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A Mediterranean Party Snack Buffet with DIY Tahini Dressing

25 Mar

The parents have returned from their winter in Puerto Rico and that gives me a chance to make things that are a pain in the neck to do up for one adult, but seem like no work at all for a lavish spread for three grown-ups and a kid who likes couscous (especially seasoned with pesto) and asparagus. Plus, make loads and leftovers are guaranteed and you know I love that!

This sudden inspiration came straight from the pantry: jarred artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers, black olives, garbanzos from a can, that type of thing. From the fridge: feta, tomatoes, cukes, asparagus.

How fun would it be to lay out mezze (Mediterranean small dishes) with a variety of salad ingredients and sit all together for a change?

So I did and it was fun and crunchy and creamy and delicious.

“Look how pretty mine came out!” said the moms, who is a bit relieved to be eating with us again (because yes, the dad is still on that cockamamie up-and-down vegan diet that I want nothing to do with – although enabler that I am, I did make him some alternative tahini dressing with no garlic, since sesame seeds — the main ingredient of tahini — grow above ground and garlic grows under…seriously? Anyway, not worth discussing; the REAL recipe below is lovely and garlicky, as God intended)

Roasted asparagus: Rinse and break off bottoms of a 1 lb. bunch of asparagus. (They break naturally at the woody part; or break off one and slice off the rest at around the same place) Smear with two teaspoons of olive oil and roast at 450 for 10 minutes (skinny spears) to 15 minutes (fat spears). Finish with flaky sea salt.

Roasted eggplant: Rinse and cut a large eggplant into one-inch chunks (for older eggplant that feels a bit soft to the touch, put in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Put a weighted bowl on top and another bowl to catch the drippings. Leave for a half hour and pat dry before the next step). Smear with a tablespoon or so of olive oil and roast at 450 for 15 minutes or until cooked through and soft, turning once with tongs.

Garbanzos (chick peas) in tahini: Rinse and drain a 28 oz can of chick peas. Add a tablespoon chopped red onion. Add two or three tablespoons of tahini dressing (below) and serve.

Tahini Dressing

3 Tbs tahini (mixed ‘till relatively smooth)

¼ Cup fresh lemon juice

1 large clove garlic, minced fine

Pinch or two of salt

Cold water to thin

1 tsp chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Mix all ingredients except water and salt in a bowl (deeper is better to avoid splashing) or mixing cup. Salt to taste and thin with water to desired consistency. Add chopped parsley if desired. Thin for use as salad dressing. Leave it thick to use as dip for vegetables. Leave it medium dense and creamy as a sauce  sauce for falafel.

Couscous with (prepared) pesto: prepare one half cup couscous (Israeli or fine) according to package directions. Add two tablespoons prepared basil pesto (or your favorite) and serve warm.

Additional stuff: chunks of feta, black olives, halved or quartered cherry or grape tomatoes, cucumber slices, avocado and mixed greens, as desired. Try hard-boiled eggs. A drained and flaked can of tuna would be great too, with a bit of chopped onion if you are not into the vegetarian thing.

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Pasta with Tomatoes, Spinach, Goat Cheese and Black Olives (feeds a crowd!)

22 Mar

The planting season is picking up at Restoration Farm, the C.S.A. that we belong to at the historic Old Bethpage Restoration Village here on Long Island. I say that as if I were right in there, pruning the apple trees and preparing the beds and raising those heritage birds, getting dirty and sweaty in honest, sacred labor on the land.

Uh, well, not exactly.

Farming has always been more theoretical than hands-on in my life. Sure I have come out to volunteer at the farms we have belonged to, but in all honesty, since I’ve had Leandro, it’s been more about picking a couple of pea pods, then taking him to see the pigs or the chickens  or to the bathroom, rush, rush, than it has been about actually doing anything useful in an agricultural sense.

This year will be different, in two ways:

1) We have a little more sun in our yard these days, thanks to some trees that had to come down. Last year we did some experimental container gardening to gauge where we could actually grow vegetables. Now that we’ve established that, we will be putting in some raised beds this year and trying to grow more stuff for ourselves.

