Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – The Ultimate: Lemon and Kale Open-Faced Sandwich

The Ultimate: Lemon and Kale Open-Faced Sandwich from page 62

Boy that was a mouthful! This is another open-face sandwich (there are a few of them in the cookbook).

This particular one calls for Mestemacher or Feldkamp bread. I did find this at Fairway near the rice cakes. It actually looks like a brick and is quite hefty for bread. I really, really liked it. If you are used to eating Ezekiel bread, you will like this one. Try to find it if you can. If you are used to regular old white or wheat bread, this may be a little too much for you.

This is pretty much the recipe here – Kale, Lemon and Cilantro Sandwich

The hummus that I already had prepared was the green onion hummus here.

The sandwich, being open-faced, was a little on the messy side to eat. This mean…not for company, kids.  Eat this one alone or with your loved one.  Definitely not with someone that you are looking to impress.

First bite, I really wasn’t sure about it yet. The bread was tasty, the hummus was creamy and perfect, and we all know how much I love kale…oh, but that lemon slice! Wowzers! That was a little too much for my taste buds to handle. I had to take the lemon slice off to finish the rest of the sandwich. Lesson learned! No more lemon slices for me!

If you do try the lemon slices, try a piece on a small section of the sandwich instead of making a mess like I did to decompose the sandwich and remove the lemon.

NOTES:

• The lemon slices were way too strong. Better off using just the lemon juice and maybe a little zest. The pith was too, too bitter.
• The recipe has tomato in the ingredients as optional…I did not use.
• Would be great with two slices of rye bread and grilled on the Panini press.
• The recipe called for cilantro or parsley.  Guess which one I used (hint: I hate cilantro).

Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Green Onion Hummus

Green Onion Hummus from page 103

Just like Our Hummus…this one is a keeper.

You can find the recipe here – Smoky Little Devils

I used an entire batch of Our Hummus to make this and it came out simply perfect. But then again, I can eat chickpeas right out of the can (rinsed of course) with a touch of salt.

I made this hummus in my 11-cup Cuisinart food processor. I made Our Hummus first, and then added the rest of the ingredients except the green onions. Then I let the food processor do its thing for a good 2 or three minutes until the hummus was nice and creamy. Then I added the green onions and processed just enough to incorporate. This left lovely little green specks in the hummus.

This was so damn yummy that we have been eating it on just about everything…rice cakes, toast, kale and kraut sandwich. This may just be my new favorite hummus..until the next one, that is.

I can’t wait to try this in Smoky Little Devils. Maybe tomorrow.

NOTES:

• Can use canned or cooked from dry chickpeas. Both come out fine for me.
• Lovely with half chickpeas and half cannellini beans.
• Added 3 tablespoons of water.
• Added extra fresh lemon juice.
• I used Dijon mustard and it was awesome.

Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Lovely Collard Sushi

Lovely Collard Sushi from page 70

I love doing batch cooking on Sundays. It sets us up for good, healthy eating for the week and it makes for a less stressful dinnertime after a day at work.

I made Vegan Hoppin’ John, which is a staple in our home. I make this once a month….at least. I will blog about this later on. I also made a few recipes from The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook, like hummus, Georgie’s Soup, and Oberlin Corn and Shallot Chowder. As soon as we eat the soup and the chowder, I will let you know what we think, so stay tuned.

Since I was in the middle of cooking, we decided to have a lunch that did not really require any cooking, other than to blanch. Lovely Collard Sushi is not really sushi, per se. There is no rice, or nori…simply fresh veggies and hummus rolled in a light blanched sushi leaf.

If you would like to try these, I did find the recipe online here – Lovely Collard Sushi.

The recipe calls for 4 collard leaves, Our Hummus, and a variety fresh veggies, which you can easily customize to your liking. The recipe states that this would make 20-25 pieces. I got 24 pieces, so they were pretty much on target.

To make the collard leaves more pliable, I shaved down some of the thick spine. I don’t know where I read to do that, but I’m guessing it was from a raw food website. Now, you are supposed to blanch the collard leaves for 30 seconds, but as soon as they turned bright green, I removed them from the water. This only took about 10 seconds.  They were definitely pliable enough at this point.

Once I assembled the hummus and the veggie on the collard leaves, it was easy to roll them up tightly. I found these much easier to roll than nori rolls.

Cutting the pieces was an entirely different story. I used a very sharp serrated knife, but the hummus still oozed out and the “sushi” came out a bit messy.

Messy or not, these were really good. I can definitely see us having this for lunch in the summertime, out on the deck, soaking up some Vitamin D.  The collards were tender, but sturdy.  The hummus was creamy, even if it was messy.  And the veggies were super fresh.  We enjoyed every bite and devoured them in one sitting.

I will definitely be making these again. After all, you can never get enough veggies in your diet, right?

NOTES:

• Another great use for Our Hummus, which has really become a staple around here.
• I cut the carrots into matchsticks instead of shredding.
• Next time, we will try making them into wraps instead of cut to resemble sushi.
• I originally thought this recipe would be good for company, but it didn’t come as pretty as I would like a dish to look for entertaining.
• The mango really didn’t add much to the taste, so not worth the trouble. Next time, I will omit.
• We used parsley instead of cilantro, but I didn’t care for it. Next time, I will omit.
• I may actually try this with sushi rice and see how it goes.