Happy Summer

Over the last month or two, we have been...required, really, to alter our meals to the weather. It's been so hot that cooking hot meals in the PAK has been unbearable. On the really hot nights even washing dishes feels like an endurance test. How many dishes can I wash before there's too much sweat running down my face to see what I am doing? Fun times.

We started making more smoothies and more dinners like the one pictured above- tomato with mozzarella and basil, along with some homemade hummus (which was eaten with chips, not pictured).

Yes, that's right- the hummus addict has started making her own hummus and all is good in the world. I have yet to venture into experimenting beyond the basic recipe yet. But I'll get there.

Basically, the following ingredients go into the food processor until they are the right consistency of smooth deliciousness-

1 can (12 oz) of chickpeas
lemon juice (1 lemon should do the trick)
1 tablespoon tahini
Garlic cloves (this may vary but personal preference, I usually put in 1-2 cloves)
Extra light olive oil- amount here is also personal preference

Next I plan to tackle tabbouleh and then all will be even more good in the world.

Chick Pea Burgers

Tonight I was digging through the folder of recipes I've cut out of magazines, and found one that came from Eating Well, for chick pea burgers with Tahini yogurt sauce. Among the ingredients: chick peas, lemon juice, tahini, and olive oil. All of these are found in hummus, which is half of Ariel's answer to the "one food for the rest of your life," question.

(Hummus and Tabouleh, mixed together, are Ariel's favoritest thing. Ever.)

So, already it sounded like a winner.

Update, 11/18/10: In the month since this was originally posted, this recipe has become a staple meal in our home. As a result of getting a lot of practice with this recipe, I've learned a few things, and edited the entry to reflect those lessons.

Ingredient list:

Chick Pea Burgers
1- can of chick peas, rinsed and drained. (I used to use 19 oz cans, I've since used 14 ox cans without changing anything else, and it works fine.)
4- scallions, trimmed and sliced
1- large egg
2 Tbsp all purpose flour
1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano. (I used dried from a jar.)
1/2 Tsp ground Cumin. (I love Cumin.)
1/4 Tsp Salt. (Or a heavy pinch, if you don't feel like washing a little pygmy spoon)
2 Tbsp Olive oil. (Bullshit... will explain later)


Tahini Sauce
1/2 Cup- greek style lowfat plain yogurt
2 Tbsp tahini. (Sesame seed paste, you may have to look a bit to find it, but I've been able to find it at supermarkets that I didn't think would have it.)
1 Tbsp Lemon juice. (I just squeezed out a whole lemon.)
1/3 Cup chopped parsley. (More or less. I think mine ended up with a lot more than 1/3 of a cup.)
1/4 Tsp salt. (See above commentary on pygmy spoons.)

Other
2 pita bread pockets, sliced in half lengthwise (Ha... it's circular. You figure out which way is lengthwise...)
1 Beefsteak tomato, sliced

The egg, scallions, salt, flour, cumin, and oregano go into the food processor with the chick peas. Use the pulse feature, and make a coarse mixture that will form patties well.

edit: Having done this a few times, I can say that it's better to mix the egg, scallions, salt, flour, cumin, and oregano first, and then add the chick peas into the food processor. I used to dump all of the other ingredients on top of the chick peas, and it took a lot longer for those other ingredients to stir down into the mix properly. By the time it was all more or less homogeneous, it was halfway to being pureed. This way the other ingredients are mixed to form the glue that holds everything together, and mixing the chick peas from there results in a coarser mix, and better patties that handle more easily.

For the sauce, combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork. It's not rocket science.

Next step, make patties with the chick pea mixture, and fry them at medium high in a frying pan, in the olive oil. Be careful when flipping them, as they will come apart pretty easily.

In the ingredient list, the quoted quantity of EVOO is 2 tbsp. This is bullshit, and you should pay it no mind. A more liberal application of oil is required, to help conduct the heat to the patties. For those of you who have a cast iron skillet that can handle 4 patties, I suggest you use it, as cast iron holds heat very well. It's a minor thing, really... frying these things up wasn't hard, but I do have a reason for thinking this.

