Cory’s brother Casey moved back to the Midwest a couple weeks ago. On his last night in San Francisco, we invited Casey over dinner. It was a gym night, which meant dinner consisted partly of leftovers, prepared Trader Joe’s food (sweet potato gnocchi!), and a quick salad I made from whatever we had on hand. It had been an exhausting and busy week for the both of Cory and I. I checked out early that night, promptly falling asleep soon after dinner. I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye to Casey, but he and Cory got to hear me snort in my sleep (the joys of living in a studio apartment!). Casey cleared out his pantry and fridge before coming to our apartment and brought us a bunch of goodies – 18 eggs, 4 pounds of red lentils, vegetable broth, canned olives, canned mushrooms, and more frozen okra than I’ll ever know what to do with.

The first meal I made with Caseyfood was soup, of course. Making a soup from the lentils and vegetable broth was the easiest choice, since I could happily eat lentils everyday. I used a mixture of red and brown lentils, since red lentils tend to get mushy and brown lentils stay firmer so long as they’re not overcooked. I flavored the soup with ras el hanout, a North African spice blend, that means “the grocer’s head” – a mixture of the best spices the seller has to offer. Ras el hanout blends vary, but generally include cinnamon, dried chili peppers, ginger, nutmeg, turmeric, and clove. Some mixtures include harder to find ingredients like dried rosebuds, golden green Spanish fly, grains of paradise, and cubebs. I made a mixture myself with what I had on hand, but ras el hanout blends with exotic spices can be found at Middle Eastern and gourmet groceries. And just a small warning: this makes a very large batch of soup!

Lentil Soup with Ras el Hanout
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2 tablespoons cooking oil of your choice
1 onion, diced
1-3 garlic cloves, minced
6 cups broth (chicken or vegetable) or water (I used 4 cups vegetable broth and 2 cups water)
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
1 1/2 cups red lentils
1/2 cup brown lentils (I ended up using a little more than 2 cups total, I measured 500ml on accident)
ras el hanout (see recipe below)
salt, to taste
1 cup cilantro, chopped

In a large stockpot, heat oil over medium heat. When hot, add the onions and cook until translucent, or 5-7 minutes. Add finely chopped garlic and stir for another 30 seconds, or until fragrant.

Add the tomatoes, broth or water and lentils to the pot. Add salt and ras el hanout and stir. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the lentils become tender. Stir in the cilantro and add more salt to taste, if needed. Ladle into bowls and serve. Enjoy!

Ras el Hanout
(from the epicentre)

1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cayenne (I recommend a half teaspoon, but it really depends on how much heat you like)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/3 teaspoon coriander
1/4 teaspoon all spice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon clove

Mix all the spices until combined, add the spice blend to the soup.

Serves 8-10

Try the recipe index for more ideas.

Related posts:

1. lentil and tomato soup
2. red lentil and sweet potato soup
3. lentil soup with tomatoes and swiss chard

Somewhere, in the deep dark depths of YouTube there is a video of starring yours truly, on a mission to find my one true love – the Egyptian falafel.  Maybe if you poke around a bit, you can find it.  But for vanity reasons, there is no way I’m posting it here (my Arabic was atrocious, I was 10 pounds heavier, and most importantly, what on earth was I wearing?).

You may be familiar with falafels made from chickpeas, but Egyptian falafels are made from fava beans.  Fava beans are a staple of the Egyptian diet.  So much so the Egyptian word for falafel, ta’meyya derives from the word “food”. I love the bitter and nutty taste of fava beans and prefer them over the more well known chickpea based falafel. Then again, I’m biased since I love all things Egyptian.

Although a straight forward process, falafel making is a time consuming task. The only special equipment you need is a food processor or blender, to blend the beans into a paste. There’s no need to use a deep fryer to fry the falafels, a large pot and frying oil will do the trick just as well. My frying oil of choice is peanut oil, but in Egypt sunflower oil or vegetable oil are more commonly used in cooking. As for baking falafels, you can’t see me right now, but I’m frowning. Some of the best things in life are fried, you know.

Just a heads up to anyone out there who is like me, the kind of person who doesn’t read recipes until I’m just about to start cooking – this recipe requires the beans to soak for 24-48 hours and there are a lot of time consuming steps involved. They’re definitely worth the effort, if you’re looking for a taste of Egypt… in fried form.

