Peanut Butter Cookies

DRY INGREDIENTS (measure first, and whisk together)
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt (optional; usually, peanut butter has salt, so you can skip this if you want)

WET (microwave for 1 minute)
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter (lightly spray your measuring cup with cooking spray OR grease it with oil to make the peanut butter come out easier)
1 TB vanilla extract (if it's the really potent fancy stuff, you can use 1 tsp; I just like a lot of vanilla)
3 TB water OR coconut milk OR juice
1 tsp shortening (optional)

Preheat oven to 350ºF

Mix together the dry ingredients until combined. Whisk together so that you know all the baking soda is evenly distributed.

Combine the wet ingredients in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave for a minute. Beat the ingredients around for a bit until they're all combined. Add the dry to the wet, about 1/3 cup at a time. Mix thoroughly.

Drop by 1 1/2 TB spoonfuls onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 11 minutes on the middle lower part of the oven (not all the way at the bottom, but towards the bottom).

THE COOKIES WILL FALL APART EASILY IF YOU TAKE THEM OFF THE TRAY NOW. Don't take them off the tray until they're cooled.

Yield: 21 cookies. You will need 3 baking trays, because they'll only fit about 7 comfortably on the tray. Let cool on the tray itself for at least 10 minutes. Eat

Based on the recipe written by Blissful Basil, found here: http://blissfulbasil.com/2013/10/06/soft-and-tender-peanut-butter-cookies-vegan-and-gluten-free/

Variations:
Substitute out 2/3 cup of the flour for rolled oats, or ground rolled oats.
Add in 1/3 cup of coconut flour, and remove 1/3 cup of AP flour.
Add in 1 tsp almond extract.
Add in 1/2 cup of crushed roasted unsalted peanuts.

Soy-free mushroom stir-fry

I'm out of soy sauce. I'm also out of noodles. I have pasta, but not those quick-cooking noodles like you find at the Chinese market. I have ginger, but it's seen better days. I have it soaking in a bowl of water in my fridge. I was in the mood for a stir-fry, but didn't feel like going to the market. I have to be downtown anyway on Thursday, and I'd sooner do it all at once then.

I know that there are those of you who can't (or won't?) eat soy. This is one of those times when I won't be asking you to buy a weird ingredient to substitute the taste of soy sauce, because the mushrooms have a ton of taste on their own. This recipe is important to follow pretty closely. If you increase the amounts, it doesn't work so well.

5 - 7 large white button mushrooms, cut into large chunks (this is important)
3 cloves of garlic, minced (not the kind in the vinegar; if you don't have fresh, use a few shakes of garlic powder)
2 tsp grated ginger (if you don't have fresh, skip it)
2 tsp sesame seeds
1 TB peanut oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1/4 of a small onion, sliced into slivers
1/2 a small carrot, sliced into rounds
1/3 cup water, reserved
2 cups rice
Salt, to taste (IMPORTANT to add salt)

Heat a wide shallow skillet (or wok, preferably) over highest heat. When it gets hot, add the oil, and the mushrooms in rapid succession. Furiously toss the mushrooms around, so that they get evenly coated in oil. Let the mushrooms sizzle and squeak like mad. They will begin to get a very dark brown crust on them. If they don't, your heat is too low, or your pan is too crowded. This only works when the mushrooms have plenty of room to jump around the pan. This initial step will give the flavour for the rest of the dish, so don't skimp on this step.

Add the garlic, ginger, sesame seeds, onion, carrot, and sesame oil (in that order), and toss to cook through. When the pan gets too dry, splash in about 1 - 3 TB of water, to loosen things up a bit. This will not only prevent your food from sticking like mad, but also distribute the mushroomy flavour throughout. Add the rice, and toss through.

Salt to taste, and toss through. Adjust seasoning as needed.

If you have them (I don't) garnish with chopped scallions.

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What I love about this version is that you don't have to work hard to get that good taste through the food. I know it's extremely simple in the flavour department, but it tasted pretty awesome. The version I made didn't even have the ginger or the carrots OR the sesame oil. It was just the onion and mushroom with rice (and a bit of cayenne). So tasty.

Flash Gaajar Halva

The traditional version of this recipe involves large quantities of dairy, huge tubs of sugar, and ages of time spent in boiling, reducing, and stirring, along with plenty of anxiety about not burning the whole mess. This version takes about ten minutes or so. My friends Anjali and Rehmah were at my house, eating lunch. Someone mentioned sweets of some sort, and Rehmah instantly got a craving for some kind of sweet. I didn't have much else in the house, so I knocked this version out very quickly, both to calm Rehmah's cravings, and to make sure that Anjali got to taste some too (as she was about to head out for a hot date that night).

The name was not my idea. It was Rehmah's.

For the record, you had a Pakistani lady (Rehmah) and a Punjabi lady (Anjali) who loved how the dish turned out. That's how I knew it was a keeper.

1 pound carrots, grated
1 TB neutral flavoured oil (peanut, canola, corn)
2 cardamom pods, crushed
3 TB granulated sugar
1 1/2 TB cornstarch
2 cups coconut milk

In a pot, combine the carrots, oil, and cardamom. Sautee the carrots over high heat, until they are softened. While the carrots cook, whisk together the cornstarch and the coconut milk.

Once the carrots are softened, add the sugar, and stir it through. The sugar will melt rather quickly, and get caramelised. The carrots will turn a slightly darker colour too. This is what you want to happen, so don't worry when it happens.

