Sequestration Meal #662

 

I will be the first to acknowledge that there is no geographic anchor for this meal, really, except to say that people would eat it in someplace with a hotter climate than mine, probably, and therefore it likely makes no sense for winter. But I had what I had, and I had an idea, and I'm so glad I went with it!

Okay, so how this began was that I had a partial can of artichokes in the fridge at the same time as a partial can of chickpeas. And what's a person to do in that scenario but make artichoke hummus? I mean, what else? So I found a recipe for artichoke hummus I could scale down (from Feed Me Phoebe).

I then realized I needed to use up the end of a jar of roasted red peppers. This, clearly, was a job for muhammara, that wonderful red pepper and walnut dip that originated in Syria. Did I have pomegranate molasses? No. But this recipe from Love and Lemons gave me the instructions to just up the lemon juice and add some maple syrup as a substitute, and it worked out fine, although it wasn't solid enough initially so I added more walnuts and bread crumbs to make it thicker, and it worked great (probably because one of my peppers was huge). So I had some things to build a meal around.

I wasn't in the mood to make naan or pita or anything, so I made some yellow rice (I veganized a very easy recipe from Fav Family Recipes by substituting vegan butter). I could have made something slightly more complex, but all I really needed was some quicky, tasty rice. It did the job perfectly.

Still feeling I needed more protein, I stared down the contents of my fridge, did some Googling, and ended up making these carrot and spinach pakoras from Vege Home Cooking. I had to add more chickpea flour, probably because my carrot was gigantic (I am sensing a theme surrounding giant vegetables around here), and I left out the asafoetida (I don't even know where I would find some around here) and substituted ground cumin for cumin seeds. But they turned out really well, and went gloriously with everything else.

Finally, I added romaine lettuce and some slices of mini yellow sweet pepper and Persian cucumbers to the bowl. And there you have it. A bowl of Indian-Syrian-American fusion goodness. So here's to the season in which I let my fears of crowded markets dictate my meals through creative scrounging. It may not be seasonal, but it got the job done!