Spicy Slow-Roasted Tomato Hummus & Pita Chips

It's been a while since I posted an actual recipe, so here goes:
Sometime in 2010, I made an incredibly delicious spicy tomato hummus that looked like vomit but tasted like heaven (coining the term heavom).  Since then, I've been on a quest to recreate the recipe since I didn't write the original down.  Finally, two years later, I think I've approximated it (more or less).  I give you: Spicy Slow-Roasted Tomato Hummus with Homemade Pita Chips!

STEP 1: SLOW-ROASTED TOMATOES

Slow-roasted tomatoes are really very easy - it's kind of the same process as making raisins out of grapes - you're just slowly drying the tomatoes out.  They range from hot and flavorful to sun-dried, depending on how long you leave them in the oven for.  Basically, you just put those suckers on a baking pan, coat them in olive oil, salt, and pepper (you can add other spices or garlic if you want to get fancy).  Then, you leave the tomatoes in the oven for a very long time (2-3 hours) at a very low temperature (around 200-250 degrees Fahrenheit).  Just check on them after the two hour mark and take them out when they're at the desired chewiness.  I'll usually use 1 package of dumpstered cherry tomatoes for this, but any type will suffice.  You can also use slow-roasted tomatoes in breakfast dishes (divine with a poached egg), bruscettas, tomato sauce, etc.  Add some garlic in the pan to roast for fun. 

STEP 2: SLOW-ROASTED TOMATO HUMMUS

 Using the slow-roasted tomatoes, the next step can either be very hard or very easy, depending on whether or not you have a food processor.  If you do, you're in luck - you get the easy road.  Otherwise, get ready - you're in for a lot of cutting, mashing, and pain.

Ingredients:
- 1 can chickpeas
- Your slow-roasted tomatoes
- Juice from 1/2 an orange (or OJ from the carton in a pinch) - this is crucial as it brightens the flavor of the hummus considerably
- Juice from 1/2 a lemon or lime
- 2 tbsp tahini (the first time I did this, I made my own tahini, which involves roasting sesame seeds and painstakingly hand-crushing them while adding olive oil.  I don't recommend making your own tahini unless you're a sadist)
- 2-5 tbsp olive oil
-1-2 cloves roasted garlic (optional)
- 1-3 cloves fresh, peeled garlic
- 1-3 tsp cayenne pepper (to taste)
- 1 tsp cumin (to taste)
- salt & pepper to taste
- If you're not using tomatoes, sometimes a tsp or two of water will be needed.

Throw it all in the food processor.  Otherwise, have fun mashing and mixing the ingredients.  If you choose this route, there's a high likelihood that you will be crying by the end of the process.

Makes roughly 6-8oz. 

STEP 3: HOMEMADE PITA CHIPS

Homemade pita chips are perfect for when your pita bread is starting to go slightly stale, or if you got way too much from the dumpster.  You can use pita chips like any regular salty snack by themselves, or you can use them for dipping in hummus, salsa, or cream cheese based dips.  It's really simple (I wonder why people buy pita chips at all): cut your pita into 8ths, then use a brush to brush olive oil on each side of each chip, laying your chips on a tin foil-covered baking sheet when you're finished.  Add salt, pepper, and whatever else (garlic powder, basil, oregano) to taste.  Next, put your pita wedges in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10-20 minutes, depending on your oven.  Check on them every so often to make sure they aren't burning, and flip them about half way through.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Olive oil, spices, tahini

Ratatouille

One of my favorite things to do with squash and zucchini is make ratatouille with it. Ratatouille is traditionally a rustic French dish that packs a lot of flavor and is considered an art to execute perfectly. The dish has become a hallmark of lauded French chefs, and can make or break a restaurant (they even made a movie about it).

My Mom made a version of it when I was growing up that was far from haute cuisine - It normally consisted of cooked veggies with some kind of Ragu sauce thrown over it. The fact that my Mom called it "ratatouille" probably would've made Julia Child turn over in her grave, but it still got me to eat greens I otherwise would've skipped.

