A Freshly-Cracked Coconut
Even if it’s a frigid mid-winter day and you’re hunkered down inside watching a blizzard blow by outside, opening a coconut will make you feel downright tropical. Once it’s open, you can drain the water and then notch out chunks of fresh, sweet flesh to eat out of hand. (They’re particularly good frozen.) You can also cut those chunks into matchsticks and then use them in Asian stir-frys and soups, or mince them and sprinkle them over a dessert made with tropical fruits or ice cream. Die-hard coconut fans will appreciate brownies or cupcakes made with strips of the just-cracked meat.
But getting a coconut open isn’t the easiest task in the world, although it’s a bit easier to crack a pre-scored coconut than one that has just fallen off the palm tree and thunked onto the sandy beach.
Choosing Your Coconut
Before you even purchase your coconut, however, make sure it sloshes easily when you shake it, and double-check the hairy surface for any signs of slime or mold. (Struggling to open a coconut and then having putrid water gush out when you finally do crack the sucker is quite a depressing experience!)
Cracking Your Coconut
Once you’re home and have access to your toolbox, rotate the coconut until you find the three softer spots at the end. These are called the “eyes” and are a bit reminiscent of the finger hole pattern found on bowling balls. Carefully pound a thick nail (or other pointy, long object) into each eye to make a hole, then upend the coconut over a clean bowl to let the water drain out. (Rice simmered in coconut water is a nice treat; so are smoothies made with it.)
Once the coconut is empty, place it on a towel, arm yourself with a chisel and hammer, find the score-line — or notch in one to make things easier for yourself — and go to work. Remember that coconuts are fairly hard, but not rock-hard! On the plus side, since you’ve already drained it, at least it won’t make a tremendous mess if you have a heavy hammer hand and wind up splitting the coconut with more force than you’d intended. Do not, however, try doing this with a simple kitchen knife! Even butcher knives were not made to pierce a sturdy coconut husk. (I recently told a friend that he might have to use his treasured Roto-Zip tool to open the coconut. He thought I was kidding … until he started chiseling away. Then he decided that coconut-cracking –which is simply inconceivable without an array of tools and a certain amount of violence — was the vegetarian version of hunting.)
Once you’ve cracked the coconut, though, you can do any or all of the things I mentioned earlier.
Enjoy!
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Tags: coconut, coconut water, cracking a coconut, fruit dessert, stir-fry
Hummus with Broccoli & Millet
I used to think that hummus was a great dip. Then I moved on to thinking it was a great condiment and dip. These days, I’ve given up trying to categorize hummus — I’m willing to try it with darned near anything. (And I’m usually glad I did!) Somehow, that combination of smooth, creamy chickpeas + nutty crushed-sesame tahini + tongue-tingling garlic and lemon lends it that same kind of umami flavor that we find so alluring in Parmesan cheese and tomato-based sauces.
One-Minute Hummus, Broccoli & Millet* (or “What I Had in My Fridge”)
* Even if you have to cook the broccoli, you’re talking five minutes; millet, on the other hand, does take up to thirty minutes, but you can make a big pot and keep it in the fridge for a week to enjoy as part of breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Combine cooked millet, steamed broccoli (or any other leftover cooked or raw vegetable), and hummus in a bowl and toss well to combine. If you prefer to have a hot lunch, feel free to warm the dish through. Drizzle with olive oil and dust with paprika before serving.
Enjoy!
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Tags: broccoli, chickpea, hummus, millet, quick lunch
Chocolate Chestnut Cupcake
I don’t know about you, but when I find an exciting new (to me) ingredient, I like to drop it into as many culinary settings as I can to see what happens. Some ideas, like my “let’s make hot chocolate with red wine instead of milk!” notion, though, are rather ill-fated. Random combinations are not always for the faint of fork. But isn’t living on the edge fun sometimes?
My newest obsession — as evinced by the recent post on chestnut snickerdoodles — is chestnut flour. (The next step is whole chestnuts. I’ve already got my eye on the roasted and peeled ones on the shelf at Trader Joe’s.) In that vein, I decided to make chocolate chestnut cupcakes. With cinnamon and pine nuts. What the heck — why not?
I’m happy to report that these came out a whole lot tastier than the red-wine-hot-chocolate debacle!
