Hummus with Parsley, Garlic, Tahini, Lemon Juice, Sea Salt
Hummus doesn’t have to be bright green. Indeed, classical hummus is usually tan in color. But when you add a handful of fresh parsley (or basil or scallions), you will have a chickpea paste in a pleasant shade of green.
Ingredients
Note: this recipe creates a small amount – to make more, double, triple or quadruple it.
1/2 cup chickpeas
1-2 small garlic cloves, peeled
1 tsp. sea salt
pepper to taste
1 handful fresh parsley
2 wedges of lemon juice
1 Tbsp. tahini (sesame paste)
1 small piece of wakame seaweed(optional)
Soak the chickpeas for at least four hours or overnight. Cook the chickpeas, covered with water, in a crockpot until tender (a few hours in my crockpot). Optionally, you can add a stamp size piece of seaweed for extra minerals and a bit of flavor. You can also add some sea salt while the chickpeas are cooking (add salt toward the end of the cooking). When the chickpeas are ready, drain the water, reserving a bit in case you want to use it to moisten the hummus. Blend in a food processor the chickpeas, peeled garlic cloves, tahini, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. If you want regular hummus, you are now done. Take the leaves off the stems of the parsley and add the leaves to the hummus, blending them until you have a smooth, green paste. If you would like it to be smoother or softer, add some of the chickpea water. I love a homemade hummus that has the consistency of ice cream.
One of my guests remarked that it looked like wasabi. The homemade green hummus went well with the homemade pita bread that I served at our Chanukah party last night.
Radish, Kale, Parsely in watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2011
It is customary to eat foods with oil on Chanukah. However, one is not obliged to eat fried foods on Chanukah. Yes, yes, I will be serving latkes (potato pancakes) as well as sufganiyot (doughnuts, usually jelly doughnuts but we leave out the jelly). For this post, however, we will be creating salad dressing with olive oil. That way, one can fulfill the custom of eating foods with oil in a healthy manner (yes, first cold pressed olive oil, uncooked, is actually good for you). And why do we eat foods with oil on Chanukah? Because of the little vial of oil found in the Temple in the days of the Maccabees – the vial was only supposed to light the menorah for one day, but miraculously, it lasted for a whole eight days (thus, eight days of Chanukah).
So here are some salad dressing ideas:
Olive oil, raw apple cider vinegar, sea salt, turmeric, pepper and garlic powder
Olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper
Ilana-Davita’s Sweet and Tangy Dressing (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sweet chili sauce, salt and pepper)
Rachel: crushed garlic, dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, dried oregano (if your kids don’t mind “green stuff”) and olive oil
Rachel: lemon juice, cumin, salt and pepper, and olive oil
Olive oil, honey, mustard, a little orange juice and a little vinegar, salt and pepper.
Ilana-Davita: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, soya sauce, lime juice, salt and pepper
Sandy: Cilantro or basil in the blender with vinegar and olive oil.
Get the idea? How do you dress your salad? If you comment and it fits the olive oil category, I’ll add it to the list.
lentils in a jar turned upside-down so the water drains
I’ve been enjoying learning how to sprout brown lentils. I’m thinking of sprouting broccoli seeds next.
Equipment
1 mason jar
1 screen lid (I bought this green Sprouting Strainer Lid from Amazon)
Ingredients
1/2 cup brown lentils
1 cup water
Place the lentils in the jar and screw on the screen lid. Let the lentils soak for about 12 hours. After that, drain and rinse out the lentils every 6-8 hours (I confess, I sometimes waited 24 though not on purpose and the lentils were fine). You drain the lentils into the sink and then rinse the lentils. You turn the jar upside down unto a plate and let it drain again. Repeat in about 8 hours. The lentils are ready when they sprout little tails (in about 3 days). You can then store them in the refrigerator. They will last for at least one week.
I covered the lentils with a sock to keep them out of the light. Most of the recipes seemed to suggest this is not necessary, so I left the sock out of the post. Here was one simple post I found that talked about sprouting in general.
We served corn bread on Thanksgiving, and as I talked about doing in my previous corn bread post, I finally put together the corn bread recipe for preparation and consumption by the general blog public.
Ingredients
Oil to cover the pan
Dry ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
Wet ingredients:
1 cup oat milk (or rice milk or almond milk)
3/4 cup applesauce (you can try a full cup or even more – my previous version of this cake, without measuring applesauce, was moister than this one)
2 eggs
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup sugar (you can add more maple syrup instead, if you want)
Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl. Mix the wet ones in another bowl. Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a pan – I used a tube pan this time, because my last one was quite moist. With 3/4 cup applesauce, a regular baking pan should be fine, though it will probably take longer to bake the middle than the sides. Mix all the ingredients together and pout into the pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes.
