Pumpkin Toor Dal Soup w/ Avocado Tahini Puree

I don't know about your bodega, but mine sells pre-slaughtered pumpkin pretty much year round, which is AWESOME. It is always on special for 99 cents a pound. Flatbush Ave. between Maple and Midwood. Go get some.


Today at the bodega, I asked a lady who was checking out if she ever cooks with pumpkin, and she said Yes. I asked, "What do you make?" and she said, "I make pumpkin rice and pumpkin soup...." Then her eyes drifted to the piece of pumpkin I had picked out and she shook her head, handed her friend her wallet and said, "Hold on, you pay for this stuff while I help this girl find a better piece of pumpkin."

So don't pick a piece with soft edges, even if it is the smallest piece and you don't want too much. Go for the firm, pointy-edged, pre-cut pumpkin that has a nice light orange hue. This lady was awesome; I think I remember her name was Marlisha, she was a Pisces (I gathered from her Pisces earrings), and she didn't like to have her picture taken. Marlisha makes some bad-ass pumpkin rice, which I made her tell me the recipe for:

Grate a piece of pumpkin, like you're grating cheese, and put it in the pot as you're cooking your rice. Add a little bit of olive oil, salt, and some coconut milk. She uses her natural herb shaker to give it some flecks of green when she's done. I'm totally making this. Here's a really unflattering picture of Marlisha and me: She is going, "Fine, I'll be a sport, take the damn picture," and I'm going, "Heck yeah, Pumpkin Rice!"


This is the recipe I set out to share with you in this post. It is adapted from Yamuna Devi's "Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking," which is my Bible. You should buy it if you're remotely interested in Indian Cooking, for real. Look, I'm giving you a REAL recipe!

2/3 cup toovar dal or yellow split peas
6 1/2 cups water
2 cups peeled pumpkin
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 onions
1 teaspoon red chili flakes
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds (not as necessary if you don't have)
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 tablespoon jaggery or maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon asafetida powder
12 curry leaves, minced
minced cilantro

Rinse toovar dal by swishing it around in water in the pan and draining off water about three times before you add ~6 cups and bring it to a boil on your stove. Add pumpkin, ginger, lemon juice, bay leaves, turmeric, some oil and some salt, and boil it covered until the toovar dal is soft and the pumpkin get mushy, about 45 minutes.

Coarsely mince your onions. Heat some peanut or canola or coconut oil (or ghee is yummy too) in a skillet, and put in mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and red chili flakes. Stir a little bit until mustard seeds turn grey and start to spit around like Mexican jumping beans and cumin seeds get brown. Throw in asafetida and curry leaves, then onions. Saute until onions are caramelized.

When soup is done, turn off heat, pick out bay leaves, and whisk until smooth and creamy. Stir in the onion mixture and some salt. A little garam masala can be good too as a little finisher, which I think I do. I like this soup to have a real pureed texture, so I put it in my food processor. Add minced cilantro.

To make the avocado tahini puree: Halve avo and put it in the food processor with two tablespoons tahini, some lemon juice, salt, pepper, and one raw garlic clove. Add a little bit of water, and blend until it is smooth and creamy. Add the water very slowly bit by bit so it is not too thin. It's best to have a sour cream consistency. Put a dollop of this on your soup, garnish with some pumpkin seeds, and WALLAH!

Roman Kale

Tonight I was going to cook a grand meal, but decided I was more in the mood for just a pile of greens. I bought some fun, spiky purple kale at the co-op today along with a block of parmesean cheese because I'm going to make some fennel pancakes.... that's right, stay tuned for some fennel pancakes...

Anyways, I made this dish for my first winter dinner, and it was met with much enthusiasm by my guests. This is a very old and traditional way that Romans prepare spinach, but I like making this one with kale.



This is what you do: Rinse and mince/tear up kale. Heat some olive oil in a pan on medium heat and brown some minced garlic (2-3 cloves) in the oil. Add the kale and saute the kale for a few minutes (kale does not take long) until it has wilted down. I like my kale a little al dente, but it's totally up to you how long you cook it. Remove from heat and toss in a bowl with a splash of balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. My favorite way to deal with parmesean is to buy the whole block (it's so much better this way than the pre-grated stuff) and to grate it nice and fat by hand with a vegetable peeler, not with a cheese grater. Toss with toasted pine nuts and parmesean cheese. If you want to get a little more fancy with this one, you could make a balsamic reduction. To do that, you heat balsamic vinegar on low in a saucepan, stirring regularly until it thickens and gets syrupy. This does change the taste of the balsamic, as it gets more tangy and sweet. And syrupy. It's delicious, but sometimes it takes too long for just a quick meal. Either way, this is some good kale.

a.k.a. Jesus Christ

So over the phone I learned that last night at Easter dinner in Milwaukee, my drunk, happy, and Catholic family came up with a new name for my restaurant: "The Father, the Daughter, and the Holy Spirit". It took me a second, but after a while, I do have to admit I thought this was funny. Especially considering that I got a comment this week that my concept of K.R.A.K. "... sounds like something Jesus would do...." Oh Lord, help me.

