"Chickpea of the sea" sandwiches and yam chips

I ran across an idea to make a chickpea salad sandwich instead of a tuna salad sandwich. The blog author called it "chickpea of the sea," heh.

On top of making the classic sandwich vegetarian-friendly, I also really like the idea of getting extra fiber and losing extra fat while still being rock-solid on the protein front. Hooray chickpeas! I adapted the recipe slightly, based on making it extra healthy and also making it with what we had in the fridge:

Pulse a can of chickpeas in the food processor for a few seconds, until it's very roughly chopped.

Add the following:
1/4 cup fat-free mayo
1.5 tbsp white vinegar
1.5 tbsp mustard
1 tsp celery seed
1-2 sliced green onions
a few cranks of freshly ground pepper
salt to taste

Then pulse for a few more seconds, or until everything's mixed and the texture is where you want it. I actually ended up adding a little water to loosen it up, but I'm not sure exactly how much.

Then we ate it on sandwiches with some spinach leaves. Michael liked it more than I did--I made a double recipe (since the original said it only made two sandwiches!), and he finished off all the leftovers. The double recipe ended up being enough for 8-10 sandwiches (sheesh), and it was still gone within three days. But the flavors were very [chicken/tuna/chickpea/egg]-salad-sandwich-y, with the mayo and celery seed and mustard, and I really liked that.

Overall rating: not mind-blowing, but still tasty and extra points for being so dang good for you. I'll give it a B.

We also made yam chips. Michael sliced up a whole, washed-but-unpeeled sweet potato on the mandoline, and we laid them out on baking sheets, sprayed them with vegetable oil spray, coated with salt, and baked them at ~400 until they were crispy. Future note to self: watch these carefully. We burned the tray on the bottom of the oven, and that was a bummer. But I thought they were really good, in spite of the minor hassle of laying out each individual yam slice on the baking sheets, and I'd make them again. We also made two variations--one with salt plus Cajun spice mix, and one with just salt. The Cajun was interesting but I preferred the plain salt ones; it let the yam flavor come through better.

Overall rating: Yum! I liked these more than Michael did. I'll give them...an A-? I don't know; this grading scale is super arbitrary, but I thought they were yummy and I'd make them again. So...there ya go.

Taste of OSU

Today we went to the "Taste of OSU" as a combined dinner/date. It's a huge multicultural event, where the 35+ ethnic student groups on campus set up informational booths, put on dance and music performances, and best of all, have delicious ethnic food booths. They had a system set up where you buy food tickets for a dollar each and then exchange the tickets at any booth for a taste (about 3-4 bites' worth) of whatever foods you were interested in.

We loved the variety! There were well over a hundred dishes there to try, so even though it was pretty crowded, we had a great time walking around the different countries' booths and whenever we saw something that looked good, we handed over a ticket and got a few scoops on our plate. It was also a great deal--for $10, we got to try ten foods we had never eaten before, and we were completely stuffed afterwards. Awesome date!

I brought my camera but I completely forgot to take pictures. Also, I didn't do a very good job of remembering the names of dishes, or even what country's booth we got most things from...this is going to make it challenging to recreate these dishes. Oh well. Our favorites were:

White asparagus soup (Germany)
fruit and nut and chocolate bar thing (Poland)
Vegetarian Muka Duka...or something...it was yellow, with wontons, rice, veggies, spices (some...Asian country :/ )
Malaysian brownie--European-style biscuits layered with a fudgey mixture of chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, butter, and nuts. I at least got the ingredients of this one (Malaysia)
Japanese vinegar rice wrapped in tofu and fried
Greek cream-filled cheese with pistachio and sweetened rose water
Indian....savory filled pastry with sweetish sauce

So tasty! And so wonderfully cheap! We're definitely going again next year.

Toasted Polenta with Quick Chili

Tonight's dinner was inspired by an "Instant Tamale Pie." The original recipe called for you to bake a little casserole with a layer of sliced polenta at the bottom and a mixture of beans, salsa, corn, and cheese on top. That sounded yummy, but I was hoping for a little more texture—I didn't want it to just be mushy all the way through.

So I deconstructed things a little. I cubed the polenta (instead of slicing it) and just toasted in a big skillet for about ten minutes, until the sides of the cubes were crispy and lightly browned. For a lot of foods, toasting or dry-frying (basically, frying without any oil at all) works about as well as frying does, but it keeps your foods light-tasting and healthy. Much better. Anyway, the little cubes crisped up nicely in a dry pan.

The quick chili aspect was really easy to make. I just took a can of chili beans (they already come with a little bit of sauce in the can), mashed it up lightly with a fork, and added half a cup of salsa, half a cup of frozen corn, and a teaspoon of cumin. Then just heat up the mixture in a saucepan on the stove (or in the microwave) while the polenta's toasting.

We assembled it with a layer of the crispy polenta at the bottom, then a few spoonfuls of the quick chili, then a sprinkling of grated cheese on top. It was actually very delicious. The polenta was brightly corn-flavored and nice and toasty, and the chili was surprisingly warm and flavorful, considering how few ingredients were in it. And a little bit of cheese took things over the top!

On top of being easy and tasty, it only cost around two dollars ($1 for the tube of polenta, which was cheap because someone who's bad at marketing labeled it as the much less appetizing "corn meal mush," $0.65 for the can of beans, and a few extra pennies for the corn, salsa, and cheese that we had in our pantry). High fives for making frugality awesome!

Red Grape Pizza

I have a weakness. I see recipes that look crazy and think, "Wow, why haven't I ever thought of that?" But guys: recipes and flavor combinations that look crazy...well, let's just say they usually taste crazy too.






















From Ezra Pound Cake.

I was intrigued when I saw this recipe for a grape pizza: you use a batch of pizza dough, divide it into 4 mini-pizzas, then brush each one with rosemary and olive oil, add some halved red grapes, drizzle with honey, and sprinkle with grated pecorino.

There are just...a lot of flavors going on! The grapes get really sweet and juicy as they cook, and the honey gets all caramely and bubbly with the cheese. The first couple bites of this, I was like, "Wow! What are all these...wow!" The combination of fruit and honey with the herby rosemary and the strong cheese was really good and new for the first few bites. But by the end, we were less "wow" and more "what...what is this bizarre mix of flavors? Whose idea was this?"

So, I wouldn't call it a swing and a miss. It wasn't horrible. It might be good as a two-bite appetizer, but the flavors were way too strong and crazy for a full meal. We also said that all the sweetness from the grapes and honey was probably just too much with the rosemary and the powerful cheese, and if we were to make something like this again, we'd probably swap out the grapes and honey for some nice browned onions.

Verdict: B+, then D (but with the possibility of a higher grade with some substitutions)

Our Dinners

We make so many fun dinners together--Michael and I both read a lot of cooking blogs, and we love to be adventurous. We were thinking about it, and the whole time we've been together, I think we've only had 3 repeat dinners: pasta with butternut and sage sauce, burritos, and shakshouka. Go figure. I like making things up as I go and tweaking recipes, and Michael likes finding esoteric recipes with unusual ingredients, and with our powers combined, we get a lot of variety in meals.

So to remember our triumphs and failures, we are (or...maybe I am :) ) going to start archiving the dinners we've made, so we can have a sort of online recipe book, and so we can remember what recipes worked and what didn't.