151. Hummus with Toasted Pine Nuts, Cumin Seeds, and Parsley Oil (p. 14)

The Book introduces this recipe by saying that "Hummus is so common these days it's become almost pedestrian." To me, this sounds a bit snobbish. It's kind of like those hipsters who claim not to like bands like Coldplay now that they have top-selling albums and sell out big arena shows. If you liked the band before they were popular, it's OK to keep on liking them once everyone else catches up to your superior trend-spotting skills. You don't have to apologize for liking something that everybody else likes. And you certanly don't have drizzle parsley oil all over your Coldplay CD and sprinkle toasted pine nuts, cumin seeds and parsley on it. You'll just wreck it.

At its core, this is just a basic recipe for very good hummus. First, I whizzed together some canned chickpeas and garlic in the food processor. Then I added some well-stirred tahini paste, water, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and more chickpeas, and whizzed it all together until it was smooth. Delicious! This is where I'll stop the next time I make this recipe.

The rest is all gilding the lily, especially when you do it all at the same time. Any one of the following accouterments on its own might be a nice little change, but all together, it's a bit much.

First, I blended equal parts of olive oil and chopped parsley in the blender. I poured this into a fine-mesh sieve and pressed the bright green oil from the solids. This parsley oil was was really good. It had a very fresh, almost grassy flavor. I'm sure that I'll find a use for this in some other dish that I make somewhere along the way.

Next, I toasted some pine nuts and cumin seeds in the oven. Toasting nuts and seeds is alwys dicy. They go from toasted to incinerated in the blink of an eye. The pine nuts were just a smidge "toastier" than I would have liked, but they were OK.

I sprinkled the toasted pine nuts and seeds over the hummus and dirzzled the parsley oil over the top. I didn't even take the last sept of scattering parsley leaves over the top of the whole thing. It was all just too much. This is an excellent basic hummus recipe. All of the "tarting-up" is good, but completely unnecessary. I just think that the editors of Gourmet "out-Gourmet-ed" themselves on this one.

Date Cooked: May 9, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A-

42. Herbed Lima Bean Hummus (p. 15)

So, in my last post, I picked on lima beans. (Did I say something about hipsters eating edamame and grandmas eating limas?) Well, if anything can give lima beans the cache of edameme, it's this recipe.

The recipe starts with simmering frozen baby lima beans, chopped onions and garlic in water for a few minutes until tender. Simmering the garlic and onions is a nice touch, since it mellows their flavor. Then you stir in a 1/4 cup each of chopped parsley and cilantro and let it stand off the heat for a few minutes. After that, you drain it and process it in the food processor with the other herbs and spices (mint, dill, cumin, cayenne) and lemon juice and oil. Season with salt and pepper and additional lemon juice to taste.

This hummus is a really nice change. It's got the familiar texture of chickpea hummus, but the variety of fresh herbs give it a nice bright flavor. Of all of the herbs, I felt that the dill came through more than the others. Generally, I'm not a huge dill fan because it tends to take over in a dish. The finished hummus could have used more lemon juice, but I used all of my lemons making Lemon Squares (check back later for more on those). This is a great dip to make for a party if you're looking for something a little different. I served the hummus with Pita Toasts (not burned this time, thank you very much).

Date Cooked: August 17, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: B+

17. Charred Tomatillo Guacamole (p. 10)

Guacamole is one of my favorite things in the whole world. I could eat it every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. OK, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement, but you get the point: I like the stuff.

I made this as another contribution to my family's Fourth of July cookout (see the earlier post for Creamy Slaw, and stay tuned for a post on "La Brea Tar Pit" Chicken Wings), and it was a big hit.

This is a basic guacamole recipe with a twist: the addition of roasted tomatillos.

This recipe gave me a chance to play a favorite game: Stump the Cashier. Here's how it works: look around in the produce department for something a little unusual, take it to the check-out, and wait for the fun to begin. As the cashier rings up your order, you'll hear that familiar beep, beep, beep as she scans the items at lighting speed. And then, all of a sudden, it comes to a screeching halt. The cashier's face gets all squinched up, she lifts the produce bag, usually holding it at a distance as if it smells bad, and then she says, in a half-curious, half-accusatory tone, "What's this?" Tomatillos are usually a guaranteed winner in Stump the Cashier. Other good ones are parsnips, turnips, and just about any fresh herbs. Some things that look a lot like other common items aren't quite as good for the game, such as shallots. These usually get rung up as onions without a bat of an eye.

