1- 19oz can chickpeas, drained, rinsed and finely chopped
1 small cooking onion, finely minced
3 cloves garlic, finely mined
1/2 Tbsp ground cumin
1/2 Tbsp ground coriander
1 small egg
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 Tbsp dried parsley
1 tsp paprika
6-8 Tbsp flour
extra flour for making patties
4-6 hamburger buns
Lettuce
Tomato slices
sweet onion slices
Tzatziki sauce
In a large food processor, add the drained and rinsed chick peas, onion (cut in half), 3 cloves garlic (whole), cumin, coriander, egg, salt, pepper, parsley and paprika to the food processor and chop it all up until it has become well mixed and has turned into a thick, somewhat chunky paste. (If you don't have a food processor, you'll have to do the best you can with imagination, a knife and a wooden spoon. Don't worry, I've been there and managed to make hummus!). Remove mixture into a mixing bowl. Add the flour (start with 6 Tbsp) to the chickpea mixture and blend well with a wooden spoon. If needed add the other 2 Tbsp flour and blend again. The mixture should not be too wet that you can't make some balls and then a burger patty out of it. It should also not be too dry and crumbly that your ball/patty won't stay together.
In large non-stick frying pan, heat about 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 1 Tbsp butter over medium to medium-high heat, until bubbling.
Have extra flour sifted onto a plate for coating the patties with. You will find that it helps to coat your hands with flour as well so that it won't stick to them so badly. Divide up the mixture into either 4, which will make large patties or 6, which will make small patties. Take each section and roll into a ball with your hands, then flatten into typical burger patty thickness (they don't tend to shrink like meat does when it's cooking, so they'll stay the size you make them). Lay them onto the plate with the flour and lightly coat both sides with flour, keeping them circular. As each patty is made carefully lay it in the frying pan. Keep and eye on the pan side of the patties and carefully flip them when they become golden brown in colour. Once both sides of the patty are golden brown they're ready!
Assemble them like you would a beef burger, although I would omit the usual condiments like ketchup, mustard and relish, and use Tzatziki sauce with fresh lettuce, tomato and sweet onion slices instead. I severed these great vegetarian falafel burgers with carrot, celery, and cucumber sticks and extra tzatziki for dipping.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Potato Leek Soup
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
3 large leeks, cut into 1cm rings (all of the white part and some of the green)
2 medium cooking onions, chopped
7 medium potatoes, quartered
salt and pepper, one large pinch of both
Add all ingredients to large pot and sweat the vegetables over medium or medium-high heat, stirring often for 5 minutes.
8 cups water
3 tbsp Bovril liquid chicken stock
Add water and chicken stock to pot, give it a stir and cover with a lid. Let it come to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium heat or a slow boil for 30- 40 minutes, or until all the vegetables are soft. At this stage, before blending, I often add another tablespoon of both olive oil and butter, but this is optional. Turn off the burner and blend to a nice smooth and creamy consistency with a hand blender. Taste test the soup and decide if you think it could use more salt or not. Personally, I would rather add salt at the end, or let someone add it as they'd like, rather than making it to salty from the start. Remember, you can always add it, but you can't take it away!
I realize that this soup could have milk or cream in it, but being lactose intolerant I became used to cooking without either, but that's not to say you couldn't use it. I have in the past added either a drizzle of cream or milk to my bowl as a garnish. Or you could always go with the old faithful dab of butter in
the center of your bowl as my mother always insisted! Healthy or less healthy, that is the question!
Enjoy!
1 tbsp butter
3 large leeks, cut into 1cm rings (all of the white part and some of the green)
2 medium cooking onions, chopped
7 medium potatoes, quartered
salt and pepper, one large pinch of both
Add all ingredients to large pot and sweat the vegetables over medium or medium-high heat, stirring often for 5 minutes.
8 cups water
3 tbsp Bovril liquid chicken stock
Add water and chicken stock to pot, give it a stir and cover with a lid. Let it come to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium heat or a slow boil for 30- 40 minutes, or until all the vegetables are soft. At this stage, before blending, I often add another tablespoon of both olive oil and butter, but this is optional. Turn off the burner and blend to a nice smooth and creamy consistency with a hand blender. Taste test the soup and decide if you think it could use more salt or not. Personally, I would rather add salt at the end, or let someone add it as they'd like, rather than making it to salty from the start. Remember, you can always add it, but you can't take it away!
