Falafel Chicken

Michael Ruhlman’s brilliant pan-fried chicken recipe has single-handedly helped reincorporate protein into the diets of at least one carb-fascinated kiddo; for that I am eternally grateful.

The recipe uses a buttermilk-like glop to soak the chicken in which isn’t buttermilk but rather milk and yogurt; obviously useful because those two ingredients are usually on hand. But actually we don’t usually have yogurt on hand. What seems always to be around is hummus.

I can’t get into a thing right now about how people want to believe they eat more hummus than they actually do, but suffice it to say I think people entertaining people assume people eat a lot more hummus than they actually do. Which is how we ended up with a shit-ton of hummus. And when I learned that you can freeze hummus without it harming anything, I learned to accept all the hummus which we were in custody of.

Which is to say, I took out a single serving of hummus, the kind you get in bulk at Costco, let it come to room temperature and then mixed it into a bowl with milk — thus your fried chicken wash.

Alright, so then, instead of just white flour, mix a little chickpea flour (or garbanzo bean flour). The thing, honest-to-god has this great falafel flavor in there.

Bringing Hundreds Of Years Of Wealth . . .

So we ended up with a bunch of red cabbage. You might ask yourself, as I did, What can I do with so much red cabbage? This is a great solution. This recipe looked intriguing, too.

Our Hawaiian-Inflected Feast

We read a book by a Hawaiian-born author for book club so we made a Hawaiian-themed meal: Hawaiian Style Macaroni Salad (which I understand is a thing), two vegetarian dishes for the non-meat eating among us — Huli Huli Tofu and Lau Lau, and roasted pork shoulder with a Hawaiian barbecue sauce.

On Meatloaf

This Paul Prudhomme recipe I originally saw in his Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen cookbook last weekend which a friend brought over (to make gumbo) and which is adapted online here is good. The spice mix is in the cookbook but not online. I couldn’t remember any of it so I just used Alton Brown’s spice mix for the Good Eats meatloaf.

Tzatziki And Lamb

Two more lamb kofta recipes: Woman and Home and Stupid Easy Paleo. I didn’t have the hands to do the former, what with the frying and then broiling, but I really want to, both to cut down on cooking time and get that char. I used ideas from each recipe vis a vis the spices: smoked paprika and cinnamon (which I initially balked at but figured that it goes in garam masala so why not?) were two things I wouldn’t have thought of. I did not have onion on hand and it didn’t need it. Child approved, too.

Then I followed this Easy Tzatziki Recipe but added the inspired carrot-for-cucumber idea from this tzatziki recipe and was kind of converted; not only do cucumbers have like zero nutritional value but they aren’t things that you keep around, or at least I don’t — carrots, on the other hand . . .