Two Nights Worth..  

I guess I blew off posting last night's dinner, so there's a two for the price of one policy tonight.

Last night: Cous Cous and Bean Salad
Ingredients: Basmati rice, Spinach, Garbanzo beans, Brussels sprouts, Green Pepper; plus garlic, pine nuts, salt, yogurt cheese and hummus. Oh, and pita chips.

Procedure: A wok plus pot affair. In the wok, the oil, garlic, pine nuts, and garbanzos were left to really fry up, caramelize a bit, and make the beans crispy. After a time there was a bit of basil and some spinach leaves along with chopped green peppers added. Both the cous cous and the Brussels sprouts were cooked in the pot, one after the other. For service, I had a pile of spinach leaves and a pile of cous cous, and sort of spread the beans and peppers about, tossed in a handful of cherry tomatoes, and a few pita chips. I used the rest of the cous cous to mix with hummus and yogurt cheese, and scooped that up with the chips. Leslie did it differently, but other than mixing the hummus with the spinach I'm not sure what it was. Here's my plate:


Tonight was hugely different from last night..unless you count using many of the same ingredients...

What you need:
Globe artichokes, Brussels sprouts, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, Basmati rice, spinach, sun dried tomatoes.

What we did:
Three heating devices tonight. While the rice simmered in a small pot, two artichokes boiled in a large one. In the wok, olive oil, chopped garlic, pine nuts, and pumpkin seeds got comfortable with some salt, dried herbs, and cracked pepper.

During the long prep time for the artichokes, the wok took on some boiled Brussels sprouts (using the artichoke water to save time and energy) and a large handful of spinach leaves.

Picture of the plate:


Rice on the bottom, with vegetable and nuts along with some fresh spinach leaves, topped with sun dried tomatoes, and served with a handful of pita chips (Simply Naked, with Sea Salt). Hummus on the side.

For a nice digestif afterwards, we ate the artichoke leaves dipped in olive oil with significant amounts of garlic powder, sea salt, "all purpose seasoning", and pepper. They tasted strangely of beef jerky, as Leslie and I separately noted (I called it a 'peppered beefstick', perhaps to technical a term for a long-time vegetarian). Quite a nice delicacy to enjoy after the meal, which was also quite fabulous.