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!

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.

Real Granola

During the late 1960s and early 1970s I made my own granola. It was the hippy influence. I never was a hippy but appreciated what some of them were trying to do - get real. Members of society at that time were getting enamoured with food packaging, canned soups and frozen TV dinners. The back-to-the-landers hippies were reacting to many things and food preparation and storage was one of their platforms. When I was growing up in Rosthern, Saskatchewan in the 1950s, I would never have guessed that the dismal small freezer in the Friesen and Company grocery section containing freezer burned unrecognizable food stuff would be replaced by rows and rows of up right freezers in mega grocery stories.

This summer, I got the urge to make granola again because I was cleaning my baking cupboard and found a bag of coconut that was begging for a reinvention. Essentially you have to mix dry to wet products in the right ratio, determine how sweet you like it, bake the mixture until it is crunchy and add the snipped dry fruit after you bake it. I have tried the following recipe with olive oil and then canola oil, added more and less cinnamon - it all works. So make it with what you have in your cupboards and enjoy real flavour.

Recipe Dried part
2 and 1/2 cups of lonely coconut shreds
4 cups of large oatmeal flakes
1 cup of flaked almonds (if you like other nuts better use them)
1/2 cup sesame seed
1/2 cup flax seed

Mix together in a large bowl.

Note in this recipe the ratio is 8 and 1/2 cups of dried seeds, grains and nuts to 1 cup of liquid. You could increase it to 10 to 1 but do not go any higher with the dried food. You will lose the clumping and moisture.

Wet part
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup honey
1 tsp cinnamon

Heat liquids till warm. Pour over the dry ingredients. Mix well. Scatter on to 3 greased cookie sheets. Bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Toss. Bake another 10 minutes. Do not overbake because it will burn. Remove. Cool.

Dried Fruit

Add 1 cup of dried cranberries and 1 cup of snipped dried apricots. Of course you can add as much or little dried fruit as you want and what ever else you want to use up. What you toss in will not affect the ratio.

Place in a clear glass jar so you can admire the colours of the granola. Do not expect the jar to remain full. The granola is perfect as it, sprinkled on yogurt, ice cream, stewed apples or served with warm milk. Those hippies got this one right.

Baked Ratatouille

My friend of 36 years is an amazing cook. She was the one who taught me to have a printed timing schedule in the kitchen when you entertain. To have perfection when when you are hosting, cooking and serving you need to know to the minute cooking and serving times. I also watched her flip a freshly baked chapiti into the garbage because it did not meet her standards. Only my well developed social graces - an estrogen laden frontal lobe - kept me from diving after it. I did shed a tear; bread in any form does that to me.

When she invited me for lunch, she said she felt like ratatouille. She was experiencing vegetable< hunger. It was September and there were all those fresh vegetables to be used and of course savoured. However, she confessed that the recipe called for one can of plum tomatoes and it was better to use the canned tomatoes than the fresh ones.v
If you are the kind of person to change recipes like I am or if you only work with what is in your pantry, do not omit the olives because they add a great deal of flavour.

The original recipe was published by Carroll Allen in Recipes Only Cookbook (1989). The recipe below has less salt and oil than the original one. Many cook books have recipes for ratatouille because it is a common vegetable stew created originally in the south of France.

Ingredients

1 egg plant
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves of chopped garlic
2 diced large onions
2 sliced zucchinis
2 sliced sweet red peppers
1 28 oz can of plum tomatoes
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup kalamata olives


For the topping
1 cup grated swiss cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

For the Bottom
3 tbsp dry bread crumbs

Trim the egg plant, cut into slices, sprinkle with salt and place in a colander. Drain after 15 minutes. Brush with oil and broil each side for 5 minutes. When cool, slice into strips.

Add oil to pan, fry garlic and onions till soft. Add zucchinis and red peppers. Cook till soft. Add tomatoes, thyme, bay leaf, egg plant and cook 15 minutes on medium heat. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Stir in parsley and olives.

Sprinkle the bread crumbs on the bottom of a greased 12 by 18 inch casserole. Gently pour in the vegetables. Top with the two cheeses. Bake 30 to 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Serve with rice and a crusty brown bread.

I asked for seconds because it tasted like the beginning of autumn but it was the colours on my plate that were irresistible - all the reds with the slash of purple eggplant, beige spots of cheese and a hint of green. It is a food palette.

Sauted Oriental But Still Healthy Spinach

This is one of the recipes that came because of a pot luck at my house. How I love those pot lucks! I no longer have the recipe but the idea is simple. This recipe is especially good for a pot luck because it can be made in advance and a great deal of spinach is reduced to at least one quarter the volume.

At the potluck, take a small serving, savour the flavour and enjoy the rest of the food crowding your plate.

Recipe

at least 2 fresh bunches of spinach

1 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp tamarind soy sauce

3 drops of sesame oil

2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (the original had black seeds)

Place a small bit of water in a large pot and stuff it with spinach. Cook on medium high heat. You can steam it if the pot is not tightly stuffed. As the spinach wilts, feed more leaves into the pot. After all the spinach is stuffed in and wilted. Remove. Cool. Squeeze out all the excess moisture. Please do not skip this step. It really makes a difference. Add all the other ingredients except the 1 tbsp sesame seeds. Toss until all the leaves are coated. Serve in a nice dish and sprinkle the remaining 1 tbsp sesame seeds on top. For this picture I added another tbsp of sesame seeds.

You could serve the dish with a pair of chop sticks as the serving utensils.