Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN

PER ITALIANO

Hello everyone,

Hummus is one of the essential foods in a plant based kitchen for its versatility. We can prepare many different variations of it by using different legumes and various vegetables and spices.

I published a more traditional Hummus recipe which was also compatible with whole food plant based diet. Today, I will be sharing our delicious Roasted Red Pepper Hummus recipe.

You can either grill or roast your peppers, I roasted mine. They lose liquid during cooking obviously so make sure that you use minimum 600 - 700 g of fresh peppers.

Ingredients:
750 g cooked chickpeas
250 g roasted and then peeled sweet red capia or bell pepper
75 g chickpea cooking water
60 g whole sesame tahini
40 g freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cloves of pressed garlic
2 TBSP nutritional yeast

1 tsp smoked paprika

Optional, little salt

Preparation:

Broccoli Greens and Red Lentil Sedanini Stuffed Winter Squash

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Today's recipe has a long title. It is very easy to prepare if you have your Roasted Winter Squash Sauce ready in the fridge.

Each meal I prepare with this sauce tastes a little different because I enrich the sauce by using whatever I have in the pantry and the fridge at the moment.

The day I prepared this dish a friend of ours brought us some broccoli greens freshly picked from her garden, so I used them. As pasta I opted for red lentil sedanini.

Ingredients (for 2):
120 g red lentil sedanini
Broccoli greens, chopped
2 winter squash halves, previously roasted and scooped out leaving a cm of flesh around the edges
Roasted Winter Squash Sauce
Plant milk (only if necessary)

Preparation:

Hummus

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Hummus is one of the essentials in our plant based kitchen as it offers such wide range of use.

You can spread it on your wholegrain bread slices, or in your sandwiches.

You can dip your vegetables or your wholewheat crackers. You can use it as salsa with your falafels or other plant based patties.

One of our absolute favourites is to spread a generous amount of hummus in our wholegrain piadina or tortillas, add some artichoke hearts, dried tomatoes and arugula and wrap it. So delicious!

It is possible to prepare hummus with different types of legumes and spices.

Today I'd like to share with you our basic recipe. They include also extra virgin olive oil in traditional recipes but, as a member of whole food plant based / nutritarian kitchen, we don't. Besides, tahini contains enough fat.

We use "whole sesame tahini" or "unhulled tahini" our kitchen. Whole sesame tahini, as you could understand from its name, is made with unhulled sesame seeds. Most of the products in the market are made with hulled sesame seeds. Tahini with hulled sesame seeds deliver a smoother product whereas unhulled tahini results less smooth and a bit bitter. However, hulling process removes many of the benefits of tahini since it discards the bran of the sesame seeds, where many of the nutrients are stored. (See: Source) That is why I always read the ingredients on the packaging and make sure it is written unhulled sesame seeds. Another thing I pay attention in tahini is to be made of 100% of sesame seeds. Some products may contain oil as ingredient.

Here comes our basic hummus recipe..

Ingredients:
500 g cooked chickpeas
120 g chickpea boiling water
60 g fresh lemon juice
30 g unhulled tahini or whole sesame tahini
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
Little salt


Preparation:

Red Cabbage Lentil

TÜRKÇE İÇİN TIKLAYIN
PER ITALIANO

Today I'd like share with you my very versatile basic lentil dish recipe which I modify every time due to seasonal vegetables and what I have available at home.

Soups and dishes which are able to bring a large variety of vegetables, legumes and cereals together can offer us so many nutrient dense choices. I try to include such dishes in our diet at least once a day, for lunch or supper.. most of the time accompanied by a large salad.

While a whole food plant based nutrient dense lifestyle requires us to steer away from processed food and the most of ready-to-eat convenience meals, it may also cause an increase in the time spent in the kitchen.

Of course it is fundamental to dedicate time to prepare some lovely healthy meals for ourselves and our loved ones but it is also crucial to come up with some practical solutions in order to make this way of alimentation a sustainable one.

One of the methods I exercise to reduce the time spent in the kitchen is to cook in abundance, eat leftovers in the next days and/or store in the freezer for the future use. This recipe, which easily delivers a nutritious 8 portions, makes my job easier.

As a matter of fact, I don't have some precise ingredient list. Therefore I end up with different dish and flavors each time I make it. This soup like dish, which I titled as Red Cabbage Lentil Dish, is only one of those endless variations. The day I made it I had red cabbage and red beets in the fridge so I used them. Some other day I may prepare it with white cabbage and white beets or some entirely different combination depending on the season. Our main goal is to prepare nutrient dense dishes using very wide range of vegetables, legumes and cereals.

Here is the basic recipe I use:

- 500 g green, red or yellow lentils
- 150 g wholegrain cereals (rice, buckwheat, farro, spelt, barley, millet, quinoa, rye, oat, sorghum, amaranth etc)
- 1.5 - 2 kg various vegetables (onion, carrot, garlic, celery stick, pepper, zucchini, tomatoes, leek, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, swiss chard, spinach, mushroom and/or many others due to the season)
- 1.2 / 1.5 liter water

In my blogs I've always paid attention to share the exact amount of each ingredient. So, I did the same also for my Red Cabbage Lentil and I weighed each ingredient after i washed, peeled and cleaned. However, you don't have to stick to the recipe to the letter.
You can take my above-mentioned basic recipe as reference and prepare a dish as you wish.
In following days I will be sharing many different variations.


Ingredients (8 portions):

500 g green lentils
150 g brown rice
300 g onions
550 g red cabbage
200 g red beets
250 g zucchini
150 g carrot
120 g green pepper
60 g celery stick (leaves included)
5 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp tomato paste
300 g tomatoes
1.2 liter water
A very limited amount of salt
Finely chopped parsley
Freshly ground black pepper

Preparation: