Earthen Oven Veggies, Rice & Beans…Oh My!
What to do with all of this remaining heat you ask? Well just keep on cookin’!!! Practically anything you have in your fridge or cabinets you can cook in the earthen oven and this will provide you with good eats for the remainder of the week. I decided to throw together a curried vegetable dish in the cast iron pan and some rice with coconut milk. The veggies cooked up beautifully in only about 25 min with one stirring. The rice however, I think I’ll need to keep experimenting with because it was still very watery after the 25 min.; I decided to finish it up on the stove top because I was starving! The oven was still so hot, but being that we haven’t been to the grocery store in a while, I was having trouble finding other things to cook. I ran across a bag of dried beans, which I had heard you could slow-cook in the ovens, but didn’t quite buy it. I tossed the beans in a metal pot, covered them with water, put the lid on, and then stuck it in the oven. I closed the door and decided to forget about it until the morning, completely thinking I’d wake up to either hard beans and water, or pure mush. Around 8am the next morning, I pulled the oven door off (still hot) and pulled out the most perfectly cooked beans I’d ever seen!!! Not mushy! But crispy and well-cooked! Looks like dinner for tonight!
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| curried vegetables |
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| slow-cooked beans overnight |
So all in all….in one firing of 1 hr. 45 min. and a small bucket of scrap wood, I cooked 3 loaves of delicious bread, curried vegetables, and a pot of beans!!! Not bad for my first try. I think next time I’ll have even more dishes lined up to cook up! Good (and healthy) eats!!!
Unlike my baking recipes, when I cook, I measure nothing. Here’s my recipe for curried vegetables:
Earthen Oven Curried Vegetables
1/2 sweet potato sliced
1 small onion sliced
4 cloves of garlic minced
3 tablespoons of ghee (indian clarified butter)
1 bunch of kale chopped
2 dried red peppers chopped
1 tablespoon of red curry paste
a pinch of sea salt
a few large shakes of curry powder
a dollop of honey
Combine all ingredients in a cast-iron pan except for the kale. Mix.
Place in oven and close door.
Stir after approximately 15 min.
Add kale. Cook for another 10 min. or until veggies look tender and done.
Serve over coconut milk rice.