Question: is it hard to obtain maple syrup where you live? You might try molasses, but it will then be a different sort of result, darker and with molasses-like flavor.
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Upcoming recipes for this blog – I finally took photos of the sprouting process, so I hope to post about sprouting lentils soon. As Chanukah is coming, I have two diametrically opposed blog post ideas: 1) sufganiyot – doughnuts recipe AND 2) a group post (meaning your participation) about salad dressing with olive oil, for those of us who wish to partake in a food way of the miracle of oil and would prefer not to consume mass quantities of fried food in order to do so.
I made this corn bread for Thanksgiving. I wanted a recipe with no dairy, and many of the conventional corn bread recipes had dairy in them. I decided at the last minute (OK, the last hour) that I had enough time to make the corn bread. So I opened a Moosewood cookbook (I think it was New Recipes from the Moosewood Restaurant – the first one not by Mollie Katzen) and converted the recipe. You will have to wait for the actual recipe – I needed to re-test it, because in my rush I didn’t measure and record ingredients. This corn bread without dairy came out moist and tasty – my previous attempts were rather dry. And here is the corn bread recipe.
Conversation from yesterday:
Me: I’m going to make the corn bread again in a week or two. Middle Son: Why? Me: So I can post it on my blog. Middle Son: Why can’t you post it now? Me: Because I need to measure the amounts. Middle Son: Can’t you just post it and let them figure out the amounts?
Fortunately, Middle Son is not in charge of posting recipe amounts to this blog.
If you would like some recipes now, I suggest you visit Batya’s newest Kosher Cooking Carnival.
On Friday I made this version of a lentil paté that really does look like chopped liver, so I am calling this recipe “mock chopped liver.” I previously posted a recipe that I called vegetarian chopped liver – that one suggests eggs, and this one needs no egg, so it is suitable for vegans.
Ingredients for Mock Chopped Liver
3/4 cup lentils
1/2 cup walnuts
salt to taste
1 onion
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. coriander
optional: ginger
Cook lentils until soft (add a bit of salt while cooking). Soak walnuts for about one half hour. Sauté onions for about one half hour – the lengthy sautéing helps to caramelize the onions, bringing more flavor to the recipe (if you stop after 15 minutes, it will still taste good). Blend lentils, walnuts and onions in the food processor with spices.
The inspiration for this quinoa pilaf recipe was a quinoa recipe in the New Jersey Jewish News called Quinoa Salad with Pomegranate Seeds. I was planning to make it on Rosh Hashana; however, the pomegranates I bought were sadly under-ripe and the seeds bitter instead of sweet, so I chose to simplify the pilaf and use only sauteed onion and celery for flavoring. The recipe also called for walnuts, and we don’t eat nuts on Rosh Hashana (not everyone follows this custom). So I will post a list of optional ingredients for your quinoa pilaf at the end of this recipe post. My pilaf recipe follows what was on the Roland box more closely than the newspaper quinoa salad recipe.
Why Quinoa?
If you find yourself making rice for many meals, why not substitute quinoa at times? Quinoa has a delicious, mild flavor and cooks in 15 minutes flat–more quickly than rice. It supposedly richer than rice in protein, fiber, magnesium and calcium, and it is gluten free. I felt fortunate to find a box that was pre-washed (for Central Jersey locals, it was Roland brand in Stop and Shop with an O-U certification). Otherwise, one has to rinse off the naturally occurring bitter coating known as saponin. An advantage to quinoa is Ashkenazim may eat this grain on Pesach, so you will find me linking to this post in the month before Passover.
Quinoa Pilaf: The Main Ingredients
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
1 tsp. olive oil (or use coconut oil)
1 stick chopped celery
1 chopped onion
Optional Ingredients
chopped carrots – add with onions
chopped zucchini – add with onions
chopped or crushed garlic – add with onions
salt and/or pepper to taste – add with onions
juice from 1/2 lemon
fresh herb (dill, oregano, basil) – add toward the end
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds – add at the very end
1/4 cup craisins (dried cranberries) – add at the very end
1/3 cup walnuts
1 chopped scallion
Quinoa Pilaf: The Recipe
Assuming you have already rinsed the quinoa, boil 2 cups of water with or without a bit of salt, then add the quinoa. Saute the onions and celery (or not – you can just add chopped celery without the sauteing, if you prefer – the newspaper version just had you mixing in the celery with walnuts and olive oil). Mix with the quinoa and with any other optional ingredients (the newspaper version used craisins, pomegranate seeds and lemon juice). May be served with scallions on top.
I like the recipe warm, but I found it tasted OK cold as well. Also, I was able to reheat the dish easily.
