Freekeh with chickpeas and mushrooms

I will forever remember freekeh as the best meal that I've ever eaten in a Greyhound Bus station.

I guess I'm something of an anomaly. I seriously love the Greyhound Bus system. You can't beat the price, you meet interesting people, and you are granted hours upon hours to do nothing but read, knit and think. Heaven. But the Greyhound is seriously lacking in one very important thing: anything to eat in the stations. They can't even put in a Taco Bell or a Burger King ...they have their own brand of pitifully cheap "restaurants" If you're a vegetarian or like food that is not corn meal + corn oil + corn syrup + artificial flavoring, fuggettaboutit. The only options are limp grilled cheese, nachos, and brown salads with fat free italian dressing. Greyhound bus food is why god invented Tupperware.

I'm generally a poor planner and don't have the foresight to pack food with me on long trips. But whenever I leave Ohio, my dad makes sure I have at least two backpacks filled with food, often extremely perishable, in glass containers, or melting. [I'll save the story about the 6 jars of expired olive tapenede that exploded in the bottom of my suitcase for another time].

All this is to say that one time, I think last winter, he packed me up a big bowl of Freekeh, cooked with tender peas and mushrooms. And it was exactly, EXACTLY what one would want to eat cold, with a plastic fork, as they sit on top of their suitcase in Wheeling, WV. The wheatberries had a subtle pop and the mushrooms played with the earthy undertones of the toasted wheat. Comfort food to the X-Tream!

I'm gonna cred the Palestinian Fair Trade website for the description of Freekeh [in hopes that any readers will cruise on over to that site, because they're doing good things!]

Freekeh is a delicious, highly nutritious grain made from roasted green grains. It is free from any chemicals. Because the grains are harvested while still young, Freekeh contains more protein, vitamins, and minerals than the same mature grain and other grains. It is high in fiber (up to four times the fiber of brown rice).

I scored some from my dads store this Christmas and finally got around to making it.

This recipe for freekeh is very much in tune with a certain niche I have been working to carve out for myself. Every cook has their specialty. A baker I am not, as has been made clear on numerous occasions, most recently my failed banana cupcakes. I suck at soups... I tend to make GIGANTIC pots that are mostly inedible due to oversalting, lifeless vegetables, and a flat-out refusal to bust out my food processor. Appetizers often require too many pans and seem like a waste of time.

My favorite recipes, the ones that give me the most joy, are the big, one pot recipes that involve a whole grain, a full serving of vegetables, and a protein source. Oh and that taste divine...Like, you could eat it at least once a week and not get sick of it good. Not like, wow, look at me I'm so healthy and yet so bland. Not like that at all. I like the challenge of a creating a healthy meal that tastes good, one that can be carted to work in my handy dandy lunch jar, frozen into ziplock bags for when I'm running out the door, or reheated after a long night of meetings. DIY convenience food.

This recipe for Freekeh is a perfect candidate. Its quick and nourishing, goes down easy but delightfully complex.


What I wish I had done:

• Measured out the Freekeh and the water [I used too much water so my freekeh had a little bit of pasty going on.]
• Used a wild mushroom mixture instead of the portobellos
• Added a bay leaf, a sprig of fresh thyme and a cinnamon stick to the water
  

Freekeh with chickpeas and mushrooms

2 c. Freekeh
2 1/2c. Water
bullion cube
mushrooms [I used 1 box of baby portobellos and they worked fine. Oysters and shitakes would be geat], chopped
1 onion
1 can chickpeas
cinnamon
allspice
cumin
salt
black pepper
**I added a dab of harissa, because it is my favorite way to make things spicy these days. You can use crushed red pepper or a teensy bit of cayenne].

Wash Freekeh thouroughly. Chop onion and sautee in large pot with olive oil. Add Freekeh and cook until Freekeh is toasted. Add water, bring to boil and then let simmer for 40 minutes or so. Oh, if you want you can dissolve a bullion cube in some of the water and add that. But if you do, go easy on the salt cause its real salty. In a large skillet, sautee mushrooms in butter or oil. Add can of chickpeas. Season with spices. When Freekeh is done cooking, stir in the mushroom mixture. Add more seasonings to taste.