2) Leandro is more self-sufficient and mature and I have hopes that our volunteering days at the farm will be less like outings to the zoo and more like real contributions.Call me crazy, but a girl’s gotta dream…..

In the meantime, we attended the season-opening potluck at the farm last Sunday and — while I listened with longing, yearning, and almost dismay as the real farm folks told me with great enthusiasm about everything they’ve been doing in the last few weeks — I tried to keep positive about what is to come for me in the world of growing things! (and we have started peas, tomatoes, peppers and culantro from seed this week).

This was my contribution to the potluck…it seemed to go well for everyone (except my own traitorous offspring who decided he didn’t like the look of it and proceeded to stuff his face with the stuffed shells and the two different baked macaroni and cheese, and the Hardscrabble chicken — anything but my dish, the one I had made thinking he’d love it; thanks for the support, little dude) and I had enough to bring in for my esteemed colleagues. At least one has decided that she doesn’t have to cook this week thanks to this abundant, rich, very easy and super-tasty, creamy dish.

You’ll be able to use this recipe next time you have to feed a bunch of people with stuff you already have on hand!

Pasta with Spinach, Tomatoes, Goat Cheese and Black Olives

1.5 lbs penne or other short pasta

6 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

4 cloves garlic, sliced thin

½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes (more if you want it spicy)

28 oz canned of diced tomatoes (or two Cups fresh)

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

10 oz – 16 oz frozen spinach

20-30 pitted black olives, sliced

½ Cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano or pecorino

6 oz fresh goat cheese (chévre)

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Reserve ½ cup of pasta water, drain and keep warm.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and red pepper and cook at medium low until softened and golden, about 4 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and salt and pepper to taste (if using fresh tomatoes, cook until they begin to soften) and then add spinach, cooking at medium low until the spinach is heated through and incorporated, about 5 minutes. Add olives.

Add the pasta and the grated cheese (and tablespoons of the reserved pasta water if the sauce is too thick) and stir until the pasta is fully coated. Add the goat cheese, mix well (but gently) and serve, with additional grated cheese if desired.

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Found Stock (Waste Not, Want Not)

20 Mar

Hate throwing things out? Me too!

(I am trying to work through a tendency to clutter in all areas of my life, but right now I am referring to the kitchen exclusively).

We are just starting to compost over here – actually, my dad is doing it with lawn clippings and autumn leaves so I can’t claim any credit — and haven’t sorted out how to approach the whole food waste thing. In the meantime, with a freezer bag you can make good use of vegetable trimmings by making a very nice, low sodium stock for soups. No two ever taste the same (and I admit to taking out some of the celery and adding extra carrots or onions for sweetness), but since this is not a professional kitchen – who cares? I like to think of home-cooking more as live theater than a DVD of a movie – full of surprise flavors, new interpretations, flubbed lines and quick recoveries, and the occasional revelatory performance by an understudy. The fact that I don’t have to make it exactly the same every time takes a lot of the pressure right off!

So, here’s an easy and cheap way to reduce your waste stream and have a terrific stock on hand for spontaneous outburst of homemade soup!

Found Vegetable Stock (makes about a quart)

8 to 10 cups of vegetable trimmings (about a gallon* freezer bag full – just keep adding to a freezer bag or other container in your freezer till you have enough!): carrot tops, onion peels, garlic peels, pea pods, celery bits, stems ends of squash, tomato cores. DO NOT include cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower.

½ – 1 whole head garlic, broken in half, unpeeled

1 onion, quartered and unpeeled

Enough water to cover

1-1.5 tsp salt per quart of water

Bring all ingredients to a boil in a generous pot. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer gently for about an hour. Cool to lukewarm, then strain (I used a colander lined with paper towel) into a fridge or freezer-friendly container and store in fridge or freezer.

*This post has been corrected! The original suggested a quart freezer bag and has been corrected to a GALLON freezer bag. Thanks to my sharp-eyed, keen-witted reader Kendra for catching the error!

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Know Your Food: Egg-Sighting Adventures in the North Fork

17 Mar

Be advised: this post starts off a bit serious — grim, even — but lightens up fairly quickly and has a happy finish!

