culinary experiments and explorations

Not at all put out by my failure to successfully make peanut brittle, but still filled with a hankering for something sweet and peanut-y, I decided to pull out an old recipe of my mom's. These rich, hearty snacks were always quick to disappear whenever they were made when I and my sister were growing up. I never could, and still can't, resist a serving of ( Mom's Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats. )

Easy to make, quick to prepare, and ridiculously tasty. This has been one of my favorite snacks since childhood.

Last night after a mediocre day, I was in the mood for comfort food. I already had some tortilla chips, but was lacking salsa to go with it. Not wanting to spend more money at the grocery when I had plenty of ingredients here, I chose to make a recipe from my Emeril's Potluck cookbook (page 6) -- slightly modified, for a little extra zing.

( Simply Salsa )

This turned out pleasantly tasty, though perhaps not quite as immediately hot on the palate as I might have preferred. It had a nice afterburn on the tongue, but it required a lot of addition of various ground peppers to reach it. I'll have to tinker with the recipe (and remember to drain the canned whole tomatoes next time) and see whether it can be improved.

This morning, I was being tremendously lazy abed, as I too often am on Sundays. Then out of nowhere I started thinking of random food. (Seriously, this happens more often than you might think. My stomach has an imagination, I suspect.)

So I randomly thought: falafel. Which, to the best of my knowledge, I've never had -- all that I know of it is that it's a Middle Eastern dish referenced in a throwaway line in Batman Begins. ("C'mon, Flass, I have kids to feed!" "What, they don't like falafel?")

I started doing research. There's quite a few various recipes out there, and many of them have comments on them like "when I started frying it in the oil it wouldn't stick together!" Nonetheless I was not disheartened, and so went over to the grocery store to pick up some of the basics for the various falafel recipes I'd found.

The result, after a few cooking missteps, was the surprisingly tasty ( Falafel in Pita Bread. )

To my surprise, and with only a few stumbles (I didn't have enough flour in my batter the first time, so my first four test balls disintegrated in the hot oil), I discovered that falafel is really easy to make and astonishingly tasty. I'm definitely going to be making this again in the future.

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.