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summary: aloo gobi (cauliflower and potato) recipe; information about turmeric for Weekend Herb Blogging; (click on images for larger views and more photos)
Weekend Herb Blogging (WHB) #148
Turmeric (Curcuma longa)
One of my favourite vegetable dishes is aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower). Not long ago, we saw the most spectacular looking cauliflower at the farmer’s market downtown. We had to buy it…
And T made the best aloo gobi with it to go with naan (made on the barbecue), rogan josh and beet salad. We had a few green beans left from the night before, so he threw those into the cauliflower as well. What a brilliant dinner!
(read more…)
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summary: recipe for hamburgers made with pita dough and baked in the barbecue; small ‘hot’ red pepper from the garden; YeastSpotting post; Bread Baking Babes wannaBe; information on Bread Baking Babes; (click on images to see larger views and more photos)
Once again, I am a
Bread Baking Babe/Buddy wannaBe (BBBwB)
Yes. I have failed once more in my attempt to become a BBB. I was sure I’d manage to do it this time. I’ve made pita zillions of times. And the BBBs’ chosen recipe for pita from The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger is virtually the same as the recipe I use. The only marked difference is that I use regular whole wheat flour instead of atta (or whole-wheat pastry flour as suggested by Hensperger’s recipe).
So what’s my excuse this time? (read more…)
summary: vegetarian burgers revisited (click on images to see larger views and more photos)
We can’t stop making vegetarian burgers!
On one of the days we decided to have the burgers, we hadn’t presoaked any chickpeas. It turned out that wasn’t a problem.
edit 16:58 EDT: But adding less than 3 Tbsp flour was a problem. And making the patties just a little larger was a problem. One of the burgers (why only one of them??) kept wanting to break apart every time T turned it. Or even looked at it, thinking he might turn it.
The next time we tried it, we remembered that we had one of those basket affairs that are specifically designed for cooking burgers on the barbecue. (Duh. It hangs on the wall in the kitchen with the pots and pans. We see it every day.) Using it made a huge amount of difference. So did making the patties small enough so they would fit into the contraption.
Here’s what T did to revise our vegetarian burgers:
- Wash the chickpeas. Put chickpeas in almost boiling water, cover and set aside on the counter for about 3 hours. This will soften them sufficiently for food processing. (Taste one to ensure it’s soft all the way through.)
- For ½ c dried chickpeas, use 3 Tbsp flour and the tiniest pinch of cumin because you know you want to use cumin*…
(If the pinch is small enough, it can’t be detected by someone with a cumin sensitive palate.)
- Omit the oil from the chickpea mixture.
- Form the patties edit: It’s a good idea to make the patties as thin as possible. and place them in a barbecue burger basket, if you have it. Brush the patties liberally with oil.
(read more…)
summary: difficulties in finding rye flour - AGAIN
It is almost a year ago that I wrote the following:
How is it that this huge cosmopolitan city of Toronto does not have a store near by that sells the following at a reasonable price?!
- rye flour
Last year, we finally found rye flour here in Toronto at a supermarket chain called Sobeys. We paid Cdn$5.60 for a 2.5kg bag of “Five Roses” dark rye flour. (We usually avoid the Sobeys chain - they generally overcharge disgracefully: $5/lb for butter… fully a dollar more than we pay at ‘no frills’ supermarket down the street.)
Yesterday, we rode our bikes over to the store to replenish the rye flour. NO 2.5kg bags of “Five Roses” dark rye flour!! They did have some little bags of “Bob’s Red Mill”: at around $3 for 600gms! We continued riding, visiting all the supermarket chains. Not one of them was selling rye flour in bags larger than 600gm (Yes, it was BRM, all priced about the same, give or take 25¢). Most of them had zero rye flour on their shelves. Some of them had 5kg bags of a multigrain blend wheat flour (white and whole wheat), cracked wheat, cracked rye and whole flax. How useless is that? 
Rye flour is available in bulk at health food stores, but it’s expensive. Apparently it’s available downstairs at St.Lawrence Market too. It’s probably sold at “Whole Foods” too but I don’t think they’ll let me in there; my biking clothes aren’t designer and I’m not sure we have enough of a credit limit on our cards to pay if we do find rye flour there.
At one of the stores we visited yesterday, we tracked down the manager. He said that they USED to have bags of rye flour but stopped carrying them because nobody bought them. (Goodness, how sad to learn the demoralizing fact that I’m “nobody”.) He did apologize. And he was very pleasant and nice. But he didn’t offer to get the rye flour to put onto his shelves…. (read more…)
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recipe: vegetarian burgers made from chickpeas; information about the “Heart of the Matter” (click on images to see larger views and more photos)
Heart of the Matter (HotM) - Eating for Life: PICNICS
I believe I mentioned that we made vegetarian burgers to go on our hamburger buns. Sure, we turned the burgers into banquet burgers by adding bacon and cheese. But these had to be better for us than regular hamburgers. Don’t they?
Although… they didn’t taste like they were good for us. They tasted fabulous. With or without the bacon, I want to have these banquet burgers again soon!!
(click on image for larger view and more photos) (read more…)
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summary: hamburger buns topped with sesame seeds; submission for “YeastSpotting” and “Bookmarked Recipes 19″ (click on images to see larger views and more photos)
Bookmarked Recipe for YeastSpotting
My wheedling paid off! We had onion rings again the other night.
How did I manage it? I dangled the “but we can have hamburgers for dinner…” carrot. And I promised to the make buns with sesame seeds on top.
In the past, for hamburger buns, I have shaped my mom’s sandwich bread into buns. I have also shaped foccacia dough like pita and let them rise a little after shaping to make very good hamburger buns. But Susan’s (Wild Yeast) hamburger buns had been beckoning to me ever since I saw them in early June. Now that I have my fancy new scale, I really had to try making them. I had no more excuses. (And I really wanted those onion rings!)
What excellent hamburger buns!!
And easy to make too! Buns are SO much easier to shape than loaves! The only slight difficulty I had with the recipe was with the fractions of grams Susan called for. My fancy new scale isn’t THAT fancy. It will not register partial grams.
The part I really loved about the recipe was the instruction on how to get the sesame seeds onto the tops of the buns. I’ve always sprinkled them on. But Susan has a much better method:
[S]hape [each piece] into a tight ball. […] Roll the top of the ball on a wet towel to moisten it, then in sesame seeds.
How smart is that!? The seeds all go onto the buns instead of being scattered on the pan below.
(click on image for larger view and more photos) (read more…)
meme: Omnivore 100: How many have you eaten?
I don’t fill out that many memes but I saw this meme “Omnivore 100: How many have you eaten?” on Katie’s (Thyme for Cooking) blog.
The list is from Very Good Taste on the 100 foods any self respecting omnivore should try at least once. Like to play along?
- 1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
- 2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
- 3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
- 4) Optional extra: Post a comment at http://www.verygoodtaste.co.uk/ linking to your results.
Okay, I’ll bite…
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred: (read more…)
