First post!

[cereta]

Greetings, all, and welcome to batchlunch. I figured I would get things started with the recipe for the lunches I am eating this week.

I call it a recipe, but almost anything can be substituted. Certainly you can add other veggies (bell peppers might be good), and the protein is flexible. I would stick with something hearty like brown rice. Whole wheat orzo would probably be good, but regular orzo might get mushy. For me, at least, the garlic lemon vinaigrette is the key.

Ingredients:
3-4 cups cooked brown rice
1 small onion (I prefer red), diced
1 package grape tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber (I prefer English/seedless), diced
1 package feta crumbles
2 cans tuna, drained, OR 2 cups cooked salmon, OR 2 cups cooked chicken
Handful of cilantro, chopped (optional, but tasty if you like cilantro)

Vinaigrette:
1-3 cloves of garlic
1 cup lemon juice (bottled is fine)
1 cup vegetable oil or other light oil

I mix the vinaigrette in a mini food processor. Otherwise, mix everything and divide into 4-5 containers. About two cups of the final mix makes a good lunch, especially paired with a small apple. Can be eaten cold or warmed in the microwave, but I wouldn't heat it too much.

It keeps very well over 4-5 days. In fact, the peak of tastiness is about day three. You could add more tomatoes later on to freshen it, or even add some lettuce with a little extra lemon juice.

Two salads: Beet-fennel Slaw and Quinoa with Chickpeas and Olives

[ellen_fremedon]

Thank you for creating this comm, cereta! I do a lot of batch cooking, and I'm always looking for new ideas.

I improvised two salads last night for this week's lunches, and they both seem to be successful:

Beet-Fennel Slaw

two large-ish red beets, well-scrubbed. If the peels are too thick to bruise when you press hard with a finger, peel them, too.
one large-ish bulb fennel
half a red onion
one small bunch mint

olive oil
cider vinegar
salt
lemon juice

Grate the beets coarsely into a bowl. (Or, if you really want to practice your knife skills, julienne them; I didn't have the patience.) Halve the fennel bulb and slice as thinly as possible. If you've got a lot of fennel, you may wish to reserve the stems and fronds for another use.

Dice the onion finely. Chop the mint into very thin ribbons; I wound up with about 1/2 cup, loosely packed, but you could use more. Add fennel, onion, and mint to the beets and mix thoroughly.

Make about 1/4 cup of cider vinaigrette, using whatever proportion of vinegar to oil you prefer, and about 1/2 tsp salt. Dress the slaw. Add lemon juice, starting with a tablespoon and adding more to taste.

Makes a lot of slaw.


Quinoa with Chickpeas and Olives

I didn't measure while I was working-- I know, I know, bad Ellen-- so all quantities are pretty approximate.

1/2 C quinoa (uncooked)
2 cans chickpeas, drained
about 6 oz mixed Greek olives
four picked peppadew peppers
zest of one lemon, removed with a vegetable peeler
the other half of that red onion
fennel fronds or other fresh herbs, about 2 tbsp minced

coriander, cumin, dill, allspice, turmeric, paprika
olive oil
lemon juice


Steam the quinoa until fluffy; a rice cooker is very good for this. Mince the lemon zest and peppadews into tiny tiny shards; dice the onion a little larger; mince your herbs. Toss them with the chickpeas. Add the spices and a good slug of olive oil and toss to coat. Pit the olives and chop or tear them into bite-sized pieces, or smaller if you like. Add the quinoa while it's hot and toss to combine. Add lemon juice to taste and salt if necessary.

Makes a lot of salad.


The two salads complement each other well. The chickpea salad would go well with any kind of bitter greens; I'm going to braise the beet greens later this week to go with mine. Oranges, greek yogurt, and any sort of flatbread would also be nice accompaniments.

Two Meat recipes: Soy Sauce Chicken & Pork Rib Stew

[delfinnium]

This is an excellent community idea - and I hope to get ideas from this! I tend to cook big batches of food because I came from a family with five kids, so we'd cook enough for two meals, one for dinner and the leftovers to pack for lunch the next day.

Both my recipes are meat dishes - they presume that you'd cook enough rice to go with them (rice is easy to cook in the morning if necessary, and I've cooked enough rice that it'd last a week in the fridge, and only need to be heated up). Any sort of green vegetables would go good with these; again, they're easy to add on the side, or just don't bother and make up the vitamin requirements with fruit.


( Soy sauce chicken )

( Pork Rib Stew )