Recipe for Today: Heading toward the weekend, we’re thinking endless guacamole

By Leslie Brenner

Is there anything more festive than a molcajete filled with guacamole? As a party-starter — whether it’s a party of two or twenty — it can’t be beat.

Our friends who garden seem to all have cilantro that’s gardening at the moment, and its delicate lacy blossoms make the nicest garnish, if you can get them.

Of course you’ll need ripe avocados, which is why we’re talking about this now. Memorial Day weekend — summer’s unofficial kickoff — is just about here, and if you grab a few avocados that are not quite ripe, you can put ‘em in a paper bag and they’ll be ready to smash just when you need them.

Whether your Memorial Day festivities skew toward carne asada or burgers on the grill, or even a fabulous vegan mixed grill, you don’t need to overthink the party-starter. Haven’t made plans? Mash up some guac, tear open a bag of chips and invite a friend. See? The party’s here.

RECIPE: Guacamole, the traditional way

Fridge-clearing and fabulously flavorful, Sunday Souper Soup will set you up deliciously for the week

When a nation of restaurant-goers turns (almost overnight!) into a society of captive home cooks, the stresses caused by fridge management can be monumental.

Keeping everyone in comfort food is easy: There’s pasta and cheese for that. Rice concoctions galore. Potatoes are a no-brainer in any form. Pizza is a track-pad click away.

Still, you diligently keep the fridge stocked with healthy fresh things: broccoli and kale, carrots and cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, salad greens and herbs.

So that by Sunday, the crisper drawer is stuffed with stuff that’s not so crisp, and you’re left beating yourself up about waste. Meanwhile, what are you going to put on the dinner table in the coming week?

If besides all that stuff you can rustle up a few basic staples, I’ve got great news for you: You can turn those hapless refrigerator victims into a Sunday super-soup that’s so incredibly flavorful that no one would ever suspect you of anything so nefarious as using up tired greens. It’ll solve the coming week’s lunch question and provide a dinner or two — all while saving money and helping you dodge a food-waste bullet.

It gets even better: You can pack the soup with an arsenal of life-affirming, enchantingly aromatic spices and herbs that turn the whole project into an anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, flavonoid-rich powerhouse. It is vegan and gluten-free, and therefore sends you into the coming week feeling vital and positive. That gigantic pan of bacon-enriched mac-and-cheese you devoured on Thursday, washed down with three glasses of wine? It is vitamin water under the comfort-food bridge. Today is a new day.

The essential staples you’ll need: onions, carrots and celery (diced together they make what the French call mirepoix); lentils; a can of tomatoes; olive or other oil; salt and pepper. These, plus water, form the base of the soup. And if you follow our master recipe, that’s all you really need for a delicious one. The basic outline is sweat the mirepoix in oil, add lentils, tomatoes, water, salt and pepper, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer till it’s soup — under an hour.

Our master recipe — which we first wrote about pre-Covid, in a story back in January — explains how to incorporate all those vegetables crying for rescue from the fridge: everything from root vegetables (turnips, parsnips, celery root, beets) to Brassicaceae (broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and whatnot) to fresh legumes (string beans, peas and such) to leafy greens. The veg can be raw or cooked, so that small dish of roasted cauliflower with Punjabi spices left over from Friday dinner can find a new life in a lush (and zero waste!) soup, and the lonely cupful of sautéed greens from four days ago may gain delicious new purpose.

And you’ll want to spice it up: turmeric, coriander seed and cumin seeds are great places to start; ginger and garlic are your aromatic allies; fresh and dried chiles are always welcome; nigella seeds and flax seeds add nutritional heft; so do mushrooms, dried or fresh. Herbs — fresh and dried — are superb additions.

Again, our January story gives a lot of the health background and zero-waste benefits. Give it a read first if you’re interested in making the soup as powerfully healthful as possible. Otherwise, I invite you to explore the recipe.

And then take a deep dive into that crisper drawer and make soup!

MASTER RECIPE: Sunday Souper Soup

Cookbooks We Love: José Andrés' 'Vegetables Unleashed' is a summer cooking bonanza, with great ideas for all seasons

NOTE: This is the first in a new and ongoing series of mini-reviews of cookbooks both new and old.

