This recipe was adapted from The Best – Ever Vegetarian Cookbook by Nicola Graimes. I bought it recently while perusing a used bookshop in downtown Reno a couple of weeks ago. We went there to visit our friends Karen and Veronica.
It was fun spending the weekend at their gi-normous house, their two lovely and charming kids, Cooper and Madison, plus all their pets. Wow! They’ve got four dogs, two bunnies, two cats and a lizard. Amazingly, everyone got along just fine, that is until we brought our English bulldog, Clarence, to the party. I guess he needs to get out more and socialize. He freaked out for the first evening we were there but thank goodness he finally settled down! We were afraid that our weekend was going to turn into a disaster. Maybe with Clarence entering middle age now, he’s becoming a little less rambunctious.
This loaf cake is a very granola-style dish, though it tastes great even so. All of your vegetarian and even “full-feeding” friends will enjoy it. It calls for a lot of ingredients and it is a bit laborious but well worth it.
The original recipe used red kidney beans, but I only had pink ones, feijão rosinha in Portuguese, which I cooked myself from a package of dried beans. I think they have a sweeter taste and look cuter than red kidney. You can use canned beans to save time. I prefer the taste of home cooked beans over the canned type, plus they’re cheaper and they freeze well.
My version of this dish departs in numerous other ways from the original in the Graimes cookbook, though she remains my inspiration. In a way, it reminds me of Taste of Beirut style eggplant bulgur casserole, as some of the ingredients are very similar.
bolo de feijão rosinha com cogumelos, or vegetarian mushroom and pink bean loaf
1 lb crimini mushrooms, sliced
1 white onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 tbsp dry white wine
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
2 cup cooked pink beans
1 egg white, lightly beaten
½ cup cream of wheat
1 cup cracked wheat (bulgur), pre-soaked for 2 hours and drained
1 tbsp fresh thyme, minced
1 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced
Kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
extra virgin olive oil
red pepper flakes
Pre-heat oven to 350F. Grease a loaf pan with olive oil then line with parchment paper and set aside.
Place 2 tbsp of olive oil, onion and garlic in a pan on medium heat. Sauté for a couple of minutes to bring to a sweat. Add mushrooms, bell pepper, white wine, sherry vinegar and continue sautéing for few minutes until mushrooms and peppers have softened slightly. Turn heat off and let cool a bit.
Transfer sautéed vegetables to food processor. Add beans and process until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and using a spatula add cream of wheat, bulgur, nutritional yeast, black pepper, salt, thyme, rosemary, pepper flakes and about one tbsp of olive oil. Taste it and adjust flavors if necessary. Fold in egg white.
Press dough into leaf pan. Bake for about an hour. Check for doneness during the last 10 minutes of cooking. Remove from oven let it rest for 5 minutes. Invert loaf on a platter and remove parchment paper. Turn it over again. Drizzle olive oil over loaf and garnish with fresh herbs. Serve warm or at room temperature.
The nutrional yeast gives this loaf a bit of a parmesan cheese-like taste, and, with the mushrooms, makes the dish rich in B vitamins.