Rajma Wrap

Dried beans and legumes are the "little black dress" of my kitchen. Keep them in your pantry and they can emerge dressed up for a feast or dressed down for an everyday lunch, and everything in between. 

In this recipe, kidney beans are decked out in their summer best, wrapped in a light wheat tortilla along with cool yogurt, fresh greens and sweet tomatoes. The inspiration for this wrap came from the curried kidney bean wrap from Sailu's Kitchen. You could think of this as an Indian burrito. 

I took Sailu's idea and changed it to fit the ingredients in my kitchen, and the fresh loot from the Farmers' Market, including the sweetest, ripest cherry tomatoes. This is a very flexible and forgiving recipe, as you can imagine.

Kidney Bean Wraps

A. Make the filling:

1. Heat some oil, and saute 1 small minced onion.

2. Add and saute:

• 1 tsp. ginger garlic paste
• 1 tsp. cumin-coriander powder
• 1 tsp. kasuri methi
• turmeric and red chilli powder to taste
• salt to taste

3. Add and stir fry on open heat until the mixture is quite dry

• 3 tbsp. tomato ketchup
• 2 chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned)
• 4 cups cooked kidney beans 

4. Turn off the heat, and add

• a dash of garam masala
• plenty of chopped fresh cilantro

B. Assemble the wrap:

• For the base, you can use store-bought tortillas, pitas or other flatbreads. I love the whole wheat tortillas from Trader Joe's. Leftover (or freshly made) rotis or chapatis would be wonderful too. 
• To the flatbread, add some kidney bean filling, dollops of thick Greek yogurt (or strained yogurt or sour cream), and your choice of fresh vegetables, including fresh greens, quartered cherry tomatoes, sliced onion etc. 
• For those who love spicy food, some green chilli chutney would be right at home here. This wrap is very reminiscent of those frankies I love to devour every time I get a chance.

Because this recipe is inspired by a fellow blogger, it goes to this month's Blog Bites: Sandwiches and Wraps, hosted right here on this blog. If you would like to participate, send in an entry in the next couple of weeks.

Speaking of frankies and street food, I am teaching a class on Indian street food at the wonderful Kitchen Conservatory on Sunday, July 25th- two weeks from now. If you or someone you know might be interested, please contact me for details.

* Talking Trash * 

I am looking to set up a compost bin in a couple of weeks, and getting unduly excited about it. Once all the compostable material is removed from our weekly trash, there is so little left, so setting up a good composting system is a top priority in reducing the amount of trash my household produces.

My two criteria are, (a) it should be a container system rather than a pit I dig up in the yard, because I don't want to deal with the hassles of dogs and assorted critters getting into the pile, (b) I want to use some biological prowess- be it worms or bacteria- to speed up the composting process.

Right now, the top contender in my mind is the Bokashi method. Any and all kitchen waste is pickled using anaerobic bacteria, then the fermented mass is buried in soil for a few weeks to make rich compost.

There is a wealth of information out there on websites and in books and it can be overwhelming. Do you compost your kitchen waste? If yes, do you mind sharing your experiences with me, especially with small-scale container composting? Thank you for your time!