Vegetables Unleashed: A Cookbook, by José Andrés and Matt Goulding; photography by Peter Frank Edwards, Ecco, 2019, $39.99

Backgrounder: This is the third cookbook from superhero chef José Andrés, founder and chairman of World Central Kitchen and co-founder of ThinkFoodGroup, which owns and operates some of the best and most forward-looking restaurants in the United States. The book is not strictly vegan or vegetarian (recipes might include a garnish of bonito flakes or optional anchovies, for instance), but it is certainly vegetable-driven and completely vegetable-centric.

Sangria made with watermelon, peaches, cherries, blackberries, basil, thyme, rosé and brandy.

Why we love it: It’s filled with delicious, expansive ideas that are so inspired you can’t wait to try them, elucidated with fun, colorful photo-driven graphics. Often the concepts extend the reach of a familiar technique.

For instance, Andrés provides a framework for building a sangria from a variety of fruits, wines and spirits. Put one pound of chopped fruit in a pitcher with 2 to 4 tablespoons sugar, any herbs, spices or citrus you’d like and macerate that in the fridge for 1 to 4 hours. Pour in a bottle of wine plus a few ounces of an optional accent spirit. Pour in to large glasses filled with “massive amounts of ice” and garnish with citrus peel and/or herbs.

I riffed on it using the seasonal fruits at hand — watermelon, peaches, blackberries, cherries, rosé, basil, thyme and brandy — it was delicious. (And gorgeous.) As Andrés suggested, I served the fruit leftover on the bottom on ice as a boozy-fruity dessert.

You’ve gotta try this: A bunch of our favorite recipes and ideas in the book happen to feature summer produce that’s now in its peak.

Zap whole ears of corn, husks and all, in the microwave and the kernels come out perfectly sweet and tender, ready to be slathered with one of four topping/sprinkle combos. We went crazy for one inspired by elotes and another with miso-butter and a combo of Japanese seasonings.

Elote Loco (aka Crazy Corn): This is one of the most delicious things we made from José Andrés’ Vegetables Unleashed

Another microwave trick (and more slathering!) is used for a dish Andrés calls Dancing Eggplant. Japanese eggplants get zapped till tender, sliced open, slathered with a sweet, salty, umami-happy glaze inspired by the Japanese eggplant dish nasu dengaku, then topped with bonito flakes (katsuobushi). The bonito flakes, light as air and activited by the eggplants’ heat, dance around on top. Although we had to tweak the technique a bit, the dish is insanely rich, savory and delicious — something I’ll be excited to make often.

Dancing Eggplant from Vegetables Unleashed

It’s not all microwave tricks; another favorite is Grilled Zucchini with Lots of Herbs — which you don’t even really need a recipe for. Cut zucchini into 1/2-inch-thick planks, brush or toss with olive oil and salt, grilled on both sides till lightly charred, sprinkle liberally with za’atar (the Mediterranean herb mixture) and top with a big handful of herbs — dill, thyme, basil, mint, parsley, tarragon, and/or fennel fronds in any combination.

A few little complaints: Not everything works so beautifully. A recipe for zucchini fritters gave us a batter that was too runny for the fritters to hold together; smashed cucumbers were inedibly salty and oily. A recipe that promised perfect cacio e pepe in the microwave was a giant flop that left us with a pile of crunchy pasta and a blob of melted cheese.

Normally with so many busts (along with a few recipes that were just duds), I wouldn’t recommend buying a book. But honestly, there is so much of value in these pages — and the ideas and approaches are so inspiring — that I’m very happy to own it, and would probably buy it as a gift for certain vegetable-loving friends. There are still a bunch of recipes I want to try, such as a riff on steak tartare made from tomatoes (the dish was born at El Bullí) and a luscious-looking cauliflower with béchamel that will be delicious when the weather cools down.

