So, I haven’t posted for ages due to being overwhelmed by life. I have a huge backlog of photos, which I will save for later. For now I will just jump right back in:

I was at Sahadi’s recently. Two favorite moments:

1.) The young guy in the bulk section who couldn’t believe the amount of chickpeas I was buying. I assured him I’d get through them soon enough. He looked amazed.

2.) At the check-out line I had the fortune of being greeted by the always friendly Charlie Sahadi who told me Sahadi’s is celebrating it’s 60th anniversary and handed me a flier with a bit of Sahadi history. Turns out May 1948 was the month Sahadi’s was born. I was sorely tempted to ask about the coincidence with another historical event that happened in May 1948, but didn’t.

Much chickpeas are consumed chez foodmonkey. I’m on a temporary no-hummus regimen due to rehab-related issues. That doesn’t mean I can’t work chickpeas in here and there in other ways.

Today I tried something I’ve been meaning to make for a while: “Lablabi” a blended chickpea soup out of Olive Trees and Honey. I gather it’s a North African thing. I normally don’t post recipes straight out of cookbooks out of respect for the author, copy right and such. I thought I’d break that rule here, because I can’t imagine there aren’t a thousand versions of this already on the internets.

It’s sort of like hummus soup minus the tehina (hummus is the Arabic and Hebrew word for “chickpea,” so I guess it is in fact hummus soup). Very very tasty. Totally hit the spot for me. I suppose you could eat it with a few toasted wedges of pita if you were feeling ambitious, but I was lazy so I didn’t. I think the more “authentic” way is to leave more whole chickpeas in there, I think I will next time. Trust me, there will be a next time.

Here goes:

Lablabi — North African Chickpea Soup

2 1/2 cups dried chickpeas

olive oil

1 onion

3 carrots

1 small celeriac

3 big cloves of garlic

10 cups of water

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp harissa

1 1/2 tbsp ground cumin

freshly ground black pepper

salt

juice of 2 fresh lemons

1 bunch of parsley, chopped

Prep:

Rinse the chickpeas thoroughly and throw out any bad ones. Soak over night in a bowl of water. I’m a bit pedantic and like to change the water a few times, but that’s just me). Also, I like to add a tablespoon or so of baking soda to the soaking water, this helps the chickpeas get tender later on.

Now for the actual cooking:

Chop the onion. Fry in a large heavy bottomed pan in the oil over a low heat until transparent and soft. In the meanwhile, chop the carrots and the celeriac. Crush the garlic. Add to the onions and fry for a while longer until everything is soft and aromatic. Rinse the chickpeas, add. Pour in the water and add the bay leaves. Cook for 1 1/2 – 2 hours, until some of the chickpeas begin to break and they are soft enough so that they make a non-grainy mush when you crush them with a spoon. Add the harissa, pepper and cumin. Cook for another 15-20 minutes. Fish out the bay leaves.

Let cool a little. Blend quickly in a food processor or blender (I like to leave a little bit of chunkiness.) Add salt to taste and stir in lemon juice. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and eat.

Chickpea Farinata is a recipe from Cranks’ Bible that has become a standby in my kitchen. It is super easy to make and makes a nice change from bread. It’s all chickpea flour and water, but it turns out sort of like a frittata or a thick pancake. I like to eat it fresh or heated for breakfast.

I believe it is Southern Italian or Sicilian in origin. Nadine Abensur gives a few suggestions for toppings, tomatoes, olives and eggplants among them. I’ve tried all of the above and they are very tasty. The version pictured is my own though, and grew out of the fact that I have a huge amount of za’atar at home and want to use some of it up. Even though it’s an Italian recipe I think it works nicely with more Levantine spices and accessories.

250 g chickpea flour

750 ml warm water

1 tbsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup za’atar

olives

3 tbsp olive oil plus extra for the za’atar and for the dish

Whisk the water into the chickpea flour a little at a time so as to avoid lumps. Add the salt and the cumin. Nadine Abensur’s recipe says to let stand for at least 2 hours. This time I let it stand over night, but I’ve made it without letting it rest and to be honest I couldn’t really tell the difference.

Set the oven to 450 farenheit.

Mix the za’atar with some water and olive oil.

Add the olive oil, red pepper flakes and the black pepper to the chickpea batter.

Stick a casserole dish or oven-proof skillet in the oven with a little olive oil in it to coat. When the oil is hot and sizzling pour the batter in. Sprinkle with the za’atar and olives, or whatever toppings you want to use.

