Whether you call them garbanzo beans or chickpeas, these tasty little legumes are among the best ingredients to keep on hand for fast weeknight meals or those times when you just don’t feel like cooking. Not that I really need to tell you that.
And since curries made from canned tomatoes and canned garbanzo beans get old pretty fast (at least to me they do), I thought I’d share two of my favorite pilfered and adapted recipes. Both are great for leftovers.
Continue reading “Garbanzo Beans”
I went with Kristin to Winterfeldplatz market with an idea in my head to make arrabiata or puttanesca from scratch this weekend. All I needed was olives. I intended to pick up a can of tomatoes at the convenience store next to my apartment if it turned out I was out.
I saw then, at the fresh pasta stand, premium canned tomatoes in very handsome cans. I considered them and then rhetorically and dismissively said, “How much better can those expensive canned tomatoes really be?”
“Very?” offered Kristin.
“Thanks for talking me out of it,” I said facetiously. I bought the tomatoes.
Still there. Still good. We thought we’d better make sure.
After we discovered that our original choice for lunch on Friday was closed, Tiffany and I decided we needed more barbecue. We had already been hungry for it again after putting together the first review on Wednesday night.
Continue reading “Franklin Barbecue: Yep, Still Good”
There was an ignored stand outside the Austin Convention Center. I guessed that it lacked patrons because people were intimidated by the food concept, which was bacon-laced waffle cones filled with Tex-Mex classics. I opted for The Hoss, which was filled with lettuce, diced tomatoes, guacamole and cheese with a couple beef taquitos tucked in.
Continue reading “Austin Trailer Report: Before Cone, There Was Bacon”
Here on Vivre Pour Manger, we mostly talk about all the wonderful and tasty aspects of food.
Continue reading “How the global food market starves the poor”
I just love almost every recipe I’ve tried from this website. Yesterday, on the email list, she sent a recipe for coconut red lentil soup. I made it for dinner last night and it was EXCELLENT! So, I thought I’d share it with you…
Creativity doesn’t always work. Occasionally, my no-recipe approach to cooking yields some horrid results, which deserve documenting as much as the successes. Here is the story of avocado meringue. Continue reading “Not everything works: avocado meringue”
After all the pickle talk, I decided to go ahead and make some escabeche, by which I mean Mexican-style pickles, not the fish dish. Escabeche can be anything from just jalapeños to a mix of vegetables, here often jalapeños, carrots, onions and cauliflower. I went for jalapeños, yellow caribe chiles, pearl onions, carrots (of course) and garlic. I modified this recipe based on other recipes I had read. I didn’t feel like messing with sterilizing jars, so I just made enough for one batch for the fridge.
This “card” was added to a cookbook that I own that was published in 1887 in Houlton, Maine. The title pages reads “Tried, Tested, Proved. The Home Cook Book, Recipes Proved and Contributed by the Congregationalist Ladies of Houlton and their Friends.”
As you can see, the card advises that some of the recipes contain [gasp] alcohol. That is well enough, but it is interesting to note that this book is not anonymous so the ladies who “unthinkingly have given recipes containing brandy, wine and cider: six in all, but six too many of that kind,” are all named. Mrs. Theo. Cary and Mrs. A. H. Fogg certainly strayed in their fruitcake recipes, unlike, for example, Mrs. Bumpus whose recipe had no intoxicating spirits.
It’s a remarkable book to own since it is well sprinkled with ingredients and it’s possible to tell which recipes were used. Just in case you are curious, yes, the recipes with brandy were used and even contain marginal notations.
VIVRE POUR MANGER 