Month 6 day 6: Chickpea lunch and ice cream

Today I made:
Chickpea Bajane, Cooking Light July 2010
Raspberry Buttermilk Sherbert, Food Network Magazine July/August 2010

Also pictured are samosas, which I didn't make, but my friends who joined me for lunch brought to share.

This dish is vegetarian and seems light, but it is quite filling (yet not overly filling). This chickpea dish kind of reminded me of the mint-chard one I made back in May, maybe because I swapped fennel seeds in for caraway then, and this has a lot of fennel too. But, instead of requiring a multitude of cooking techniques, this is a two-pot recipe. Once everything is chopped, it isn't a very complicated dish. This made it well-suited to a little 12:30 lunch gathering, since even though I would only get home from church ~12 pm, I had already cut everything the night before and figured 30 min would be plenty to make everything. As it turned out, I got home a little later than expected, and also things took a little longer than expected. Luckily, my friend Isaac helped cook the bajane while I wrestled with the ice cream. There were some technical difficulties.

1. The raspberries were too plentiful for my blender so the top layer didn't get mixed in easily
2. I used frozen raspberries instead of fresh (they're going to get frozen later anyway, I figured), so the liquid:solid ratio was too small to allow proper mixing 
3. Also this meant that the end consistency was really thick, so I couldn't strain out the seeds
4. I wanted to wipe out the inside of the ice cream maker quickly before pouring the mix in, but then the paper towel froze to the side of the container and was really hard to get off!
5. The amount of ice cream was exactly the upper limit of the ice cream maker, so it was a little dicey.

It all worked out, but it took a lot more hands on time than I was expecting for a recipe that is basically to blend some things together and pour it into an ice cream maker. Originally I had thought to mix this up first and put it in the ice cream machine while I cooked the bajane, but luckily I decided to start on the bajane first or else I would have never gotten to it :-P

Interestingly, it is served with cracked pepper on top. People were mixed on whether you could actually taste the pepper or if it was a good match.

Speaking of ice cream, I wanted to give a little plug for Susan's Ice Cream Essentials. Susan herself came to give out samples at our local Shaw's (why there??). I think it's only available in New England, but if you're here you should give it a try. It was tasty and she tries to make it with wholesome, natural ingredients and gluten free if you're into that kind of thing. Of course, if you have an ice cream machine, you can make whatever kind of ice cream from wholesome ingredients yourself. I don't normally eat much ice cream, but lately Hulu has been showing a ton of commercials for Skinny Cow and some other ice cream brand. Whenever I see them I'm not particularly tempted to go buy those brands, but it does make me tempted to go to the freezer and eat the ice cream that is already there. Haha. I don't think Hulu would be too pleased with that response.