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Hummus

30 Aug

There used to be a time when people paid me money for this Hummus…  Annie Mariel, Laura, Ana Yolanda, Angie, Denisse, Elinor, Lillian – they all have sung the praises of this hummus recipe. That’s why I had not shared it as such in this blog.  Now that I am sort of retired from the pseudo-catering business, I feel comfortable posting it here.

It’s funny that I do not like to eat beans necessarily, but I learned to love hummus.  My version is special because I like it lemony…  to me this is what makes this recipe better than those store-bought hummus.  Hope you learn or teach someone  to love legumes by making this recipe…

 

HUMMUS

1 can of chickpeas or garbanzo beans – I still have not been able to figure out how to make the garbanzo beans from scratch
1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese
juice of one lime
about 1/2 cup of olive oil – enough to make the mixture as creamy as possible
1 clove of garlic, minced
¼ cup of water, optional
salt and pepper to taste
a dash of paprika
 

I usually make this recipe eye-balling all the ingredients…  so this is my best attempt to give your measurements and proportions.

  1. Rinse the garbanzo beans. 
  2. Place garbanzo beans, cheese, garlic, lime juice salt, pepper, paprika and some of the olive oil in a food processor.
  3. Pulse until the mixture is creamy.  If the mixture is not as creamy as it should be, add the water and a bit more olive oil in small increments until you reach the texture you seek.

 

A friend and ex-neighbor from Israel told me the lemony kick is very much in line with the way they make hummus in Israel.  I remember eating a lot of hummus in Israel and it was all delicious!!!!

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Panzanella Salad

9 Aug

This is another recipe that combines this Basic Italian Tomato Salad with several other ingredients so you can enjoy its delicious flavors in another format…

 

PANZANELLA SALAD

1 recipe of Basic Italian Tomato Salad
1 whole-wheat ciabatta roll
2 cups of baby spinach, washed and dried well
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and Freshly cracked Black Pepper

 

  1. Make Basic Italian Tomato Salad.  Set aside.
  2. Cut ciabatta roll in half.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Toast in oven at 350F for about 5 minutes.  Take the bread pieces out and cut into 1-inch pieces.  Set aside.
  3. In a large salad bowl, add the baby spinach, Tomato/Mozzarella salad and bread pieces.  Toss everything to combine and allow the juices from the Basic Italian Tomato Salad dress the salad.

 

That’s it!!!  Easy, no?

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Spinach Croquetas

8 Jul

I love croquetas… when I was little, my dad used to take us to La España to eat ham croquetas.  It was the treat while we were waiting for our Media Noches or Sandwiches Cubanos.  And the croquetas needed to be eaten with a squirt of lemon to taste in their prime.

But now that I am vegetarian, I miss eating croquetas.  So, in good vegetarian fashion, we need to start making them ourselves.

We got together in my friend Angie’s house to enjoy a whole Spanish feast to celebrate the start of San Fermín – among all the dishes we made, we made these croquetas.  Not to worry… you’ll be seeing the rest of the dishes we had in the next few days. 

We even got out our Spanish aprons for the ocassion…

We mixed a few techniques…  what my aunts in Miami have told me, a few recipes I had found on the internet, the fork-frying technique from Angie’s Cuban mother-in-law Graciela and our daringness to not give up on the first try if things did not turn our exactly as planned.  The results were delicious…

 SPINACH CROQUETAS

1 cup of frozen spinach, measured frozen, thawed and squeezed dry
½ yellow onion, diced small
1 garlic clove, smashed
1tbs olive oil
1 small pat of butter
2 tbs spelt flour
About ¾ to 1 cup of milk
Salt and Pepper to taste
About 1 cup of whole-wheat breadcrumbs
Canola Oil for frying

 

We will be basically making a thick béchamel that we will mix with the spinach, breading and then frying.

