Pomegranates

I saw this video ages ago, but I only tried the technique out this week. It wasn't quite as easy as it looks in the video -- the ribs on my pomegranate were a bit wonky -- but I liked pulling the fruit open in this way. You don't lose any arils or make any mess.

Hummus pizza

Without tomato sauce or cheese, it feels a bit weird to call this a pizza. Whatever you want to call it, it was good: hummus, topped with lemon slices, olives, pomegranate and sun-dried tomatoes. I wasn't sure that this combination would work, but it really did -- sweet, salty and tangy, with a nice hit of garlic from the hummus.

The tomatoes got a bit burnt, but still tasted pretty good. (The pomegranate bits had been frozen, which changed their colour but they held up pretty well.)

When I did some googling about hummus as a pizza topping, it seemed like quite a few people thought it better to reduce the amount of time the hummus is in the oven, by putting it on after par-baking the crust, or even putting it on after the pizza is done. However, I thought this worked out well, and don't think the long cooking time (12 min) hurt the hummus at all.

(Pizza specs: as usual, I used my favourite dough recipe from Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day. This time I used 2/3 wholemeal and 1/3 white flour and it was very nice. I got some nice bubbles in the crust, maybe because the toppings were lighter and drier than usual.)

Pomegranate pizza

 

This is pomegranate pizza, based on a recipe from Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa by Habeeb Salloum. (Hey, you can look inside this book on Amazon and find the recipe by searching for -- you guessed it -- pomegranate pizza.)

I cheated by spreading the topping on pita breads and throwing them under the grill (=broiler) -- you would too if you were making this on a day that was close to 40 C in a house without air conditioning. Also I didn't have any green onions, and used grated Cheezly mozzarella rather than feta. I like the way that the cheese is mixed into the sauce in this recipe -- it kind of sneaks up on you.

Pomegranate seeds are still something of a 'what the hell do I do with these?' ingredient for me. That this recipe worked out so well was a pleasant surprise.

My second pomegranate

A pomegranate was the star of tonight's quick dinner.

We had black beans (Goya's black bean soup -- MSG-haters beware, but for everyone else, this stuff is great: deliciously seasoned black beans straight out of the can. I would never have known, were it not for smitten kitchen.) and rice (a mix of wild rice and brown rice, out of the freezer), Tofutti sour cream (only in the house because of latke festivities last night), blue corn chips, and what R called a 'pomegranate avocado salad'. It's this recipe for guacamole with pear and pomegranate, but with the proportions radically changed (we only had one avocado) and no grapes (too out of season for me -- yes avocados are not exactly in season here either, oh well).

My first pomegranate

This was the first time I've ever used a pomegranate. I've eaten one before -- as a kid, we found a pomegranate tree in someone's backyard, and my overall impression was that they were a lot of effort for not much payoff. But then, we were just biting into the fruit, and probably getting mouthfuls of the untasty pith along with the tasty seeds.

The best thing about this salad (steamed kale, sauteed potatoes and tofu, pomegranate seeds) was the dressing. It was a mixture of tahini and pomegranate molasses, plus water, salt and pepper. It was great!