3 recipes down, 27 more to go! See you all tomorrow for Day 4: Weird Food Combo. Missed Day 2? Check it out here. 

Stay connected on the daily by following me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Made this recipe? I would love to see it! Use the hashtag #screcipe on your social media. 

Savoury Za'atar Socca

 

Save Print

Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

16 mins

Total time

26 mins

 

This savoury chickpea pancakes takes less than 30 minutes to make from start to finish- including the sauce! This dish is filling, protein packed, and delicious. Perfect for a savoury breakfast or light lunch. Top with whatever vegetables you like! In the winter, roasted vegetables would be a great toppings. Feel free to use any toppings you like. This recipe is vegan, gluten free, nut free, and soy free. This recipe makes 2 9-inch crispy soccas + extra sauce.

Author: Jessica DeMarra

Recipe type: Breakfast, Lunch

Cuisine: vegan

Serves: 2

Ingredients

• For the Savoury Socca:
• 1 cup chickpea flour
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
• 1 teaspoon za'atar
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper chili flakes + more for garnish
• 
  
• Za'atar Tahini Sauce:
• 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon white miso
• ½ teaspoon pure maple syrup
• ½ teaspoon za’atar + more for garnish
• Splash of filtered water to thin out if necessary
• 
  
• Toppings:
• 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
• 10 fresh basil leaves, cut into ribbons
• ½ teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
• Pinch of fine grain sea salt
• Sliced avocado
• Pea shoots
• Za'atar

Instructions

1. In a bowl, whisk together the chickpea flour, water, 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, baking powder, and salt. Whisk for about 15 seconds until it is completely smooth with lots of bubbles. Set aside while you make your sauce.
2. Add all the for the sauce ingredients to the blender and blend until smooth. Set aside until ready to dress your soccas.
3. In a bowl, mix together the tomatoes, basil, oil, and salt. Set aside until the socca is ready.
4. In a non-stick skillet over medium heat, heat ½ tablespoon oil until hot. Add ¾ cup of the socca batter and cook for 5 minutes. Flip and cook the other side for 3-4 minutes. Keep the socca warm while you cook the second one. Add the remaining ½ tablespoon of oil, heat, and cook the second socca.
5. Top with tomato basil mixture, avocado, pea shoots, Za'atar Tahini sauce, and extra za'atar.

3.3.3077

The post Day 3 Vegan MoFo: Savoury Za’atar Socca appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

My brain has been drained a little bit lately as I get ready for another round of exams coming up and with the weather being particularly freezing lately I have wanted to go into full-fledge hibernation mode. Homework has been piling up because I am the worst at doing any sort of homework during Christmas break. As much I curse my procrastination, I did need the downtime to relax and not overthink everything to death. But now we are the second week of 2015 and I had to get right back into the full-schedule, juggling school and work full time. Blasted adulthood!

Mark has also returned to school and started his internship at a Toronto fine dining restaurant to complete his culinary degree. Nights at our house have become pretty lonely when I am not working and I usually have dinner by myself (with the exception of Barb snuggling on my lap). I haven’t really wanted to cook for myself too much since it always seemed like a waste but I asked myself why I thought like that. Perhaps I read too many women’s magazines in my youth (thinking that adults actually did these things) and thought that the phrase “Cooking for One!” was pathetic. Just because they put an exclamation point at the end and in a cheery bright font does not make the phrase any better. However the act of cooking a proper healthful dinner for myself should be a priority and I must devote some time in my evening to do so. A daily devotion to myself and my well-being. A dollop of hummus, peeled carrots and some pita sometimes doesn’t cut it as a proper dinner since I usually use the hummus container lid as a plate for the veg and pita. Oh how my mother would cringe.

Roasting vegetables with some chickpeas is pretty easy, comes together quickly and is versatile when you get tired of the same vegetables you have been eating all week. You can make this dish go even further when served on a bed of cooked grains like brown rice, quinoa or millet (all gluten free grains!). I cook my grains on a Saturday morning before work so I can eat them for my long shifts on the weekends and have some left over for school. I soak my grains on Friday night after work to get them all sprouted to cook the next day. Living it up. “Sorry guys can’t go out, I have to sprout my grains…” Don’t worry I have never said that.

Mark is appreciative of the leftovers he gets when he comes home late from his internship and I get an actual dinner. Double win.

P.S. I am digging this new addition to my pantry: za’atar, a savoury Middle Eastern spice blend that I have been sprinkling on everything. I also made this hummus with it.

