Felafel Success!!!!!!!!!!

This weekend I had a ravishingly radiant Robin visitor!! She inspired me to make attempt #2 of homemade felafels... attempt #1 being a resounding and resplendent failure.

Long story short my mixture (from canned chickpeas) was too soupy and my carefully formed balls disintegrated in the frying oil. Quel dommage!!

But this time around they were perfect!

 Seriously! How good do those look?!! Haha I knew this post was going to have a lot of exclamation points in it!

The trick, I've discovered, is to use dried chickpeas and not to cook them.

So...
Put 1 cup of dried chickpeas in a bowl full of cold water and let them soak overnight.

A few hours before you want to eat dinner, assemble your felafel balls and refrigerate them. The recipe I was using says this helps keep them together in the hot oil.

In a food processor add:
drained chickpeas
1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley
1 small onion
4 ish cloves of garlic
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cummin

Whuge everything together until combined and then add 2-4 tablespoons of flour. The flour helps dry the mixture out so it depends on humidity etc for the amount. You should be able to form the mixture into a ball in your hand without it seriously sticking.


Form into walnut sized balls and refrigerate.


When you're ready to eat them, heat 1 1/2-2 inches of oil in a frying pan at medium high heat.


Check to see if the oil is hot enough by spattering a couple TINY droplets of water into the pan. If they crackle and spit then the oils hot enough. I usually just wet a few of my fingers under the tap and kind of flick them at the surface of the oil. Feel free to flick water at your friend at this point as well.

I then put the felafel balls into the frying oil and fried them for about 5 minutes on one side and then probably 3 minutes on the other. I have metal tongs that I used to turn them and they came out a beautiful golden brown!!


We ate them in whole wheat petas with fresh tomato, grated carrot, lettuce, hummus and tatziki. How does one make Tatziki you might ask? Simple.


Grate half a cucumber into a sieve, over a bowl and salt it. Leave the cucumber to drain for a couple hours to get some of the water out.

You can skip this step and just mix it all together but if you keep the tatziki overnight the water you didn't drain out separates from the yogurt and whole thing gets kind of weird. And not good weird.

Mix the drained cucumber with garlic, salt, pepper, the juice of one half lemon, fresh dill or parsley and a little over half a cup of plain yogurt. Slather generously on Felafel.

Eat and be joyful!!!!!!


My plan is to make up the rest of the felafel mixture tonight and freeze half of them raw and the other half fried and see which way works better. I'm kind of hoping that the ones I fry will be initially soggy when defrosted but after popping them in the oven they'll crisp up again. I'll let you know how it all turns out. I promise.

Chicken and Resting on My Laurels.

So you may have noticed that I haven't blogged in a while. Well that's the thing with being one person who consistently makes enough food for four! I always freeze my extras and that's what I've been eating for the past two weeks.

Sorry but I just didn't feel that a post about defrosting spaghetti sauce was really gonne be that interesting!

Today I made something that was all kinds of delicious!

Basically shake'n'bake chicken legs but I made all the stuff myself.

So what I've recently discovered (while reading recipe blog after recipe blog about fried southern chicken, I don't know I think it's a cold weather craving...) that if you give chicken a buttermilk bath before coating it and frying it, well it's just the darn-tootenist!

I didn't fry my chicken. My reason? Honestly? It seemed wasteful to use that much oil. I wasn't worried about the calories, or the dangers of a pan full of boiling oil but the cost. Of oil, which might be one of the cheapest things in my pantry. It's official, I am the cheapest human alive.

Another thing, who buys buttermilk? Bizarre. There's not really much else to do with it but bathe chicken legs... and I can eat a lot of chicken but that's ridiculous. So wherever a recipe calls for buttermilk I use watered down plain yogurt. Wherever a recipe calls for sour cream I also use yogurt. I am a fan of the yogurt.

So I made a little swimming pool for my poultry legs with:

The juice of one half lemon
Several glops of yogurt
A chopped up clove of garlic
And a teaspoon of cumin

I let them marinate for about 2 hours and then I shook of the marinade and coated them in salt and pepper seasoned cornmeal.

Bake for 30-40 minutes at 350 and enjoy!!

Cabbage and Potatoes, so delicious!

Daylight savings has forced us all to fall back and while it is nice to see a bit more sunshine when my alarm goes off in the morning it makes walking home from work in the almost pitch dark make me crave warm, carbolicious comfort foods.

Give these bad daddies a try and you won't be sorry!

