Week 36 - Caramelizing

I love caramelized onions. They take so long to make, but they're so delicious. The Week 36 challenge, caramelizing, was a repeat of a challenge I did in 2014 when I also made caramelized onions, but I was definitely going to do it again because I like caramelized onions so much. I found a bunch of recipes online that sounded good, but then realized that the next recipe we were going to try in Ottolenghi's Jerusalem would be great with caramelized onions instead of fried onions, so decided to make that instead.

The recipe was for roasted eggplant with fried onion (here, caramelized onion) and chopped lemon. I was a little skeptical of the chopped lemon with raw garlic being added on top of the eggplant, thinking that both had some very strong and overpowering flavors, but I've trusted Ottolenghi many other times with combinations I didn't think I'd like, so I tried to follow the recipe as closely as I could (omitting the green chiles and substituting with just a dash of cayenne so it wouldn't be too hot for B).

The ingredients for the eggplant dish were:

- 2 large eggplants ($4.33)
- 2 tbsp + 1/2 cup olive oil ($1)
- 3 medium onions ($1.89)
- 1.5 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)
- 1 tsp sumac ($0.10)
- about 1/4-1/3 cup crumbled feta ($0.50)
- 1 lemon ($0.79)
- 2 cloves of garlic ($0.10)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- dash of cayenne pepper ($0.01)

We ate the eggplant alongside some turkey meatballs, since the recipe suggestion was to serve it with the turkey and zucchini burgers (which I made for a challenge in 2016). I had a feeling I was going to have enough to do with the constant monitoring of the caramelized onions that I wasn't going to have time to make something else from scratch (and I was right), so we just made some meatballs in the microwave that are one of our freezer staples from BJ's. The total for the eggplant was about $8.85, and the whole meal cost about $11.85 (not really sure how much each meatball portion cost). It was enough for the three of us for dinner, although maybe we would have been less full if B had actually liked the eggplant.

The steps for making the eggplant (our version with caramelized onions) were:

1. Slice onions into thin slices.

2. Heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add the onions and stir until coated with oil. Spread the onions evenly and let cook for 10 minutes.

3. While the onions are cooking, preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Wash the eggplants, and then halve lengthwise with the stem on.

4. Score the cut side of the eggplants with a criss-cross pattern, and then brush the cut sides with olive oil (the 1/2 cup). Sprinkle with salt and pepper. [Don't be me - I forgot to do the salt and pepper, and had to pull it back out of the oven a couple of minutes in to do it.]

5. Place the eggplants on a greased baking sheet cut side up, and put on the top rack of the oven. On the bottom rack, put a baking pan filled with a shallow layer of water to keep the eggplants from drying out.

6. Roast the eggplants for about 45 minutes until the flesh is golden and cooked.

7. After the onions have cooked for 10 minutes, add a little salt, stir around, and cook for at least an hour until caramelized. Stir every few minutes, letting them brown a little bit (but not burn) and then stirring, deglazing as needed. Adjust the heat if needed to prevent burning. [Ours took over an hour... That set dinner back a bit.]

That does not look like THREE onions

8. Once the onions are done, add the cumin, sumac, and cayenne pepper. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the feta, and cook for another minute before removing from heat.

9. Mince the garlic, and put in a small bowl to be combined with the lemon.

10. Remove the skin and pith from the lemon, and coarsely chop the flesh, removing the seeds, adding the flesh and juice into the bowl with the garlic. [This was the (paraphrased) instruction from the recipe. I had never done this before, so I wasn't sure if I needed to remove everything but the pulp. I ended up pulling out all the inside juice segments and adding them to the bowl, breaking them up with my fingers and squeezing out whatever juice I could. Where was the juice supposed to come from if you were chopping the lemon on a cutting board? This whole instruction confused me, and this was the first recipe in the book that didn't show the finished product so I couldn't examine that for hints.]

11. Assemble the eggplants in a serving dish when done, topping it first with the lemon and garlic mixture (rubbing it into the flesh a little bit), and then spooning over the onion-feta mixture.

The entire process of making this dish took me about 2 hours between the time it took to caramelize the onions (plus some extra time since there was some unexpected mold on the outside layer of the onions to deal with) and all the other tasks that just added up. Unfortunately, it wasn't an unqualified success. The onion-feta mixture was delicious. I could have eaten a giant bowl of that by itself, but three onions once caramelized became such a small bowl! (That's the worst part of caramelizing onions. You get so little when it's over.) The part I was most worried about - the lemon and raw garlic - worked really well with the eggplant and wasn't that overpowering for me, just a nice hit of garlic and citrus.

