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Chickpea Snacks

I wanted something nice and simple for this week's guff food. For those of you who don't live in a co-op, guff stands for General Unspecified Free Food. Each House buys communal ingredients from a organic farmer; everyone in the house is allowed to cook with them. In the summer we don't eat every meal together like in the school year. Instead, the house selects a "guff cook" who makes one food item per week for the House. The cook receives one work hour per week, so the recipes have to be pretty simple and easily multipliable. As the guff cook, I've made soup several times over the past couple of weeks and tonight had to be something different. So.... dunt dunt duhhh. 

Chickpea Snacks! 

You'll know when they're done because they'll have turned a nice brown-orange colour and gotten all crunchy.

You'll Need

• 2 cups of dry chickpeas 
• Some H2O
• Salt
• Garlic Salt 
• Cayenne Pepper 
• Canola Oil 

You Should: 

1. Soak the dried chickpeas overnight in water 
2. Dry them (duh)
3. Coat them in oil and spice them to your liking
4. Bake them at 450 degrees for 30 minutes until they're roasted

makes four servings 

Pretty easy, eh? 

Indian Food

This post is dedicated to Neale, who made this awesome food. 

Japanese Night: Miso Soup and Maki Garden Rolls

For one of our Five Dollar Dinners, we made Miso Soup and Maki Rolls. Although there aren't any pictures of the miso soup (because soup is ugly) I took a few of our attempts to make sushi. It is ridiculously hard to make sushi. I was really terrible at it but Sunshine figured it out and made us a couple of sushi logs. 

Miso Soup


You'll Need:

• 4 cups water
• 1/3 cup miso 
• 3 chopped green onions
• 1 tbsp shredded nori seaweed
• 1/2 block firm tofu, cut into 1 inch cubes
• dash soy sauce 
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil 

Preparation:

1. Bring water to a slow simmer and add seaweed. Allow to simmer at least 5-6 minutes. 
2. Whisk the miso in a cup of water before adding it to the soup. This is essential because miso is glunky and hard to mix in. Add a little bit of the miso water to the soup while whisking. Don't forget or you're soup will be gross. 
3. Reduce heat to very low and add the rest of the ingredients. 
4. Simmer the soup until the green onions are cooked but make sure you don't boil it. Miso shouldn't be boiled because it loses its flavour. 

A couple of things to remember: 

• Seaweed Preparation: The longer you simmer the seaweed, the less of a salty fishy flavor it will have. But be careful, if you simmer it too long it'll become bland. 
• Miso comes in little jars and can be found in the international aisle of Meijer. There are several different types of miso with varying flavours. The two most common are
•  Shiromiso (white miso) which is lighter
• Akamiso (red miso) which is stronger
 

Maki Rolls

The original recipe is from Vegetarian Times 

You’ll need:

Sushi Rice

• 1 1/2 cups short-grain sushi white rice
• 1 Tbs. booze. (see note)
• 2 1/2 Tbs. rice vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp. sugar
• 3/4 tsp. coarse salt

Filling

• 2/3 cup  vegetable broth
• 3 Tbs. soy sauce
• 1 Tbs. mirin
• 12 green beans, trimmed
• 1 small carrot, cut into matchsticks
• 10 shiitake mushroom caps
• 3 sheets nori seaweed
• 3 tsp. toasted sesame seeds
• 1 cup sprouts

You Should:

To make Sushi Rice:

1. Rinse rice under cold water.
2. Bring rice, 1 2/3 cups water, and booze to a boil in saucepan. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 10 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes off heat.
3. Whisk together vinegar, sugar, and salt in bowl.
4. Transfer rice to large bowl, and drizzle half of vinegar mixture over rice, while cutting through it with wooden spoon. Continue adding until all vinegar is absorbed. Cover with damp cloth, and cool.

To make Filling:

1. Bring broth, soy sauce, and mirin to a boil in skillet. Add green beans and carrot, cover, and simmer 6 minutes. 
2. Transfer to plate with slotted spoon. 
3. Add mushrooms to remaining liquid, and bring to a simmer. Cover, and simmer 4 minutes, turning once. 
4. Cool and cut the vegetables into thin strips. 

To Roll:

1. Place 1 nori sheet shiny-side down on sushi mat.
2. Spread one-third Sushi Rice over nori, leaving 1-inch border at top edge.
3. Sprinkle with 1 tsp. sesame seeds.
4. Arrange green beans, carrot, mushrooms, and sprouts in order below center line of rice.
5. Dampen top edge of nori with water; roll up from bottom.
6. Seal with top edge with water so it sticks
7. And repeat.
8. Each sushi log should be cut into 8 sushi slices

Some things to remember: 

•  You can use any type of wine or booze you want but traditionally it's made with sake which is rice wine. We just used some red wine that was lying around. 
• Mirin is really sugary sake so if you can't find any just 1 tbs booze and 1 tsp sugar for every 1 tbs mirin you need. We couldn't find any in Meijer but the organic co-op store had some (surprisingly)