stovetop tajine.

This picture of a pseudoghetto Sydney liquor store has nothing to do with anything, just needed a picture. Just liiiiiiike....last night, I just needed a dinner. Yeah, sorry, I've been reading and writing art history for 72 hours, I used up my brains. Here's an Anna Jones recipe that, as usual, sounded totally weird and mwah but ended up being pretty darn ok and yay. I'd make this again.

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chickpea, zucchini, dates, quinoa, lemon-coconut yogurt.

2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2 leeks finely chopped
A generous pinch of saffron
2 teaspoons of ras el hanout spice
500ml of vegetable stock
a drained 400g tin or jar of chickpeas, or 250g home-cooked chickpeas
1 tbsp sriracha

2 courgettes, thickly sliced
10 dates, roughly chopped
200g of runner or green beans, chopped into bite sized lengths

100ml of coconut yoghurt
A sprinkling of dried chilli
The juice and zest of 1 lemon
A couple of tablespoons of sesame seeds
A few sprigs of fresh mint or basil

optional: 4 free range or organic eggs

Heat a good glug of olive oil in a pan, add the leeks and garlic and cook on a medium heat for 5 minutes until the leeks have started to soften. Then sprinkle the saffron and ras el hanout over top.
Next add the chickpeas and the stock and bring to a steady simmer and cook for 5 minutes until the broth has thickened a little.

Meanwhile, heat a pan with a little olive oil and add the sliced courgettes and the dates and sauté until the courgettes are browned on both sides and the dates have begun to caramelize.

Next turn the heat down a little add the green beans and cook for 8 minutes. Throw the lemon juice in.

Meanwhile mix the yoghurt with the chilli and lemon zest with a good pinch of sea salt and pepper.

Ladle the vegetables and broth into a bowl, top with sesame seeds a squeeze more lemon juice, herbs and the yoghurt for spooning over.

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falafel taco.

Serendipity? I didn't invent this unholy bastard mess but I should have. Above: storebought taco shell filled with: avocado and shredded iceberg dressed with lime and salt; momofuku cukes, tomatoes and red onions; zhoug; amba; beet hummus; soy tzatziki; sriracha. And homemade falafel. After a week of pretty awful cooking by me it was time to go for what you know.

Below, the next day's non-taco version.

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sabih + amba.

VDuck has a bit of a tradition of loving multi-component street-foodie kinds of things, kind of almost more than anything else when they're really good. Chipotle corn cakes. Fish tacos. Bao. Bhel puri. Maoz Falafel.

I think the above is about ready to join those storied ranks. Indeed, it's essentially a Maoz Falafel salad box without the messy hassle of making falafel. Or a sabih without the bread and eggplant. Anyway the main delivery vehicle here is a cheela made with a handful each of chopped and sauteed spinach and iceberg lettuce, yes iceberg, I think this helps keep it moist and a little crunchy. And then there's only cumin and curry powder as the spices, basically a big falafel pancake.

The other components are zhoug; tahina and/or hummus (storebought); a tomato cucumber onion salad that's basically Momofuku's cucumber pickle plus tomatoes and a red onion; a drizzle of pomegranate molasses, a small pile of pecans, why this works so well I have no idea, you could probably combine the pecans and pomegranate molasses into an interesting spicy sticky nut thing come to think of it; and finally amba, an Israeli mango ketchup that kind of almost stole the show. There should also be fried eggplant in here but I was kind of cooked out when it came right down to it.

Anyway, it's unsurprising I guess that all of this works together so well, but with the addition of amba and its combination with zhoug and hummus it kind of becomes something I'd serve to "guests". In Israel they add a hard-boiled egg, which sounds fucking great. You could probably add a drizzle of yogurt and/or sriracha and that would also be great. Fuck, just keep drizzling things until there's nothing left to drizzle. Drizzle.

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amba. 

250g frozen mango pieces
2 or 3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
juice of a lemon
2 tbsp honey or agave syrup
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp toasted cumin seed
salt to taste
1/2 cup to 1 cup water

Mmm, yeah, just blitz everything except the water in a food processor, adding enough of the water to make it blitzable, and then cook it for 10-15 minutes on the stove, adding the rest of the water to get to a ketchup-like consistency. Adjust to get to ketchup-like levels of salt and sweetness and sourness. Use liberally.

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ghosted.

Hi. Let's talk about food.