The eggplant, however, had tough skin (other than the middle) and some tough flesh near the stem and the cut parts of the skin, and I was just so disappointed. It wasn't as dry as the last time I made eggplant, but it wasn't what I hoped it would be, and the parts with tough, chewy skin just ruined the whole thing for me, so I ended up scraping out a lot and leaving the skin. A bite of soft skin from the middle with the tender eggplant and the onions and cheese and lemon and garlic all together was actually delicious, but there were so few of those perfect bites.

Would I make this again? The onion combination, maybe, although it took a while and would be easier to just saute it or roast it and then add those seasonings. The whole dish, probably not. Why can't I roast eggplant properly? Why was the skin so tough? I re-checked the recipe after dinner to make sure I hadn't messed up and wasn't supposed to also oil the outside skin of the eggplant, but it definitely only said to brush the cut side, so what did I need to do differently so that all the skin would be soft enough to eat? Also, B wasn't a fan of the eggplant at all, and I didn't even give him the skin, so I'd rather make something he likes better.

Jerusalem Cookbook Project Rankings:

1. Roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs (pg 26)

2. Baby spinach salad with dates and almonds (pg 30)

3. Na'ama's fattoush (pg 29)

4. Roasted eggplant with fried/caramelized onion and chopped lemon (pg 33) (if we were just ranking the onion mixture, this would be higher!)

Week 12 - Peppers

I love stuffed peppers, so when the Week 12 challenge came up as peppers, choosing what to do for the challenge was so easy. We've had some amazing stuffed peppers (and other vegetables) at restaurants, especially the ones we had in a small village in Greece, but the only ones we had at home before this challenge were the ones we bought at Costco, in which the peppers always came out underdone and not soft at all (but the filling was good). I quickly found a delicious-sounding recipe for turkey stuffed peppers on Skinnytaste, and the thing I liked the most was that people commented about how soft and juicy the peppers were. Exactly what we were looking for.

The ingredients for the stuffed peppers were:

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.50)
- olive oil ($0.20)
- about 6 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.30)
- 1 small onion, chopped ($0.79)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- cumin ($0.10)
- salt & freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- oregano ($0.05)
- 4 bell peppers ($5.34)
- 1.5 cups of chicken broth (bouillon + water in our case) ($0.50)
- about 3/4 cup of tomato sauce ($1)
- about 1.5 cups of cooked brown rice ($1)
- canola oil spray ($0.03)
- a few handfuls of shredded cheese ($1)

The total cost for the stuffed peppers was approximately $14.89 (right on par with so many of our challenge meals). We've made it a few times since then, and the price might have been slightly less those times since we only used three peppers instead of four. (The prices fluctuate so much though, and depends on where we can get our groceries from!) For a meal that's just the right size for our family of three, that works for us.


The steps to make the stuffed peppers were:

1. Prep - Mince onion and garlic. Wash peppers and chop in half from top to bottom, pulling out the seeds and ribs.

2. Add olive oil to skillet, and cook onions and garlic until soft.

3. Add turkey, garlic powder, cumin, salt, black pepper, and oregano, and cook, breaking up the turkey as it cooks, until meat is fully cooked. Adjust seasonings if needed, to taste.


4. Add tomato sauce and 1/2 cup of chicken broth, and simmer for a few minutes. Adjust flavors to taste.

5. Add rice to turkey, and mix well. [Note: We used some rice that had been thawing out in the fridge for a few days, but was apparently still frozen. Make sure the rice is fully thawed out (or never frozen) or this will add a significant amount of time, as we learned the hard way...]

6. Spoon meat and rice mixture into the bell pepper halves and place in baking dish that has been sprayed with canola oil. [We used two 13x9 baking dishes for 4 peppers (and still do even with less peppers).] Top with cheese.

7. Pour 1/2 cup of chicken broth into the bottom of each baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil (making sure it's tight, but also not resting on the cheese), and bake for 40-45 minutes.


The stuffed peppers were everything I hoped they would be. The peppers themselves were so soft and juicy, and the vibrant taste of the peppers, plus the seasoned turkey and rice mixture, plus the cheese made for an excellent combination. If we would change anything about the way we made it that time, it would be to add a little more seasoning to the meat, but it was still good as it was. We were so happy with how this turned out and put this technique for stuffed peppers into our repertoire, with the intention of mixing up the fillings depending on what we were planning for the week.

