My Legume Love Affair #60: The Round Up

Welcome to the round-up of the 60th edition of My Legume Love Affair, a monthly event in which bloggers send in recipes starring legumes. This month brings 22 recipes that make up a smorgasbord of legume love. From fresh green peas to tofu, dried legumes to chickpea flour, there are many pantry favorites featured here.

Click on the pics to enlarge them. All pics are contributed by the participants.

Let's kick off the buffet with a couple of appetizers. This first dish is from Nilambari Desai who does not have a blog (yet!) but who e-mailed her recipe and picture for lima beans cilantro tikki. These savory patties look exactly like something that would get the party started. I've made many types of tikkis or patties but never with lima beans- they look so good.

Lima beans cilantro tikki (MLLA 60 entry by Nilambari Desai)

Featured legume ingredients :- Lima Beans, Chickpea flour, Peanuts

Ingredients

 1  cup frozen Baby Lima beans thawed and washed

3/4 cup Cilantro

1/4 cup minced yellow onion

3 big cloves garlic 

3 medium green chillies

1/2 Tsp turmeric powder

1/2 Tsp red chilli powder

1 Tsp cumin coriander powder

2 Tbsp grated jaggery

1/2 Tbsp Tamarind concentrate + 1 tbs water

3 1/2 Tbsp chickpea flour (besan)

2 Tbsp salted peanuts roughly chopped

1 Tbsp rice flour

 Salt to taste

Oil -for frying

To make tikkis - 

1) Blanch Lima beans in boiling water and cool.

2) Pulse Lima beans and cilantro in the food processor or mixer 3-4 times until they are broken down to small pieces but not a paste. Add salt and keep aside in a mixing bowl.

3) Grind garlic and green chillies to form paste.

4) Add the garlic chilli paste and rest of the ingredients to the mixing bowl. Mix well to form a soft dough. 

5) Divide dough into one inch balls. Apply little oil on your hands and flatten each ball into quarter inch thick patties. 

6) Heat oil in a pan and shallow fry the patties on both sides till golden brown. Drain on paper towel. 

7) Serve hot with ketchup and mayo.

The rest of the entries will take you to several interesting blogs...

The second appetizer comes from Preeti who blogs at Write Food. She looked up a video recipe and made a batch of Kothimbir Vadi- savory cubes of chickpea flour, peanut powder and lots of cilantro. Crisp on the outside and creamy on the inside, Preeti reports that these snacks were the perfect accompaniment to a game of backyard frisbee.

For the soup course, Surabhi from S Came Tumbling After made a beautifully verdant  Green Peas Soup. The soup is her mother's recipe and Surabhi tells us that this recipe has been enjoyed by family and friends for years. Now you and I can taste this soup too.

If anyone is in the mood for a hearty salad, Nikita from A Real Housewife has a big bowl of colorful Bean Salad. With several types of legumes, veggies and a sweet-tangy dressing, I just want to dive right into this bowl, accompanied with a bag of tortilla chips, of course. Keep this salad in mind for potlucks and picnics.

Next, we have two side dishes that embody the less-is-more style of cooking with minimal ingredients but maximum flavor.

Vidya at All For Taste sauteed steamed assorted legumes with a simple seasoning to make Mixed-Legume Sundal. She served it with evening tea- I'd say it is a step up from the cookies that accompany my usual afternoon cuppa!

 

Janet at The Taste Space talks about how heirloom beans are almost too pretty to cook. She cooked a specialty variety called Good Mother Stallard Beans in the simplest way, with carrots and herbs, the better to enjoy the flavor of the beans themselves.

Savory legumes in a pastry shell- what's not to love? These two recipes would be right at home for brunch or at a picnic.

Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen made Sunny Caribbean Patty Pies. The dough gets its sunny appearance from turmeric and the filling is a hearty mixture of beans and vegetables. Shaheen says that these patty pies sold out at a crafts and food fair, and I can totally see why.

Claire at Chez Cayenne combined tofu, vegetables and chick'n in a golden pie shell to make Vegan Spinach Chick'n Quiche. This is a versatile recipes that you can make with several combinations of vegetables.





Now for lots of main dishes.

For the pasta course, Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe used chocolate fettucine and lentils to great effect in a Lentil Ragu with Chocolate Chilli Pasta. Johanna slow-simmered veggies and lentils in wine and stock to make this hearty dish, perfect for winter Down Under.




