Cranberry Dressing-is it for salad or dessert? and an HGK Soup in the News

Wow, I am totally blown away by your response to my last post. Your appreciation for my work here on HGK and your thoughtful suggestions for newcomers are deeply meaningful to me. Thank you for taking the time to leave comments, I know how busy we all are in this day and age and I want you to know how grateful I am to all of you.

Today I just wanted to share with you something that I have really been enjoying lately. It's a fresh cranberry based no-oil vinaigrette and salad that I made after being inspired by this recipe from the blog Choosing Raw. Since I have quite a few fresh cranberries sitting around in my fridge since Thanksgiving, it looked like a recipe I needed to do an HGK riff on.
What's in this baby? Green leaf lettuce, roasted beets, red cabbage,garbanzo beans, dried cranberries, chopped walnuts and this fabulous, sweet cranberry vinaigrette. When I am craving something sweet, I totally dig this salad!

Fresh Cranberry Vinaigrette
makes approximately 2 1/2 cups

Printable Recipe

1 1/4 cups fresh cranberries
1 Tbsp orange juice concentrate
� cup water
� cup raw cashews
1 whole orange with peel removed but seeds intact
� cup vinegar (I used Orange Muscat Champagne Vinegar)
4 pitted dates
dash of salt, or not

Blend all ingredients on high speed till smooth.
Feel free to adjust the ingredients to your taste: more cranberries for tartness, orange juice concentrate or dates for sweetness.

A big shout out and thank you goes to Your Teen Magazine for being the first magazine ever to publish an HGK recipe! They chose a Leban-easy Lemony Lentils recipe by none other than HGK contributor Chris-Anna.

Chris-Anna's Soup-er Lebon-easy Lemony Lentils

serves 8

Printable Recipe

1 cup rinsed lentils with any debris removed

8 cups low sodium vegetable broth or water

4 cups white potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/5" cubes

3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

8 garlic cloves

4 cups Swiss chard, chopped, including stems

1 cup tomatoes, diced

1 cup curly parsley, chopped

pepper to taste

Bring water or stock to a boil in a large pot. Add lentils.

While lentils are cooking, peel and dice potatoes. Add potatoes and lemon juice and turn heat to medium low.

Peel garlic cloves and crush garlic into pot with a garlic press. Add diced tomatoes and chopped Swiss chard and stir.

Turn heat to high. When soup is almost boiling, turn heat down to a low simmer. Cover and cook for 25 minutes or until lentils are soft.

Add parsley, stir and simmer for 5 additional minutes.

Taste. Add more lemon juice if necessary and pepper. 

Salt Questions and The Soup of the Year: Red Lentil with Cauliflower and Indian Spice

I know you've experienced this scenario before: your favorite restaurant serves a dish and you think it's the best thing since sliced bread. And you wanna make it at home, because there is no way you could ever get enough of this dish. So you set about making said food yourself and hope for the best.

That's how this recipe came into being. My BP (business partner) and I created this soup recipe as a joint venture. Pretty funny since our usual jobs are managing a custom invitation printing company. But Red Lentil with Indian Spice soup was so near and dear to our hearts after eating it and loving it for so long at Organic Energy, we had to try creating an oil-free, low salt version for ourselves (more on salt after the recipe).

My husband pronounced, "it's the soup of the year!" It really is that good. Just don't make it when you are in a time crunch.

Red Lentil Soup with Cauliflower and Indian Spice

Makes 7 servings (2-cups each)

Printable Recipe
2 cups red or orange lentils

6 cups water

3 plum tomatoes

2 cups yellow onion, finely chopped

6 Tbsp low sodium vegetable broth

4 medium cloves garlic, chopped and made into a paste by sprinkling 1 tsp of kosher or sea salt (to act as an abrasive) and crush with the side of a large chopping knife over the mixture until the garlic breaks down and becomes paste like. Skip salt altogether if you cannot go there and just finely chop the garlic!

1 tsp white or black sesame seed

2 tsp cumin seed

1 tsp fennel seed

2 tsp brown or yellow mustard seeds

2 bay leaves

2 tsp turmeric

1 � cups unsweetened almond milk

1 � tsp coconut extract

1 lime, juiced

1 14 ounce bag frozen cauliflower

Optional: a dash or two of cayenne pepper (I used two)
salt (I added 1 tsp more for the whole pot) or salt free seasoning
Chopped cilantro, for garnish

Take frozen cauliflower out of freezer and leave on counter to partially defrost. Measure seeds (sesame, cumin, fennel and mustard) and place into one small bowl and set aside.