Since the time we did this challenge the first time, we've now made stuffed peppers a couple more times, experimenting with different variations, but each time using only three peppers. The second time, we used beef-less ground beef from Trader Joe's instead of ground turkey, and omitted the tomato sauce (didn't have any) and the shredded cheese (didn't have any open packages). The two ingredients that we were missing seemed to make a difference, so the third time, we used Gardein beef-less ground (no idea if that's the same manufacturer as TJ's, but it's frozen instead and tastes different), tomato paste, and shredded parmesan, and it was much better. Considering the various meat supply issues during the pandemic, we're really glad that all the meat alternative products work so well in these stuffed peppers, and everyone in the family, including B, loves them. Definitely something we're going to keep in our rotation as long as we can get good bell peppers!

Falafel Mix

We made a falafel mix from Trader Joe's recently, one that was sitting in our pantry for over a year, mostly because it didn't expire until March 2020 and we had so much else to eat in the meantime. We had been putting together a lot of pantry meals this month since we had some long stretches without grocery shopping, and the falafel mix sounded like the perfect thing to try out for a Mediterranean dinner, paired with some other TJ's sides that'll be in another post at some point - the dolmas and the giant white beans.

I hadn't really paid much attention to the nutritional content of the falafel mix when we bought it, and since then, only checked the ingredients to make sure there was no egg (there isn't any; it's vegan) and we could give it to B. We figured that we would make the whole box, and if there were any falafel left over, it would be good for lunch. I started mixing, and since I had nothing else to do, started reading the nutritional facts. My jaw dropped when I got to the sodium number. That couldn't possibly be right, could it?


(Disclaimer: Nothing in this post is intended to be health or nutrition advice, but just our take on what was provided on the package.)

One serving size according to the box was 180 calories and 810 milligrams of sodium. 810 milligrams of sodium?! That's a lot in my book, especially considering a serving size is 1/3 cup of mix. The box has 9 servings (3 cups of mix), which meant that the entire box was 1620 calories and 7290 milligrams of sodium. 1620 calories isn't nothing either, but if you divide that by 3 (two adults, one toddler, and maybe some leftovers), that's 540 calories each, so not that terrible. But even if you divide that sodium number into thirds, that's 2430 milligrams of sodium and much, much more than any person should really be eating in a day (not my judgment; it surpasses the American Heart Association's recommended daily max) and far more than any toddler should be ingesting. Sometimes things with high sodium counts on the package don't taste that salty though, so I hoped for the best. I don't think I realized when I picked up the box at the store that the sodium content could be this high. I am so glad the new FDA labels this year recommend giving the numbers for the entire package and can't wait to start seeing those become more common.


Putting together the falafel mix was easy. One cup of mix, 3/4 cup of water, mix well, let it sit for about 45 minutes, shape the falafel into balls or patties, bake for 25 minutes, done. Far easier than making falafel on your own from scratch. They smelled so good as they baked in the oven, and when I pulled them out after about 25 minutes, they had puffed up nicely and texturally were dense but soft. (We weren't going for crispy and opted not to fry them.)


Then we tried them, and they were more salty-tasting than we thought they would be, even knowing the sodium content. All we could taste was salt. So much salt. All those delicious spices we could smell when they were baking? Gone and overpowered by salt. We had an entire tray full of baked falafel patties, and after having a few each, couldn't bear to eat any more. We put on some hummus to try to kill the salt, but it didn't work. We unfortunately didn't have any yogurt or tzatziki to see if that would work better. The entire time we ate the falafel, we tried to figure out what we could possibly eat it with that would counteract the insane amount of saltiness, and all we came up with were lightly dressed salads and plain yogurt. They were just unbearably salty, and if I hadn't bought them so long ago, I would have considered bringing them back for a refund. They were that inedible for us.


The other thing I did while eating the salty, salty, salty falafel was read every review of the falafel mix I could find on the internet to see if there was a general agreement that they were salty. I know I probably cook with less salt than the average American, and even more so now, cooking for a toddler, but I was still surprised how in the minority we were on our opinion. Most people never even mentioned the salt, the majority of people raved and loved the mix overall, and I think I found maybe three people who thought they were salty. In almost every case, other people responded that they did not find them salty at all, or that maybe there were just abnormally salty packages, something I find unlikely considering that the package was actually intended to have over 7000 milligrams of sodium. I don't even know the last time we didn't finish a meal and tossed it, because we just don't do that and we operate under the general principle that most things are salvageable, but we just couldn't finish these. We couldn't even eat 2/3 of them.

Buy again? A very sad but enthusiastic no. We wanted to like these so much, since a simple falafel bake would make for such an easy weeknight dinner. But unless the nutritional facts have changed since we bought them (which would account for all the raves if true, and I'll update this post if that's the case), I can't see us getting these again.