Stonyfield Farms-– the organic dairy company from which I buy a lot of yogurt and receive too many magazines thanks to their rewards program — is running a Know Your Food campaign (“This Year I Will Know My Food”) that has stuck in my head. As it happens, the USDA is doing the same thing (Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food). Both limit themselves to farmers they work with…still, it is a start, isn’t it?

Leandro and I know a fair bit about who makes what we eat – when it comes to seasonal local stuff – but it’s hard to know everything. And it gets scarier and scarier, what with the pink slime in school lunch meat (can we get any more cavalier – or gruesome — about how we feed children?) and arsenic in apple juice and e. coli everywhere…I am sick, not just because it’s a horrible thing nutritionally, but because I am sick of reading about it, sick of worrying about it, and sick of how complicated it has become to get simple healthy food on the table these days. Heavy sigh.

Can you guess what this is?

But, let’s brighten up and lighten up here.

Here's another look!

We recently spent an amazing couple of days out on the North Fork of Long Island (our Bordeaux on the Sound, as it were), picking up wine from Paumanok, spending quality time with Deborah Pittorino Rivera at The Greenporter Hotel  which she and her husband, Bill, own and where she also serves up incredible food at La Cuvee Wine Bar & Restaurant (see her blog, Seasoned Fork,  here), riding the carousel — Leandro learned how to grab the rings — and watching the Shelter Island ferries shuttle cars back and forth.

We  stopped by one of my favorite places to get fresh, organic eggs. Ty Llwyd Farm has the best fresh eggs (duck eggs too! More on that later), organic vegetables, and sometimes flowers (pussy willows right now!) in Northville on Sound Ave. They also have manure and hay – they do a bit of everything and are moving into dairy. If you blink, you might miss the homely wooden sign – look for a big nursery (van der something or another) across the road and you are close.

It is an egg sorter!

This time I hit pay dirt! The last few times I have stopped for eggs, Leandro was asleep in the car, so he didn’t get to see the cool old egg sorter in operation. This time he was wide-awake – on fire and crunchy from too much enforced restaurant sitting, in fact – and the sorter was in use to sort eggs for the cognoscenti stopping by for the their weekly supply. So owner David Wines was kind enough to let the little guy sort his own eggs…you roll them onto a little chute and they travel along a line of egg-sized scales measuring jumbo, extra-large, large, etc. and the egg rolls off when it tips the correct weighted scale.

We then proceeded to visit all the animals – you may remember that Leandro is very found of chickens – only the egg-layers, though — so we saw the pullets, the free-rangers (who came running to see my little hen-whisperer), the cows, the geese marching in formation, the ducks…

The henhouse...a pretty nice set-up if you are a hen!

When I asked Dave how long he has been there, he said, “Oh, about 300 years” or something like that. Turns out, his people were farmers from Cornwall who came to the North Fork via Connecticut centuries ago and the family still farms. The name Ty Llwyd (pronounced tee clewed) is from his Welsh wife, Liz, also from a farming family.

It was a wonderful couple of hours we spent and we came home with two dozen fresh hens’ eggs and two duck eggs ($0.75 each) which I fried up a few days later.

The duck eggs

The taste is very similar to chicken’s eggs, but denser and richer somehow. One egg on one slice of toast was enough to fill me for hours. Very satisfying!

So no recipe for today, aside from a teaspoon of vegetable oil heated at medium high, crack two eggs in, sprinkle with good salt, lower heat and cook for four minutes or until they reach your preferred doneness. I covered the eggs to make the heat more even to be able to cook them at lower heat and more slowly. As adaptable as eggs are, a lot of high heat doesn’t do them any favors.

So, duck eggs (which are said to pack more nutritional punch that hens’ eggs) were a great success. People bake with them, but I don’t think that is cost effective. I’d rather enjoy them on their own!

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Sauteed Mushrooms and Onions (Burger Topping Extraordinaire)

15 Mar

Now that I have recuperated from the trauma of car buying and am tooling around happily in my beautiful new (for me) automobile and impressing the neighbors — a bit like Toad, only better-behaved (extra points if you get the reference)  — a host of other little things are making life challenging.

