Hobo Monday: Eggplant, Zucchini, and Chickpea Salad

This month’s Hobo Monday challenge was to prepare a meal with chickpeas, other than hummus. The only other dish I ever make with chickpeas besides hummus is a Warm Butternut and Chickpea Salad with Tahini, which I found on Orangette and have made numerous times. I had wondered how this amazing salad would adapt with other vegetables, particularly eggplant, so I decided this would be a great opportunity to give it a try.



Since I was using eggplant and zucchini rather than butternut squash, I altered the herb in the original recipe from cilantro to basil (parsley would work too, but I wanted something fresh and bright), as well as omitted allspice and added some dried thyme. The results? It was very good, though not quite as wonderful as the original recipe. I think the tahini sauce complements the warm, rich flavor of butternut squash a bit better. This recipe still gets an 8 for Deliciousness and 2 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 4.



And now for the total: $1.99 for the eggplant, $ .89 for the chickpeas, approximately $1.50 for the zucchini, and probably about $ .75 for the tahini, partial onion, and basil. The lemons were free, and the rest of the ingredients are staples. So my total was $5.14 and it yielded three meals (two for dinner and one for lunch) at $1.71 per portion. I went just slightly over budget, but it was an even cheaper lunch than the pre-made salads I usually buy from Trader Joe’s, so I say it was a success.



If you would like to see how others stretched their dollars to create meals with chickpeas for $5.00 or less, there will be a round-up on the Thursday Night Smackdown site on Saturday.

Eggplant, Zucchini, and Chickpea Salad adapted from this recipe from Orangette
1 large eggplant, dried and cut into ¼ inch cubes
2 medium zucchini
2 medium garlic cloves, pressed
1 teaspoon dried thyme
2 tablespoons. olive oil
Salt (to taste)
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
¼ cup of red onion, finely chopped
1/3 cup fresh basil, roughly chopped

Tahini Sauce
1 medium garlic clove, finely minced with a pinch of salt
3 ½ tablespoons. lemon juice
3 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil

Cut your eggplant into round slices, salt, and let sit to dry on paper towels for half an hour. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and cut the eggplant into cubes. Cut the zucchini into similar-sized pieces. Place both vegetables in a large bowl and toss with thyme, garlic, olive oil, and salt. Pour vegetables onto a baking sheet and roast for approximately 25 minutes or until tender. Remove from the oven.

While the vegetables are roasting, chop the onion and basil and make the tahini sauce. Whisk the garlic and lemon juice together in a small container (I like pyrex measuring cups for sauces), and then stir in the tahini, water, and olive oil.

Combine the roasted vegetables with the chickpeas, basil, and onion in a large bowl. You can dress the entire salad, but since I knew there would be leftovers, I dressed each portion individually.

Hobo Monday: Pizza!

Last month I participated in a food blog event called Hobo Monday, where participants must cook a meal for two for $5 or less. And I failed! Both monetarily and taste-wise: my meal was $5.74 and had the lowest EDR ever. Naturally I had to try again. I’m going to keep this short since I am tired and my DVR is filling up with good Thursday night shows as I type this.

This time around there was an additional challenge: no pasta allowed. So I made pizza. Recently I have taken to buying Trader Joe’s pizza dough and using it as a repository for aging vegetables and leftover meat. This time around I did a combination of caramelized onions, mushrooms, pesto sausage, and eggs. The pizza really didn’t need eggs, but I had wanted to try it for a while and my initial Hobo Monday idea had been to do an egg dish, so I went for it. I’m happy I did because I discovered that egg on pizza is actually quite delicious. They cook up like poached eggs, which are my favorite kind and I have yet to master.



Cost breakdown: $1.19 (I think) for the pizza dough, $1.07 for the sausage (1/4 of a $4.29 package), about $2 worth of onions, and I would say about $.80 for the cheese. I’m not sure how to assess a monetary value to the mushrooms because they were leftover from takeout salads we ate on Saturday night; Mr. Penpen asked for his mushrooms on the side, thinking I might want to eat or cook with them. And I’m calling eggs a staple, since anyone who bakes as much as I do always must have eggs. That’s a total of $5.04 (and there were leftovers), which is much better. The pizza gets an 8 for Deliciousness and a 2 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 4 – also much better. If you want to see how others stretched their meal budgets, there will be a round-up posted on the Thursday Night Smackdown site on Saturday. You can also find about Hobo Mondays if you wish to participate next month. Okay, this post wasn’t quite as succinct as I planned. Time for "The Office."