Perhaps there will be a "Last Supper" themed spring dinner. Maybe I'll serve unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and hardboiled eggs.

Ok, I'm going to post some more recipes starting tomorrow

The Spring recipe scheming begins...

Kate's Renegade Aboveground Kitchen is about to complete a fantastic first winter season, and I am already scheming for the seasons around the corner. Spring '08 will focus on lots of delicious spring veggies like fennel, beets, and young vidalia onions.... Plus, the K.R.A.K. kitchen will be moving around to other people's homes just to spice things up a bit. My friends in Prospect Heights have a large rustic loft with a wood burning stove, and we are planning a Medieval Banquet-style Spring pagan dinner. It will be quite a feast, and we're planning on brewing our own mead. Get ready!

Here's something I cooked up last night with spring in mind: It is a beet pancake with cashew-garlic sauce, layered with steamed green kale, millet, and curried green lentils, with a few caramelized leeks on top. My roommate Alex and I agreed it was totally excellent and surprising-- sumptuously sweet, zesty, and complex! I do want to work on the presentation a bit, but it will definitely find its way onto the spring menu in some shape or form.


Millet is an amazing little whole grain, and one that is worth having around in your pantry. Very few cooks use whole grains directly, and I want to endow you, my readers, with a healthy diverse knowledge about the world of carbohydrates. There is a reason why grains are at the base of our food pyramid, and despite this nation's recent aversion to carbs, we NEED whole grains to provide fiber, B vitamins, and folic acids for healthy digestion. Slowly, I will teach you all about my favorite whole grains that are not wheat, soy, or corn. (I have nothing against wheat, soy, or corn, but they are SO overly grown, done, and pumped into most of the food we eat....) There is so much more out there, and YOU should cook it! Wow, my first blog post and I'm already standing on a soap box and YELLING!

Fun millet facts: The ancient Chinese ate millet as a staple crop before they rice became the dominant crop! Millet is the primary ingredient in bird seed! (Am I telling you to go buy a bag of birdseed and cook it up for dinner?.... Well, maybe I am.) Also, millet is super easy to digest and is gluten free!

Ok, enough is enough, here's the god damn recipe. This is a great way to prepare millet as a side dish, which is how I made it for the pancake. It has an uncanny resemblance to this breakfast dish that I ate a lot at Raghava's house in Bangalore...

South Indian Style Millet:

Spread a cup of millet onto a baking sheet and toast at 300 degrees (toaster ovens are wonderfully suited for this type of stuff if you have one...) until you start to smell a nutty aroma. Millet does not need to be toasted, but it helps keep the grains intact when you boil them and prevents a mushy texture. I think it also improves the taste.

(I don't measure my water for millet, but let's say two cups to start....) Add the millet to a pot, and add about two cups water. Boil for 20-30 minutes, check to see if you need to add water or drain some out once millet is soft.

Chop up a medium size onion, de-seed and mince a few green chillies (you could also use red chili flakes), and mince up about 12 curry leaves. Heat about two tablespoons of coconut oil in a skillet. Add about a half tablespoon of black mustard seeds, throw in the chillies, and let seeds sputter and turn a bit grey. Sprinkle in the curry leaves with a dash of asafaetida (optional, but authentic...) right before you toss in onions. Saute with a dash of turmeric until the onions are a bit caramelized, and stir in the millet. Add salt to taste (salt is very important here... don't forget it...) and serve!

Baffled by some of these ingredients? Well, the park slope food co-op has all of them, but before I joined I shopped a lot at the little Indian grocery on First Ave (between 5th and 6th I think...) in the East Village, in Little India/Jackson Heights/Queens (Patel Brothers), or on Lexington Ave. in the mid 20's. Go get ye some Indian cooking staples! I keep my curry leaves and little green chillies in my freezer so they keep longer and I always have them on hand.