Daylight Savings really messed with my head on Sunday. All day long I kept feeling like I had lost something, or forgotten something somewhere, and it was very unsettling. When I finally stopped and thought about it I realized I did lose something. I lost an hour, even though technically we gained an hour, somehow (to me) it just felt like I lost one. I was ahead (by an hour) yet somehow I was behind (by an hour!). Weird.
The great thing about Sunday was that I had nothing planned, so there was time to just putter in the kitchen doing a little of this and that. We had some ground lamb that was needing some love and attention and so using that as a starting point, the rest of our meal sort of came together.
I put 2 pounds of ground lamb into a bowl and added, a sprig of finely chopped fresh rosemary, 2 very large pinches of finely chopped mint, a quarter cup of grated Parmesan cheese, a pinch of finely chopped fresh parsley and salt and pepper to taste. I stuck my hands in the bowl and mushed everything around until it was well blended, then took my lamb covered hands and chased Charlie around for 2 minutes making monster noises. I swear one of these days he's going to turn on me and scratch my eyes out. I formed the lamb into little football shaped patties and put them in an ovenproof dish and eventually into a pre-heated 350 degree oven were I made them stay until they were browned. When cutting one open revealed an ever so slight pink center, I removed them and set them aside.
The yogurt sauce was quite simple and very tasty with the lamb. I had intended it for the lamb only, and while we did actually dip the little lamb balls into it (that just sounds... wrong) I also used some of it as a dressing on some sliced cucumbers. I dumped a cup of plain whole milk yogurt into a bowl, added 2 cloves of crushed garlic, a large handful of fresh dill, (fresh dill, what a wonderful herb) salt and pepper to taste and mixed it all around. I served it over the cucumbers with a sprinkling of paprika for some added color.
You may have noticed that I've been cooking with Madhur Jaffrey all weekend. I was inspired by my recent trip to Kalustyan's and her "World Vegetarian" cookbook is an excellent way to prepare dishes with the herbs and spices from different countries. I've always had much success with the recipes, even the ones I find too mild and end up doctoring to suit my tastes better. The recipe for the green beans was the first time I made something from the book I really didn't like. To be fair, it was my own fault because I overcooked the string beans and I cannot eat them that way. It reminds me too much of my canned string bean days of childhood and the hours spent gagging and secretly spitting the offensive things into napkins to be later flushed down the toilet. Thankfully my brothers were there through the ordeal too. We would keep each other company and do silly things to make us laugh and make milk come out of our noses. Tom was a good sport and ate them anyway, he said the flavor appealed to him so he would be able to overlook the mush factor. I'm not going to re-write the recipe here because this entry is already getting too long, but what appealed to me about it was Jaffrey's instruction to:
“ Put the mustard seed (2 tablespoons of whole or brown or mixed) in a clean spice grinder and grind to a fine powder. Empty into a small bowl. Add 3/4 cup of water and let soak for 20 to 30 minutes. DO NOT STIR. Set the mustard mixture aside.”
Later on in the recipe the Water from that mixture is used as the liquid to cook the beans, the thick mustard paste is discarded. The beans were also flavored with mustard oil, salt, fresh cilantro, and a hot green chile. It's really too bad I messed it up.
When soaking the chickpeas overnight on Friday for the soup I made on Saturday I intentionally soaked an extra 2 cups to use in hummus. I love hummus, and eat it often with veggies as an easy and quick lunch or dinner. Everyone seems to have a variation and mine is no exception, it's full of garlic and lemon and sesame tahini and now my new little secret...a sprinkle of sumac! shhh...don't tell anyone.
I've always used canned chickpeas but I wanted to try it with dried to see if there was a difference. After a sad attempt with the stick blender, which couldn't handle the volume and chunkiness, (heh, maybe not a "stud" after all) I scooped everything from the bowl and tried the blender. That resulted in my shredding a spatula because I stuck it into the blender to move the blades while it was still running. duh So... much to my annoyance we dragged out the food processor, in the end it did the job and was worth the hassle, although I was hoping to not have to use it. An observation about canned over dried chickpeas: While the dried made for a nicer texture and a somehow fresher taste, the water content in them was too low. Because I didn't use chickpeas that had been sitting in a waterlogged environment in my cupboard for ages, I needed to add some water to the puree to make it less like a paste and more like a dip.
Place the garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, salt and garlic in a food processor. Blend until smooth. Transfer the mixture to a serving bowl. Drizzle olive oil over the mixture. Sprinkle with sumac (or paprika) and add parsley to garnish.
This was good eating. We ate with forks and our fingers, dipping lamb into yogurt and chunks of nan and tomatoes into hummus. We grabbed cold crisp slices of cucumber and dropped them into our mouths and jabbed mushy string beans with our forks (well not me). It was satisfying food, flavorful and not heavy. Tom paid me a really nice compliment by saying that he thought my cooking has gotten even better since I started keeping track of it on this weblog. I was really flattered.
I did a lot of cooking over the weekend, and now I'm burnt. There's plenty of leftovers for lunches and dinners for the coming week, which is good because it's going to be a busy week for me with little time for cooking, although it's been a while since I made something for " The Locusts". Maybe I'll try to bake them a little something...
OH! Heres a picture of the soup from Saturday with the sumac infused broth and turkey meatballs (I'm including this especially for Blue... cause I luvs her).
Written by Deb on April 7, 2003 12:40 AMA MurrayHill 5 Creation ©2002-06 The contents of this website and all images are © D. Byer unless indicated otherwise. All rights reserved. Please do not use images and/or content without permission and credit to this site. For more information contact: mh5deb(at)gmail(dot)com