Wolf was down in California finishing off Triathalon season over the weekend and I was back at the ranch prepping for the long week ahead. Food-wise, it was a hodge-podge, though I did cook Friday night after living off of enchilada casserole all week. It felt good to get back in the kitchen on Saturday morning and do something that didn't involve sitting in front of a computer. Kneading dough for pita bread and running some errands did me some good. But then that pita really needed something to go along with. Hummus? Mmm, ok, but maybe something else?
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was lamenting the end of summer. Something about back-to-school signals an end to the summer fun, but the truth of it is, it has been a grrrrrrrreat summer in Seattle. Maybe the best one we’ve had in the handful of years we’ve lived here. A long summer of…
A couple of weeks ago on the Splendid Table, LA Times Food Editor Russ Parsons wrote, “The thing that's really great about this book is that he takes what might seem familiar and just throws a twist on it. When you cook it, it's an act of exploration because you're doing things that you know, the ingredients are fairly familiar, the techniques are fairly familiar, and then boom, there's this very new and exciting result that really makes you want to cook more into it.”
He was talking about < Ottolenghi's Plenty
Greek salad is one of those of dishes about which it seems there’s nothing left to learn. The cucumber-tomato-red onion combo is so common, even my regular ol' grocery store usually has a big bowl of it swimming in dressing in the deli department. While it's not exclusively Greek and appears in multiple countries across the Middle East and Mediterranean, the variations are usually minor, some include olives, feta cheese, red bell peppers, even a little romaine, maybe a little parsley, usually with a lemon or red wine vinaigrette. Eat one, and you’ve eaten them all, right?
In the summer, Greek salad is a default around here, beating out even basic green. So for all those reasons, I was ready to skip right over the recipe for Spiced Chickpeas with Fresh Vegetables in Jerusalem. How could it possibly be anything special? Don’t make that mistake.
You know that thing when you discover something, whether it’s a song or a TV show or even just a color, you see it everywhere, where once you probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought? I’m going through that right now with harissa – the Tunisian hot sauce/red pepper paste.
Super Bowl Sunday always seems to be about dips. Salsa, guacamole, Lipton onion soup mix, ranch, maybe hummus. If you're looking for a little something different for your Super Bowl shindig the sumac-spiced sauce that goes with these turkey zucchini burgers may be just the thing.The burgers, from the Jerusalem cookbook, are very good, and…
