Beluga Lentil + Maitake Bowl w/Black Garlic Vinaigrette

Let’s get DRESSED.

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Season: Summer
Dosha: Vata

I know this may come as a surprise, but even when you have so much cooking wisdom, love ingredients, adore cooking, possess all of the appliances and fancy tools, have a pantry full of ingredients + even a farm share of gorgeous vegetables practically dropped at your doorstep….S O M E T I M E S you still don’t feel like cooking. Or you don’t know what to make. This is a problem because you still have to eat a few times each day, which is SO INCONVENIENT IN TIMES LIKE THIS.

Good thing there’s breakfast cereal for breakfast. And toast! Easy. Phew.

And for dinner, there’s cereal again! Or toast…maybe with eggs!? Or you could always order a pizza. Someone once told me that everything could be a taco, which means that there’s a possibility without thinking very hard.

 

But lunch is harder. There aren’t any easy shoe-ins for lunch – lunch has to be made by someone. And in my house, no matter how lazy, un-inspired or busy I am, that person is me. (Sigh.)

 

In times like this, I’m really grateful to have a few tricks up my sleeve. I typically have either a pot of beans on the countertop in the InstantPot (or a jar of beans made earlier in the week in the fridge,) and a rice cooker full of grains waiting to be enjoyed (made most mornings right after breakfast. But beans and rice get pretty boring and frankly aren’t close to being enough — nourishment or fun. And that’s where having an arsenal of dressings comes in — my best trick yet. Yep – getting DRESSED is arguably the most important task I do in the kitchen all week.

Mind you that “getting dressed” doesn’t necessarily mean wearing pants when I cook (too much?) or donning an apron. I’m talking about the sauces that drizzle over whatever I find in the fridge + pantry to make a meal that’s interesting, fun and promises – bite by bite – to pull me out of the cooking doldrums. (Or, at least to make sure that I don’t starve while I’m down there.) And when I can make this component a super-charged part of the meal, it’s a win win win win.

 

If I were to go into my fridge right now, I probably have two or three little jars of dressings at the ready. There’s an experimental one I made the other night with coconut milk, orange juice, olive oil + cilantro. DIVINE on tacos + bowls of black beans with quinoa. There’s a creamy little cumin-yogurt sauce that I’ve been drizzling on baby greens, and a zesty cilantro thang that goes great with eggs. And then, there’s this Black Garlic Vinaigrette that’s really something special. Black garlic is an ingredient to know about, and this dressing is an easy way to amp up the flavor (and function) of your meals, even when you’re at your laziest + most uninclined.

 

So today, when I went to make my lunch, I reached for the lentils I’d made yesterday in the Instant Pot (ready to go!) some steamed rice from the rice cooker (always on the counter, filled with grains!) and added some pickled beets, golden roasted maitake mushrooms, a handful of microgreens, whatever seasonal veggies I have at the ready too. Maybe some feta, or a fried egg? But most importantly,   a fat drizzle of this Black Garlic Vinaigrette.

 

So c’mon, let’s get DRESSED.

Black Garlic – what is it?

Before you can have a Black Garlic Vinaigrette, you need to know black garlic. And before you know black garlic, I want you to know WHY black garlic. So here we go.

 

Garlic, on its own is an incredible natural healer known to:

It’s a ridiculously cleansing, super-purifying, digestion-increasing wonder of an ingredient punch. In Ayurvedic medicine, garlic-based treatments are used for everything from fixing digestive disorders to relieving asthma—even reversing hair loss! Garlic has this positive effect on our bodies because it’s remarkably heating. This very pungent flavor gets things up and moving all over the system (which is often why you may have indigestion, diarrhea or other feelings of “heat” in the body after eating it.) For some of us with “heated personalities,” and “on fire lives,”(me! And also, me!) this ingredient may be too much altogether.  (YEP.) This intense heating effect makes garlic as an ingredient a very potent medicine: as in to be used for specific healing purposes and NOT put on every meal, we eat.