Hobo Monday: Sweet Potato Gnocchi

From Thursday Night Smackdown, the fine site that hosted First Thursdays and got me to cook duck and oysters, we have a new blog event: Hobo Mondays. First Thursdays were about cooking recipes from cookbooks or magazines; Hobo Mondays are about cooking our own recipes - with a budget of $5 for two people. Pantry staples are not factored into the meal cost, and participants are permitted to determine what constitutes a pantry staple in their household. The $5 challenge daunted me. Although I have cut back on certain expenditures in this dismal economy, food is not one of them. I have always considered myself a fairly practical grocery-shopper and I try very hard not to waste food. Also, since we’re not eating out as often these days, I figure we should eat well at home. I actually did casually mention we make a food budget once, but Mr. Penpen nixed the idea immediately and I did not give much protest.

I made some delicious ricotta gnocchi a couple months ago, and it consisted of mainly pantry staples, so I decided that I would try making gnocchi with a vegetable. I had seen butternut squash at Trader Joe’s for less than three dollars for an entire squash; I figured I would only need about half a squash for the gnocchi, use the rest another day, and stay way under budget. Sadly, Trader Joe’s did not have butternut squash (fresh, anyway – there was canned). I went across the street to Whole Foods, and again there was no butternut squash. I decided a large sweet potato would be a good substitute. And yes, I know Whole Foods is pricey, but it was a rainy day and I wanted to get home, not trek to every grocery store in the county. I used the same recipe I used last time as a guideline and started making the gnocchi on Sunday, as there are two chilling periods and time is often tight on weeknights. The first step was pureeing and chilling the sweet potato. The next was to mix the dough, which is where things started to go wrong: it was incredibly sticky. I kept adding more flour, hoping the dough would come together. Finally I gave up; as I was worried all the extra flour would render the pasta to be tasteless gummy blobs. I put the dough in the refrigerator to chill with the optimistic expectation that it would be cohesive after resting. This is what I got:

A huge glutenous mess! There was absolutely no way I would be able to form this glob into pasta. I was about ready to throw in the towel and call this “Waste of Money Monday.” However, I do not admit defeat in the kitchen that easily. I scraped the mess into a bowl and back into the refrigerator. I went straight to the kitchen when I returned home on Monday evening, and with an ample amount of flour on the cutting board and my hands, I was able to shape the pasta. I put it back in the refrigerator for the final chilling phase (one hour or up to a day) and went for a run. The gnocchi seemed firm enough when I took them out a couple hours later, so I boiled some water and cooked them. They turned out fine, but not great, you could tell there was too much flour. I served them with some butter and crumbled blue cheese, which, of course, makes any bland food taste better. Since I try to have something green on my dinner plate, I sautéed some about-to-go-bad pea shoots in garlic and olive oil.



Okay, I guess it’s time to break down the cost of this meal. The only thing I purchased for this meal was the sweet potato, which was $3.24 – I guess I should have gone with the canned squash for $2.29. The pantry staples I used were salt, pepper, butter, garlic, olive oil, flour, parmesan cheese, and nutmeg. I probably used about one dollar’s worth of blue cheese, and the pea shoots came from my CSA box. Apparently they are very inexpensive, about $1 to $2 per bunch, so I’ll say $1.50 for pea shoots, which brings my grand total to $5.74. A little over the $5 allotment, but there was a good amount of pasta left over. Unfortunately, the gnocchi doesn’t stand much of chance next to the other leftovers in our refrigerator.

This meal received a 5 for Deliciousness and a 4 for Effort, giving it and EDR of 1.25. If you would like to see how other people fared with a meal budget of $5, there will be a round-up on the Thursday Night Smackdown site on Saturday, where you can also find more detailed information about Hobo Mondays if you would like to participate next month.