And here is an especially promising new thing, got it from here, did it camping style with no oven so I imagine the recipe will change eventually, but tonight was pretty darn good. Instead of a meat sauce I made this Lentil Bolognaise with Afghani spices instead of Italian. Here's where the idea came from. I bet toasted pumpkinseeds would be a good experiment on top.

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kaddo bourani (sweet afghani pumpkin with spicy tomato-lentil sauce and garlic yogurt).

3 tbsp butter
2 onions, chopped fine
2 carrots, diced small, smaller than you usually would
100g tempeh, diced the same smallness as the carrots (optional)
1 tsp ground coriander (or more, this is the most important taste)
1/2 tsp ground turmeric (or more)
3 cloves garlic, pressed
3 cans tomatoes
2 tbsp tomkllllllllllllllllllloikjjjjjjjjjjjato paste (thanks Pip)
2 tsp sriracha
1 cup green lentils (not the fancy kind)
1 cup water
a pinch smoked salt
a pinch red chile flakes
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 small pumpkin,  peeled, seeded, and cubed into 1.5-cm cubes or something like that
some cooking method
sugar
butter

2 cups yogurt
4 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tsp dried mint
salt to taste

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Mmm, it went something like this: melt the butter in a big pot. Throw in the onions and carrots and tempeh if using and saute for 8 minutes or so. Then throw the coriander and turmeric in and saute it all for 3 minutes or so. Then the garlic, for a minute or two. Then the tomatoes, the tomkllllllllllllllllllloikjjjjjjjjjjjato paste, the sriracha, the lentils, and the water. And maybe the salt, chile and pepper too. Yeah go ahead. Do it. You're going to cook this business for about 30 minutes, or until the lentils are al dente, possibly adding more water as you need to to give the lentils something to soak up. If you do do that you'll probably need to adjust salt and pepper again.

Meanwhile, on another burner if you're camping like I was and don't have an oven to do Helmand's candying thing linked to above: boil the squash in water for 10 minutes or so, or however long it takes the squash to be cooked but still hold its shape. Drain it and caramelize the outside of it in sugar and melted butter (roughly 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp sugar).

Oh, right: before you do any of this, make the yogurt sauce: go into the fridge and find the oldest of the several buckets of Greek yogurt that are in there. Scrape off any gross looking parts and throw away any watery liquid that has accumulated. With what's left, use a silicone spatula to make it look pretty, then add the garlic, mint, and salt to taste. Don't tell anybody what you just did. Stir to combine. Let sit for at least an hour before you do the first two steps.

Serves probably 4.

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recently.

 Flàmmeküeche and pumpkin soup at Troost. Sleep Gunner and Moore/Buis heading to the Belgian border.

Where I had one of the least edible restaurant dishes I've had in a long while, "homemade ravioli of the day". I think you can tell by the ravioli in the foreground that these are pretty "al dente", but what you can't tell is that they also tasted pretty "awful", like only the wrong things about dried mushroom taste.

Luckily Nelson was able to redress the lingering bad pasta juju by busting out her birthday present for the first time and making homemade lasagne noodles...

Which were then applied to this spinach and eggplant lasagna bianca with rosemary, really good, recipe from Caroline.

Italian suckses continued at home with Dennis's new pizza recipe, to be posted here soon.



Then quite a mixed bag of recipes from Veggiestan, this eggplant/tomato/yogurt/mint concept was really good...

...but an unpictured pumpkin soup with rice and za'atar croutons was, mmm, not such a great idea, and these kibbeh:

Despite appearances, were just depressingly bland and useless.

Then this week I encountered a need for vegetables and pickled things, so we get Mark Bittman's beet carpaccio and some perrrrrfect pickled beet eggs.

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shakshouka.

Shakshouka. A good thing to do for a warming breakfast if you've made too much red sauce for your previous two days' Italian needs (yesterday's arancini risotto and the day before's unprecedented chicken parm casserole).

To your remaining red sauce, add a bunch of toasted cumin seed, dried thyme, and some crushed red pepper. Cook it down some, ten minutes or so, then lay a couple of eggs in there (make wells first if you want them to look pretty), cover, and cook for 4 minutes for still-runny yolks or until eggs are set to your liking. Throw some chopped cilantro, crumbled feta and pul biber on there afterwards and blast your sinuses out. The Wikipedia article says that you can/should even serve it with zhoug, which next time I maybe will.

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Chronology break: Day Two of shakshouka (after the Top Chef Brazil dream) was decorated with a pesto that I'd pestled up out of wilting arugula (1 cup), nearly stale pistachios (1/4 cup) and spotty basil (1/4 cup), plus garlic (3 cloves), salt and olive oil (to taste). Even better than the first day, fresh garlic and herbs bring a nice zing.

