Vegetarian Lebanese Stew with Peas and Rice (Bazelle with Riz) for #Food of the World

For this month's Food of the World event, we are going to Lebanon. While browsing through the internet for vegetarian Lebanese dishes, I landed on this page with a ton of recipes to choose from. I finally narrowed the whole list down to about 10 dishes, but more than half of them were desserts and I had to resist the temptation of making those rich and creamy desserts. I have them bookmarked and will pace them out and try them in the future.

At the end, I made this vegetarian version of Lebanese Stew with Peas. Traditionally this dish is made with beef or lamb mince. I used soy granules/ TVP instead. The highlight of the dish is the Baharat spice blend that is added to the stew. It is a mix of ground spices and it adds a nice warmth and lot of flavor to the dish.

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Vegetarian Arroz Tapado (Peruvian Rice & Soy Granules) for #Food of the World

Starting this month, I will be co-hosting Food of the World event that was started by Diane who blogs @ Simple Living & Eating. Every 2nd Tuesday of the month a new country will be chosen and you can link up your creations as well.
This month we are taking a trip to South America, Peru. My globe trotting husband has recently visited Peru on business and just like his other trips he didn't get a chance to visit any of the historic or touristic places. He brought us fridge magnets and a Peru key chain as souvenirs :-)

I actually made a sweet quinoa porridge for today, but I was not happy with the way it turned out, so didn't take pics and then procrastinated until the last minute to make today's dish. I found this vegetarian version of Arroz Tapado on Peru Delights blog and loved how colorful and fresh the dish looked.

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Austrian Vegetable Strudel

For this month's International Food Challenge, our host Briju Parthasarathy is taking us on a culinary tour of Austria. She gave us 4 Lower Austrian dishes to choose from and I picked the Austrian Vegetable Strudel.

Some wiki gyan about Strudel: Strudel is a type layered pastry with a -- most often -- sweet filling. Strudel is most often associated with Austrian cuisine but is also a traditional pastry in the whole area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The savory strudel is filled with crisp tender vegetables and cheese. It almost sounded like the veggie pastry we used to get back home at the bakeries. Original recipe had rutabaga, parsnip etc, but I used vegetables I had on hand; sweet potato, carrots, green beans and red pepper. Also to add some protein, I added some soy granules as well.

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Soy Methi Rice

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 2
Theme: Miscellaneous - Rice dish using leftover rice
Dish: Soy Methi Dill Rice

I sometimes crave for simple and easy dishes that don't take too long to cook and are filling and tasty. Even though I love spicy and masaledar (does this translate to more spicy in English?), sometimes all you want is food with simple flavors. Today's dish is just that and much more in terms of healthy ingredients used.

Recipe is courtesy of my new found Telugu cooking show. This dish is a great way to use up leftover rice and if you really want to amp up the health quotient of this dish, use brown rice instead of white or even better use quinoa or any other whole grain.

It has soy in the form of granules or TVP, methi (fenugreek leaves) and dill leaves (called 'soya'kura in Telugu). I'm not a big fan of dill, because I feel it is a little strong to my palate, but I didn't even notice its presence. It blended with the methi and the taste was very pleasant.

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