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Showing posts from May, 2021

Harummus

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This is a fusion of harissa and hummus. Two of my favorite purees. I tried to keep it pretty clean and not cloud the flavors with too many ingredients. It's a little spicy. It's got some African, some Middle Eastern and some Spanish notes.  1 medium red bell pepper, diced 1 jalapeno, diced 3 cloves garlic, sliced 1 can dark red kidney beans, rinsed 1 tbl olive oil 2 tbls red wine vinegar 1 tbl caraway seeds 2 tsps Aleppo pepper flakes 1 tsp cayenne 1 tsp black pepper 2 tbls salt First, cook down the peppers with the salt. They'll release a lot of water and soften after 5 minutes or so. Add oil, Aleppo, cayenne, black pepper, caraway and garlic. Continue simmering over medium heat for 10 more minutes.  Add kidney beans, vinegar and pepper mixture to the food processor. Puree.  Enjoy. 

Middle Eastern Lentils in Broth

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 We're sticking with the lentil theme for another recipe. It turns out that making lentils really tasty is one of my super powers. Who knew? One way to really extract flavor from simple vegetable ingredients is by sautéing them down before you begin creating the broth. It's a little bit of extra time, but the pay off well exceeds the effort.  Recipe Ingredients 1 poblano pepper, small slices 6 cloves garlic, thin slices 2 jalapeno, seeded and minced 1 serrano, seeded and minced 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved Spinach and Arugula 1/3 cup dry lentils 2 tbls olive oil 3 1/2 cups of water 1 tbl salt 1 tbl ras el hanuot  The salt and ras el hanout amounts look high, but there are a lot of ingredients and there is a lot of water. It's just a lot of food, so it needs a lot of seasoning.  Start by cooking down the various peppers and salt in a large sauce pot, uncovered over medium high heat . When the peppers start to make noise add the oil. Stir to coat the peppers with the oil. Le

Mushroom Lentils

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Lentils. They're tiny little disks of nutritional gold, but they don't boast much in the way of flavor. This is easily remedied with the right ingredients and cooking methods. It doesn't take much effort to turn them into something as enjoyable as they are healthful.  Mushrooms and lentils really like each other. When they get together some serious culinary magic happens.  Ingredients 1 cup. fancy dried mushrooms (if you can find one with morels, all the better) 2 chile costeno, sub guajillo or puya, tear off top and empty most of the seeds 1/3 cup dry lentils 2 cups water, ore was needed 5 cloves garlic, minced 1 tbl olive oil 1 1/2 tbls salt 1 tsp black pepper  Add all to a pot. I like to tear the tops off of the dried chilies and dump out most of the seeds. Try to leave them mostly whole though. They're easier to avoid and discard once the cooking is done. They're not really good to eat in this state.  As far as the dried mushrooms go, I found an interesting mix