Kitchari

This is my first time eating mung beans. I did not know what to expect and was pleasantly surprised! Kitchari is all I ate for 2 days of a detox and felt really great during the detox. I think I'll eat this even when I'm not detoxing!

Ingredients

1 cup yellow mung beans
1 cup long grain brown rice
6 cups water
1 inch fresh ginger, minced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 tsp asofetida
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp turmeric
4 tbsp ghee or oil

Instructions

Heat the oil in the pot. Add the ginger and garlic for 1 minute. Add the rice, mung beans, and water. Stir in the spices, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes. The rice and mung beans should be soft, but the mixture should still be somewhat soupy.

Vegan Carrot Ginger Soup

This recipe was also inspired by my quest to detox without going nuts. This soup may taste very plain to some, but if you find that to be a problem, just add more ginger and I promise you will get more bite!

Ingredients

3 cups carrots, minced
4 1/2 cups water (or more if you want the soup to not be so thick)
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and grated
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Bring the water to a boil and add the carrots and half the ginger. Cook on high for 15-20 minutes or until the carrots are soft. Transfer ingredients to a blender and blend on medium speed. As you are transfering the ingredients to the blender and you have a lot of liquid sitting on top, but prefer a thicker soup, remove some the liquid and add it back in as needed in order to reach the consistency you prefer. Add the remaining ginger and salt and pepper to the ingredients in the blender while blending. Transfer back to the pot and reheat if necessary or serve directly from the blender. If this is still too bland for you, add some powdered ginger and more pepper.

Whiting with Sorrel Tomato Sauce

One of my co-workers had a lot of extra fresh herbs which she was gracious enough to share with me because she was on her way out of town. One of those herbs was sorrel...which I had never heard of, much less used in my cooking. I looked for recipes on the internet and didn't have all the ingredients for any recipe in particular, but very close to one from the Congo region, so I ended up making the fish with a tomato sorrel sauce. The recipe called for 1 small can of tomato paste, but all I had was pasta sauce, so I used that instead. My co-worker also gave me some gorgeous (and delicious) red and yellow baby tomatoes that I used for the sauce.

Ingredients
2 lbs. whiting fish
1 pint baby tomatoes, halved
1 bunch sorrel, chopped with stems removed
1 tsp nutmeg
2 shallots, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, sliced and seeds removed
1 bay leaf
1 cup pasta sauce
1 1/2 cups water
4 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Heat 2 tbps. of the olive oil in a pan, fry the fish until cooked through, and set aside. Heat the remaining 2 tbsps. of olive oil and add the shallots and jalapeno pepper in the pan until the shallots are cooked through. Add the tomatoes, pasta sauce, and half the water. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer, slowly adding water to keep the sauce smoothe. Stir in the sorrel, bay leaf, nutmeg, and fish. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes and serve hot over rice or quinoa. I couldn't get the fish into the sauce in one piece, so I ended up with the fish all broken up, but it was still delicious and looked more like a stew by the time it was done. Enjoy!