Hummus, My Way

As if we all needed another recipe for hummus.  But after so many times of  randomly throwing hummus together and getting such varied results I finally started keeping track of what I did and got the recipe down the way I like it.  By the way, I costed this at about $1.65, most of that being the chickpeas.  If you cooked your own from dried beans, it would be even less!

Anita's Hummus
(servings:  ummmm . . . depends on the day!)

 1 16-oz. can chickpeas (1 1/2 cups), drained with juice reserved
1 clove garlic
2 TBSP tahini
2-4 TBSP lemon juice (towards the higher end if using fresh lemon)
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of cumin, pinch of black pepper
1 TBSP reserved liquid from chickpeas


Instructions

Place all ingredients except for the reserved liquid into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the standard chopping blade and whiz it smooth.  This is one food I can't seems to make the way I like it except in a food processor. With blenders, I seem to have to add too much liquid to get the texture I really want.  In the food processor I pulse and scrape, pulse and scrape a few times, and then let it whiz for quite a while until it is very smooth.  If you add too much liquid early on, the chickpeas will always stay a little lumpy/grainy, which is fine if you like that texture.  I like mine creamy, so I add the extra liquid (usually about one TBSP as written) at the end just to thin it a little.  You could also add olive oil to loosen it up if you like.  I like my hummus creamy and pretty thick, so that it is easy to scoop up on a pretzel.

Taste and correct the seasonings as you like it.  I like a bright lemon flavor, which is why my recipe has such a wide range of acceptable amounts.  Since it's cheaper and easier to always have on hand, I often use the bottled juice (forgive me!) which seems to take less to get the brightness I like.  Also, not all tahini is created equal.  I start with 2 TBSP and then add more if I have a mild tahini.

Speaking of tahini, it is the reason I costed my recipe.  It can be pretty pricey but if you tend to use it just for hummus, it will last a long time and the cost per batch isn't too bad (about 50 cents).  

I like to serve our hummus swirled about with olive oil and za'atar (a Mediterranean blend of herbs, salt, and toasted sesame seeds--I found a great source at Ten Thousand Villages in downtown H'burg) and scooped up with mini-pretzles (since Gibbles has been sold my new favorite is Utz Wheels) or flat bread.  YUM! 

p.s. and if you've figured out how to make thick, creamy hummus in a blender, let me know!

Baby Month (and a recipe link)

So it's June 1st, and I didn't make any posts for the entire month of May.  I guess I was a little busy having a baby and all.  I actually did a lot of cooking in March and April to stock up the freezer with enough meals to hopefully not have to cook for a month after giving birth.  With eight days to go towards that goal and sandwich supplies on hand it looks like I just might squeak by . . .

But I do have a delicious link for you.  Back in the first week of May when I was waiting around for this baby to be born (due April 28), I started getting tricksy.  I tried pretty much every trick in the book to convince baby to be born including this eggplant parmigiana recipe.  Looks gross, tastes AWESOME, did not produce a baby within 48 hours.  But it was still yummy.  I made a 1/2 recipe which was a good thing, as this is RICH in cheese and we had enough for about three meals (two adults, one toddler).  It was labor-intensive (har, har) so I'm not sure I'd make it again unless I had some serious baby-sitting or it was a weekend.  But it was yummy.  Did I mention that already?

The only things I changed were to use cottage cheese instead of ricotta (we prefer the texture) and used basil pesto in the sauce since I had no access to fresh basil.  I also made my own breadcrumbs from some stale bread and Italian seasoning and used that parmesan/romano cheese blend in the shaker bottle *gasp!* instead of the fresh stuff.  But it was still yummy.

See, looks gross (I think I baked it a little too long . . .) 

So I'll end on a sweeter, prettier note.  Baby Girl.  Born 8 days after the eggplant parmigiana.  We love her a LOT!

Frittata

A simple and delicious dish for any meal of the day, especially if you want quiche but don't feel like fooling with a crust (or the baking element in your oven just went out, which is what happened to me right before Thanksgiving!). Like quiche, you can fill your frittata with any combination of ingredients that suits your fancy: bacon and cheese; asparagus and ham; spinach; onions; potatoes. And so on. Once you have your fillings prepared (sauteed, cooked, wilted, fried, etc.) you pour your egg/cheese mixture over them in an oven-proof skillet and cook on the stove until the eggs are mostly set but still wet on top. Then transfer to the oven and broil until the top is lightly browned. That's it! 