Once the sugar is caramelised and lightly browned, add the coconut milk and cornstarch mixture. Bring the liquid to a full rushing boil, and continue to boil for one minute with constant stirring. Turn off the heat, and allow to cool down to room temperature before serving.

Yeast Belgian Waffles

Makes about 3 1/2 Belgian waffles

2 cups all purpose flour
3 TB cornstarch
1 cup water, microwaved for 1 minute
3/4 cups soy OR almond OR coconut milk, microwaved for 1 minute
1/2 packet (2 tsp) yeast
3 TB sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 tsp salt

SET ASIDE
1 TB vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder

In a bowl, combine the water, almond milk, and sugar. Whisk until the sugar is dissolved. If the liquid is body heat, whisk in the yeast. If it's too hot, add the canola oil, and then add the yeast. Either way, get the yeast dissolved. Then, add the flour, cornstarch, canola oil, and salt. Let set covered with plastic wrap for 1 hour, in a warm place (or over a bowl of warm water, if you don't have a warm place). The dough will have doubled in size. If the dough is not doubled in size, let it hang out a bit longer, until it is.

Once the dough is doubled in volume, heat your waffle iron. When the iron is hot, spray it with cooking spray, or brush on some oil. Then, dissolve the baking powder in the vanilla extract. Beat the slurry through the dough. Then, ladle on however much waffle batter your waffle iron needs. Mine needs about 3/4 cup. This will rise a lot, so don't overfill.

Bake on medium heat, if your waffle iron lets you set the heat. Serve piping hot.

These are very easy to split in half, and slather generously with jam, peanut butter, melted chocolate, or whatever combination you can come up with. Eat it like a sandwich. This way, the crispy part on the outside remains crispy, while the pillowy fluffy part inside gets soaked in delicious sweetness.

Sprouted Corn & Brown Rice Blinis

EDIT: I thought that my mother would be horrified, but it looks like she's proud! 

another version of adai. but definitely different. kudo MY SON. i keep doing stuff like this to traditional recipes. go dinu.
love you
amma

I love you too, Amma! 

I learnt about blinis while watching this English cooking show called The Two Fat Ladies. Anyone who's lived with me for any length of time will tell you that I obsessively watched cooking shows, and between Julia Child and The Two Fat Ladies, I was fairly happy to while away hours upon hours of time in front of the television. Fortunately, my mother classed cooking shows under "Educational TV", so she didn't really bother much while I would spend all that time watching those shows.

You see, I was always more fond of reading than watching TV, and what TV I did enjoy watching generally involved nature documentaries on PBS, cooking shows on PBS (both Julia Child and Lydia Bastianich were favourites), and when we finally got cable, cooking shows on the food channel. I loved watching the Discovery channel, and looking at all those exotic places that the crews would go to, and watch the narrator quietly explaining what was going on.

So, while we were limited to 2 TV shows per day, there was no limit to the amount of educational TV we were allowed to watch. And, of course, no limit to how much reading we were allowed to do. Even while grounded, my mother would never curtail my watching of documentaries. There's a reason why my mother rarely resorted to grounding. She found that assigning extra chores was a much stronger deterrent.

But I digress (as usual)! On the episode where they were doing this cocktail party for the Brazilian ambassador to England, Clarissa did blinis. She had these darling little miniature pans that she fried them up in, and at the end, served them with sour cream and caviar. I never did get around to making them on my own, because they involved buckwheat flour, which I couldn't easily get my hands on at the time. Fast forward to a few years later, and I'm in New York, living as a vegan, working in a vegan restaurant. I thought back to that episode, and watched it again, thinking to make something interesting and vegan for a special.

It involved large quantities of butter (melted, so I could easily use oil), then milk (soymilk), then eggs with whipped egg whites. I stopped myself, because it was getting to the point where half the recipe was being substituted, and just watched the show, and let the matter drop. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I started seriously thinking things over. What is a blini, in essence? It's a slightly fermented batter, made of buckwheat and all purpose flour, combined with some kind of fat, and pan-fried. Easy, right? So what makes the eggs and such necessary? Buckwheat flour and wheat flour will have a tendency to not form a firm cake on its own. It should have bubbles in, because it's fermented overnight, but it wouldn't have enough structure and body to stand up on its own.

What does have enough structure, that is also fermented, and doesn't require binder to stay together? DOSA. The South Indians have been making fermented batters since time immemorial. In fact, they even make unfermented (but sprouted or soaked) bean batters to make various pancakes. Why couldn't I just use a base of a fermented bean and rice batter, stir in cornmeal for structure, let that all ferment for a very short time (enough to rehydrate the cornmeal), and then fry it off? It should work, right?

Off I went.

6 cups brown rice
2 cups urad daal
3 cups chickpeas
2 TB fenugreek seeds (WHOLE)

In one bowl, soak the chickpeas in 12 cups of cold water. In another, soak the brown rice in 9 cups of cold water. To the rice bowl, add the fenugreek seeds. Soak the rice and chickpeas overnight. The next day, soak the urad daal for 2 hours in cold water. While the urad daal soaks, drain the chickpeas and rice, and let them hang out in a bowl, drained. Two hours later, when the urad daal is soaked, drain it as well, and let it sit as well. You'll want your beans and rice to hang out for four or five hours so that they can sprout. That evening, grind SEPARATELY the chickpeas, urad daal, and rice, with enough water to get them down to a fine paste.