Dhabas are roadside eateries that you find along the highways of India, and dhaba food is synonymous with homely, down-to-earth food that is inexpensive and utterly satisfying. The next two entries borrow from this style of cooking. This is followed by several home-style Indian bean and lentil dishes.


Siri at Cooking with Siri talks about the changing seasons as sultry summer nights give way to chilly, breezy evenings. To warm herself up, she made up her own dhaba seasoning mix, then used it to make Dhaba Style Urad Dal.

Vaishali over at Holy Cow! writes a beautiful description of the dhabas of India. She went on to make a silky, buttery (vegan!) Dhabay ki Daal with a medley of three legumes.

Priya Elias at The Humpty Dumpty Kitchen made Curried Red Lentils, a quick side dish.

Harini at Cook Click n Devour gives a nod to home cooks "who can simply do magical tricks with unbelievably simple ingredients and create something gourmet" and illustrates this by makes a Potato Moong Dhal Stew inspired by her mother.

Manasi @ A Cook at Heart talks about the happy hours she spends discovering new recipes and tips on Pinterest. The challenge is always to stop pinning and actually try the pins. Manasi did just that by trying a new recipe for Red Lentil Curry. Spoiler Alert! She loved it.

Every cook has those times when vegetables are not on hand or there's not enough time to chop them. Madhuli of My Foodcourt comes to the rescue with a recipe for Dal Kanda, chana dal seasoned with onions.

 Mints!  at Vadani Kaval Gheta made Quick and Easy Chhole. Different regions of India make legumes in different ways, and this is a home-style Punjabi dish that Mints! learned as a teenager. Read her post for the story of how she learned to make this dish.. 

Avika at A Day Through My Life makes a classic dish of chickpeas even better by adding some spinach to it, and that's how she brings us Chole Palak.

Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen says that "Nourishment doesn't get much better than this" and I'm inclined to agree with her- chickpea cooked with potatoes, with a hint of sweetness and a hint of tang in her Chickpea Potato Curry sounds very tempting indeed. 

Shilpa at Aayi's Recipes introduces us to a legume called chori beans or cowpeas and uses them in a  Red Cowpeas- Vegetable Curry- so you get your legumes and veggies all at once.

Nagashree at Sattvaa has fond memories of vacationing in Kerela. She shares a recipe for traditional Kadala Curry - with black chickpeas in a rich coconut sauce, taught to her by a wonderful home cook from Kerala. 

For the last of the legume curries, I made Vatana Rassa, green peas in a sauce of coconut and herbs.

We continue the main dishes with 4 recipes that combine legumes with rice. 

Indosungod at Daily Musings- Everyday Recipes And More made me nod vigorously when she said, "Occasionally I get the urge to eat some fancy food". If you want food that only tastes fancy while being quick and easy, try her Rajma Paneer Biryani- Pressure Cooker Method.

Pavani at Cook's Hideout shares a truly gorgeous Dal Biryani made by layering rice with a spiced mixture of 3 legumes and fried onions.

Princy Vinoth at Spicy Foood made Chickpeas/ Channa Pulav that she calls a "quick mix and toss ready to go rice" that is a wonderful lunch-box option.

Shruti at Part-Time Chef was doing a pantry eat-down and used a lot of legumes lurking in her pantry in this 3 Legume Rice. What a beautiful dish to come out of wanting to use up a few ingredients. 

Time for dessert, everyone. While not the most obvious ingredient to be used in desserts, legumes indeed have a place in this course as these two recipes illustrate.

Tanusree @ Ma Niche made Chickpea Almond Chocochip Cookie Dough Bites- with boiled chickpeas and almonds, these are not your run of the mill cookies but filling and perfect for that cup of morning tea.

Viola @ Threes Divine made a luscious Mung Porridge with mung beans simmered in sweet coconut with dried fruits and nuts.

Prizes!

As I mentioned at the start of the month, participants in MLLA were entered into a raffle to win a couple of great prizes. I used a random number generator to pick a winner. It turned out to be Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen! Congrats, Shaheen, you will be getting a cookbook kindly sponsored by Susan. As Shaheen is located outside the US, I drew another number from the US entries. This time, it was Manasi from A Cook At Heart, and she will get the bean box sponsored by Hurst. 

MLLA 61! 

The July 2013 edition of MLLA is scheduled to be hosted at My Diverse Kitchen, so check that blog for details.