Ta’meyya
(adapted from Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food)
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1 pound dried and skinless fava beans (broad beans), soaked for 24-48 hours
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
cayenne pepper or chili pepper (optional, to taste)
salt & pepper
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup parsley
1 cup cilantro
2 leeks, white and green parts
6 scallions, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 cup sesame seeds (optional)
frying oil (I used peanut oil)

In a large pot, soak the beans in a generous amount of water for 24-48 hours. Change the water a couple times a day. After the beans have finished soaking, pour out the water into the sink and spread out the beans on a large towel on a hard surface. Let the beans dry for about an hour.

After the beans have had time to dry a bit, put them in a food processor and pulse until the beans form a paste. You may have to do this in batches, depending on the size of your food processor. Add the spices and baking soda and pulse a few more times until the spices have mixed through, or until the paste is smooth. Let the mixture rest for a half hour.

Meanwhile, wash and chop the parsley, cilantro, leeks, scallions, and mince the garlic. Add them all to a very large mixing bowl or stock pot, along with the bean paste and knead with your hands until mixed through. Take small clumps of the mixture and patties that are 2 inches in diameter roughly 1/4 inch thick or into balls the size of golf balls. Optionally, dip the falafels into a bowl full of sesame seeds just before frying.

Heat a large stock pot with at least 2 inches of frying oil. Working in batches, fry the falafels in batches until brown, turning over once. Transfer the falafels to a plate lined with paper towels. Serve hot.

Serving variations:

- With hummus or tahini
- With pickled vegetables
- In a wrap or pita bread with lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and tahini sauce or hummus
- In a salad

Serves 6

Try the recipe index for more ideas.

Related posts:

1. ful mudammas (egyptian fava bean breakfast)
2. puréed fava bean soup
3. spaghetti with fava bean sauce

Egypt has been on my mind constantly. It all started when I finally got Cory to watch one of my favorite movies, The Band’s Visit, just after the New Year. Then a couple weeks later, we watched Dr. Zhivago (seeing it made me even more proud to have been an extra in a film that starred Omar Sharif). Now in the wake of the protests in Egypt, I’ve been glued to Al-Jazeera English’s live stream everyday and find myself constantly refreshing certain blogs for live updates.

I miss Egypt. A lot. I spent almost a year there, over the course of three separate visits. Egypt will always have a special place in my heart. It was a place of firsts – first international flight, first time living on my own, first roommates, and the place where I first took an interest in food and cooking. Although I had a lot of frustrating experiences in Cairo (as any woman will tell you), I long for the day I can return and introduce Cory to my favorite bookstores, restaurants, and neighborhoods.

I especially miss the cats. Don’t even get me started on the cats. I have more pictures of cats than pyramids (which is easy, since cats are everywhere).

I loved all of the cats, even the ones that tried escaping my loving embrace. I could totally do without the geckos (bors), though.

And, of course, there’s the food.

I arrived in Egypt a very picky eater and returned to the States with a new love for food and cooking (lentils, fava beans, and chickpeas… where had they been all my life?). With Egypt so much on my mind lately, I started off the week with plans to only make Egyptian and Egyptian-inspired foods. So expect to see lots of Egyptian recipes here in the near future. My produce market was overflowing lots of interesting greens – butter lettuce, dinosaur kale, and brilliantly purple escarole. Once I got home, I wanted to put them all together in salad. For the record, I was never served anything quite like this salad in Egypt. It’s Egyptian-inspired, with a tahini based sauce laced with cumin and coriander. You see, I can’t help but put a somewhat foofy California cuisine spin on the dishes I make.

By the way, if you subscribe via email or RSS take a look at avocado & bravado’s new look. I planned on coding my own WordPress theme from scratch, buuut… I never quite got around to it. Instead, I found a nice minimalist theme to use as a base and customized it myself. I’m still smoothing a few things out, but the blog is finally looking the way I’ve always wanted it to. I love it.

Mixed Green Salad with Tahini Dressing
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For the dressing:

3 garlic cloves, chopped finely
2/3 cup tahini
1/3 cup plain yogurt (you could leave this out and add more tahini, but sometimes I find that tahini can be too strong)
2-4 tablespoons water (depending on the thickness of your yogurt. I used full fat Greek yogurt, so I used about 4 tablespoons of water)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
salt

Chop the garlic and toss into a blender, along with the remaining the tahini, yogurt, 2 tablespoons water, lemon juice, cumin, coriander and salt. Blend until smooth. If the dressing is too thick, add more water, a tablespoon at a time until you’ve reached your desired consistency.