Don't worry about how much water you're adding. The batter will not end up watery at the end, because you're going to add other stuff to this as well. Once the three pastes have been formed, mix them together thoroughly with a few pinches of salt. Then, in a warm draft-free place, let the batter ferment (covered with a towel) overnight. If your oven is empty, and turned off, just leave it in there. Make sure to put it into a container large enough that if the mixture expands, it has plenty of room to expand. You want a container at least double the size of your batter.

On hot days, you'll only need about four hours to ferment the batter. On colder days, like in the winter, you'll need overnight at the very least. This is OK. If it IS a hot day, and you won't have time to get to the batter by the time it's done fermenting, feel free to refrigerate it, and ferment it for a day. It'll take longer, but you won't harm the taste any.

Then, when it's all fermented and bubbling away, you'll want to add your additional ingredients, based on what you have. For this particular recipe, I had some good quality stone ground cornmeal. I added that, along with ginger, garlic, salt, black pepper, and sweet corn kernels. I mixed everything together until it was a the consistency of a loose dough. Then, I thinned it out with water enough to get it to pancake batter thickness. You want it thin enough that the batter will spread when it hits the griddle, but not so thin that it becomes a crepe.

This is the most important step, after the fermentation of the initial batter. Because you've added fresh ingredients, you need to give the batter a second ferment, and a chance for the cornmeal to rehydrate in the batter. This way, when you cook it, you won't wind up with overly crunchy bits of cornmeal. It's not pleasant, trust me.

Let the batter ferment and rehydrate for at least four hours. This will get the cornmeal completely hydrated and make the eventual product have a light and fluffy inside. Finally, you're ready to go. Unlike blinis, which will spread on you (and therefore require a small pan in which to fry them) this batter will stay coherent. Heat up your largest griddle to about 400°F, and add some fat of your choice (I used Canola oil). Spoon the batter onto the griddle, spacing them about 2 finger's width apart. You want them a little spread out so that they have a chance to cook up on their own, and not meld into one giant mess. When you see the bubbles forming on the top of the cake, and popping, you'll notice the colour change from a milky white to a pale yellow. That's about when you're ready to flip. Carefully flip the cakes over (stabilising them with your hands, as necessary), and cook on the other side.

Much like a traditional blini, you'll see little holes forming on the cakes, and you'll have a very crispy inside with a light and slightly sourdough tasting inside. They will get more and more crisp as you fry them longer and longer.

If you want a thinner blini, with a more crepe like taste, feel free to grind the feremented batter (containing the corn kernels) in the blender until it's smooth, and spread the batter down with your spoon so that it's thinner.

I feel like the combination of the corn, with the corn kernels, and the ginger and garlic, and the black pepper and salt just have an amazing taste. You bite in, and you get a little hint of sweetness from the corn, a bit of sourness from the fermented batter, and that wonderful garlic and ginger.

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You could, if you have it, use chives, parsley, chopped leafy greens, or whatever other vegetables you like. I just used corn, because summer is almost gone, and I want to enjoy corn while I can. Instead of cornmeal, grits work just as well, as does semolina. It's really important to use the brown rice, because it actually does sprout, and gets improved with the long fermenting. And chickpeas give structure very well, without resorting to weird egg replacers and the like. The fenugreek seeds help the batter to ferment, as does the urad daal. After that, the cornmeal gives the texture a really nice boost, and keeps the cakes high enough.

Adai

2 parts toor daal
1 part barley
1 part brown rice
1 part mung beans
1 part masoor daal
3 dried mulato chiles
3 dried ancho chiles
3 dried pasilla chiles
2 dried chile de arbol
1 TB fenugreek seed
1/3 part urad daal

Soak overnight. Using the soaking liquid, grind to an absolute paste along with 1 part grated ginger, a generous sprinkle of salt, and 1 part curry leaves loosely measured. Fry off in your favorite pancake skillet and eat with great gusto.

Set up big pressure cooker for small cooking.

In the body of the pressure cooker is lentils with enough water to cover them. The first bowl in the stack has barley, and its cooking liquid. Atop that, I set the little trivet that came with the pressure cooker. Atop /that/ are some red potatoes, with a scant 2 cm of water in. There'll be plenty of steam in the cooker, so I need not even bother with it, but I don't want the potatoes sticking to my bowl. I then put the lid and weight on the whole mess, set it over high heat, and set my timer for 40 minutes. (Next time, I'll go with shorter time, because the potatoes got overcooked). Then I walked away, and heard the pressure cooker get to full pressure at like 6 minutes or so. Then, I dropped down the heat to low, and let the timer run out. I did a quick release. Honestly, if I just did like 20 minutes, I could have still done a quick release with no problems. I was just stupidly nervous. Boo.

My friend Christy Morgan, of Blissful Chef fame, is maintaining an ongoing pressure cooker party on her blog. Please check out this link for more info on cooking other stuff in pressure cookers! She's got lots of creative ideas for cooking in my style: whole ingredients, lots of produce, and minimising premade stuff. Check it out!

I've said it once, twice, a million times.

A friend on one of my forums asked a question.

Hey guys, I'm going to be in rural Oklahoma with a large party of omnis for a few weeks next month, and I'd like to make stuff for every meal to share with them (a main course, so I've got what to eat too, I'd make some desserts also, anything really). They're potentially wary of "weird" things (though I'll still make some things with tofu, just strategically hidden). I'm not asking you to do my homework (okay, I kind of am), just give me more ideas.

