Putting Peppers To Work: Hummus!

Big things are coming soon to Six-Seven-Eight, including our kick off a culinary world tour where we'll make a meal from a different country or region taking a full circular route around the world. Before the taste bud travel begins, our pepper comparison guide is finally coming to help you know the differences between peppers, how hot they are, and what to cook them with.

Prior to our full guide, let's take a look at a fun way to use several different peppers together by making a middle eastern favorite and veggie go-to food: Hummus!

If you haven't had hummus before, the basic idea is to make a dip using the base ingredients of chickpeas (garbanzo beans), tahini (a paste made of sesame), and garlic. While fantastic as a dip just for using with chips or veggies, hummus has a pretty big range of applications, from using it on sandwiches in place of mayo and mustard, or spreading on tortillas to make a wrap.

The most expensive ingredient in hummus is easily the tahini, which can run as much as seven or eight dollars a jar, depending on where you get it. Tahini is available in health food stores, or at the grocery store in the same section as soy products. Although the initial investment is a bit steep, you only need about 1/4 of the jar for a single can of garbanzo beans, so it ends up evening out in the end. When using tahini, keep in mind that it will settle over time into a top liquid layer and a bottom solid layer, so be sure to mix it thoroughly before adding it to anything. 

To make our hummus a little more exciting, we're going to put in roasted vegetables. Here I've cut up large strips of annaheim, jalepeno, yellow banana pepper, red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, and tomato.

To roast your veggies, set the oven to "Broil" and leave the door just slightly open. Cook for about six to seven minutes, until the skins are blackened and the flesh of the peppers and tomato are getting soft.

After being cooked, allow the peppers to cool and remove the blackened skin, which peels off easily once properly roasted.

Here I've chopped up the peppers and tomato so they will blend easier once we start mixing together all the main ingredients.

Now it's time to get to the heart of the hummus creation process. In a food processor put together a can of garbanzo beans (include some of the water from the can for easier mixing), about 1/4 to 1/2 the jar of tahini, chopped garlic, the roasted peppers and tomato, a dab of vegetable oil, and the juice of 1/2 to 1 whole lemon. I recommend also chopping up a handful or two of either fresh cilantro or parsley.

While a food processor is ideal, you can also make hummus with either a blender or an electric hand mixer. If you are using a blender, make the hummus in small batches and then mix them all together to avoid overworking the appliance or having the blades get stuck on thick chunks.

Make it thinner or thicker to your liking, depending on what you plan on using the final product on, by adding in more or less liquid. This isn't the end though - you need to add in some spices to change up the flavor.  Cumin is a standard in most hummus recipes, as is salt and pepper. Adding in a few dashes of paprika also gives the end result a very nice color.  If you want to make different varieties of hummus past the norm, try adding in different hot sauces or salsa as well and then mix thoroughly.

Once you've got a nice big batch of delicious hummus, you'll need something to dip in it, and we're going to do homemade tortilla chips.  You can make great chips by frying corn tortillas in oil, but this time we're going to do something a bit healthier by baking slices of flour tortillas coated in cooking spray.

And here's the result of all that roasting, chopping, juicing, and blending, along with some fantastic (and easy!) crispy chips.

For more ideas to get started making your own dip, check out a full listing of various hummus recipes at this location.

Other Ingredient Ideas:  Green onions, habeneros, lime, Manzanilla olives, fresh basil

Ordinary to Extraordinary Part1: Habanero Seafood Pasta

In addition to finding new ways to interconnect meals and stretch one main meat component into several different meals, we have been trying a few other ways to save on food costs. Our strategy lately has been to go through our freezer and cabinets to use up forgotten ingredients, as well as picking cheaper lunch materials at the grocery store. This is a bit of a challenge for us, because we like our food to be exciting and full of flavor, so Ramen and frozen dinners aren't our usual choices. We've discovered with a bit of ingenuity and a willingness to try new or unexpected combinations, it isn't all that difficult to make the most ordinary foods into something more extraordinary. Later down the line we'll cover how to make things as simple as hot dogs or even microwave hamburgers into full-fledged awesome entrees,  but this week we're covering how to take very basic seafood and make a restaurant style dinner.