Fattoush

One of the things I've always wanted to do was cook from a cookbook cover to cover. (Well, as much as possible considering dietary and kitchen restrictions, some self-imposed.) I imagine this started back when I read Julie & Julia (well before the movie came out), and just thought that was such a great way to learn and challenge yourself. I also love buying cookbooks, and we haven't made 95% of the recipes in the ones on our shelves, so it's sort of a practical mission as well. I'm not disciplined enough or singularly focused enough to want to go page by page on a weekly basis or daily basis, so I imagine any cookbook challenge I do will take a while (and a few may even run simultaneously), but I think it's a good way to use what we have and continually try new things.

We started with the first recipe in the Jerusalem cookbook last year, and now that we're finally getting settled in our new home, it was time to move on to the second - Na'ama's fattoush. I tried to stick closely to the recipe, but there were a couple of things I didn't measure. The ingredients we used were:

- 1 cup whole milk yogurt ($1.25)
- 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp 2% milk ($0.28)
- 2 pitas ($0.70)
- 3 tomatoes ($1.19)
- 4 mini cucumbers ($1.33)
- 6 scallions ($0.52)
- a handful of fresh mint (about 1/2 a package) ($0.85)
- a bunch of fresh parsley ($0.40)
- 5 radishes ($0.50)
- large spoonful of minced garlic ($0.10)
- about 1/4 cup olive oil ($0.30)
- about 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar ($0.10)
- juice of 2 lemons ($0.98)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- sumac to garnish ($0.10)

The salad came out to about $8.65 (not helped by the fact that lemons are not cheap right now and I wanted to use real lemon juice because it was a salad), but considering how much it made, it really wasn't a bad total for dinner, even after adding the two panko chicken tenders we ate it with.

The first step had to be done hours in advance (probably 4-5 hours in our case), which was to mix together the yogurt and the milk and then leave it in the fridge. The result was supposed to have bubbles on the top after a few hours, but I don't know if I did it right, because there were bubbles on the top as soon as I was done mixing. The goal was to be like buttermilk, but less sour, but since we don't really ever taste buttermilk on its own, we had no idea whether that was really the case. We used it anyway, since it tasted like yogurt and yogurt dressings are good.

When it was actually time to make dinner, the first thing I did was chop up the pita and pop it in the oven on a dry baking sheet at 350 degrees for a little over 10 minutes. You're supposed to use stale pita in this recipe, but I'm not a big fan of leaving bread out to get stale (bugs...), and we just bought the pita the day before, so this seemed the most efficient way of drying it out.

The next and most time-consuming step was all the vegetable prep: dice tomatoes, dice cucumbers, thinly slice radishes, thinly slice scallions, coarsely chop parsley and mint. The recipe itself actually said to put the pita in first, followed by the yogurt dressing, followed by all the other ingredients, but since we're still working on our kitchen arrangements, we didn't yet have the counter space for that. I wasn't really sure what the difference was, since the pita, yogurt, and vegetables were to go into the bowl in quick succession anyway, so into the bowl went all the vegetables as I chopped, followed by the pita pieces and the yogurt dressing, and then all the other seasoning/dressing ingredients like the olive oil and vinegar.

As we mixed it up, it just seemed to be really heavy on the liquids, definitely more than the stylized photo in the cookbook. That seemed like more vegetables than dressing, and ours seemed like yogurt everywhere in an overwhelming amount. It didn't really look pretty, but when we tasted it, it tasted good so that was fine. Appearance isn't everything. We left it for about 10 minutes for the flavors to meld and hopefully for the dressing to thicken up (it only did a little bit), and then spooned it into bowls with the sumac on top.

The salad was light and refreshing, had a good amount of flavor, and worked well with the chicken we ate it with. While we both liked this salad and thought it was tasty, it probably won't enter our regular rotation. If we're in the mood for a salad of this type, sure, we'd make it again, but it's not going to be top of mind most likely when we're making our meal plans. I think to keep track of what we've made for this cookbook project, it might be helpful to rank what we've made in order by how much we liked it, so right now, here they are:

Jerusalem Cookbook Project Rankings:
1. Roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs
2. Na'ama's fattoush

Week 32 - Salad

For over a year now, I've carried around a list in my phone of ingredients for a recipe that I hoped to make, roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs, the first recipe in the cookbook Jerusalem by Ottolenghi. I was hoping to start a cookbook project where I started from the beginning and just made the recipes in order, skipping over any that we wouldn't make at home normally (deep frying, for example) or couldn't eat for intolerance/allergy reasons. But the ingredients sat and sat in the notes app on my phone, waiting for the day when we could find the fresh, ripe figs that would be needed for the recipe.