This recipe also gave me an opportunity to use my brand new mortar and pestle, which was an anniversary present from my wife (thanks, Sweetie!). While the tomatillos were under the broiler, I mashed up the onion, chile, and cilantro, salt and pepper. Once the tomatillos were good and charred, I threw them in the mix. Finally, I put it all in a bowl, added the avocados and mashed it all up with a potato masher. If you make this in advance, like I did, be sure to cover the guacamole with plastic wrap pressed right against the surface of the guacamole, otherwise it'll discolor.

This was an excellent recipe. The guacamole has the creamy texture that we all love plus the pleasant and unexpected fire-roasted flavor and slight tang from the tomatillos.

The recipe calls for three to four serrano chiles. These little suckers rate about 10,000 to 23,000 on the Scoville Scale, which means that they're pretty darn hot! Now, The Book suggests removing the seeds from some or all of the chiles to make a milder guacamole, but even without the seeds, there's still a lot of heat in them there peppers. So, my wife and I had a debate about how many serranos I should include, but in the end, Stop and Shop made the decision for me. There was only one, single, lonely serrano in the whole store. The result was that the guacamole was pretty mild, but by no means wimpy.

My only complaint with the recipe was that it was too salty. The recipe calls for a whole teaspoon of salt, which was too much. If I make this again, and I probably will, I'll start with a half teaspoon, and then add more to taste as needed.

Date Cooked: July 4, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A-

3. Strawberry Salsa (p. 896)

What with the salmonella scare affecting the nation's tomato supply, I figured that it would be good to try a tomato-less sals-alternative.

The list of ingredients in this recipe (strawberries, onion, jalapeño pepper, cilantro and lime) make this dip a little bit scary. But, like everyone at my family's Father's Day celebration who was brave enough to try it, I really liked this salsa. The flavors (sweet, hot, tangy) melded well, and it didn't come off as a fruity salsa.

The blurb in The Book suggests it as a substitute for pepper jelly, and recommends serving it with roast chicken or pork. I doubled the recipe and served it with tortilla chips as a salsa substitute, and it was great.

Date Cooked: June 14, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

2. Eggplant "Caviar" (p.11)

If I stumbled with the Pita Toasts, I jumped right back up with this great dip. This dish is simple enough, even though it does dirty more than its fair share of dishes: you have to broil the eggplant and tomatoes, and then you need to saute the onion and green pepper, and then you need to whiz the whole thing in the food processor.

The real reason I burned the Pita Toasts was because, instead of watching them closely, I was washing all the dishes I dirtied making this dip.

All that aside, this dip was excellent, the roasted flavors of the eggplant and tomatoes blended well with the carmelized flavors of the onions and peppers.

Date Cooked: June 14, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Rating: A

1. Pita Toasts (p. 7)

There's an old saying that every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If that's the case, I tripped and fell on my face on the first step.

I volunteered for appetizer duty for my family's Father's Day celebration, and I decided to make Eggplant "Caviar" and Strawberry Salsa. I thought that these Pita Toasts would go well with the Caviar, and the recipe couldn't be easier. It's one of those recipes where the name is the recipe. The ingredients and the cooking instructions are in the name: to make Pita Toasts, you basically toast pitas. That's about all there is to it.

I even said to my wife before I got started cooking, "This one is so easy that I can't even believe that I get to count it as a recipe." But I spoke too soon. The Book says to cook the toasts for "about 12 minutes total." Apparently, "about 12 minutes" is not the same thing as "12 minutes," because in a matter of seconds somewhere in between 11 and 12 minutes, the Pita Toasts became Pita Cinders. It might have had something to do with the fact that I used whole wheat pitas, or maybe it was the non-stick cookie sheets (which make food brown faster), or maybe the oven got too hot.

But, no one complained, and they gobbled them up. (Maybe it was just because the Eggplant "Caviar" was so good, no one noticed that the Pita Toasts were charred.) Anyway, I'm not going to let this initial setback break my spirit. The only way is up!

Date Cooked: June 14, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Easy (or at least it should have been)
Rating: C (but it's all my fault)