Rice Cooker Hummus

Hummus intimidates me. My lovely former roommate (Hi A! I'm totally going to talk shit about your hummus!) used to make hummus. It was... not great? And somehow, no matter how few garbanzo beans she'd start soaking, there would always be a half gallon of hummus when she finished making it. It would eventually go bad. We'd eat it until it was obviously obviously bad, and then she'd make more. (Spoiled hummus tastes sparkley. Or it has blue fuzz.)

We were quite broke, and some of her relatives had given us ten pounds of dry garbanzo beans. Also, we had all of this disgusting bread.

So hummus intimidates me. However, I got my darling brother a rice cooker for holidays, and he expressed interest in cooking beans for hummus. I said I'd figure it out for him and then he could visit this blog and wish I had a copy editor.

Remember how I insulted A's hummus like two paragraphs ago? Did you think that I'd follow up by using a different hummus recipe? That's what the weak do, readers. I went ahead and used the exact same recipe and it was delicious. I have theories as to why.

1.) There was something wrong with the free garbanzos. It's unlikely that ordinary garbanzos octuple in size during the cooking process.
2.) My decade-old memory is fallible. The hummus was always delightful.
3.) An endlessly replenishing half gallon of any sandwich spread will eventually become disgusting.
4.) I'd always pressure her into including tahini. Tahini is possibly disgusting.
5.) Using a cheap and terrible blender is a bad idea. Food processors are better.
6.) I've learned to sneer at Laurel's suggestions about salt and seasonings.
7.) Look, the beans, the oil, and the garlic were scavenged. It's likely that at least one of them had spoiled.

Keep all of that in mind.

Take one cup of dry garbanzo beans, and soak them in cold water for at least five hours. (Or overnight) Discard the water, rinse the beans, and fill the rice cooker with five cups of water and the beans. Cook for about three hours, replenishing water as needed. Cook until beans are tender. (The beans may be old. Then, they will not become tender, even after four hours of cooking. Throw them away. Cry. Harangue your grocer.)

Peel three cloves of garlic (I don't actually know how much garlic is a good idea. I know six cloves is too much. Use less than six.) Throw them into the food processor with 1 tsp salt and 1/4 cup vegetable oil. (If you used canned beans instead of playing with the rice cooker, don't add the salt. If you used the rice cooker, you might have to add a lot more salt. Also, I used to be obsessive about using olive oil here. I made it with safflower oil because I was pretty sure this was a test run, and it was good. Go ahead, be cheap.) Puree that stuff. (Oh my, more notes. If you want to add 1/2 cup tahini, do it here. Or use a half cup of peanut butter! Or almond butter! Increase the rib sticking properties!)

Drain the garbanzos and add to the food processor. Puree the heck out of it. Make it as smooth as possible. Squeeze in the juice of 1/2 lemon. Taste. Add pepper, salt, and lemon to taste. You might have to add a lot of salt.

Makes about 3 cups, or about... six pitas? Enough. Don't go doubling this for no reason, guys. Make it once first.

Fava Bean Puree

Hey, once again spring saps me of any desire to write about food. There's no photo either- envision a pale green paste that pretty much ends up directly in my mouth.

Fava beans are the original European bean. They aren't very good and so are no longer a staple. Since they have a stronger flavor than other, significantly better beans, they can be used to make a tasty canape topping. The paste can also be spread on crackers as part of the solution to the 800 calorie problem.

Makes enough puree for lunch for two days or appetizers for a reasonable number of guests.

Shell one pound of fava beans. Blanch and peel beans, and if necessary cook until palatable in salted water. (About five minutes.) Grind two cloves green garlic (or one clove regular garlic) and a scant handful of parsley in a food processor. Add the beans and pulse until smooth. Salt to taste, and add the juice of one lemon and 2 tbs olive oil. Stir until combined. Serve on crackers or bruschetta- it's nice with arugula on top.

I mostly like it because it's Pre-Columbian European and reminds me how much chewing life used to require. It is not calorie dense.

