More to come on that later. In the meantime, I have for you today a lovely medley of lunch time culinary delights. See, my girlfriend, being vegetarian, requires a much different diet than myself. Her nutritional needs are different, and getting those nailed down takes some doing, especially when you're on the road.
Today, I put together two of these darling little recipes, courtesy of "www.cooks.com" and "associated content's" lifestyle page, both modified by "yours truly." Heh. Merrily, Krampus. Merrily.
So, being that time of the time, I was putting together some Hummus. To start with, I wanted to put a little homemade tahini sauce together to make my hummus extra yummy. Unfortunately, I don't have an actual teaspoon, table spoon, or measuring cup. You wouldn't believe what a bugger of a time I've had finding such not in South Korea. I had a measuring cup, but it was made of weak glass, which shattered during an operation one night. Most sad.
So I used a shot glass. Lots of sturdy booze bessesls kicking around Korea, that's for sure.
Taking the basic homemade Tahini recipe,
1 T soybean oil
2 T water
1 T lime or lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T oregano, chopped
1 T sesame seeds
I replaced T with
And carried on with the operation. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out, and I was forced to add two more shots of sesame seeds to the recipe to produce the thickness of Tahini I like.
Also, to even things out, I used three giant cloves of fresh garlic. Yup.
I like a thick tahini sauce. Kind of like a sesame seed peanut butter, only with a whack of zing on your tongue.
Completing this crucial stage, and winning a dubious yet curious look of approval from my Girlfriend, I continued, and produced this recipe:
1 lb. can garbanzo beans (chick peas)
Sm. clove garlic, mashed with
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tbsp. sesame tahini (three Korean standard sized soup spoonfuls in my case)
2 lemons, juice only,
substituting a normal can of chick peas for the pound can, a large clove for the small, a dash of salt instead of a bloody tsp of it, and lemon juice to flavour, which wasn't really necessary after the tahini was added, which was pretty lemony itself.
The end Product was mmmmmmed approvingly by the girlfriend, though it could used a little more lemon. I went back to my laboratory and doubled down on the hummus again, going light on the tahini, (two spoonfuls) and heavy on the blending.
The end result nailed it.
Good combo. I'm eager to try modifying this further with two things:
1. Roasted Eggplant. A Moroccan buffet I go to adds that to their hummus, and it's awesome. Gives it a smoky flavour. It's quite nice.
2. Fruit. but I'm not sure which fruit yet.
This made a great lunch, served with some toasted bread and cut broccoli as dippables and a vegetarian soup to round everything out. Filling, with lots of hummus and tahini leftover.
Adding raw vegetables to my diet has been one of the little things I've been working on for the last little while, which I hope to illuminate in a later post.
Rock on, and nail it down.