You know, unexpected meetings (note the use of the plural – not one, not two, but many!); unexpected need to write recommendations; unexpected oily messes from poorly shut jars of sun-dried tomatoes that somehow tipped over in the fridge at 11 p.m. after one of those unexpected meetings; unexpected armies of black ants marching through the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen; just unexpected stuff that keeps popping up in the middle of attempting to actually finish something, just one thing, for the love of God!

Still life with mushrooms

So I am swamped and overwhelmed, but none of it is bad or life-threatening, and even though I haven’t kept you informed, we are still eating real food over here (and I am still washing heaps of real dishes, which is becoming a real problem because I have fisherman’s cracked hands). So, I’ll count my blessings and try to catch you up on some recent favorites.

The original topper from which this recipe is derived....YUM-Burger

I promised you this burger topper recipe weeks ago, from a mid-winter BBQ with Marianne & Co. when the weather was mild enough to warrant firing up the grill. It is still mild enough! I have since made it to dress-up black bean burgers – it really made me feel as though I was having a restaurant meal. And I needed that.

With black bean burgers

Onion and Mushroom Burger Toppers

2-3 Tbs salted butter

2 medium onions, sliced

8 oz. button mushrooms, stems trimmed and sliced (2-2.5 Cups)

1 Tbs Worcestershire sauce, plus more to taste (optional: from what I know Worcestershire sauce contains anchovies, so it is not vegetarian; other steak sauces like A-1 may be vegetarian. Check the label!)

Salt to taste

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a skillet on medium-high. When foaming subsides, add onions to skillet, stir to cover and lower heat. Allow to wilt and caramelize (at least five minutes; more if you have the time).

When onions have cooked and browned, remove and set aside. Add mushrooms to skillet with existing butter (add more if desired) and cook at medium –high, stirring occasionally, until mushrooms have released their liquid (about five minutes), liquid has evaporated somewhat and mushrooms are tender and browned. Add more butter, if desired (I desire a lot of butter!), return onions to skillet and stir to incorporate. Add Worcestershire sauce to taste as desired, a teaspoon or so at a time. Serve atop cooked burgers, grilled meats or vegetable or veggie/bean burgers.

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Mayo-Ketchup Gets a Much-Needed Makeover (with Chipotle!)

4 Mar

“We totally just licked the bowl!”

I had promised my friend Ashley and my son a “tostones-for-dinner” Friday night and, since I had the plaintains I was ready to go. Ashley had decided to learn to make them, so I set her up with the assembly line of garlic and salt water, hot oil, plates covered in paper towel and tostonera (See Tostones! for the how-to of this Caribbean riff on French fries) and got ready to relax with a bit of the fizzy stuff.

Then I mentioned that Puerto Ricans usually dip tostones in mayo-ketchup – mayonnaise and ketchup stirred together. Without hesitation Ashley said “That sounds like it would be great with chipotle and lime,” and since I had it all in (plus garlic) a new creamy, spicy, lick-the-bowl delicious dip was born. And it was so quick that I still got to drink that glass of fizzy in relative peace….

You. Are. Gonna. Love. This.

Mayo-Chipo-Ketchup

(play around with the proportions to suit your taste)

1 Tbs prepared mayonnaise

1 Tbs plain yogurt (nonfat or lowfat are fine)

1 Tbs ketchup

1 tsp chipotle in adobo (minced)

1 tsp lime juice

1 clove garlic, minced fine

Pinch salt, if desired

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and serve with tostones or other fried, crispy tidbits.

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Grilled or Roasted Tomato Pasta Dressing (so light! so bright!)

12 Feb

The temperatures here in New York have started to drop some, but so far 2012 is The Winter That Hasn’t Been (I like the present perfect tense here rather than the past tense “wasn’t”, because there is still time for some apocalyptic winter weather to strike).

That means that many of us have been firing up the grill as if it were summer. If you are one of those people, here is a fresh, uplifting recipe that will brighten up the day and feel easy on the digestion.

I made it the other day from tomatoes grilled the night before at our friends’ house during an impromptu and convivial burger night (more on the amazing sauteed onion and mushroom topping soon!).

A glimpse of the salad the same night - with grilled asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes! Heaven.