Popcorn is Totally a Meal!

The mid-sentence caps in the title give it unnecessary gravitas.

Popcorn is technically a whole grain. This means that sprinkling popcorn with lemon, olive oil, and nutritional yeast is technically a healthy lunch.

French Lentil Salad with Endive

It's the time of year when my mother eats strange things at strange times. The happy advantage is that there's someone else in the house who will eat lentils.

Take one cup French lentils. Cover them with water and add a bay leaf. Simmer until tender (45 minutes). Make a vinaigrette with 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup lemon juice or rice vinegar, one chopped, pressed, or grated clove of garlic, and salt to taste. Mix lentils and vinaigrette. If you like, add 1/4 cup finely chopped onion, rinsed and dried and 2 tbs. chopped parsley.

Serve with Belgian endive leaves as cracker type things.

Onigiri: More Fun with the Rice Cooker.

It's the birthday of my favorite sibling, so I'm posting early. I will also be brief. That's why the food is so pretty.

We are in that blissful post wedding state where I have more kitchen appliances than I can use. Still, I adore this rice cooker. It's like a magic food production machine- I put in rice and water, walk away, and find perfectly cooked proof that I am the best wife ever. C is a big fan of rice.

Onigiri is less about the flavor of the filling and more about the flavor of the rice. As such, one needs about a tablespoon of filling for half a dozen rice balls- my suggestions are mashed avocado, chopped green onion, or about a tablespoon of any savory leftover in the fridge. I used nikujaga sauce. (Tomorrow's recipe: nikujaga!)

Cook 3/4 cup short grain white rice according to whatever method you chose. (Rice cooker rice cooker) (I've tried other sorts of rice; short grain brown, long grain brown, sticky rice. They simply do not work. Sushi rice is the way to go here- when I get more adept, I may switch to 50%/50% with short grain brown. Or I may not. All the Japanese expats get a little fraught when people ask them about rice substitutions. Mix in about a teaspoon of seasoned rice vinegar. Or, you know, a good sprinkle of salt, a good sprinkle of sugar, and unseasoned rice vinegar. Taste it to make sure you approve of the flavor.

Get a smallish square of saran wrap and a small bowl or old fashioned tea cup. Line the teacup/bowl with saran wrap. Fill teacup/bowl with about 1/2 cup rice. Stick a very clean finger into the rice and fill the hole halfway with filling. Grab edges of saran wrap and twist/wrap the rice firmly into a ball. Leave the saran wrap on for at least five minutes- though if you're packing a lunch, the saran wrap can stay on indefinitely.

Repeat with remaining rice- this should make about 6 onigiri.

Sweet Sweet Failure

I found this recipe while bumping around other, better food blogs. I was about two thirds done with the process when I realized that it was my cowboy caviar, mixed 50/50 with quinoa. Quinoa is more expensive than all the other ingredients, no healthier, and less tasty. Fie! Fie!

Still, needs must post. Cook one cup quinoa until the cotyledons unspool and look like toenail clippings. Stir in one cup cooked black beans- let's not lie here, you're going to put in 12 or 16 oz, because who wants to have half a can of black beans hanging around? Add one cup frozen corn- possibly toast it in the oven for five minutes- and a chopped bell pepper and a handful of chopped cilantro and a diced onion. Sprinkle with salt. Lots of salt. Grab like four limes, and squeeze them onto the salad until it's appropriately sour. Add a dash of olive oil. Stir. Hey, it tastes like cowboy caviar and quinoa! Delightful. That is what you were hoping for.

Really, I think of lettuce as an herb I don't particularly care for. And avocados get sad in backpacks, and sad avocados are a sin.

Sammiches

The sandwich is moodily lit to represent my ambivalence about enveganating something that was invented to be a meat delivery tool.