RECIPE: Corn on the Cob with Elote Slather

RECIPE: Miso Butter Corn

RECIPE: Dancing Eggplant

RECIPE: Grilled Zucchini with Lots of Herbs

Cool as a cuke: Four cucumber-happy salads to refresh you through a hot and heavy summer

Blimey, we all need a chill pill! In the absence of an effective one, we’ve been turning to the coolest of vegetables, the cucumber.

The Oxford Companion to Food tells us that the cucumber is “one of the oldest cultivated vegetables,” that it has been grown for some 4,000 years, that it may have originated in South India and that Christopher Columbus introduced it to Haiti in 1494. Jessica B. Harris points out, however, in The Africa Cookbook, that the some scholars feel that the cucumber may have come from Central Africa.

But wait — isn’t “one of the oldest cultivated vegetables” technically a fruit?

“It is a fruit,” says my friend Tim Simmonds, a Dallas botanist — and so are squashes, both summer and winter, including pumpkins. “Same big happy family.”

The curcurbit family, that is: the vine-y plant group that also includes watermelons, chayotes, gourds, cassabananas (a.k.a. melocotón) and the kiwano (a.k.a. African horned cucumber or jelly melon).

Given the cucumber’s origin story, it’s not surprising that it is popular in India — especially in the form of raita.

The cooling cucumber salad accompanies just about any kind of Indian meal, of course. But I’ve been known to enjoy a bowl of it on its own for a soothing lunch (particularly in a pandemic!).

Ours features grated cucumber, toasted cumin and a touch of lemon juice.

A Cucumber Sunomono was literally the first recipe we test-drove for our recent review of Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking, since the cucumber salad is a frequent starter of Japanese meals. This one, which weaves wakame seaweed in with the cukes, sports a jaunty grated-ginger garnish. We fell in love, not surprisingly. Maybe you will, too (let us know in a comment!).

Cucumbers also make appearances in Sakai’s recipe for Potato Salada and Dallas chef Justin Holt’s Salaryman Potato Salad.

But we’re not counting those in our four, so wait, there’s more!

This pretty Cucumber, Radish and Feta Salad came together as we riffed on a Levantine dish called khiar bel na’na, starring thin-sliced cukes, dried mint and orange-blossom water. We added radishes, scallions, feta and fresh mint (which layers beautifully with the dried). Lately it has become a house favorite.

And finally, this Scandanavian Cucumber-Dill Salad — which is wonderful with poached salmon, Cold Poached Arctic Char or even Swedish meatballs.

A happy development, at least in my neck of the woods, is that organic Persian cucumbers have become more readily available, even during the pandemic. They have lovely texture (as long as they’re nice and fresh), they’re less watery than English cukes but more flavorful than most hothouse cukes, and they don’t require peeling — a win win win. Though sizes for all kinds vary, generally speaking you can figure two Persian cucumbers for one medium English cucumber, or three for a large English cuke.

As you’ll see from the above recipes, many cultures salt cucumbers and let them sit to draw out the water and ensure great texture; sometimes gentle squeezing is called for as well. Hope you enjoy these refreshing treats.

Stay cool. Think cuke. Wear a mask. Stay healthy.

[RECIPE: Cucumber Raita]

[RECIPE: Cucumber Sunomono]

[RECIPE: Cucumber, Radish & Feta Salad]

[RECIPE: Cucumber-Dill Salad]

Say hello to the green gazpacho of your dreams

There are a grillion versions of green gazpacho out there — many of them likeable, some (like Yotam Ottolenghi’s in Plenty) lovable. But I’ve never found one that made me stop and say, OK, you are the green gazpacho of my dreams.

I enjoy versions with yogurt, but the green gazpacho of my dreams is vegan. And even though a gazpacho without bread is technically not a gazpacho, the green gazpacho of my dreams is gluten-free. That’s because when I crave green gazpacho, I’m craving something very clean and pure. I’m wanting something intensely chlorophyllic, and herbal — but also tangy.

The green gazpacho of my dreams is something I can throw together in a flash, as a satisfying and energizing lunch, or a refreshing prelude to a lovely summer or late spring dinner. It should be basic enough to make for myself and family on a weekday, but gorgeous enough to start off a celebratory dinner party with friends (if we are ever able to do that again!).