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orange you glad i didn't say asian again.

Turmeric Quest 2013 still in progress, but even I as a true lovvver of most things Asian am needing the occasional break from the normal Indonesian-Thai-Vietnamese-Japanese-Burmese-Cambodian-Sri Lankan-etc stuff we cook over here.

And yet. Trying to eat orange stuff like turmeric but also squash and sweet potatoes, I'm sure you know why. And kale, you know why, everybody does. And prunes, you probably think you know why, but it's just because I've had this bag of them sitting around forever and it's time to start fresh and begin ignoring a brand-new bag of prunes.  

Thus, if not Asian, toward what cuisine do we steer our mighty kitchen spatula. Have you noticed I'm not using question marks anymore. It's more blasé that way, like I don't even care if "you" answer. More rhetorical. I've also put sarcastic exclamation marks "on pause". Quotation marks, unfortunately not (yet), and parentheses are still going pretty strong. And I'm still really likely to use more than one colon in a sentence, probably all of them incorrectly. Progress (implied question mark). 

The answer to my extremely rhetorical and questionably punctuated moronic question turned out to be: Moroccan, ish. In the end though, by the time I got around to turning on the stove I just really didn't have it in me anymore so I just scorched/steamed a chicken breast, threw some cilantro at it and dipped it in harissa, almost the same thing. The squash is still roasting, it's 9:45pm. A recipe for tomorrow's usage of tonight's detritus will eventually emerge from the shambles below. 

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calico tagine. 

100-200g leftover chicken
1 or 2 fried or hard-boiled egg(s)

2 or 3 cups kale, chopped pretty fine
1 or 2 cups butternut squash, roasted with smoked salt, cinnamon, and cumin seed

7 or 14 prunes, soaked, keep the water

handful almonds, toasted, chopped

pinch powdered ginger or ras el hanout

teaspoon cumin seed

a good bit of cinnamon

an assload of harissa, ok i used 2 tbsp 

extra-virgin olive oil if there's not already some from the squash or chicken
salt or feta if you're eating dairy
freshly cracked pepper to taste
a sprinkle of smoked paprika if you're in the mood
toasted sesame seeds

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fassoulia.

Went into the center yesterday for a drinkie-poo and some sun with the Moop and the KK, ended up on the Leliegracht at Spanjer & Van Twist, where I think I have never ever been before. Pleasant enough place to drink and chat, though in terms of food I'm not sure it would ever be wise to venture beyond the "fried" portion of the menu.

That little neck of the woods sure is picaresque (sic) though. OK, here are some options for tonight's North African-Jewish idea, another Saveur ripoff.

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boulettes de poisson.

400g cod or haddock
½ cup very finely chopped almonds, or almond flour
¼ cup finely chopped parsley
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp ground ginger
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 cups stock (I used chicken)
2 cups whole, peeled canned tomatoes with juice, crushed
1 tsp sugar, plus more to taste
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp crushed red chile flakes (I used pul biber)
1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/2 cup chopped cilantro for serving

I served it with buttered rice, yogurt probably would've been good too. These were the "meatiest" fishballs I've ever encountered, not in a bad way.

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fassoulia (long-cooked green beans in tomato sauce).

1 large onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin
400g fresh string beans or runner beans
1 can diced tomatoes (2 cups or so)
1 cup beef or vegetable broth
salt and pepper

Cook for 45 minutes.

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form factor.

Above: trying to use our Cineville cards properly, here we are at Kriterion for The Place Beyond the Pines.

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Chickpea flour surplus reduction effort underway here. Messing around with socca again, hampered a bit by the fact we never really did get our oven fixed (I mean, it works, but now if it gets too hot [around 450F] it stops working and the only fix is to push the Reset button, conveniently located on the rear of the oven, that's right, the side FACING THE FUCKING WALL).

So 2013's socca technique is all about stovetop-style crepe-ishness. And while it's not really as good texturally as the ovenblasting method, it's still pretty good. That is, after the first three fucked-up looking ones. Is it impossible when making pancake-esque things to just wait until the pan is the right temperature? Signs point to yes (context for non-elderly/non-Americans).

