I love bulgur. I try to make it whenever possible. Last year I was all about the dried cranberry bulgar salad from Delicious Days, but about six months ago I decided I wanted to try different tastes and variations of the same salad, so my experimenting began. What I discovered along the way wasn’t that surprising to me, really. I figured out that I didn’t like fruit or sweet foods mixed with my savoury salads. I just didn’t. Well, aside from dried cranberries. They work. I don’t know why or how, and I don’t care, because they work, damn it.

So I accepted this fact about my taste buds and my brain, and moved on to variations of savoury additions for this particular salad. I tried a lot of different ingredients, hoping each time I had found the winning ingredient that would pull it all together as well as the dried cranberries did. And guess what? It took me a few months to stumble upon the one and only ingredients I can tolerate in this salad, and a lot of tries later, but I did it! And you will understand when I tell you because it’s probably one of the last ingredients that would cross your mind too.

The magic ingredient, for my money anyway, is crushed or chopped up pistachios! Yup. There you have it, kids. Pistachios. Huh. I did not see that one coming, either. Not only does it taste delicious, it balances out the texture and colour palettes, too. Try it. You just may end up loving it as much as I do, too.

* Chicken stock (pre-made, packet or from scratch – whichever you desire)
* Chickpeas (fresh from the can and washed, or dry and soaked overnight – doesn’t matter)
* Bulgar (grain size is personal choice, but I prefer medium coarse more)
* Mushrooms (I love to add veg wherever possible, and I use the canned to speed this up)
* Tomato (one medium, diced, should be fine for 4 servings)
* Pistachios (a handful, crushed or coarsely chopped)

Cut chunks of cauliflower and broccoli tossed in olive oil with coarse salt, cracked pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes, and then baked at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Serve with any meat dish you like.

Zucchini fritters:
Makes four generous, thick patties. This is an eggless recipe. The moisture from the zucchini and the dryness from the homemade bread crumbs will keep them from falling apart after you chill them for at least 24 hrs.

3-4 lbs of zucchini, washed sectioned, seeded and grated
6 tbsp or more coarse salt to encourage the draining of water from the grated zucchini

Over a bowl, place a fine mesh sieve or a broad mesh sieve with a cheese cloth inside it. Place your grated zucchini in the sieve and top with the salt. Mix it up so the bottom layer gets coated in salt, too. Let it stand in the fridge over night. The next day, squeeze the zucchini mixture up against the sides of the sieve to get rid of any water that is remaining in the mixture. You don’t want it sopping wet, but at the same time, you don’t want it bone dry either. You should feel the moisture from the grates when you touch it, but your fingers shouldn’t be coated in zuke juice.

2 or 3 medium slices of stale bread (I like to use multigrain or whole wheat)
1/2 C of dried oregano, dried basil, dried thyme mixed with S&P to taste.
3 tbsp all purpose flour

Break up the break into small torn cubes into a food processor and pulse till you get a fine grind. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl with the bread grinds. Toss well.

Add the zuke grates to the dry ingredients in the bowl and start kneading them together to incorporate all the dry with the wet. In the end you will have a big ball. Shape it out on a cutting board into a 1 1/2″ square and cut it into four equal parts. Take each part into your hands and start rolling it around to make a ball. Flatten the ball out on the cutting board into a 1/2″ or slightly thicker medallion. Do this for all four chunks.

Insert one end of a thin 5″ strip of wax paper into the bowl to cover the bottom and using a bench scraper to life the patty up, place one on top of the paper. Fold the paper over top of the first patty and scrape up the second. Layer all the patties over the wax paper till the patties are all in the bowl and covered. I needed a second strip of wax paper to finish the job, but when I was done, I left the patties sitting in the fridge, covered, over night before I pan fried them in a very small amount of olive oil over medium heat.

You can also choose to use any oil you like, or Pam spray. All work well to get a lovely brown sear on each side of the patties. Pan fry for roughly 5 minutes on the first side, flip them over and cook for another 3-5 more minutes. Serve hot or cooled down plated as is or inside a burger bun.. Top with whatever condiment you like.

So, this week was a bust for me as far as cooking and baking goes. Didn’t get to do much. DH’s nephew came home to Canada after four years in Asia, DH was swamped with lots of work at night after we closed the store, and we did lots o’laundry. All of that adds up to me cooking… twice, I think, all week. And they were fast and dirty meals, too. Nothing fancy, nothing new. Nothing to blog about certainly. Sorry. :-\

I did think of a few tips I wanted to pass along to those of you who want to make bread but don’t because you’re like me and you can’t stand sticky anything on your fingers as you work.

1. I have been known to employ my KitchenAid mixer to do the bulk of the dough kneading for me and then when the ball is formed, turning it out on the counter and giving it ten of the best minutes of my upper body workout.

2. Before DH bought me the Mixinator, I employed another method: mixing the wet and dry ingredients in a bowl with a big wooden spoon till it was all incorporated before turning it out onto the counter.

3. Recently I came across another clean method, and you will love this. It’s so simple, so clever, you will roll your eyes while asking yourselves why you never thought of it yourself. The idea is to lay out a generous sheet of parchment or wax paper on the counter, drop your flour down, make your well and then add your wet ingredients in the middle. Now, here is the fun part: Take diagonal corners of the paper and push the flour into the middle of the wet ingredients – alternating corners as you go before doing a quarter turn of the paper before picking up two more corners. Do this till all of the flour is more or less incorporated and you feel the ball isn’t sticky anymore. From there you can then turn it out and do your normal kneading on a lightly floured counter top.

Hopefully you’ll find one of these methods works well enough for you to adopt. Happy bread making!