Gearing Up For The New Year

Why buy sodium filled chickpeas cans when you can have as many as 12 cans prepared from scratch in your own kitchen.

Sprinkle dry chickpeas with baking soda and soak overnight. Boil until cooked then store with no liquid in containers and freeze. They can be defrosted in a bit of boiling water in a minute.

"Alleyeh" is a key ingredient in Lebanese Stews.

It can be prepared ahead of time and frozen. Simply crush garlic and chop cilantro. Cook garlic in olive oil, add the cilantro and cook for few seconds until wilted. Cool and freeze. 

You can then chop a chunk off when need to use it.

Real orange blossom water is made from the blossoms themselves. Given how involved the process is, a bottle of real orange blossom water can run in the $50 range.

But how come we can buy it for less than $10 in stores in Vancouver? Well, those are the cheaper versions; made of orange trees' leaves, not blossoms. They are less potent and lighter in colour.

I usually get a couple of bottles every time I visit Lebanon. But now I have a jar of dried orange blossoms from Iran.

A tsp of dried blossoms boiled in a cup of water for 30 minutes can produce a close-enough version of the authentic orange blossom water.

A new trick I learnt about making vegetable broth.

Cook unpeeled onions and other vegetables you are using for the broth in a bit of oil. Add parsley and herbs, a bay leave and water then simmer for an hour to an hour and a half.

The broth freezes well.