  1. In a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat, add the olive oil, butter, onions and garlic.  Sautee them until they become softened.  Season with salt and pepper.
  2. Remove the pieces of garlic and add the spelt flour and stir all together to form a paste.  Move around the saucepan a bit to cook the paste as much as you can to avoid having a raw flour taste afterwards. 
  3. After about 1-2 minutes of cooking the onion/flour paste, slowly add the milk while whisking.  Whisking will prevent lumps from forming.  Continue whisking once in a while until the mixture starts to bubble.  It’ll need to bubble to know how thick the sauce will really be.  Add more milk if you believe the sauce is too thick, but it needs to be on the thick side to withstand the frying later.
  4. Take off the heat and add the dry spinach.  Season with salt and pepper again.  Mix together well to avoid having big lumps of spinach.
  5. Take the mixture off the sauce pan to help it cool off.  You can place in the refrigerator, if you’d like.
  6. After the spinach béchamel has cooled, we can start making the croquetas…
  7. Place the breadcrumbs in a shallow container.  Set aside.
  8. In a large skillet, pour about ½ inch of canola oil and allow it to become hot enough for frying.  We always check using a wooden spoon.
  9. While the oil heats up, we take about 1 tsp of spinach mixture and roll it in our hands to make a ball. 
  11. Drop it on the breadcrumbs and roll around to coat it well on all sides.
  13. Place breaded balls in the hot oil to fry.   It’ll take about 5 minutes to cook on all sides until they’re golden brown. 
  14. The croquetas are delicate so the best way to handle them while frying them is using 2 forks.  Use the forks to roll them from one side to another to ensure they cook well on all sides and to take them out of the oil.
  16. Make sure the first side has cooked enough and is crispy to withstand being moved.  If you move them too soon, they will just break and form a sloppy mess on the frying pan.
  17. Take them off the frying oil and drain them on some paper towels while they cool off a bit.

 

The croquetas were a real success – we ate them all up before the husbands ever arrived.  We had such a great time frying and eating as they came out of the skillet.

Natalia and Mariana tried the croquetas for the first time and I think they were a hit – more with Natalia than with Mariana, but I feel confident I can make these again at home and they will both eat them all up.

        

These Spinach Croquetas may not be the ones I originally learned how to eat in La España.  But, with a little rearranging of the letters, these are also as Spanish as they can be.  And a squirt of lemon will not hurt these either…

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Brandad-Stuffed Piquillo Peppers

7 Jul

Today, July 7, the Fiestas de San Fermín start – the festival celebrating the patron saint of Pamplona, Spain.  Every year, from July 7 until the 14, Spain gets up early to watch 5 bulls run through the streets of Pamplona when thousands of people are running in their way.  I do not condone or agree with the Corridas de Toros, at all.  But the Encierros is sort of the “revenge of the bulls”, IMHO.

zezenburu_gcabecera_logo

I can’t believe it’s been 3 years since my last trip to Spain.  I believe that I was Spaniard in some other life… because I love the country, the food, the people…  last year, I took this opportunity to showcase a few Spanish recipes made the vegetarian way.  I enjoyed it so much that decided to do it all over again…

Bacalao, or salted cod fish,  is something I used to enjoy a lot before I went vegetarian, but I have found that frozen tuno can be molded and seasoned into tasting like many types of seafood dishes.  One of them being brandad – a mixture traditionally made with bacalao and potatoes.

Here is how I did it…

 

BRANDAD-STUFFED PIQUILLO PEPPERS

6 roasted piquillo peppers
½ cup of Tuno Antipasto recipe
2 medium-sized russet potatoes, boiled
A drizzle of olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

 

  1. In a medium-sized bowl, mash the potatoes well using a potato masher.  Mix together the Tuno Antipasto and season with salt and pepper.  Drizzle a bit of olive oil to give it added gloss.
  2. Take the roasted peppers and carefully stuff them using a small spoon.  Place them in a shallow gratin dish and drizzle again with a little olive oil.
  3. Roast in a 400F oven for about 15 minutes until the peppers dry a bit and the filling is warmed up.