I realize that this soup could have milk or cream in it, but being lactose intolerant I became used to cooking without either, but that's not to say you couldn't use it. I have in the past added either a drizzle of cream or milk to my bowl as a garnish. Or you could always go with the old faithful dab of butter in
the center of your bowl as my mother always insisted! Healthy or less healthy, that is the question!
Enjoy!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Fratelli Restaurant, Riocan Drive, Barrhaven - GROSS!
Recently my husband and I went to Fratelli in Barrhaven. Phil was excited to go, as he's heard the restaurant hyped up in adverts by Lowell Green on 580 cfra for years, not that his is an opinion to follow.
To put it mildly, we were upset with our entire meal there. Restaurant reviews often begin with discussing the decor and service, which was all pleasant, but we went for the food, not the atmosphere.
To start out, Phil ordered the carpaccio as an antipasto. He had never seen it on a menu in Canada, and loved having it when staying with his Italian friends in Italy and France. He said it was supposed to be very simple, thinly sliced raw beef that is sort of 'cooked' by sitting out for 20 minutes or so in lemon juice. He was pretty shocked at what the waitress brought him. There was some type of mustard-mayonaise sauce covering most of it, which he tasted then scraped away as much as he could. There was also cheese shavings on the dish, but it was hardly recognisable to his palette which was full of the lemon marinade, lemon being the only part they got right. Lemon and cheese? Worst of all it was easy to tell that the beef had been laid out on the plate and then put aside in the freezer, because the slices in the center of the plate were still stone-frozen. So after scraping away all the nasty sauce and eating the tasteless cheese, he had basically a lump of frozen lemon-beef on his plate.
The only thing better about the main courses were that they were the appropriate temperature when they arrived. I had what the menu calls "homemade canneloni" and Phil had chicken tortellini in alfredo sauce. He always gets suspicious when he sees 'alfredo sauce' since it's unheard of in Italy, but he really wanted tortellini. Phil was sure that his was cooked from frozen, as the noodle part of the tortellini was tough like out of a freezer bag that you buy at the supermarket, not soft and supple like fresh pasta should be. The filling and sauce were equally bland at first taste, just like precooked supermarket pasta, and I could tell he was severly disappointed. The sauce had the bland taste and texture of supermarket bagged-powdered-sauce-stuff. When he asked the bus-girl to bring parmesan cheese so he could give the dish some flavor, she brought over a bowl of the crumbly Kraft 'parmesan' type, not real cheese, which only gave it a sandy texture, and maybe made the taste worse. This cost $17, and he was furious on the way home that a restaurant with an Italian name would serve this.
As for my dish, the 'homemade canneloni', I was almost as unimpressed. My sauce was also bland, it was supposed to have sundried tomatoes, but it was just a plain tomato sauce. I didn't let the bus-girl put the powdery 'parmesan' on my plate. Though the menu said my dish was to have ricotta and mozarella, there was only some melted cheese on top of the canneloni, and NONE inside them. It was basically rolled unseasoned ground meat, and dry to boot. Not a hint of green basil inside, no cheese, onion, garlic, nothing. At least the texture of the meat was good, but I could've got that from a hamburger. That's basically what it was, a plain hamburger rolled in pasta instead of in a bun, tossed into a bowl with tomato sauce. I think this cost us almost $20.
We were pretty appalled as we went over it again and again on the way home. Neither of our dishes had any typical Italian herbs, whether oregano, basil, rosemary, parsley or thyme. They were ultra bland and seemed thrown together from frozen and canned stuff you get at costco. The only part of my canneloni which was homemade seemed to be that they had stuffed the ground meat into the pasta themselves. We are sure it wasn't the cooks having an off night or anything, because we don't believe there are true cooks working there, just $15/hour kids warming ingredients up and putting them together. If that is how Fratelli operates, I'm sure it's no different at any of their other locations. We haven't been more let down by a restaurant in years, and we will NEVER go back!
To put it mildly, we were upset with our entire meal there. Restaurant reviews often begin with discussing the decor and service, which was all pleasant, but we went for the food, not the atmosphere.
