Kitchiri

Another yummy lentil recipe made up on the fly... Kind of an Indian risotto without any cheese.

Ingredients

1/2 cup brown lentils
1 cup Arborio rice
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp each ground cumin and coriander
1/2 tsp chilli flakes, or to taste
salt, to taste
1 cup diced mushrooms
1 medium carrot, diced
1 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup sour cream
4 hardboiled eggs
sweet chilli sauce

Saute onions until translucent. Add garlic and spices and fry until fragrant. Add lentils and two-three cups of water and cook until lentils have softened. Add Arborio rice and vegetables (except peas) and continue to simmer gently, adding more boiling water as liquids are absorbed. When rice is almost tender, stir through peas and sour cream and continue to cook gently until rice is soft but still slightly nutty. Serve topped with quartered hard boiled eggs, and sweet chilli sauce.

Chicken and Quinoa Soup

Beth and Katy both devoured this soup when I made it last week, so the recipe is a definite keeper. We had roast chicken for dinner tonight, so I decided I would make this soup again from the leftovers (and I'm actually motivated to make stock from the carcass tonight since I can think of an immediate use for it).

Chicken and Quinoa Soup
1/3 cup quinoa, rinsed
2 cups water or chicken stock
1/2 small potato, grated and finely minced
2 Brussels sprouts, finely shredded
1/2 cup cooked chicken, diced
1/2 cup corn kernels
1-2 tbsp cornflour dissolved in water
oregano, black pepper and salt to taste

Boil the quinoa and the potato til the quinoa's "tails" are beginning to loosen, then add the rest of the ingredients and cook until quinoa is fully cooked. Pour in cornflour and water, and stir until soup thickens (add more cornflour and water if soup seems to thin after five minutes or so). Serve to pickiest eater and watch her scrape her bowl clean.

Next time, I will add finely chopped broccoli florets and increase the amount of potato, which appears to be undetectable.

Basic Biscuit Recipe

I want to do some biscuit baking with the munchkins, but I don't have a basic biscuit recipe which I like. Here is one I found to experiment with.

Food Down Under Basic Biscuit Recipe. Is awesome. We made it this afternoon and iced it and sprinkled it with 100s and 1000s (K's job), and I have tried very hard not to eat all of them immediately. They are kind of shortbready but not gritty - very nice!

Cup Cakes!

Katy and I decided to try out this recipe this morning. We made a quick trip to the shops for sprinkles and mini M&Ms to decorate them with, because I was feeling decadent! They look beautiful, having just come out of the oven, and we are waiting for them to cool down before we decorate them.

ETA: This is now my official white cake recipe - they are delicious! K lost interest in decorating them and I got a phone call while I was in the process of doing the rest, so some of them don't have sprinkles because the icing had hardened by the time I got to them. Oh well. Still yummy.

If there are any left for you this evening, Beloved, let alone B when she gets back tomorrow night, you will both be very lucky *g*