Eventually, I settled on cilantro and eggs. As a kid, I didn't love finding cilantro in dishes. I don't think I thought it tasted like soap, but just that it was strong and overpowering. One day, it was like a switch flipped, and I suddenly realized how amazing cilantro was and couldn't get enough of it. I also didn't love eggs when I was younger, other than omelettes. Didn't like the texture or taste hardboiled, found them boring scrambled (and whatever they were in those "scrambled egg" dining hall trays), and didn't like runny eggs at all. Omelettes were fine, filled with meats and veggies and cheese, but why would I choose those other types of eggs when there were so many more interesting things I could eat? Combining herbs and eggs led me straight to kuku sabzi, a Persian herb frittata usually eaten at the start of spring for the new year. (Note: We made this in February, and I'm just a little behind in posting...)
Kuku sabzi wasn't really a perfect answer to this challenge. First, frittatas are similar to omelettes, so not exactly something I would have disliked. Second, I couldn't actually make eggs due to B's allergy, and I didn't dislike chickpeas at any point (garbanzo flour would be the substitute for eggs). Was this really the best thing I could make? In the end, I decided to go with it for two main reasons. One, I'd never made it before, and the point of the cooking challenge generally was to expand my cooking horizons, and two, I may have disliked how strong some herbs were when I was younger, but maybe I could avoid that for B by continuing to introduce them to him at a young age. Looking around, I found a vegan version of kuku sabzi on Golubka Kitchen and decided to start there. It sounded delicious.
Before I go any further, a quick plea for help if anyone is reading this and has any ideas. This challenge, out of all the ones this year so far, took the longest to prepare. I didn't take any breaks or play games and just worked the entire time, but somehow it took 2.5 hours to prep everything and get it in the oven, with the majority of that time spent prepping three things - parsley, cilantro, and dill. How can I get faster at washing herbs, picking them off the stems, and chopping them up? What are we doing wrong? How could it possibly take so long? There has to be something we're missing, but internet sleuthing and YouTube haven't turned up anything yet. We just don't understand how it could have taken so long. Anyway, on with the challenge.
The ingredients for our adapted version of the vegan kuku sabzi were:
for the frittata:
- 2 cups chickpea flour ($1.50)
- salt ($0.02)
- turmeric powder ($0.15)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 3 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.50)
- 2.5 cups water ($0)
- 1 onion, finely chopped ($0.79)
- 1 cup of leeks, chopped ($1)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced ($0.10)
- 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped ($0.99) *
- 1 bunch of parsley, chopped ($1.49) *
- 1 bunch of dill, chopped ($1.99) *
on the side:
- 1 box of grape tomatoes ($3.99)
- 1 container of garlic spread ($2.99)
* The recipe said 1.5 cups of each of these, chopped, and I really tried to do that. We had some giant bunches of cilantro, parsley, and dill that we bought from Wegmans, larger than what we would ever get at Trader Joe's. I felt sure that this would be way more than 1.5 cups, so much so that I only washed half the parsley initially, and then was shocked when it didn't even fill an entire cup. In the end, it probably came out to just under a cup of cilantro, just over a cup of parsley, and about 1.25 cups of dill.
All of that came out to $8.58 for the frittata and $15.56 for the total. It seems most of our challenge meals are coming out around $15 these days. It did last for two dinners though, so no complaints there and more economical than some of the other stuff we've made lately.
The steps for the recipe itself weren't difficult, but it just took a lot of time to make, with the bulk of that time being prep as mentioned earlier. The steps for our adapted version were:
- Prep the onion, leeks, garlic, and herbs.
- For the batter, combine the chickpea flour, salt, turmeric, black pepper. Whisk in the oil and water, and then let it sit while preparing the other stuff.
- Saute onion, leeks, and garlic until soft, and then add to the batter.
- Add the chopped herbs to the batter, and mix in well.
- Oil a pie pan (two in our case), and then pour the batter into the pan.
- Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes.
- Serve with garlic spread (looked for a yogurt dip or yogurt-based tzatziki, couldn't find what I wanted, but this worked so well) and chopped tomatoes.
The final product here tasted good, but we thought there wasn't as much flavor as there should have been considering there were all those herbs plus garlic plus leeks plus onions. If we made this again, we would add more garlic, more leeks, and green onions. Honestly though, there probably won't be a next time for this exact recipe unless we can figure out how to process the herbs faster. It took way too long to prepare something that should be so simple.
That said, the texture was good, and we all liked it, so we decided to reuse this as a framework for other "frittatas" that would be easier to prep. We've already done that once now with a combo of mushrooms, onions, and Mexican cheese, which was definitely easier to make, but also came out with far less flavor than we thought it would (and zero cheese taste). Something to work on for the future, I guess. Another bright spot from this kuku sabzi experiment, besides finding a way to make vegan frittatas, was that B ate plenty of it and at this point in time, doesn't seem to have an aversion to herbs and stronger flavors. He was so willing to try it, and that made me so happy!
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