Vegetables in Lentil-Drenched Brown Rice Noodles (No Added Fat)

I came up with the idea of pressure cooking vegetables and serving them in a brown rice noodle nest. I had never pressure cooked asparagus, and was curious to know how it would come out. I was originally going to include seitan in the recipe, but instead mixed the Turkish lentil soup that I made two days ago. Here is what I did.

Ingredients

• 3 medium carrots, cut into 3/8" slices
• 1 medium zucchini, cut into 3/8" cubes
• 12 spears of asparagus, cut into 3/4" lengths
• (Optional) 3 kale leaves, stems composted (or discarded) and leaves roughly hand-torn into approx. 3/4" squares
• 2 scallions cut into 3/8" lengths
• 5t tomato paste
• 3t capers
• 1/2 t dried oregano
• 3/8 cup water
• (Optional) 1/4 cup lentil soup (I used leftovers from two days ago)
• (Optional) soy sauce and/or salt and/or hot sauce to taste
• Brown rice noodles (approximately 3 cups dry)

Process

1. I put all of the ingredients except the lentil soup, soy sauce/salt/hot sauce, and noodles, into my Instant Pot and cooked at high pressure for 3 minutes.
2. In the meantime, I set a large stock pot of water to boiling, then reduced the heat and added the noodles, stirring occasionally.
3. When the noodles were cooked in just 2 or 3 minutes, I drained and rinsed, and mixed in the lentil soup.
4. I made a noodle nest on each plate with a hollow in the center, and served the pressure cooked vegetables atop.

Results

Dinner was tasty! I was pleased with how mixing the lentils with the noodles came out. The vegetables all tasted good!

Ideas for the future

I'd like to continue to explore combining soups like lentil with noodles, rice (like kicheri), or pasta. All of my experiments with pressure cooking vegetables have been great!