Simple Hummus Recipe

What is tahini?  What’s the difference between chickpeas and garbanzo beans? Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about how to make hummus at home (but were afraid to ask).

If you’re under the impression that hummus is too rich and flavorful to be easily made in your kitchen, allow me to dispell that myth for you right here and now.  I, too hesitated for years when it came to whipping up a bowl of this creamy Middle Eastern dip for MG and myself to enjoy.

Could it be that I was intimidated by the food’s foreign origins?  Was I fearful of the unfamiliar ingredient that is tahini?

Knowing me, the truth is I probably just couldn’t bring myself to trust that something so densely rich and flavorful could be made in under five minutes using only ingredients I already had sitting around in my kitchen (save for one).

This is because I always have to believe that everything worthwhile has got to be harder than it actually is.  I’m constantly amazed at how simple a wonderful thing can be.

I don’t know my blood type, but I’m laying 10 to 1 odds it’s probably “B Negative.”

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Season of the Cookie: Carrot Cake Cookies

Billows of gooey cream cheese frosting sandwiched between two moist cookies bursting with oatmeal, carrots and raisins.  Meet the official Tv Food and Drink Halloween cookies for 2011.

I haven’t even begun to think about what I might dress up as for Halloween this year, and seeing as it’s only five days away, I don’t intend to start now.  There’s no point in denying that as a result of bad planning and a embarrassingly short attention span I’ve wandered yet again into that shameful realm known as the “Halloween Scramble Zone.”  You know… that place where people come together and bravely try to justify the merits of such supremely lame and last-minute costumes as, “Hobo,” “Hippie,” “Cat” and “Toilet Paper Mummy.”

Yes, I’m talking to you too, “Guy in Bathrobe,” “Working Out Girl,” and “Truck Driver.”

If you are going to dress up for Halloween, you have to put some pizazz and some planning into it.  At the very least, you must give it the old college try.  And no, that doesn’t mean you can go to your neighbor’s party in a cap and gown with a rolled up piece of sheet music you tore out of your little sister’s recital book.  That’s lame too.

Don’t stick a knife through a box of Cocoa Pebbles.  That doesn’t make you a “Cereal Killer.”

“Sexy Librarian” is no longer distinguishable from “Sarah Palin.”  Neither gets you laid anymore.

And just because it’s October 31st, wearing dirty clothes and no shoes so you can be “Homeless Guy” still qualifies you as a Prime Time Emmy-Winning Douche Canoe.

I’ll take a moment to address these knock-out cookies, though come on… is there anything else you really need to know?  The words “carrot cake” are in their name.  You can see the creamy frosting oozing out of the middle.  These are sweet, chewy, eye-poppingly decadent, and they will make you the star of any Halloween party.

As for you… guy in trench coat with black socks standing next to dude with the “This IS my costume!” t-shirt.  You can just move along to the orange-colored Rice Krispie Treats.

There’ll be no cookies for you.

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Season of the Cookie: Chocolate Mint Sandwich Cookies

Thin Mints are now relics of your past. THIS is the cookie recipe girl scouts will kill to keep out of your hands!

Forget what The Bossa Nova favorite, “Once I Loved” tells you.  I am here to testify that love is in fact not the saddest thing when it goes away.  A plate of these chocolate mint sandwiches disappearing is far far worse.  It’s enough to send me to the bottom of the swimming pool in my apartment courtyard, sucking my thumb and desperately holding on to a lead teddy bear.

Think “chocolate covered mint Oreos” and you’re pretty much on board.

Here is that phenomenal cookie that will keep you up at night, as it quietly calls your name from that easily infiltrated plastic dessert container on your kitchen counter.  You know… the one you have every intention of taking with you to work the next day because you truly mean to share these sinfully rich cookies – gooey on the outside, crispy on the inside, and a rich chocolaty peppermint center – with your co-workers.

But really, is that actually going to happen?  What have your lousy co-workers really done for you?  A sheet cake with your name misspelled for your birthday and a Darth Vader Get Well card when you were sick (“I sense a disturbance in the force!”).

Fuck ‘em.

Share these with nobody.  And I guarantee that at least one of these cookies you end up eating while your pajamas are on.

Season of the Cookie, 2011 is now officially open here at Tv Food and Drink!  Stop back now through the end of the year for lots and lots of new cookie suggestions, pics and recipes to enjoy!

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Mushroom Marsala with Artichoke Hearts

Looking for some guidance on how to best prepare mushrooms? Give this rich, decadent pasta dish a try. As much fun to make as it is to enjoy!