So, there's definitely a ratatouille spectrum out there that you can get creative with. Ratatouille can take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on how fancy you want to get with it. I'm going to give you a pretty basic (i.e. non-traditional) version of it to try. If you like that, I'd suggest googling more extreme recipes.

Now, one major difference between the ratatouille that I make and a traditional one: 99% of traditional ratatouille recipes include eggplant. Mine doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I love eggplant, I just prefer to use eggplant as the main component of a dish instead of as a supporting character. A lot of traditional ratatouilles also use alcohol and take a long time to cook down. I don't always have time for that.

And so, on to the recipes. Both are fast, but taste a bit different since one uses a home made veloute-like sauce (with stock, butter, and flour) and the other uses previously canned tomato sauce. I'll give you the option to choose your own adventure in a second...

Ingredients:
- Squash
- Zucchini
- Onion
- 2 tbsp Butter or Olive oil
- Tomato (optional)
- Eggplant (optional)
- Lemon, juiced (optional)
- Flour (optional)
- Chicken or Vegetable stock (optional)
- Tomato sauce (optional)
- Salt & pepper & parsley to taste

Throw all your favorite chopped veggies into a pan with some butter (olive oil if you're vegan) on medium heat with some salt and pepper and cook until everything's soft.

Here's where the 2 possibilities diverge...choice one is a lemon veloute sauce (one of the five French mother sauces) that requires SLIGHTLY more work, and choice two is over in another 30 seconds...

1) Add about a half cup of stock (chicken works best in my opinion, but veggie works too), turn your heat to medium-high, and let it boil down just a little. Take a tablespoon of flour (maybe a teeny bit more than that) and sprinkle slowly into your sauce, stirring the whole time to thicken it up. When everything's sticking together pretty well, add the juice from 1/2 to a full lemon. Continue stirring, taste it, add some fresh parsley, and you're finished. (This option is the one pictured above, with a tomato in there, which adds to the sauce as well).

2) Open a jar/can/whatever of tomato sauce (bonus points if it's home made and home canned), pour just enough in the pan to cover your vegetables until the sauce heats up, taste it to see if it needs anymore salt or pepper and you're finished.

This can be a side dish or put over rice or noodles for a heartier meal.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Butter/olive oil, Salt/Pepper

Baba Ganoush

I ended up mixing several recipes together to make this, added with a friend's recommendation on how to prepare it without everything tasting weird. I also didn't have pita to make into pita chips so I ended up dipping celery and corn chips in it in the end.

BABA GANOUSH

Ingredients:

- 3 small-medium eggplants

- 4 cloves garlic

- 2-3 small lemons, juiced

- 1/4-1/2 cup tahini

- 1/2 cup olive oil

- Drizzle of honey

- Salt, pepper, parsley, cumin, & cayenne pepper to taste (about 1-3 tsp each depending on your love of flavor)

A good description of how to grill and drain an eggplant is here (also a great explanation as to WHY you need to drain an eggplant). If it's winter (like it is now) and you don't want to go outside to grill, just roast them by putting the eggplants on a rack with a pan underneath to catch the juices. Set the oven to 400-450 degrees Fahrenheit and leave them in there for 30 minutes, then drain them.

Squeeze out all the pulp according to the video above. Drain the eggplant for 30 min. and remove as many of the seeds as possible without sacrificing the pulp.

Throw all the ingredients into a food processor and mix it up! If it's not viscous enough, add a little more tahini to the mixture. Keep tasting to make sure you get the right balance of spices.

Dip veggies, pita, or anything your imagination can come up with into your yummy baba ganoush!

Items not dumpstered: Olive oil, garlic, tahini, parsley (from window garden), spices, honey

Applesauce & Apple Butter

This is going to be a lazy post (I apologize now). I dumpster a lot of apples in the late fall, and this year I also went apple picking at a local farm, so I've had a lot of use for apple preserving tactics. My favorites? Applesauce and apple butter. Applesauce is perfect for Thanksgiving or to pair with Hanukkah potato latkes. Or, y'know, applesauce is a pretty great snack by itself too.

The excellent part is this: when you get tired of your canned applesauce, you can make apple butter out of it! I love giving jars of apple butter to family during the holidays. It's thoughtful, homemade, and lasts about 1 year if you use proper canning technique. After you open the jar, it'll keep in the fridge for at least another 2-8 months, depending on how much sugar you put in it (since sugar is a preservative).