The tomatoes (Campari’s which I bought out of season because I couldn’t resist the clearance price) had none of the rich acidity and fullness of a summer tomato, but grilling and roasting add some depth of flavor and the garlic and vinegar give a very pleasant tang. So, should you succumb to a good price or simply the need for a tomato that didn’t come out of a tin during the winter months, this recipe will enhance a lackluster product. To my surprise, Leandro really dug this pasta and ate the extra serving I had intended for my own lunch the following day.  I should have been totally pleased and delighted and flattered, but this imperfect Mommy was kind of annoyed. And frightened. If he eats like this at four, how much is he going to eat as a teenager?

Grilled or Roasted Tomato Pasta Dressing

(Special tools: about six BBQ skewers. If using wood, soak the skewers in water for about 20 minutes)

1 lb medium length pasta such as penne or rotini

1 pint small tomatoes: grape, cherry or Campari, preferred

2-3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1-2 tsp red wine vinegar

3 cloves garlic, minced

(optional: 1 tsp chopped fresh basil or parsley)

Salt, to taste

Heat grill and skewer tomatoes, leaving ample space between tomatoes. Grill tomatoes for about five minutes, or until beginning to wrinkle and just beginning to brown (or preheat oven to 350° and scatter tomatoes on a baking sheet or foil and cooking for 15 minutes or until beginning to wrinkle and brown)*. Smaller tomatoes will cook faster. Do not char. Chop tomatoes roughly. Do not discard liquid or seeds.

In the meantime, prepare pasta according to package directions. Keep the pasta warm after draining.

While the pasta is boiling and the tomatoes are grilling, whisk olive oil and vinegar together until blended in a large bowl. Add garlic, tomatoes with juices, and still-warm pasta. Add optional herbs, salt to taste and serve with your favorite grated cheese.

*You can grill or roast the tomatoes while firing up the grill or oven for something else, place cooked tomatoes in a tightly sealed container in the fridge, and make the recipe the following day.

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Feta, Avocado and Sun-Dried Tomato Snacks — Use ‘Em While Ya Got ‘Em!

30 Jan

I’m in a Use-It-Up frenzy at the moment; bought more fresh food than Leandro and I could consume during a week in which we were unexpectedly invited to dinner at other people’s houses and even if I could afford the waste, I have a really hard time throwing out food.

(For more on the food we throw away  visit Jonathan Bloom at Wasted Food; or the E.P.A. — where you’ll find out that Americans generate 34 million tons of food waste each year; or this NYTimes article from 2008 which says “As it turns out, Americans waste an astounding amount of food — an estimated 27 percent of the food available for consumption, according to a government study” ).

So, no real recipe today, but a serving suggestion of flavors and textures that worked well in a “scrappy” snack…horrid pun intended.

I took half an avocado left over from the previous day, some slices of feta that needed using up, and some sun-dried tomatoes in oil that have been lurking in my fridge. I just sliced fairly thin, laid them on woven wheat crackers and called it a light lunch.

It was delicious and satisfying and effectively utilized my natural resources! Pretty too, don’tcha think?

 

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Cranberry-Nut Mini-Muffin Scones

24 Jan

Nothing like getting halfway through a baking recipe and realizing you don’t have one of the critical ingredients.

Leandro and I were experimenting with a new muffin recipe on the eve of the spring semester and I had laid out all the ingredients beforehand (a critical strategic move when baking with a four-year-old boy and a secret pleasure because I pretend I am on my own prepped and pretty cooking show).

Then the “1/2 Cup milk,” bit, which I swear was not there when I was playing next Food Network Star in my own head five minutes previous, suddenly loomed into view. Milk!?! I hate milk! Leandro hates milk! Ick! We never have milk in!

And baking? Well I suddenly hated baking too, because it is so precise, so unforgiving, so anal, so not me….

But, Leandro and I do like yogurt and we always have plain nonfat organic on hand for my breakfast and his dip for apple slices. So, seeing as we were well into the process of these muffins (which started with a recipe from Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread by — I kid you not — Crescent Dragonwagon, an Arkansas chef and innkeeper), I bunged in 1/2 Cup of yogurt instead and hoped for the best.

The result was some really fun mini-scones. They were nubbly and attractive, studded with ruby cranberries. Instead of my usual muffin sponginess, the texture had that dense fluffiness that makes scones so lovely with tea or coffee, punctuated with nutty bits. The craisins took on an orange-y candied peel flavor that was perfect for a winter day.