Anyway, I keep seeing all these people putting things on their socca, and I think that hey I too want to be one of these "all these people". But what for toppings to use? I find myself asking in a Peter Lorre kind of voice. Right before drifting off to sleep last night I envisioned something like: torn harissa-marinated mozzarella; half-dried tomatoes, chopped basil leaves and a drizzle of balsamic or lemon-date syrup. Seems like any flavors you'd normally pair with chickpeas would be good (thus Spanish, Italian, Middle Eastern, Indian primarily), but the challenge would be the addition of complementary textures to end up with something possibly pizza-achtige.

So maybe some kind of play on romesco sauce plus arugula and manchego? Something with spinach, pine nuts and raisins plus pecorino? Something based on a potatoless pav bhaji (mostly cauliflower and carrot then I guess) with coriander and....whatever cheese goes with Indian food? Please continue without me: I'll be at the stove trying to gauge socca flipworthiness.

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sometimes i holiday in saint-gilles.

I arrived on Passover and left on Easter Sunday, have to say Passover was more fun, but I think that's because I missed all the food and drink on Easter and almost everything outside was closed. Some nice veggie appetizers being made below pre-Passover: soft-boiled white onions stuffed with spiced lentils or fava, not sure; and yes, softened red onions stuffed with sweet potatoes and a nut of some sort, I ate eight of those.

Easter Sunday, walking to the train station yes everything closed, there's a picture of a "no frites" sign outside a clothing store.

flaffle.

OK, the above is a pretty badly color-corrected and giantly smashed falafel (with zhoug, garlic yogurt and beet-pickled red onions with mint), but for testing purposes our teeth were still able to chomp on it very successfully.

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We always loves us a good falafel, and lately it seems like the little guys are showing up more and more often around our pad. Thing is, they're not so so cheap if someone else makes them for you, so we decided to give it another go ourselves.

Like any superpopular and time-honored traditional dish, there are scads of regional evolutions and passionate opinions about how to do it "right": favas or chickpeas; cooked or uncooked; what kinds/ratios of herbs, ect ect ect.

We tried it once a long time ago, and then we used uncooked chickpeas, soaked instead of cooked, as is the general tradition. Something must've not gone quite right with the whole soaking process, I remember an inedible, undercooked result that might have even gone unserved: Mara doesn't remember it.

So in the interest of ending up with something that could jump in our bellies tonight, I went with chickpeas that I had cooked from scratch yesterday (unsalted). This recipe was quite specific about barely grinding the beans, I guess so that we wouldn't end up with a gummy, overstarched mess (thanks to Zora for asking about this in the Comments).

And...more data is required. I don't think these are exactly gummy, I've enjoyed falafel like these before...but the test batch was a bit..."moist" inside, not sure if it was my cooking technique or the recipe, we'll see tomorrow when I do a real batch of real-sized balletjes. In any event, the seasoning proportions below are almost perfectly perfect.

UPDATE: I have eaten so much falafel in the past few days that I must smell like a cliché. You know, that addled old Greek or Italian (or some other onion-and-garlic-eating cuisine) chef who tries to make perverted advances on a young female protagonist working as a waitress or hostess in a crappy diner in one of those 80s kind of pre-hipster-irony I-can-make-it-in-the-big-city-if-I-try novels of which I cannot think of a single example. But you know what I mean...she's ending her shift, I'm drunk in the kitchen, screaming at the dishwashers, wearing a blood-and-grease-stained wife-beater with "my breath reeking of stale onions, garlic and cooking wine", when she tries to squeeze by me to get to the walk-in I ect ect ect.

The falafel: it's not like most falafel I know, so I assume it's the uncooked vs. cooked thing. These falafel are totally delicious, and they hold their form well enough to be flipped, but you could never, for example, throw one at someone and have them catch it and pop it in their mouth (this was the first example that popped into my head, which gives you some idea of my home environment). The last falafel I had like these were at Falafel Dan down by the Tuschinski, which I think is out of business now, probably because no one could play catch with their falafel balls.

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falafel. 

2 cups roughly chopped white onion
6 garlic cloves
2 cups cooked, unsalted chickpeas, drained
2 cups lightly packed cilantro leaves
slightly less than 1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon hot paprika or cayenne pepper
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cumin seed, whole
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup chickpea flour or all-purpose flour

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The instructions are important, and forthcoming.

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I also made another nice new fish salad, as unappetizing as that sounds...but you know we dig on some mfkn fish salad up in this bitch. Tonight's was noteworthy in that it was my first time cooking successfully with Moroccan preserved lemon, I really liked it.

north african fish salad with potatoes and preserved lemon.

