La Platicona Habla: Tastes, Passions and Pursuits

I have made some guacamole dips in my life, but I've never made it with Italian parsley and poblano peppers until today. I found this recipe in a Rick Bayless cookbook, but I was shocked to find that the recipe did not contain any onions. I cheated and added some anyways, although it would taste just fine without any. The recipe presented here doesn't reflect all of the ingredients Rick uses, including a hard queso fresco and raddish, but you can add these ingredients at the end.

Poblano peppers are also called pasilla peppers and are located in your grocer's produce aisle where the jalapenos and serrano peppers are. They come in a deep green color and are about the size of a small hand. They require some prep that you may want to do the day before if you plan on serving this at a BBQ or on the fly after work.

You will need:
- 2 poblano peppers
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 2 plum tomatoes
- 3 ripe avocados
- 2 key limes or 1 lime, juiced
- handful of chopped Italian parsley
- salt to taste
- 1/4 white onion, diced (optional, just mix in at the end)
- chips for dipping (I suggest blue corn)

Step One: Turn the oven to broil. Place a piece of foil on a cookie sheet and place the poblano peppers, tomatoes, and garlic cloves (with their skins still on) on top. Roast these for a few minutes and turn them so they blister on all sides. This takes only about 5-7 minutes if your oven is preheated. Remove the ingredients from the oven. Place the tomatoes and chiles in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. Place a dish towel around this to retain the heat. Let rest for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, peel the garlic and set aside. When chiles and tomatoes are done resting, remove the skins from the poblanos and tomatoes. Chop the tomatoes up and place them in a bowl. Remove the seeds from the chiles; chop the chiles up finely with the garlic and place in the bowl with the tomatoes. You can set this aside overnight if you want to serve this dip the next day.

Step Two: Take the avocados, cut in half and remove the pits. Scrape the flesh into the bowl with the tomato mixture. Using two spoons, gently mix the ingredients together until well incorporated and the avocado is mush. Add lime juice, italian parsley, and salt to taste. Eat this up!

This alternative recipe for guacamole had a deep smoky flavor from the roasted chiles and is especially delicious to folks (like my mom) who hate cilantro. I prefer the dip with onion, but it is not necessary here.

Labels: avocado, guacamole, Italian parsley, pasilla peppers

After attending a garden party recently, I just couldn't resist asking the host for her cauliflower salad recipe. Cauliflower, that beautiful creamy floret, was bathed in a lemon parsley pesto and then dotted with sicilian green olives. While my host gave me the ingredients, I didn't ask for the exact portions, so I made them up (as usual). Feel free to tinker with this dish, serving it warm or cold, and adding different herbs if you have them.

You will need:
- 1 head of cauliflower, washed and cut into small pieces
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 chile piquin
- 1/2 bunch of Italian parsley
- 1 shallot or 1/4 white onion
- 8 large green olives for the pesto and 10 for the salad roughly chopped (I used green sicilian olives, but you can use kalamata too)
- salt & pepper to taste
- 1/2 c of olive oil

Step One: Place the cauliflower florets in a heated stock pot with 1/2 c of water and a pinch of salt. Cover the pan and cook over medium-high heat for 5-7 minutes until cauliflower softens. The texture you are looking for should be slightly crunchy as this is a salad, not a soup mush.
Remove, drain, rinse under cold water and set aside.

Step Two: In a blender, combine the parsley, garlic, chile, onion, 8 olives, and lemon juice. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil until totally incorporated.

Step Three: Bathe the cauliflower in the pesto and add the remaining olives to them. Serve warm or cold with a side of pasta or good bread and a salad.

Labels: cauliflower, Italian parsley, lemon, olives, salad

Split peas, part of that lovely legume family, were the focus of my culinary experiment after eating a delicious bowl of yellow split pea soup from a middle eastern restaurant in Denver. I savored every bite of this soup and attempted to decipher all of its ingredients. While I was unable to do just that, I did manage to come up with a darn close version.
My only regret is that I did not cook the split peas long enough, so they turned out a little tougher than I would have wanted. This yellow split pea recipe will almost complete the split pea/daal soup array of recipes posted on this site. If you’ve never tried split peas, I suggest starting with the green split pea soup recipe first because its flavors are more common than the seasonings used for this dish.

You will need:
- 2 c of yellow split peas (pick through them and pick out the rotten ones)
- 3 c of vegetable or chicken stock
- 4 c of water
- ½ finely diced yellow onion
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 2 tsp whole cumin seeds
- handful of chopped flat leafed Italian parsley
- juice from 1 lime
- salt & pepper to taste
- basmati rice, cooked

Step One: In a crockpot, combine the split peas, stock, water, spices (except Italian parsley), garlic, and onion. Put the crockpot on low and cook all day while away at work, or on high for 4 hours.
If you don’t have a crockpot, place the garlic and onions in a stock pot and sauté with 3 tbsp of olive oil. When translucent, add spices, split peas, stock, and water. Bring to a boil; turn this down to medium and cover it. Cook this for 1-2 hours until the peas are very soft. Stir this so it won’t stick to the bottom.

Step Two: When cooked, add the juice of one lime and stir in the Italian parsley. Correct the seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve this over cooked basmati rice, or eat as a soup. If you want more liquid, add more stock (1 c at a time) and cook for another 10 minutes until warm.

Labels: Italian parsley, lemon, split peas

I absolutely adore chickpeas, whether in a soup or on a salad, the texture and matte flavor is a wonderful addition to your legume family. Chickpeas are native to southwest Asia and have been cultivated for over 9,000 years. They are unique in the legume family for being nearly 5% oil by weight, as opposed to 1-2%. Chickpeas, a.k.a. garbanzo beans, form a main staple in India where the legume is hulled and split to make chana dal, a ground flour for pakoras, papadums, and fried goods. If you eat at Graze restaurant in Albuquerque, the chef makes these great chickpea french fries by molding chickpea flour into little french fry shaped sticks and lightly frying them.

So anyways, I decided to whip up a batch of fresh hummus for some dinner guests last week and it turned out marvelous. Hummus is basically a chickpea spread that is flavored with salt, lemon, parsley, and olive oil. It is a great lunch spread for vegetarian sandwiches, and makes a good appetizer for a dinner, and finger food for a cocktail party.

You will need:
- 2 cans of garbanzo beans, drained
- 3 cloves of minced garlic
- handful of chopped flat leafed italian parsley
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1/2 c of olive oil
- 1 tsp of kosher salt
- pepper to taste

Step One: In a food processor (if using a blender, add 1 can of beans, and slowly add the second so as not to over fill the blender container), combine the beans, garlic, parsley, pepper, and salt. Roughly blend.

Step Two: Add lemon juice and turn blender on high. Through the hole in the top of the blender or the food processor, slowly drizzle in the 1/2 c of olive oil, adding more if necessary. The consistency should be that of a bean dip, and should not be runny. You can experiment with flavors by adding a handful of roasted red peppers or kalamata olives.

Scrape the dip out of the processor or blender and serve in a bowl; drizzle the hummus with olive oil. Eat hummus with toasted pita bread (you can heat it in the oven for a few minutes), a side of olives and peppers goes well with this.

Labels: garbanzo beans, Italian parsley, lemon, olive oil