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People ask me all the time what they can do to help improve the food system. Given that some of the problems that need fixing (like unsustainable agriculture, mistreatment of workers and animals, hunger, and diet-related disease, to name just a few) are so complex, widespread, and downright daunting, it's easy to overlook the things [...]

I made this as a quickie-quick appetizer on Christmas Eve. No, the kids didn’t eat them, but the hubs and I thoroughly enjoyed them. A repeat performance definitely has to happen.

I’d been thinking about this onion fritter recipe, found on Pinterest, for a long time. I ended up using a simpler recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but I love the ideas in the first, too. I was just short on time.

The brilliance of this concoction is that the ingredients are so few, the flavor is more than the sum of its parts, and it’s painlessly gluten-free—–without even trying. Given my well-documented obsession with chickpeas (here, here, and here—oh, and here and here) it really hit all the points on my checklist.

So, here’s the skinny:

1 part chickpea flour, 4 parts water, salt. A sprinkle or two of cumin and cayenne. I used 1/4 cup chickpea flour and 1 cup water for 1 sliced leek. Drag leek rounds (or onion rounds) in extra chickpea flour, then dunk in batter. Fry in a generous (but not huge) amount of oil. Drain and enjoy.

Mr. Bittman says battering veggies with chickpea flour and frying is a traditional Indian preparation and can be served with chutney (oooh!). Sadly, I didn’t have any chutney on hand and didn’t feel like making any, but maybe some other time. I poured out the last bit of batter and made a lacey pancake with the last scraps of leek. Yum! I may have to try this with other veggies.

Poking through the blog I found thru Pinterest (a bit of this and a bit of that) I see lots of exciting Indian recipes. I’ll have to browse some more…

In other news, I’m still working on my nonfiction picture book, and things are starting to gel. So exciting. And the other night I got to attend the Women’s National Book Association book swap. Check out my instagram feed (it’s in the right hand column of the blog) to see my haul.

And for more of my cooking and eating adventures, click here.

I’ve always made tabbouleh from the box because it’s so easy and quite good, but the box mixes aren’t in every store here in Germany. This time I found only plain bulghur so decided to make it from scratch using Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

I still think box-mix tabbouleh is decent, but making it from scratch definitely kicks things up a notch, and it’s really very easy. The most time-consuming part is chopping the herbs and veggies, but that’s really no big deal. It’s a real herb love-fest.

I added a little red bell pepper and chick peas in addition to the usual tomato and cucumber to give the salad some more heft. I think I may also have used scallions instead of white onion. It was super delicious. Recipe here.

We had our school festival over the weekend, and as always, there’s great international food there. I keep dreaming about these wonderful tamales and salsa and also, some fantastic Egyptian falafel. The falafel was green! And full of flavor. Note to self: Learn how to make tamales and Egyptian falafel.

What about you? Made any good salads lately?

In this week's New York Times Magazine, Mark Bittman and Thomas Keller tackle classic French cuisine, attempting several recipes out of master chef and La Pyramide founder Fernand Point's seminal cookbook Ma Gastronomie. "Fernand Point was not one of your gym-going, globe-trotting, Ph.D.-equipped chefs. He was a roast-chicken-for-breakfast-eating, two-bottles-of-Champagne-at-lunch-drinking,

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You’re going to think all we eat are beans around here. Contrary to squeaks from the peanut gallery, it isn’t true. But beans are what I’m into exploring these days.

This was another recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Really loving that book. The actual title of the recipe is “Baked Chickpeas with Fresh Cheese,” but I didn’t think that did it justice.

Here’s before baking:

You make it with a spicy Indian-style tomato sauce and coconut milk (or cream) and crumbled cheese. I subbed feta for the Indian cheese since I knew it would be a wild goose chase to find it. Sounds a little strange but it was so so good.

Here it is after baking:

We ate it with rice. There were no leftovers. However, while I was cooking it, I got scared I wasn’t going to like it. The smells and flavors just didn’t seem to work together until the last minute, when everything clicked into place, and boy I’m getting hungry just thinking about it right now.

Anyone know the etiquette for posting recipes from cookbooks? I did ask permission for the last one I posted, but I don’t feel right posting a bunch. Here’s a version of this recipe here.  And oddly you can find the page on google books here, but isn’t that kind of weird? Shouldn’t you have to buy it as an e-book? It would make a great e-book since it’s sooooo huge, but the last time I checked it wasn’t available that way.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to see the one about Jamaican-Style Baked Rice and Kidney Beans from the same cookbook.

1 Comments on Spicy Baked Chickpeas with Cheese, last added: 5/25/2011