What's Cooking Today??

Spinach frittata and salad.

 

Found an apple chutney at the back of the cupboard from 2014. Tasted fantastic with some nice sharp cheddar.

Having some haddock for dinner.

 

I am about to make some rice with copious amounts of vegetables mixed in. And some chicken will be air-fried to accompany it.

 

I had my first go at making falafel from scratch today. It worked out pretty well. Except I'm not sure it technically qualifies as falafel. I discovered yesterday that the bag of dried chickpeas I thought I had didn't exist, so I soaked the cannellini beans instead. Also I had no gram flour or besan flour, so I used self raising to bind it. But apart from using the wrong bean type and the wrong flour, it turned out quite good. I made 13 pieces. 12 to share between the four of us in wraps tomorrow, and one to bust in half for the missus and I to sample it this evening.

 

Awww thanks for the link Shiney I watched this when it was originally aired, and so enjoyed watching it again this evening. Love Elton and all of his work.

 

Love chickpeas, they are one of the staple ingredients to our meals as they are very popular back in my hub's country.
Thankfully we make sure to have a good stock in. Yes you can use alternatives but they are not the same and can really change the flavour and texture of some beloved family recipes.

The 15 Best Chickpea Substitutes For Your Recipes

 

I did notice that the flavour was not quite there. Our sample one was slightly bland, despite me including onions, sea salt and herbs and spices in the mix. We could certainly taste the spices, but there was a distinct lack of the slightly nutty flavour.

As an aside, is it normal that chickpeas take ages to rehydrate? When I've used dried chickpeas in the past in other recipes I've noticed they seem to take much longer than other bean types to swell and soften.

 

We always leave them soaking overnight until about midday the following day. Usually 12- 16 hours.

 

We go to the big international store in the city.
That's a real shame you can't get them , although tinned is OK..well I think, my hubs won't use them in any traditional recipes from his homeland.

 

Gosh now you're asking, they have them in different grades I think we pay a couple of pound per kilo. I wouldn't go for cheap....you get what you pay for.

 

Made nine pizzas for lunch today. Quick 5 hour dough, two types of mozzarella, grana padano, basil, peppers, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni were the choices of toppings. Stayed relatively dry thankfully.

 

How lovely @Hanglow , it sounds like you have an outdoor pizza oven. I would've loved one but now it's just the 2 of us and we don't eat pizza that often it's not really worth it. I use to make pizzas myself when our brood were still living at home...each had their own favourite toppings. Some people knock pizzas but homemade fresh ones are far superior to shop bought and can actually be made to be fairly healthy too.

 

Yes I have a small wood fired oven, got it maybe seven years ago now. Since then a lot of smaller gas powered pizza ovens have been released which are good for pizza as unlike something like BBQ and smoking there is no benefit to using wood as pizza ovens burn at such a high temperature.

Anyway I consider it one of my favourite purchases, even if it can sometimes go a couple of months unused during winter. And yes homemade is a lot better, and these Neapolitan types are best eaten within about 30 seconds after it leaves the oven