When we were at Trader Joe's during the weekend of their anniversary sale (and what a great sale that was), A noticed that there was a big display with boxes of fresh figs. They looked pretty good, and after getting advice from a nice gentleman who was buying multiple boxes for himself, we picked one up and decided we would finally get around to making this recipe. I didn't think of it at the time but realized later it would be perfect for the Week 32 salad challenge.

The ingredients for the dish (adapted from the original) were:

- 4 sweet potatoes, small to medium sized

- olive oil

- salt and pepper

- 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

- 1 bunch of green onions

- chili flakes

- 8 fresh figs

- 5 oz goat cheese

For whatever reason, I kept thinking of this like an appetizer so wondered if we needed to eat more afterwards. But when I stopped to think about it rationally, it would be equivalent to eating 2 sweet potatoes each, which would be enough for a good dinner.

The steps for making the dish (as adapted) were:

1. Wash sweet potatoes and slice lengthwise, continuing to slice into wedges until they are desired thickness.

2. Cover sweet potatoes in olive oil, and top with salt and pepper.

3. Bake sweet potatoes skin side down on a baking sheet at 475 degrees for about 25 minutes. [They were definitely done by then, but probably could have done it for less time.]

4. Once sweet potatoes are soft, remove from oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

5. Make the balsamic reduction by adding the balsamic vinegar to a small pot, and simmering until it thickens.

6. Wash and chop the green onions into medium sized pieces.

7. Add olive oil to sauce pan, add green onions, and shake on chili flakes. Cook for a few minutes until green onions are softer but still have some sturdiness to them.

8. Slice figs into quarters.

9. Plate! Sweet potatoes on the bottom, then the green onions and infused olive oil, then figs, balsamic reduction, and topped off with crumbled goat cheese.

Wow. That was really, really delicious. I didn't doubt that the dish would be good since we've had Ottolenghi salads from our time in London, but that first bite of a little bit of everything together was amazing. And I say this as someone who doesn't especially love fruit in savory dishes, but this definitely worked. Not a ton of ingredients, but every one played a role in the flavor. We would definitely make this again.

Nopi

For our London trip, we planned on frequenting mostly casual spots, but we did set aside one night for a "nice" dinner at Nopi, a more formal Ottolenghi spot located in Soho. Visiting an Ottolenghi restaurant was a must for us, and when we looked at the menu for Nopi before our trip, we wanted to eat everything on it, so making a reservation was a no-brainer. Nopi has two floors, a more formal upstairs and a communal dining room downstairs. We made a reservation for downstairs, thinking it would be a little more casual, but when we got there, they offered us a choice and said we could be seated faster if we were okay with sitting upstairs. If they had no problem seating us upstairs, then that was fine with us!

We had a short wait before being seated at our table, and while we waited at the bar, they brought over a board with two small cups, one with marinated olives and one with roasted spiced nuts. We weren't sure if there was a charge for them since both were on the menu and at least £5 each, so we were hesitant to start eating them. When we got to our table, the server let us know they were complimentary because we had to wait. That was fantastic hospitality and very unexpected, especially since the wait wasn't long at all. The meal was off to a great start. A ate most of the olives, since M isn't a huge fan, but she did try a few. Like most olives, they were salty and sour, and in this case, also a little bit spicy. The cup of nuts seemed to have quite a variety in it. We spotted macadamia nuts, pecans, pumpkin seeds, almonds, peanuts, and cashews with lots of spices and seasonings that we couldn't quite identify. They were really good.

They brought out some bread and olive oil once our orders started to arrive. It was two pieces of something like country bread, and the olive oil was really, really good. We expected nothing less from the olive oil from an Ottolenghi spot considering their focus on quality and Mediterranean flavors.

The menu at Nopi was split up into nibbles, mains, and small plates to share, the last of which comprised the majority of the menu. We decided to order one item from the nibbles, but otherwise concentrated on the small plates so we could try as many things as possible. From the nibbles, we got the mixed seed lavash with burnt spring onion dip (£6.5, all prices as of a year ago). The lavash was very crispy and covered in a variety of seeds, including black and white sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and many some others that we couldn't identify. The burnt spring onion dip was a dark greenish-gray color, similar to a black bean dip, and garnished with some pieces of scallions and microgreens. Both the lavash and dip were really tasty, and we made sure to finish the entire thing, even wiping up the remainder of the dip with the aforementioned bread. We especially liked the dip, full of onion and scallion flavor, nice and smoky.