Potato pancakes are almost as delicious as French Fries. When you put cabbage in them and serve them with parsley garlic yogurt sauce it makes for one hell of a dish!!

So, slice your green cabbage nice and thin and saute it real sweet and slow with about a tablespoon of butter (don't be afraid of butter). Give it a generous salting as well.

Cabbage takes a lot longer to soften than onions so once it has softened and become slightly translucent add onion. For this recipe I used half a cabbage and two medium sized onions. But you could make a smaller or larger batch easily (obviously...)

While the onion is cooking, put a pot of water on to boil and throw in 2-3 halved potatoes. Blanch the potatoes for just under 10 minutes. Take the cabbage onion hash off the heat and grate the potatoes into a bowl. Add the hash and two eggs. Salt and pepper at will.

Heat a couple generous glops of oil in a frying pan on medium high heat and shape the hash-egg mixture into patties. Fry each patty on either side till they`re lovely and crispy and golden about 2 minutes.

Serve with a yogurt sauce made from about half a cup of yogurt, 2 heaping teaspoons of fresh chopped parsley, salt and pepper and some minced garlic. Yum Yum Yum

I had some today with a serving of Borscht I took out of the freezer. You could also make them in the morning, or afternoon or at 2am when you inevitably crawl out of bed to pee. The potato loves you and you love it!

The Most Beautiful Bread in the World

Add this bread to that list you have. You know the one. The one titled:

Super Impressive Things that I Bring Over to Other People's Houses that They Think are Really Hard to Make so I look Incredibly Impressive but Actually They're Sinfully Easy, Ha Ha!

If you don't have this list, promptly make one.

This bread is so beautiful I want to spend the rest of my life taking pictures of it and then scrap booking the pictures in a scrap book made from THIS BREAD!!

Easy-Peesy No-knead Bread

This cutey-pie little recipe is floating around the internet these days and it leaves a lot of room for creative experimentation! All it takes to pull off is the foresight to mix the ingredients the night before you actually want to eat it.

The night before, in a large bowl, combine:

3 cups flour (1/2-1 cup of which can be whole wheat or spelt, etc) I have been using 1/2 of dark rye flour these days and it's scrumptious.
1-2 tsps salt (the first time I made this I only used 1 and this second time round I used 2 but it seems a bit overly salty so I'll probably do 1 and a bit the next time)
I also added 1/2 cup sesame seeds because I've still got a butt-load of from when I made bagels. You could also use flax seeds. So this is going to be a seedy bread. Yum Yum Yum

Currently my bread is 2 1/2 cups white flour, 1/2 dark rye and 1/4 flax seeds and I'm addicted.

Yeast It's your choice. Either use 1/4 teaspoon Instant Yeast and just throw it in with the dry ingredients or pre-proof 1/2 teaspoon regular yeast in 1/4 cup warm water with a dollop of honey or maple syrup (that's what I do)

Add
1 1/2 cups warm water and stir with a fork till it's all combined. I ended up adding an extra scant 1/4 cup of water because I added the sesame seeds and had too much dry loose stuff hanging out in the bottom of the bowl. Done. Cover and go bed.

Finish tomorrow.

I had some quick oats in my cupboard and the recipe called for a cornmeal coating to keep it from sticking to the pan. I used the cornmeal on round one of this bread but thought I'd switch it up and it worked so so well!!

To bake the bread you prepped last night turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Make your hands a bit wet so the dough doesn't stick to them. Just pull the edges up and push them gently into the centre to make a kind of belly-button on the top of the bread. It really doesn't need to be kneaded.

Then gently put the whole thing in a clean dish towel sprinkled with flour, cornmeal or oats and tuck it in for another 1-2 hours of rising.

shhhhhhh the breads sleeping!

With me so far? The bread rose over night and all day, so 9pm-4pm. Then I belly-buttoned it and tossed it in oats. One more rise from 4:30pm-6:30pm ish.

At 6pm put an oven-proof pot with a lid in the oven and preheat the pot and oven to 425 degrees (my oven is still a bit hot so I'll probably only go as hi as 400 next time).

Bake it for 20 minutes covered and then 15 minutes uncovered. It should make a hollow sound when you flick it. Plus it's fun to flick!

Then get yourself a generous slice, reheat some of the delicious Borscht you made yesterday and toss three caramelized onion meatballs into the soup. Dinner, my friends, is served.

Oh Yeah Groceries! And Caramelized Onion Meatballs

Groceries this week were nice and in budget. Thank you cheap and delicious BORSCHT!