Here's my favorite recipe for making applesauce at home. You can tweak their recipe by adding lemon juice (also works as a preservative), keeping the rinds in there as you cook the apples down and removing them before you mash everything up:

http://www.pickyourown.org/applesaucewomill.htm



Now, apple butter is way easier than you'd think. It's literally just cooking applesauce down at a very low temperature for a very long time until there's very little moisture left in it. You can add extra spices and more sugar during this process too, depending on how tart or sweet your applesauce was to begin with. There's two methods to achieve apple butter: 1) cook it on the stove at a low heat or 2) use a crock pot at very low heat.

The crock pot is a little safer, since you have to leave it on while you're presumably at work or otherwise living your life. Here's good instructions on how to make apple butter. You can futz with the proportions to make more or less, depending on how much applesauce you start out with:

http://www.pickyourown.org/applebutter.htm


Something I like to do when I'm giving tiny jars of apple butter to people is spice them up a little. For pretty much all home canning, you're using jars with 2 pieces to the lid - a ring and a flat part. If you have some fabric scraps (a cool old t-shirt works fine), you can put the piece of fabric in between the flat part of the lid and the ring, like this:


Now you don't need wrapping paper!

Other apple ideas are apple juice (which comes out of making a lot of applesauce) or apple cider.

Ingredients not donated or dumpstered: spices

Sweet Potato Fries with Spicy Garlic Aoli

I made this recipe to bring to Thanksgiving at my Dad's last year. My nieces and nephews (all under the age of 12 and averse to veggies) loved these, and the aoli elevated the dish so that all the adults were impressed with my "culinary expertise." My family asked me to make these again this year, so I figured I'd share the recipe. At home, I'll usually pair these with a black bean burger or my quinoa burgers (and put the aoli on top of the burgers too)!

SWEET POTATO FRIES WITH SPICY GARLIC AOLI

Ingredients:

Fries:
- 1 large sweet potato, peeled (don't have to peel them, but it makes them more crispy if you do. Also, a good rule of thumb is to ration about 1 sweet potato per person if you're cooking for more than just yourself or a friend).
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Salt, pepper, paprika, and cinnamon to taste

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
While you wait for it to heat up, peel and cut your sweet potato into 1/2" thick sticks. Try to keep really pointy ends from being there, as they burn easily.
In a ziploc bag, put in your olive oil and spices.
Throw your sweet potatoes in and give the bag a good shake so that everything covers the sweet potato (this step is especially fun if you're making this with a kid as your helper. Put on some music and shake around!).
Put your potatoes spread evenly on a baking sheet with tin foil over it.
Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, turning your fries over in the middle (at 10 or 15 minute mark - different ovens will take different times to make the fries crispy). When your fries begin to brown, it's time to take them out.
Dry your fries on a paper towel, add some extra salt and pepper, and serve!

You can make oven fries with regular potatoes too. Just bring down the cooking time to like 10-20 minutes because regular potatoes will burn more easily.

Aoli (don't use this if you're vegan unless you have vegan mayonnaise):
- 1/3 cup Mayonnaise (bonus points if it's homemade)
- 1-2 tbsp sriracha sauce
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- 1 tsp Lemon or lime juice (I used lemon)
- pepper & salt to taste (I used about 1 tsp pepper and 1-2 tsp salt)
- 1-3 tbsp cayenne pepper (depending on how spicy you like it)
- 1/2 tsp cumin

So, the funny thing about aoli is: it's just a fancy word for mayonnaise. You put stuff in it to make it taste better, but it's usually just mayonnaise (yeah - all those fancy restaurants that have "aoli" somewhere on the menu? It's because they're too chicken to just call it what it is so you're actually willing to pay more money and think it's healthy or high-class or something).

To make it, you just mix all the ingredients together until it tastes good. Up the quantities of everything if you want more aoli to dip into or if you're putting it on top of a burger.

