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I remembered how to make meghli, which is this really tasty Arabic rice pudding. Basically, you need:
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 cups water
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp anise
1/4 tsp caraway
I'm pretty sure those were the quantities I used. Anyway, this is super easy. Mix together the sugar and rice flour with one cup of water so it forms sort of a gooey paste. Mix in the spices. Boil the other two cups of water and pour the goo into it, and stir it constantly until it begins bubbling again. Reduce heat to looooowwwww and let it simmer for a while. You're waiting for it to reach a certain consistency. You know the "coats the back of a spoon" trick? That's what you're going for. I think I let mine cook for like 20-30 minutes, I can't remember exactly. You're smart, you'll figure it out. By this point everybody in your house should be asking you what that delicious smell is, and you pour it out into bowls. This makes about two big servings, or more likely four small servings. The stuff is super rich so I can't eat too much of it at once. If you've got something small like creme brulee cups, that would probably be perfect. Pour it out, cover it with plastic, and refrigerate it for a few hours until it's cold. It should have a decidedly "pudding" like texture and then you eat it. When I made this I didn't have any rice flour, so I decided to make my own by pounding rice into flour. I recommend not doing this, as it took about 2 hours and made a big mess on the floor. It was still delicious though, even though my arm is still sore. The things I do for you, livejournal group vegancooking.
Lentil dip
This one was inspired by kibbeh, that dip made with lamb meat. Instead of lamb, I used lentils. So technically it's not kibbeh, but it is pretty good. This is what I used:
1/2 cup lentils
1 cup water
1 maggi bullion cube
2 cloves of garlic (they were smallish)
1/2 cup bulghur wheat
salt
pepper
lemon juice
I cooked the lentils in the usual manner with the bullion cube. I don't know how prevalent maggi bullion is; I know it's everywhere in Africa, and I'm pretty sure it's pretty widespread in the Middle East and India. It's a brand of food that was bought out by Nestle, which is sort of questionable, but makes a very neutral but good tasting vegetable bullion cube. I'd recommend it if you could find it. The broth isn't too assertive, it's just brothy. I think that lentils cooked in maggi broth are just absolutely stellar. So anyway, after the lentils were cooked I poured them into my food processor and started it running. When lentils get ground up, they absorb a LOT of water, so have a cup handy and keep feeding the paste water until it's the right consistency. Add a little bit of lemon juice; just a tad. Just to add a little bit extra to the flavor. Pound the cloves of garlic in a quarter teaspoon of salt with your mortar and pestle so it makes a salty paste, and add that to the lentils. Wash the bulghur wheat in cold water and try to get out as much water as possible. Add that to the lentil puree at the last minute. Add about a teaspoon of pepper to it and it should be done. Serve with bread and garnish with chopped parsley, onions, and/or pickles (like those great turnip pickles, kabees lefet). This is a pretty strong tasting dip, but it's strong in a good way. You might have to adjust the seasoning a little bit. That's just what I did this time. It was an experiment.
And finally, in my neverending quest for more ways to eat pasta and sauce, I came up with this new one, which is a variation on my other sauce. You have to start somewhere, right? You will need:
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup soymilk
1 Tbsp margarine
2 tsp dry vermouth
1/4 tsp soy sauce
1-2 tsp prepared mustard
2 Tbsp nutritional yeast
1 bay laurel leaf
1 Tbsp flour
1 Tbsp pine nuts
salt
pepper
Melt margarine in whatever you're going to make this in. Finely mince garlic, and pound pine nuts into a paste in mortar. Add both of those to the margarine and throw in the bay leaf and cook over low heat. Like as low as it goes. You don't want to burn the garlic. After a few minutes, add the flour and make a roue, then add the soymilk and raise the heat to bring it to a boil. Add everything else and adjust taste with salt and pepper. The trick here is to get the balance between the nutritional yeast and mustard just right. If there's too much yeast, it'll taste too try and yeasty. If there's too much mustard, it will taste like a baseball game. You don't want either of those. When it's just right, it'll just taste good. And trust me on the soy sauce, you just add a little tiny bit and it adds a bit of oomph that you don't get from just salt.