Rose's Kitchen Recipes

What Julia Child is to French cooking and Marcella Hazan is to Italian cooking Deborah Madison is to vegetarian cooking. I picked up her cookbook “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” at a used bookstore and what a find! If you’re a vegetarian you can prepare every recipe in this book. If you are a vegan you can cook most of them. If you eat meat you also can cook everything in the book and serve it with meat, fish or fowl.

Quinoa Chowder with Spinach, Feta and Scallions

This is one of my favourite soups. It makes a quick, wholesome meal. I used frozen spinach  and sliced the potatoes instead of cubes. When you use cumin seeds and grind them yourself you get a totally different flavour, much milder and fresher. The recipe says to stir in the feta and cilantro but instead I added some to each individual bowl and then ladled the soup overtop.
Serves 4
¾ cup quinoa rinsed well in a fine sieve
2 tbsp olive oil
4 garlic cloves chopped
1 jalapeno chile seeded and diced
1 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste
½ pound potatoes peeled and cubed
1 bunch green onions thinly sliced
3 cups finely sliced spinach leaves or 1 pkg. Frozen
¼ pound feta cheese
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
1 hard-cooked egg chopped

Put the quinoa and 2 quarts water in a pot, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Dice the vegetables and the cheese. Drain the quinoa saving the liquid. Measure the liquid and add water to make 6 cups.
Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the garlic and chile cook for 30 seconds. Add the cumin, 1 tsp salt and the potatoes and for a few minutes constantly stirring. Add the quinoa water and half the scallions and simmer until potatoes are tender. Add the quinoa, spinach and rest of scallions and simmer for 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the feta and cilantro. Season with salt and pepper and garnish with the chopped egg.

                     
Hearty Lentil Soup

Serves 4 to 6
Mustard and vinegar sharpen the flavours in this soup. It makes it zing!!!
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups diced onion
4 large garlic cloves
salt and pepper
3 Tbsp tomato paste
1/3 cup diced celery
1/3 cup diced carrot
2 bay leaves
½ cup chopped parsley
11/2 cups green or brown lentils
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
Chopped celery leaves and  parsley

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add onion and sauté until it begins to color. Add the garlic, tomato paste, celery, carrot, bay leaves, and parsley and cook for 3 minutes. Add the lentils, 2 quarts water and ½ tsp. Salt and bring to boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the lentils are tender 25 to 30 minutes.
Stir in the vinegar and mustard. Taste and add more of each  if needed. Season with black pepper, remove bay leaves and add the celery leaves and parsley. The soup tastes better the next day.