I have been really enjoying Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem of late. The book features recipes from the Israeli and Arab cultures of the region, with many vegetarian recipes highlighted. Chickpeas, eggplants, and tahini are, predictably, staples of many of the items found in the book. Many of the recipes are straight-forward and come together relatively quickly. All of them have been delicious.
This Wild Rice and Spiced Chickpea …
Lentils are a favorite in our house. We make our lentil burgers and our mustard-vinaigrette lentils. We have our lentil tabbouleh and lentil penne dish. We love our lentils. This lentil soup is a recent addition to our lentil love. The beauty of this soup is that it comes together quickly and makes more than enough to go around (and then some).
So leftovers are a given with this recipe. And the advantage with a good soup is that the flavors tend to intensify with time. A few days in the refrigerator …
Picking a recipe is never easy. There are thousands of recipes on any given website and among any collection of cookbooks. And then, when cooking for a crowd, things get only more complicated, as more and more tastes, allergies, and preferences must be accounted for.
Among the vast collections of recipes, this one stood out almost immediately. I love a good homemade crust. Caitlin loves a good gourd. The addition of fresh rosemary (from our own herb garden out back) was an additional selling point. Beyond those considerations, …
I am not a huge meat-eater, and red meat is particularly rare. Though I still do enjoy the occasional burger and roasted chicken. Caitlin is almost exclusively vegetarian. So the hunt is often on for a new twist on vegetarian cooking.
I came across this recipe while flipping through our copy of the Vegetarian Times (that, by the way, is not a sentence we’re likely to hear around town). The potato chips offer a fun and crunchy twist on the standard stuff vegetable recipe.
With our CSA in full swing, these zucchini boats …
I had never heard of 00 flour when I first bought it. My regular grocery store had never heard of it. Even Whole Foods seemed unfamiliar with it.
Finally, after searching The Hill, Saint Louis’s Italian neighborhood, I found a grocer who carried this Italian flour. Having tried it, I’m glad I did; it makes an extraordinary pizza crust.
As Saveur notes, 00 flour is ideal for pizza crust because it is finely ground and because it has a lower gluten content than other flours. In Italy, flour is graded from 1 to 0 to 00, with 1 describing a rough grind and 00 describing the finest grind.
Gluten is the natural protein that remains when starch is removed from wheat grains. It creates the elasticity you feel when biting…