It has to have body, and a little richness. I’ve seen recipes for versions involving avocado, but I’m nor looking for that kind of unctuousness. (Though I do adore diced ripe avocado as a garnish on classic Gazpacho Sevillano.)

Sometimes the way out of a culinary conundrum like this is to go back to the basics. I looked to traditional ajo blanco, the cold almond and garlic soup from Malaga, Spain that’s also known as gazpacho blanco, white gazpacho.

Yes! Raw almonds add just the right body to this soup, without the tannic bite that’s so nice with the walnuts in Ottolenghi’s Plenty version. If almonds work here, perhaps raw cashews would as well. I tried that on round two, and liked it even better — it imparted a little more roundness and depth. But either works great.

You’ll want to use your best sherry vinegar and olive oil in this soup; they are more than just supporting players.

Here is your ticket to summer-long green greatness:

As you can see in the recipe, the ingredients are basic, easy to keep on hand for when a craving comes knocking. No need for advance planning, as you don’t need to chill it; just plop two or three ice cubes in each bowl before you serve. Or make it ahead, and chill it in the fridge. For maximum delight, garnish it with a flurry of soft herbs — any combination of dill, chervil, parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, chives, tarragon, celery leaves and sliced scallion greens (OK, those last two are not technically herbs, but you get the idea). Or just add a swirl of your best olive oil on top.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho

My favorite roasted potatoes

I have to ask you to forgive me. I've been so busy putting together Palate, The Dallas Morning News' annual food and wine magazine, that I have been a delinquent blogger.

I promise I will make it up to you: I have a couple of really cool stories in the works. One will feature a guest cook I'm really excited to introduce you to – Susie Bui – who stopped by the house a couple weeks ago to show me how to make one of her favorite Vietnamese dishes. The other is a Japanese story I've been working on for some weeks.

In the meantime, I have this for you: my family's favorite roasted potatoes. They're super easy to make and incredibly delicious. I would even say crazy good. I don't know who invented them, but I think it must have been my dad, who was a wonderful natural cook (he picked up the habit later in life). My brothers and I all make them. Or maybe it was my mom; I don't really know, but I'm calling them Brenner Family Roasted Potatoes. My parents divorced when I was a teenager, and these potatoes were staples in both of their houses ever after.

The secret is letting the oven do all the work for you: Roasting gives the potatoes a deep, rich flavor and a wonderful texture – creamy soft inside and sort of chewy and crisp on the edges. And the roasted onion, which falls into petals when you cut it up through the stem end, melts into fabulous sweetness. If I could eat these potatoes once a week, I would. 

Before roasting, I toss them with lots of fresh thyme, but you can just as easily use rosemary – or both together. And of course a little olive oil, salt and pepper. That's it. They make a great side dish for just about any fish, fowl or meat. I love them with roasted branzino (and that makes an easy dinner for which you don't even need to turn on the stove), or roasted chicken, or sautéed pork chops – your imagination is the limit. 

Do you like the platter up at the top of the post? It's one of my favorites – an early piece by my old friend Christopher Russell, who has since become a well-known ceramist and sculptor. (Check out his website – I think his work is gorgeous.)

But often I roast the potatoes in a pretty oven-to-table roaster, and serve them straight from the oven. 

So. Thank you for being so patient. Here is the recipe:

And I promise: More good stuff coming soon.

Warming lentil super-detox soup is a meatless Monday winter favorite

Post-holiday food should never be about repentance. It should be about deliciousness and healthy renewal – clean eating at its best. 

That's why, after New Year's Eve revelry followed by an indulgent New Year's Eve lunch (on the heels of Christmas feasts and other holiday parties), what I craved for dinner was a warming bowl of chunky, vegan lentil-and-vegetable soup. Happily, I'd created one a couple weeks before – one that my family went crazy for. I'd whip up something like it again.

Only this time, I'd boost the turmeric, said to be a powerful antioxidant with terrific anti-inflammatory properties. And I'd add ginger, which I felt would work with the soup's flavors. And I'd try swapping in some red lentils, which have a softer texture than the green or black ones in the original. I didn't have any baby kale in the house, so I used baby arugula. And I left out the celery.

