The full title is Spiced Chickpea Wraps with Tahini dressing. When I first made this, I was so impressed at how much it tasted like a falafel sandwich, which I LOVE, so it fast became a favorite. It’s pretty simple, and I really need to shout out to Thug Kitchen, where this recipe comes from. I also like the way the author writes, making cooking fun and simple and profane! You begin with cooking the chickpeas till they begin to pop like popcorn, then you cook down a liquid blend of soy, maple syrup and lemon juice before adding a spice blend including garlic powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper and peri peri. To serve it, you steam a large tortilla, and lay down a bed of fresh spinach, matchstick carrots and cucumber on top of a spread of tahini dressing Spoon the chickpeas on top of the vegetables and add another dollop of tahini dressing and you are off the delicious races! To make tahini dressing, you add tahini to lemon juice, olive oil, water, soy sauce and dash of rice wine vinegar. A couple cloves of finely chopped garlic and a little salt, pepper and peri peri go a long way. Also, you play with the amount of liquid to get the consistency, taste and texture right! Wrap it up and go to town! It’s definitely one of our favorite meals!

Fusion is where its at for us. This pizza began as a Malawian Mango Chicken dish, and the sauce it left behind is so delicious that naturally, a pizza was the thing to do. We have found that shrimp is great with these sauces, to it was a very simple pizza. Mango sauce base with shredded mozzarella, and little piles of fresh mozzarella, then the shrimp. The pizza bakes in the oven then gets short broil before being dressed with fresh cherry tomatoes, lightly dressed arugula, a drizzle of balsamic reduction, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Delicious!

The idea of a hot, sweet mango sauce sounded lovely. It’s a pretty easy dish with few ingredients. The secret is the sauce. I used 3 mangos, 3 tomatoes, a large onion, fresh ginger, a pile of garlic, tomato paste, curry powder, chili powder, salt and peri peri along with some red chili flakes and chicken stock. I seared the pre-spiced chicken (salt, pepper and peri peri) before letting simmer in the sauce for 20 minutes. After that, I used the immersion blender to puree the sauce. I made sour porridge (corn meal with a little vinegar) and served the chicken over the porridge with additional sauce for dipping. Alchemy!

When we set out to explore pizza, it never occurred to us that we would consider making pizza’s that competed in the World Rome Pizza competition. We also never considered that we would consider making the winning pizza in the “Specialty Pizza” category, but this pizza was ranked as the “Best in Show” in the 2019 competition. It’s a technical pizza to make, including things that we have never considered. For example, in order to make this pizza, you need to make a “balsamic cream”, which is really a balsamic reduction, and of course, the way the pie is baked, the time, and the method is technical, and then you use uncooked cured salmon. It’s a great pizza, quite unexpected, and filled with umami.

You start off with a light layer of crushed tomato and fresh mozzarella, which is baked and then broiled till the crust is toasted. Then you add the salmon to the hot pizza, add the olive oil dressed arugula, halved cherry tomatoes and lime zest, then you drizzle the balsamic reduction in a particular way, over the pizza and finish with a drizzle of fresh lemon juice.

Is this a peperoni and pineapple pizza, or is it an Erie Ave pizza with pineapple? Well, sort of neither and both. I started out with Toum (Lebanese garlic paste), then added tomato sauce that was enhanced with Tapatio for spice. Shredded mozzarella, pepperoni next, then pineapple followed along with chopped pickled jalapeno, hot honey, and finally finished with ricotta cheese. We both enjoyed it so much!

There used to be an Italian restaurant near my old place over 30 years ago that served a Fettuccine ai Tre Colori that I always enjoyed. So,, I thought I’d try it. Pesto, alfredo and marinara sauce like tys Italian Flag! The truth is that because I don’t have a six burner stove, making this dish correctly was harder than it looked. So, I made it “Olive Garden” like. The pasta is amazing and I finished it in a little butter and pasta water before heating the sauces up one at a time before dousing the pasta in accordance with the flag, Green, white, red. We shaved paramagnon to finish. The pesto sauce had some pistachio notes and the red sauce was a spicy marinara.

There is a local shawarma place in our neighborhood called Garlic Crush that makes this dish which I just love. Their version of this meal inspired me to try my own version. There are 4 parts to this dish. The chicken, the humus, the garlic paste (toum) and a fresh salad with an oil and vinegar dressing. The restaurant is owned by an Egyptian fellow, but puts themselves forward as Lebanese. In South Africa, back in the late 70’s a shawarma was my favorite take out meal. In my years here in the States, there have been only a few Lebanese places that have risen to the flavor profile I was expecting. Garlic Crush gets there, and this meal is my favorite version of their fare.

The chicken is marinated in a bath of lemon juice and olive oil and several spices, esp cinnamon, cardamom and cumin as well as garlic and hot pepper flakes (of course, I added peri peri). It marinates overnight.

The humus I make is so smooth and so good, that its almost pornographic. This time, I made it with a roasted shallot flavor and naturally, it was also heated up with peri peri.

The toum is a great emulsified garlic paste made slowly with olive oil and lemon juice. It’s also made a day ahead.

The salad I chose for this meal is a Greek tomato and cucumber salad with feta cheese, red onion and kalamata olives and a pile of chopped basil. It is a fantastic meal served over rice with a little warmed pita bread.

I have not watched Football for a very long time, but, with the Seahawks in the Superbowl, we made the choice to watch the game, along with the Winter Olympics, on Sunday. When you have a day of sports on the telly, you need snacks. Heather and I thought, we need an excuse to make wings. She had purchased some buttermilk for her pancake quest, so we soaked the wings in buttermilk for the morning, then coated them in a South African base that is peri peri based. Then I made a Korean seasoning that included soy sauce, gochujang, toasted sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, hot honeym fresh garlic fresh ginger, and chili flakes. They were delicious.

I have always wondered how to make super tasty carnitas. My first effort was a recipe from Modernest Cuisine at Home, which uses a pressure cooker to shorten the process. While those carnitas are brilliant, that is not how Mexican families make carnitas, so, I wanted to try that. Having done so, now I know why it’s best to rely on our local authentic Mexican restaurant for carnitas in a pinch. I found an authentic recipe to try. It’s a slow cooked porkbutt recipe that can only be described as confit porkbutt. The biggest surprise was that you literally confit the pork in lard. In addition, you use an orange, an onion, garlic, Me4xican oregano, evaporated milk and a Mexican coca cola. Once it has cooked for hours, you let it cool and then tear it apart with your hands. We made tacos with radishes, chaoite cheese, green onion and jalapeno, and cilantro. They were spectacular.

When we began our Pizza Quest, one of the founding ideas was to see if we could identify brilliant pizza pies that we had never tried, and add them to our repertoire of great pizzas. Think of it like this, imagine we are menu testing for our personal pizza restaurant, and we only want pies that we truly love. None of the “usual” pies, just really brilliant, tasty, and moreish pizza pies. Stop the presses! The Mortadella & Pistachio pizza is the reason we went on this quest. First of all, it has just a few ingredients. Second, if you have never had pistachio pesto, you haven’t lived. Third, when you discover how the acidity of pickled shallots and a squeeze of lemon juice creates pizza umami, then you will understand. For our pizza, we substituted Genoa Salami for Mortadella which was not available, made fresh pistachio pesto which is absolutely delicious, and made a pile of pickled shallots (red wine vinegar, sugar, & peppercorns). The cheeses are shredded mozzarella and fresh mozzarella. This is a 5-star pizza