mediterranean feast, part two: rosemary chickpeas with walnuts
Writer’s block. Nothing to say about this dish. Problematic and also strange, as it’s one of my all-time favorites. Must be posted about so I can move on (can’t have a part one without a part two).
Try it.
You’ll like it.
Next entry will be much more entertaining.
Hopefully.
excuses, excuses, excuses
I had every intention of writing the sequel to my Mediterranean appetizers post this week, but a fifth wedding anniversary, a birthday, and a simple grilled meal for the two of us that somehow turned into a full-blown dinner party at the last minute (good thing we almost always make too much food!) were enough to keep me from, you know, DOING ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE AT ALL. We also took a trip to Spoons ‘n Spice and came home with a plethora of new playthings, part-birthday present (a Henckels 7″ Granton Edged Santoku Knife!!!) and part-mutual anniversary present (sharpening steel, wood chip smoker, mortar and pestle (finally!), and some gorgeous tri-colored peppercorns).
You’d think that I’d have loads of new dishes and photos for you, since I rushed right home and started practicing with the new cutlery, but it’s been raining for days and I can’t seem to get a satisfactorily-lit picture. I guess you’ll just have to wait a bit longer before you get to hear me squee in a recipe-specific way about how brilliantly the knife handles fresh herbs, or how easy it now is to use that last little bit of onion in the fridge without losing a pinkie.
Despite my slacker ways and unpostable photos, I still wanted to share the first thing I actually made with The Knife. Simple, quick, and delicious, it may be one of my new favorite dishes: 101 Cookbooks’ orzo soup. I adore orzo and Heidi’s recipes, and I couldn’t think of a better time to try soup in June than in the midst of this unusual fifty-degree weather. I left out the egg whites and threw in some onions, garlic, fresh Italian parsley, and about a quarter cup of lemon juice to brighten the flavor, and I spiced up the fire-roasted tomatoes with a splash of hot sauce. The leftovers were perfect to take to work in my Mr. Bento and filled me up a lot more than I suspected a 120 calorie soup ever would. We just polished it off yesterday (okay, I polished it off) and I’m already considering making it a part of tonight’s dinner. I suspect this soup will probably end up on my “we eat it so often we’d be sick of it, except it’s Just That Good” list sometime in the near future. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. 
mediterranean feast, part one: two roasted red pepper appetizers (muhammara and hummus)
RECIPE THE FIRST: HUMMUS
I know, I know — everybody and their dog has their own hummus recipe, and they’ve all already posted them online somewhere. At this point, posting a hummus recipe seems a little like posting a recipe for a grilled cheese sandwich; either you already know how to make it, or you just don’t care (and probably never will).
But I’m posting about hummus anyway, a) because I really, really like this recipe, b) because it’s slightly different (and healthier!) than most of the hummus recipes I’ve come across, and c) because it was part of last Friday’s Mediterranean feast, in which we made so many dishes that I had to split the recipes and photos into two different posts.
I put the picture of the freshly roasted red pepper before the jump because it’s an essential ingredient for both of the recipes in this post.
better-late-than-never savory phyllo bake
Weekends around here are usually pretty food-centric; we have more time to plan and shop and cook, for one thing, and there are often a few hungry friends hanging around with that feed me look in their eyes — which, of course, we always do. This weekend, however, was even more food-focused than usual.
On Saturday afternoon, we took the train down to the 2008 Living Traditions Festival in an attempt to load up on tasty dishes from as many different ethnic food vendors as we could. We walked around for at least half an hour, perusing the menus and trying to decide what sounded the best, but it all looked so good that we decided to just hop in two of the shortest lines. Most of the vendors were kind enough to have at least one vegetarian dish, if not an entire combo meal, so we were fairly confident that we would be happy with whatever ended up on our plates.
Bryson got Pad Thai (good but not great, and entirely too bland for his Sriracha-trained palate) and veggie spring rolls (which I loved, but I could literally eat spring rolls with every meal) from the local Thai Buddhist temple, and I got a spicy potato plate (seasoned perfectly but unfortunately quite cold) and veggie momos (such a delicious dish that I can’t even imagine biting into one that wasn’t everything I was hoping it would be) from the Utah Tibetan Association.
Unfortunately, all that starchy food left us entirely too full to even think about indulging in the one thing we really loved from last year’s festival, which was fried plantains and cream with powdered sugar. We even tried to walk around for awhile to see if we could somehow make room for a bite or two, to no avail. I’ve been craving one ever since, and you know what that means — there will probably be some experimenting in the near future (I say experimenting because I’ve never cooked a plantain myself before, much less tried to deep-fry one).