You know what? The soup was every bit as delicious; the ginger took it in a slightly different (and still wonderful) direction. 

It's a soup that can be all things to all people  or at least many kinds of people. It's vegan. It's gluten-free. The only processed ingredients are minimally processed (a can of tomatoes and the ground spices), so it's very clean. 

It's so soul-satisfying that carnivores probably won't miss the meat. Wylie, home for college for winter break, had three bowls. If you don't mention it's healthy, no one will be the wiser. 

Best of all, you can whip it up in a flash. Putting it together takes about 10 minutes, 15 max (if, say, you're in a post-holiday stupor). In less than an hour, it's done. 

Cooking for just one or two? Make a batch, eat some tonight, then take it to work later this week in a Thermos for lunch. 

Ready for the recipe? Here you go...

Happy New Year!!!

Ottolenghi meets Zahav: Introducing the ultimate hummus recipe

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First there was Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's recipe for hummus, published in  Jerusalem: a Cookbook in 2012. Then there was last year's sensation – the hummus tehina from Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook's Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking, which just won the 2016 James Beard Book Award for Book of the Year. Finally, we had an easy way to make amazingly smooth, creamy and fabulous hummus, and America went nuts over it. 

Now that the excitement is simmering down, I started simmering up: I have at last (after receiving a review copy) given Solomonov's recipe my full attention and put it to the test. 

Yes, it is wonderful. But it's also somewhat more complicated than it needs to be. And there were a few minor issues. It needed more salt, and my chickpeas cooked much quicker than Zahav said they would. The recipe said they would be tender in about an hour; mine were falling apart after 25 minutes; 10 minutes later they were mushy to the point of being waterlogged, resulted in too-watery hummus. Covering the pot of chickpeas simmering over medium heat made the pot overflow the first time I tried it; next time I tried lower heat, but the same thing happened. 

I wondered: How did this differ from Ottolenghi and Tamimi's recipe? So I went back to that one for guidance. They didn't cover the pot. And their estimated time to tenderness was "between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on the type and freshness" of the chickpeas, "sometimes even longer." 

Aha. Two great recipes. How about synthesizing them, taking the best, most thoughtful aspects of each? The goal was to achieve maximum flavor and amazing creamy texture with a minimum of time and effort. (Of course if you want a quickie cheater version using canned garbanzos, you can do that, too.)

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The thing that probably makes Solomonov's recipe brilliant for a restaurant actually makes it cumbersome for the home cook: It calls for 1 1/2 cups "basic tehina sauce," which you have to make first. The recipe for it – a whole separate recipe – yields 4 cups.  That's great for a restaurant doing serious volume, but silly for a home cook making one batch – which is already a ginormous amount of hummus. Ottolenghi's recipe simply has you put those ingredients (tahini, garlic, lemon juice) directly into the food processor without making a separate sauce first. However, Solomonov's recipe, in breaking out the tahini sauce separately, does something clever: He has you drop whole cloves of garlic into lemon juice, pulverize them together in a blender, let the mixture sit and mellow for 10 minutes, then you press it through a fine sieve and discard the solids. It's the mellowly garlic-infused lemon juice that goes into the tahini. 

Great effect, but it's kind of a pain in the butt. I found a compromise: While the chickpeas are simmering, you crush the garlic through a press into lemon juice and let it sit and mellow till the chickpeas are tender. No need for straining, pressing, discarding. 

So here's how it goes: You soak the chickpeas overnight, with a teaspoon of baking soda to start breaking down the garbanzo skins so you get that amazingly smooth texture. Next day drain and rinse them, and simmer them (uncovered) in a lot of water with another teaspoon of baking soda. Drain them and purée in a food processor. With the motor still running, add tahini, the lemon juice-and-crushed-garlic mixture, salt and a few tablespoons of ice water. And let it run and run – until the hummus is incredibly smooth, creamy and light. 

Wow, is it incredible – wonderfully warm, nutty and vibrant. It almost seems alive.  You will be licking your spoons and rubber scrapers like a kid with Tollhouse cookie dough. Such a simple food, and such an amazing one. 