Place lentils in a metal sieve and rinse well with cold water.

Fill a medium sauce pan halfway with water and bring to a boil. Score the peel of the base of the tomatoes with a sharp knife in the shape of an �X.� Place the tomatoes in the boiling water and blanch for 1 minute. Drain the tomatoes and run them under cold water. Once cool, peel and finely chop the tomatoes, discarding the tough stem ends.

In the same medium sauce pan that you used for the tomatoes, place lentils and water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until the lentils are soft. Turn off heat when lentils are finished and put to the side. Do not drain lentils or discard the cooking liquid, you will need this later!

Heat a large dutch oven or stock pot over medium heat. When pot is hot, add the seed mix and jiggle the pot around. You want to toast the seeds but be careful not to burn them. They are ready when they look toasty and you smell something wonderful. At the sign of any burning, lower the heat immediately. When seeds are toasty, add onion and 3 Tbsp vegetable broth. Stir frequently and �saut� onion for 5 minutes.

Add garlic/salt paste and 3 more Tbsp vegetable broth. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently and lowering the heat if the onion/garlic/spices start to burn. Add turmeric, bay leaves, almond milk, coconut extract and peeled chopped tomatoes. Stir. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Chop partially defrosted cauliflower and add to pot. Add lentils and their cooking liquid and lime juice and simmer for 20 minutes.

Optional: Partially puree soup with an immersion blender. Season with Cayenne pepper and/or salt or salt free seasoning to taste. Garnish with chopped cilantro.

Notes:

Blanching the tomatoes really does take just one minute so the skin will peel off. You don�t want to cook the tomatoes.

You can leave this soup to simmer for a long time and the flavors will only get better.

This soup is absolutely delicious. But BP and I were very fascinated by the taste difference between our version and the restaurant version of the soup. It got us talking about salt. We calculated the amount of added sodium (from the salt, not the other ingredients which also contain natural amounts of sodium) per 2-cup serving (yes, a large serving) and it came to about 650 mg of sodium.

That's a decent amount of sodium. But by no means does our version even begin to taste "salty." We talked about how much better it would taste with more salt and either real coconut milk or oil, but neither one of us is willing to go there anymore!

The point is, that even a soup with 650 mg of added sodium per serving does NOT taste salty to us. And even more importantly, I thought I was creating a low sodium soup by only having 2 tsp of salt in the entire big pot of soup. I now know that 2 tsp of salt is 4600 mg of sodium, which calculated out to a whopping 650 mg/serving.

So how much sodium is in foods that DO taste salty to our palate? A whole crap load, I'm sure of it now.

What are your thoughts/experiences with salt? Are you struggling with this? Do you add it to recipes anymore or have you eliminated it from your home cooked food?

What is the best salt-free seasoning? I'm now considering purchasing a whole truckload of it! 

No-oil Almond Ginger Dressing and Crock Pot Lemony Lentil and Kale Soup

Just so I don't scare you guys who are here for the plant based recipes with all of my talk of how to be successful at adapting a plant-strong diet, here are some of the things I made this week in my makeshift kitchen. Just 4 more weeks until I am back in full action! The time is really flying.

I dressed a huge salad that I made for a girl's night pot-luck dinner with this creamy and delicious dressing. This recipe would also work well as a dip for veggies, just cut the amount of water in half.

No-oil Almond Ginger Dressing

adapted from a recipe from DrFuhrman.com

makes about 2 1/2 cups

1/2 cup raw almonds
1/2 cup unsweetened soy, hemp or almond milk
1 cup water
4 tablespoons tahini or unhulled sesame seeds
6 dates, pitted
2 small cloves garlic or 1 medium clove garlic
1 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled

Place all ingredients into a high powered blender or food processor. Blend until smooth. Add more water if a thinner consistency is desired.

This soup is best if you serve it the day after it is made. It allows the flavors to develop.

Crock Pot Lemony Lentil Soup with Kale

 adapted from a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens, January 2010 issue

2 large carrots, peeled and chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 cups low-sodium or no-sodium vegetable broth

2 cups green lentils

1 tsp. dried basil

1 tsp. dried thyme

2 tsp. salt

8 cups chopped kale leaves (about 6 ounces)

6 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

Place all ingredients except kale into a crock pot on low heat (approx 8 hours). A half hour before serving, stir in kale and let kale wilt.

What's going on with you? What are your plans for Memorial Day Weekend? Do your plans involve social gatherings with food? How are you preparing to handle those challenges?