Southwestern Black Bean Salad

Last week it was too hot to cook anything, so Carolyn and I put our culinary minds to the test and developed a great dinner that didn't require heat of any kind. Just kidding--as usual, we ripped off somebody else's recipe and are now passing it off as our own creation. Today's dinner (or rather, last week's dinner, because I'm too lazy to post anything on time) is brought to you once again by the Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks.

As you probably surmised from the title, we had Southwestern Black Bean Salad. Being the lover of black beans that she is, Carolyn wasn't content to only have it once a week in tacos. And now that it's so hot outside, soup is out of the question. Naturally, then, she found a way to combine them with lettuce. The following is a fairly simple salad recipe, but what made it special was the Cilantro Lime Dressing (also found in the Moosewood) that topped it off.

Cilantro Lime Dressing:
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 entire scallions, chopped
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 cup oil

Blend all ingredients except oil until smooth. Mix in oil slowly by blending on low speed.

The Salad:
1 can of black beans, rinsed and drained
1 & 1/2 cups cooked corn
2 avocados
8 cups of your favorite leafy green vegetable (we used romaine today)
tortilla chips

-Toss corn and beans together with cilantro lime dressing in a bowl.
-On your plates, place your greens, then crush tortilla chips over top.
-Mound your corn/black bean/dressing in the center.
-Add cubed avocado to the mix.
-Grind a touch of black pepper over the whole business, along with a little salt focused at the avocado.

And that's all it takes. This salad was really tasty, and aside from a little blending, actually faster and easier than the chef-style salad that I typically make. The only reason not to make it weekly, on a whim, is that it requires two fairly time-sensitive ingredients, avocado and cilantro.

We actually cut this recipe in half, and I'd say it was almost enough food for 2 people on it's own. Of course, we'd eaten lunch late and were planning on milkshakes for dessert. If you want to round out the meal, I'd suggest a simple cheese quesadilla. Carolyn's recommendation, if you're making this salad in spring or early summer, is spicy tomato soup.

A note on additions: tomato and grated cheese would not be out of place at all in this salad, but I'd leave out the cheese if you're planning to pair with a quesadilla, to preserve contrast. The Moosewood suggests chopped green olives, which sounds gross to me.

Jammie Dodgers

Yes! I'd love some tea! What biscuits do you have there? Jammie Dodgers?! My favorite.

The after-dinner adventure tonight was baking Jammie Dodgers in honor of the last new Doctor Who episode for a long time. I found this recipe for "clones" of the British package cookie. I halved the recipe that was on the website and ended up a little short of 2 dozen sandwich cookies.

Combine:
1 cup butter (2 sticks) softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup, packed brown sugar
1 egg

In a separate bowl (or the same bowl, on top of the wet ingredients if you are lazy like me) combine:
3 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Add dry ingredients to the wet, one cup at a time, alternating with:
1/8 cup milk and
1 TABLESPOON vanilla extract


Chill in the refrigerator for at least a couple hours before you try to roll out the dough. Because my kitchen was so warm, I had to take out only small hunks of dough at a time so that it wouldn't all warm up too fast. Rolling out warm dough is a messy and frustrating task.


Roll dough on a floured surface-- about 1/8 inch thick. Cut out circles that are about 2 inches in diameter (I used a drinking glass to do this). Place cookies on a greased baking sheet. Make cute cut-outs in half of the cookies (these will be the tops of the sandwich cookies). I used a knife to make my cut-outs, but if you have tiny cookie cutters it would be easier. I incorporated the discarded bits from the center of the cut-out cookies back into my rolled out dough to be economical.


Bake at 350 for 8 minutes.


Cool.

Spread jam (I used seedless blackberry jam) on a plain cookie and top with a cut-out cookie. Repeat. I estimate I used about half a jar of jam.

Ben and I thought these cookies were great (worth the effort). That opinion was later verified by two people who are not authors on this blog-- so you can trust us on this one.

Falafel

My brother passed along this recipe for falafel. The recipe is copied from his e-mail (because I'm super lazy) with a few notes added.

1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 cloves garlic
1/2 chopped onion (we used red onion)
1/2 cup parsley
2 t olive oil
2 t hot sauce
3 T flour
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1/2 t paprika
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt, to taste

The recipe calls for baking these things. I ("I" meaning my brother, but we did this too. It's much too hot to be using the oven.) pan fry them on low heat until they're browned on both sides and heated through, you can try whichever. If you bake them, preheat to 400.

Pulse chickpeas and garlic in blender (If you have a food processor please use it! The chickpeas mush into a thick cement paste at the bottom of the blender. Ben added water to get things moving around in the blender, but that meant that our falafel was wetter and didn't form into very ball-like balls.)  Add onion, parsley, olive oil, and hot sauce, and blend until relatively smooth.

Transfer to mixing bowl. Mix in flour, cumin, coriander, paprika, baking powder, salt and pepper. The mixture should be mushy but firm enough to shape into balls. You can add some flour to firm up if necessary (we added at least twice as much flour because we had to add water while blending).

Pan fry in some oil. I've been using peanut because it's what we have. Presumably canola would work the same. Olive was a little less good the one time I used it. I do this on pretty low heat and they tend not to stick too much. I'll leave that to you. (We used canola oil.)

The recipe says this makes 12 falafels -- I obviously make them larger, because I only get about half that. Make them whatever size you find convenient. (We ended up with 8 falafel patties.)

If you bake, it says to form them into walnut size balls and flatten. Spray a baking sheet with some cooking spray and bake for 16-18 minutes, spray the top, flip, and bake for 8-10 more. 

These are so good (thanks, Brother!). Ben thought that he would like more hot sauce next time, but I thought the spices were perfect as they were; the cumin/hot sauce combo makes these slightly hot with a smokey flavor. We ate our falafel wrapped up in pita bread with cucumber, tomato, and ranch dressing. We used ranch because I had some vague idea that there was a white sauce that people used with falafel-- turned out to be a pretty good addition. I mentioned above that our falafel was wetter than typical, but in my opinion this was an improvement over other falafel I've had in the past; I think most restaurant falafel is too dry.