Woman of Leisure cooks Moroccan food

Today I exercised my alter ego, Suburban Woman of Leisure. She woke up at 10am, lay on the couch reading until after noon, ate lunch out, got her hair did, went shopping, and fixed dinner (drink in hand). The whole lazy morning thing was not entirely my fault--I did get back from an airport pick-up last night at 2 am and then somebody swapped the coffee for that consummately useless substance, decaf. Any how, I could seriously get used to being Woman of Leisure. Even the dinner fixin' was simple because I had prepared it yesterday and just had to turn on the slow cooker to make it happen.

What did we have?  Well, we had a Moroccan-style meal inspired by two of my favorite sources of food information, Bon Appetit and Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker:

Moroccan Chickpea, Lentil, and Apricot Stew

Place in a slow cooker:
1T EVOO
1 medium onion, chopt
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
5 garlic cloves: 3 chopt & 2 whole
1c dried lentils, rinsed and picked
3c chickpeas (~2 15.5 oz cans or ~1c dried & reanimated)
1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes, with liquid
1/2c dried apricots, halved
1t fresh ginger, peeled & minced
1t turmeric
1/2t cumin, ground
1/2t cardamom, ground
1-2 sticks cinnamon, broken into 1-2" pieces mom, 4 of the pieces you order
Enough vegetable stock to cover the entire mixture, ~4c
Stir everything up.

Leave in the fridge overnight. I'm not sure this part is necessary--the lentils were much softer than they typically are when I slow-cook them without a soak, though.

The next AM, add more veg stock as necessary to cover the solids.
Cook the mixture on low for 8-10 hours (set it and forget it!)

About 15 minutes before you plan to eat, season the dish with the juice of 1 lemon (~2T), salt, black pepper, and 1-2t harissa sauce (recipe below).  Garnish with fresh cilantro, chopt.

Harissa sauce
(also available in jars)

Soak 4 dried chiles in very hot water for 5 minutes (I used 2 anaheim, 2 arbol).
Cut chiles into a few pieces and place in your food processor.
Add the chiles, 2 large garlic cloves, 1T EVOO, 3T water, 3/4t ground coriander, 1/2t salt, and 3/4t ground caraway seeds.  Turns out celery seeds are a great replacement if you don't have caraway seeds or you don't know what caraway seeds look like, so you pick the only seed you can't identify and hope for the best.
Process until reasonably smooth.

I served it family-style over saffron rice with a side of roasted cauliflower. I left the remainder of the harissa sauce out so that people could choose-your-own-adventure the spiciness.

The flavors reminded me a little of one of our old favorites, Armenian lentil and apricot soup.
That harissa sauce really takes it to the next level, though. I could put that stuff on anything. I can't believe I'm just discovering it now! Reminded us a little of adjuka (no idea how to spell this), the hot pepper paste M. used to buy in Russia, a place where hot sauce is so scarce as to be more precious than gold.

Jamaican Pumpkin Soup

Got this recipe from a colleague at work, Layne.  She is a fantastic cook and is very generous with her creations!  Hers tasted somewhat different from mine, but both were good.

Sautee 1 chopt sweet onion in 2T butter
Add 2 cloves garlic, 1 small habanero pepper, and 1 red bell pepper, all chopt. Saute for another minute or two.
Add 1 15 oz can pumpkin and ~3c veggie stock. Season with thyme, salt and pepper. Stir, bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer for 20 min or so.
Stir in ~3 oz cream cheese.
Puree in the blender.  Replace on the heat.  Cook for a few more minutes and then serve with bread.

Note: after eating it for a soup one night, I reduced it, thickened it a little with flour, and served with pasta and veggie Italian sausage.  Delicious!

Lemony Red Lentil Soup

When I saw this recipe on 101 cookbooks, I knew I had to make it.  I knew because the dish looked fantastic, and I knew because my heart was warmed by Heidi's paeon to her family's old cat, who looks like he was far sweeter in life that my little ground-monster.  I made enough modifications to the recipe that I'll go ahead and re-write the whole thing here.  I would definitely use red lentils and not try to sub brown: the red practically melt away with just 20-30 minutes of cooking and blend with the yellow turmeric to create the most beautiful autumn hue.

Here goes: Lemony Red Lentil Soup
Cook barley (or another grain) or fetch leftover grain.
Meanwhile, in a large pot, melt 2T butter.
Chop 1 sweet onion, sweat it in the butter.
Add 2t ground cumin and ~1/2T mustard, cook for another minute or two.
Add ~7c veggie stock, 2c red lentils (rinsed and picked), and 1T turmeric.
Bring to a boil, and then turn temperature down to simmer.
Once the lentils are cooked through, add 2-3T (I pref. 3) lemon juice, a handful of chopt cilantro, and salt to taste.
Place a scoop of the grains in each bowl and cover with soup.  Stir in something creamy. I used goat cheese, which was FANTASTIC.  Cream cheese or greek yogurt would be OK, too.
I served it with kale on the side.

Makes ~6 servings.

Om nom!!

On a completely different note, tonight I plan to solve the mystery of which is the better Fright Night: '80s or '10s.  Stay tuned.