Falafels, an ode to the Glorious Channa

Chickpea/Channa, wondrous Legume, oozing versatility.

We use you in glorious ways, from hummus to Falafel goodness.

Even plain, with curry and cumin, your flavorful facets are revealed,

And you're not found wanting;

You're wanted.

We've never felt this way before about small beans.

How can we explain it with mere words,

With verbs and nouns, with adjectives and alliterations?

Fried or pressured, you let us into your delectable, disguised world,

And all I daresay,

Is try then enjoy.

These are bomb.

Ingredients:

Prepared Channa (chickpeas) (either from can or soaked then pressured)

Broadleaf Thyme

4 cloves of Garlic

An Onion

Egg

Oil (a little to saute, then a fair amount to fry)

Squeeze in half a lime (optional)

Crushed crackers (we use Crix) or Breadcrumbs

Directions:

Saute the Onion and Garlic Then Mash up the Channa/chickpeas in a large bowl adding the thyme (you can even use Guyanese Celery, or parsley), garlic, onion and lime. Then add in the egg and continue mashing.

Add in the Breadcrumbs or crushed crackers to thicken the eggy, channa mixture.

Roll up (using a Tsp or Tbsp) the falafel mixture s into either balls or thick disks with your hands.

While you're mashing and rolling, heat up oil in the Kaharee (or some other frying mechanism) in preparation of deep frying your falafels.

When the oil is hot, drop your balls/ovals it. Let them fry on all sides for about 3-4 minutes or until they're brown and hard.

Enjoy!!

*We've used these falafels in two ways. The first time we made some Roti, and wrapped the falafels in them with some cucumber, lettuce, tomato, and cream cheese (since we didn't have cucumber yogurt sauce). The next time, we just made a fresh salad (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, carrot, little cheese) and crumbled the falafels on top of the greens, and made a homemade vinaigrette (olive oil, apple cider vinegar, and some spices) This was really, really good. (if only we had some feta cheese....)

-TT

Hot Pepper Experiments

So as we've mentioned before there is a sauce/garnish here called “Pepper”. It's a mix of hot, savory, vinegary preserved goodness. It's similar to salsa, but waaaaaaay more spicy. I've been promising myself that I'd make it at some point, but just never got around to it. However, the other day we just returned from Town and the pepper bush in our kitchen garden had exploded with peppers. We saw a few green “fruits” before we left, but as we walked closer to our residence we noticed the green peppers had turned a hot shade of crimson. Funny story about this plant. When a neighbor first gave us the plantling we thought it would grow into sweet peppers, but Chelsea's burning eyes, and red rimmed nose (she had touched her face after she cut it) bear witness to our misconception. It was actually a hot pepper plant rather than a sweet. Ooops. So we had some peppers just dying to be picked, and we couldn't for the life of us use all of them just in our every day cooking, so I decided to stop the procrastination and make some pepper sauce.

Hot peppers, deseeded, (about half a pound, we used about 8-9 of them)

2 cups of Vinegar (We used Apple Cider Vinegar, it has a very distinct taste, not sure if I'd recoommend it)

Cucumber

2 Onions

4-5 cloves of Garlic

tsp of Oil

*I added some water to cut the vinegar...use your own discretion)

We cut up and blended all of the ingredients together to make a fine, fine blended liquid (like salsa)

Then we simmered the blended ingredients for 10 minutes and put the liquid in jars and let it cool

Voila! Pepper sauce. I am sure there are other recipes out there, this was just an initial one we tried.

Poor Man’s Peace Corps Pesto

So this whole time that we’ve been cooking up random, resourceful recipes the lovely Peace Corps Guyana has had a volunteer cook book. We knew of this manuscripts existence, but out of pride and the fact that we all have Macs (and the book was in Microsoft Publisher format), we were not privy unto it’s contents. However, a benevolent benefactor at PCHQ , who shall not name (only because we really don't know who put it in our box) we now have in our possession. Do not despair, this will not end our culinary explorations, rather it shall deepen them. Here is our first adaptation and discovery. PESTO! I love Italians. I wonder if Columbus brought this to the new world too hmmmm...

2 cups of “Married Man Pork” (Which we have in garden! See photo below. Get the joke with the name? Eh, tough crowd.) Oh yeah, for those of you not Guyanese this is fresh basil or fresh thai basil...Bombness!




About a 1/2 cup of Olive Oil

About 3/4 cup of ground peanuts, walnuts, or cashews (How I miss pine nuts...) I think we even put some walnuts in it (Thanks, Oma for the Granola ingredients!)

6 cloves of garlic

Cut up the garlic and some of the married man pork, maybe ground some of the nuts if they are not ground yet.
Combine into blender (or food processor) and blend it up. I am even thinking about putting some fresh broad leaf thyme in here, but I haven’t tried it yet. Next time. Keep inventing!
-TT.

