I feel I should explain how this meal came together.
I like to prep food in bulk over the weekend. I cook up one or two types of beans and I tend to make one big batch of mixed grains. I make a couple of loaves of bread. Why? Because I pack lunch and snacks every day for work and because I’m super-lazy after work. Monday through Friday I have tons of choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner with very little effort. It works for me.
This past weekend I made red kidney beans with fresh jalapeno and some chipotle powder in the pressure cooker. For a grain I combined kamut and whole grain elbow macaroni in the rice cooker. I didn’t work Monday (Columbus Day in the U.S.) so I used my morning to plan out my meals for the week. I kept thinking about those spicy kidney beans–and that kamut-elbows mix. What veggie? What veggie?
I spied the Japanese eggplant in my garden
and picked it. I don’t cook with eggplant much and really wasn’t sure what to do with it. All that came to mind was ratatouille, which I have never made (hell, I don’t even really know what it is). As I thought about how to make a ratatouille I remembered that I had Soyrizo in the refrigerator — which might go beautifully with the red beans that were already nice and spicy with chipotle and jalapeno.
Then I thought about kale. Because I always think about kale.
How about a bed of lime-steamed kale, layered with kamut and elbows, and topped with a spicy soyrizo and eggplant ratatouille?
JL’s Soyrizo, Eggplant & Bean Ratatouille over Kale and Kamut
(You will note that I don’t use measurements for most of this dish. Cook intuitively!)
For the ratatouille
- Water
- Yellow onion, half-moon slices
- Garlic, minced
- Carrots, diced
- Celery, diced
- Sea salt, to taste
- Soyrizo
- Eggplant, diced
- 1 can diced tomatoes
- Spicy red kidney beans (see below)
Heat a large skillet and add water. Saute onion, garlic, carrots and celery (add a little salt to taste) for 5 – 7 minutes. Add Soyrizo (crumble and “brown”). Add eggplant and saute for another minute or so. Add the can of diced tomatoes and spicy red kidney beans and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce to simmer for five minutes.
For the spicy kidney beans
- Avocado oil
- Garlic, minced
- Jalapeno pepper, sliced into rings (keep the seeds in the slices for spice!)
- Chipotle powder
- Red kidney beans, soaked for 1 hour
- Water
- Sea salt, to taste
Saute garlic, jalapeno pepper and chipotle powder in avocado oil. Add kidney beans and enough water to cover the beans. Lock the pressure cooker lid into place and bring to pressure. Cook at pressure for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let pressure release naturally. Remove lid, away from you, and add sea salt to taste.
For the kamut and elbows
- 1.5 cup kamut (dry)
- Half cup whole grain elbow macaroni
- 4 cups of water
- Sea salt, to taste
- 1 t avocado oil
Add all ingredients in rice cooker and cook on brown rice setting.
For the lime-steamed kale
- Water
- Garlic, minced
- Kale, torn into bite size pieces
Add water to a hot skillet. Saute garlic for a few minutes. Add kale, stir and then squeeze fresh lime juice over the kale. Reduce heat to low, cover and let steam for about two minutes.
All together now! Start with kale, add the kamut-elbows and top with ratatouille.
Like what you see? View the entire printer-friendly recipe!
Remember, I didn’t do this all at once. The beans and grains were cooked up on Sunday. The kale took all of four minutes. The ratatouille came together pretty quickly. So don’t look at this recipe and think “complex.” Not at all. It was an intuitive meal that came together based on foods I had already prepared, based on what was in my garden and what was in my refrigerator.
Do you have meals that just came together based on what you had on hand?
20 thoughts on “VeganMoFo 12: Wednesday = Dinner (Soyrizo, Eggplant & Bean Ratatouille over Kale and Kamut)”
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OMGGGGGGGG JL this looks incredible. I am coming to NYC in November (will email you with exact dates soon) will you make this for me PLEASE!?!
You’re coming to NYC?! YAY! Let me know as soon as you have your dates!
Looks delicious JL! I’m terrible at cooking with what I have on hand, I’ll probably go looking for a recipe with those ingredients. My father however is excellent at it, he ALWAYS makes something delicious with some leftovers or those two vegetables that keep hangin’ around in the fridge. I wish I inherited his talent for that 😉
Love it! I’m like you on the weekend: I usually make my meals then and have leftovers all week. I like how you make the components, but then whip them u pinto different things during the week. It helps with meal fatigue, for sure! 🙂
Exactly, I never have the beans or grains the same way twice. Today I made a soup–with my black-eyed peas (which I had yesterday with salad) and the kamut & elbows, which I had previously with the ratatouille–by simply adding both to vegetable broth, poured over kale. Never boring!
I love that you cook intuitively. I usually do the same thing, but for the blog I try to measure out portions for an accurate recipe. It’s difficult, though, because I’m usually adding a pinch of this and a dollop of that!
I hear you. I try to balance both and sometimes I’m very prescriptive and others I simply want to share the dish and hope my readers will just pick and choose the ingredients and quantities to their liking!
I often think that meals that come together like that taste the best. I’ve just started to get back into the habit of cooking up a pot of beans and grains at the weekend and it has been such a lifesaver when I’ve been busy. I made a lovely mix of pearl barley, white beans and roasted squash the other night and it tasted amazing!
Oh, that sounds like a lovely pot of deliciousness!
This looks fantastic. I love Japanese eggplants. They tend to be slightly sweeter in my opinion. I just wish my plant would produce more than one at a time and this year I was lucky to even find a single plant.
Heather, I planted mind in June and NOTHING, then suddenly one. Then two! (I need to eat that second one up soon – thinking eggplant bacon ala Isa…)
JL, you are a woman after my own heart. Kale and kamut are pretty much my two favorite foods and together, they’re awesome. This looks great! Thanks!
Haha – every meal I make comes together that way! It’s always an episode of “Chopped” in my kitchen 🙂
I don’t really know what ratatouille is either, but I’ll take your word for it. This looks delicious. I’ve been meaning to try soyrizo, maybe this is my week!
Soyrizo is great in tofu scrambles, too!
this sounds {and looks} SO good! i think i see kale and ratatouille in my future…
haha, oops – my fingers got a bit excited typing that. i really do know how to spell my own name. and no, there’s no ”f” in it.
Are you growing your eggplant in a 5 gallon pot? If so, have you had any luck with other veggies in them? I have a “garden” on my 2nd floor balcony and I’m always trying to find veggies that I can grow in pots up here.
Yes! I planted a deck garden this year, all in containers. I had lettuce, jalapeno and banana peppers, eggplant, cherry tomatoes and kale. Here’s a pic of it: https://jlgoesvegan.com/it-is-now-the-bistro-garden/
Wow that first picture of the pot – I could literally dive into that, looks so hearty and GOOD! Never tried kamut but you have inspired me to pick some up.
And most of my meals usually come together based on what I’ve got lying around – I’m not a very organised shopper. I sort of just wander up and down aisles and think “Ooh, I wan’t that” which results in a random combination of groceries.
Today I whipped up an autumn veg stew with sweet potatoes, orange queen squash, celery onion and fresh herbs – totally delicious!