I'm pathetically a cooking rookie, but I'll tackle anything. Ideally, some simple, fairly quick (or slow but totally worth it) recipes that you think would have success with omnis. Also being in rural Oklahoma means I have limited access to exotic ingredients (...exotic here includes miso paste, tahini, and hummus...and vegan yogurt, and anything else really, you're stuck eating sprayed carrots and corn from a can -- I digress!). If you've got a killer recipe that calls for something less Wal-Mart-standard, there's a Whole Foods an hour's drive away -- I would sacrifice myself for cuisine!

OK here goes. I'm not going to tell you to get fake meats (big surprise) or weird spices (that actually is a big surprise). Use what's in the pantry, and what you can find at any grocery store, and that tastes good and people can easily make, so that when you leave, they may very well be tempted to try their own hand at it. I've discussed this technique so many times, but it's still not getting out there, so I'll keep at it till it does.

Start with vegetables of any kind. Get them into equally sized pieces. As long as they're the same size (roughly) you should be fine. Get a dish, and pour in some spices that you have. Paprika is good, dried herbs like basil and sage are both really good, and if they have curry powder, seasoned salt, chile powder, mrs. dash, or any other herb or spice blend, be lazy and use that instead. Add a bit of salt (to taste), a bit of black pepper, and oil. Mix the oil and spices together. Then, toss your vegetables in the spices and oil, and bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until tender. Check them at 20 minutes, and if they're not tender yet, let it go for another 10. Then check every ten minutes or so till it's done to your liking. Quick cooking veg, like courgette or squash or dark leafy greens without stems (you heard right--this works for leaves too) can take as little as 15 minutes. Long cookers, like whole potatoes, yams, butternut squash, or sweet potatoes, can take as long as 1 hour. Most vegetables, like broccoli, cauliflower, dark leafy greens with stems, carrots, rutabaga, daikon, and other such high-water vegetables will take about 25 - 30 minutes.

I do not kid you when I say that the smells are fantastic. If you are going this route for dark leafy greens, go ahead and put some foil over the baking sheet, so as to allow the greens to steam themselves, and prevent drying out. While you're at it, don't make just one variety. If you have a bunch of different things, and you make the same (or different) spice and oil combos for each one, and bake them in their own little dishes, and then serve a side of rice and beans, you've got a very filling meal going down, with very little effort.

With just this basic technique, you're hitting gluten free, soy free, nut free, and pretty damn near every other allergen free, barring the freaky ones that people make up to be unique and special. And it's easy. And it's low in fat and calories. And it smells and looks fantastic. AND it works for frozen or fresh vegetables. You heard me right. Frozen works fine too. Just avoid tinned veg.

To round it out (with the beans and rice as mentioned), sautee some onion (a medium one, diced is great) in a bit of oil. When the onion turns brown, throw in some of those herbs and spices you used for the vegetables. If you have access to curry powder or turmeric, throw in a bit of that as well to make lovely yellow rice. Then, throw in the rice (about 2 cups), and toss it through with the onions, oil, and spices, until the rice gets toasty, and smells slightly nutty. At that point, dump in a tin of beans of your choice (with the liquid) and wash out the tin with water, and pour that in as well. Then add one more tin's worth of water, and let the water all come to a rolling boil. Turn down the heat to a simmer, slam on the lid, and let it cook slowly for 20 minutes or so. Turn off the heat after 20 minutes, and let it sit there with the lid shut for 10 minutes, while you do other stuff. This is 10,000 times easier in a rice cooker, as you just have to dump everything in, and hit the start button. If it's not cooked enough, let it cook longer over low heat, with some extra added water. If you're using brown rice, increase the cooking time to 40 minutes.

He said that it seems quite doable, and accessible. Anyone else agree?

Mid week feast.

I don't know if this will become a regular feature, but I guess I'll give you guys a peek at this week's mid-week feast. It's a special cooking I do during the middle of the week, to lift up my spirits (because I love to cook), and Steve (because it gives him something of a change, and makes the house smell nice). This week's mid-week feat was simple, but tasty.

I had a few yuccas lying about, along with a few heads of cabbage, some onions, a lot of garlic, some tomato, and sweet potato. I peeled and chopped up the sweet potato (1 large one) into large (about 3 cm cubed) pieces, and set it in a pot of cold water. I set it onto the stove to boil. While that water came up to heat, I peeled the yucca, and set that in a pot of cold water. Set that on the stove to boil as well. Then, I chopped up 1 1/2 heads of cabbage, and the onions I had left. Then I minced up a head of garlic. I then got to cooking. By the time the onions, garlic, and cabbage were prepped, the sweet potatoes were just tender.

That's when the magic started to happen. On went some oil into a screaming hot skillet. In went some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. In went a bit of coconut oil, to fortify the smell and taste of the Canola. The house started to fill up with the heady aroma of the coconut oil, and the lovely spices. In went the sweet potatoes, a hefty hit of salt, and a bit of turmeric, black pepper, and cinnamon. I rounded it out with a good scraping of nutmeg.

I then continued to cook the sweet potatoes until they developed a rich, decadent crust on them. They browned every so nicely. I had to drop down the heat to medium low, and let them sit for a few minutes to move them around, but so what? The crust was developing. Then, I finished it off with some garlic, onion, and flaked coconut. That only boosted the smell even more.