Chicken/Veggie Stir Fry

So the longer one cooks food, the less nutrients it has. Guyanese like to destroy their food. They pressure or fry their veggies until all semblance of color is dispersed. We try to tell them that when they do this it takes away the nutritional value, but I don’t think they like the hardish texture of not obliterated veggies. For example, we had a salad one time with fresh lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, and a homemade vinigarette, and our Guyanese guest just looked at it and said, “Wha' that!?” Anyway, this is a nice little dish that is quite good and doesn’t destroy the veggies. One of our goals here is try and get some Guyanese to eat healthier and this could be one of our target dishes. However, there will be challenges since carrot is primarily for color, not nutrition here, and bora is rarely served when it’s not in fried rice or chow mein.

Bora (green beans)
Cabbage
Carrot
Tomato
Chicken
Salt and Black Pepper
Butter

If you want Chicken, saute it in some of the butter. Once the Chicken is cooked, take out of pan.
In another pan or cleaned kaharee, saute the bora, cabbage, and carrot in butter. After a few minutes, once some of those veggies have been cooked (you still want them to have texture), stir in Tomato and Chicken. Add Salt and Pepper to taste.

Guy-Nachos

Yes, more Mexican food. Its oozy, cheesy, refried- beany goodness. And as mentioned in the last recipe, Mexican food is one of god’s gifts. So, really, if it’s possible, it should be eaten at least once or twice a week like a church service, you know? My favorite part of this whole recipe is that its all baked! So there are plenty of ingredients on every bite!

Tortilla chips
Refried beans
Cheese
Did I mention cheese?
Tomatoes
Salsa
(Corn)

Make the refried beans, or just buy a can. Grate the cheese (as much as you think you’ll use). Cut up the tomatoes, open the can of corn. Make your salsa.

On a baking sheet (or as we do it in Guyana in a frying pan, sitting on a tawa and topped by a tawa (see enchaladas)) place chips and top with Cheese and Refried beans. (It is also possible if you have a baking sheet to top every chip with some cheese and beans)

Bake for about 10 minutes. Until cheese is melted.

Top with tomatoes and salsa. (you can add other stuff too if you got it like sour cream, guacamole, etc.)

Comfort from the Gods: Mac and Cheese

Comfort food. These two words take on a whole different meaning now. They mean warm bellies, a particular hidden, satisfied smile, and a happy cow shattered silence ( When the consuming silence around the table is broken by occasional “mmmmoos” of pleasure). This is a Tony recipe and its pretty bomb. It’s mac and cheese, man! It’s glorious, for cheese was, of course, the gods’ gift to mankind. I mean it must be up there with fire, creation, mexican food, and pizza, right?

Elbow Macaroni
1/2 lb of Cheese (or more)
Milk
A whipped egg.
Salt
X (Variable Ingredient)

Prep your pasta, boiling it.
Drain pasta, put it pack in the pot. Slowly stir in half of the cheese, watch it melt.
Stir in some milk and the egg. Continue stirring
Finish up the rest of the cheese. Stir until melted and sticky. Heat pot if necessary.
It is also possible to stir in other things, we’ve added pumpkin (thanks Sara!), another time it was bacon. We put some shallot in there once, and even red onion. Use what you think and what you like. It’s mac and cheese! So easy!
-TT

Hummus

As we’ve mentioned so many times before, Guyana has a lot of chick-peas, a.k.a. channa. We’ve dreamt of creating hummus for a while since channa is the primary ingredient, but never really took the steps to make it happen. Until now. We were feeling the slump; a proverbial culinary one. It took several conversations with current volunteers, a few looks at the Internet, and a desire for change to make it happen. And it did. For the betterment of men and womenkind...well, at least, for the Linden 4. Since there is no worse slump than one of culinary proportions.

Channa (Chick Peas either in a can, or as we do it, dried, that have been soaked for 8 hours.)

About a 1 1/2 cups of either the canned channa water, or your water from when you boiled the channa.

4-5 cloves of garlic, cut up a bit

1 Red or White Onion, cut up

Olive oil (round about 2-3 tbsp)

1-1.5 tbsp of Peanut butter (better if it’s natural flavored as opposed to artificially sweetened; better yet if you have tahini sauce. We don’t. But if you want to send us some. Please do!)

Geerah (or as you Am-ER-icans say Cumin.)

X (What is X, you ask? Well it's what you want. We’ve used some green olives the storekeeper near us bought, but we’ve also put some pesto in here. Maybe if you’re feeling it..some curry powder (hmm I’ll have to try that). Basically experiment, I know we will!)



Soak and boil your channa (or just open the can, and put them in the blender)
Combine the ingredients in a blender (or food processor if you’re so lucky). Blend on a lower speed to make sure it’s flowing. You can even switch it to a higher gear if you’re feeling it. Anyway, eventually all will be blended and all will be good.
You can even salt to taste.

-T & C