For this frittata, I used sauteed spinach and onions and boiled potato slices. I mixed in some needing-to-be-used cream cheese with the eggs and then sprinkled feta on the top just before it went under the broiler. YUM! I was trying to conserve cookware, so I sauteed the spinach and onions right in the cast iron skillet that I cooked the frittata in. However, I think I would do them in a separate pan next time so that I could layer the frittata with the potatoes on the bottom of the pan, then spinach, then eggs poured over all. That way the potatoes could get crispy on the bottom instead of the spinach. Make sure there is some butter or oil under all that too, by the way! 

For this frittata, I used 6 eggs and a dash of milk, salt and pepper. It took longer to cook on the stove than I thought it should, but that may have been because I was using a cast iron skillet instead of a non-stick making it hard to lift the edges and let the eggs on top run down underneath to cook faster. 

Whatever your method, this is simpler and faster than quiche and just as tasty. As a main course, this fed two adults and a toddler with two slices left over. Enjoy experimenting!

Meze Plate

I had to go back a ways to find this.  All the way back to August 23.  It's not that I haven't been cooking, it's just that I've been doing too many other things I guess, like moving and traveling and celebrating my child's first birthday.  You know.  

So back in August I made some killer hummus.  No, I did not write down the recipe, but it had plenty of lemon juice and tahini and not too much garlic (my usual downfall).  I restrained myself and was very pleased with the result.  Unfortunately, I decided to serve it up with dollops of pesto and hot pepper paste which makes it look like a weird mask in the photo and really overpowered my hummus.  Ugh.  Live and learn.

I added some toasted homemade flatbread, colorful local carrots, cucumbers, a roasted squash salad and some marinated mushrooms for a quite satisfying lunch. 

I've also got a great idea for a fast healthy food restaurant.  Meze.  That's the Turkish word for appetizer.  Serve a great basic core of Mediterranean meze (flatbread with hummus, tabbouleh, baked goat cheese, olives, stuffed grape leaves, spanakopita, etc.) and add seasonal salads during the summer.  Customers pick a plate of 3-5 meze and it's a meal!  I would eat there.  As long as they didn't muss up the hummus.

Fig Birds

I came across this idea on the Martha Stewart website when I was hunting inspiration for the rest of my fresh figs. Of course, I could have just eaten all of them fresh and loved every bit of it. But hey, figs with soft cheese . . . sounded too good not to try. While Martha used blue cheese and pecans in her figs, I went for goat cheese because I love goat cheese and would rather have that left over than blue. What can I say?

Once the figs are washed and the hard bit of stem removed from the top, cut them open as seen in the picture above and stuff a little nugget of cheese inside--I have to admit, the pungency of blue cheese probably would have tasted fabulous with my mildly sweet figs, but no regrets!

After the cheese is in, wrap with a slice of prosciutto and secure with a toothpick. I drizzled mine with a teeny, teeny bit of both balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then dashed them with some fresh-ground black pepper.

I did this twice in the same week. The first time I baked the figs in my toaster oven, but I thought the prosciutto got a little tough that way, so the second time I broiled them just until they sizzled a bit and I could see some juices dripping.

Don't they look like darling, hungry little birds?!? I loved the sweetness/juiciness of the fig along with creamy goat cheese and subtly wine-flavored meat. Mmmmm . . . I'm a hungry little bird!

Fig and Sausage Borek

"Borek" is a Turkish word meaning a stuffed phyllo pastry, usually in a triangle shape. But this is not a Turkish recipe. It is one of my own creation, born of the delight of finding fresh figs at one of my favorite quirky grocery stores.

The first time I tasted a fresh fig, I was nothing less than transported. I remember the grocery store I found them in, my curiosity and hesitancy. The first bite through the soft skin and into the succulent center burst onto my tongue and into my brain like stepping out of a dark house into a sweetly warm summer afternoon. The fresh fig does not blow you away with an intensity of flavor so much as it softly, surely seduces you. That first bite is forever branded into my physical memory, such that no other fig experience can some close to it.

The figs I bought this week were, predictably, shipped in from California. Bruised and battered from the long trip, they bore some resemblance to my "primal fig" but tasted watered down (though they did photograph beautifully, no?).

