Friday fun facts! 1 June 2007 11:30 pm
Posted by Tracy in : baking, cooking, eating, garden, school, seasonality , trackbackPeter is out of town for the weekend and took the camera, so no pictures today (which is a shame, because my garden is a thing of great beauty and also the potato bed at the Urban Farm is spectacularly awesome, but oh well). Instead, I will regale you with tales of my most recent home cooking adventures.
I made my very own pita bread!
My ongoing and admittedly somewhat obsessive quest to make absolutely everything from scratch led me past hummus all the way to pita bread yesterday, when I got all fired up about bringing something special to Urban Farm (our group had a little potluck and book discussion session at our professor’s house, and have I mentioned best class ever? I think I have. But back to the pita bread.) Holy crap, pita bread! Is totally something I can make, at home, with nothing fancier than a rolling pin (although I did use the KitchenAid for some of the kneading, mostly for food-geeky kicks). So that’s my first fun fact this Friday: pita bread is just pizza dough rolled out very thin and baked very briefly in a very hot oven after a short rise. (My oven runs a little hot, so a few of my pitas turned out a little crispy, but it was okay since I was using most of them for chips and dip anyway). Remember, readers, I’m a trained professional and I tried this at home, but you don’t have to take my word for it: you can do this, too. That said, I cannot resist just a little shameless bragging: Despite the too-hot oven, all but one of my dozen pitas even puffed up and formed pockets, just like you might want them to if you were planning, say, to serve falafel inside! I used the “Pita Bread” recipe in the original Moosewood Cookbook, and it was fun and easy and turned out great! Yay!
Curried red lentil dip!
In addition to hummus and pita, I also made Curried Red Lentil Dip from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, and it turned out fantastic, an intriguing blend of sweet and savory that was a big hit with my professor and classmates (one of whom brought Indian-style flatbreads, which were even more perfect with this dip than my pita). Two thumbs up! I was especially pleased with this recipe because it gives me another use for red lentils besides Curried Red Lentil Soup, which while delicious is not exactly summertime food. But! I now believe I have found a new use for leftovers of the aforementioned soup, when it’s all thickened up from reheating it several times — put them in the blender, with maybe a little more coconut milk or lemon juice if you need some liquid, and use them as dip! Sweet! And savory! Yay! And that’s fun fact number two, dedicated to the fabulous Chiara, who loves the dip (No really! She says so right here! Also there is a picture of some truly fantastic body paint!)
Falafel!
Fun fact number three is one I sort of knew in my heart but had never really tried for myself: homemade, from-scratch falafel is fun, easy, and awesome. Allison used to make it now and then when she lived here, and it was always fantastic, but it was her thing and a very special treat and so I never really even knew what was involved besides chickpeas and a Cuisinart (and yet it never occurred to me to wonder why it wasn’t just fried hummus, but I digress). Today, however, I had leftover chickpeas from yesterday’s hummus, and a few pita breads, and there was just no way I was going to use the just-add-water mix, oh no. Again I broke open the original Moosewood Cookbook, and again I was rewarded for my troubles. I made my very first, very own batch of falafel batter in not much more time than it would’ve taken me to boil water and let the mix do its thing (it really is better if you let it rehydrate for a while before making and frying patties, and I don’t know why) and the results were delicious, if lacking in parsley, which I forgot to pick up on the afternoon’s errands, and maybe a little crumbly. I’m planning to work on correcting both of those problems by experimenting with the leftover batter, which supposedly keeps well — parsley I can get at tomorrow’s Saturday Market and for the crumbliness I want to try Allison’s trick of binding everything together with egg, because yum, egg.
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In case these adventure stories don’t make it clear, it has been a better week for mucking around in the kitchen and garden than writing, but next week I will be buckling down to finish at least one book review for class (maybe more, if I get on a roll). Also I still owe my mom some comments on Don’t Point That Menu at My Child, Please and I hope to make those good reading for the rest of you as well. And, um, let’s all pretend I skipped a post on Monday on account of the holiday weekend, and not Wednesday just because it was super-hot and I fell asleep. Yes? Thank you for your understanding and co&oml;peration.
Comments»
I do! I do love dip. Also I love red lentils, and it is definitely lentil season here, so I may be busting out both that dip and that soup pretty darn soon.
I can’t believe you made pita bread! Wait, yes I can, because it is awesome and so are you.
I’m excited to hear about curried red lentil dip, since Moosewood New Classics is slowly on its way to me from Amazon. TracyGranola, btw, is now a preferred breakfast/snack in our house!
Yay! I am so happy to hear about people using my recipes! And liking the results is better still! Also yay for Moosewood New Classics!