I have not eaten a mushroom since I was nine and my mom tricked me into eating one, telling me it was just “a bean.” Standing in the kitchen near the stove where she was making dinner, chewing with an intesne curiosity, I was actually enjoying the damn thing (somewhat). Then, she revealed to me that the bean was actually a cremini mushroom at which point, I lept to the sink, spit it out and declared my total disgust and feelings of betrayal in the most dramatic way I could possibly fashion.  Having watched a lot of Dallas as a kid, I’m sure I really managed to sell it.

Were these NOT the same things that occasionally grew on the corners of our front lawn? Were these NOT the same things dad warned me away from because of their possibly poisonous nature?

Was my mother out to kill me?

Well no, in fact, they were NOT the same things as the possibly toxic (but probably not) varieties making homes out front the house. And I quickly understood that. But divorcing myself from a distatse, an almost irrational fear of the mushroom, has taken me decades.

I pick them off pizza. I fish them out of salads. And pack anything you damn well want into the caps, heat them up and drop them in front of me. I’ll suck on my sneaker instead.

And yet… I could not get this recipe out of my head. Maybe a mushroom on its own didn’t sound all that hot, but mushrooms with wine, pasta, cheese, and onions? This is something a spore-bearing fungus hater might be able to get behind.

Mom has often told me I was missing the boat on mushrooms. This patsa dish looked and sounded so rewarding that maybe, I thought to myself, just maybe, this would be the meal that could lead me to welcoming mushrooms into my kitchen on a regular basis.

And it was! Moms always know.

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Brussels Sprouts with Figs and Bacon

Too many people don’t know how to cook sprouts. If you’re one of them, here’s a sweet and savory recipe to get you started!

One of the most common ways Brussels sprouts are prepared in the United States is by boiling, steaming or roasting – more than enough reason right there to stay the hell away from them. Brussels sprouts are of the same family as cabbage, kale, and collard greens, and if steaming, boiling or roasting a plate of any of those vegetables and serving them up to your family sounds like a fab-oo idea, then by all means stop reading here, head to the kitchen and take one giant step toward complete familial alienation.

Say it out loud… “how does boiled kale sound to everyone tonight?” and you see my point.

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Simple Marinara Sauce Recipe

Of all sauces for pasta, marinara is the easiest. If your mother forgot to teach you how to make spaghetti sauce, here’s the recipe for you.

Learn from me, dear readers.  DO NOT watch FOOD NETWORK after 10pm!  Last week there was a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives marathon on, and I was only about 20 minutes into it when I could no longer resist the call of the kitchen.  Unfortunately, raw materials were limited, so instead of replicating the corned beef and cabbage, baked mac and cheese, polenta, and stuffed meatballs Guy Fieri was lucky enough to inhale, I was stuck sucking down three slices of garlic bread and a handful of peanut butter chips.  Not quite up to my usual standards, and also slightly embarrassing.  Yet still most satisfying!

Changing topics now.  Marinara sauce is something you can always put to good use.  And a simple homemade spaghetti sauce recipe is something every cook should have committed to memory.  Of course you can use it to top pasta, but don’t stop there.  Slather up a grilled vegetable sandwich, or just drop in some meatballs and Italian sausages, heat it up, and eat it straight from the pot right there over the sink!

As you can see from the above, I used this batch of sauce for sandwiches (sausage, cheese, bell pepper and onion) and got the big thumbs up from MG.  Wrap these babies in foil and cook at 400 F for about thirty  to forty minutes.  Good hot, good cold the next day, good at 4 am in the morning when your building’s fire alarm goes off and you want to nosh on something while standing in your slippers on the street.

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Jalapeno Cheddar Scones

Scones make me think of a stodgy, listless tea party with Joan Plowright and Emma Thompson in a Merchant-Ivory picture, where no one reveals a single true emotion, Joan peers down through half-spectacles and huffs disapprovingly at everything she sees, and Emma is fraught with concern over relatives on deathbeds, if she’ll be invited to a respectable home for the winter, and whether or not Fanny the chambermaid has located the missing bed warmer.

No… scones do not interest me in the least. I’ll happily pass them up in any bakery case or grocery aisle, in any stage of freshness any day of the week. I’ve always found them to be heavy, cumbersome, and a real effort to get through, much like many a Merchant-Ivory picture.

Then I discovered this recipe for jalapeno cheddar scones.

If Merchant-Ivory had ever made a film where Emma and Joan have a hot-oil wrestling match and Grace Jones kicks in the salon door and snaps Hugh Grant’s neck between her thighs, these are the scones that would be served.

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Season of the Cookie: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Through these cookies, you will come to understand why it is necessary for me to keep all my toilet paper in the trunk of my car.

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