Outside of the nibbles, we had five other plates and they split them into two rounds of three dishes and two dishes. They tried to match up things that they thought would go well together, and we thought they made very good choices. One of the dishes in the first set was the "roast aubergine, black garlic, broad beans, basil" (£8.9). There was also yogurt and pine nuts but those weren't listed on the menu line. We loved this dish. The aubergines were soft and tender. The flavor of the basil was so incredibly vibrant, unlike a lot of the basil we buy in the grocery store which can sometimes be a little dull. The yogurt was creamy and a little tart. We liked the garlic chips, the pine nuts, and everything worked so well together. The whole dish just tasted really fresh, really light, really clean, and it was the type of thing that we have pretty much always thought would come out of an Ottolenghi kitchen.

The next thing we tried were the scallops with apple yuzu puree, endive and pork (£12.9). Although we saw these on the menu and they sounded good, they didn't immediately jump out at us as a "must order" dish. Then the dish arrived at the table next to us, and the dish smelled so amazing that we had to order it. The dish had three large scallops, perfectly cooked, little bits of pork, soft roasted endives, and both apple and yuzu purees, together on the plate but not blended together. We tried the purees on their own and they tasted strongly like apple, but when we ate them together with all the other parts of the dish, the apple wasn't anything more than an accent. The balance of all the ingredients was just perfect, and this was one of our favorite dishes of the night. The scallop dish was so good that it made M's top 10 list in 2015.

Fish was our final plate in the first round of dishes, seared hake with roast chicken cream and pickled girolles (£12.9). We weren't sure what girolles were, but looked them up online and found out they were chanterelles. There were also peas which were not listed on the menu. We liked the fish, but just not as much as the scallops which were on the table at the same time. We couldn't place the flavors or small seeds in the sauce that the fish was cooked with, but the chicken cream was like a really thick, rich chicken gravy. The peas and mushrooms helped to balance out the dish, providing some fresh and light vegetables alongside the chicken cream. Even with all the cream, the dish felt pretty light, even though it was filling. It also felt very seasonal for the fall.

The first dish in the second set was the courgette and manouri fritters with cardamom yoghurt (£11.5). This was the first thing M saw on the menu when researching the restaurant, and she was immediately sold on them. Each of the three fritters had grated zucchini that was mixed with chunks of manouri cheese, formed into a conical shape, and then fried. These were rich and creamy because of the cheese, but lightened up a little bit by the zucchini. The cardamom yoghurt was a little bit tart, but also had some warming spice to it. We liked this, but not as much as we thought we would. Maybe we were already getting full, maybe we were spoiled for everything else because of the amazing scallops, or maybe our expectations were too high, don't know. They were really good, but just not the star of the night we thought they would be.

The last savory dish was the twice-cooked baby chicken with lemon myrtle salt and chilli sauce (£10.9). This was also listed in the mains section at £21.9 where they gave you a whole chicken, but we went with the smaller portion. The chicken had both dark meat and white meat, and the flavor was smoky and sweet. The chilli sauce provided a little heat (but not too much) and also some sweetness. It was like a sweet chilli sauce you can buy in the store, but not as sweet. M recognized the name lemon myrtle from native Australian week of the cooking challenge, but we didn't really taste anything but salt from that ingredient. That said, on the whole, the chicken was so much better than we anticipated. We really liked the flavors.

Once the savory courses were done, we moved on to sweet. With our desserts, A got a flat white, which he liked.

We got two desserts. The first was strawberry mess, sumac, rose water (£8.5). M was immediately drawn to that one. She didn't know what a strawberry mess was, but didn't really care because the listing of strawberry, sumac, and rose water combined three flavors she really loved. It also seemed in line with the Mediterranean flavors that we had been enjoying all night. What came out of the kitchen looked like a scoop of strawberry sorbet, rose water meringue, whipped cream, sumac, and pomegranate seeds, topped with edible flower pieces. M's favorite part was the strawberry sorbet on top. It tasted like wild strawberries, and had such a pure strawberry flavor without extra sugar. The rose water meringue pieces were a little bit on the hard side. We tasted some sumac in the whipped cream, but not much. After doing some research, we realized that this was their take on the typical Eton mess, which Wikipedia describes as a "traditional English dessert consisting of a mixture of strawberries, broken meringue, and whipped heavy cream." Without even knowing it when we ordered it, we were trying out something traditionally English.