$3.01 weekly condiments

$1.29 Can of Tomatoes
$2.50 Ryvita crackers
$2.99 Plain Yogurt
$4.79 Ground Beef
$1.79 Lettuce
$2.61 Cabbage
$1.69 Head of Celery
$2.50 Almond Milk

Usually I make myself choose between milk and yogurt but this week I splurged, haha.

And now that the part for my computer has arrived and I can blog away in the comfort of my own home I'm adding another recipe. Making up for lost time.

I'm making the ground beef I bought into meat balls, some of which I will brown and add to my borscht tonight and some that I will freeze, raw on a cookie sheet and then toss in a bag for later.

1 pound ground beef
2-3 tablespoons water
2 Ryvita crackers crushed into breadcrumbs
A generous handful of fresh parsley
A dash of Cayenne
Salt

And the ingredient that makes this entire recipe worthwhile... drum-roll please...

Caramelized onions. Yum yum yum. I was just going to make my burger/meatball recipe with finely chopped white onion like I usually do but then I remembered how the onion never really cooks as much as I like so this is the solution.

Onions are EXTREMELY easy to caramelize and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Just saute some onions (I'm using two medium ones for this recipe) in hot oil till they get a bit brown and soft and translucent. Then add about a cup of water and turn them up to medium high heat. Let the water boil off and then do that again. You can do this two or three times depending on how gloriously shmooshy you want them to be (or how much time you have).

I've used a lot of different recipes for caramelized onions. Ones that include soya sauce, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar. A recipe where they go in the oven and another really annoying one where you spend an hour and a half standing over the stove while the onions cook on low heat, yech! Who has the time?

I like this one because you can pour in the water and step away from the stove. The onions don't burn and it frees you up to do the clean up dishes or have a little dance party around the kitchen table.

Also I'm not going to clean the frying pan right away because it's the one I'll use to brown the meatballs and you KNOW that's going to be good! So there, meatballs for later.

I would have caramelized them further but I only had so much time to prep-cook during my lunch break!

Borscht and Broken Computers

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Well, my computer went all ka-putt and I`m waiting for it to get better. It just needs a little time.

I`m posting this at work during a free period hoping against hope that my computer is better tomorrow or the next day at the latest. The recipes I made last night turned out really well so here goes!

I had a lot of beets left in my fridge from that farmer's market I went to three weeks ago. Beets are great because they don`t go bad very quickly. Unfortunately recipes in my repertoire that use beets include grating them over salads and roasting them with potatoes, onions and garlic. Not very inspired.

The type of beets I've got are sugar beets so they're a very pretty yellow-gold colour and they have an AMAZING flavour (if you`re into that kind of thing).

Turns out Russian Borscht is a really basic soup and all I needed to buy was cabbage and a can of tomatoes. Turns out my repertoire of cabbage recipes is even smaller than that of beets and the broscht only used a quarter of this bad mamma-jamma... a little research and we'll have more cabbage recipes to follow.

Ironically, or coincidentally, or fortuitously? I jumped in a cab with a very friendly driver who was passionate about health, swimming, and cabbage! He suggested boiling it and then pairing it with sauteed onions and apples... I might try it, we'll see.

Anyway back to the Borscht.

Saute until the cabbage is soft
Two onions
1/4 green cabbage
4 or 5 medium potatoes peeled, chopped and washed (I peeled the potatoes this time but I probably won`t the next time I make this soup cause the peels add texture and I like them!)

Add
1 can diced tomatoes
5-6 beets peeled, washed and chopped (I chopped mine the same size as the potatoes but it turns out beets cook more slowly than potatoes - it's that whole "more starch" thing again - so next time I make this I'm going to cut them smaller)
8 cups broth

After the farmer's market, I had quite a few carrots left and since I trim and wash my celery after I buy it I had enough veg to make a pretty delicious broth.

Start all broth (meat or veg) with a mirepoix, which is just a fancy French word for the holy trinity of soups, Onions, Carrots, Celery. Saute a good amount of these (I make sure they cover the bottom of my large pot) in oil until they start to smell delicious. Cover in a quart of water and add whatever vegetable trimmings you've got in your fridge (just make sure they're clean, no one likes a gritty stock). Toss in 6-10 whole pepper corns and some parsley, if you have it. If you've got tomatoes put those in, or greens that need using etc. Really stock is your oyster, so make pearls... or something.

Simmer for 1 hour and then add 1/4 cup of soya sauce. This is my favourite thing to salt-ify soups and sauces with. It gives them a good rich colour and just the right amount of salt to bring out the flavours. Try adding it to gravy next time you make it and you will be amazed!!

