The BBQ Song

[drcuriosity]

An ethnoculinary survey of the southern states that wolfwitch found for me:

My first attempt at making felafels didn't go as well as I would have liked, but the experiment was worthwhile all the same. I'd give it a C- - but then, working from scratch with unfamiliar ingredients and tools, it could have been a lot worse. As fate would have it, Ilan emailed me a proper recipe around four hours afterwards. It looks like I'd got around 75% of the way there myself, and probably would have got to around 90% on my second try, but having a reference to work from will speed things up considerably.

Dessert that night was Deep South's double chocolate ice cream drizzled with blackcurrant and raspberry juice and some of that fudge sauce that you heat up in hot water before you put it on. That's hard to screw up, at least :-)

One question on chickpeas, though. After soaking and possibly hulling them, do you think I should just blend them straight away, or try steaming or boiling them a little first to soften them? Bear in mind I have what's essentially a juice blender rather than a proper food processor, too.

Comments

[elnigma.livejournal.com]

/me very fond of Carolina BBQ. Never had the yellow mustard kind though my mom used to make a killer thick mustard sauce for baked chicken (it'd be bright orange when done cooking!)

Some Vietnamese immigrants make really good BBQ, too.. how they do it I don't know (their secret) - but the result is delicious bright purple-stained meat. Oh my!

[drcuriosity]

Thank you! You've just reminded me of another ingredient I forgot to add: sumac! It's quite popular in Southeast Asian cooking, I hear. Quite tart - also goes well with tomato-based dishes.



The stuff I have is a bit darker than the variety pictured, though - almost the colour of dried blood.