Chocolate Chestnut Cupcakes
(Both gluten-free and glutenized versions are provided here, though it would be a shame to scrap the lovely coconut in favor of the much-more-bland wheat. And remember — if you can’t find coconut flour, feel free to make your own by grinding unsweetened coconut flakes in a coffee grinder.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a standard 12-muffin muffin pan (or use paper cupcake liners) and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together:
1/4 cup cocoa powder, preferably un-Dutched (un-Dutched cocoa has a stronger flavor)
1/4 cup almond flour (you can grind sliced almonds in a coffee grinder to make your own flour)
1/2 cup chestnut flour
1/2 cup coconut flour (again, you can grind your own; see above recipe note)*
1 T. cinnamon
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup pine nuts (optional)
* You can substitute whole-wheat flour for the coconut flour.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together:
2/3 cup maple syrup, preferably Grade B
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
1/4 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup melted butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
Pour liquid mixture into flour mixture and combine with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the bowl to make sure you’re combining everything thoroughly. Promptly ladle/spoon the batter into the waiting muffin tin and pop it in the heated oven. (Speed is of the essence when you’re dealing with gluten-free baked goods.)
Bake for about 25 minutes, then do a toothpick test to see if the cupcakes are done. If not, return to oven and bake another 3 minutes before checking again.
Enjoy!
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Tags: almond, chestnut, chocolate, coconut, cupcakes, dessert, gluten-free, pine nut
Luxurious Tuna Casserole
Who says a tuna casserole can’t be glamorous? (Or gorgeous, for that matter.) It’s simply a matter of choosing your cheeses wisely — scrumptious cheese makes for a scrumptious casserole. For this concoction, I was fortunate to have a complementary selection of cheeses on hand: herbed Brie, English Stilton, and Dutch Parrano (which is a bit like Parmesan). A forlorn bunch of leftover broccoli was also sitting on the refrigerator shelf just begging to be eaten, so that got tossed in, too.
Since most vegetables pair well with tuna and cheese, it’s always nice to include one or two. Peppers, for example, would be a tasty addition, as would tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, carrots…you get the idea. The more veggies, the merrier the flavor and visual appeal (and nutrient density).
Luxurious Tuna Casserole (gluten-free or with wheat)
Serves 4. If you’d like to double the recipe, use a 9×13 pan.
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
4 servings whole-grain noodles in a chunky shape, such as twists or tubes, prepared according to package directions (use brown rice noodles for a gluten-free dish)
1 head broccoli, cut into little trees (cut the tops free from the “trunk” and then cut any large clusters in half)
2 T. butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 T. brown rice flour or whole-wheat flour (the former is gluten-free)
About 3/4 cup of whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
About 1 cup of combined cheeses, grated or cubed (Brie, Stilton, and Parmesan are excellent candidates for a three-cheese combination)
1 6-oz. can of tuna
While the pasta is cooking, bring a medium-sized pot of water to boil. Add broccoli and simmer for 5 minutes, if necessary turning down the heat a little to keep the water from bubbling and bursting out of the pot. Drain broccoli and set aside. Drain noodles and set aside, too, being sure to rinse them thoroughly in warm water to prevent them from sticking later on.
To make the roux, melt the butter over medium-low heat, stir in the flour, and let cook for about a minute, stirring constantly with a whisk. Gradually add milk a tablespoon at a time, stirring after each addition to smooth out any lumps. When all of the milk has been added, you should have a smooth, thick sauce. (If it’s too thick, add another tablespoon of milk.) Gradually whisk in cheeses, again stirring constantly.
The second the last shred of cheese has melted into the sauce, remove from heat and stir in broccoli and tuna. Stir drained noodles into sauce and then pour/scoop the entire thing into an 8×8 glass pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes or until casserole is gently bubbling around the edges. If you’d like a nicely-browned top, broil the casserole for 3-5 minutes. Serve piping hot.
Enjoy!
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Tags: brie, broccoli, casserole, gluten-free, Parrano, roux, Stilton, tuna
Ensalada España con Fabas y Pimientos
Spaniards have some delectable culinary customs, among them “giant” beans and “giant” corn. (I found the latter — salted and roasted, no less — in a flamenco bar in Cádiz, sold in cocktail-peanut-style canisters in a mini rotating vending machine. Like most bar snacks sold in disposable canisters, they weren’t very good, but still, I could tell the idea had potential.)
There are a few varieties of oversized beans, some called “gigante” and some known by their place of origin, like the fabas asturianas (Asturian fava beans) in this salad. Unfortunately, this deliciously buttery and rich bean is tough to find in the States. (But easy to find on Spanish-food web stores like www.latienda.com.) In a pinch, you can substitute giant butter beans or the more-normal-sized-but-creamier Great White Northern beans. Either way, you’ll have very satisfying salad…or soup or stew or casserole.
For this salad, I balanced bitter arugula and a tart vinegar-based dressing against the creamy smoothness of the beans and the sweet smoothness of roasted red peppers — piquillo peppers, to be exact. (Another specialty of Spain, although roasted red peppers will also do quite nicely.) Not only is this salad very simple and easy to toss together in minutes, you can also use it as a base and add whatever else you’d like: hard-boiled eggs, tuna, grilled chicken, a salty cheese like Manchego or Stilton (or Valdeón, if you’d prefer to stick to the Spanish theme), more fresh vegetables, perhaps even crisp fruits like apple or pear.
