Hummus with Sweet and Spicy Carrots

 

Hummus with Sweet and Spicy Carrots

I've got this thing for roasted carrots with dobanjang and honey going on lately. I love the texture and flavors.

Last trip to the store, I bought some chickpeas and some carrots, knowing that Ann wanted to dip carrots into a batch of hummus for a light dinner. But the weather is still cold here in Central Oregon and I wasn't really feeling such summery fare. I thought instead to roast the carrots and serve them still warm out of the oven on a bed of hummus.

Right now, it is just too much effort to come up with a recipe for the two major ingredients here, hummus and the dobanjang honey sauce in which the carrots are tossed. Both of these I make at the drop of hat in the quantities that I want, spiced like I want. It robs my cooking of all spontaneity to measure and to assign a precise ingredient list to such whimsy. In short, codifying a dish robs all my joy. Sorry. Not sorry.

The hummus is chickpeas, lemon juice, pimiento-stuffed manzanilla olives with some brine, garlic, pimentón, salt, a splash each of sriracha and sesame oil, with enough water to smooth it out to a rough paste. I'm not the biggest fan of super smooth hummus. It's great and all that, but I really do prefer more texture.

The sweet and spicy sauce could be made from anything spicy and anything sweet, but this version is about equal parts dobanjang and honey with a touch each of soy sauce and rice vinegar, to add salt and to tame the sweet a bit.

Maybe someday I will get around to codifying these two recipes, especially if I ever decide to write about creative vegan fare.

Recipe: Roasted Potatoes and Asparagus with Salsa Verde

Roasted Potatoes and Asparagus with Salsa Verde

The other day, our store had a big bag of small potatoes on special and we brought one home along with a bundle of asparagus whose price has plummeted with the arrival of spring in a lot of parts of this hemisphere, here excepted. We won't see spring temperatures for a few weeks, but a guy can live vicariously via the produce in the stores, can he not?

I ended up roasting one sheet tray of asparagus and another of the baby potatoes, then mixed the asparagus with some of the potatoes for our dinner. We liked the combination so much that I decided to do it again.

But meanwhile, leftover from this dinner was a small container of roasted potatoes and being a hungry guy, I pulled them out of the fridge for my lunch. Right next to them was a container of recently made salsa verde and I thought, "Self, wouldn't these two be good together?" And I put them together and they were good and I filed that note away for our next roasted potato and asparagus dinner.

And that brings us to dinner last evening, pictured above. While the potatoes and asparagus roasted, I made a batch each of salsa verde and another of my pimentón (smoked paprika) sauce, recipes below. This salsa verde is a new sauce that I started making in the last year; the pimentón sauce, I've been making since before opening the restaurant, some 20-plus years ago.

The combination of vegetables with the bright and spicy green sauce contrasted with the rich and smoky orange paprika sauce was as good as I had imagined it would be. And it made a fantastic dinner on a cold March night, warm, comforting, spicy, smoky, low calorie, lowish fat, and most importantly, delicious.

Recipe: Roasted Potatoes and Asparagus with Salsa Verde

You don't need a formal recipe or fixed amounts to serve this dinner. For entrée-sized portions, for every two people, start with a pound and a half each of baby waxy potatoes and asparagus. This would also make a wonderful side for a grilled steak, in which case, this amount would likely serve four people.

1.5 pounds small waxy potatoes
1.5 pounds asparagus
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 cup salsa verde
2 tablespoons pimentón sauce

Preheat your oven to hot, about 400F. Toss the potatoes with olive oil, salt, and pepper and put on a sheet tray. Break off the tough ends of the asparagus and cut the remaining tender stalks to serving size; I cut each stalk into three pieces. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper and put on another sheet tray. Place the two sheet trays in the oven and roast the vegetables until done. The asparagus will likely take 20-25 minutes while the potatoes, depending on size, will take 35-45 minutes.

Combine the roasted vegetables with the half cup of salsa verde and toss well. Divide into two serving bowls and drizzle with the pimentón sauce.

Recipe: Salsa Verde

This is a recipe that I have published before, but it's a short one and easier to include it here than to go and chase it down. I mainly like to use fresh vegetables versus canned ones, but this sauce is a great use for canned tomatillos because it avoids you having to cook the tomatillos before making the salsa.

I specify serrano chile in the recipe simply because it is a reliably spicy chile that is available everywhere all year round. In practice, I make the sauce with whatever spicy green chile I happen to have. Last year, it was most frequently Sugar Rush Peach peppers because a friend gave me a plant.

You'll need a good blender to make this sauce. Here's a plug for my venerable VitaMix, veteran of the restaurant kitchen. At one point, we had five of them between the kitchen and the bar at the restaurant. And we probably went through about a dozen of them total over the 15-year life of the restaurant. 

1 28-ounce can whole tomatillos, drained
2-3 large cloves garlic
1 serrano chile, sliced
1 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt (to taste)

Place all the ingredients in the blender and starting on low speed, gradually increasing the speed as the ingredients liquefy, blend until you achieve a smooth sauce. Season to taste with additional salt, if necessary. Will keep, tightly covered under refrigeration, about a week.

Recipe: Pimentón Sauce

This sauce is such a good flavor enhancer and color booster for a dish that we used to make it by the gallon at the restaurant, about a week's supply. Quantities are approximate in that I never measure exactly. Quality matters: use a great brand of real Pimentón de la Vera from Spain, not some knock-off. And restraint matters: pimentón gets really bitter when used in large amounts, so go easy until you get a feel for how you like it. The following recipe yields about a cup of sauce.

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Pimentón de la Vera
1/2 cup water
salt to taste

Start by putting the mayonnaise in a bowl and sprinkling the pimentón and a dash of salt over it. Mix thoroughly with a spoon, pressing the pimentón against the bowl as needed to remove any lumps. Mix until the paste is evenly colored throughout. Add water in small amounts, mixing it in well before adding more. Thin the sauce to the consistency that you desire. Season with salt as necessary. Store under refrigeration almost indefinitely. I typically load the sauce into a squirt bottle to make garnishing easy.