bit more nutrition. The recipe (with my changes) is:

1 cup all-purpose flour (unbleached)
1 cup whole-wheat flower
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 (8 ounce) container blueberry flavored
yogurt (I used Greek)
1 egg
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon butter, melted
2 cups blueberries

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.

2) Stir together flour, sugar, baking soda and baking powder. In a separate bowl, combine yogurt, egg, vanilla, butter and blueberries. Stir mixtures together just until combined; batter will be very thick. Taste batter to make sure it tastes delicious. Taste again, and realize that if you taste anymore you won't have enough batter. Scoop into prepared muffin cups.

3) Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes.

I added a little bit of muesli on top of the muffins before I baked for some extra pizazz. You could also use some rolled oats and honey, or even some All-Bran cereal ( if you're irregular, heh heh).

Result: delicious. You can't even tell these muffins have barely any oil in them.

suspisciously easy bread...

This really isn't turning into a baking blog, I swear. I haven't really baked that much in the past, so when I discover something new I get really gung-ho about it. Check my house in two weeks - you'll probably see a bunch of baking trays in the garbage out back. Hee...

Regardless, my friend Peter mentioned in the last post a certain article put out by the New York Times that describes a recipe for no-knead bread. Yes, it's from three years ago and yes, that means I've probably been living under a rock but I'm okay with that. I'm trying to find a bread recipe that I can streamline into daily life - bread that tastes great but doesn't require a heck of a lot of fuss (AND is healthy). I looked on the back of a store-bought loaf of whole-wheat and noticed over 12 ingredients on the label... frankly, that's too much. Can't a guy get a loaf of bread with just flour, water, and yeast?

Thankfully, that's just what the recipe is. AND it has another perk - no need to knead! I thought this was too good to be true so I had to investigate. The original recipe:

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt

To be honest, I thought that sounded kind of boring. So I used a mixture of half bread flour and half whole wheat flour to make things a bit more interesting.

Mix all the dry ingredients like so, then add 1 5/8ths cup of lukewarm water. Since I doubt anybody actually has a 5/8th measuring cup (including me) I just decided to add 1 1/2 cup. shhh, don't tell...

This is what you end up with - a soggy, disgusting mess. I mean, a 'shaggy dough'. I was concerned, but didn't give up faith. Cover and let this sit for about 12-18 hours.

When I peeled back the cover, the dough had somehow become more liquid (but had definately increased in volume). I flipped the entire thing out on a floured surface and then attempted to fold it over on itself a couple times to get the surface looking all pretty and dolled up for a night on the town. or the oven...

Stunning! You're supposed to let this thing rest for two more hours, but to be honest I only let it rest for one. A half an hour before this thing is done resting, crank up that oven to 450 degrees F and place a heavy covered pot (ceramic, pyrex, cast iron... just something that will do a decent job of keeping the moisture in) into the oven to let it warm up. After that's done, take the pot out (carefully!) and dump the dough into the pot. Cover, then let bake for 30 minutes. Take the lid off and bake for 15-20 more minutes and... you're done!

I was nervous it would stick, so i dusted the bottom with some cornmeal before I put the dough in but it probably would have been fine without.

The verdict- this bread was delicious. The mix of unorthodox flours that I used didn't seem to matter at all, and I ended up with a slightly nutty, chewy and crusty bread. More important was the fact that I felt good eating it - and that I had complete control of what went into this baby (figuratively, of course, i don't condone putting babies in the oven... unless you're a stoned babysitter).

I'm curious as to what this bread would be like with just all-purpose flour, so I started up another batch that's half all-purpose and half whole wheat (as well as doubling the recipe). Soon, we shall see!

First Post... and fancy shmancy bread

Oh hey! You managed to find this blog. It looks pretty pathetic right now, with this being the only post and all, but it'll be okay. If I manage to find the energy to update this thing at least once in a while, I'll be the happiest camper this side of Skyline Drive.

I could go on for ages with the question of "who am I?", probing the depths of philosophy for a description of my existance - but seriously, who the hell cares about philosophy. I'm a recent graduate of a prestigious-ish college, currently unemployed but looking at the future with bright eyes and an eager stomach. My liberal arts degree might say "Would you like fries with that?", but I choose to view of it more as "Would you like pommes frites with that?"

Anywho, back to reality. I flew back from Tokyo on Monday (short story: Chris applies for grant, Chris recieves grant, Chris eats lots of Japanese food, Chris counts eating Japanese food as 'research', Chris flies home) and arrived at my current (and indefinite) place of residence: my parents. Jet-lagged and with food poisoning from an unfortunate choice of curried ramen from a 7-11 the night before my departure, I was at home for at least 4 days. On that last day, I was at the point where the churning of my stomach was dying down enough for me to notice my ridiculous sleep schedule.

I woke up at 5 AM Thursday morning, and decided that it was a good idea to bake bread.

In my zombie-like state, I happened to come across a nice little website for those who had never hand baked a loaf in their life (i.e., me). The nice folks over at The Fresh Loaf provided me with a few great lessons on the subject, which I recommend that you check out. Me, always looking for the healthy alternative, decided on a recipe for "Farmer's Bread" - I figured if this first go-round failed then maybe it might at least look nice. Anywho, I mixed the first ingredients together and let it sit for a couple hours. I guess i was supposed to do this step overnight... but who has time for that. I added the next set of ingredients and ended up with this:

Beautiful, I know. I'm a skilled mixer. Eventually, I got them separated into two tear-drop shaped balls and rolled out one side. A quick fold over, and you get this:

30 minutes later, and i'm impressed:

They looked pretty good. I was expecting them to get a lot more brown, but they didn't. Next time I'll brush them with an egg yolk to get a good color out of 'em. Taste-wise, they were good, wheaty without that smacked-in-the-head-by-a-hippy-with-a-sack-of-whole-grains feeling that you get with some storebought loves. They were soft and moist as well (some wheat breads feel like I'm eating a mount of compacted sawdust) so, overall, I'd say it was a success.

First post, over and out.