Taco Dip

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With the Super Bowl quickly approaching I have been getting some snack recipes together for the party. The burger dip that I made last week got me thinking about hot cheesy dips and one my favourites has to be this taco dip! Since I last made this dip I have learned a few things and I was just itching to make it again and apply what I had learned. The first thing that I wanted to change was to make it in a wider dish since I had discovered that it works really well for hot cheesy dips when I made the pizza dip. The burger dip that I made last week taught me that topping a hot dip with fresh ingredients makes it even better, as hard as that is to believe! If any dip deserves to be topped with fresh ingredients it is this taco dip as tacos are commonly filled with fresh ingredients!

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Quinoa Flatbread with Tabbouleh, Falafel, Feta and Pomegranate

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Next up in my week long exploration of Mediterranean cuisine and quinoa was these quinoa pancakes or flatbreads that I came across a while ago. They caught my attention immediately because of the creative use of quinoa and because of the tasty sounding Mediterranean toppings. These flatbreads are really simple to make with only a few ingredients including ground quinoa, flour, an egg and some water. I liked the sound of grinding my own quinoa as it allowed me the opportunity to make it a really coarse grind allowing a lot of the quinoa to remain whole as I figure the texture would be pretty amazing. After the batter is mixed it is as easy as cooking them in a pan as you would a pancake only they are not going to rise.

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Falafel

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Falafel, or fried chickepea patties, have been on my todo list for a while! Making the quioa tabouleh salad reminded of a photo that I had seen a long time ago where perfectly golden brown falafel were served on a bed of tabbouleh and I figured that it was the perfect time to try making falafel! As it turns out, making light, crispy and perfectly golden brown falafel at home is quite easy, though if you are starting with dried chickpeas you do need to let them soak over night so it takes some planning.

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Quinoa Tabbouleh Salad

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When I made the quinoa cakes with roasted red pepper and walnut pesto, goat cheese and a poached egg it reminded me that I had not done much with quinoa lately and that got me thinking about all of the things that I want to try using quinoa in. A quinoa tabbouleh was pretty high on my list of quinoa dishes to try and it would fit in nicely with a few other recipes as well so I started with that. Tabbouleh is normally made with bulgar but I figured that the texture of quinoa would work well in it. In addition to the bulgar a tabbouleh salads normally consist of tomatoes, cucumbers, parsly and mint and it is dressed up in lemon juice and olive oil. I kept things pretty straight forward with this tabbouleh salad other than swapping the bulgar out for the quinoa and it turned out really well! There is nothing like a light salad filled with fresh herbs and a hit of lemon to push back the gloom of winter!

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Mapo Eggplant

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One of my favourite Chinese dishes has to be mapo tofu for its use of not only the chili heat and numbing Sichuan peppercorn combo but also for its use of another great Chinese ingredient, fermented black beans. Mapo tofu or mapo doufu is a dish where tofu and ground pork are served in a tasty chili and bean sauce but I was thinking that it would be nice to try replacing the tofu with eggplant and braising it in the sauce until it was nice and tender. This dish includes a few ingredients that may not be in every pantry but it is well worth the effort to track them down. If you cannot find the dried fermented black beans you can replace them and the garlic with black bean and garlic sauce which is more commonly available in the Asian section of grocery stores along with the fermented bean paste. I served the mapo eggplant on noodles, which are said to be lucky on the lunar New Year, garnished with green onions along with shredded cucumber to tame the heat of the dish.

Happy Lunar New Year!

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