The second dessert was roast pineapple with macadamia nuts, lemongrass, coconut cream (£8.5). This was pretty good. The pineapple was roasted and a bit caramelized. The coconut cream was fine, it tasted like whipped cream hinted with coconut milk. M preferred the pineapple without it, but A liked it much better with the pineapple than M. The more interesting of the two desserts though was definitely the strawberry mess.

Overall this was an excellent meal. It didn't come cheap, but we didn't expect that it would. We were very glad that we were able to try all the dishes that we did at the restaurant, and we would highly recommend a visit. Whenever we get back to London, we may choose a different Ottolenghi spot just for some variety and to try new things, but if we had a lot of time, we would go back to Nopi. The food was excellent, the service was wonderful, and the entire experience was great.

Week 24 - From Scratch

The Week 24 "from scratch" challenge puzzled me. I wasn't sure what I could possibly make that would be entirely from scratch, and we both wondered how far the from scratch requirement went. Would I have to grind my own spices? What about olive oil? I wasn't the only one wondering, and after some clarification, it seemed like as long as you made something from scratch that you normally wouldn't, that should suffice. With that guidance, the logical choice seemed like hummus. We had never made that from scratch before, and A had been wanting to make his own hummus for some time, so no time like the present!

Starting from scratch for hummus!

We recently bought the Ottolenghi Jerusalem cookbook (finally) and decided to follow the hummus recipe from the book (which is also on Food52). To make it a full meal, we planned to top it with mushrooms and onions, similar to what you would get if you ordered a hummus entree at a Mediterranean restaurant. We were really, really excited about doing this challenge, both because we would finally be making our first Ottolenghi recipe and because we were going to try to make our own hummus.

The first step in making hummus from scratch was soaking the chickpeas (a little more than 1.25 cups) overnight. In total, they probably soaked for about 19 hours. A few hours into it, they started making popping noises, which I hadn't expected so I was wandering all over the apartment trying to figure out what was making random popping sounds until I realized it was coming from the bowl of chickpeas. They plumped up in size in just a few hours which was nice to see.

When it was time to start the hummus for dinner, I followed the recipe's instructions and cooked the chickpeas with a tsp of baking soda for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. After the 3 minutes were up, I added a little more than 6.5 cups of water (since I used a little more than the recipe's amount of chickpeas to start with) and set the pot on the stove to boil. It didn't really boil much for the first half hour, so I ended up raising the flame even higher at some point and it was done about 5-10 minutes after that. While the chickpeas are boiling, you're supposed to skim off any foam or skin floating on the surface, and there was plenty of that. Once the chickpeas were soft enough to easily crush between my fingers, I knew they were done and drained them. At this point, we also tasted them to see how different they were from canned chickpeas. There was a definite flavor difference, but even more of a textural one, just softer and a little less starchy. But so much more work.

Once the chickpeas were done, it was time to take out the food processor (which I try not to do very often because it takes up the entire counter), and process the chickpeas until they were a stiff paste. While that was going, we worked on preparing some of the items that needed to be added to the chickpeas in the food processor - measuring out salt, squeezing out fresh lemon juice, peeling and crushing garlic, and opening the tahini sauce. All of those were supposed to be added next while the machine was still running (although we had to stop it to add the tahini since too much of it was dripping on the chute and we wanted to use all the tahini we could).

The next step was to slowly drizzle in about 6 tbsp of ice cold water. About 15 minutes earlier, I had put a bag with that amount of water in the freezer to chill. We weren't really sure what the difference was between just adding water and slowly drizzling it in, but who were we to argue with Ottolenghi's methods?

After everything was mixed in, it was time to move the hummus to a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. It was pretty watery when it came out of the food processor, but we figured it would thicken up a bit in the fridge while it rested. However, during the time it sat in the fridge, a bunch of things clicked in my head and I started realizing that perhaps I made a mistake and it was going to be way too thin. But I tried to push that to the back of my mind so I could finish making dinner, and just hoped for the best.

While the hummus rested in the fridge, I worked on the mushroom and onion topping. The ingredients were simple - an 8 oz box of mushrooms, 1 onion, 1/2 head of garlic, a handful of pine nuts, a bunch of parsley, olive oil, and salt and pepper.

The topping itself was a simple saute and pretty easy to cook once it was all prepped. It didn't look exactly like the mushroom toppings we've had before at hummus restaurants, but I was fairly sure that it would work since it was pretty basic.