Generally, I find that foods that are allowed to heat up more gradually do not get that crispy-fried crust on the outside. I've had friends that cooked falafel in aluminum pots, or with not enough oil, and the result was a mess. The aluminum conducts some of the heat away, and the falafel dough (if that's the proper term) cools the oil down even more if there's not enough oil in the pot to compensate. So, the oil didn't stay hot enough to make the falafel balls crust over, and the result was lumpy cooked chick pea paste, in oil.

Using a cast iron skillet to fry these up makes a WORLD of difference. Instead of the slowly building sizzle that I'm used to with our old aluminum and stainless frying pans, the patties start to sizzle the instant they hit the pan. And this instant-frying makes a much crispier outer crust. As a result, I've discovered I actually need less oil.

The patties are served up in the pita pockets with the sauce, and a slice of tomato. Extra pita can be used to help clean up the extra sauce that's typically left over.

This was probably one of the fastest, easiest things to make that I've cooked in a while, and it was really, really good. We'll be making this one again.

One very happy nursing student.

Black Bean Hummus

This is a quick and dirty kind of recipe that I stumbled across recently. Ariel's always been a huge fan of hummus, and this was a nice curveball that really got her excited.

I used 2 small (14 oz) cans of black beans, the juice from one lime, 1/4 cup of tahini, and a few peeled cloves of garlic.

Throw the whole mess into the food processor, and add olive oil and garlic until the whole mix makes sense. This is pretty much the delicate part of the process. More olive oil helps thin the mixture, which also helps it mix better. So I add it a bit at a time, because it's important to have a good consistency.

The first time that I made it were in the middle of a hummus making binge for a party we were having at our house, and I got the garlic balance right. Ariel took one bite, and got very excited. This past Saturday I got the garlic balance right, and Ariel was very excited.

The last time I made this hummus, I did NOT get the garlic balance right. I peeled a few garlic cloves, threw them in without thinking, and called it done. Way too much garlic. Ariel was not excited.

Add the cloves in one at a time, let them mix in, taste, and add again as necessary. This is very important. Good hummus has a lot of garlic, and it can approach the limits of what most people consider to be in good taste. So it's important to take things to that limit, but not beyond.

Spaghetti dinner

 I remember being astonished by friends in college who didn't understand how to make decent spaghetti. They thought you just boiled the pasta, and dumped the sauce out of the jar.

I think the sauce should be a meal unto itself. Piles of veggies and meat, and forkfuls of flavor. Friday night was spaghetti night when I went to visit my dad on weekends as a kid. And his sauce was basically 2 pounds of hamburger with some garlic, tomato paste and bay leaves. Yummy stuff, and it quickly became comfort food for me.

Ariel made something similar for me a year or two into our relationship. That night is still a memorable one, and looking back, I think it probably helped seal the deal for me.

Tonight I made spaghetti sauce, twice. Once for dinner, and another batch in the crock pot for the rest of the week. 

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The basics for good pasta sauce for me have always been pretty simple. You need a good base, good veggies, and meat. Over time, my list of veggies has expanded, and the process I use to cook everything has, too. I use store bought sauce as a base, since it's already pretty well seasoned, and it comes with a jar, which is great for storing leftover sauce. Given the amount of other ingredients that get added in, it's not uncommon for me to cook dinner, and have enough sauce left over to fill the whole jar, which can then go in either the fridge or freezer.

Basic ingredients:

-Store bought spaghetti sauce
-Onions
-Garlic
-Scallions
-Bell peppers
-Tomatoes
-White mushrooms
-Green olives
-Bay leaves
-Tabasco sauce
-Chili powder
-Black Pepper

The process has typically been the same for me: cut up the veggies and throw them in the frying pan with some oil. Recently I started throwing some of them into the food processor with the mixing blade, because it chops them up much finer, which means they cook faster, and mix more evenly into the rest of the sauce. So, tonight I threw half green bell pepper, half of a beefsteak tomato, 2 scallions, a few garlic cloves, a handful of white mushrooms, half of a fresh jalapeno pepper, and a half-dozen green olives into the food processor, and mixed them up using the pulse button. It helps to use the pulse button so that the stuff on top doesn't float while the stuff on the bottom gets turned into juice. The result looked vaguely like relish. The mixture went right into the frying pan with some oil.