Leandro did not like them at all. “I told you not to put that smelly powder (nutmeg) in,” was his shrugging response.

My colleagues, however, were a different story. I brought them in for a first-day-of-school snack for our kitchen and they moved quickly and got lots of compliments. So….as they used to say in hockey “kick, save, and a beauty!” I guess I like baking again.

Here’s the recipe…enjoy!

Cranberry-Nut Mini-Muffin-Scones

1 ¼ Cup unbleached all purpose flour

½ Cup sugar

2 ½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 Cup nonfat plain yogurt

½ Cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

¾ Cup dried craisins (sweetened dried cranberries)

½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts (you may sub 1/4 cup walnuts with ¼ cup unsalted sunflower seeds)

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease or line with paper cups 48 mini-muffin tins.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar to taste, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. In a second bowl, whisk together milk, butter, egg and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and combine gently into a soft dough (crumbly is fine) with as little handling as possible. Gently fold in cranberries and nuts.

Use a spoon or fingers to fill muffin cups a half to two-thirds full. Bake until lightly golden, 12-15 minutes. Cool for a minute, remove and then cool completely on a wire rack. Will keep three days in an airtight container; no refrigeration.

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Lentil Soup/Sopa de Lentejas (with vegetarian/vegan option); Snuggly, Spicy Winter Soup

22 Jan

If you do not have a bag of dried lentils in your larder at all times, you’ve got some explaining to do. These little cuties are about $.80 a pound, keep for a year, are full of good stuff for you and don’t need to be pre-soaked. They are fast, convenient, filling and ever so tasty. How could you not?

Lentil Soup has got to be the best comfort food ever. It is rich and hearty and slurpy and — this version at least – just a bit spicy. You can use whatever scraps you’ve got around. You can give it a Middle Eastern flavor or Italian flair by varying the spices. Use a different type of sausage – like kielbasa – and some sage or rosemary for a more Eastern European style. Use no sausage at all and a dash of liquid aminos or veggie steak sauce and some red hot pepper flakes or chipotle for a vegetarian/vegan version. It will keep in the fridge for several days and packs up really nicely for an office lunch that will make you feel loved and valued.

This is a slightly modified version of a previous lentil soup recipe…I make this all the time and I vary it to my mood. This time I included celery and just added a teaspoon of oregano; the vegetable stock I used (Nature’s Promise Organic, from Stop and Shop) really punched up the flavor so much that it didn’t need much added seasoning.

A dollop of plain nonfat yogurt or sour cream or creme fraiche makes it creamy!


Lentil Soup (Sopa de lentejas)

2-3 Tbs olive oil

1 baseball size onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced or diced to fingernail size (approx 1 Cup)

2 stalks celery, chopped

(1/2 cup chard stems, chopped – optional – I just happened to have some left over from a previous chard leaf dish)

3-4 oz chorizo (Spanish dry hot sausage), peeled and sliced into 1/4-1/2 inch rounds (I use Palacios Hot; vegetarians can omit it entirely and add liquid aminos, steak sauce or snoky chipotle to taste)

1 medium potato, peeled (if you like) and chopped into 1.2 inch cubes (approx. 1 Cup)

1 Cup (8 oz) dry lentils, rinsed, picked through and drained

4 – 8 Cups chicken or vegetable broth (you may use water as well)

15 oz can diced tomatoes (optional)

1 tsp each – ground cumin, turmeric and oregano OR 1 tsp each – oregano and marjoram OR Tbs dry Italian herbs

Heat oil until it runs quickly and is fragrant. Add onions and stir to coat. After a minute, reduce heat to low. After five minutes start adding, garlic, then carrots, celery and optional chard, then chorizo. When chorizo begins to release its color,  stir in lentils, potatoes, broth/water and tomatoes, if using. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer, covered for 20 minutes or until lentils and vegetables are tender, adding water a cup at a time, if desired. Add spices at the end and salt to taste.

Serve as soup with crusty bread, or over rice. Finish with a dollop of plain yogurt, sour cream or creme fraiche!

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