Lekker: Quinoa Tabbouleh

No, I didn't sneeze. It's food, I promise.

TABBOULEH! Know it? It's a Middle Eastern grain salad that's been around for eons upon ages, and typically it's not one of my favourite foods. Nothing against Middle Eastern food, of course--in fact I love it--but tabbouleh usually has a consistency that is not very pleasing to my tongue. With this recipe so chock full of fresh veggies and salty goodness, though, we've got zero problems.

And yes yes I know. Quinoa (KEEN-wah, if you haven't heard the yuppies talking about it as the next big health craze for the last 5 years) is not the traditional grain to use in tabbouleh. TOO BAD; that's what I had in my fridge and I like it better than bulgur anyway because it's got more protein per serving: 8 grams per cooked cup versus bulgur's 6. This is also an excellent swap if you're gluten-free since quinoa is technically a seed, not a wheat product.

I am *also* aware that traditional tabbouleh does not contain carrots, olives, or feta cheese, but if you're going to say no to those types of things I'm not sure I want to be friends with you anyway.

So, onwards we go to this strangely addictive light vegetarian lunch or dinner option (oooorrrr just add some grilled chicken to blow that whole vegetarian thing out of the water)!

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This is the only time grain salads look pretty. Not pictured: olives and feta cheese.

QUINOA TABBOULEH
serves two as a full salad for lunch or dinner; add grilled chicken if you want it a bit more filling

WHAT YOU NEED
1 1/2-2 cups cooked quinoa (I used tri-colour since that's what I had)
2 Persian cucumbers, diced small (Persian cukes are the little wee ones packaged in a tray and covered with plastic wrap; I like them because they're super crunchy with minimal seeds but feel free to use an English hothouse cucumber--the super long ones wrapped in cling wrap--as well. Regular cucumbers don't have the kind of crunch you want here.)
1 large beefsteak tomato or 2-3 smaller Roma tomatoes, diced
2 scallions, finely diced
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced
~1/3 cup kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped (Why are you bothering to measure a salad? Just take a "1/3 cup" to mean "a handful.")
~1/3 cup feta cheese, crumbled (or however much you want; I never let people tell me how much cheese I should or should not be eating dammit)
8-10 leaves fresh mint, finely chopped (Don't cheap out and use dried herbs! In this salad it's a total loss.)
8-10 leaves fresh Italian flat parsley, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled and finely minced
Juice of 1 small lemon, pulp and seeds strained out
~1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper, to taste

WHAT YOU DO
1. In a large bowl, toss together the cooked quinoa, diced cucumbers, diced tomatoes, scallions, carrots, olives, cheese, mint, and parsley. Then in a separate small bowl whisk up the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper until well combined to become your dressing.

2. Toss the salad with your dressing (add a bit more olive oil if it looks too dry), and leave it to chill out in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.

As I said, this dish is actually super addictive. I wasn’t a huge fan of it the first time I ate it, but after it sat in the fridge for an hour I had another serving, and the more I ate it the more I wanted to eat more of it until I was essentially just shoveling it into my piehole, grains and parsley leaves flying everywhere. I are sexy.

Buon appetito!

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Lekker: Feta Dip

Today's recipe comes from Sweet Paul, one that's been hangin' around on my Pinterest boards for ages while I waited for an excuse to whip it up. I got a GREAT one on Saturday night when my girlfriends Lilypad, Tiny Bird, Sammy Anne and I had a good old fashioned girl's night/slumber party--ladies, have you had one of those recently? Now I don't mean going out and getting wasted with your girlfriends and then coming back to crash at their places--I mean sitting around a coffee table laden with snacks on the living room floor, watching romantic comedies and stuffing your faces and laughing until you cry? That's exactly what we did and man, it is good for the heart.

However, since we are "grown ups" (LOL) instead of Ben & Jerry's we had gelato and sorbetto, and in lieu of greasy pizza we whipped up baked Brie and prosciutto and THIS delicious feta dip. I know, we're all just so painfully sophisticated right? Don't worry--I may have been sipping a Lemon Ginger Martini, but I was doing it in a leopard print onesie and making dick jokes through Cards Against Humanity, so, some things never change.