I decided it wouldn't be a travesty to cook them into something. Something worthy of that half-bottle of white wine waiting to be finished off. Quick check of available ingredients:
phyllo dough: check
figs: duh
sausage that also needs to be used very soon!: check
onions: check
olive oil: check
goat cheese: sorry (oh, so very sorry!)
old labaneh: check
egg: check
sage: check
salt and pepper: check, check
other cheese: check (mozzarella)

So! Sausage and Fresh Fig Borek with Sage and Mozzarella. Sounds like a title fit for any gourmet cookbook.

I got some onions sizzling in olive oil on the stove to which I added the sausage. Meanwhile, into about a cupful of old labaneh (a thick strained-yogurt cheese, if you're new to the blog) I whisked an egg along with some salt and pepper. I read the instructions on the phyllo dough box. Time sensitive stuff apparently, so I assembled (as suggested) all my ingredients in small bowls. Quartered fresh figs. Shredded mozzarella. My labaneh stuff and the sausage/onion mix, to which was added some fresh snipped sage.

Working as quickly as I could with my unskilled phyllo fingers, I dabbed a bit of this and some of that onto a sheet of phyllo dough folded in half and brushed with olive oil. It looked like this:

I then proceeded to clumsily fold them into triangles, along the length of the dough with the final little endpiece tucked under to (hopefully) hold it all together. They went onto a baking stone. When all were assembled, it was into the oven at 350F for about 30 minutes.

They came out looking like this:




Not bad for a novice, huh?

I loved the flavor, which improved as they cooled and you could actually taste the individual ingredients rather than just burning your tongue. I loved the sweetness and juiciness of the figs alongside the pungent sausage/onion/sage flavors. I might add more cheese another time and a bit more pepper, but for a first time these little pastries were delectable. They re-crisp rather nicely in the toaster oven the next day, too!

Eggplant Bake

It started at the grocery store with a sideways glance at their reduced produce racks. Are any of you impulse grocery shoppers like me? Nah. Probably not. You all budget and menu plan and ONLY buy what you need for this week's meals. So you won't understand. I do make a list, mind you, it's just that whenever I get to the store, I find that my list was incomplete. Yes, last week I had forgotten to write on my list "one slightly-marred eggplant". But I found I needed it. Once I got to the store.

Next time, I won't forget. Because I found a great, easy, tasty way to cook up that forty-nine cents of slightly-damaged goodness. Searching the internet (I wonder how many times that phrase appears on this blog) I came across this. Eggplant cut into rounds, fried in a little olive oil, stacked in ramekins with tomato sauce, and baked.

Of course, I don't have ramekins. And I didn't exactly follow Tasty Palettes' way of making sauce, but it was pretty close, and we were pretty thrilled with the results.

(Just FYI: the smell of pumpkin cake is filling the house, and I'm about to remove some french bread from the oven too. I'm in cold & sleety-evening heaven!)


Improvised Eggplant Bake

Sauce:
olive oil for sauteing
about 1/3 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup red wine
1 cup crushed tomatoes
herbs (I put in a frozen basil cube I made in my ice-cube trays this summer)
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions: Heat olive oil in a sauce pan over medium heat and saute onions and garlic. Add wine and cook a few minutes. Stir in tomatoes and herbs. Salt and pepper to taste. Turn heat on low and simmer while you fry the eggplant.

Eggplant:
1 - 2 large eggplant, sliced thin (1/4-1/2 inch)
olive oil for frying
lemon juice

Instructions: Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add enough eggplant to cover the bottom of the skillet, turning quickly as they will soak up as much oil on one side as you've put in the skillet. Fry on both sides until beginning to turn brown. Remove and hit eggplants with a spritz of lemon (I used a pastry brush to swab lemon on them since I didn't have any fruit on hand. Heat more oil and repeat until all slices are fried.

Putting it all together: Tasty Palettes suggests doing this in ramekins or a casserole. Basically, you want to spoon some of your sauce into the bottom of your baking dish, and then arrange layers of eggplant slices with the rest of the sauce, ending with more sauce on top. I baked mine in two small clay dishes at 350F for about 15 minutes because of a time constraint. It would probably be better to leave them in up to 30 minutes for more flavor-melding. If you like, add some parmesan cheese to the top close to the end of cooking time. Remove from oven and cool for a few minutes before serving. We ate ours with extra-virgin olive oil toasts and a spinach side salad. If you want to do it "right" just go to the other website and follow her instructions!