Next thing to go through the cuisinart was a couple of onions, chopped into chunks just small enough to go through the chute, to get sliced up. The sliced onion went into the pan, and got mixed up with the veg mix. I browned some sweet and hot Italian sausages, and chopped them up to go into the pan. I finished the whole mess by adding half a jar of store bought sauce, a few bay leaves, some tabasco, and some chili powder. I let that simmer for 5 or 10 minutes before starting to boil water for pasta.

One tip for simmering sauce: for years, I ignored the wisdom of using a screen to go over the frying pan. Given that I was a young man in his early 20's who didn't worry too much about things, the result was a perpetually messy stove top. It's still a little messy now, but it's much better than it was, and the use of the screen has helped tremendously.

By the time the pasta was fully cooked, the sauce was finished. Total time for the whole meal was something just under an hour, 30-40 minutes of which was spent actively cooking.

Rapid-Fire Salad

I've been a woodworker for a few years now, and in the woodworking world, there's a split between machine woodworking and hand-tool woodworking. And somewhere along the way, I realized there was a similar thing at work in the kitchen. (Woodworking has really colored the way I see a lot of things.)

In short, machines are used for sheer productive capacity. Hand tools are used when a little bit of finesse is desired, when the quantity called for doesn't justify cleaning an entire machine, or when you feel like taking your time and enjoying the process. I like the process of breaking things down and slicing ingredients... there's something for me about working with my hands that allows my head to unwind itself a little bit.

When it's time to produce, one of my favorite machines is the food processor. I don't have a full-sized one, yet, but I've had this mini Cuisinart for something like 13 years now. It's still going strong, and despite it's size it's a solid workhorse. The only hand tool required with a food processor is a knife, to trim off any undesirables, and break the rest down into manageable chunks.

UPDATE-- 9/16/10: Apparently I'm not the only one who really likes his food processor. Check out this column from columnist Mark Bittman in the New York Times

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Growing up, the typical salad involved large chunks of lettuce leaf, raw tomatoes, oil and vinegar, and other large chunks of raw vegetables that are the typical anathema to a bouncing screaming holy terror of a child. So I grew up hating the idea of salads in general. I've grown up a bit, and my ideas of what can possibly constitute a salad have been broadened considerably. Among other variations, I was introduced to the concept of so-called 'Israeli Salad,' which is synonymous with "doesn't have lettuce." For some reason, this really appeals to me, and it really opens up the genre to a lot of possibilities.

There are times when I feel like making a really fancy-looking salad, and I'll take the time to carefully slice ripened pears on top of an arranged bed of... whatever... and add nifty things like nuts, craisins, and cheeses, and so on, and so forth. That takes time, room to spread out and prep all the ingredients, and at least a mild level of engagement. Tonight I was just hungry.

I fed some celery, apples, carrots, and red cabbage into the Cuisinart. I mixed up the result, dumped some of it on top of a pile of spinach, added some craisins and balsamic vinaigrette, and called it dinner. I used the slicer on the celery and apples, and the shredder on the carrots and cabbage.

Please note that this processed part of the salad is very dense. Carrots and Cabbage are serious roughage, and shredding it will help with the process of digestion, but it also allows it to compact very tightly in the salad bowl. So be aware that what you see in the picture above is going to last for at least 2 or 3 meals, and attempting to eat all of it would be the gastronomical equivalent of eating a box of brillo pads. 

Normally for salads I like to use pears, if I have them, instead of apples. Pears are sweeter, and I like the way that the sweetness counter-balances the bland earthiness of most lettuces and some other vegetables. I also like combining pears with something like gorgonzola in a fancier salad, but I'll make one of those at a later date.