Digging through the fridge we came up with a half empty super cheap bottle of white wine, along with some frozen seafood we discovered while cleaning out the freezer. Some time back we had bought a couple of $1 vacuum packed seafood portions (tilapia, salmon, and scallops) to use for random lunches or whatever and promptly forgot about them, and we also had a bag of frozen shrimp leftover from when Jacob worked the Albertsons stand at the wine and food festival.  None of these on their own make a great meal, and the $1 fish in particular needed a little something extra to be jazzed up and worth becoming an actual meal. Inspiration struck when I realized we still had a habanero pepper left from our upcoming pepper comparison guide.

Among the spiciest peppers that planet Earth has to offer, the habanero is not to be trifled with, as it packs a serious kick. In small quantities though, this fiery fruit offers a unique flavor and just enough heat to keep things interesting.

To start off with, I decided to do a marinade for the shrimp using this spicy recipe as my starting point. The marinade is started by chopping up green onion, garlic, half a habanero, and a handful of cilantro leaves (we'll cover how to use habaneros in a later blog, but it's worth mentioning here that you absolutely should either use gloves or hold one part of the pepper with a fork while cutting with a knife - do not touch this directly to your skin).

All the chopped ingredients are then placed in a bowl along with 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the white wine. Then we change up the flavors by adding in a variety of fun seasonings: parsley, sage, and thyme. To add some sour notes and complement the cilantro, I also squeezed in a bit of lemon juice.

Here the shrimp are being mixed into the marinade and getting ready to sit in the fridge for awhile to soak in the flavors. Silly me, I accidentally left the tails on and had to remove them later before cooking.

While the shrimp were soaking in all that fantastic spicy/sweet/tart flavor from the marinade, I started working on a sauce for the fish and scallops to use up the other half of the pepper. I found a recipe online from a habanero themed website specifically for seafood, but it absurdly called for TEN habaneros! Seeing as how I enjoy having taste buds, I failed to follow that part of the recipe :)

For my version, I chopped up half an onion, half a yellow banana pepper, half a serrano pepper, half a habanero, one chipotle pepper in adobo sauce (more details on using this fun canned pepper will come in our upcoming blog just on peppers) some garlic, and half a green apple.

Everything is pulsed together in the blender with the rest of the bottle of wine and some apple cider vinegar for a touch of the sweet. The sauce is heated up for a few minutes to fully release all the flavors, then refrigerated.

Once the marinade and sauce were ready, I peeled the tails off the shrimp and got down to the business of cooking. I wrapped the tilapia, salmon, and scallops into separate tin foil pouches and doused them liberally with the habanero-apple sauce. The shrimp were already flavorful enough from the marinade, so they went straight on the sheet and were baked along with the fish.

But how to tie it all together? Just shrimp and fish isn't exactly a meal - which is why it all went over pasta. We split up the fish portions into several pieces so everyone got a bit of everything, and then tossed the scallops and shrimp over spaghetti. All the flavors essentially made their own sauce for the pasta, but for a little added kick I spooned some more of the habanero-apple sauce onto the spaghetti. This would also work great with linguine or fettuccine.

There's lots more coming up on the horizon here at Six-Seven-Eight, so stay tuned for more tips on turning ordinary ingredients into extraordinary fare, how to use a range of different peppers, how to make cheesecake that your friends won't be able to get enough of, and our culinary "world tour!"

Recreating An Olive Garden Dinner

As a fun break from our standard weekly meals, we recently decided to have some friends over for a themed dinner night in which we would recreate Olive Garden recipes including a sausage soup, breadsticks, fettuccine alfredo, and a colorful house salad. Several of the recipes came from (or were inspired by)"Top Secret Restaurant Recipes" by Todd Wilbur, a restaurant clone recipe we got as a gift a few years back (thanks Matt!)

Our meal started off with a fabulous Toscana soup, which gave us an opportunity to use the chicken stock we made previously from our Easter dinner roasted chicken. Several cups of the stock were first mixed with heavy cream and heated up.

While the stock and cream were being mixed, spicy Italian sausages are cooked up on the stovetop. Any type of sausage will do, but adding a bit of spice really makes the soup's flavor stand out more.