 

This brings us to black garlic, literally a fermented garlic bulb that has turned black during the anaerobic fermentation process. There’s nothing rotten about black garlic, in fact, this ingredient is pretty sweet. The fermentation process that black garlic undergoes during the two-week + period of time when it stews in its own juices, concentrating its sugars, losing some of its pungency, concentrating its minerals and nutrients, and becoming more bioavailable makes it more…well, sweet. During this period of time, this fabulous little allium also becomes easier for our bodies to digest, and use, without the intense impact of the acid, but with an increased amount of all the incredible benefits that garlic, when raw or cooked, provides.

 

The fermented nature of black garlic changes the ingredient enough that it actually makes it less firey, less pungent, more grounding, and more beneficial to firey constitutions like mine. It makes it more accessible. And makes it a powerful ally as an ingredient (instead of an indigestible enemy.)

Less “what” we eat + more “why”

More important than the “what” we eat in Ayurveda is the “how,” and the “why.”

 

The WHY that Ayurveda applies to so many natural principles is what has made me so enthralled with this incredible science. It’s helped me to unlock a whole new level of wisdom in my own body, in the bodies of my clients, to reach a whole new understanding for what truly great food is and how to make it, and has introduced me to a broad realm of foods I never knew about + often overlooked.

 

To understand “why not garlic all the time,” we need to know a little bit more about the “how” foods interact in our bodies according to this philosophy. This is the way that I think about building my meals, menus, and even how I shop for ingredients.

In Ayurveda, all foods can be classified according to two main metrics. Let’s dive in.

The doshas

First, there is which dosha they work on. Dosha means constitution, or basic body type and energetic or mental tendencies. Every person is composed of some combination of the three doshas: Kapha (earth/water), pitta (fire/water), and vata (air/ether). And this combination dictates a great deal about our physical, mental, and emotional beings.

The best ways to eat, sleep and exercise for us INDIVIDUALLY all have to do with what doshas are predominant in our beings. For people with a good amount of fire in their constitution (me!) who lead busy, passionate lives (also me!) adding fire to the flame in the form of garlic is a tricky way of eating + fueling.

Why? Because, in general, like attracts like and, if left unchecked, imbalances cause greater imbalances. If you are a Kapha person, for example, you might naturally prefer to eat sweet, heavy foods— things that increase Kapha. You are actually recommended to avoid these foods and, instead, choose pitta foods to boost the inner fire or vata foods to lighten and reduce Kapha.

You can see that our friends the onions and garlic fall firmly into the pitta category. That is why they’re so amazing when you get a cold and want to dial up your immune system. (The digestive fire is a purifying force responsible for burning out infections.) However, if you are already pitta-dominant or just don’t want more fiery energy in your life, eat them with caution.

The gunas (or qualities)

The second other Ayurvedic metric is the three gunas. According to the yogic tradition (dating back as far as the Bhagavad Gita), the gunas are fundamental qualities or principles that underlie all manifestations. They are at work in all matters, including human bodies and minds.

Everything you eat influences the balance of the gunas within your being, within your life. Similar to the rush of sugar we experience when we eat a box of popsicles, each and every food has a similar impact on the body…but not always as obvious to ourselves and others. Watch, the next time you eat a meal with all six flavors included, just how grounded, at ease, and sorta enlightened you feel. Notice how soothed and juicy you feel when you eat a fresh piece of fruit this summer. And, notice how agitated, amped + firey you (and your digestive system) feel the next time you pile on the garlic. The more sensitive you are, the more you will become aware of the effects that diet has on your physical and mental state.

So, I use black garlic instead!

I have a LOT of pitta in my being, and the energy of my life is often rajasic – busy, it’s important that I build in sattvic and tamasic foods to keep balance in my body and my life.   And this means leaving out the garlic….UNLESS it’s black garlic. The fermented nature of this food reduces its rajasic nature, and makes it a better fit for me. I use it in many of the places where a recipe would call for garlic, I take pause and choose wisely. Can my firey life withstand a little extra heat right now? When the answer is yes, I go for the raw garlic. But when the answer is no, and I want a more subtle but still complex flavor, but with a less inflammatory package, I reach for a few cloves of umami, dark black garlic. I buy my bulbs from our local spice store, but there are many grocery stores that carry this ingredient now, and you can make it yourself if you’re quite avid.

 

I blend it into vinaigrettes like this one, but I also smash the tender bulbs and use it in pasta as a flavor builder, add it to hummus, swirl it into soups, or generally use it anywhere that garlic is welcome (so many places!)

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