Last week we visited a farm and bought way too many apples. So anyone have any good apple recipe ideas? I’ve already made apple cake (I skipped the nuts), and I plan to make apple pie. I cooked some apples with raspberries for my daughter last week when she wasn’t feeling well (no added sugar – I’ve been convincing her sugar is no good for the healing process).
Here’s a link to Flamingo Musings’ brisket. She soaks hers in coffee. I’ve done wine in the past. My kids don’t like when I use a lot of cloves. Hers has no cloves. It does have garlic cloves. That would work for them.
I’m planning to make a Moroccan carrot salad – the kind where you steam the carrots briefly, then add the spices and bits of parsley at the end. My middle son said he is mostly likely to eat the simanim for carrots if the carrots are cooked, so I’ll leave some unspiced in the hopes our children will join us for this one.
I saw a recipe for quinoa salad among Rosh Hashana recipes in a local paper – it had pomegranate seeds and nuts. I will skip the nuts, as it is our family custom not to eat nuts on Rosh Hashana. Do you eschew nuts for this holiday, or are you like some of my friends who poo poo this custom as superstition or plain false?
Zucchini (or squash or gourds) are one of the simanim. Ordinarily, I would cook the zucchini (we have some new baby zucchini growing in front of our house, just in time for the holiday) with onions, but it seems more appropriate to skip the onions for the simanim dish. I will add some spices to some sauteed zucchini. No point in trying to get my kids to eat zucchini unless disguised in a cake.
More side dish ideas: as a friend who is a vegetarian will come one of the days (when I am serving meat), I will consider making kasha with mushrooms and onions. Maybe potato salad, too – that could be a side dish at any meal.
Finally, I might try Mrs. S.’s blondies. At first, I was tempted in my mind to add blueberries (before carefully reading the recipe and realizing this would be a vulgar addition). But as this is really for my kids, chocolate chips will remain the only flavoring.
This chickpea soup can warm your soul, whether it’s summer and served cold or fall and served warm. I got the recipe from the Macrobiotic Recipes page on Facebook. The original author is Montse Bradford, and I added amounts and tweaked the recipe a bit.
INGREDIENTS
chickpeas – 8 oz.
kombu (or a little bit of any kind of seaweed)
1 large carrot
1 onion
1 stalk celery
garlic – 1 clove
1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. miso
Garnish (optional): cucumber, bread croutons, parsley, spring onions.
How to Make the Chickpea Soup
Soak chickpeas overnight with plenty of cold water. Discard soaking water. Place chickpeas in a pressure cooker or a crock pot with the kombu and water completely covering the beans. Bring to a boil, discard any loose skins or foam that arises to the surface. Cook until till soft.
Saute separately some finely diced onion and minced garlic with some olive oil for 10 minutes. Add diced carrots and celery to the onion. Let it cook for 5 minutes, then add it to the chickpeas. Simmer for 15 minutes. Put the soup in the food processor (or use a stick blender) and blend for a short time, so it’s a bit chunky. Season to taste with some miso. Make sure to add the miso when it’s still warm – the miso will blend better with the soup. You can serve this chickpea soup cold or warm.
If you don’t mind spending about one half hour taking pita bread in and out of a hot oven, you can easily create some delicious, homemade pita. This recipe is from Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cooking.
Recipe for Pita Bread
Ingredients
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
1 packet active dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Mix the flour and salt in a warmed bowl. Make a depression in the flour.
Combine yeast, sugar and 1/4 cup lukewarm water (make sure it’s not hot anymore) in a small cup. Mix and set aside for 5 to 6 minutes. I wait until the yeast gets frothy. Pour the yeast mixture, 1 cup lukewarm water and olive oil into the depression. Gently form a ball and add more water if you need it. You will probably need another 3 tablespoons. Once you have a ball, knead it for 10 minutes or until smooth. (Leora’s comment: or use a mixer like the Kitchen Aid with dough hook). Put the ball in a bowl and cover with damp cloth for about 2 hours.
When it has doubled in bulk, punch the dough down and knead until smooth. With surface dusted with flour, roll out the dough and cut into 12 equal parts. Roll each into 1/4 inch rounds and lay these on baking sheets that are lightly dusted with flour. Cover with dishcloth and let them rise for about 45 minutes.
While the pitas are rising, preheat your oven to “broil.” Put a cast-iron skillet or griddle on the bottom of the oven if it’s gas or the middle if your oven is electric (I used at large stainless steel skillet). Allow to heat. Put one or two pitas, depending on size of skillet and immediately return the skillet to the oven. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes. The breads will puff up. I then flip the breads (not part of the original recipe). You can also toast if you want the tops to brown. Wrap in damp dish towel to cool them down.
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Note: like the Children of Israel coming out of Israel, I didn’t have enough time to allow the dough to rise in the pita bread in the photo. Hey, the pita still came out OK!