Cannelloni bean salad with roasted garlic and thyme

Thank you, Progresso, for putting your wide variety of beans and soups on super-sale at the Supreme grocery in West Philly. Without you, I may never have thought to buy two cans of white beans, because all I know about white beans I learned from my days as a server at the Olive Garden,where I had to recite the pasta y fagoli ingredients over and over again to tables of suburban housewives and there drooling, obnoxious children. In an effort to get over my food service industry hang-ups [beets, anyone?], I wanted to do up a nice Cannelloni bean salad.

I acquired two large heads of red-leaf lettuce from an event I helped to pull together two weeks ago . Because its February and not exactly salad season, and I was tossing around the idea of sauteeing it, mostly for the laughs. Lettuce? You can cook lettuce?? Oh Kate...you are such a jokester! I did find a few Chinese-inspired recipes for cooked lettuce, but couldn't bring myself to do it...all due respect my Asian friends! :)

My compromise was a warmish salad, with roasted garlic and red pepper. I have been wanting to try more roasted garlic recipes because I've never had much luck with it. Maybe its because I'm Lebanese and I like my garlic loud and proud, but it is always too subtle to be detected. This salad was still lacking a pronounced garlic flavor, and I wished I used two heads instead of one. Plus, as I scolded my sister who was dousing her bowl with garlic powder and lemon juice, not every salad has to taste like fattouch, difficult as it is for us to understand.

I braved the snow and bounced over to the Reading Terminal after work to pick up some herbs and fancy cheese. Now, as far as cooking goes, I am generally an outside-the-box kind of person. I am first in line to try foods I've never had before, and my idea of adventure sport is hiking to the store to buy fennel bulbs. But when it comes to fancy cheese, I can never bring myself to buy anything but manouri, a rich, creamy sheeps milk cheese from Greece. I know that there is a world of cheeses out there that I'm missing, but I love manouri so much I can't justify spending money on anything that isn't manouri. I only had my credit card, and there was a $10 minimum. I bought a full pound of the stuff without blinking an eye [though now I'm feeling a little guilty about it, because I really can't afford to spend $10 on cheese].

On the other hand, I had no idea that the fresh herbs at Iovines were only a dollar!! I hardly ever use fresh herbs cause I just assume they were expensive [and my dad owns a spice store. Dried herbs are never in short supply]. This is one of those discoveries that will forever change my life. I thought thyme would be nice with the beans, and a chance for my blog to live up to its name.

The salad was great, and got six thumbs up from me and my roommates, which says something because Ann doesn't like beans and Hannah doesn't like peppers.

What I wished I had done:

• less lettuce, more beans
• another head of garlic
• toasting the thyme to give it more flavor? Does anyone know if this works?

Cannelloni bean salad with roasted garlic and thyme

1 large head Red Leaf lettuce
1 large can of Cannelloni beans
2 red peppers, cut into long, meaty strips
2 heads of garlic
1/2 cup red onion
a few marinated artichokes, chopped
fresh thyme to taste
goat cheese, cut into wedges or medallions
sea salt
olive oil
lemon juice

Coat garlic heads in oil and wrap in foil. Roast in the oven at 450. Wash and chop lettuce, combine with onion, artichokes and set aside. Coat the peppers in oil and put them in the oven with the garlic. Drink some wine while you're waiting for them to roast [garlic needs about an hour, peppers need about 40 minutes]. Dip the cheese in a mixture of thyme and sea salt. Once your garlic is done, mix it with the beans and a bunch of finely chopped thyme, douse with a good amount of olive oil and lemon and pour dressed beans onto the salad. Toss well, top with cheese and roasted peppers.

Spinach Fatayer

Not with filo dough, with pizza dough. Think calzone, not spanakopita.






Ohh…making these guys made me ache for my grandmother. She lived with us for several years, and the language barrier was such that food was essentially our only means of communication…she cooked, we ate, all was right with the world. She didn’t make fatayer often, mostly only if my cousins were in town and she had my Aunt Sana to help her. They are pretty labor intensive and bang out much quicker when you working with your daughter.