600g firm white fish, original suggests monkfish, I used earth-destroying panga
200g cubed, cooked potato, I kind of poached mine in olive oil and used 2 tbsp of that oil as the 2 tbsp listed below

juice of a lemon
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
2 tbsp EV olive oil
2 tbsp capers
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/4 or possibly up to 1/2 of a preserved lemon, flesh scooped out, rind (not zest, whole rind) diced small or minced

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aci biber sosu.

Sooooooooo, yeah. That's pretty fucked up looking. My breath is fucked up as well. I did end up making that amazing Maoz-centric idea I had last night, but didn't take a picture til today, that's it above looking like this awful Dr. Oetker cookbook someone gave us 15 years ago, or we possibly stole, or found, it was called Modern German Cooking I think. Unbelievably hideous food photography, like everything was photographed in a morgue with fluorescent lights.

But I swear those mint leaves just landed like that. They didddddd!!!

What we're looking at is minus last night's pickled beets and cucumbers, it's: those supergarlicky Tunisian carrots with cumin, ginger and olives (the orange stuff), plus the garlicky Yemeni zhoug (the green stuff), which is outrageously good, plus a slightly thicker version of that garlicky Turkish tahinli tarator (the beige stuff), plus I swear randomly scattered mint, plus "the spicy-ass red stuff", which is this:

Last night I had all of the above with a little shoarma-seasoned steak and it RAAWWWWWKED, but: today, no steak, add the missing beets and cukes and this is possibly the best vegan thing I've ever smashed into my face (no yogurt). It's Maoz at home. And, coolly, it combines contributions from three continents, but I guess that's how the Ottoman/Arab world rolls. More details after accomplishing something(s).

UPDATE: A day later I made this to play along with everyone else and it was realllllllly good: Roasted Cauliflower with Tahini Dressing.

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virtual tourism, continued.

View Istanbul in a larger map.

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The leetle friend Hilly the Poes goes off to Istanbul for work tomorrow and has had no time to do any research, so I did some real quick just now cos I used to be interested in a visit there myself, and cos I'm fast at researchin', and cos H the P does stuffs for me all the time.

Clicking on the little blue pushpins gives you further information, URLs and shtuff, but there's one pushpin you can't see because it's all off to the southeast in the Asian district: it's Çiya (seeya!), more detail here and also in the comments for this post, courtesy of the wonderfully helpful Zora.

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And now after looking at all that food I'm having terrible döner/shawarma/falafel/blo my dam head off with spicy stuff cravings. As a result, I will now try to make some of the hot-as-balls Yemeni thing called zhoug, plus some vitamin-rich omi houriya und some cooling tahini sauce.

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zhoug.

6 of them finger-sized spicy green Turkish peppers, basically like jalapeno hotness. Stemmed, not seeded!
1 cup of fresh cilantro, washed
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, washed, or just use all cilantro like I did
3 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 tsp caraway seeds, crushed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp water
1/4 cup of olive oil, plus 2 tbsp
optional: 1/2 to 1 tsp raw sugar, use only if you're thinking that something's missing

Pretty sure this is what I did except for salt and pepper could be off. But it looks and tastes EXACTLY like Maoz' spicy green sauce, which is a great great thing to look and taste like.

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today's fad diet.

Messing around with a 1500-calorie CRON diet for a while, should be a good exercise. The biggest challenges so far are 1) getting to sleep early enough so that I'm not starving before bed, and 2) high-protein breakfasts that don't involve 3 eggs. Here's one potential solution for the latter, a cup of chickpeas + the egg is about 20 grams of protein and +/- 400 kcal. Seems like a little sauteed chorizo and a tablespoon of lowfat Greek yogurt wouldn't be bad ideas either in the protein and taste departments.

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chickpeas, tahini, shoarmaspice, harissa, pickled fennel + an egg over-easy.

Next time I make this I'll do proportions.

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seemple pleasures.

This is tomorrow.
This is dessert:

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goat yoghurt, date syrup, cherries or some other fruit, pine nuts or some other nut.

Haven't tried this exact combination, but so far we have tried bananas and strawberries, both good, and I've tried pine nuts, walnuts, and almonds, all good. It's pretty infallible, and the first two ingredients add instant and delicious exoticism to whatever fruit and nut you use.

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This isn't:

prune and tamarind chutney.

1 cup prunes, pitted,
1 onion, diced
2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tbsp cumin seed
1 tsp fennel seed
2 tsp tamarind concentrate
2 tbsp palm sugar
pinch cayenne
1 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
salt pepper

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good evening.

