Another class reviews analysis methods like chromatography and mass spectrometry. It's an excellent class, but it's stuff I mostly knew from before. A third class in food microbiology has indeed taught me some new material, but most of it doesn't make for good storytelling (unless you are very interested in the finer points of mold and Clostridium). The last class is statistics. And I can say, with a confidence level of 95, that most of the bell curve out there is not interested.
But today we had a food fair, and it was fun. It was for the food analysis class. The project was to "invent" a food product, which in reality meant "bake a cake or something". The real part of the project was learning how to use this Israeli nutrition program to calculate your product's nutrition value. That program is called Tzameret - a word which, as a friend once told me - means three things: the pointy top of a tree, the top echelon within an organization, and (wait for it) the little tuft of male chest hair that pokes out of the shirt. In this case, it's an acronym for something... I forget what, but it has to do with food.
So I had a great opportunity to make something fun. I decided off that bat that this was not the forum for a labor-intensive dish. That would make the work itself more difficult, would run a higher risk of failure, and the food would probably not survive the transit from home to school. Instead I decided to make something which features an unexpected ingredient.
My thoughts first turned to avocado pie, a dessert Rachel and I have made once or twice. You can find numerous recipes for it on the internet, and it generally consists of avocado blended with something creamy (cream cheese or milk), possibly blended with sugar and/or lemon or lime juice, and poured to set in a crust (usually graham cracker). The first time you taste avocado pie, its deliciousness is amplified by the fact that you were totally worried it would taste nasty.
I decided against avocado pie primarily because of the avocado selection here in Haifa. You can sometimes find the Hass variety - the bumpy skinned kind you usually see in the NY area, but more often you'll see a smooth-skinned variety, kind of like the Florida variety, but smaller - Hass sized. The problem with this variety is that it takes about a million years to ripen; ok, more like two weeks. But you still have to plan way in advance if you want to use them. Also, I find them less creamy, which means they wouldn't work as well in the pie.
So I didn't have anything as of last week, but then I luckily stumbled across a recipe for chocolate chickpea cake on the blog Serious Eats. It's a chocolate cake where you substitute chickpeas - ground, drained chickpeas from a can - for the flour. It's not something I would have tried the way I tried the avocado pie. The latter sounded good, but this sounded... not as good.
I realized, however, that it would serve perfectly for this project. It was creative, so it looked like I'm trying hard to "invent" my own product (even though that wasn't really necessary). It was an easy recipe that I could easily bring with me to school without fear of it melting or spilling or crumbling en route. And, last but not least, what do Israelis love more than chocolate and chummus? Come on!
I made up my mind, and baked the cake. The batter tasted a lot like... well, chummus with chocolate and eggs in it. Not so good. But as it baked in the oven, the cake filled the kitchen with a nice chocolate aroma. When it was done, I took a little taste. It had a good, brownie-like texture and a rich chocolate taste and a distinctive aftertaste of chickpeas. Mission accomplished!
How did the cake fare in a room full of Israelis? They were pretty surprised at first. Everyone who looked at the label I made (with Rachel's Photoshop skills of course) expressed skepticism at the combination, but while some brushed it off with a laugh others seemed genuinely interested. When the tasting began, my cake remained untouched for a while, with only one or two people trying it and not replying. The truth was, at one point when I walked past a guy with a piece of it on his plate I could smell the chickpeas. Not promising.
The tides turned, however, when one girl tried the cake and really liked it. She got a bunch of other people to try it too. It turns out she has a niece with celiac, and her sister always struggles with baking gluten-free desserts. Chickpea cake is a great way to pull that off. By the end of the fair, most of the cake was eaten. Most people agreed that it was tasty and had good texture, and that you could taste the chickpeas. Some people liked this chickpea flavor. Others just liked the fact that it wasn't too sweet, especially after eating the hundred other desserts that were prepared by other students.
Overall, a success. But I don't think I'd ever make it for its own sake.
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