This will be less of a recipe, and more sandwich theory. First, it helps to think "Bahn Mi" instead of "BLT". Second, it helps to have really good bread. Third, it's important to spread something unctuous on said bread- probably avocado, possibly some mushroom pate, (note to self: make mushroom pate.) and in a pinch, vegenaise or whatever watered down Crisco is the thing of the moment. Fourth, use tasty things you made in advance. Lastly, red peppers and cucumbers are all kinds of tasty together, particularly so when combined with bread.

Kale/Quinoa Tabouli

This post title reads like a parody of vegan cooking.

Rinse 1 cup white quinoa three times. Simmer in two or three cups of water until tender and the seed embryos pop out.

Chiffonade the heck out of two cups of (destemmed) dinosaur kale, one cup of Italian parsley, and 1/2 cup mint leaves.

Drain and cool the quinoa. Mix the chopped greens and the quinoa with two cloves diced garlic, the juice of two lemons, a healthy dash of salt, and 1/4 cup olive oil.

The 800 Calorie Problem.

I'm skeptical about diets. (This is a rarely used definition of "skeptical" meaning "violently opposed to".) Part of it is my total lack of impulse control- when I get hungry, I am going to eat something. I will eat all of the things in my lunchbox, and then if I am still hungry, I will eat other things: Entire fennel plants. Acorns. Wayward deer. Unwary coworkers.

I assume other people buy a candy bar or something.

Thus, my lunchbox always contains at least 800 calories and 10 grams of fiber. (And ample 'pocket jerky'- edible but non palatable items.) My challenge this summer was all vegan lunches- it's a little hard to find things that are sufficiently energy dense. I've relied heavily on potato salads.

Potato Salad with Mint and Lemongrass
Boil 1 pound of potatoes until fork tender. (Potato texture is not important in this recipe, except that it be delightful. Thus, this is a good slush recipe for those strangely textured potatoes in your life.) Cut into large chunks. Add three stems thin sliced lemongrass and 1/4 cup chopped mint. Dress with 1/4 cup rice vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 1 tsp sugar. Salt to taste.

Sarlah Salad.October Style.

Why yes, that is a piece of chicken skin. It makes your skin beautiful.

I am the worst vegan ever.

This is another recipe garnered from a roommate. I have a lot of these, both because some of my roommates are awesome cooks and because I've had twenty-four roommates. Law of averages, really. Sarlah lived on a salad of chopped vegetables- fresh, blanched, and wilted- with one of several fermented soy products and a wee bit of oil. Of course, this version is remade for my finickier tastes- and as a "last farmer's market of the year" salad.

Rinse one handful really nice lettuce. Or chopped cabbage. Or parsley, kale, chard. I'm not really a follower of the cult of the salad. Green or red leafy thing. Put it in a large bowl.

Garnish with cucumber slices, apple slices, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced tomato, toasted peanuts, toasted sunflower seeds, bell pepper, carrot, (I keep referring to the picture to remember what I included) boiled beet slices, sliced raw or wilted summer squash, and finely sliced onion. In short, go to the farmer's market. Put the vegetable contents of the market into a bowl. Dress. There you go.

But the dressing, you ask- what sort of dressing makes this salad a Sarlah salad? Take one tbs miso, two tbs rice vinegar, and one tbs olive oil. Stir together. Put on salad. Eat.

Cowboy Caviar

I took the picture before stirring because it was just too pretty.

Take two cans black beans. (Fine, yes, I cooked 1 cup dry turtle beans. HeadLaurel would scold elsewise. However, this is better with canned beans. And easier. See how there are no beans in the picture? That's because they're still cooking. Still.) Drain and dump into a giant bowl.

Chop one red onion, two handfuls cilantro, and one bell pepper. Dump into bowl. Blanch two ears of sweet corn and cut off kernels. Add kernels to bowl. Goodness, how pretty. Stir. Juice two limes. Mix juice with 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 clove grated garlic, and about as much capsaicin source as you can stand. (None is an amount here. I won't judge.) Add to bowl. Stir. Taste. Maybe a little salt?

