If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
It turns out, that to meet my criteria of foods that can be eaten on their own or used as an ingredient, “U” is the most difficult yet! I had to resort to searches for food beginning with “U” and Urid Dal and Umeboshi were the only two. Now Umeboshi is a Japanese salty pickled plum which, though eaten on its own as well as a central ingredient in Japanese cuisine, and which I have tasted, I cannot claim any knowledge of recipes, so your google search is as good as mine! What I can say, is that of the five basic tastes, Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami, it hits Sour and Salty spot on! Although Umeboshi is often described as a salted Plum, it is more nearly related to an Apricot. If you are a super-taster and enjoy new flavours, I urge you to try it – it grew on me and I really ought to try finding and trying some recipes.
Urid Dal is one of the many varieties of lentils so popular in Indian cooking, it is a white lentil and I decided to give it a try in my new pressure cooker. I found a recipe (pictured above) by the lovely Candice aka The Edgy Veg! It was an InstantPot recipe and since my Ambiano pressure cooker is not, and cannot achieve the same pressure, I had to adapt the recipe by adding 1/3 extra minutes according to instructions from this site – intriguingly called The Aisle of Shame – those of you who frequent Aldi or Lidl supermarkets will know what this alludes to…. It is in fact a site which promotes Aldi goods despite the name!
So using sixteen minutes and substituting a can of tomatoes for fresh, I can report that the lentils were absolutely, perfectly cooked! Not so my next attempt with the pressure cooker – to cook butter beans – always a good test because they are a large bean and prone to losing their skins aka turning to mush… There is a slow cooking setting on the Ambiano pressure cooker which runs for two hours, I soaked the beans first with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda – it helps to soften pulses – and after rinsing them well, covered them liberally with water, chose the high pressure option and crossed my fingers. The Butter Beans were al dente and I foolishly decided to try another short period of cooking at full pressure – mushed! Ah well, a pressure cooker of any description has a bit of a learning curve…
You! Pronounced “U”
I know – it’s a stretch but, as Archy, the cockroach, reincarnated from a free-verse poet used to say “wot the hell – wot the hell” (Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis)
Tomorrow I am going to summarise all the diets from full-on Carnivore to payed-up Vegan and I would please like to know YOUR story and where you are both in reality and aspirational on the spectrum if you care to share in the comments and I will feature tomorrow… Why do you eat what you eat, are there health reasons or other necessitations or do you roam freely through foodstuffs purely on taste…
I stopped eating meat (but not seafood) in high school, and I think it was primarily to irritate my parents. In addition, I was attending a girl’s boarding school, and the meat offerings were gross. Plus it was the ’70s.
This eating style, pescatarian, continued until I turned 40 and succumbed to Bacon. Well, yes, there WERE the occasional Chinese Green Beans with bits of pork prior to that, but I clearly remember standing in a kitchen in Indianapolis scarfing down a slice while frying some for my mid-life crisis boyfriend.
It took another 20+ years to confess to my mom that yes, I now ate (some) meat. I wanted her meatloaf recipe!
Anyhow, it was never anything moral, it was simply youthful diffidence and then flavor (and mouthfeel – still don’t like chewing slabs of meat).
ps: I hear you on the difficulties “pantsing” A-Z. This morning, not only did I have to write the post, I had to create the artwork! (And it took 3 images before I was satisfied). https://www.anne-m-bray.com/blog/177137/atozchallenge-2022-u-is-for-utah
Thanks for visiting Anne, just been over to yours for a gander – I like today’s altered photograph…
Ah I am from India and connect a lot with Urad dal. You can use it to make anything from dosa (crepes) batter to fritters. Just ping me if you need any recipe and I’ll share the easiest and perfect ones with you! You would generally need to soak urad dal for a couple of hours to make anything for better and quicker results.
Dropping by via A-Z challenge from momandideas.com
Thanks for that offer of recipes – I might just do that when the madnee=ss of April is over…
I’m a guinea pig and I eat only vegetables, and I eat them raw. But you probably want to know more about my Mummy. She’s been vegetarian since 1986, but she eats cheese. She doesn’t eat fish or meat and avoids eggs.
She’s been doing quite well on her eating programme to lose weight until Easter. I think she should go back to it, even if it does mean she spends longer in the kitchen every day.
She says the problem with most people going vegan these days is they don’t eat a balanced diet – beans and lentils are essential, not ‘meat-free’ products they substitute meat-looking dishes with.
I only wrote that because she told me to. 🙂
Ludo
When I was in the US we used to order something on the phone , we would spell out the letters of the name to prevent accent related confusions… i would go J as in Japan, A as in apple etc . When it came to Y I would say Y as in You… after the silence i was met with , i realized how confusing that is and shifted to other Y things 😀
Haha – you are like me – I never bothered to learn the standard international code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet#:~:text=The%2026%20code%20words%20are,%2Dray%2C%20Yankee%2C%20Zulu.
but made up my own too – the Y in that is Yankee which would either be very appropriate being in the US or maybe difficult if you were in the deep south where Yankees meant the northern enemy in the civil war…