By that point, the yucca was done. So I drained that, and chopped it up. In that same wok, I threw in some more oil, mustard seeds, and cumin seeds. When they popped, I dumped in the cabbage, along with some salt, and black pepper, and some red chili flakes. I sauteed that around for about ten minutes. That went off the heat into its serving bowl.

Finally, I had the chopped yucca, some tinned beans, the rest of my onions and garlic, and a hankering for a hearty stew. In went the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and coriander seeds (crushed) with the screaming hot fat. In went the onions and garlic. When they browned, I threw in one tin of drained and rinsed black eyed peas, and a tin of pink beans (with the liquid it came in). I sauteed the beans around in the hot oil and spices, and slated it generously. Then in went the yucca, the yucca's cooking liquid, and some red chili flakes. The smells got even more heady, as the yucca cooked up, and the spices got more aromatic.

While this whole thing was going down, I had a pot of rice going in my rice cooker. All said and done, it took about 40 minutes from start to finish. Hope this inspires some of you to try your own mid week feasts.

Add garlic and ginger at the end, please

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: add your garlic towards the end of cooking. I've seen the cost of garlic skyrocketing like everything else in the stores. And, just like everything else, we can find ways to maximise the way we use said ingredient. If it's oils that are costing a fortune (olive, sesame, etc.), we can use them only as finishing oils, and in sparing amounts. With garlic, the magic is in adding it at just the right time to get the punch you want.

If you don't like strong garlic flavour--

Wait a minute. If you don't like garlic, what're you reading this for? Don't use it!

No, I'll be serious now. If you're not a huge fan of the sharp, strong garlic taste, add it in the mid-point of your cooking. Say for example that you're making a tomato sauce or something similar. Instead of sauteing the garlic with the onions, and missing out on having the garlic give any impact at all, just use less than the recipe calls for, and add it after you add the tomato. It's when you cook it in oil that the flavour disperses and weakens.

So now, suppose that you're a huge fan of garlic. Mince it up as finely as you can, and go ahead and add it as close to the end as possible. You'll taste the garlic, and smell it as soon as it gets to the table. In fact, if you want to use the mortar and pestle to grind it down to a paste, and go from there. It'll be all the more strong, and taste all the sharper.

This goes double for ginger. I myself have advocated cooking ginger along with the aromatics, but I've found that it cooks extremely quickly. It cooks even more quickly than garlic! Add ginger at the very last minute possible, once you've grated it finely, and you'll taste it clearly in the end result.

Chickpeas are awesome in general.

I was in the vegan chat room today, and got to chatting with someone from Australia, who was just starting out her exploration of the humble, yes awesome, chickpea. She's been roasting them in the oven, and spending upwards of half an hour on the process, as the oven takes its own sweet time in making the roasty magic happen. I gave her a detailed explanation on how to roast chickpeas on the stove. She seemed shocked that it only takes a few minutes!

You can hear the results of the conversation here, on the new podcast episode. It was basically me catching up with my listeners, by reading their emails, and then plunging in head-first into chickpea heaven.

You start with a screaming hot skillet, some oil, some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. I get into more detail about the conditions of the whole thing in the podcast episode, and in the cook book, so either way, read up or listen up to the whole popping spices deal before attempting this. If you don't have the book, listen to the pocast which is free. Either way, you'll get the idea.

After the seeds are popped, throw in the well-drained chickpeas WITH NO AROMATICS. Aromatics kill caramelisation of your ingredients. They exude water, and increase the cooking time. This is supposed to be a quick five minute thing. Besides, adding aromatics adds to your prep time. Bother with that stuff when you don't care about time!

Then, you roast the chickpeas on high heat for about five minutes. If you want them more brown, keep going. Do not fear oil! Stove top roasting is a bit more oil intensive than oven roasting. If you see the skillet drying out, add a bit of extra oil, until the chickpeas are slightly shiny from the oil, and keep roasting. You won't get that beautiful brown unless you use a bit of oil. If you are watching your calories, read on, and I'll explain how to do them in the oven.

After the five minutes (or however long you decided to roast them) is up, turn off the heat, and let the chickpeas rest for a minute, while you contemplate how to eat them. They're excellent in a pita pocket, with some alfalfa sprouts, cilantro, and tomato. They're good over hot steamy rice. They're quite nice all by themselves, as a snack. You can use them as croutons over a salad. You can add a cup or two of water, and make it a soup (to thicken up the soup, either mash with a potato masher or grind in a blender about 1/2 of the chickpeas). I discuss other possibilities in the podcast.

If you are watching your calories, and want to reduce the amount of fat, use the following ratio for 1 pound of cooked chickpeas:

1 teaspoon oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
Salt, to taste

Mix the oil, sesame seeds, and turmeric powder into a spice paste. Toss the spice paste with the well-drained chickpeas. Arrange them onto a baking sheet, so that they have a fair bit of space between them. For me, a pound of chickpeas takes two baking sheets. Your sheets may be bigger or smaller. The idea is that you don't want to crowd your baking sheet, or else the chickpeas will not roast on all sides.

Sprinkle generously with salt, to taste. Let them roast in the oven for about 20 minutes (at 180ºC or 350ºF), and check and see if they're brown enough for your liking. Feel free to shake the pans a bit to turn the chickpeas over. Also, feel free to rotate your pans. Some ovens have "hot spots", and you might do well to move the baking sheets around your oven, so that they can all get cooked evenly.

