Dinner for Two

By Pete Nielson
Food Editor

The past couple of weeks I have been working on my own homemade bread dough. This little adventure started from a visit to a friend’s house after a yoga session in the park. The guests were hungry and wanted to make some hummus, so what better to dip in your hummus but pita bread? I have made pita bread a bunch of times before, so a quick search on the internet and a recipe was found. Within the next few days I found myself craving some more pita and hummus, so I decided to make a whole dinner based around the homemade pita and hummus.

The menu: Homemade pita, homemade falafel, homemade hummus, and homemade tzatziki sauce. We also had a garden fresh salad of cucumbers and radishes. The time it takes to make all of these individual ingredients for dinner is relatively small, but the pleasure in knowing you actually hand made it all is so fulfilling.

The Recipes

Pita Bread
The Bread Bible
By: Rose Levy Beranbaum
Pg 224-227

Ingredients:
Unbleached all purpose flour 3 cups plus a scant ¼ cup
Salt 2 tsp
Instant yeast 2 tsp
Olive oil 2 tbsp
Water at room temperature 1 ¼ cup

Hand method:

:: In a large bowl, combine all ingredients except scant ¼ cup of the flour. With a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until all flour is moistened. Knead the dough in the bowl until it comes together
:: Sprinkle a little of the reserved flour onto the counter and scrape the dough onto it. Knead the dough for five minutes, adding as little of the reserved flour as possible. Use a bench scraper to scrape the dough and gather it together as you knead it. At this point it will be very sticky. Cover it with a inverted bowl and allow it to rest for five to 20 minutes. (This rest will make the dough less sticky and easier to work with.)
:: Knead the dough for another five to ten minutes or until it is soft and smooth and just a little sticky to the touch. Add a little flour or water if necessary.
:: Cut the dough into 8-12 pieces. Work with one piece at a time, keeping the rest covered with a damp cloth. On a lightly floured counter top, with lightly floured hands, shape each piece into a ball and then flatten it into a disk. Cover the dough with oiled plastic and allow it to rest for 20 minutes at room temperature.
:: Roll each disk into a circle a little under a ¼ inch thick. Allow them to rest, uncovered, for ten minutes before baking.
:: Preheat a griddle or cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Lightly grease the surface and cook pitas one at a time. Cook for about 20 seconds, then turn the dough and continue cooking for one minute or until big bubbles appear. Turn the dough again and cook until the dough balloons. If the dough begins to brown, lower the heat. The entire cooking time for each pita should be about three minutes.

I made these on the stove top because of my extremely small oven. I find that it is more fun to use a griddle. I also made these a day ahead of time and kept them in the fridge. The cooked pitas freeze very well and the dough can be made up to three days in advance. The longer the dough is refrigerated, the better the flavors will develop.

Baked falafel

Ingredients
Garbanzo beans cooked and drained 1 ½ cups
Red onion small 1
Garlic cloves 2-3
Parsley ¼ cup chopped
Lemon juice 1 tsp
Olive oil 1 tbsp
Coriander ground 1 tsp
Cumin ground 1 tsp
Red pepper flakes 1 tsp
Whole wheat flour 2 tsp
Baking powder 1 tsp
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
:: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drain and rinse the garbanzo beans. Put in a medium-sized bowl and smash with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Form into small balls, about 1 1/2? in diameter and slightly flatten. Place onto an oiled baking pan.
:: Bake for 15 minutes on each side, until nicely browned (since it’s baked, only the part actually touching the pan will be browned and crispy).

Falafel has been a long time favorite treat of mine. It is almost like a veggie burger but lighter. The combination of the cucumber sauce and the veggies added to the pita makes for a great light dinner. I know for a fact that the ingredients freeze well, which makes this recipe a snap to make ahead of time or as a go-to meal when you are running short on time.
If you are trying to watch the amount of wheat that you are consuming, you can omit the pitas from this menu and make a salad out of all of the fixings and even leave the wheat flour out of the falafel to make this recipe a celiac-friendly dish.
I have the tzatziki sauce and the hummus recipes posted on my food blog, http://www.foodaddict101.wordpress.com
Eat well; your body will appreciate it.

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