Tomato Onion Chutney and Cilantro Coconut Chutney

These chutneys are kind of a pair, a matched set, because they go with the Indian Breakfast bowl recipe from my cookbook Tasting Pennsylvania, which was gifted to me for the cookbook from Cafe Santosha in Trexlertown. If you haven’t been there, and you are local to me in Eastern Pennsylvania, please go.

Cilantro Coconut Chutney and Tomato, Onion, and Golden Raisin Chutney. Photo by Alison Conklin.

They’re delicious on their own, with eggs or anything else you’d want to use a chutney for, quite honestly. As a team, they work great with the breakfast bowl, but if you have leftovers, I don’t think you’ll be hard-pressed to figure out how to use them up—whether that means making the breakfast bowl again, or mixing it with rice or other cooked meats, that’s your decision. All good.

Ingredients for tomato, onion, and golden raisin chutney

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 2 medium onions, finely diced (about 2 cups)

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper

• 1/3 cup golden raisins

• 1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 1 to 2 tablespoons red wine or sherry vinegar

• 1 (15-ounce) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes

• 1/2 Thai chili pepper or a pinch of chili flakes

Yield: 12 ounces

Instructions

Heat the olive oil in a medium saute pan and cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until they turn golden brown about 5 to 8 minutes. Add the salt and pepper, and stir a few minutes more. Add the raisins, sugar, and cardamom, and stir to combine.

Deglaze the pan with the wine or sherry vinegar and scrape any bits that are sticking to the pan. Add the tomatoes and pepper. Simmer and cook uncovered stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes.

Refrigerated, the chutney will keep for about 2 weeks. Serve at room temperature.

Ingredients for cilantro coconut chutney

• 1 small green chile

• 1 pinch ground cumin

• 1 tablespoon agave nectar

• 1 large bunch fresh cilantro, tough ends removed

• 1 lime, zested and juiced

• 2 cups unsweetened flaked coconut

• Salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste

• 1 to 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, as needed

Makes 1 pint.

Instructions

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together the chile, cumin, agave nectar, cilantro, lime zest and juice, flaked coconut, and salt and pepper. Add the oil while the machine is running. The chutney should be a thick paste, not thin like a pesto. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Serve at room temperature. Chutney will keep in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Indian Breakfast Bowl

This, right here, is one of my favorite things to make. It’s not something I was brilliant enough to come up with on my own, but I was blessed enough to be able to share it in my cookbook Tasting Pennsylvania (2019, Farcountry Press). It’s a collection of 100 recipes from contemporary Pennsylvania cooking, dining, and eating.

It comes to me from Cafe Santosha, a lovely little eatery that’s tucked inside a health food store, so you know it’s already got a lot of good stuff going for it. And so I am now sharing it with you because it’s plant-based and delicious.

Indian Breakfast Bowl from Cafe Santosha. Photo by Alison Conklin. Recipe reprinted with permission from Tasting Pennsylvania, Farcountry Press, 2019.

This Indian Breakfast bowl is a delicious and filling dish that owner Sarah Collins serves at her cafe. Now you can make it at home. You may look at this recipe and think, why are there two chutneys? And where on earth am I going to find curry leaves? There are two chutneys because you need both of them. You can find them elsewhere on this blog.

And the curry leaves? You can get them at some Indian grocers or, if you’re like me and you live near a cool market that stocks all sorts of groovy things for food lovers, you can find curry leaves at the Easton Public Market Highmark Farmstand. Whatever you do, please don’t swap curry powder. It’s not the same thing. If you can’t find them, don’t sweat the small stuff, as they say. It will still be really delicious, and you won’t regret a single moment of making—or eating—this dish.

The chutneys live elsewhere on my website because otherwise this recipe would be too long and no one would want to make it. Please make them ahead of time (the day before or so is fine) so all you have to do is just spoon them out when your breakfast bowl is ready.

Ingredients

• 5 to 6 medium Yukon gold potatoes, 1-inch dice

• 4 tablespoons olive oil, ghee, or coconut oil (divided)

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

• 4 tablespoons mustard seeds

• 6 curry leaves (omit if you cannot find)

• 8 eggs (or 12 ounces firm tofu, drained excess moisture patted out of it)

• Pinch curry powder

• 4 cups baby spinach (or kale)

• 2 cups purple kale, rinsed and torn into small pieces

• 1/2 cup tomato, onion, and golden raisin chutney

• 2 tablespoons cilantro coconut chutney

Instructions

Heat the oven to 400. Toss together the potatoes on a rimmed baking sheet with 2 tablespoons of olive oil or ghee, salt, pepper, 2 tablespoons mustard seeds, and curry leaves. Roast for about 30 minutes until crispy. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat the oil or ghee in a small cast-iron or nonstick skillet on medium heat. Whisk the eggs in a small bowl and season with salt, pepper, and curry powder. Using a spatula, gently push the eggs around the pan, forming “sheets” of eggs. Continue to fold the eggs over themselves until they are just cooked through or a bit undercooked—they will continue to cook once they’re off the heat. This should take about 5 minutes.

