Recipe: Party Hummus 23 September 2008 11:13 pm
Posted by Tracy in : advice, America's Test Kitchen, events, vegan, school, vegetarian, recipes, cooking , 2 commentsThere was a fantastic recipe titled “Best Hummus” in the May-June 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated, and I’ve been using it as a guide to improvise delicious chickpea-based dips for parties this summer, with great success. I had sort of been brushing aside the resultant compliments until I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the hummus offered at a few NYU orientation events (sorry, NYU catering!) Turns out I’d forgotten how mediocre hummus can be. On top of that, I realized that I could submit my post about hummus to the third round of My Legume Love Affair, a blog event created by Susan of The Well-Seasoned Cook and hosted this month by Lucy at Nourish Me. I mean, really, it’s about darn time I jumped on that particular bandwagon of beany goodness. But back to hummus. The following hints should help prevent disappointment in homemade concoctions.
First, everybody’s taste in hummus is slightly different, but when in doubt, I vote for a texture with more light fluffiness and less pastiness, and this recipe achieves that goal. If you’d rather have something suitable for home decorating projects (caulk, spackle, you get the idea), by all means leave out some oil and water. That said, it is possible to omit ingredients and still get delicious results. Just before our going-away party in Eugene, I discovered that our tahini had grown mold, and threw it out. The hummus turned out fine anyway; I used a little extra olive oil to make sure it got a nice creamy consistency even without the sesame goodness. At our housewarming party here at the Moon Monkey Bar, Grille, and Cocktail Lounge, I forgot the lemon juice and substituted a few extra cloves of garlic for pungenty goodness. If you do this variation, I highly recommend finishing the hummus the same day it’s made, because the raw garlic will get stronger with time and try to destroy you, even if you aren’t a vampire.
And now, on with the recipe. (more…)
Recipe: a spinach salad for Sarah. 19 September 2008 11:31 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, salad, events, recipes, vegetarian, friends, eugene, restaurants , 1 comment so far
Another month, another round of No Croutons Required. I haven’t played along since mushroom miso soup, in April, but this time, the challenge from Holler at Tinned Tomatoes was: use fruit in a soup or salad, and it was the excuse I needed to finally get around to writing this recipe up for Sarah, like I promised to do back in May. Yes, I’m a giant slacker.
Speaking of slackery, it’s not laziness that makes me a raw salad minimalist. Instead, it’s because I like to taste food as a recipe comes together, and if I’m not cooking salad ingredients, they usually don’t go through enough of a transformation to keep me interested if I’ve already eaten a bit of everything involved. Peter doesn’t have this problem, and he likes salad much more than I do, so he makes a lot of the salads we eat. But when I’m in charge of salad, I try to keep it simple, lest lunch or dinner fall victim to my sampling habits and short attention span. An added side effect of this approach is that minimalist salads are somehow much fancier than mixed greens with the works.
To get back to the theme of this month’s event, there’s a formula for a green salad so fancy it hardly even needs a vinaigrette: (more…)
Minestrone variations 3 June 2008 9:59 am
Posted by Tracy in : soup, vegan, sundance, recipes, vegetarian, cooking , add a commentSo some Thursdays ago I posted my my basic minestrone recipe but I cut it short because I felt like I’d been rambling on for far too long. Today I finally present you with the conclusion to my minestrone saga: suggestions for tasty ways to adapt this soup to almost any season or available vegetable-type ingredient. Here goes!
Recipe: Minestrone 22 May 2008 10:05 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, soup, recipes, vegetarian, cooking , 1 comment so farThere’s a minestrone special on at Morning Glory this week, and it’s all right, but I would’ve made it even better. (Sorry, Gail.) Turns out I have a pretty specific idea in my head about minestrone — brothy tomato-vegetable soup with Italian seasonings (by which I mostly mean herbs like basil and oregano), some kind of light-colored bean, and maybe pasta. We’re talking serious Tracy comfort food, the kind I associate so strongly with warm fuzzies that just the idea of it was enough to make me fall in love with this picture of Chiara (ok, the swooning was not hurt by the fact that Chiara is awesome and that picture is really cute, but I digress). Maybe my notion of minestrone is so non-traditional as to be heretical, in which case I’m really sorry, but it’s going to be a while before I can stop using the word, even if it does not mean what I think it means. But I digress. (more…)
Cooking for friends, part X: dal bhaat with Liz, Jason, and Ryan 21 May 2008 6:16 am
Posted by Tracy in : vegan, nepal, vegetarian, eating, friends, cooking , add a commentCooking for friends is one of my favorite things to do in the whole wide world. So when I made plans to visit Liz and Jason and meet my new favorite two-month-old Ryan, I maybe kinda sorta browbeat them into letting me make them dinner, since that’s how I roll. Then, because I’m kind of a jerk, I asked, “So what do you want for dinner?” Realizing that this was kind of a bad move, I suggested adventure cooking, teaming up on a new recipe, or maybe dal bhaat as a sure thing kind of backup plan. Liz wisely opted for the latter, and a delicious time was had by all. (more…)