Pan-bagnat

A fabulous summer evening meal! Pronounced "pahn banYAHT" (apparently) this sandwich originally comes from the region of Nice, France. You can find all this information on the web (I first encountered it here). Far from its origins, what I made probably should not be called pan-bagnat. Maybe just "Squashed Loaf Sandwich".

Basically, you take a loaf of bread, stuff it with fresh veggies, and then squash it so that the juices soak into the bread. Some instructions say to hollow out the loaf; I left mine intact.

After cutting the loaf, I drizzled both sides with olive oil, then layered on the following veggies: slices of tomato (thanks, Bek!), mushroom slices, green peppers, purple onion, and torn basil leaves. I gave the pile of veggies a good dash of salt and pepper then closed the loaf, wrapped it in saran wrap, and squashed it under an upside-down chair and a planter (see black and white picture below). After about two and a half hours, I unwrapped the deflated sandwich sliced it, and served it up with a bowl of olives and glasses of lemonade. Bon apetit!

Labane 2

I first encountered labane in a small cafe in Gaziantep, Turkey. The owners of the start-up business were excellent hosts. They made us a delicious herbal tea (their own mixture) and served flatbread with labane. They made the kind of labane that I described in the previous post, the creamy type laced with garlic and herbs. It was love at first taste.

Then, a few years later, I re-discovered labane in Nazareth, Israel where it is almost ubiquitous at Arab meals. They would spread their labane in a dish, drizzle it with olive oil, and sprinkle za'atar on top. My North American roommate and I kept it in our fridge at all times. It was in Israel that I also encountered the type of labane that has had more of the liquid strained off. This kind can be rolled into balls and kept in olive oil. This is my "Labane 2" attempt.

I strained the yogurt for three days this time instead of just one day. You can see that the labane is drier, clumping together more than in "Labane 1".

I rolled the labane into little balls the size of walnuts. It was actually difficult because it was still quite "sticky". I should have let it strain longer, but we were leaving for Illinois the next morning at 4:30 am, and I was taking the labane as a host gift. So . . . At this point the labane was at room temperature, and refrigerating it probably would have made it easier to work with. I used this jar, adding a few peppercorns and a bay leaf. I poured olive oil over each "layer" to eliminate air bubbles.

A few days later in Illinois I taught my sister-in-law and her children how to make pita. We used some of the labane as a topping for the flatbreads. At dinner, her husband exclaimed: "You made these!?! They look store-bought!" We're taking that as a compliment.

More later on pita . . .

Cook's Word: Refrigerate the labane before rolling. In fact, as summer approaches, refrigerating it the whole time it strains is probably a good idea. For myself, I might just stick with Labane 1. It requires a lot less olive oil, and we'll end up smearing it on bread anyway!

Labane 1

It begins with yogurt. And becomes very yummy.

When I made my first batch of yogurt I was so overwhelmed by the amount of yogurt I had on my hands that I ended up using over half of it to try making labane. Labane is basically yogurt that has had a lot of the excess liquid drained off so that it is the texture of sour cream. I strained my yogurt by dumping it in a cloth-lined colander set over a bowl to catch the liquid. I had an old, clean rice bag that I used, but any piece of clean cotton cloth will work.

After about 24 hours, the yogurt looked like this: labane!

Amazing how much liquid drains off! Probably more with
homemade yogurt which is runnier than the store-bought stuff.

I added salt to taste and a few glugs of olive oil . . .

With homemade pita, YUM!

To serve the labane (or "labna" or "labaneh") I spread it in a pretty bowl, drizzled more olive oil on top--use virgin oil for the best flavor!--and sprinkled it with za'atar. Za'atar is an herb mix popular in Israel and other Middle-Eastern countries. It usually contains hyssop (an oregano relative), toasted sesame seeds, and salt.

Labane really is a great blank palate for any fresh or dried herbs that you like. Get as creative as you want with garlic, peppers, onions, ranch mix, etc. and use as a spread on sandwiches or a dip for crackers.

Taste-Tester(s) Say(s): "I could eat this all day!"

Cook's Word: Too easy and delicious not to try. Some instructions call for putting salt and olive oil in the yogurt before straining. I did the salt once, but still had to add it to taste at the end of the process. And, I know I said it before, but use virgin olive oil! It makes a huge difference in the taste when drizzled on top for serving.