The roasted-peanut-sage-month of thinking and tasting is coming to an end and with that perhaps my last try based on these two ingredients. Needless to say, asking me to combine peanuts and sage into a dish tells me automatically that coffee has been invited to participate, no matter how awkward it may sound to others at first. But what goes well together in the mind, will most likely go together for the palate just as good – if not better. That is my experience with new and challenging combinations, which earlier seemed to be culinary contradictions.
So let us get to the core of the matter. I had thought of melting these TGRWT #21 ingredients into little potato balls or fingers and frying them with low heat in olive oil. But suddenly I hat the urge to switch to carrots. If I try to build on this idea further some time soon, I will surely go back to the potato idea. I believe it will better serve as the taste carrier I was imagining for this dish. Anyway… after preparing the mixture I decided not to fry them, but to put it in small forms and baking it.
After my first couple of bites I kept thinking of meat. Again and again I tried making some connection or trying to understand which was the true connection to meat, until a bit later it dawned on me: Veggie Burgers!
I guess it is due to the roasted peanuts and the carrots, both ingredients which are sometimes used to provide the “meat” taste some non-meat eaters wish to have in their mouths. And since I did grow up with no meat and many artificial-meat products, the palate-memories took over immediately. It may be well worth it experimenting further with this idea at some point, since I did clearly discover some mistakes retrospectively. For one, the peanuts must be prepared in much smaller chunks. Not necessarily like flour, but certainly not so coarse. Second of all, knowing I wanted to have balls or fingers, I had drained the juice of the carrots and with it much of the carrot taste, which may have been a nice extra to the taste. So for the next time I would either replace the carrots with potatoes or add some flour to compensate for the excess of fluid. Either way, here is how I made it.
- 3/4 cup of roasted peanuts
- about 4-5 mid-size carrots
- about 30 sage leaves (all sizes mixed)
- about 5 grammes of coffee powder
- Hawaii-black-lava-salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 2 egg whites
Mix the grated carrots with the oil, black-lava-salt, black pepper, sage leaves and coffee. I then let it rest for 10 minutes and proceeded to take the liquid out (carrot juice), before adding the egg whites and mixing it well.
The peanuts are roasted and added to this carrot mix. Put it then into small forms and heat it up at 190° for about 30 minutes.
You may also use the mixture to make Quiche.
I hope you will either enjoy it, or it will serve you as inspiration for your own creation.
The combinations and recipes for the TGRWT #21 may be found at the Humbling Attempts at Creativity Blog.
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