My dad's house had had a massive oak dining room table, so big that it didn’t really fit in the living room. My tata would spend an entire Sunday rolling out homemade pizza dough, cutting enough circles out with the base of a glass cup to cover the entire humongous table, filling them quickly with spinach or lamb and folding them neatly and quickly into adorable pies. The whole house would smell yeasty and warm, and we would eat them hot, several at a time, while we were playing Nintendo. This is when my dads house still had wood paneling and times were simpler.

Of course, mine didn’t turn out as well as my grandmas. I wished I had used entirely white flour, at least for the first time. I used mostly wheat, and the density of dough took away from the pillowy comfort food texture I was craving.




The real bonus is that I had some sumac in my freezer from my trip to Lebanon in 2006…I’m presuming its still good cause it was frozen, but it did remind me that I want to try and acquire some more next time I have a buddy in the Middle East. Sumac, IMHO, gives life to spinach fatayer. Nothing else would substitute.

I got this recipe from an adorable cookbook, which I actually think is one of my most prized possessions. It was my mom’s, from when she was living in Oman. There are little notes next to some of the recipes that indicate whether or not my dad liked the dish or not…touching in that it is probably the only evidence that my mom actually loved my father at one point. It’s a very cute cookbook and the recipes are like, perfect. I don’t think you can buy this puppy on amazon, or at least I’d like to think that you can’t.

Spinach Fatayer
Apparently, fatayer make great gifts. I was able to pass some along to a friend who is recovering from surgery and a friend who has intensive nutritional needs and may be struggling to keep them met. That, and they go nicely in my freezer, ready for a day when I wake up too late to make my lunch and I don't want to drop six bucks at the friggin' Green Village deli across the street from my work.

2 pounds fresh spinach
1 finely chopped onion
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts, browned
2 tbsp Sumac, where available

Basic Savory Pie Dough (Aajeen)
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons dry yeast
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
2 cups lukewarm water or milk
1/4 cup olive oil

(makes 25 four inch or 40 three inch pies)

Combine flour and salt in large bowl. In another bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Let sit 5 minutes. Stir yeast mixture into remaining water, or milk and add to flour mixture. Mix well with wooden spoon and turn onto floured board. Knead well for 8-10 minutes, until dough is very elastic and smooth. Place in greased bowl and cover with dry towel. Set dough in warm spot until it has doubled. Punch down and form into a ball. Let dough rest 10 minutes. Divide dough into 25 or 40 pieces. Coat hands with oil and form each piece into a ball. Cover dough with dry towel and let rise 30 minutes. Roll balls into circles 1/4 inch thick for fatayer or fill and form into meat or spinach pies.

Divide pie dough into 12-15 balls and roll into 4 inch circles about 1/8-1/4 inch thick.

Wash, Drain and chop fresh spinach drain and chop. Lightly squeeze out moisture and place in large bowl. Add onion, salt and pepper to spinach. Mix well and let stand a few minutes. Stir in lemon juice and oil. Add browned pine nuts if desired. It should taste like a good salad.

Place a small amount of spinach mixture in center of each round of dough. Form a triangular pie by drawing two sides of dough to the center and pinching shut a seam from center to the corner. Then draw up the remaining flap of dough and pinch shut the remaining seams, leaving a small opening to vent the pie in the center. Or make vertical pleats of dough around the filling to form a round open tart. (The former method is more traditional). Brush with olive oil.

Bake at 375 to 400 degrees F for 15 minutes , until brown on top and bottom. Serve warm or cool with lemon wedges.

My blogs rebirth!

Welcome back to Wild Thyme Kitchen! I hope you didn't miss me too much.

I'm celebrating my return to blogging with a facelift for this blog, as well as some nifty new features!

Click here for a categorized list of recipes on this blog.

My favorite feature, however, is my new "living" post of tips, tricks and reminders. This is mostly for my own purposes, because most of the things I cook could have been a little bit better if I had just not made that one mistake that I always make. So after I ruin a dish by using too much sea salt, burning the onions, ect, I can at least document my mistakes in hopes that I won't make them again.

Needless to say, the tips will almost always end in a self-deprecating insult. "wash the cilantro so your curry's not gritty, dumbass" and "cut the baklava BEFORE you cook it, idiot!", "1 cup of olive oil is almost always too much in almost every situation, olive oil junkie!"

Anyway, look forward this week to spinach fatayer, mjeddera for 50, and a valentines treat, yet to be determined.