Ensalada España con Fabas y Pimientos
(Spanish-Style Salad with Beans and Peppers)
Note: this recipe serves 2 for lunch or 4 as a side dish. Double as necessary.
Toss together:
Several handfuls arugula and/or mixed baby lettuce mix
1/2 cup roasted piquillo peppers or roasted red pepper strips
1 cup green beans, simmered for 5 minutes, then drained and cut into three pieces
1/2 cup (4 oz.) fabas asturianas or Great White Northern beans (or giant butter beans)
1/4 almonds or pine nuts (optional)
Drizzle extra-virgin olive oil onto salad, then drizzle on either sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar to taste. (Most people prefer a 2:1 oil-to-vinegar ratio; I prefer 1:1.) Season with a few grinds of fresh peppercorn and sea salt.
Toss again and serve immediately.
Enjoy!
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Tags: fabas asturianas, green beans, roasted red peppers, salad, sherry vinegar, spanish
Vietnamese Noodles with Savoy Cabbage
Cabbages aren’t exactly the hottest item on the vegetable menu: they don’t have the slim elegance of a green bean or the curvy voluptuousness of an eggplant. From Sauerkraut to Asian cabbage-parcel soups, however, they do feature prominently in most world cuisines. (To achieve the latter, stuff a leaf, tie it off with chives, and simmer in the broth for about 20 minutes to make sure the bundles are cooked through. The stuffing can be any combination of minced veggies, aromatics, seasonings, and/or ground meat.)
While some cabbages are hearty — some might say “sturdy” or even “tough” — other types of cabbage are a bit more mild and lend themselves to a quick sautée. The Savoy cabbage I opted to use in this recipe was tender enough to be sliced into strips and cooked with the sauce. (It would have been a good candidate for stuffing, too.) That mildness and slight crunch made it the perfect match for the pungency of Vietnamese seasonings and the full-flavored, grass-fed pork.
Vietnamese Noodles with Savoy Cabbage
2 servings noodles (soba or brown rice noodles work particularly well with this dish, and as long as the soba noodles are 100% buckwheat — always read the ingredient label! — both are gluten-free options)
1 T. butter, ghee, or coconut oil
1 medium onion, diced
About 1″-long piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced (or 1 tsp. ground dried ginger)
3 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
1/2 lb. ground pork, preferably from pastured pigs
About 5-6 leaves of Savoy cabbage, sliced
1 T. nuoc mam (fish sauce)
1 T. soy or tamari sauce
1 T. pomegranate molasses OR 1 T. tamarind paste (both have a tangy, sour, citrusy flavor that goes a little way towards mimicking the lemongrass flavor typically found in Asian dishes)
2 T. lime juice
1/4 cup loosely packed chopped fresh cilantro
Prepare noodles according to package directions.*
While they’re simmering, in a medium-sized pan, sautée onions and ginger in butter over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until onion is nearly translucent and both onion and ginger have softened. Turn down heat to medium-low, add garlic, and sautée for another 2 minutes, stirring often. Stir in pork and cabbage and raise heat back up to medium. (When you’re using grass-fed meats, they’ll cook more quickly at a lower temperature — if you rachet up the heat to scorching, you’ll dry out your dinner!)
Break up the pork, making sure that the aromatics and cabbage are evenly dispersed throughout the meat, and cook for another 3 minutes. Stir in fish sauce, soy sauce, and pomegranate/tamarind, standing back a little when you first add the sauces so that the quickly-rising steam won’t burn you. Stir well to combine and continue to simmer for another 3-4 minutes. If the liquid evaporates too quickly, add enough of the lime juice to deglaze the pan and keep just a little bit of simmering sauce at the bottom of it.
Just before you remove the pan from the heat, add the (rest of) the lime juice and the chopped cilantro to the pork mixture. Stir in well, let simmer for another 30 seconds, and remove the pan from the heat. (Citrus juices are very vulnerable to heat, so if you cook the juice for long, you’ll lose most of the flavor.)
Stir in cooked and drained noodles, putting the entire pot back on the stove briefly if the noodles need a bit of reheating. Serve steaming hot.
Enjoy!
* You may want to toss a bit of extra-virgin olive oil into the cooked and drained noodles while they stand so that they don’t stick together.
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Tags: cabbage, cilantro, fish sauce, gluten-free, lime, noodles, pomegranate, pork, vietnamese
Chestnut Snickerdoodles
Chestnuts roasting over an open fire used to be pretty popular in the States, but that was before chestnut trees that had been imported from Asia caused the American stocks to fall prey to a nasty fungus. By the 1940s, chestnut trees were very few and far between.
