Hummus # French Fridays with Dorie # Food Revolution Day 2014

Guided by Mardi Michels,  this Friday the Doristas are participating in Food Revolution Day. Food Revolution is a movement started by Jamie Oliver to inspire parents, kids, teens, workers and everyone else to get back to basics and start cooking good food from scratch. This year he chose “getting kids excited about food” as the theme for Food Revolution Day, which is today and our charge from Mardi is to share a recipe from Around my French Table that we think every child should know how to make.

Now my son is only two and a half so I wasn't really thinking of making a meal when I signed in for #FRD2014. The idea was to make something simple that would give the little boy a feel for cooking.. Since last January, we have been experimenting with a lot of recipes. Mostly smoothies and some muffins like this Chocochip Cherry 'n Coke Muffins whose ingredient list alone was good enough to excite him. Keeping his familiarity with the blender and his love for apple and cheddar in mind, I thought Hummus and Savory Cheddar Chive Bread with chunks of apple would be an exciting for him. And I was right. He enjoyed the process of making both. However something about the bread was not right so I decided to keep it off the post and talk about hummus today. 

Personally, I think hummus is a great recipe to have in ones repertoire. It can be prepared in no time... just whir together chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, cumin powder, salt and pepper in the blender and you are done...  

And once you are done, the possibilities are endless.  You can build simple or fancy sandwiches with it as the base, serve it with crackers or make appetizers of all kinds to entertain friends...

And if you are like me, you could simply sit with a spoon and your bowl of hummus and call it a meal..

Thanks Mardi for involving us in #FRD2014. This was fun !

Visit French Fridays with Dorie to know the recipes from Around my French Table that other kids found exciting !

I shall be sharing this at some of these weekly parties. 

Indian Chickpea Curry

Punjabi Chole Masale is a curried Chickpea Side dish that is very popular in North India and Pakistan. Served with Bature, a fried Indian bread, a carrot pickle and a salad of onions, lemon and coriander it is a dish that North Indians often enjoy for brunch. As a student, I have enjoyed many a meals of Chole-Bature in Delhi and in Allahabad and after moving a to US created my own version of Chole using staples from the kitchen. Though a close cousin of Punjabi Chole Masale, this Chickpea Curry recipe isn't very authentic or traditional. It is however delicious and serves as a wonderful side with both rice and roti. So give it a try and I guarantee that you will come back to it again....

Wheat Berry and Chickpea Salad

Dorie's Wheat Berry and Tuna Salad somehow got me fixated on Wheat berry. Ever since, I have been trying a lot of combinations with the berries and this one worked out great. It made my husband say, "we should have salads more often. may be we should make Monday our salad day !" 

Chickpea almond chocochip cookie dough bites..

You might have noticed that for the past two weeks I have not been posting my cake for the week. well that is because I have not been baking any.  over the last month or so I have put on a LOT of weight and i figured its time to cut down on the sugary treats. however since I love something sweet with my cup of morning tea, last week i decided to bake these healthy chickpea and peanut butter cookie dough bites from Texanerian Baking that I had bookmarked. but since there wasn't enough peanut butter in stock I substituted it with blanched almonds. the result was pretty good. can't call these cookies addictive because these are quite filling and you really cannot have more than one at a go. in fact if you are not a big eater, a single cookie with a glass of cold milk is good enough to take care of your breakfast, which might be a good thing if you are dieting. 

now here's how i made these grain-free cookie dough bites...

Chickpea Almond Chocochip Cookie Dough Bites

ingredients

• 11/4 cup boiled chickpeas
• 1/2 cup blanched almonds
• 2 tsps vanilla essence
• 1 tsps baking powder
• 1/4 tsp pinch of salt
• 1/8 cup honey
• 1/2 cup chocochips

what i did

• first i preheated the oven to 350 degrees F. 
• i then coarsely ground the almonds the in the blender. then adding all the ingredients except the chocochips to the ground almonds i blended the mixture until all the ingredients were well-combined.
• then removing the mixture from the blender i added the chocochips to the dough and shaping them into little patties placed them on a baking tray and baked for 10 minutes in the preheated oven.
• when i took the cookies out of the oven the surface facing up looked cracked.  so i left the cookies  out for about 5 minutes and then flipped each cookie and baked for another 4 minutes. 

thats it ! a batch of 11 healthy breakfast cookie dough bites were ready to serve !

As this recipe includes chickpeas, I am linking it to the 60th edition of My Legume Love Affair, a food event that was created by Susan  of  The Well Seasoned Cook and is presently managed by Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen. This month Nupur of One Hot Stove is hosting the event. 

  

also since these have been made from the scratch, I am sharing them at Made with Love Monday, a event hosted by Javelin Warriors of Javelin Warrior's Cooking w/Luv.