1 post tagged “pine nuts”
So it turns out that all those nice Middle Eastern dips you make with various things plus tahini are rendered infinitely more wonderful if you use the same principle but grind up your own toasted pine nuts instead. Today I made one with roasted zucchini, which is a lovely thing to make into a puree, as it becomes beautifully creamy in both color and texture. It tastes nice too. The basic method goes like this:
- Slice the vegetables you want to roast -- I think eggplant and zucchini or some other young squash probably do the best as the base here, but there's no need to stop with them. Add some peppers, maybe, or onions. (About three quarters of a pound of veg to start is about right.) Or of course you could use chickpeas or some other legume as the base. Brush the vegetables with olive oil and pop them under the broiler, or grill them. If they aren't cooked through by the time they're golden brown, you can take them of the heat and stack them so they steam to completion.
- Meanwhile, toast a handful of pine nuts in a dry skillet until they're all roasty-toasty.
- While the vegetables go on cooking, grind the pine nuts in your mortar and pestle with a clove or two of garlic and some salt, until you have a rough pine-nut-and-garlic butter.
- Chop the vegetables roughly.
- Now, if you have a nice big mortar, you can do this all in there. That will give you the nicest texture, to my taste, but a food processor will do as well. Either way, add the vegetables to the pine nuts and grind or whirr to a rough puree.
- Taste for salt and add some chopped herbs: mint, basil, parsley, what you like. Add lemon juice too if it pleases you, or some olive oil, or both, or neither.
By the way, my pine nut secret is Costco. I can get a ridiculously large bag of perfectly nice pine nuts for $11 or something, and so my fridge is always well supplied.