Let bake for about 15 minutes or until the batter has set and the top is golden brown.

Let rest for a while and then eat.

I like it about 1 inch thick. I have no idea if that’s authentic or not, but it’s damn tasty.

I try to stay as seasonal as possible and mostly shop for vegetables at the farmers’ market. In New York City in March, this means pickings are rather slim. The most well-stocked farmers’ market is the one on Union Square, but even there we’re talking mostly different types of roots. I’ve pretty much done beets, carrots, parsnips and turnips to death at this point, so I figured I’d try a recipe based on celeriac.

I made the Celeriac Soup with Bouillabaisse Seasonings out of Cranks’ Bible and served with rouille as suggested.

The rouille recipe in the book was based on egg yolks, I figured I’d take a stab at egg-less rouille. Basically I used the same recipe but substituted silken tofu for eggs. I used 4 cloves of garlic, but think next time I will cut down on the amount of garlic, my rouille was very garlicky, probably because the tofu isn’t as fatty as egg yolk and thus doesn’t cut the garlic as much. It was still tasty though. Also, my rouille didn’t float on top of the soup as well as the rouille pictured in the cookbook. Next time I will try adding some tehina. I think that might help make it creamier and more bouyant, but then again, the flavor might be a bit off. A third option that I will try in the future is blending some white bread into it, I noticed many traditional rouille recipes involve bread.

As for the soup, it involved 1 carrot and about 1 kg celeriac, leeks, saffron, orange peel, lots of garlic, plenty of wine and a bunch of herbs. Next time I will add a little more carrot and maybe a potato and use a little less celeriac. It had sort of a bitter celeriac undertone that was ok, but not my favorite.

Here’s the recipe for vegan rouille:

Egg-less Rouille

1 packet of silken tofu (not the vacuum packed kind)

1 tsp paprika

a few dashes tabasco

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp tomato purée

2 cloves of garlic

2 tbsp finely chopped red bell pepper

juice of half a lemon

a few tbsp extra virgin olive oil

salt

Chop the pepper and garlic. Throw all ingredients in the blender. Blend. Add a trickle of oil while blending.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day and I was feeling happy and healthy for the first time in almost two weeks after a nasty run in with the flu. Mondays are normally my work at home day where I get freelance work and school stuff out of the way, but in celebration of my health and the weather I decided to play hooky a little. After a failed attempt at some reporting in the city I gave up and went to Sahadi’s instead.

For those who don’t know, Sahadi’s is a gourmet food store on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn that specializes in Lebanese and other Middle Eastern foods. They have a bulk section that is out of this world. Every kind of spice, nut, grain, and bean you can imagine. Pickles and olives of every description, dried bananas, strawberries… you name it, Sahadi’s has it. And, the prices are noticeably lower than most other stores, which is surprising considering the quality and range of their merchandise.

Long story short, it is my idea of a good time and I try to make it there about once a month or so to stock up on high quality staples and specialty items I can’t find elsewhere.

Yesterday I bought frozen large fava beans, mini dried fava beans to make fool mudamma, kasha at a fraction of the price of Arrowhead Mills, Italian tomato paste in a tube (can’t stand the canned stuff) vinegars, oils and more. All for little more than $10. I hope to chronicle my kitchen exploits with these items on this blog in the near future.

Then I went home and made egg-less vegan rouille to go with a soup I am planning to make tomorrow. More on that in next post.

My favorite health food store, Northside Health Food on Bedford Avenue is closing. The owner told me he’d be selling off the inventory at reduced prices so I went there today to stock up on some basics. It was sad. They’ve been there forever. Or at least for longer than I’ve been around these parts, which is almost 10 years by now.

The reason this makes me sad, apart from the fact that the owners are friendly and that they have a nice assortment of grains, beans and nuts in bulk, is that they were selling health food in the neighborhood before anyone else was. Now they’ve been pushed out of business by all the new (heavily marked up) stores that have moved in selling ready-made foods and expensive soy products and yuppified organics.

I wish I wasn’t so alone in appreciating good old simple ingredients in bulk. I realize I’m fighting a losing battle here, but why don’t people just eat actual food as opposed to the overpriced over-processed stuff that passes for health food in some quarters? I find it particularly ironic that people thing they are being healthy when they eat stuff like soy ice cream or Tofurky sandwich meats. Not that I’ve never had that stuff, just saying. Oh well. Can’t stand in the way of capitalism. Sigh. I suppose I will be making more frequent trips to Sahadi’s from now on.

