So much food!

Today was another day of cooking, eating and enjoying our feast days as much as possible. Even with the weather taking a little turn towards the rain, at least it was later in the day and I was still able to get out into the garden for some fresh herbs and salad leaves.

I have been itching to use my food mixer/grinder more, and have been looking for excuses to try it out. Today I decided to grind up some of the dried herbs from my garden - it did a fantastic job with them. Now I have jars of very fragrant freshly dried herbs which will replace the old ones.

I mention this because I am still astounded by how differently my own finely ground herbs smell and look compared to shop bought ones. What on earth do they do to them? Why is the food so different tasting and looking from homemade? Shocking!

So, on to today. Because I had so much food already on hand, I did not want to make much more, but I am still working away at my list of requests. With our main meal I decided to make onion bhajis - which everyone loves, and I have discovered an easy way to make them.

This type of food would normally have been fried or even deep fried (I bake them), they are delicious in a sweet and spicy way, great with a dip or salted on their own. I had a roasted duck ready for a warm duck salad, and wanted something substantial and complementary to go with it. 

The onion bhajis were perfect! To make the bhajis, I sliced a few onions, sautéd them with spices (ginger, turmeric, cumin, salt, pepper) in a pan until translucent. In the meantime I mixed gram flour and more of the same spices together with water.

Gram flour mixture

Once the onions were done, I mixed these two together until the onions were well coated with the wet flour. Using a wooden spoon I dropped large spoonfuls of this wet mixture onto an oiled pan and then placed it into a hot oven.

Saute onions

The trick with these seem to be baking them long enough - in the past I would think they were overdone and take them out early, however they do need the full 45 minutes or more depending on how thick they are. Halfway through the cooking, I turn the pan and brush the bhajis lightly with olive oil again. 

Once out of the oven, salt with sea salt and serve! These went nicely with warm duck salad, pickles, goat's cheese and other finger foods in our meal. It was all delicious, eating this way after our long fast makes it all worthwhile.

Onion Bhajis out of the oven

Oh and the halva turned out great, everyone loves it even though it did not set hard the way shop bought tahini treats do. Perhaps next time it will be better - however the taste is outstanding.

Let's see what tomorrow brings! LOL

Have a lovely day,

April

Hazelnut honey halva treats