Sunday, March 28, 2010

Passover on my mind

With the Jewish holiday of Passover starting tomorrow evening, I decided to get into the festive mood by creating traditional Matzah balls for a Matzah ball soup. I felt that it would be a great to display a sense of my own heritage while also adding to my By Hand repertoire.

Here is the ingredients given from this product:



- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 large eggs, slightly beaten
- 1/2 Matzah meal
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons soup stock

First I blended the vegetable oil, eggs, Matzah meal and salt together. After that was completed, I added the soup stock. After sitting in the refrigerator for 15 minutes (as instructed in the recipe), this is what my Matzah mixture looked like:



(Doesn't necessarily look the most appetizing at this point...but it gets better)

The next step was to form the mixture so that the Matzah meal can take its traditional ball-like shape.



Nextly, the Matzah balls cooked in boiling water for about 30 minutes.



Overall, I really enjoyed making this dish. Not only was I extremely happy with the final outcome of the Matzah balls, but I really felt a sense of accomplishment through my cooking skills that I haven't really obtained otherwise. Perhaps for me, crafting something that is of significance to my own cultural background has led to a better appreciation of the food I'm making.

Here is the final outcome:



With the addition of broth, chicken, and some vegetables this will make a delicious Matzah ball soup for this upcoming Passover!


P.S. I know originally this By Hand Blog was supposed to cover organic recipes and lately I've gone away from that. On the other hand, I have heavily shifted my research project on the political expression that come from both the organic and DIY movements. In the near future, I will want to resolve this issue and see how my blog can better assist me in research efforts.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

On Today's Menu: Hummus

For this week's attempt to add to my By Hand project, I decided to make one of my favorite appetizers: hummus.

Here is a ingredient list for hummus that I found on the internet:

- 4 garlic cloves, minced and then mashed
- 1 15-oz cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed
- 2/3 cup of tahini (roasted, not raw)
- 1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Here are my ingredients at the prep stage:



Here are the preparation instructions provided by the website:

- In a food processor, combine the mashed garlic, garbanzo beans, tahini, lemon juice, 1/2 cup water, and olive oil. Process until smooth. Add salt, starting at a half a teaspoon, to taste.

After I read the instructions, I immediately ran into a problem. Since I am not at home, I did not have access to a food processor. The best I could make do with in my college apartment was a blender. Having to make do with what was at my disposal, I was reminded of the idea of Yankee Frugality in Rachel Lawrence's "Making Do: The Aesthetics of Frugality," which we talked about extensively in class.

Here is a picture of all my ingredients being mixed into the blender: (Trust me, the finished product taste better than it looks!)



After I used the blender in place of the food processor, I could definitely see the disadvantages of using the blender. From the picture above, it was obvious that I perhaps pulverized my ingredients a little too much. Perhaps, if I had access to a food processor my ingredients would have been handled in a more gentle fashion. Nonetheless, I was still a able to get a good amount of hummus from the bottom of the blender.

The finished product:



In the end, my hummus turned out to be the perfect afternoon snack!