(To substitute tofu for the eggs, wrap the tofu in a clean kitchen towel, and place a heavy plate or bowl on it for ten minutes to extract as much water as possible. Pat it dry. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high, and add the tofu. Break it up with ta spoon and saute until it starts to turn golden brown—it should only take about five minutes. Add the salt, pepper, and curry powder. )

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a small saute pan and add 2 or 3 tablespoons of mustard seeds. Stir to coat in oil and when they start to darken after a couple of minutes, become fragrant and then pop, remove from the heat and set aside.

Place a quarter of the spinach and kale in a bowl. Top with about 3/4 cup of potatoes, add a quarter of the eggs or tofu, followed by 2 tablespoons tomato chutney and a teaspoon of cilantro chutney. Garnish with a little bit of mustard seeds on top, and serve with your favorite hot sauce.

Sausage, White Beans and Tomato Stew

This sausage, white beans and tomato stew, my friends, is one of my favorite pantry meals, hands down. I almost always have the ingredients for it, even in a pandemic, my kids will always eat it, and the leftovers—if any make it—are sublime for several days.

Sausage Love

You start with your favorite Italian sausage. Mine happens to come from Giacomo’s on the Hill, here in Easton. I try to buy a couple pounds at a time of their fennel sausage (or the plain, or the parsley and cheese, depending on what’s available). I will cut about a pound of it into 4-5 inch pieces, wrap it in aluminum foil, and then pop it into a ziptop bag. And label the bag, accordingly.

If I am dealing with the sausage immediately, I cut the sausage into link-like pieces (about a half to a full pound, depending) and cook to just to brown it for maybe 5 minutes, then remove it from the pan and set it aside. (I like to do this in a cast iron pan—Stargazer, a local company, is my current favorite.) Then, I start the onion in a Dutch oven over medium heat, adding the herbs, salt and pepper, the chopped pepper, tomatoes, white beans, greens, and so forth. It’s pretty adaptable, but the sausage gives it a ton of taste.

A Word About Cheese

Before serving, I like to sprinkle this soup with Pecorino Romano, simply because it’s got a bit more assertiveness to it, but a good quality Parmesan will work, too. But know what’s even better? Parm Rinds!

Do you wonder what to do with those old rinds of Parmesan or other hard nutty Italian cheeses? (Or Spanish ones, let’s not discriminate). Stick them the freezer. Pop one into your soup or stew, and you’ve got an umami-punch that no one will be able to really detect but will permeate your soup with so much tastiness. I’d suggest doing it for this soup in particular, if you’ve got one, but I’m not putting it on the ingredient list because I didn’t have one. Just pop it in about halfway through the process of cooking and remove before serving. If you want. It will get a little gooey in there, but that’s the point!

Make-Ahead!

This dish is so easy, and you can cook it and let it sit a little bit if need be over low heat. If some of the liquid evaporates, just add a little more water. (I like to save the tomato can and fill it with water so you get some tomato-ey water if you need more.)

Here’s what you do.

Ingredients

• 1 pound (or less) Italian sausage

• 1 tablespoon cooking oil of your choice

• 1 medium onion, chopped

• 1-2 teaspoons Italian seasoning (or equal parts of dried oregano, parsley marjoram, fennel—customize to your liking depending on what the spice rack yields.)

• 1 medium bell pepper (or other frying-type sweet pepper), chopped

• 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained

• 1 (15.5-ounce) can white beans, rinsed and drained (or approximately 1 1/2 cups cooked)

• 2 cups Tuscan kale, cut into thin strips, or baby spinach, left whole

• Salt and pepper to taste, always

• Grated Pecorino Romano cheese

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, for garnish

Directions

Cook the sausage in a cast iron pan for about 5 minutes until it browns on all sides and starts to release juices. Remove from the pan, set aside to cook on a cutting board. When the sausage is cool, slice it thinly.

In a Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high heat and add the onions, stirring to coat. Add the seasonings, and let the onions soften, about five minutes. You want them to start to take on a little bit of color, but not burn. (Most people don’t let their onions cook long enough.) Add the chopped peppers, and cook over medium heat for a few minutes, just to soften.

Add the canned tomatoes with all their juices. If it looks too scant, add half a can’s worth more. Cover and bring to a boil, briefly. Reduce heat to medium-low, add the beans. Simmer for 5-10 minutes to warm through.

Add the sliced kale right before serving, toss it in to gently wilt. Sprinkle Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper on top, stir. Taste. Top with pecorino and chopped parsley, if desired.

Serves 4-6, depending on size of bowls and appetite.