For Christmas last year my oldest friend bought me a container with 6 flavoured salts in it. They were originally intended for popcorn but I have been gleefully tossing them into recipes left, right and center (what does that mean?!!) The dill salt tasted sublime in my borscht. Sorry Russians but I couldn't resist putting a little Dukhobor in your beety-borscht.

For everyone who didn't grow up eating creamy, dilly borscht from The Tree House, I`m sorry. Duhkobor Borscht is as different from Russian as Manhattan Clam Chowder is from Boston! Just trust me on this one.

So I made the stock last week and then used it in my borscht this week. I finished the soup before yoga and had a delicious and nutritiously comforting meal waiting for me when I returned.

I garnished the finished product with a dollop of plain yogurt and some fresh parsley.

Pretty and hearty.

Best Dinner EVER & Groceries #2

Dinner tonight: Lemon Dijon Pork Burgers with Home Cut Spicy Fries and Green Salad. Drool drool drool.

But before the fun stuff let's get the money business out of the way.
I bought:

Farmer's Market Veggies $8
Ground Pork $3.71
Two Tomatoes $1.77
Local Apples $2.61
Red Leaf Lettuce $1.79
Fresh Parsley $1.59
1 Can Chickpeas $0.99
1 Packet of bread yeast $0.66
Flour $1.00

Total $22.12

Plus my carry over condiments $3.46

Total's total $25.58

Now. Onto the BEST DINNER EVER!!
I used half the amount of pork I bought and it made 3 large burger patties.

I put in them:
1 egg (still have a few from the last 2 weeks)
2 generous handfuls of chopped fresh parsely
1 heaping tsp of grainy mustard
1/2 a white onion, finally diced
Dash of lemon juice
Salt and pepper

But the mixture was much much too soupy so what did I add in lieu of bread crumbs? You guessed it! Cornmeal. My favourite pantry item (shhhhh don't tell the rest of the pantry!!)

Once I'd mixed all this up I put a pot of water on to boil and chopped up my potatoes in fry shaped pieces.

Now, when making fries from scratch in the oven remember that sweet potatoes have a lower starch content than regular potatoes so they don't need to be blanched first. They can just be tossed with oil and spices and put in the oven. Potato potatoes need to be blanched first.

Bring salted water to a rolling boil and drop in your taters. Turn the water down to medium high and boil for 5 minutes. No more no less. Drain and rinse. Toss the "fries" in oil, salt and cayenne pepper and painstakingly lay them out, EVENLY spaced, on a cookie sheet.

Put them in a 425 degree oven for ten minutes. Now here comes the finicky part. You gotta flip each one over after 10 minutes. Don't just toss the pan around and hope that all of them flipped cause believe me they didn't. Flipping them by hand (well okay, with a fork cause of the burning hot oil) is WELL worth the effort.

Leave them in for another 10-ish minutes. It behooves you to check them quite regularly they are wont to burn if you're not careful.

The burgers go into a medium to medium high frying pan with a bit of oil. In order to keep any type of burger from puffing up in the middle and looking like a large meatball put a small divot in the centre when you're forming them.

Cook for roughly 6 minutes on each side. Mine weren't quite done all the way through at this point so I turned the pan down and cooked them covered, on low for few minutes.

I love lazy weekends at home because I have time to do all my food prep and planning. This weekend I made bread (which I haven't blogged about yet because I'm still tweaking the recipe, maybe next week...), hummus and I also washed all my lettuce and cut my carrots into carrot sticks.

Here's a little secret about me. I love vegetables but I hate having to prep them. I hate washing lettuce and I never peel carrots. Having to wash lettuce before making a salad can actually make me go without salad that day. So lazy.

I would buy pre-washed baby greens but they are much more expensive than a simple head all by its onesies (if you're wondering how that word is pronounced it goes One-zeeies).

So I washed all my lettuce and put it back in the bag with the little holes that it came in. I also washed and cut up my remaining carrots. When I buy celery I wash and cut it up too. Both go into a large container filled with cold water in my fridge. If I didn't do this I would never eat them. Sad but true.

So my fries turned out perfectly, the burger was flavourful and tender and it tasted divine on two slices of freshly baked bread. Who needs burger buns!

I was a good little eater and made salad. I turned my fresh batch of hummus into salad dressing by thinning it out and the leftover burgers will make a great lunch and/or dinner in the next few days.

So good.