Monday, November 22, 2010

Cashew Hummus

This past summer I discovered a great cook book, A Year in Lucy's Kitchen by Lucy Waverman. Since my library is over flowing with cook books, I signed it out from the library. It was not a random choice, I had read a review of it under the banner of cookbooks you will want for Christmas. I marked each appealing recipe with a sticky note. Usually I will not find more than five recipes per book that look interesting, novel or repeatable. However, with this book when I was finished reading it, looked like a yellow sticky forest. I showed the book to one of my friends who said I should return the book to the library with the stickies in tact to see if others would recognize superior recipes. We had a great laugh. I returned the book sans the sticky notes and went and bought my own copy. What I realized was, it is worth buying cook books by great cooks. So many cookbooks are written because they can be, to raise a profile of a restaurant, bring attention to an issue like healthy eating or ethnic flavours, or to raise funds for an organization. The question is, how many cookbooks are actually written by exceptional cooks. I think Lucy Waverman is one of those cooks. This particular cookbook also has a value added feature. There are wine pairings and menu suggestions. After having attended Jennifer Cockrall-King's Food and Wine Writing class in Penticton, I have a new respect for wine pairings. It truly makes a difference. For this dish the wine pairing is fino sherry.

Please note, this is not the original recipe. I decreased the oil from 3/4 to 1/2 cup and balanced the consistency with the chickpea water and made a few other tweaks. Play with the flavours. You can increase the cumin, decrease the garlic or add less salt but when you do make these changes and the result is very good, record the change.

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>1 cup dried chick peas soaked over night and drained. This was the first time I did this and the flavour was superior to using canned chick peas, I wondered why it had taken me so long to adopt this method. In fact I made 8 cups of chick peas in my slow cooker and froze the ones I did not need.
2 cups of water
1/2 tsp dried red chillies
1 bay leaf
2 spring of thyme. I grew thyme in my garden and have a use sip lock bag in my freezer
1 cup unsalted cashews
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp chopped garlic
2 tsp ground cumin
salt for flavour

Bring to boil the chick peas, bay leaf, red pepper chillies and thyme in the water and then simmer for 40 minutes. Drain chick peas saving the cooking water, combine with the rest of thee ingredients and puree in the food processor. Add the chick pea cooking water to thin the hummus to the desired consistency. Serve with a variety of crackers. This is a gluten free dip and so I tend to use gluten free crackers. I love the flavour of the cumin with the cashews. Usually when I think of hummus, I taste oil, lemon and garlic in my mouth. A great combination but this one is a definite rival!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Romaine with Oranges and Pecans

This is one of those salads that you just want to have second and third helpings. In fact I will just have half of this salad for a meal. The recipe comes from one of the Best of Bridge cook books. For the salad part shred two heads of romaine lettuce toss with 1 cup toasted pecans add 2 peeled and sliced oranges Dressing. Combine the following in a blender 1/4 cup red wine vinegar 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup oil 1 tsp salt 1/2 sliced red onion 1 tsp dry mustard 2 tbsp water Although the recipe does not call for it, I also slice thin rings of red onion into the salad.

Magic Pesto

I love pesto. I make it with parsley, coriander, or basil or some times a mixture of herbs. Which ever herb you choose, ensure it is fresh. I pour one third cup lemon juice and two thirds cups olive oil into the blender, add 3 to 4 cloves of garlic and stuff the blender full of fresh, washed herbs. When it is the colour of a green goddess and there are no strands of green in the mixture, just tiny bits of green, it is blended enough. Then grate at least one cup of Parmesan cheese into the mixture. I have also added ground almonds for people who are allergic to cheese. I ladle the pesto into small containers. Label them and place them in the freezer. I use the pesto for every thing - it is great layered with sun dried tomatoes and goat cheese in a clear glass bowl as an appetizer, I toss it on all vegetables, potatoes or pasta. For salmon, mix 1/2 cup of pesto and 1/2 cup mayo and spread it on the salmon before barbecuing. Delicious.

As my friend Jan said, it is just magic!

Tomatoe Fennel Soup

I was at a writing retreat at Strawberry Creek Lodge. Imagine the decadence of just writing, walking and having a fabulous cook prepare all the meals. Apparently writers will write through the night and show up at odd hours to eat but that was not the case on this retreat. Every one showed up for all three meals at the assigned times. I wrote in the evenings and apparently missed out on freshly baked cookies. Oh dear! I did have dessert every evening so can not really justify even one cookie. Below is a recipe the cook made for one of the meals. When I made it, I used sodium reduced chicken broth and this did not affect the flavour. One evening, a former contractor who does not have an ounce of fat on him came over for dinner. When I asked him about any allergies and food preferences he said he only ate fat free food. So I omitted the oil in the soup, cooked all the vegetables in the broth and again, the soup was delicious. When you do serve the soup, put a heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt on the soup and in the centre, place a table spoon of home made pesto. It looks so much more appealing. The original recipe came from the Oprah magazine 2008 Cookbook.

Brown the following in 2 tbsp oil: 1 chopped onion, 1 chopped fennel bulb and 3 chopped and seeded red peppers. When almost browned, add one chopped jalapeno pepper with most of the seeds removed. If you like more heat, leave in more seeds. Sit fry for 2 minutes. Add 4 cups of chicken broth and simmer for 20 minutes. Cool. Puree in batches in the blender. After all the soup has been blended, add 1 cup yogurt and taste for salt. Stir, ladle and garnish with the yogurt and pesto. You could also garnish the soup with fresh basil leaves. The soup looks like it would be tomatoe based. If is not. Great for gluten free diets and those allergic to tomatoes.