On Sunday, we loaded up three bags of food and headed to my parents’ house to cook a belated Mother’s Day dinner for my mom. It was nice to dirty up somebody else’s kitchen for a change, and the dishes we prepared were some of my all-time favorites.
coconut bourbon banana bread
Before you take anything I say in this post seriously, you should probably know that I am most definitely NOT a baker. With the exception of a batch or four of vegan mojito cupcakes (spirits + dessert = two thumbs up!), it’s just not something I do. With all that kneading and measuring and more measuring, baking just doesn’t fit well with my “throw random amounts of ingredients together until it tastes right” style of cooking.
This probably explains why, despite my healthy and persistent obsession with all things food-related, yesterday’s banana bread was the first of its kind. And by that, I mean I actually had to go out and buy a bread pan before I could get started. I know, right?
Luckily for me, the nearly perfect recipe I was attempting to follow (thanks, Deb at SmittenKitchen!) was easy enough that even I couldn’t screw it up. That’s not to say I didn’t try; I tinkered a bit, of course (I can’t not!), and threw in some coconut and poppy seeds. I also left out the cloves, simply because I didn’t have any already ground and couldn’t be arsed to do anything with the bag of whole cloves I bought a few weeks ago at the Asian market. Oh, and the only thing I acutally managed to accurately measure was the flour, which makes the fact that I didn’t completely ruin a perfectly good recipe even more of a miracle.
Long story short, my first foray into banana bread-making was a complete success. So much of a success, in fact, that there’s only a slice or two left this morning. Great for my ego, not so great for my diet — but I suppose we’ve all got to compromise somewhere.
like the internets really needed another food blog…
I made two life-changing decisions this week. Not earthshattery life-changing, like having a kid or losing an eye or inheriting millions of dollars. No, I’m such a boring loser slave to my routine that even small variations in my day-to-day activities tend to seem like big changes, at least until they become part of said routine.
Life-Changer Number One — well, you’re looking at it. A few months ago, it occurred to me (while hungrily perusing my millionth food blog of the day) that — hey, I think I want a food blog of my very own! So I did what every good n00b does — I hopped on Blogger and set up too-much-garlic.blogspot.com. I didn’t do much more there than host a small recipe archive that no one but myself, my friends, and my family ever really looked at. Which was fine, great, wonderful, whatever — except that a recipe archive wasn’t exactly what I wanted.
I wanted more control than Blogger offered me. I wanted an easily relatable domain name, free from dashes and dot-blogspots. I wanted to be able to fiddle with the layout. I wanted Flickr plug-ins. And I wanted to actually blog, to talk about the entire process of being inspired to make a dish, shopping for it, preparing it, serving it, and yes, even eating it.
Oh, sure, I could have done most of those things right where I was. But I’ve always been the type of person that likes things neat and clean and organized and universal. When things aren’t neat and clean and organized and universal, I tend to throw my hands up in the air and abandon all hope of ever making them so. You may recognize a physical manifestation (ha!) of this weird personality trait if you ever visit my kitchen.
Thus, toomuchgarlic.com was born. Just you wait — it will be so neat and clean and organized and universal that I would never think of abandoning it the way that I abandoned Operation Spotless Kitchen all those years ago.
Life-Changer Number Two: I finally gave in, after months of drooling over Flickr’s Mr. Bento Porn (100% work safe) and bought myself — yes, you guessed it — a Mr. Bento. I was tired of spending $10+ bucks a day on lunches that I didn’t even particularly want, and all that eating out made it pretty hard to keep off the 35+ lbs I’ve lost since last summer, not to mention the ten more I’d still like to get rid of. Owning a Mr. Bento seemed like the perfect solution. Let’s face it — there’s no shortage of food at my house, and most of it is infinitely healthier than anything I could buy near the office. And if I’ve got a snazzy and perfectly designed lunchbox to cart around said excess food, then I’m basically out of excuses, right?
Besides, I’m fascinated with the idea of a meal that consists of very small portions of a variety of different foods. That just seems Right to me, well-balanced and more nutritious than eating a huge portion of just one thing (which is unfortunately what tends to happen at dinnertime around my house).
I’m also madly in love with one of the goals of a true bento, which is to improve the taste and overall experience of a meal by making it as visually pleasing as possible. That just seems so intiutive to me — we’ve all marveled over a perfectly arranged plate of food before — and bento takes that concept to the extreme.
I’ll probably never get as creative as most of the bento makers out there, but the two (fairly unoriginal) bentos I’ve made so far — pictures and details to follow in an upcoming post — were entirely too much fun to make and eat, and I’m looking forward to improving my mad bento skillz in the near future.