Serve as a dip, or as filling for tortillas. Or eat it straight. It is important to use a fork when eating it straight, FYI. Particularly if you have poison oak on your fingers. I usually eat about a quarter of this with a half an avocado chopped and stirred in- but if you're serving it to starving hordes and you want to be fancy, add two chopped avocados from the get-go. And maybe a little tomato/peach salsa on the side.

German Potato Salad

This is a sorry excuse for a vegan recipe- being as it required the suffering of three different species. Happily, my mother informs me that it's also a sorry excuse for German potato salad. According to her every potato chunk should be coated with an acrid gloss of roofing tar- or a roux made with bacon fat and cider vinegar and whole wheat flour. Regardless of cultural accuracy or following the sentiments of this blog, it's pretty good potato salad. It has no mayo, if that's a thing. Also, it's what I'm having for lunch this week, so stop whining.

I will be giving my Midwestern recipes extra leeway, because I can think of about three dishes that are perfectly vegan. They are all pickles.

Dice two onions, and caramelize them in 1 tbsp butter, lard, or for those of us without seven generations of German grandmothers hissing in our prefrontal cortexes some sort of vegetable oil. This will take a while- that's why one does it first. At some point you may find the onion pan to be dry- add more fat and make sure the heat is nice and low. Cut 10 Yukon Gold or other waxy potatoes (the red ones or the white ones or the purple ones)in half, and boil them until fork tender.

Chop 4 stems of celery, a good handful of parsley, and cucumber pickles. The total amount of chopped pickle should be half the amount of chopped celery. You should use dill pickles, but I'll still be your friend if you use bread and butter. Or non-cucumber pickles, actually. Hell, I still love C, and the man hates pickles. I've gotta find some with Yellow #5. Put the chopped vegetables into a large bowl. Oh, and dice one slice of bacon.

You'll probably finish chopping long before the onions turn properly brown and the potatoes become edible. Do some dishes or something.

When the potatoes finish, cut them into thick slices and put them in the bowl. Add the onions. Take the old onion pan, turn the heat up to medium high, and fry the bacon until crisp. Keep stirring, or it will burn and you will be sad. This is where you'd make a roux if you were bound by tradition, but we already silenced those demons with lard earlier. We are strong. Instead, add one tbsp of mustard, (not French's, fools) 1/3 cup of cider vinegar, 1 tsp sugar, 1/8 cup of olive oil, and 1/3 cup chicken broth. (The secret to great vegan cooking is homemade chicken broth.) Turn the burner off, stir until blended. Pour over the vegetables, mix everything together. Chill.

This should be a little on the acid side, because I was raised on acrid roofing tar potato salad, so you may want to hold back on the vinegar at first. Or to be more accurate, I added sauce ingredients until it tasted right instead of measuring, and too much vinegar is the only thing likely to make the final product inedible. If the balance is off, add things until it tastes good. This holds up very well in a backpack- though that might be in contrast to my memories of dubious mayonnaise based potato salads.

Please note: butter, bacon, and chicken broth. Tasty.

Beet Salad

My excuse for not going live earlier? June. Work has been... June.

I like to have a little salad in my lunch- my parents aren't crazed vegetable eaters, and it's a good way to get an extra serving in. This week, it's going to be beet salad, because I live in the middle of nowhere and being seasonal is difficult.

Crap, the farmer's market is going on right now. Be right back.

Hey, there were beets there! Justified! (Like most lunch items, serves me for four days.)

So grate two raw beets. This will leave you with a lot of grated beet. Make a quick vinaigrette by blending 1 tsp Dijon mustard (I like Inglehoffer)with 1/8 cup red wine vinegar and 1/4 cup olive oil. (Salad quality oil, whatever that means for you.) Add salt and pepper to taste, pour over grated beets. Taste. Adjust. Put in Tupperware so it can sit in a hot backpack for five hours.

It's a tasty little salad- nicely sweet. If you wanted to make it super Californian, you could use tahini instead of mustard and add some soy sauce and sesame seeds. If you wanted to make it Chilean, you'd cook the beets, peel them, and then do pretty much everything else the same.