Items not donated or dumpstered: olive oil, garlic, spices, sriracha sauce

Curried Sweet Potatoes

My good friend Kendall and I made this dish for a birthday pot-luck a few months back which mostly had vegetarians and vegans in attendance (we also made some vegan jalapeno corn bread with a spicy mango-ginger chutney, which I'll hopefully post the recipe for soon). Unfortunately, Kendall and I don't get to see each other as often as we'd like to since we live kind of far away from each other and are both incredibly busy folks. Making this dish doesn't require a lot of prep time, and you have to wait around 40 minutes for these to finish in the oven. This leaves ample time to catch up and commune with your friends, which is exactly what Kendall and I did before heading to the party. Our dishes were gone minutes after we placed them on the table, and folks lamented that they couldn't come back for seconds. As the demi-god Charlie Sheen would say: winning.

I re-made this dish after dumpstering sweet potatoes the other day, and it was just as good (and easy) as the first time. This time, I ended up hanging out with my housemate (who was about to move to NY) while I waited for the sweet potatoes to cook. I got a little engrossed in the conversation, so the potatoes got left in the oven a bit too long, which is why they look a little TOO crispy in the photo above. In the end, they still tasted yummy and I got to have a great time talking to my roommate (and friend) before he left.

CURRIED SWEET POTATOES

Ingredients:
- Sweet potatoes
- Around 1/2 cup vegetable or olive oil (I'm pretty sure we used olive oil both times)
- Juice from 1/2-1 lemon
- Yellow curry powder (a LOT of it)
- A butt-ton of rosemary
- A healthy dose of nutmeg
- An equally healthy dose of cinnamon
- Salt & pepper to taste (I put on a lot)

Wash and cut your sweet potatoes into cubes - maybe around 1"x1". Leave the skins on for extra nutrients.
Throw everything else on your sweet potatoes and toss so the potatoes are covered.
Put them on a baking sheet covered in tin foil.
Bake in an oven at 350-400 (the higher the temperature, the crispier the outside of the sweet potatoes will get).
Take them out and turn them over a bit around half way through.
40 minutes later, and you're done. You can tell they're done if a fork goes into them easily.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Honey, spices (rosemary was from the garden)

Two roasted beet salads

BEETS! In an old Nickelodeon show 'Doug,' Quail Man had a line that beets were "nature's candy." I couldn't agree more. Doug's favorite band was also incidentally named The Beets. Beets are uber-nutritious and delicious (providing vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C, and a compound that helps detoxify the liver. Add the beet greens and you also get a butt-ton of iron)!

Beets can be used in numerous ways, from roasted as a side to a fresh ingredient for juices and smoothies to a hearty addition to a salad. You can also use the bitter greens and cook them in the same way you'd cook spinach or swiss chard. Since it's still summer, I decided to give you guys beet salad two ways. Enjoy!

ROASTED BEET & GOAT CHEESE SALAD

Ingredients:
- 1 small beet, roasted or boiled then diced (I like roasting them better because it keeps a lot of the flavor intact, whereas so much color and juice leaks out into the water if you boil it. That said, boiling is a tad bit faster)
- 2 cups greens (I used a baby spinach/baby arugula mix)
- 1/8 cup shaved red onion (white's okay, though)
- 1.5 tbsp goat cheese, crumbled (optional for vegans, but otherwise I think it offsets the aggressiveness of the raw onion really nicely, so don't skimp)
- 2 tsp olive oil
- salt to taste
- Sprinkle with crushed pistachios (optional)

Put it all together. Toss. DONE.

MOROCCAN BEET SALAD

- 1 large beet, roasted and diced
- Juice from 1/2 a lemon
- Parsley
- Salt to taste

Put it all together. Toss. DONE.

And remember - if your urine or poo looks like there is blood in it a day or so after eating a lot of beets, it's probably because you ate a lot of beets, not because you have a kidney infection. Pink pee is hilarious. When talking about this to my friend Emily, we decided that all women pee magenta-colored pee all the time in the minds of men...just like we also burp glitter and fart rainbows.

Items not donated or dumpstered: salt, goat cheese, parsley (from garden)

Vegan Quinoa Hippie Burgers

It's not really a secret that I'm a little bit of a hippie dirtbag deep down inside. I was vegetarian for 8 years, 2 of which I was vegan for. Although I now eat meat again, I still have a soft spot for the old classics of my vegan days.