The post Roasted Chickpea + Vegetable Bowl w/ Za’atar Tahini Sauce appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

Does anyone actually follow the serving suggestion on a tub of hummus? Two tablespoons is the serving size on most purchased hummus. Like on one pita chip right? If you follow this serving suggestion then you have a greater will power than I do but I am just a mere mortal who loves her hummus. If I feel I have been indulging a little bit more than usual or eating a lot of takeout, hummus is one of those things that help me get back into the groove of healthful eating. I know I have food in the fridge if there is hummus and I have been known to really bunker down and eat my fill of it. Can you overdose on hummus? To me, the limit does not exist. (Still love Mean Girls)

Since starting school again I have noticed my hunger levels have gone up but my brain needs to be alert, focused and fuelled with good unrefined foods. Nothing is worse than a caffeine/sugar crash mid-test or exam so it is better to get your brainpower from whole food rather than stimulates like caffeine. Traditional store bought hummus is pretty good but uses a lot of canola oil (generally the second or third ingredient on the list) so it isn’t the best kind of fat you can eat. Store bought works in a pinch if time is not on your side and you need a snack ASAP!! I call these moments Snack-Attacks when I come home from work or school and literally tear apart the fridge on a mission to find the fastest snack I can shove in face. The hunger is animal-like and nothing can stand in my way.

Cooked dried beans make the best hummus. I don’t say this lightly but it is well worth the effort to soak and cook the beans for hummus. Cooked beans take the hummus to a freshness level that canned beans simply cannot and are way less expensive, even organic beans. I buy mine in bulk to make them even less costly and store them in large mason jars on my pantry.

Za’atar is a new spice in my pantry and I find myself eating more hummus because of it. This Middle Eastern blend consists of dried thyme, sumac, toasted sesame seeds and sea salt, making it a perfect pairing for hummus. Mark and I sprinkle it onto warm naan or pita bread drizzled with olive oil. A friend of mine who was raised in the Middle East says that at the Starbucks there they serve za’atar on warm buttered croissants. Sprinkle this spice on any Mediterranean or Middle Eastern dish that you fancy but also on roasted vegetables, hot rice with a squirt of lemon juice and with this hummus.

The post Lemony Za’atar Hummus appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

Halfway there! It is kind of crazy how time flies by when you are having fun or when you are stressed out about deadlines for posts but for this first time MoFo’er it has been such a great experience. I am not sick of my kitchen just yet so it is full steam ahead in the second part of this month.

This recipe is inspired by my mother and her love for old black-and-white movies. When my sister and I were growing up, we did not have cable, just the old rabbit ears with tinfoil balls on their ends so we did not watch a lot of TV. My mother only enjoyed a select few cartoons like Animaniacs or Bugs Bunny (which I know them now to be incredibly violent!) so needless to say we did not watch a lot of kid-shows either. During my teen years when all my friends were obsessed with Dawson’s Creek, Friends and Passions (yes the soap opera) however my mother had no patience for 90’s teen TV characters complaining about how everything was just so tragic. “I will show you real tragedy,” she would say as you popped in a VHS tape. So I spent most Friday nights watching Gregory Peck in the Maycomb courtroom defending a wrongly accused man while Jem and Scout watched from the balcony, Audrey Hepburn in her trench coat, soaked and looking for Cat in the rain and of course Humphrey Bogart saying goodbye to his true love all for the greater good but meeting a friend along the way.

How I love Ilsa Lund’s (Ingrid Bergman) jewelry sparkling softly in the low lighting, the way she sipped champagne so elegantly, her large brimmed hats and her amazing capability to keep a white suit stain-free and glowing.

Rick’s Café Américain is what I thought every nightclub was like: large bandstand with talented musicians in white dinner jackets, a piano player playing beautiful love songs, fancy hats and gambling underground until I actually went to one and upon arrival some pimple-faced kid barfed near me, spattering it across my shoes. That place was no Rick’s.

Casablanca is still my favourite old movie as well my mothers. I imagine Morocco’s air to be full of warm spices, gin joints to get a stiff drink and having a grand but tragic romance with my true love. But in the meantime, I will just enjoy these Moroccan Spiced recipes with a drink in hand.

 10 recipes down, 10 more to go! Woot!

The post Moroccan Spiced Chickpeas: 3 Ways {Vegan & Gluten-Free} appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.

The things I do miss about school are my wonderful friends, Jerri and Matt whom are supportive and kind even when I literally cried over math. Literally. Without them, school would be the most unpleasant experience. We are all fast tracking high school credits to apply to university, which is stressful and chaotic at times. Thankfully every lunch period we hang out under a tree to eat, talk about schoolwork and look up Youtube videos to help us out. One of our favourite lunches to have under our tree is on Tuesdays when Ali Baba’s has a 2 for 1 falafel wrap special. I go for this lunch every week but my stomach has taken the hit a more times than I like to admit. All the rumbles and whale noises my stomach makes in the quiet classroom can be fairly embarrassing but I just love falafels!

Making this homemade version is simple and the food processor does a lot of the work. It is fresh, lighter and gluten free so your stomach will thank you for skipping the fried stuff. Besides who likes frying at home? The heat, the mess, the potential burns, the small fires…not saying that I have set a fire in my kitchen or anything… Compared to the fried ones, these baked ones are more satisfying and will leave you glowing!

Congratulations to Jerilyn F from Waterloo, Canada who is the winner of the Sprouts & Chocolate’s Vegan Chocolate Cookbook by Fran Costigan giveaway! Your prize will be shipped to you very soon!

The post The Big Falafel Salad with Lemon-Tahini Dressing appeared first on Sprouts & Chocolate.