If they are brown enough to your liking at 20 minutes, remove them. If not, keep roasting them until they're at the brownness and crispness of your liking. The longer you let them go, the more they dry out, and the more brown they get.

If you find that they are taking too long to roast, chances are that you're crowding the pan, and having them steam first, then roast. Make sure there's plenty of breathing space for the chickpeas in the pans.

Now go out and roast some chickpeas!

By the by, this whole entry and discussion with my friend on the chat room was spawned because of the mid week feast I made for Puppy. I've got the picture below and above this entry.

CREAMY DRESSING OF DOOM OMG

So I have a couple of heads of romaine lettuce, and a few other random veg lying about the fridge. I had today off from work, so I decided to cook up a bit of a feast for lunch. First, I set the lentils that I'd soaked overnight on the boil. Then, I cooked up some aubergine for Puppy. I used fennel seed, cardamom (1 pod), sesame seed, and cumin seed. The recipe is in the book. Then I cooked up some cabbage, and used mustard seed, coriander seed, cumin seed, and sesame seed, with a bit of turmeric for colour. Finally, I composed the salad. I used two heads of romaine, two small Jordan cucumbers, grated carrot, fresh summer squash, chickpeas, Kalamata olives, onions, and of course, the creamy dressing of doom. It changes shape every time I make it, but it's got a similar base of hummus. This time, I amped up the flavour profile to be a little more adventurous.

I started with 1/2 cup of chickpeas (the other 1/2 cup went into the salad itself), and a small handful of raw cashews. I first whizzed up the cashews in the food processor until they were ground as finely as they would go (almost a powdery thing). Then, I dumped in the chickpeas, as if I were going to make a hummus. I let the food processor run until the cashews and chickpeas became a solid mass of paste of delicious. Then I added a sprinkle of salt, a scant teaspoon of oil, and let the food processor rip again. Every time I open the top of the food processor, I had to scrape down the sides, because I wanted everything to come together neatly. It was still at a thick paste stage.

Now comes the fun part.

I dumped in a heaped teaspoon of my own home made grain mustard. It has a kick like horseradish, which I hate, but a wonderful peppery back note that I love. Also, since I had so much chickpea and cashew to offset, I knew I'd be fine. Then in went the juice of one lime. Always remember to be conservative when you're building a good dressing, because you can add, but you can't take away. I let the food processor rip again. By this point, it was starting to resemble a very thick hummus.

I tasted it for seasoning, after grinding till the mustard was combined through, and almost fell over in bliss. It was such a strong, bold dressing. It was creamy, but sassy. It had boldness but with a soft touch. It was beautifully balanced, and I didn't even need to add any vinegar! Just had to use my cashews, chickpeas, salt, mustard, and lime juice. (Side note: next time, I'll add the zest of the lime as well to amp up the flavour even more.)

Unfortunately, beautiful as it was, it was also way too thick to use as a dressing. I ran the food processor at full blast while I very slowly drizzled in some water, allowing the last bit to emulsify in before adding more. I'd say if you went with a teaspoon at a time, you'll be safe. I think (but don't hold me to it or do the same thing) I ended up with about 1/4 cup of water in total, but I could be mistaken, because I tend to eyeball these things, and before I have a chance to measure what I've done, the dressing ended up perfect. I did stop a few times to check the texture.

All this took about five minutes flat. It just seems like it took longer, because I wanted you to have the experience with me, and share along in the discovery. I'm eating the salad now, and I must say that it's a beautiful matching. The best part is that because the dressing has such a strong taste, I'm not tempted to use too much, and drown my salad in dressing. Instead, the leaves are gently coated with a fine layer of silky dressing.

Give this one a shot if you like creamy dressing. For the first time you do it, leave out the mustard, or use a mild dijon mustard, and go with a scant teaspoon. The dressing does not need the mustard; I just added it because I wanted to make something different from how I've been doing it all this time.

By the by, this dressing would have also been wonderful with the addition of a clove or two of garlic, and a scant 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder. If you don't like cashews, walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts would work fine. Macadamia nuts would work, but it'd be a bit extravagant to use macadamia nuts in a dressing! Brazil nuts would work, but you would leave out the fat, as Brazil nuts are very high in their own fat. Pistachios would work, only if you don't mind the colour being a very mild pale green. Peanuts might work, but I'd suggest that you use peanut butter, and not whole peanuts.

Try it out, and tell me how it goes for you!

I mention the chickpea dressing here.

Pictures of the salad and the dressing:

Watermelon.

I just finished eating a giant piece of watermelon. Next to me was my little salt grinder. Now, anyone who's been over to my house to eat at one of my Saturday afternoon food for alls knows that I have a bit of a salt thing. You've probably eaten freshly cut fruit from atop my slab of Himalayan pink rock salt (it's shaped like a brick). You know that I use Kosher salt (and only Kosher salt) in my cooking, and I use coarse sea salt in a salt grinder for salting at the table.

So when I was staring at that little salt grinder, and wondering what would happen, my brain went back to that Watermelon Gazpacho (which is what it's called, but I couldn't remember the name) at Sacred Chow. If they can use salt on watermelon, why can't I?

On went a few ethereal grains of finely ground salt atop my glistening slice of watermelon. It was almost as if the watermelon slice grew more delicious than it already was! How was it possible that I've waited this long for the magic to happen? I'm quite pleased with my little salt grinder.