Enter the vegan burger.

There's a lot of different ways to make vegan burgers. Most of the time, changing up the base ingredient is what makes each one special - people use things with lots of protein like black beans, lentils, pinto beans, kidney beans, or quinoa (a grain that is a perfect protein). I like using quinoa the most, since I'll make up a batch as a side dish for dinner and then have leftovers that I want to transform into something else...

VEGAN QUINOA HIPPIE BURGERS

Ingredients:
- 2.5 cups cooked quinoa (I cooked mine with freshly chopped rosemary to give it a little extra flavor)
- 1 cup roasted red pepper hummus (you can also substitute cooked chickpeas and a little water, or any other flavor of hummus, but it's not as tasty) (p.s. EXTRA BONUS PROTEIN!)
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2-3 tbsp soy sauce
- 2-3 tbsp flax seed meal (harder to dumpster, but I lucked out with a 3 lb. bag one time, so I'm set for life)
- 2 cloves garlic
- Crap-ton of fresh basil (to taste)
- 1 tbsp fresh thyme
- 1 tbsp lemon juice (this brightens up the flavors of the spices and hummus)
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp paprika
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 4-5 tbsp wheat flour

Mix everything up in a bowl. Taste it to see if the spices balance in the way you'd like.
Make into big meaty patties.
At this stage, you can freeze the patties for use later by sticking wax paper between them and putting them in an air-tight container - they'll last up to about 3 months.
Fry on high heat in the olive oil so they don't fall apart and get super-crispy (the crispy texture is crucial or else the hummus can make the texture a little weird and the patties will fall apart).
Serve!

Wasn't that easy?

I'm was a total ex-vegan and put goat cheese and spring greens on mine, but you can add anything from avocado to homemade scented aolis (again, bad vegan) to tomatoes. I don't have any bread in my house either right now, so you'll have to use your imagination as to how these would look freaking amazing with burger fixin's on a bun (although, if you're gluten-free, never mind).


These are really great (and easy) to make for BBQs when you have friends who don't eat meat. I can tell you that being on the receiving end of a BBQ that has no substantial food options for you is a bummer ("What?! Just corn on the cob and fruit salad again? Awesome!").

A lot of folks assume that being vegan is really tough, but as long as you have an arsenal of high-protein, nutritionally balanced food, it's actually pretty doable and delicious.

Items not donated or dumpstered: Quinoa (from the Beet Food Co-op), garlic, rosemary (from garden), thyme (from garden), basil (from garden), cumin, paprika, salt & pepper

Spinach-Basil-Cashew Pesto

Homemade pesto is a great way to make almost-wilted, almost-sad spinach (or basil) much happier and live longer. It's the route to take when your spinach is starting to wilt and isn't that appetizing in a salad anymore, but still usable for cooking. Pine nuts are traditional fare for pesto sauce, but I dumpster cashews more often (and they still taste great). You can also add parmesan cheese for protein.

SPINACH-BASIL-CASHEW PESTO
(vegan or vegetarian, depending on parmesan usage)

Ingredients:
- 1 bunch or bag of spinach
- 3 tbsp fresh garlic
- 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1 cup raw, whole cashews
- 1/4-1/2 cup nutritional yeast (optional)
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 bunch basil
- Salt & pepper to taste
- Parmesan cheese (optional)

Using a food processor, finely chop cashews & olive oil.
Add garlic and process again.
Add spinach, basil, & lemon juice (and nutritional yeast and parmesan cheese verrryyy slowly).
Add salt & pepper to taste.
Chill and serve.
In a tupperware, this pesto will last at least a month (without parmesan), oftentimes more.

So, what can you use pesto for?

Pesto tastes great with chicken, salmon, shrimp, tomatoes (bruschetta!), grilled cheese, eggs, and pasta. It's also great to use as a twist on pizza sauce.