Artichoke vinaigrette: an easy, elegant, French (and vegan! and healthy! and make-ahead!) appetizer

Growing up in California, I took fresh artichokes for granted. After all, Castroville – the town that bills itself as "the artichoke capital of the world" – is right there in the central coastal part of the state, not far from Monterey. I used to love stopping there on road trips and seeing the giant concrete artichoke sculpture that greets you at the edge of town.

In the spring and summertime, my mom always steamed artichokes and served them as an appetizer with melted butter to dip the leaves in. I love them even more dipped in mayo, or a mustardy red wine vinaigrette. Wylie loves it with balsamic vinaigrette.

A classic French way to serve artichokes is  à la vinaigrette – that is, actually dressed in the vinaigrette; shallot vinaigrette suits them particularly well. Pouring the sauce over them while they're still warm lets the vinaigrette penetrate the leaves – no additional dipping sauce required. An artichoke vinaigrette is also pretty beautiful. It's great as a sit-down starter at a dinner party or as a sharable treat before the dinner gets started. 

A few years ago, I served boiled artichokes as an appetizer to new friends in Texas, and was surprised that they found them exotic. "How do you eat them?" they asked. We showed them how to pull off a leaf, dip it in sauce, scrape off the meaty part (closest to the crown) with your teeth and discard the rest of the leaf. When all the leaves are gone and only the thin, prickly ones at the heart remain, you pull those off, scrape the fuzz off the crown with a spoon, and eat the heart  – the prize! – which is also delicious dipped in mayo or vinaigrette.

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Many cooks boil artichokes rather than steaming them. I've prepared them both ways, and find that boiling them in plenty of salted water gives them the best texture. Acidulating the water with lemon juice (as some cooks do to prevent discoloration) is unnecessary; I find the results to be the same with unacidulated water. Instead, after I trim them, I simply rub the cut surfaces with half a lemon.

For a party of four to eight, I often make two artichokes and serve it with another app or two. For a dinner party, you can serve one per person, or for a more casual dinner, one for every two to share.

So, how to trim them? You can get all fancy, and remove the chokes if you want to, but I usually don't. 

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Once you do it once or twice, it's easy. Using a sharp serrated knife, slice off the stem, creating a flat surface for the artichoke to rest on. Then slice off the top straight across – removing the tops of the inner few rows of leaves. Next use your fingers to break off the tough row or two of small leaves around the bottom.

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Finally, use kitchen scissors to snip off any remaining leaf tips (be careful – there's a prickle at the top of each). Rub the cut surfaces with half a lemon and they're ready to cook.

Boil them in lots of salted water in a covered pot. Don't worry if they bob up to the top; flip them over with a spoon once or twice so they cook evenly. While they're cooking, whisk together the vinaigrette. 

Drain the artichokes upside down, then dress them with the vinaigrette. Voilá. Easy, chic, delicious and healthy. And there are a couple of bonuses: You can serve them warm, or make them ahead, serving them chilled or at room temperature. And . . . they're vegan!

Ready to try? Here you go!

Hummus fans rejoice: Introducing an amazing, easy cheater version

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I lied: I told you this post would be more about gribiche. But we need to interrupt our gribiche coverage to bring you breaking news on the hummus front: Cooks Without Borders has figured out how to make pretty amazing hummus from canned chick peas. 

No joke! 

If you're among those who caught hummus fever as chef Michael Solomonov's recipe for Israeli hummus tore up the internets last fall, or fell in love with Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's recipe in their brilliant cookbook Jerusalem (the excellent cooking blog Food 52 featured it a few years ago), you know how earth-shattering this is.

For those who are just catching up with it, here is the hummus situation in a garbanzo shell: Since time immemorial, creating hummus as smooth and fluffy as what you get in a great Lebanese, Israeli or other middle-Eastern restaurant involved soaking chick peas (aka garbanzo beans) overnight, simmering them for an hour and a half or two hours and removing their skins (can you imagine?!) before puréeing them. Sheesh! The brilliance of Ottolenghi's technique (which he apparently didn't invent, and which Solomonov also uses) is that it uses baking soda during the cooking process to soften the chick peas' skins so they don't need to be removed. 

