This week is a delicious and filling Levantine rice and lentils dish called Mujadar (or Mujaddara). This is one of those dishes where there are so many regional variations that the sky is more or less the limit on what you can do, but this is the basic stripped-down version. So long as you use olive oil and no butter, this dish remains vegan, and it makes a huge amount. It's also quite versatile. One of my favourite things to do is to put this along with some cheese into a flour tortilla and heating it up in a pan until the tortilla is a little crispy.

We used brown lentils for this, but green are also fine. More traditional would be black "Beluga" lentils, which are actually a different plant from the green and brown varieties! The black lentils have a significantly different flavour, but are also delicious in this recipe, and you can treat them in exactly the same way as the green or brown. A little tomato product also goes nicely in this recipe, in the form of either chopped sundried tomatoes or even just a little bit of tomato paste added in to the rice and onions before you cover them with the lentils for the long cook.

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This is our adaptation of a Bon Appetit recipe from Carla. We've made a couple of changes (mostly to bump up the flavour of these), and we absolutely love the results. Now, these are not the light and fluffy pancakes you get at iHop or Denny's. They are very hearty and filling, but are still fluffy and very creamy inside. Part of this is because the chia seeds release a lot of mucilage, which is why you need to let them bloom in the buttermilk a little before you get started mixing everything together. This mucilage helps with the creamy texture in the middle of these delicious pancakes.

We add a whisper of cinnamon and some vanilla paste to this recipe which really bumps up the flavour and makes it more like a classic brunch food. With all of the fibre in these, they are incredibly satisfying and will keep you sated for a long time. We usually limit ourselves to two for a meal. They also keep very well in an airtight container. To bring them back, we just pop them in the toaster oven for a little while, and they get delightfully crispy.

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Michael Knowles, political commentator at Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire, says in front of (kind of sparse, honestly) crowds at CPAC that "there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. ...Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely."

https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1632057198577606657


Obviously violently eliminationist rhetoric. But of course when news outlets reported the things that he said out loud in front of people for them to hear, he calls it libel:

https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1632122942380277763


And, of course, he is being roundly beaten up on Twitter for being a genocidal fascist about it:

https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1632237428181221376


He thinks he gave himself wiggle room by saying "transgenderism" instead of "trans people" must be eradicated from public life, but no one's buying it. So, we get more violent rhetoric against trans people, more stochastic terrorism, more threats of actual violence against the trans community.

Sorry, Michael: Trans rights are human rights, and your genocidal tendencies are incompatible with existence in a just and fair society.

Making caesar salad dressing is very similar to making mayonnaise. Basically, you are emulsifying oil into egg yolk with the help of some mustard to help bind everything together. There are, obviously, a few other ingredients involved, as well! Anchovy paste is a frequent addition to the recipe, but it's not always easy to find it in stores, and not everyone likes it, so it's okay to leave out. We like it because it adds this delightful umami richness to the recipe that we quite enjoy.

We added a lot of lemon juice to ours, because we enjoy the dressing to be a little tart to combat the bitterness of whatever greens we're using. The croutons are very versatile, and you can make a lot of changes to that part of the recipe. Herbs are a delightful addition to the croutons, and a little bit of dried oregano, basil, or rosemary can be added before they are baked. Also, we let the croutons soak up all of the garlic bits, but the remaining garlic oil in the bowl was enough to infuse the dressing with a pronounced (but not overpowering) garlic aroma.

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This week we got some really amazing purple potatoes from a local farmer, and we wanted to do this delightful potato salad inspired by a German potato salad. The biggest difference is that the German potato salad frequently or typically includes bacon, but this version is completely vegan. It's nice and zingy with the vinegar and grainy mustard, and you could even spice it up a little with either some cayenne sprinkled in, or even some pickled jalapenos diced finely and mixed in with everything.

The fresh herbs are really the key to this one. If you don't have all of the fresh herbs we use here, you can switch up the flavour profile with things like cilantro, basil, or chervil. Variations on this recipe are frequently served warm or even hot, but we find that this one is better if it's had time to chill for an hour or so in the fridge before serving. The hot version is a little different, and we'll probably make a video about that sometime in the future, because it is also delicious.

