Inside Out Falafel Wraps

We, like all right-thinking people in this world, love falafel. But we don’t always have time to make it. One workaround we’ve found is to make falafel-spiced patties with chickpea flour. They’re like tiny savory pancakes. They’re not as crunchy, but they’re an 85% solution when we’re craving falafel and don’t have the time or energy to fill a pot with oil and deep fry some falafel (and spatter the stove, and ourselves, with hot oil).

Having used that trick a number of times, we decided to branch out. Since we could make chickpea pancakes, more or less, could we make something closer to chickpea crepes? Could we make ourselves a wrap with falafel toppings on the inside, with a falafel-tasting chickpea crepe holding it all together?

The answer, as it turns out, was an emphatic yes, though it took us a couple of tries to get it just right. So now, without any further ado, we present our brand new Inside Out Falafel Wraps!

Ingredients:

Chickpea crepes:
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chickpea flour
1 1/2 cups water
Large handful of parsley, finely chopped
1 Tsp cumin
1/2 Tsp ras al hanout
1/2 Tsp salt (or to taste)
Juice of one half lemon

Tahini sauce:
1/4 cup tahini
Juice of one lemon
1 Tsp garlic powder
1 Tsp salt (or to taste)
Water as needed

Filling:
Cherry tomatoes, quartered
Cucumbers, sliced

Directions:

Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan on medium high heat. Pour a thin layer of the chickpea batter into the pan and let cook until set. Carefully flip it over and cook until done on both sides. The amounts given above made us 5 chickpea crepes.

fullsizeoutput_14c

In a medium bowl, whisk together the tahini, lemon juice, garlic powder, and salt until combined. This will be very thick. Slowly add water, whisking continuously, until the desired consistency is reached. We wanted ours to be thick and spreadable. Spread the tahini sauce on the finished crepes.

fullsizeoutput_14d

Divide the tomato and cucumber among the 5 crepes, lining it all up in the middle. If you prefer different toppings (like shredded carrots, greens, beets, fruit, honey, etc.), go nuts.

fullsizeoutput_14e

All that’s left is to wrap it up!

fullsizeoutput_14f

We wrapped ours up in foil, since we needed to store them to take them along for lunches through the week.

fullsizeoutput_151

Happy weekend

Since it's Friday we thought we'd share a couple links to what we're cooking up this weekend, a fun article, and a recipe for a favorite cocktail!

This looks like the perfect Saturday breakfast as we head towards fall and start to see more fresh apples headed our way.

We saw these tacos and knew that they had to happen.

We've been struggling with too much zucchini this summer and this seems like the ideal solution.

As a fruitcake lover, this kind of delights me.

As for the cocktail, we did sort of a cross between a Bee's Knees and a Sidecar, so maybe we could call it…Motorcycle Hornet? We'll work on it. Anyway, we wanted to use some of our local Baltimore liquors for this one, and it turned out pretty well!

Ingredients:

1.5 oz Shot Tower Gin

1.5 oz Sloop Betty Honey Vodka

1.5 oz Triple Sec

Juice of 1 lemon

Superfine sugar

Directions:

Full shaker halfway with ice. Combine ingredients and shake well. Strain into martini glasses rimmed with superfine sugar. Treat yo'self.

Chocolate Fig Tart

Hungry Harvest recently offered us some fresh figs, and we leapt at the opportunity to try some fun stuff with ingredients we don't use very much. We have a fig tree in the back yard, and this year it started flourishing, but it's still not yielding much fruit. When it does, you can be sure we'll be making some of these chocolate fig tarts, because they're delicious.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup almond meal

1 Tbsp Coconut oil

1/2 Tbsp maple syrup 

A pinch of salt

1 cup fresh figs, chopped finely

1/4 cup coconut sugar

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1/3 cup dark chocolate chips

1/4 cup coconut milk

Directions:

Mix almond meal, coconut oil, maple syrup, and salt until they start to stick together and look like wet sand. Press into a mini tart pan. Bake at 350° F for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Place figs, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot and cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently until sugar is dissolved and fruit has a thick jammy consistency.

Heat coconut milk in the microwave until bubbling hot. Pour over chocolate chips. Let sit for a minute before stirring.

To assemble: scoop jam into cool tart shell, reserving a tablespoon or so. Spread chocolate ganache over jam. Place sliced fresh figs on top. Mix reserved jam with a bit of water and brush on top of sliced figs. 

A Favorite Book

The news can be very scary even for us as adults, and we know that our kids hear some scary things on the radio or overhear us talking. We want to make sure that they understand what they hear and aren’t scared but can learn from what’s happening. We want to protect them, but we don’t want to shelter them.

What happened in Charlottesville over the weekend was terrible, and quite honestly terrifying for a number of reasons. The continuing existence and ascendance of white supremacy is a stain on our country, and one we can only attempt to wash away with love and acceptance and inclusion. It’s important for us to instill in our kids a sense of kindness and justice. As parents we worry about the world they’re growing up in, and we can’t help make it better by hiding it from them and them from it.

