May 27, 2019 – CT Side-B

Turmeric Anise Sesame Cookies
ターメリックアニス胡麻クッキー

I recently had turmeric cake from a Lebanese deli, called Zakia Deli, and I fell in love with the flavor combination: turmeric, anise, and sesame seeds.

These turned out great.

Crunchy outside, chewy inside, and super flavorful!!

At our house, I’m the one who typically go wild about exotic spices, but it was my husband who raved about these cookies!

Turmeric Anise Sesame Cookies; adapted from Ms. Isa Chandra’s recipe – makes about a dozen

1/4 brown sugar
1/4 white sugar
1/3 cup canola oil
1/8 cup soy milk
1/2 tablespoon tapioca flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
turmeric powder
ground star anise
sesame seeds

1. Combine and mix all the ingredients except for sesame seeds.
2. Roll the dough into balls and flatten them. Sprinkle sesame seeds and press them.
3. Bake in the oven at 350F for about 8 minutes.

Homemade Pasta
ホームメードパスタ

This was something I had wanted to try for a while, and I thought this long weekend would be perfect to do so.

Homemade pasta!

I have made homemade pasta using eggs in the past, but this time my goal was to make tasty pasta without using eggs.

I did some research and studied several different eggless pasta recipes.

Well, eggless pasta is very simple.

Basically flour, salt (or no salt), water, and olive oil (or not).

It sounds okay, but I also wanted to come up with an idea where I could add some richness that is found in egg pasta.

Since I use garbanzo flour a lot for my “egg” dishes, I decided to add some garbanzo flour to my dough.

I used to have a pasta machine, but when I looked for it, I couldn’t find it!!

So I decided to do the whole process by hand.

The dough was very easy to handle, and it was actually a lot of fun.

The pasta turned out wonderful!

Love the taste and texture, both.

And the look.

I wanted to serve it very simply because I wanted to showcase the pasta itself.

I cooked garlic in olive oil first, added freshly cooked pasta, sprinkled crushed red pepper and chopped Italian parsley, and then added some butter at the end.

SCRUMPTIOUS!

Whenever I make pasta, I ask myself why I don’t do this more often.

Homemade Pasta – makes four servings

1.5 cup all purpose flour
0.5 cup garbanzo bean flour
a pinch of salt
0.5 cup warm water (to begin with, but I usually add some more)

1. Mix all together. Knead for about 10 minutes. Make a ball. Cover and let it rest for about 15 minutes. Flatten and cut.
2. Cook in boiling water for about 3 minutes.