For the salad:

3 cups mildly tart greens (any of the following: endive, escarole, dandelion greens, kale, purslane, watercress), washed and chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 cups mild greens (any of the following: butter lettuce, loose leaf lettuce, Romaine lettuce), washed and chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 onion, diced
1 cucumber diced
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
black pepper, for serving

Toss together the the greens and add to individual bowls. Drizzle the dressing over the greens and add the onions, cucumber, walnuts, and chickpeas. Grind some black pepper over the salad and serve.

Serves 6-8

Try the recipe index recipe index for more ideas.

Related posts:

1. green salad with apples and pecans with buttermilk honey dressing
2. salad with carrot ginger dressing
3. mint and cucumber noodles with tahini dressing

When I think about it, having a food blog is kind of strange. I post recipes of the dishes I’ve made and share them with strangers. When I first launched avocado & bravado, some acquaintances who had no idea that I had ventured into the world of cooking, assumed I’d gone the route of dutiful housewife (girlfriend, rather) on a quest to become the next Martha Stewart. Not quite. Um, do I look like Martha to you? I grew up knowing very little about food and even less about cooking. As I’ve mentioned here before, I chopped my first onion a few weeks shy of my 23rd birthday. If a reformed McDonald’s addict can learn to cook, so can you. And if I’ve made any impact at all on your cooking or helped boost your confidence in the kitchen, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more. Thank you all for the kind comments, emails, and constructive criticism throughout the last year. Oh, and a big thanks to the occasional troll for the laughs. I’m looking forward to updating avocado & bravado for many more years to come.

Now that I have a shiny new camera, there are many many more recipes in the queue, but I haven’t had much time to edit most of the pictures. So the recipe I have for you today is a simple avocado and cilantro dip. Cory bought blue corn tortilla chips for a stew he made a couple weeks ago. We never have tortilla chips on hand, so the urge to snack on them was pretty strong. But it would be a shame to snack on just the chips alone, so I wanted to make a dip to accompany them. I planned on making guacamole, but I was missing many of the ingredients.  That was okay, though.  Once the cilantro was chopped, everything came together rather quickly and I didn’t even miss the tomatoes, onions, or chilies.  Also, I ate almost the whole thing in one sitting.  Just a warning for those with very little willpower.

Cilantro and Avocado Dip
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2 medium-sized avocados
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt (or more, to taste)
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Cut the avocados in half, remove the pits, and scoop out the meaty avocado goodness into a mixing bowl. Mash the avocados with a fork and mix in the garlic, lemon juice, cumin, salt, and cilantro.

Serves 2 (or less!)

Try the recipe index for more ideas.

Related posts:

1. mast-o khiar (persian yogurt and cucumber dip)
2. hummus with roasted garlic and fresh herbs
3. tomatillo salsa verde

I’ve mentioned my love for sumac many times in the one year history of this blog (well, it will be one year in a little over two weeks!). Sumac is a spice that I sneak into just about anything. I love its sourness, it’s not as overpowering as lemons can be. Sometimes I even find myself eating small spoonfuls of it just before adding it to dishes. Hey, it’s not nearly as weird as trying to eat a tablespoon of cinnamon. Sumac adds a nice tart kick to vegetable dishes and I’ve been roasting lots of vegetables lately (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and carrots). Partly as an excuse to keep the oven on for over an hour (our heater is only in one room!), but mostly because there’s no such thing as eating too many vegetables. Or too much sumac. Sumac most likely isn’t available at your local grocery store, but can easily be found at Middle Eastern grocery stores – or places like Amazon.com, if you’re willing to shell out a couple dollars for shipping.

Sumac Carrots
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1 lb carrots, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon sumac
salt, to taste
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Preheat oven to 350F.

Toss the carrots with olive oil, sumac, and salt on a baking sheet or baking pan. Transfer to the oven and roast for 20-25 minutes, or until tender. Sprinkle with a little bit of parsley before serving, if you’re feeling fancy.

Serves 2

Try the recipe index for more ideas.

Related posts:

1. sumac potato salad
2. carrot salad
3. roasted broccoli