After heating through, each sausage is sliced into small pieces at an angle. Add more or less sausage depending on how thick and hearty you want your soup to be.

Several russet potatoes are peeled and boiled as though you would be making mashed potatoes. After softening up, each potato is cut into small cubes and dropped into the stock/cream base.

Here we're adding in one whole bunch of chopped kale - a vegetable we'd regrettably never had cause to use before. Unlike lettuce, the kale actually retains a bit of its shape when heated or soaked and adds a slightly bitter flavor that is surprisingly pleasant and works very well with the sausage and cream. Without question we will be finding new recipes using kale in the near future.

Now that everything is cooked and chopped, the slices of sausage are splashed into the pot. For seasoning, throw in some salt and crushed red pepper flakes to finish off this deceptively simple soup that actually has a complex flavor.

The completed soup is both visually stunning and amazingly appealing to the palette, and easily as good or better than what you'd get while dining out.

The soup is just one stage of our Olive Garden meal, though, and what Italian restaurant dinner doesn't come with a few breadsticks? For our base, we actually used a pizza crust recipe that makes a soft dough perfect for pizza, cheesesticks, or just plain old breadsticks.  Here the yeast, water, oil, and other ingredients are mixed together and rising. It doesn't look like much now, but in a few minutes...

...you get a plump and perfect dough ready to be rolled out and topped with melter butter and garlic.

The dough is sliced up into portions and ready to go into the oven at 450 for about 15 minutes. This recipe is easily doubled or halved as well, if you need more or less for a group of people or just a pizza dinner for two.

After coming out of the oven, each breadstick is powdered with garlic salt for a little extra salty flavor, making them perfect to dip either into the soup or even the pasta sauce.

A dinner like this deserves a high quality salad to match the great soup and bread! Normally when making an alfredo sauce I like to put together our own caesar dressing, but this time we went with a restaurant style house salad with Italian dressing. Here's one of our salads, complete with tomato wedges, olives, slices of red onion, croutons, and a peperoncini hiding out in the back.

Not everyone liked the same ingredients (apparently we know some weirdos who aren't into tomato somehow), so everyone got a customized salad before dinner started.

For the main course we had a classic: fettuccine alfredo! This versatile sauce is best when you only use fresh ingredients and keep it very simple - try to max out at about 5 ingredients total or less.

A stick of butter, some heavy cream, pepper, and shredded or shaved Parmesan cheese is all you need to make a fantastic alfredo sauce. There are plenty of other ways to make alfredo though, so if you feel like perusing your options, check out this listing of potential recipes. For a spicy version, chop up some habenero and throw it in, or if you have some lemon-pepper pasta in the cupboards, add some lemon juice and grated lemon zest for a tart twist.

Unlike alfredo from a jar, your homemade sauce will thicken up to the point of becoming solid when the leftovers are refrigerated. Instead of microwaving your leftovers, plop the alfredo into a sauce pan and cook on a low heat, adding in a few tablespoons of milk or cream until it returns to its original consistency.

Creamy pasta to die for, salty breadsticks, five star soup, and a restaurant quality house salad - what more could you ask for?

How about a table full of friends and family to share it with?  Here's Cristal, Molly, Jacob, and me digging in, with Megan behind the camera.

We may not live anywhere close to an Olive Garden, but we sure weren't going to let that stop us from having the Italian dinner we wanted. Stay tuned for more cooking adventures coming soon as we explore how to use different types of peppers and making a cheesecake that's better than anything you'll find at the store.

Interconnecting Meals

In our recent blog entries about eating great food on a budget and keeping Easter leftovers going, we explored a few ways to have several meals based one around one main meat or vegetable to save money and stretch out food across several dinners. We briefly mentioned a stock that was made by using the bones from whole roast chicken or grilled chicken drumsticks, and now we'll go a little more in-depth into how to make an amazing stock that can either be used for a soup the next day, or frozen and saved for any number of meals down the line.

To start a stock, chop a few vegetables, like onions and celery. These don't need to be diced small or even be uniform in size, as they are only there to add flavor and won't be directly eaten (although you could definitely take them out of the stock afterwards to use immediately, such as by adding them to roasted potatoes).

