First, the Ambien cookbook is hilarious.
CAN’T YOU SEE I’M WORKING HERE?
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I’m going ape-shit with avocados these days, enjoying every sliver of sunshine produce I can. Avocados really are one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.
This time around I was again playing with my meager pantry, but it was slightly better stocked after a trip to the Co-op over the weekend. With little to do with my evening, and a personal promise not to hit my local until late (or at all), I started flitting about the kitchen determined to make something weird.
I started with a cup of black eyed peas that I’d asked my roomie put down to soak on a whim in the middle of the day. I’ve lived a rather starchy existence recently, so I decided to forgo that for this dish, and see what I could make.
I skimmed the floaters from the peas and tossed them in a pot to cook with some toasted cumin and a few cloves of garlic, chopped roughly. I did my meez, breaking down a red onion, jalapeno (grrr… Where’s the tilde?), a few cloves of garlic, a summer squash and I de-stemmed a hunk of cilantro.
hmmm…. What to do next.
oh geez, I have some almonds. Ok, a handful of almonds (around a cup) went into water with the cilantro stems to simmer the skins off.
I then wandered off to watch some baseball.
a little while later, after an Angels Rally, the return of my roommates and half a chapter of Tortuga I meandered back to my peas to see what was the haps, yo.
The beans were done, so I took them off the heat. The almonds were ready to be skinned, so I drained them and dumped them in some ice water and got my hands wet, removing the skins as inefficiently as possible. Really though, is there a good way to accomplish this? If so, someone tell me.
Olive oil, red onion, mounds of cumin, more garlic and the jalapeno (I swear, until I figure out how to put a tilde on that n, I’m going to pronounce it in my head as ‘jah-lah-pee-no’ which makes me sound about as white as Powder after two winters in Iceland) sweat while I skinned the almonds, and into the pot they went as well. While those were kinda-sorta-poaching or something, I tossed the cilantro and a whole avocado into my blender. I beat them up with a little water and vinegar so it wouldn’t brown.
After a bit I added the bean cooking liquid to the onion/almond mixture, and let it all simmer for a while longer.
Into the blender it went–almonds, onions, jah-la-pee-no, avocado, cilantro olive oil and bean juice, with healthy amounts of sea salt and fresh black pepper.
I let this thing whir around on ‘puree’ for a good long time, and what resulted was a frothy, almost mousse-like concoction that I can best describe as ‘green deliciousness.’ next time I have a teenage mutant ninja turtles‘ party, this will make an appearance somehow.
I sauteed the squash and some frozen pressed tofu in a hot pan with more garlic and onion, and tossed the beans in for a little re-heat/flavor injection, and to dry out the beans.
assembly was easy. Sorry for the blurry and dark photos here, but you get what you get.
