You might scratch your head over this, but Perl hackers like food so much that they add recipes to their source code. But the new maintainer, Andy, has deleted the recipes. Horrors! To preserve these two tasty vegetarian Middle Eastern ones, I’m republishing them here. Thanks to Sean Burke for including them in the first place.
Tangy Moroccan Carrot Salad
formerly found in Locale::Maketext
6 to 8 medium carrots, peeled and then sliced in 1/4-inch rounds
1/4 teaspoon chile powder (cayenne, chipotle, ancho, or the like)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon honey
juice of about a half a big lemon, or of a whole smaller one
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon of fresh dill, washed and chopped fine
Pinch of salt, maybe a pinch of pepper
Cook the carrots in a pot of boiling water until just tender — roughly six minutes. (Just don’t let them get mushy!) Drain the carrots.
In a largish bowl, combine the lemon juice, the cumin, the chile powder, and the honey. Mix well. Add the olive oil and whisk it together well. Add the dill and stir.
Add the warm carrots to the bowl and toss it all to coat the carrots well. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Serve warm or at room temperature.
The measurements here are very approximate, and you should feel free to improvise and experiment. It’s a very forgiving recipe. For example, you could easily halve or double the amount of cumin, or use chopped mint leaves instead of dill, or lime juice instead of lemon, et cetera.
Easy Hummus
Adapted from a recipe by Ralph Baccash (1937-2000)
formerly found in HTML::Element
INGREDIENTS:
juice of two smallish lemons (adjust to taste, and depending on how juicy the lemons are)
6 tablespoons of tahini
4 tablespoons of olive oil
5 big cloves of garlic, chopped fine
salt to taste
pepper to taste
onion powder to taste
pinch of coriander powder (optional)
big pinch of cumin
Then:
2 16oz cans of garbanzo beans
parsley, or Italian parsley
a bit more olive oil
PREPARATION:
Drain one of the cans of garbanzos, discarding the juice. Drain the other, reserving the juice.
Peel the garbanzos (just pressing on each a bit until the skin slides off). It will take time to peel all the garbanzos. It’s optional, but it makes for a smoother hummus. Incidentally, peeling seems much faster and easier if done underwater — i.e., if the beans are in a bowl under an inch or so of water.
Now, in a blender, combine everything in the above list, starting at the top, stopping at (but including) the cumin. Add one-third of the can’s worth of the juice that you reserved. Blend very well. (For lack of a blender, I’ve done okay using a Braun hand-mixer.)
Start adding the beans little by little, and keep blending, and increasing speeds until very smooth. If you want to make the mix less viscous, add more of the reserved juice. Adjust the seasoning as needed.
Cover with chopped parsley, and a thin layer of olive oil. The parsley is more or less optional, but the olive oil is necessary, to keep the hummus from discoloring. Possibly sprinkle with paprika or red chile flakes.
Serve at about room temperature, with warm pitas. Possible garnishes include olives, peperoncini, tomato wedges.
Variations on this recipe consist of adding or substituting other spices. The garbanzos, tahini, lemon juice, and oil are the only really core ingredients, and note that their quantities are approximate.
For more good recipes along these lines, see:
Karaoglan, Aida. 1992. /Food for the Vegetarian/. Interlink Books,
New York. ISBN 1-56656-105-1.
