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1- Rice Special with Vegetables à la Maison
(the title makes up for the simplicity of the recipe)

Ingredients:

• Vegetables of different kinds. (Choose for example from: potato, cauliflower, carrot, eggplant, cabbage, paprika)
• Tomatoes (1-2 middle sized per person)
• Cumin seeds or ground cumin, half a teaspoon per person
• Rice (brown or white), half a cup per person.
• Peanuts (half a spoonful per person)

Time: 15-20 minutes (full corn rice takes about 40 minutes)

Put water and salt for the rice in a pot and bring it to the boil. Then add the washed rice. You need about two-and-a-half times as much water as rice. Cook until the rice is soft. Full corn rice will take 40-50 minutes to get cooked, white rice 5-20 minutes. Add the peanuts just before the end.

Bring the water and salt and cumin seeds to the boil for the vegetables. Add the chopped vegetables one by one, the hardest first (potatoes, carrots, white cabbage), because they need the longest cooking time, then the softer ones like cauliflower, paprika, chinese cabbage, eggplant and tomato (in that order). Don't worry if you don't know the exact timing, the worst that can happen is that some vegetable are a bit too soft.
Add the tomatoes a few minutes before the end. They'll fall apart and make a nice sauce.
After about 15 minutes, when the potatoes and carrots are done, try if the rest is cooked and if so, add soya sauce, tomato paste or other tasty stuff. But you might like it a lot with only cumin and salt!

Your first attempts were a success?  Then here are some extra ideas for this dish.

• Mix cooked macaroni or similar pasta in the cooked vegetables
• Mix in sunflower seeds just before the vegetables are done (half a spoon per person)
• Mix in Homos after cooking
• Add chili powder (dangerous!) and serve yogurt with the vegetables
• Add cubes of vegetarian cheese (after you have taken the pot off the fire) or mix in soft cheese (don't cook either)
• Add cubes of tofu after cooking. (You can fry the cubes. They also taste better if you cook or soak them instead in marinade or simply in salty water. Tofu can even be eaten straight from the packet.) Tofu makes your dish really special!

There are many kinds of grains that you can use instead of rice. Some, like bulgur or barley, have a clear taste of their own. Ask your health food shop!

Worried about your protein? You got enough in your milk, cheese or yogurt earlier in the day. But you can add (vegetarian) cheese or quark to the vegetables (don't cook), or cook some soya flakes with the vegetables. For a special taste: cook the soya flakes separately in soya sauce, (they will soak up the sauce), then add them to the cooked vegetables.

Easy beans
If you want an extra dish, buy some mungbeans or lentils from the supermarket (reform department) or from the health food shop. Leave them in water for a night and they need only 20 minutes cooking.
Rice and beans together give you all the protein you need that day. Mung beans are much easier to prepare and to digest than other beans!

Dal - a bean dish
Another bean dish for this meal: cook yellow split peas from your Asian shop with salt until soft (this doesn't take long), then mash them into a puree. Try out which spices you like in it. This is an Indian dish, called dal.

Other beans
Other beans take more cooking time and need to sit in water for 6-24 hours first. That's not so complicated as it seems -they can do the soaking while you sleep and boiling while you do other things.
There are more beans between heaven and earth than you'd ever dreamt of: white beans, brown beans, Soya beans, kazuki beans, mung beans, green lentils, chick peas, green peas, yellow split peas... Visit your local health food shop or supermarket!
Some beans tend to produce unwelcome gases in our intestines. However, it helps a lot if you cook them with the herb savory.

Sprouting beans
Did you know that you can easily sprout beans and seeds? Mung beans are good to begin with. You can buy them in the supermarket. Soak the mung beans overnight, throw the water away and simply wait for two or three days. If you rinse them twice a day, they won't dry out.
You'll be surprised to see those hard beans change into soft little plants that you can eat raw with a little salt and lemon juice.

• 2 cups of applesauce
• 3/4  cup of honey
• 1/4  cup of oil
• 1 teaspoon of each spice: cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger
• 1 teaspoon dried lemon peel, ground
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 cup of chopped dates
• 1 1/2 cup of raisins
• (no eggs needed!)

Combine all ingredients (either dumping and stirring, or sifting dry ingredients and adding one by one to the wet ingredients). Bake in 2 oiled loaf pans at 350° C for about one hour.

Copyright 1998-2000 by Joost Boekhoven