Sidebar: Have you guys ever played that game, Cards Against Humanity? SO. MUCH. FUN. You get to learn aaaaaalll sorts of things about your friends with this little doozy...for example, my sweet, classy, Southern Belle friend Lilypad? Turns into a completely dirty deviant! The hippie, flowers-in-her-braided-hair museum studies/art history major Sammy Anne? That woman just wants to watch the world burn. And Tiny Bird, well...she just wants to play with dead babies and coolers full of organs from Mexico, but I was pretty sure of that already. It's just as despicable, awkward and hilarious as it sounds, and you can buy it here.

Fun way to find out what your friends REALLY think of you, too.

Eat this while you play.

I repurposed the original feta container, because I'm lazy eco-friendly like that.

Feta Dip

serves 4

What You Need

8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (I am over-the-moon obsessed with the "Authentic Greek Feta" from Trader Joe's, because it IS actually legit--made from sheep's milk and packed in brine, that stuff is utterly addicting.)

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (I only had limes on hand so that's what I used, but lemon is better)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Dash or two of dried thyme

Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

6 tablespoons olive oil
Optional: 1 tablespoon Greek yogurt, if you feel like it needs to lighten up a bit

Sliced cucumbers, pita chips, and/or tomatoes for dipping & serving

What You Do

1. Throw everything into a blender or Magic Bullet, or do what I did and just use an immersion blender and a deep bowl. Done! Make sure to let this sit in the fridge for a few hours before you serve it so the flavours have a chance to marry, like half my friends these days.

Lekker: Homemade Feta-ish Cheese

I suppose this recipe is the one that started this blog in the first place, and if I made any sense at all I would have made this the first entry. But whatevs. I tried my hand at this last weekend for the first time on a whim and posted the results to Instagram. My friend Eliza begged for the recipe and gave me the push I needed to start this little thing, so here we are!

I got the idea from a buddy of mine, Lucas, who I'm fairly certain is some sort of international secret agent or former drug lord. Jury's still out; all I know is that he's already retired at age 32 and does nothing all day except cook delicious things whilst drinking and sends me pictures of all of it. Drives me bananas, but he gives me good recipes so we're still friends. This came about because he had picked about a dozen ears of fresh corn from his garden and wondered what to do with them. I suggested a simple roasted corn salad, which calls for feta cheese, and two hours later I get a photo that features a pan of insta-made feta cheese. WHAT?! That's a thing? You can do that?

Apparently.

Farmer Henry shows you how, here, and he's the most adorable farmer I've ever seen.

His video is for making goat's cheese, which obviously uses goat's milk. I didn't have that on hand and Lucas had made it with cow's milk and enjoyed it that way, so I followed his lead. 

I halved the recipe as well since my thighs do not need three cups of cheese sitting in my fridge, so here goes:

Homemade Two Hour "Feta"-ish Cheese
makes about 1.5 cups of cheese

I have "feta" in quotation marks there because this isn't a TRUE feta cheese. It's not brined for a week, and it's not made out of sheep's milk or goat's milk. I did try a second batch with goat's milk, but having done zero research on it I used the only goat's milk I could find at the store which was ultra-pasteurized--which you apparently cannot use. It refused to curdle (stubborn brat) and I wound up throwing it all down the sink. As soon as I can get my hands on some sheep's milk, I will be making this recipe with that--plus experimenting with a brine for a few days. But that's all for later, for now, CHEESE!

What You Need
1/2 gallon whole cow's milk (I used organic)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
cheesecloth (which you can usually find in the grocery store by the alu foil and cling wrap; sometimes I think it's called butter muslin and you can use either)
a strainer of some kind 
Optional: olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper for seasoning

What You Do
1. Pour the milk into a large non-reactive metal pot (that means no aluminum) on the stove over medium-low heat. You'll need a wooden spoon and a bit of patience for this part, because you're going to have to park your butt at the stove for about 15 minutes to bring that milk to a slow boil. Stir gently and constantly to keep it moving, otherwise you'll scald the milk and it'll taste all weird. Don't be a lazy ass and turn up the heat, it'll get there.

2. As soon as it gets to a boil, turn off the heat and add the 1/4 cup of vinegar and stir gently. This will cause the milk to break and you'll see curds start to form and the liquid around it (called the whey) will go yellow. Give it a minute or two to finish curdling. Looks disgusting at this stage.

3. Now comes time to strain it. You'll need a large bowl with a strainer set up inside it, into which you will lay your cheesecloth nicely. The point is to ladle or pour this mixture into the cheesecloth, which will be supported by the strainer, so the whey can be collected in the bowl. I'd do this in the sink if I were you. You'll then want to gather up the cheesecloth and squeeze more of the liquid out of it. The drier you get it, the firmer your cheese will be.