Stability Soup, or Sweet Potato Swiss Chard Soup

Recently, in yoga class, we did some seriously destabilizing things in our flow. Chair pose on the balls of the feet—ok, done that before. But have you ever done down dog with your feet on a blanket and then push back to plank using your feet on the blanket to slide yourself up and out? Did you ever place a blanket on the four corners of your mat, and then put your right foot and right hand on blankets while your left foot and left hand are on the mat, while in plank? How about a Warrior 2 with the back foot on, you guessed it, a blanket?

The point of all this was to get us to really think about the ways in which we are—and are not—engaging in the poses. And the ways in which we are perhaps going through the motions with poses that are very familiar to most of us. In what ways are we going through the motions in life? In what ways are we actually really engaging and feeling all the feels? How do we respond to difficulty? These are some of the questions.

The biggest question, though, is what happens when stability is threatened. When the usual way of grounding oneself in a pose is thrown off kilter? The parameters are blurry, the rules of engagement have changed and they will change yet again.

You can see how this is a metaphor for life.

My adrenals are not cooperating lately, and I’m getting tired more quickly. As a result, my practice is very much in flux. Some days I can handle a flow like this like a champ, and other days my body feels like it weighs a ton and is like a recalcitrant child. I’ve been at this long enough that. I know to take child’s pose, and I don’t have an ego about it. It’s all good. Paying attention to the body is half the battle with yoga. This practice was the sort of all-engrossing type, where you have to be completely present with your body in order to stay aligned and stay safe. Which we did. There is no time or space for the mind to wander. And there were 22 of us in that room, so we were all feeling it together, and falling out of poses and laughing, and expressing our default behavior when things get tough. I found myself adapting to standing in warrior 2 on my towel instead of my blanket, which just kept slipping regardless of anything I did to engage my feet or adductors or outer hips. The towel gave me a little more traction, but not enough to completely do the work for me the way the foot, in direct contact with the earth, would.

I had a rather visceral reaction to this practice, as did many. I was frustrated. I was tired. I adapted. I modified, but I stayed with it. I laughed. I slid like I was on ice. I laughed some more. I had a fleeting moment of tears welling up. In short, I was all over the map. Later on, I realized that the practice was so incredibly challenging because my life has been destabilized for the past two and a half years or so, almost three. The mat practice has been my solace, as it is for many who practice.

What’s all this anatomical nitty gritty got to do with soup, you may be asking.

I decided to make some soup and share it with a friend who was doing me a yogic favor this weekend. I just bought some sweet potatoes at the farmers’ market, and some beautiful swiss chard from a hydroponic grower that’s new to the Easton Farmers’ Market this year.

Potatoes have so many benefits, but mostly, right now, they are a grounding food. We are in winter, contrary to what the thermometer says and the increasingly longer hours of sunlight are telling us. The foods that keep us tethered to winter are root veggies. They grow underground and send their signals out to gather nutrients and strength in order to grow. Winter roots us in similar ways, but we are definitely in a moment of impending emergence and change.

In the meantime, preamble aside, this soup tastes great. Puree or serve it as is—I happen to like the interaction of the flavors when it’s pureed. Something happens with the earthy bitterness of the Swiss chard when it’s pureed with white beans and sweet potatoes. It becomes transformed and less of itself and more of the whole. I know what you are thinking: it looks like baby food.

For this soup, I used purple sweet potatoes and straight up sweets, but you can use what you have on hand. This would be good with Yukon golds, too, but just not as sweet. Sage is the most prominent herb here, which given the yogic element of this soup, seems to make a lot of sense.

I call this Stability Soup, because it is full of grounding foods, because soup is a grounding practice that keeps you both engaged and watchfully detached (chopping and boiling, simmering and waiting, keeping an eye on things from a distance, but trusting it will do its thing while you do something else. And that’s where the magic happens. That’s where you’re on the mat.)

Ingredients

• 1 cup chopped onions

• 2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

• 4 cups chicken or vegetable stock, or water

• 2 cups chopped sweet potatoes, purple or otherwise

• 1 teaspoon dried sage (I used Dalmatian rubbed sage, which is fluffier) or 1 Tablespoon fresh

• 2 cups Swiss Chard, roughly chopped

• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Over medium heat in a Dutch oven or other large stockpot, melt the butter. When the butter has melted, add the onions and saute for 4-5 minutes until translucent. Add salt and pepper and stir.

Add in the stock, sweet potatoes and sage, and turn the heat up to medium-high. Cover, and bring to a boil. Once the soup boils, pop the lid so it’s slightly askew, turn the heat down to low, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Check the potatoes—sweet potatoes cook more quickly than yellow or white potatoes.

Once the potatoes have become tender (they may pierce with a fork), add the Swiss chard and stir gently until it wilts. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, again.

Puree in batches in a high-speed blender, or serve as is.

Serves: 6-8 depending on bowl size and appetite!