Covid Cafe: Hummus, Shrimp Scampi, and Chocolate-Coffee Cookies

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Good day to you, chefs. We've practically got soup to nuts today, with a perfect hummus, an intense shrimp scampi, and cookies for dessert. Tomorrow Bruce creates a pasta with dandelion greens and fried flowers. You all are tres creative.

Kay writes: My friend’s Lebanese grandmother’s recipe makes the best homemade hummus.  With a half cup of lemon juice, it’s assertively lemony...and that’s the way I like it. Use less if you don’t want it so piquant. 

A drizzle of olive oil and lemon on top just before serving it is always good.  Toasted pine nuts are too. 

 

Hummus

Two 15-oz cans garbanzo beans drained, but keep at least a half cup of liquid
Half cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, less if you don’t want it so lemony
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c tahini
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 clove garlic

Process it all and add leftover bean liquid until the hummus reaches desired thickness.
Cuisinart works well, but Vitamix gives a really smooth texture. I top mine with a sprinkle of Sumac, a Mediterranean spice that looks like dark paprika but has a tart citrus flavor.

Variations:  
Roasted garlic (lots)
Roasted red peppers, from a jar is fine
A little artichoke either thawed frozen or jarred marinated

Salad greens in our garden

ready for cutting 

Shrimp Scampi

Rob's freezer-find redux: Found a bag of shrimp in the freezer and turned it into a modified scampi, starting with a broth made from shells and finished off with a lemon slurry. (ed. note: Rob used the Cooks Illustrated recipe, but there are lots of shrimp scampi recipes online to google.)

I sauteed the shells in a little olive oil until they started to turn brown, and added a cup of wine and a bit of thyme.  Let that simmer down and it was a revelation!

Chocolate-Coffee Cookies

Camille told us she found this recipe in a mag for Covid quarantine pantry recipes. It uses pancake mix and they're good. I did make a small amount of espresso for these. I’m trying not to eat cookies but had one...

A Shropshire Lad 2: 

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

By A. E. Housman

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

Michigan legal

 

 Music

Lord Huron

Ends of the Earth