To start out, Phil ordered the carpaccio as an antipasto. He had never seen it on a menu in Canada, and loved having it when staying with his Italian friends in Italy and France. He said it was supposed to be very simple, thinly sliced raw beef that is sort of 'cooked' by sitting out for 20 minutes or so in lemon juice. He was pretty shocked at what the waitress brought him. There was some type of mustard-mayonaise sauce covering most of it, which he tasted then scraped away as much as he could. There was also cheese shavings on the dish, but it was hardly recognisable to his palette which was full of the lemon marinade, lemon being the only part they got right. Lemon and cheese? Worst of all it was easy to tell that the beef had been laid out on the plate and then put aside in the freezer, because the slices in the center of the plate were still stone-frozen. So after scraping away all the nasty sauce and eating the tasteless cheese, he had basically a lump of frozen lemon-beef on his plate.
The only thing better about the main courses were that they were the appropriate temperature when they arrived. I had what the menu calls "homemade canneloni" and Phil had chicken tortellini in alfredo sauce. He always gets suspicious when he sees 'alfredo sauce' since it's unheard of in Italy, but he really wanted tortellini. Phil was sure that his was cooked from frozen, as the noodle part of the tortellini was tough like out of a freezer bag that you buy at the supermarket, not soft and supple like fresh pasta should be. The filling and sauce were equally bland at first taste, just like precooked supermarket pasta, and I could tell he was severly disappointed. The sauce had the bland taste and texture of supermarket bagged-powdered-sauce-stuff. When he asked the bus-girl to bring parmesan cheese so he could give the dish some flavor, she brought over a bowl of the crumbly Kraft 'parmesan' type, not real cheese, which only gave it a sandy texture, and maybe made the taste worse. This cost $17, and he was furious on the way home that a restaurant with an Italian name would serve this.
As for my dish, the 'homemade canneloni', I was almost as unimpressed. My sauce was also bland, it was supposed to have sundried tomatoes, but it was just a plain tomato sauce. I didn't let the bus-girl put the powdery 'parmesan' on my plate. Though the menu said my dish was to have ricotta and mozarella, there was only some melted cheese on top of the canneloni, and NONE inside them. It was basically rolled unseasoned ground meat, and dry to boot. Not a hint of green basil inside, no cheese, onion, garlic, nothing. At least the texture of the meat was good, but I could've got that from a hamburger. That's basically what it was, a plain hamburger rolled in pasta instead of in a bun, tossed into a bowl with tomato sauce. I think this cost us almost $20.
We were pretty appalled as we went over it again and again on the way home. Neither of our dishes had any typical Italian herbs, whether oregano, basil, rosemary, parsley or thyme. They were ultra bland and seemed thrown together from frozen and canned stuff you get at costco. The only part of my canneloni which was homemade seemed to be that they had stuffed the ground meat into the pasta themselves. We are sure it wasn't the cooks having an off night or anything, because we don't believe there are true cooks working there, just $15/hour kids warming ingredients up and putting them together. If that is how Fratelli operates, I'm sure it's no different at any of their other locations. We haven't been more let down by a restaurant in years, and we will NEVER go back!
We Love Pho Thi!
Just a note about one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants...
My husband and I often go to Pho Thi on Merivale Road in Ottawa for a quick and cheap bowl of soup. It is always really tasty, and we usually simply share their largest size bowl of Chicken or Beef Broth, with whatever meat in it. The menu is kind of funny that way, there is every combo you can think of except the obvious ones... So if you want beef in beef broth, you have to ask them for beef in chicken broth, and substitute the chicken broth for beef ha ha, and oddly not the other way around. But whatever. The point is, it's really good, it fills both of us up for a while, and costs 11 bucks. We never get entrees, just the soup. If we're really hungry, have nothing at home, and want to eat really fast, we go there... the soup is on the table within 5 minutes of ordering!
My husband and I often go to Pho Thi on Merivale Road in Ottawa for a quick and cheap bowl of soup. It is always really tasty, and we usually simply share their largest size bowl of Chicken or Beef Broth, with whatever meat in it. The menu is kind of funny that way, there is every combo you can think of except the obvious ones... So if you want beef in beef broth, you have to ask them for beef in chicken broth, and substitute the chicken broth for beef ha ha, and oddly not the other way around. But whatever. The point is, it's really good, it fills both of us up for a while, and costs 11 bucks. We never get entrees, just the soup. If we're really hungry, have nothing at home, and want to eat really fast, we go there... the soup is on the table within 5 minutes of ordering!
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