Yes, that's the strainer from a salad spinner. It's all I had. Don't judge me. Also, this was after I had poured out all the whey, because there was a LOT and nearly made a giant mess on my countertop. Hence the sink suggestion.

4. So at this point, having done more research after the fact, I learned that most cheese makers tie up the cheesecloth into a nice little bundle and hang it from a wooden spoon that's been laid over a bowl so that it can drain further for a few hours. I didn't know this and would have been too impatient anyway, so I just squeezed the hell out of it until it looked like this:

That's the great thing about trying new things in cooking. When you have no idea what you're doing, it's hard to care too much about doing it "perfectly." Wine helps with this.

Hooray! I then dumped it out into a bowl and tasted it. It was kind of bland and I was sort of disappointed until I remembered that Farmer Henry in all his adorable overall-ed glory told me I could season it however I wanted. Feta cheese has a tang, right? So in went salt and pepper, lots of lemon juice and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil, fluffed with a fork until I thought it tasted great.

The olive oil added a bit of colour, but it wasn't actually yellow, those are just my kitchen lights.

I smooshed it all down into a little Pyrex container trying to compact it as much as possible to form nice crumbles and stuck it in the fridge to cool down and firm up for a few hours. In the meantime I poured myself a(nother) celebratory glass of wine and bragged to Lucas and my friend Ghost about my clear supreme excellence in cheese making. (Nevermind the batch of goat's milk cheese I promptly screwed up not 20 minutes later.)

I ate it sprinkled over grilled eggplant and tomatoes for dinner in the evening, and it was awesome. TB is not a huge fan of feta but he tossed it into a stir fry later in the week and gave me two thumbs up. Will absolutely be doing this again, and you should give it a whirl too. It's easy and pretty step-by-step, and who cares if you screw it up? All that's wasted is a half gallon of milk.

Stay tuned for further variations. I refuse to be thwarted in my quest for a magnificently creamy goat cheese bedecked with fresh cut basil from my garden. 

Lekker: Crispity Crunchity Cuke Salad

This isn't a "real" recipe. This is just one of my favourite salads of all time, one I grew up with and learned at my Mom's elbow and was inspired to eat for dinner last night as a way to get more of my delicious homemade feta cheese into my mouth (recipe coming soon).

I was looking forward to this salad all day; it's so crunchy and refreshing and light and just what I wanted after a cathartic run. Also I'm single and busy, so make no mistake I'm not making full fancy meals for myself every night. I grabbed an English cucumber from Trader's Joes and my currently-preferred olive oil (100% cold pressed, 100% organic from Spain and only $5.99 at TJ's) on my way home from work, thinking I'd use the gorgeous vine-ripened tomatoes I'd pick up from the store only a couple of days ago. WRONG! They were, already, a rotten soggy mouldy mess. I don't deal with disappointment well, so I had a beer. Then, PING! I thought to check out in the garden. My housemate TB had told me that our current tomato cycle was over, but I wandered out there anyway and I found more than enough gorgeous, bright red, PERFECT Roma tomatoes waiting to go into my salad.

I know I'm lucky. Not everyone has these luxuries and I'm well aware of my fortune in TB.

Crispity Crunchity Cuke Salad

makes 1 large salad for a really hungry chick

What You Need

1 English cucumber, peeled (it's the long slim one in the plastic wrap in the grocery store; I like it because I think it's crunchier than the traditional cucumbers, but obviously use whatever you like, this is not Nazi Cucumber)

a handful of Roma tomatoes or any other kind you like, in proportion to the amount of cucumber

feta cheese, same in proportion

olive oil

lemon juice (fresh squeezed or bottled, whatever you have)

S&P

What You Do

It's a salad with like 3 ingredients, how complicated do you think this is? Dice up the cucumber and tomatoes into cute little bite sized pieces. Toss it with enough crumbled feta cheese until you're satisfied. Dress it lightly with equal parts olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste and stick it in the fridge to marinate for 15 minutes while you drink another beer and pat yourself on the back for making a salad. Nom.

Sometimes, GOOD doesn't have to mean complicated.

You can see I added some diced kalamata olives here because I wanted more salinity since my cheese was much milder than I'm used to. If you're using store-bought feta cheese I would leave the olives out, because that's a LOT of salt, and bloat works for no one.