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We saw an ad recently telling couples to go to IKEA for a romantic meal at the IKEA diner. We always feel like making dinner yourself is a little more romantic, so here is a way you can make delicious turkey Swedish meatballs at home! The way this recipe works, they come out a little more like little patties instead of meatballs, but that's just semantics, really. These are fairly light in flavour, and you can definitely spice them up if you want to. Blitz up a dried pepper or add some cayenne to the spice mix if you want a little bit of heat.

The mixture comes out quite wet and sticky, so forming them into balls is a little challenging. Also, Swedish meatballs tend to have a little bit more of a bouncy or springy texture, so you need to work them slightly more than a typical Italian-style meatball, but less than one of those much firmer Chinese-style meatballs. The flavour profile for the Swedish variety is very simple, just allspice, nutmeg, and some parsley!

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This recipe comes from Julia Child's excellent "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." This is one of my favourite lemon desserts of all time for a few reasons. Firstly, it's quite easy to do. If you can make a good lemon curd, you're off to the races. Second, I love sour things, and this pie has an amazingly delicious and bright sour lemon flavour. Third is the texture. This pie is so light and airy it's practically not there, and it really is very much like a soufflé in a pie shell.

Do make sure that you blind back your pie crust enough before you add the filling. We underdid ours by just a little. It probably could have gone another 5 minutes. Because the soufflé pie takes so little time to cook at a low temperature, the crust is not going to get a whole lot more cooking time, so you need to make sure you get it at least 2/3 or even 3/4 done before you add the filling. Also: You can make this pie with any citrus you like. This could be a lime soufflé pie, or orange, or grapefruit, or a blend of them. Lemon is one of my very favourite flavours ever, so this recipe is perfect for me as-is.

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This is an old recipe! This is the tourtière recipe my mom got from my dad's mom, and dates back to sometime in the early 20th century. This is a classic French Canadian dish from that era of a pork pie with potato and breadcrumbs. Like a lot of recipes of its time, it's simple, hearty food, but we've made a couple of changes to the original episode to bump the flavour up a little. In the original recipe, the ground pork was just boiled with the potatoes, and not cooked at all before. We gave it just a little bit of browning for some extra flavour. We also replaced the plain sugar with maple syrup and added some sage. We also blitzed up a dried pepper pod to add a little kick, but we didn't include that in the video.

You can spice this up in lots of different ways. This is a very basic recipe with minimal flavouring. We thought the sage would go nicely with the pork (it did) and that the maple syrup would add a little bit of interest to it (it also did). You can use your favourite pie crust recipe for the crust (lard would be more traditional in this recipe), and you can change the flavour profile however you'd prefer to. After boiling with the potatoes and breadcrumbs, this recipe really gets a similar texture to a pot pie.

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This video is inspired by a Food Wishes video by Chef John where he made these crackers. We made ours a little spicier, but the basic technique is the same. It was shocking to us how simple and delicious these crackers are. Just whole flax seeds and water with a little bit of seasoning. We cut the salt just a little, and added a whole pepper pod, but there are a lot of different ways you could change the flavour profile for these. We really want to try some grated parmesan and dried basil and oregano.

These crackers are not completely neutral flavouring. Flax definitely has a flavour, so don't expect a completely neutral cracker like a Carr's Table Water cracker. We found that it did go extremely well with the cheese board, and matched well with both the soft and hard cheeses we had. Also, it is not necessary to make the cut marks in the crackers while it's baking. When you go to break it up, you'll get some irregular chunks instead of nice even crackers, so whatever you would prefer!

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It's been a while since we've done any pickling or preserving on the channel, so here are some amazing turnip and beet pickles! These are super easy to do, and extremely delicious. These bright pink or purple pickles are frequently referred to as shawarma pickles because they are often seen in Middle Eastern restaurants as a garnish or topping for shawarma or gyros. The bright pink colour comes from the (relatively) small amount of beet that you ferment in the brine with the turnip.

It's a very basic sort of pickle, and doesn't need a lot of flavour added. We used garlic, bay leaf, and mustard seed along with the hybrid vinegar/salt brine. What it DOES need is some time to ferment. We recommend that this sits out at room temperature, out of direct sunlight (keep it in the shade!) for 2-7 days. You need to be the judge of how long, based on how your pickles react. When they really start to bubble and there's a bunch of pink froth on top of your pickles, it's time to put it in the fridge!

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