I just wanted to pour some textual beer on the ground for a store that has been part of my Brooklyn since I moved here. It will turn into a pet supply store, so I guess that’s where I will be buying my kitty litter in the future.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with steel cut oats in the mornings. I thought I’d find it too sticky and heavy, but I don’t. It’s delicious. I’ve been adding different fruits and spices to it. Mostly apples. Today I made apple raisin oats with cinnamon and fresh grated ginger to exorcise the debilitating flu I’ve come down with.

Other combos have included pineapple, ginger, orange zest and grated carrot (inspired by Veganomicon’s Sunshine Muffins); apple and fresh pomegranate (this was especially tasty); and plain old banana apple.

I learned to cook from my mom as a kid, and by making dinner for my family starting when I was about 12 or so. I never used recipes. Then one day I realized that I was stuck in a rut, making the same foods over and over again, with the exact same spices. I decided to buy myself a few cookbooks and to teach myself new techniques and flavor combinations by systematically cooking my way through them. (Also, I was given a couple of great cookbooks by my mother and sister last year.) While I have other cookbooks, these are the ones that are on particularly heavy rotation right now. That might change, but I am trying to exercise restraint and not buy any new ones until I have cooked most of the recipes in these.

Veganomicon, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Romero.

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, by Gil Marks.

Both of these are large encyclopedic cookbooks that are great for the kind of large batches of simple everyday foods I mostly eat when alone. I’m a soup fiend and they both have a large number of great soup recipes. (I’m almost at my goal of having cooked every soup in Olive Trees and Honey.

The Cranks Bible, by Nadine Abensur was my first cookbook. Cranks is a famous vegetarian restaurant in London where Abensur, who is a French-Moroccan Jew was food director for many years. The recipes are sort of a veggie fusion with a South-Mediterranean tilt. It’s peerless for spectacular dishes to impress guests and show them how great vegetarian cooking can be, but some are a bit too rich and involved for my daily needs. It is, however, my first love among cookbooks and a major influence on the way I cook.

I tend to be too busy to cook during the weeks. Instead I try to make a batch of soup on the weekend that I freeze into portions for future use as workday lunches. I’m about 10 months into doing this systematically so at this point I have a good variety of soups in my freezer. Some might say way too much soup for my tiny freezer to handle.

Lately I’ve had to slow down a little and not make soup for a week or two since I was running out of space. Instead I lived off UFOs (unidentifiable frozen objects) from when the grass was greener and the produce at the farmers’ market more exciting.

Unthawing a vegetable stew with summer squash, aubergines and fresh herbs was like having my own little piece of August right here in my dismal February kitchen (but without the mosquitoes and the oppressive heat).

Today the time had finally come to make soup again. I chose the Turkish Mixed Legume and Bulgur Soup from Olive Trees and Honey. I’d had my eye on this one for a while. Since it doesn’t have any fresh veggies in it, it didn’t make sense to make during the harvest season. I figured now was the perfect time since all there is at the farmers market is potatoes and roots.

I had lots of little amounts of stuff that I needed to get rid of, like 3/4 cup of bulgur. This recipe which mixes black eyed peas, chick peas, lentils and bulgur was perfect for that. I used homemade vegetable broth so that there would be at least some nutrients in there. Other than that the only freshness in here was chopped parsley and mint, which cut it suprisingly well, but I think next time I might add a few veggies to the mix. I think carrots and celery might work particularly well.

I’m always looking for new ways to cook lentils. Last week I made the Tamarind Lentils from Veganomicon. My expectations weren’t particularly high, but this recipe is something else. I actually subbed pomegranate molasses for tamarind paste since I had one and not the other. I might add that I also made my own garam masala according to Wikipedia’s (heh, I know, I know) directions. (Nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom.) Not sure if it tasted exactly the way the Veganomicon authors intended, but the results were amazing. Sweet, tangy, thick, spicy and delicious.

I ate the lentils with odds and ends in my fridge that needed to be used up. This produced a very old-school health food restaurant looking plate. But I promise much more flavorful and very tasty.

Clockwise from top:

Moroccan/ Israeli raw carrot salad, from Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World.

Mexican Millet, from Veganomicon.

Tamarind Lentils, also from Veganomicon.

And finally, steamed kale.