Here's how I used my batch of pesto:

CHIK PATTY & PASTA WITH PESTO PARMESEAN CREAM SAUCE
(absolutely not vegan, but very much vegetarian)

Ingredients:
- 1 chik patty (highly recommended)/chicken breast/light protein thing meat whatever
- 2-3 cups pesto
- 1-2 cups grated Parmesan cheese (if it's not in the pesto already)
- 1-2 cups heavy whipping cream
- A butt-ton of nutmeg
- Salt & pepper to taste
- 1 sprig fresh basil
- A few cups of whatever pasta you have on hand (I used farfalle)

Throw your pesto in a pan at medium-low heat.
As the oil in the pesto starts to melt a bit, stir in cream slowly, mixing constantly with a wooden spoon.
Sprinkle in Parmesan, constantly stirring (this is important, or else burning is imminent).
Everything should start to melt together - don't let the sauce bubble much or the milk will scald.
Sprinkle in a liberal amount of nutmeg (super awesome tip: nutmeg makes all cream sauces taste better. The French know what's up).
Keep adding milk and cheese at medium heat until everything tastes balanced and yummy and the sauce reduces a bit (about 15-20 min).
(Adding the cream looks pretty. Who says food isn't aesthetic?)

Simultaneously cook up your pasta and chik patty/preferred protein.

Mix it all up, shred some fresh basil on top, and enjoy! This is a super-easy recipe that looks impressive.
A word of advice: Microwaving pesto is a bad idea. It separates the oil from everything else and makes your dish all oily and kinda gross. It still tastes good, but the texture is a little weird.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Olive oil, garlic, spices, basil (from window garden), nutritional yeast

Cranberry Mint Lemonade & Basil Lemonade

One night, I got a million lemons from a dumpster session:

And, as the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I don't like regular lemonade a whole lot (in fact, I'm not even that big a fan of juice in general). However, adding herbal infusions or tea make it much yummier and more exciting.

I know it's the middle of winter, but this refreshing drink reminds me of summer (even though it's cold). It's a good use for lemons that are starting to get a bit of white mold on the rind. If they are soft on the inside, then don't use them. If there's green mold, also avoid using them. Lemons typically last over a month if left in the fridge due to their acidity, so don't let the white mold on the rind put you off. Also, lemons aren't great to compost (especially if you vermicompost because the worms don't like the acid), so really try to use them before they spoil.

CRANBERRY MINT LEMONADE

Ingredients:
2-3 cups cranberries
Juice from 14 small lemons (about 3 cups of juice) (see lemon's scale below)
1 orange, quartered
6 (or more) cups water
2 pinches salt
3/4 cup sugar (or less if you prefer more sour lemonade)
2 sprigs of fresh mint
1 lime to garnish (optional)

Juice 13 small lemons. The scale of the lemons I get most often is this:
Juicing lemons by hand is a LOT of work - it may take a few sessions over several days.

Next, put cranberries & orange slices in a pot with 3 cups of water at medium-high until the water boils and all the cranberries pop (about 10 min).

Strain mixture and return juice to pot - put aside the pulp to eat or use for a sauce (check out cranberry sauce recipes online - most first steps involve doing what you just did)!
Add 1/2 cup sugar. Boil for 2 min.
Add lemon juice and remainder of sugar & water.
Add 1 sprig of mint.
Move to a container and let cool. Leave the mint sprig in the mixture for a few days when storing the juice to release more mint flavor, then remove it.

Pour into glasses (Mason jars are my favorite) with crushed ice. Add a fresh sprig of mint and a slice of lemon or lime to garnish.

Also, a variant:

BASIL-INFUSED LEMONADE

Ingredients:
3 cups of fresh lemon juice
6 cups (or more) of water
3/4 cup sugar
6 sprigs basil

Mix lemon juice, water, and sugar. Add 5 sprigs of basil (including stems). Cool in the fridge for at least a day before removing and composting basil. Serve with 1 sprig of basil for garnish and crushed ice.

For a more intense version of these, try adding a light soda (like ginger ale or sprite) or alcohol (I imagine vodka would be best). I don't drink anymore, so try it out and let me know how it is!

Perfect for a summer garden party.

Makes about 1200 ml.

Items not dumpstered or donated: Mint & basil (from my window garden)