Here is a recipe I like a lot. Actually, it is an adaptation of recipes from two sources, the food site AllRecipes and one of my favorite Indian-inspired cookbooks, Yamuna’s Table by the late rockstar chef, Yamuna Devi. She literally was a rockstar. She was a backup singer with the Beatles, cooked for Indira Gandhi,  and authored the much acclaimed Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, a dog-eared copy of which I keep easily accessible on my cookbook shelf.

Why not consider this colorful dish for your New Year’s table?

Recipe: Hummus
5 unpeeled garlic cloves
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil
2 15-ounce cans garbanzo beans (drained and rinsed)
1/2 cup tahini
1/3 C. fresh lemon juice
1 t. ground cumin
1 t. salt
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 to 1 seeded fresh jalapeno chile
2 T. chopped cilantro
8-10 fresh mint leaves

Directions: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F and place 5 unpeeled garlic cloves on a sheet of foil. Drizzle garlic cloves with olive oil and fold foil to enclose the garlic cloves and oil. Bake packet for 15 minutes. Remove packet from oven and let the garlic cloves cool. Then squeeze garlic cloves out of peels.

In a food processor, combine roasted garlic cloves, drained and rinsed garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, cumin, and salt. Blend until smooth. Add olive oil, jalapeno chile, cilantro and mint leaves and continue to process until the jalapeno, cilantro and mint leaves are throughly blended into the chickpea mixture.

Chill for a few hours to let the flavors blend together then spread hummus onto a decorative bowl or dish, using a spatula to make deep swirling designs in the hummus. Let hummus sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before serving. Then, drizzle a bit more good olive oil onto the dish and garnish.

Serve garnished with a few whole garbanzo beans, lightly-toasted  pine nuts, chopped parsley, pitted kalamata olives, pomegranate arils,  a pinch of paprika and a decorative ribbon of lemon peel. Serve with toasted pita bread wedges , a platter of crudites or simple crackers.

I’m sitting here at my computer, just home from a holiday shopping excursion and nursing a coffee mocha I treated myself to on the way home. It’s cold here in Huntington Beach and my icy fingers are warmed by the zarf that encircles my pretty minimalist red cup from Starbucks.

Blue Cayenne is now just over two months old. I’m still learning the ropes of writing a food blog but I’m enjoying it every baby step of the way. Clearly, I’m a cuisinomane. (See the link at the end of this blog.)  I find that I am inspired to try more new recipes and I’m enjoying sharing some of my old recipes like the Egyptian Lentil soup that I posted yesterday. Do try that one. You won’t regret it, particularly if you save it for a day when you are hangry after fighting the holiday crowds.

I’m enjoying the foodspo, too. It is, I’m finding, a real artform to photograph food and difficult sometimes to convey both the beauty and the deliciousness of a particular dish. I don’t always get it right (like that damn glare on the spoon pictured with the lentil soup) but I’m learning. I’m hoping that Al Nomura, my photo teacher, can help me out on that one. He knows everything. After all, he has promised to teach me how to make a glass of liquid “glow” in a photograph. Stay tuned.

I’m enjoying writing, too, and enjoying reading even more about food.I’ve found that this blog gives me permission to sit a bit longer to read the food section of the newspaper and to scour the web for interesting food stories.

You never know what you will find out. Did you know, for instance, that there is a full-on war going on over the meaning of the word “mayo”–complete with leaked e-mails, dirty tricks and  lots ‘o lawyers? The issue is whether a vegan company can call its product “mayo.” Hellmann’s says they can’t. At the moment, the Food and Drug Administration is involved and everything is at a stalemate. (Was stalemate a food pun? Sorry.) And, did you know that some cuisinomanes, the climatarians, are altering their diets to do their part to fight climate change? They eat locally, choose their proteins carefully and work energetically to limit food waste. My reading has also informed me that there is a nascent movement to eat one’s food in the company of cats…in cat cafes. (I’m not telling Juliet about that one. I think it would cross a line in the sand(box) that Juliet has clearly drawn regarding her fractured relationship with her arch enemies–cats.)

Well, it is getting late. I have been enjoying my writing and the time has crept up on me. It is almost wine o’clock. Gotta go.

Important P.S. My Grammarly app keeps informing me that I’m confusing my words in this post. If you, too, have noticed that and perhaps suspected that I’ve spent a wee too much time celebrating my wine o’clock happy hour, au contraire. I’m introducing you to this year’s new food words.

Here is the link, so you can enjoy the article and decipher my post. You’ll have to learn the term “piecaken” for yourself…and cookie butter. I won’t even go there!

“Foodie,” by the way, is so last year!

NY Times: You May Eat These Words in 2016

I’ve had a bit of trouble posting this blog entry but I think I finally have the right version posted this time. Earlier in the year, when I was toying with the idea of starting a food blog, I tested the waters by posting recipes on my Facebook page. I’m trying to move those recipes here to the real blog so that I have a complete file on this site. Pardon the posting glitch.

This is a wonderful appetizer/first course.

I originally found this recipe on the NY Times’ food page. I love the glowing golden color of this soup. Wait!  Is it a soup? One source I read called gazpacho a liquid salad. I like that.

If you enjoy food history as I do, the background for gazpacho is pretty interesting. While it is most often associated with southern Spain, food historians believe the dish was probably introduced to Spain during the Middle Ages by North African Muslims who, in Spain, were called Moors. Some historians, on the other hand, trace the soup’s origins back to the Romans. Interestingly, the soup originally consisted of garlic, almonds, stale bread, sherry vinegar and olive oil or water and the ingredients were pounded together in a large wooden bowl. It was a worker’s dish. After Columbus’ discovery of New World foods, the recipe often was altered to include tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers and cooks haven’t looked back since then in modifying the recipe in all sorts of glorious ways. This recipe, for example, contains no bread.

In the 19th Century, gazpacho became a more widely-eaten dish with recipes popping up in northern Europe and in the United States. French writer Theophile Gautier, for example,  carried stories about the dish back from Spain to northern Europe, calling it “hell broth.” One of the first transfers of the dish to America was recorded in a 1824 cookbook, The Virginia Housewife.

I served this gazpacho in an elegant glass. No one at my table called it hell broth…at least, not to my face.

Recipe: Gazpacho

2 Pounds of ripe red tomatoes, cored and roughly cut into chunks

1 Light green pepper like an Anaheim, cored, seeded and roughly cut into chunks

1 Cucumber

1 Small white or red onion, peeled and roughly cut into chunks

1 Clove garlic

2 t. sherry vinegar, more to taste

Salt

1/3 Cup extra-virgin olive oil more to taste, plus more for drizzling

Directions:

Blend tomatoes, pepper, cucumber. onion and garlic in a blender until the mixture is totally blended and very smooth. This will take two to three minutes and you will want to use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the blender bowl several times during the process.

Keep the blender motor running and add vinegar and 2 t. salt and slowly add the olive oil to the blender bowl. You can vary the amount of olive oil you use to get the right smooth texture for your gazpacho. Your gazpacho should be the consistency o a smooth, emulsified salad dressing.

Strain the gazpacho through a sieve or strainer to remove any remaining solids.

Store in your refrigerator in a glass container for at least six hours and preferably overnight to thoroughly chill before serving. Taste and adjust seasonings before serving. You can add a bit more salt or vinegar or some lemon juice to your taste. I like lemon juice. Top with a few drops of olive oil and serve.

Here is the link to the original recipe in the NY Times.

NY Times’ Gazpacho Recipe