Mara just reminded me that one time in high school she threw up on a cop at a U2 concert. Jägermeister.

Above: Westerpark this morning at 9am. Tonight's dinner: beet carpaccio. Moroccan chicken wings. Some kind of salad with a faux-bacon dressing or if that fails then maybe this tahini dressing that we haven't made in a while.

The fennel seed in these wings makes for nice little surprising bursts of flavor.

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moroccan chicken wings.

3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp cayenne
Juice of one lemon
an extra sprinkling of salt

Oven at 200C. Place chicken in a single layer on a roasting pan. Cook for 30 minutes until chicken is tender, then increase heat to 250 and cook for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until chicken is crispy and caramelized.

theme, variations.

This is closely related to the carrot thing I made the other day, but it's in a different, probably more easily servable configuration: veggies roasted instead of boiled, and then diced instead of mashed. I tried it with roasted garlic instead of raw this time and a few other tweaks, it's still good, though if not as ka-BLAM! as the other recipe, it's much less of a Breath Destroyer for sure. It's like the older brother of the other thing.

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tunisian roasted vegetable salad.

carrots
parsnips
EVOO
garlic
salt
pepper

cumin
caraway
harissa
a lemon
argan oil or another less healthy, more affordable oil
fresh mint, chopped
salt
pepper

Roast vegetables and garlic. Let cool. Dice, combine with rest of ingredients. I served mine at room temperature.

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omi houriya.

Woo! Just crashed this together to see if it was worth bringing to a HBF/tc + J-Kim potluck on Sunday (I love the complex equation those two have become.....ohhhhh I mean their CB handles of course not their real selves aaahahahhhh ha ha xoxoxoxox).

Ohhhhh but seriously folks. It is. Worth bringing. This tastes very very much like the butt-kicking carrots from Maoz Falafel, a total total Breath Destroyer but yeah no one's smelling mine tonight are (is) they.

The recipe below is pretty much verbatim from Claudia Roden's New Book Of Middle Eastern Food from 1972 (at least the ingredient list is verbatim, my instructions are on the curt and cryptic side), a book which almost never lets me down. The only change I made was to add both cumin and caraway, she suggested either, but I like the occasional surprise of a caraway seed.

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omi houriya (tunisian carrot salad).

700gr carrots (the recipe called for "old carrots", I used winterpeen)
salt

4 tbsp EVOO
3 tbsp good vinegar, I used apple cider
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp harissa
1 tsp or more ground cumin
1/2 tsp caraway seed
1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 cup or more feta or hirtenkase, crumbled
16 green olives, quartered or finely chopped
possibly a little pomegranate molasses for drizzling, or sumac for sprinkling

Peel carrots, cut into big pieces. Boil in salted water til tender. Drain. Mash. Add the rest of everything through the ginger and combine. Garnish with feta and olives. Serves 6-8.

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sweet, greens, made of this, etc.

This totally looks like something boring you'd see on one of those "special diet" websites, but it's what I had for breakfast today and it's actually super tasty and I will be making it again very soon.

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sweet potato + greens.

4 big handfuls of fresh spinach, or possibly kale
1 clove garlic, minced, 2 cloves if you don't have social/romantic plans
1 tbsp EVOO

1 sweet potato, cubed small
1 red onion, chopped
1 pinch ground cumin
1 pinch garam masala
2 tbsp EVOO
salt and pepper to taste

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Do the spinach/kale and garlic as if you're sauteeing greens and garlic for a sandwich or something. Remove them and set aside. Saute the rest of the ingredients on medium-low heat until the sweet potato is done. Then add the spinach/garlic mixture back in and season to taste.

this is how we clean the pantry.

This was highly edible, almost really super good. I'd had dried black-eyed peas sitting around for a long time so I made a very harissa- and garlic-centric hummus out of them last night. Today I tried an Israeli-style hummus-crusted fish with it, then served it with a pile of cilantro and the leftover ruby kraut from the tempeh thing.

Drizzled with sriracha, it was a totally gourmet lunch, but would've been even better with a drizzle of a tahini cream sauce and some quick beet or cucumber pickles. I must warn you, this makes a lot of hummus.

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black-eyed pea hummus with harissa.

3 cups cooked black-eyed peas
2 garlic cloves, minced
6 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1-2 tbsp harissa
2 tbsp EV olive oil
1 or 2 tsp ground cumin
3 or 4 tbsp tahini
salt to taste
possibly water for thinning, or more olive oil

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