It can be hard to explain these concepts to adults, let alone to sweet little children who have never known anything but love. We’ve been reading a book recently to the kids Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester and Karen Barbour. We like that it talks about race in a way our children can understand. It addresses not only the meanness of racism, but how little it makes sense. Even Watson hears us explaining that some people think they’re better than other people because of the color of their skin and just shakes his head.

There’s only so much we can do, and someday our kids are going to go out in the world and make their own choices. Teaching them the value of other people of every race, religion, gender, and nationality is important to us because we hope to see them carry kindness, love, compassion, and justice with them out into the world.

Race

Eating Local – Pepper and Lobster Mushroom Sandwich with Pecan Pesto

The other day we showed you some pictures from our trip to the Baltimore Farmers' Market. With the food we bought there, we put together a delicious vegan (not gluten free this time, but easily adaptable) meal, along with a wonderful local wine. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 large bell peppers
1 basket of lobster mushrooms
1/2 cup pecans
1 cup basil, packed loosely
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt to taste
Bread of your choice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425° F. Chop peppers roughly and spray them and mushrooms with cooking oil of your choice. Place on a lined baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes.

In the meantime, to make pesto, pulse the basil and pecans in a food processor until finely chopped. Slowly add the oil in a thin stream as the food processor runs until everything is incorporated. Add salt to taste.

Toast four pieces of bread, spread some pesto on each, and split the mushrooms and peppers in two portions to make two sandwiches. Serve with a refreshing local Vidal Blanc.

Wednesday Recipe Adaptation – Vegan Gluten-Free Tomato and Garlic Pie

While we tend towards gluten free and vegan dishes, we're always hesitant to label the way we eat. There are a number of reasons why we don't eat meat, and while we limit our dairy, eggs, and gluten, we aren't super strict about those, mostly when we go out to eat. When we eat at home, however, we like to stick to our preferred way of eating. 

This can be difficult at times, like when I'm flipping through a food magazine and see an amazingly tasty looking recipe like the tomato garlic pie in bon appetit.

We're lucky to live in a time where so many people are finding new ways to eat that it's easy to find tricks to make any recipe work with any diet (well, almost any recipe–I don't think the bacon wrapped filet mignon my mom used to make is adaptable!).

Depending on the recipe, you can use either a vegan butter (we love earth balance) or do as I did here and use olive oil. Flax seed works great as an egg replacement, I used 1 tablespoon mixed with 3 tablespoons of water in the crust. For the crackers, we went with Mary's, which has all kinds of amazing vegan and gluten free options!

The cheese filling was a little harder, but 10 oz of kite hill ricotta worked well in place of the taleggio, a mixture of pecans, nutritional yeast and salt made a good Parmesan approximation, and vegan mayo was super easy to find.

The results: astonishingly delicious. The crust is crumbly and flavorful, the cheese is salty and creamy, and the tomatoes are juicy and tart and sweet. This adaptation was so successful that we couldn't imagine it having been any better in its original form.

Play Dates and Finding Friends

Both of us hated dating and neither of us was very good at it. It's awkward, exhausting, and you constantly feel like you're trying to impress people. We were so glad to find each other and never have to date again.

We were wrong.

Arranging play dates is just like dating. Our kids love the other kids at daycare, and we want them to be able to have some one on one time with their friends on the weekends. Kind of like how you see a person at work all week, but you never really talk until you grab coffee or brunch on Saturday. 

We see other parents at school events and birthday parties, but first you have to figure out which kids your kids really like and which ones your kid only tolerates. Then you start talking to the other parents, and you have to figure out a way to bring it up, and that's exactly like asking someone on a date, right down to the butterflies in the stomach. If the other parent tells you they're just really busy all the time or they'll get back to you eventually, it's just the worst. It's rejection.

This doesn't even get into the land mines of conversation once a play date is arranged! Do you bring up current events? Can you be sure they won't say something you find abhorrent politically? What if, God forbid, their taste in films and television leaves something to be desired?

It's something of a minefield, but we've gotten lucky and we've gotten a bit more used to it. Now we just need to figure out how to escape the nagging guilt about not play dating exclusively.

Eating Local – A Trip to the Baltimore Farmers’ Market

We've been trying as hard as we can to put money into our local economy with our purchases. Sometimes financial concerns make that hard, but it's something we believe in. The Farmers' Market is a great way to get local food, and Baltimore has got a really great one. This weekend we stopped by to get some great fresh, local food, and we used it all to make ourselves a tasty meal. We'll put the recipe up tomorrow. For now, here's a preview of the beautiful food we used to assemble our meal.

Heirloom tomatoes, Italian basil, local semolina bread, bell peppers, lobster mushrooms, olive oil, nuts, and wine. If you've got a guess as to what we made with all this, let us know. Tune back in tomorrow for the recipe!