To get the most flavor from the vegetables, cook the onion, celery, and carrots in a small amount of oil for a few minutes until they are just turning soft.

At this point we threw in sliced garlic cloves and the leftover bones, fat, and skin from the roasted whole chicken we made for Easter dinner. Everything is mixed together thoroughly and then seasoned with some red pepper flakes a few whole peppercorns.

Fill your pan up with water and allow the stock to cook for several hours until all the flavors have properly mingled. This is a basic stock to use as a base for just about any type of soup, but you can jazz this up in different ways depending on what you want to make. For instance, the stock could be taken in a more Mexican direction by throwing in cilantro and cumin. You can also find a good stock recipe from Alton Brown at this location. By using the leftover chicken carcasses, in addition to the other meals mentioned in recent blogs, we ended up getting around five days worth of lunches and dinners out of our Easter feast.

There are plenty of ways to interconnect the ingredients from your weekly shopping trip into multiple meals besides just reusing bones for stock. Last week I wanted to get peanuts for a salad, but we needed to find another way to use a bag of peanuts to save on cost. Taking a look through our pantry we noticed we had a bag of rice, and then checking the meal list we saw we would have several different peppers and veggies for other meals. Putting all our ingredients together, we decided to make an Asian rice bowl.

Here are the main ingredients for the bowl, featuring bright reds and oranges from bell peppers, along with both hot and sweet flavors from green onions, banana pepper, poblano pepper, and finally some sliced mushrooms to add a bit of a meaty texture.

Here I'm slicing up pieces of chicken (amazingly still from those Easter birds - they lasted forever and were a steal on sale for 79 cents a pound!) and you can also see the shelled peanuts.

All the vegetables are getting a quick cooking on the skillet to soften up and mingle their flavors together.

To add an Asian twist, here's Megan pouring in both teriyaki and soy sauce to the cooking veggies.

And in the last few minutes of cooking, the peanuts get tossed in for a fun crunch to offset the texture of the rice.

The finished vegetable/chicken/peanut mixture is spooned over a bowlful of white rice and then tossed with extra soy and even a little teriyaki hot sauce.

But what about the salad that started this whole adventure? This one went a very different direction and was sweet instead of savory with apple, croutons, and of course the peanuts. 

To match the flavor of the fruits and nuts I used a cranberry walnut dressing, but poppy seed or any other sweet style dressing would work equally well for this great change-of-pace salad.

Every now and again we like to hit the supermarket on weekday evenings to check for clearance lunch meat or other deli offerings that need to be used up right away. The deli department at many stores mark down their hot food prices at the end of the evening, which can result in some really great deals as long as you are willing to use up the food the same or next day. Recently we found a $5 package of chicken strips for $1.50, and managed to make several different fun meals out of it we wouldn't normally eat.

Here I'm putting together another salad, with crunchy fresh green beans, red bell pepper, jalapeno, green onion, and pieces from one chicken strip.

The different textures, flavors, and colors from the meats and veggies gives a stunning presentation for a salad that's actually rather simple. The chicken strip chunks really made the salad more exciting and filling, and the meal was much healthier than just eating the chicken strips by themselves with dipping sauce.

To take this up to the next level, I also grated some hot pepper cheese on top, but mozzarella or sharp cheddar would do nicely as well.

For the dressing I went with a lite caesar, but honey mustard would make a great flavor combination with the chicken strips and red peppers.

The honey mustard idea got me thinking that I wanted something similar to the salad, but in a sandwich format. Here I've sliced up avacado, tomato, poblano pepper, and cheddar. I took two chicken strips and sliced them both in half lengthwise so they perfectly covered a large slice of bread.

I melted the cheddar on top of the chicken, spread out some honey mustard dressing on the bread, and then layered on all the veggies with a bit of lettuce.

This was one heck of a sandwich, easily on par with what you might get on a restaurant's lunch menu, and something I'll definitely make again to play around with different ingredients.

And now I sign off so we can get started on our Olive Garden clone night, where we will make soup, salad, pasta, and bread sticks mimicking that restaurant's style. Coming up soon we also have blogs covering how to make the perfect cheesecake, comparing different peppers and how to use them, and a hop scotch between meals from different countries to get more variety in our cooking adventures.