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Pulses


Chris Head

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Boring or what? I eat alot of pulses and have decided to start jazzing the recipes up a bit...any ideas would be appreciated. The only rules are that they have to be seriously tasty and as close to zero fat as possible.

Recent recipe is a sort of salmon & pulse 'burger'. Take chick peas, green lentils, diced onion, cooked salmon, coriander or any herb that you fancy, season, bind with an egg & wee bit of flour, shape & gently pan fry in olive oil. Quantities up to you but I go pretty heavy on the salmon. Serve with green salad...or ketchup if you're from Essex![:D]

Mixture can be made in advance & refrigerated. I allow about a half to two thirds of a kilo for a meal. No idea of calorie content but it's good stuff so shouldn't be a prob?

edit...forgot to say give it a bit of a whizz to the texture you want

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we boil red lentils or puy lentils untill soft add chilli onion herbs blk pepper (flavours can to changed to taste) and then whizz them with a blender and use like hummus with pitta bread. cold or hot  yummy[:)] a lot less fattening than hummus, can be used with carrot sticks ect as a dip 
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Hi Chris

This is very different to wood but hey a man must eat.............

Black eyed beans soak overnight drain  fry some chopped onion, garlic in olive oil till transparent toss in some chopped celery and spinach cook till spinach wilts down add water or stock and the beans, liquid must be about 2-3 inches above beans add tomato puree cover and simmer for about 2 hours check beans if not soft cook a while longer till beans are soft, you may need to top up liquid as this dish needs to be soupy, only now add salt and pepper to taste. I serve this dish with sliced raw onion and home made bread.

Sorry no quantities I do it all by sight and taste.

 

 

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It is but dos'nt taste as good without, although some people also add olive oil to make it smoother

You can also add rice to my mixture and use it as a stuffing for birds which if you dont eat it all with the birds can later be rolled( I add sweetcorn)  and oven baked (never fry anything if you want to keep calorie free) and used as little veg burgers. 

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I don't know if you eat meat? If so, I made a batch today of a slowcooker meal with the large white butter beans, called soisson here, soaked overnight. First fry up some onions and stew meat, add the soaked beans and water to cover. Slow cook for several  hours. Just remembered, I also added a small jar of tomato sauce.Tomato puree would do. Quantities - for a kilo of meat, 4 onions, half kilo of beans. This is enough for 8 helpings so I will freeze some in 3 batches.
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Chris

Made your salmon burgers for tea this evening and OH said they made a lovely meal.

Might try your stew, Pat, though generally, I love my meat and don't like it too "diluted" with other stuff.  I have a bois charbon oven for heating the kitchen but, now that it's installed, I find myself using the oven part more and more for cooking meat.  Usually just bung it in a heavy pan, with some onions and root vegetables, then forget about it until it's time to eat.  And, as you say, lots left over for the freezer.

Use the top of the stove for making soups and again, just put all the veg in and leave for hours.  Best of all, everything can be left unattended as the heat is slow and steady and nothing seems to catch, so no stirring required.

Will look into using more pulses as I do see a nice variety in the supermarkets over here.

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Red lentils are great and easy to cook added to soup in the slow cooker ( I hope you have the slow cooker still Chris ?)

One recipe I use quite a bit is an onion or two sliced or chopped and softened a bit, add leek or other veg (cut root veg thinly), garlic to taste, red lentils ( 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls) a tin of tomatoes, stock or a mixture of stock and tomato juice....I either get this all going in a wok and cook it on medium in the slow cooker all morning or just heat it all through and leave it on low overnight....

It seems to work without exact measurements..........

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You did Sweet? Cool! That meat sounds like it's fall off the bone stuff when it's done.

Il est un "saucier" (sorcier) notre Chris. Just a regular guy these days CA without the juju[:D]

Yeah I love meat Pat, got it noted thanks. There's still most of a pig & a lamb in the freezers to use up.

I got custody of the slow cooker Gay...it does save alot of time & meals can be taken whenever, hadn't really thought of using it for pulses though.

I think far more carefully about food these days Tony...sounds like you're in the same boat? I'd just hate to become bored with it on my self imposed regime. I dropped from 92 kilos to my present 78 in the space of about 8 - 10 weeks once I'd kicked booze and now eat enough for two normal adult males just to keep my weight to 78 kilos...about 4000 calories a day min; the food I take in is carefully thought about these days. In the past it wasn't...the food was normally eaten in the evenings when drunk or reluctantly during the day because the stomach still felt full from the previous nights alcohol.

 

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As someone else said, red lentils are very versatile - and they are the most easily digested of all pulses. There are many Dal recipes, see Maddhur Jeffrey Eastern Vegetarian Cookery book. My favourite is with fresh grated ginger & turmeric, then cumin seeds + chilli flakes + a pinch of asafoetida added right at the end, quickly fried in a tiny amount of oil, to release flavour.

Le Puy lentils are very good with just lardons, and a drizzle of olive oil at the end, hot or cold.

Then of course you can make your own baked beans; I make mine with white haricot beans, and a homegrown homemade tomato sauce which has garlic and onions and well seasoned.

 

Chris: I believe tahini is ALSO good juju, as much as olive oil is. It is the right kind of fat, even has omega 3s, and contains very high levels of calcium and other minerals, as well as protein.

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[quote user="Chris Head"]

Recent recipe is a sort of salmon & pulse 'burger'. Take chick peas, green lentils, diced onion, cooked salmon, coriander or any herb that you fancy, season, bind with an egg & wee bit of flour, shape & gently pan fry in olive oil. Quantities up to you but I go pretty heavy on the salmon. Serve with green salad...or ketchup if you're from Essex![:D]

[/quote]

Nice one Mr H. Tried it this eve! Yep i'm really liking that. (Except i could hardly taste it as some evil person has infected me with a stinking cold! [6])

Went with the salad option, watercress, tom and feta. (Not from Essex you see, i'm from a much more classy area.[Www])

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Another good thing about pulses is that they are almost 100% protein. Our family was vegetarian for a while and I used pulses as a substitute for meat. We did eat fish, cheese ,eggs as well though. And also of course good for the gut[Www]
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The protein is good if you're doing heavy physical stuff and the stomach quickly becomes used to being cleaned by pulses. I think you can 'bulk up' on pulse based meals in the evening if you have a large appetite and don't want to eat carbohydrate to fill up, but I don't know for sure though.
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something I used to make when vegetarian was a savoury crumble.

Half cooked beans/peas/etc (the dry sort, not the green ones!) to cooked root vegetables in a white sauce (made with brown flour) topped with a wholeflour crumble. Herb-ed and seasoned to taste.

It was yummy and I fed 20 members of the caving club on it for under 2 quid!
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I love Puy lentils.  One of my favourite ways of cooking them is to saute up some chopped onion and a bit of garlic until softened.  then add a chopped red pepper or two (leave them quite chunky), maybe add a few halved mushrooms.  Soften everything up and then add Puy lentils, red wine and stock.  Cook until, well, cooked!  then add a splash of soy sauce, a dash of balsamic, some crumbled red chilli flakes and some chopped mint.  Leave to infuse for a few mins.  Godd with rice, steamed veg or baked potato.  Add a dollop of yoghurt, or creme fraiche if you want to be naughty.

let me know if you want the exact recipe.

 

 

Another great way of eating pulses is to make a lentil dahl.  Cheap, quick, tasty and keeps for days in the fridge.  Let me know if you want a recipe.

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