 

Serve alongside a green salad for a light supper or by itself as a tapa.  They’re super easy to make and very filling.

Jonathan loved this dish and he didn’t even suspect it had soy tuna in it… the flavors are so good, he just gobbled them up.  That’s the way to introduce your omnivore friends to your vegetarian cooking – don’t tell them all the ingredients before tasting anything.  People are prejudiced if you tell them of any soy product substitutes.  Have them taste the food first, and after they’re in love with it, reveal the details, if you want to…

Viva España and enjoy the next few days of San Fermín and Spanish recipes, OLÉ!!

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Recreating Maggiano’s Stuffed Mushrooms

3 Jun

For a long time I had been dreaming of this dish… the Stuffed Mushrooms from Maggiano’s.  I had never heard of Maggiano’s before, but I went first during a trip to Philadelphia.  Someone recommended the stuffed mushrooms and when I tried them I was hooked.  I have been known to hook a few other people to these mushrooms.    Every time I travel and I see a  Maggiano’s,  I start to salivate for these mushrooms.  Hey, I even photographed them once for you…

But I was crushed recently … CRUSHED, because for the first time ever, Maggiano’s mentioned these mushrooms are made, apparently, with chicken broth.  Something, I swear, I had never seen in their menus, or even tasted.  Believe me, I have been tricked many times into thinking something doesn’t have chicken broth and then I taste it and arrrrgh!!!!  But these mushrooms never tasted to me like they had any chicken broth.  But one day I checked them out on the internet and there it was… the description every vegetarian dreads:

Stuffed Mushrooms
Jumbo mushroom caps stuffed with spinach and topped with our seasoned breadcrumbs and house cheese; served in a white wine chicken broth.

Could it be that I had never read the menu when I ordered them???  Possibly… nonetheless, I was scarred for life…

And as we are, humans with worldly desires, just knowing I couldn’t have these delicious mushrooms any more with the knowledge of someone drowning them in chicken broth, made my desire of re-creating this recipe the more ever-present in my mind…  YOU MUST BUY MUSHROOMS, YOU MUST COOK MUSHROOMS, YOU MUST EAT MUSHROOMS… and so to Costco I went.

Coincidentally that same afternoon, my friend Jonathan invited me to dinner, and I remembered the huge container of jumbo mushrooms from Costco in my fridge and without giving it too much though… I invited him over for dinner.  I guess the time had come for him to taste my vegetarian cooking.  Would I pass the test?  Would I really be able to recreate these stuffed mushrooms from Maggiano’s while satisfying Jonathan’s carnivore appetite?!?!?!  Check out the results…

 

Better-than-Maggiano’s STUFFED MUSHROOMS

8 jumbo white mushrooms
About 2/3 cup of chopped frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
1/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese
¼ cup shredded pecorino romano cheese, plus more to top mushrooms
1/3 cup of whole-wheat breadcrumbs
Salt and Pepper to taste
A pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
1 yellow lemon

 

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 400F.
  2. Clean the mushrooms well with a damp paper towel.  Remove the stems and place them over an oiled baking sheet.  Set aside.
  3. Chop the mushrooms stems finely and add them to a medium bowl together with the spinach, cheeses and breadcrumbs.  Mix well and season with salt and pepper.  Add the red pepper flakes if you’re into spice, like Jonathan.
  4. Fill the mushroom caps generously with this spinach mixture.  Top with a bit more pecorino romano cheese and drizzle a bit more olive oil on top.
  5. Place in oven for about 20 minutes until the mushroom caps cook and the cheese on top is golden brown.
  6. Serve immediately with a squirt of yellow lemon juice over them.

 

We had these mushrooms with a salad on the side.  I would say the dinner was a complete success… according to Jonathan, these mushrooms are the BEST he has ever had.  And now,  I won’t salivate anymore over any mushrooms out there.  I have what I need at home.


Portobello Mushrooms

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