Kitchen Adventures with Joy
- Joyous Sparks
- Jul 3
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 12
Welcome to Kitchen Adventures with Joy!
Where recipes are more like guidelines, and the end result can be totally weird and the most important thing is to have fun in the creating...
So, yesterday was the first day in about a week where it wasn't hot enough that standing in the kitchen was a cruel and unusual punishment. And I'd missed cooking - quite a bit, to my own surprise. So I seized the chance and ...
... went a little overboard?
But, look: It had finally cooled down enough, and there were still so many veggies left in my fridge, and my next delivery was scheduled for today, so: Cooking Marathon Time It Was!
First off the cutting board:
Beetroot dahl, Tandori masala style
... because I didn't have any garam masala, and why not try something different? And it is SO GOOD. Like, I wanna swim in this. Yeah, I'd turn super pink, but so what? I'd be happy!
Okay, okay. Eating it also makes me happy. No swimming required.
Recipe (à la Joy)
1 large beetroot
1 purple turnip (because it was in the fridge; original recipe uses leek)
75g red lentils
300ml wateer
150ml passata
2 heaped teaspoons Tandori masala
1 teaspoon salt
pepper (lots, because I like pepper)
3-4 tablespoons coconut milk (original recipe calls for creamed coconut, didn't have any, but had coconut milk, so)
... oh, yeah, and some ginger juice, because I didn't have any ginger root either
Step One:
Wash beetroot and turnip. Peel if you feel you need to, I am lazy and never bother.
Step Two:
Chope up beetroot in small cubes. Rinse hands, knife, and cuttingboard with hot water. Chop turnip into equally small cubes.
Throw into pot, add water, set to boil.
I let them boil for, like, 15 minutes to soften, before I added the red lentils.
Step Three:
Add lentils. Potentially more water. Let cook for 7 minutes.
Realise that wasn't enough, lentils are still not soft, cook for another 5 minutes.
Step Four:
Add passata and coconut stuff of choice. Also ginger juice, salt, pepper and, in this case, two generous teaspoons of tandori masal spice mix.
Let sit for a bit.
Congrats, you made delicious dahl!
Onto the next thing I made:
Asian inspired stir fry with Adzuki-bean noodles in tomato sauce.
So, this is a classic Joy-style dish. I do a lot of stir fries, and generally simply throw in whatever's in the fridge. So, um. Recipe? Eh.
But it goes something like this:
Recipe
1 large mangold / bok choy
1 Aubergine (eggplant)
1 red pepper
4 onions - because they were tiny; maybe two medium-size or one large onion. maybe. use as much as you like!
2 cloves of garlic
fresh ginger
6 tablespoons tamari (I think? use as much as you like!)
salt and pepper
oh, yeah, some apple cider vinegar (the only vinegar I have) and some maple sirup
Step One:
Chop all veggies into small pieces.
Then chop ginger, garlic, and onions (in that order, leaving onions for last, so you don't cry as much).
Step Two:
Heat oil in a pan - I used coconut.
Sauté onion until translucent, then throw in garlic and ginger.
Step three:
Add first the white stem parts of the mangold/bok choy. Sauté on high heat until softening.
Add aubergine. Fry on high heat until soften.
Add bell pepper. Same as above.
Step Four:
Add tamari, vingear, maple sirup, salt and pepper. And whatever else you wanna throw in, really, these are your taste buds. Oh, yes! I added some chili flakes, too!
Step Five:
Reduce heat, cook for a bit, then add green bits of mangold/bok choy. Put lid on pan, let simmer for a bit, until greens have wilted.
Oh, yeah. The noodles. Well, they were from a package. Came with a spice mix. Packaging said to cook 5 minutes, then mix spices with passata, throw in noodles, enjoy.
Did that, then threw everything together.
Once it got all mixed together, it looked a lot less nice, and it tasted kind of meh, yesterday.
Today? Oh, Em, Gee. The flavours. The richness. I blessed myself with great food, omnomnom.
And now, the real experiment:
QuiNCheeze
Where I made a vegan cheeze sauce from potatos and cauliflower, cooked quinoa with yellow lentils, mixed everything together, and then put it on the oven for, like, an hour.
It's not quite solid enough to be sliced like bread. Or else, you end up with pretty thick slices. But, like, the flavour combination? Something bread-like with a hint of cheeze?
Awesome stuff.
Also tastes awesome with a sweet-mustard spread. Very much recommended for the gluten-free folks out there.
Recipe for cheeze sauce
400g potatoes (peeled. for once)
200g cauliflower (was left in the freezer)
200ml plantbased mil (oat, in my case)
4 tablespoons nutritional yeast (because more is more)
2 cloves of garlic (original recipe says one. yeah. no.)
2 tablespoons vinegar (recipes says white wine, I used apple cider)
salt and pepper
Step One:
Cook potatoes and cauliflower until soft. Drain water.
Step Two:
Add milk, nutritional yeat, vinegar and garlic. Then blend. Handblender is possible, you might prefer a jud blender. I don't have one, so hand blender it is.
Step Three:
Season to taste.
Step Four in this case:
Our about half into the pot with the quinoca-and-lentil mix.
Step Five:
Line oven form with baking paper. Pour in mix.
Step Six:
Bake at about 200°C / 395°F - or something like that, depends on your oven, mine is a little weak and needs higher temperature. I left it in there for, like, 45 minutes or so. Until golden brown on top and slightly crispy. 's good.
...
And last but not least: dessert!
Mango-coconut nice-cream, with dark chocolate topping and lemon zest.
That one turned out weird, because the chocolate is really hard, so if the nice cream is frozen, it's all cold-hard-chocolate-style in my mouth. And when softened, the nicecream is too runny and the chocolate still hard.
Ah, well. It's still tasty! And it was an experiment, because I was kind of throwing two half-remembered recipes together. So for that? Complete success!
Next time I'll try for a layered style, wonder what that would be like ...
And that's it for today from Kitchen Adventures with Joy!
Hope you enjoyed. ;-)
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