Roti from the bread machine

There are few kitchen gadgets that I really care for, as I tend not to use too terribly many of them very often, because most times, I can just do it faster by hand. One of them is my citrus squeezer. It's a red number which resembles a large garlic press, only instead of being square, it's round and large enough to fit half a tangerine.

Another is my food processor. Few things can really get the job done like a good strong food processor, especially when I have large amounts of repetitive tasks to get done. It's not that I don't know how to chop garlic, ginger, or onions, but rather that if I'm about to chop around three heads of garlic, a pound of ginger, or three pounds of onions, I'd sooner run them through the food processor, whiz it a few times, and get on with my life.

Still another is the rice cooker, but this one is because it's so much more convenient to have a machine to make picture perfect rice every time. Frankly, we eat so much rice in my house that to cook it on the stove every time would needlessly tie up a burner that I could be using to cook up something else.

Largest and most ostentatious of the bunch, however, is the bread maker. I'd never buy one, but there are so many to be found for free either through Craigslist, or for really cheap, such as in garage sales and the like. The one I own now is from my mother, who got hers for free, because her friends went on a certain low carbohydrate diet, and decided that a bread machine is far too much temptation for anyone's own good.

Not only that, but she managed to snag yet another machine for free from yet another friend who was going off of carbohydrates. Apparently, this is a common occurrence. Fine by me, I say. More bread making for me and my husband!

At any rate, all this time, I've been using my own two hands, or the food processor to bring my flatbread dough together (roti, puri, etc.), and ending up with a hard dough. This is rather useless, because roti dough is meant to be very soft. Not soft because of lots of water and fat, but because it's been kneaded for a rather long time, until it becomes supple and pliable. Doing that with all purpose flour is bad enough, but I have durum atta, which is whole meal flour that's been finely milled. Even though it is finely milled, it's hard as rock when you attack it with your own two hands, and you'll frequently end up with tired arms.

As I side note, I feel that must mention that I do not make dainty little roti or puri like they do in restaurants. They are neither small not perfectly shaped into a perfect circle. They're vaguely circular in shape, but you wouldn't really call it a circle. And, they're on the minimum, ten inches in diameter. Why? Because I don't have all day to stand around rolling out dainty, perfect roti, and then griddling them one by one. There's way too much other stuff to be done, so I'd sooner make large ones, and bang them out quickly, than make aesthetically pleasing ones and stand over a hot cast iron skillet for hours on end.

By the time I'm done griddling off a set of roti, I'm usually fairly tired, since the kneading took so long. I don't know why it took this long for my dense skull to figure it out, but I finally realised that I could just chuck the lot into the bread machine, and let that wonderful invention do all the kneading work, as long as I used the dough setting. My dough setting does almost nonstop kneading for a good 30 minutes or so, and then goes for a 20 minute rest period, and then finishes off with another 30 minutes of kneading. Pretty cool, I think.

In it all went, flour, water, spices, and salt. On went the machine. I decided to just let it run for the first 30 minute cycle. It was a revelation! Perfectly smooth, round ball, and beautifully soft. It rolled out into a perfectly thin disc in no time flat, and I was slapping them on the cast iron skillet in just a few minutes. And the best part is that everything got perfectly mixed in. The roti taste fantastic.

For the record, there is an excellent puri and roti recipe in the book.

Italian Stir-fry?

There. I'm doing it. I'm scraping down at the bottom of the barrel at this point, because I sincerely doubt that I'll get satisfaction from a restaurant, but I dislike going to the market, when I'm about to leave in two days! So, here comes what is left in my fridge. There was some broccoli in the freezer, along with some cut green beans. There were mushrooms floating about, so those got chopped as well. I had a tin of olives (sorry--I just love olives). Of course, I also used my old standard of garlic, onions, sesame seeds, and cumin as the base seasoning, and I added oregano, basil, and thyme to the dish for heightened flavour. I did it up like a stir-fry, keeping things moving constantly, and cooking it all over a very hot flame. It came out wonderfully with some pasta. I'm pleased.

Massive Food Update

Two weeks ago, I went to the beautiful home of my friend Erica to cook with her and her daughter. Ever since Karen (her daughter) found out that her mom works with a guy that does Indian cooking, she's been bugging her mom to call me over to have us all cook together. Finally, now that I'm leaving town, Erica decided to get this thing off of the ground. She called me and Steve to come over that Saturday, and see what we could see.

We arrived bright and early at 11:30 AM, and went shopping at this fruit and vegetable store near her house. They had such an enormous variety that I was squealing in excited glee, and grabbing everything I could find. The entire trolley was overflowing with a cornucopia of colours. Erica could barely name half the stuff I was flinging into the trolley, but was happy that I was at least having a good time. $50 later, the car was loaded up, and we were ready to roll. We made a quick run to my parents' house to grab some curry leaves (again, which Erica had never heard of before!) and get things started.

Karen is an eager and talented cook. She knows her way around the kitchen, and is comfortable with pretty much anything you ask her to try. We chopped, peeled, and cooked. And cooked. And cooked some more. We started around noon, and rounded off the last dish around 4:00 PM. At the final count, we came up with 14 dishes. All of them were amazing. I decided to take some photographs of the event, but lost the camera that night. Steve found the camera, so I'm sharing now.


On the far left is lentil soup. It's a standard for me, and a crowd pleaser every time. In the centre is kale soup, with carrots. On the far right is kale and swiss chard soup. Yes, we had three soups to start.