I pulled the hummus out of the fridge a few minutes before the mushroom topping was done. I was relieved that it had thickened up a little bit, but it was definitely not as thick as we were expecting or as we wanted it to be. So what went wrong? When I made the list of what I needed to get for the hummus recipe, I just wrote down "tahini." Having never bought tahini before, I hadn't noticed that the recipe called for tahini paste, and instead, I picked up tahini sauce. Since tahini sauce is already mixed with lemon juice and some other stuff, it made the hummus much thinner than tahini paste would have. Completely my mistake. It was still edible and it was okay, but it just wasn't what we were hoping for with our first hummus attempt. Lesson learned.

The hummus with mushroom topping was still a good dinner, even if the hummus consistency wasn't exactly what we wanted. The taste of the hummus was good, but it was a little too salty. Even taking out whatever salt was in the tahini, I think it was still too salty for my taste and might cut down on the salt a little bit next time. Oh well. We'll need to work on this recipe some more.

I would usually list out the ingredients up top to figure out how much this whole experiment cost us, but we did it in so many pieces that it seems to make more sense to just tack it here at the end as a footnote.

- For the hummus: 1/2 bag of dried chickpeas ($0.75), 1 tsp baking soda ($0.02), 2 lemons ($1), 8 oz tahini sauce ($2.99), 4 cloves of garlic ($0.15), salt ($0.05) = $4.96.
- For the mushroom topping: 8 oz box of mushrooms ($1.99), 1 onion ($0.50), olive oil ($0.50), salt and pepper ($0.05), 4 cloves of garlic ($0.15), 1 bunch of parsley ($1), handful of pine nuts ($1.50) = $5.69.

The total was about $10.65. It did make a lot of hummus, but that doesn't include pita or anything else we could have eaten along with it. Considering that you can get a container of hummus at Trader Joe's for about $2, I'm not sure whether it's more cost-effective making it from scratch. It definitely takes longer, but I'm still glad we tried it. Next time, we'll make sure we get tahini paste instead.

Sahara

After driving through the majority of Pennsylvania and Ohio, we stopped in Maumee, Ohio (a suburb of Toledo) for the night. We had eaten a lot of junk on the road between our McDonald's lunch and the giant bag of onion rings, so we definitely wanted to eat something fresh and healthy for dinner. We weren't tremendously hungry after the onion rings, but the nearby places we found in Maumee weren't open super late so we had to eat soon after arriving. Luckily the place we chose, a Mediterranean restaurant called Sahara, had half orders for all the entrees, which was perfect for how we were feeling.

The first thing to arrive was a complimentary basket with a small bag of fresh pita and some fried pita chips. We tried some of the chips, but didn't eat too many of them since we were really more in the mood for healthy, clean stuff. They were pretty good, but we might have eaten more of them if they had come with some sort of sauce, like a Mediterranean style chips and salsa.

The next dishes to arrive were salads. Both of our entrees came with side order choices, and we both chose salad. We were expecting something on the boring side, mostly lettuce, since it was just a side order, but we were pleasantly surprised when what came was a big plate of salad with romaine, tomato, red onion, green peppers, cucumbers, and vinaigrette dressing. This was exactly what we were looking for after a day on the road, and the salad was very good, very fresh, and well-dressed with a simple olive oil and lemon dressing.

M chose a half order of the chicken shawarma ($10.95), described on the menu as "charbroiled chicken strips marinated and served over rice with garlic sauce," and also served with one side (she chose the salad). M wasn't sure what the garlic sauce was going to be, thinking it was just going to be some sauce drizzled over the rice, but was pretty happy when she saw what it actually was - toum. As a garlic lover, she had always loved toum, that thick, creamy garlic whip, and was pretty excited to see that on the plate. The chicken was pretty good, not too dry, the rice was buttery and soft, and the garlic sauce was full of strong, delicious garlic flavor. The entire dish felt so healthy, and it was exactly what she wanted out of dinner.

A got a half order of the hummos with meat ($12.95), which had meat options of gyro, beef or chicken saute, and he chose the gyro. His half order also came with a choice of 2 sides, so he got the salad and rice. This type of dish is the type of thing A really likes. The combination of meat and hummos always seems to hit the spot for him, and this was no different. The saltiness of the meat combined with the nutty creaminess of the hummos paired together perfectly. It was heavier than what M got, and A ended up using some of the aforementioned pita to wipe up the remaining hummos, but it was still a healthy dish. The rice was a basic pilaf with a nice buttery flavor and some spice that A couldn't quite place.

We both were pretty surprised and pleased to find a good Mediterranean restaurant in a relatively small town in the middle of Ohio. The flavors were solid, and we loved that they offered half sized portions, perfect for what we needed. We wish places in NYC would do that as well. Overall Sahara was a very good, healthy eating option, and a great end to our day.