These three ingredients were those chosen for the foodlovers challenge this week.
We had to immediately exclude preserved lemons from consideration as we didn't have any and it takes a few weeks to make them.
Kyla decided to make Salt and Pepper
Squid. We have had this a couple of times when we have been out for dinner, and all the kids love it, so were very pleased with Kyla's choice. She made a tempura batter, and dipped the scored squid pieces into it before deep frying it. I did help at this point as the thought of leaving Kyla to it (capable though she may be) was a little too worrying.
I chose to use chickpeas this time.
I don't normally buy pre-prepared food, but one that I have been buying lately is Lisa's Felafel Mix. It is really tasty and convenient as it stores in the fridge for a few weeks in it's nice little plastic pouch, just waiting for a busy day.
So, I thought I should give felafels a go myself. I did cheat and use tinned chickpeas as I did not have time this weekend to soak and boil the dried variety.
It was easy to make as you just throw everything in the food processor, then chill for 2 hours. I think that I pureed them for a little bit long as they were a bit smooth in texture, and should have had a bit longer in the fridge... It was getting a bit late to wait for them to chill fully. They tasted really good though, and I will definitely make them again. The garden is still producing parsley, tomatoes and lettuces so they were nice and fresh for this.
Last weekend Sandra and Craig took the kids to the Dad's soccer game while I did some work. They dropped into the Swiss bakery on Rosebank road, and bought some pretzel rolls. This afternoon we were at Nosh, and we got the kids a soft pretzel from there. So, the next thing to do was to see if I could make them.
Kyla had described these little rolls to me, and so after a look on the very useful net, I settled on a recipe to try. After a bit of further searching, we discovered that the caramel/brown colour on the rolls was dur to dipping them in a lye solution.... which seems slightly alarming when it comes with a warning about how caustic the lye solution is! Due to not having lye on hand (surprise, surprise) I had to do a bit of trial and error.
I did half the rolls dipping them in a cold baking soda solution (on the right of the photo), and the other half (on the left) were dipped in a boiling baking soda solution for about 30 seconds.
Kyla snuck out of her room (she was supposed to be going to sleep) when she heard the oven beep, and was quite impressed with my efforts. She tells me that the ones on the left (boiling baking soda solution) look the most like the ones they had. She has yet to taste them, but we have tried them and they are really nice.
This weeks soccer scores:
Kyla - her team had a bye
Braden - his team won, 6-1 (the 1 was actually an own goal scored by another defender - not Braden)
Lauren - her team drew 3-3 against a team called The Champions. They are actually really good team, so they did well.
Daryl - the old boys won 2-1, a hard game, and apparently it was supposed to be one of the easier teams in the league!
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