On the left are plantains, done up like the Indian Roasted Potatoes from the cookbook. Since they were cooked in the oven, they all came out done all the way through. In the centre are roasted potatoes with whole cippoline onions. It was done in a cumin, sea salt, and turmeric base, in the oven. They came out tender on the inside, and crispy on the outside. The onions were sweet, and a little smoky from the cumin. Fabulous! On the right you see Karen, me, Erica, and Janice.


When Erica got back form Israel, she mentioned in passing that with every meal, they serve a chopped salad of cucumber, red onions, and tomatoes, tossed with parsley and lemon. Just by luck, the vegetable place had Israeli cucumbers, and good sweet plum tomatoes, so I couldn't resist! The only change I made was that I used shallots instead of onions, and cilantro instead of parsley. On the right is the Unslaw from the cookbook, with the addition of red peppers, and broccoli. I also added some hot Hungarian paprika to finish it off.


On the left is the unslaw, but without the broccoli or Hungarian paprika. I left out the broccoli, so that everyone could clearly see which one is hot, and which one isn't. In the middle are me and Steve. On the right is a blend of toasted ground cocoanut, with mixed nuts (also ground) that I seasoned with cinnamon, clove, fennel, and a bit of salt. We used it to sprinkle onto the soups, or salad, or rice, or whatever else we felt like eating it on!


On the left are red wine and brandy marinated beets (you can't see the nest of sautéed beet greens underneath, but they're there). On the right are the Indian aubergines from the cookbook.


No party is complete without silly poses after the cooking. I submit to you mine for that night.


This is what the spread looked like before everything came out. There's still a few dishes missing.


That's me and Erica in the kitchen, ready to break open the cocoanut with a hammer.

I'm sorry that it took so long to post the updates (which is why it's coming all at once!), but better late than never, eh?

Mushrooms, Cabbage, Potatoes

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but Steve makes a very bad liar. He's also fairly bad at dropping subtle hints. But that's OK, because I can tell what he's getting at for the most part. A prime example of this was yesterday night after work. I'd asked him to snag some vegetables on his way back home. We had frozen spinach and dried beans, but we'd already had bean soups three times this week alone. I was wanting some actual vegetables. He said that he'd definitely hit up our usual haunts, and see what he could rustle up. "Oh, I made sure to eat already, so there's no pressure to cook, but I did clear out the dishes in the sink, and the counter, so it's there if you want." See what I mean? About as subtle as a flaming pink and neon green rhino at a tea party. In a sun dress and white gloves, no less.

We got home, and he showed me that he'd bought cabbage. And potatoes.

...

This would usually mean, on my side, a stew or soup of some sort. I'd whip out the holy trinity of ingredients (onions, garlic, tomato), and the holy trinity of spices (cumin seed, mustard seed, sesame seed), and make soup happen, with the addition of some lentils, or other beans. It would have been comforting and delicious. But last night, I was feeling contrary. I didn't want to follow predictable patterns. He knows what happens when he presents me with really scant variety of ingredients: I panic and make soup. It's what happened every single time in the past when the pantry has been bare.

Fortunately, this old dog has a few new tricks up his sleeves. I puttered around for a while, chopping up the cabbage, dicing up the potatoes, dicing up some onions, and musing on what to make. For good measure, I roughly chopped up a few handfuls of curry leaves, and had my spices waiting for me, depending on where to go. When I saw how much more cabbage there was to chop, I groaned inwardly, and decided on my old standby of soup.

Let me explain. The cabbage that Steve brought home was a couple of kilos at the very least. Something of that size takes some serious effort to break down. I managed to hack it apart enough that I could finish chopping half the head, but beyond that, I was far and away screwed if I were to chop through the entire monster. Considering that I'd just chopped up an onion and some potatoes, I was ready to call it quits at this point in the chopping department.

Good Dino: Wait a minute, Dino. Isn't the holy trinity of soup supposed to be onions, garlic, and tomato? You've only got one of the three handled now, and you know how we feel about starting something without having all the ingredients ready in front of us. Evil (AKA normal) Dino: Quiet, you. We'll figure this out.

In went some oil into a deep sided pot. When the oil got hot, in went some spices (the same spices I used in that lentil soup a few posts back). I pitched in the curry leaves and the onions, and a liberal dose of salt. While the onions sautéed, I fumbled around in the fridge, seeing what else I could rustle up. Aha! Sliced mushrooms! Suddenly, I knew that I could do this as a dry curry on top of the stove, rather than a soup.

When the potatoes were crusty and brown all the way around, I lobbed in the sliced mushrooms. See, my problem is that if I was going to add in cabbage, which takes a while to leak out its water and let you unstick the potatoes from the bottom of the pot, I would have to add some water first to deglaze the pot first. What the mushrooms would do for me is quickly leak out their water naturally, which would deglaze the pot. In the mean time, the water would also evaporate fairly quickly, so that I wouldn't end up with a wet dish, meaning that I could make a dry curry after all!

Once the mushrooms cooked down a bit, I threw in the mass of cabbage that I did have cut already (the other half comfortably sitting in the fridge), and added a bit more salt. I let the cabbage cook for about five or ten minutes or so, and stirred it around every two or three minutes to redistribute all the spices and salt and flavours. Once the cabbage was done to a T, I turned off the heat, and had the divine stuff with some steaming hot rice. It tasted wonderful, and was easy to make.