Home cooks, meanwhile, who want to make a quick, easy hummus that's always at least as good as what you buy in a plastic tub at the supermarket, could simply purée chick peas in the food processor or blender with some garlic, lemon juice, tahini and salt, maybe a little olive oil. A hummus like that is fine, but never killer. It never has that amazing texture and deep flavor that a great one has.

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I've been playing for the last few weeks with hummus made the Ottolenghi/Solomonov way, and I'll post about it when I'm ready to draw some conclusions. (There's more hummus to be made and tasted first!) But as I play, I can't help but wonder: Can we use this baking soda trick to radically improve the super-quick and easy version from canned garbanzos?

Yes, we can!

All you do is rinse the canned beans, simmer them for just five minutes in water and a little baking soda, and toss 'em in the food processor with some tahini sauce you've made while the garbanzos simmered. I found it pretty incredible that the skins could be softened enough to make a difference in just five minutes, but there you go. 

Was our cheater version as smooth as hummus made using dried-and-soaked garbanzos you simmer for an hour with baking soda? Well, if not, it was certainly close. It had been a week since I made a more involved one, but Thierry couldn't tell the difference: The cheater hummus was light, fluffy and soft, maybe more velvety than satiny. The flavor was very good, if not as extraordinary as the more involved way. It was terrific enough so that I'll certainly do it again if I'm pressed for time and want hummus. 

Want to try?

OK, toss whole garlic cloves (you can leave their skins on) in the food processor with salt and lemon juice. Purée briefly to chop the garlic, and let the mixture steep 10 minutes while you boil the garbanzos. Strain the solids from the lemon-garlic-salt juice, then put the juice back in the processor. Add tahini, pulse, then slowly pour in ice water through the tube as the motor runs. 

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That gives you very light, lovely tahini sauce. Now add the garbanzos plus a little cumin (if you like that flavor), purée a couple minutes till very smooth, plate and garnish with olive oil and paprika – and more, if you like. I usually keep it simple, but you can get creative with parsley, whole garbanzo beans and such. 

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Yippeee! Who says cheaters never prosper?

I think I can improve it still further flavor-wise (I'm going to play with adding more tahini, for instance). Once I have the very best version possible of the cheater hummus and the more involved hummus, we'll do a side-by-side taste-test. 

Meanwhile, I wanted to give you this recipe right away as it is very acceptable – way better than the stuff you'd buy in a tub.

Very good indeed with pita toasted or heated in the oven, and crudités. Who says cheaters never prosper?

A superfood salad (and more) for super-wonderful friends

Last night my friends Nicola and Habib came over to help me judge (and eat!) a couple of dishes I was testing for a cookbook review. 

The book I'll be reviewing (I'll try to post it next weekend) is Lidia's Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine; Lidia would be Lidia Matticchio Bastianch – you may know her from her PBS show Lidia's Kitchen. 

You can't invite just anyone if you're testing a recipe for rabbit, but I had a feeling English-born Nicola and French-Tunisian Habib would be game (pun intended). And they were! The other recipe I tested was spaghetti alla carbonara. 

But hmmm – nothing green there. How to make sure my pals had their veg? Got it! We'd nosh on crudités while I was finishing up the cooking; I'd put them out with a red pepper-harissa dip I've been making and serving to friends for eons. I made the dip about an hour before they arrived and stuck it in the fridge so the flavors would come together. Here's the recipe:

And before we dug into the carbonara and rabbit, I'd give them a salad. I wanted something with some weight, and serious greens. Just the thing: baby kale with roasted sweet potato and pomegranate seeds. Should I put in some goat cheese? Nah – better idea: toasted pecans. I could toast a bunch and use them in both the salad and the dip. 

I'm not usually a huge fan of balsamic vinegar, but it's just right with the kale and sweet potatoes, and its depth balances the bright flavor of the pomegranates. And here's something really cool: All four of the salad's main ingredients are superfoods. A superfood salad for super friends! Please try it – and tell me if you like it as much as we did.