Kitchen Adventures: Autumn Edition

Welcome, friends, to this week's autumn edition of Kitchen Adventures with Joy. As you can see, the autumn mists are rolling in, making fall-bright pasta seem mysterious and maybe a little spooky ... 🍃🍂

No, it's not your vision doing weird things or your screen giving up the ghost: the pasta was so hot, the camera lense fogged over! But very thematically fitting, I suppose. 😃

... Not that I deliberately set out to create autumn-coloured dishes this week, but I guess I'm, like, in tune with the season? Or something??

Probably something. It has been a week; not stressfull, I've simply been feeling very strange. Something big is changing, and I do not believe that is simply the change of seasons. It feels too big for that, too profound. I don't fully know what is going on. It is more a feeling-sense of Knowing.

Ah, well. The unfolding of events will bring clarity, and in the meantime, I will simply hold space for myself, keep tuning into the feeling ~ and have kitchen adventures, too!

On that note, here is what might be the first week of Kitchen Adventures, Autumn Edition:

misty spooky autumn kitchen adventures

Starting with this autumn-coloured pasta dish: 3 small carrots, 1 small yellow beet, 4 tiny onions, about 200g of cooked chipeas, stir-fried in my stir-fry pan. Glazed with 300ml of passata, and let simmer for almost 30 mintues, until carrots and beet were softened.

In a seperate pot, I cooked 125g - yes, for once I actually weighed it! - of pasta made from peas. Yes, 100% sweet pea pasta!

Once the veggies were soft and the pasta drained, I mixed everything together. The result - above.

I like how, if you look closely, you can see the pasta still steaming in the pictures.

The taste is ~ strange, to be honest. The pea-flavoured pasta takes some getting used to, for sure! But not bad, and piping hot, this feels like an amazing fall dish all around: colours, textures, flavour.

... uh, yeah, spices? Salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of medium-hot curry powder in the pan while the onions were sautéing. Hope that helps?

But seriously, this is probably a great dish to experiment with spices. Make it hot, make it mild, make it earthy, make it sweet, even. Also maybe some edamame or spinach for extra green?

The possibilities are ... well, maybe not endless, but there sure are many! 😃

Up next, we have another accidentally autumn-coloured dish:

autumn pancakes

Pancakes! Savoury pancakes! That are gluten-free and proteinrich, because made from red lentils.

Yes, you read that correctly: red lentils!

Now that I finally have a pan that actually fries the stuff you put in there, instead of burn it, I was so happy to get to try out these pancakes. I've been missing pancakes ~ of all kinds ~ and I've seen different recipes for red-lentil-pancakes all over TikTok. So: very happy to make these! Finally!

... though, making the "batter" was a bit on an adventure. I followed instructions: 150g of red lentils, wash, and then let soak for 2 hours. I even used hot water!

Then rinse, mix with 300ml of water, add spices (salt, coriander, baharat in my case), and blend.

Well, this is where I ran into difficulties. Because this does not work with a handheld blender. At least not with mine. And the smoothie maker? Cannot handle 150g of soaked lentils in one go.

It took half a dozen. And a lot bit of patience, some deep breathing and reminding myself that I wasn't getting graded, that making a mess was fine, and that if the "correct" way didn't work, I wouldn't be penalized for finding my own way.

And, in the end, I created a very nice batter. That I then mixed grated carrot and grated zucchini into.

If you give this a try, don't be confused for your batter is super runny. Mine was almost water! But it firms up nicely in the pan. As you can see.

And makes nice, savoury, autumn-coloured pancakes.

... I wonder what red-lentil-pancakes with pumpkin spice taste like ...?

While the pancakes were cooking, one after the other in my Samwise-Gamgee-pan - four in total - I grated three more carrots and chopped two tiny yellow bell peppers into thin slices. Followed by two cloves of garlic and one big(ish) onion.

Pancakes are still going, so onion goes into the stir-fry pan. Then the garlic. Then carrot. Then bell pepper and the other half of the grated zucchini.

And so, bit by bit, while the pancakes were cooking, the final dish came together:

Joyous "golden autumn" vegetable curry!

... though I have realised just now that I forgot the chickpeas.

Oops.

Folks, if you make this? Don't forget your chickpeas! 😃😃😃

... ah, well. I'll simply have to add them in after the fact, stir well, and pretend they have always been there when I re-heat some of it for dinner tomorrow. 😃

So, in conclusion, with hopefully a bit more coherency:

The Golden Autumn curry:

• 1 onion

• 2 cloves of garlic

• 1/2 of a big zucchini

• 3 medium carrots

• 2 tiny yellow bell peppers

• 200g chickpeas

• 1 heaped teaspoon curry powder

• a splash of ginger juice (bc I didn't have any fresh ginger)

• juice of 1 1/2 sad limes

I mean, your limes don't have to be sad. Mine just were, because they'd been lying around for so long, waiting, waiting ... so I put them out of their misery and into this dish.

Here served with quinoa.

(Don't forget the chickpeas, though!!)

Aah, and that's it already for this week! Because I am pretty sure you don't really need to see yet another picture of yet another cucumber salad!

... do you? 😃

Thanks for reading till the end, and just to remind you all: There is another Kitchen Adventures mini workshop coming up, in case you'd like to explore more!

Yep, and that's it, see you all next week!

Bye! <3