Roasted chestnuts remain popular in other countries, though — street vendors still cook them over open fires in the public squares of many towns. (In Spain, they’re called castañas asadas; in Switzerland, they’re heiße Maroni.) Others eat them candied, grilled, puréed, in stuffing, as a stand-in for coffee, and even as beer. Italians are particularly creative with chestnuts in both savory and sweet dishes.
While I’m not a huge fan of the actual roasted nuts (although I would love to try chestnut beer!), I do enjoy using chestnut flour in sweet baked goods. Chestnuts are like almonds: they’re dry enough to be ground into a nice fine flour, but they’re still moist enough to make soft cookies and breads. Flavor-wise, chestnut flour can be the main attraction (as in these snickerdoodles) or can blend into a pleasant background. In this recipe — partly in homage to Italian cookie traditions, partly because they pair well with chestnuts, and partly because I think they’re sadly underutilized in American cuisine — I’ve also included pine nuts.
Chestnut Snickerdoodles
Note: since chestnuts are nuts, they’re naturally gluten-free.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease two cookie sheets.
Whisk in a medium bowl:
2 cups chestnut flour (if you’re a bit short on chestnut flour, use 1 cup chestnut and 1 cup sorghum or brown rice flour)
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
Cream together in a large bowl:
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
1/2 cup to 3/4 cup sucanat (depends on sweet you want your cookies to be)
Beat into the butter mixture:
2 eggs, preferably from free-range hens
Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture.
Also stir in:
1/4 cup pine nuts
Spoon little mounds of cookie dough onto the greased sheets. (I use an ordinary teaspoon to ensure that I get uniformly-sized cookies.) Be sure to leave an inch or two between each soon-to-be cookie — they’ll spread as they bake.
Bake for about 12 minutes and check to see if the edges are turning golden brown. If they are, your cookies are ready to be eaten! Store uneaten cookies in an airtight container for up to a week.
Enjoy!
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Tags: chestnuts, cookies, gluten-free, italian, pine nut, snickerdoodles
Millet Crab Cakes
Crab cakes, I think, are one of America’s great culinary inventions. ( I once had a coworker whose father hopped in the car one day and drove from Detroit to Baltimore to satisfy his urge for crab cakes. A few months after that, he called his son to let him know that he was slurping gumbo at a café in Louisiana. Talk about letting your taste buds lead the way!)
The only problem with crab cakes, though, is that they’re often more cake than crab — that is, the main ingredients sometimes are mayo and breadcrumbs, and their blandness tends to leach flavor away from the crab rather than complimenting it. In this incarnation, I’ve done away with the mayo entirely (if you handle the cakes gently, they’ll hold their shape just fine without the mayo) and have used cooked millet rather than breadcrumbs. Not only does the millet have more complimentary flavor — a nutty sweetness — since it’s a whole grain, it’s also a lot more nutrient-dense. It’s gluten-free, too, so these crab cakes are suitable for gluten-eaters and celiacs alike.
Millet Crab Cakes (with alioli)
2 T. butter or ghee, preferably from grass-fed cows
1/2 cup green onions, minced*
1 lb. crabmeat (you can usually find 1 lb. cans of crabmeat at meat and fish markets)
1 egg, slightly beaten with fork
1 T. Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp. ground mustard
1/4 cup parsley, minced
1/4 cup cooked millet**
Pinch sea salt
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper (optional)
Extra-virgin olive oil (if necessary)
Additional butter or ghee for sautéeing
Sautée green onions in butter for about 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring often to prevent onions from browning. In a large bowl, combine cooked onions with remaining ingredients. Shape crab mixture into patties about the size of a standard hamburger patty. (Or at least the size standard hamburger patties used to be before the advent of Super-Sizing.) Drizzle in a bit of extra-virgin olive oil if they seem too dry. At the end, you should have about 8 cakes. (It’s better to make them small — they’re easier to handle. Big cakes will fall apart when you try to flip them.)
Sautée the cakes in batches over medium heat, being sure that the pan is hot and the butter is melted before you add the first patty. Gently flip after about 4-5 minutes or when cake is nicely browned. Cook the second side for another 4 minutes and then remove from pan. You might want to keep the first cakes stacked in a warm toaster oven while you’re cooking the remaining batches.
Serve hot or cold — these cakes will also be delicious straight out of the fridge on the following day. You might want to serve them with a mustard sauce or an alioli (pictured above). To make the latter, place about 2 large cloves of garlic and 1 T. lemon juice in a blender. Gradually trickle in about 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil while blender/food processor is running and blend until you have a thick, smooth sauce.
Enjoy!
* Note that you could also include minced and sautéed red bell pepper and/or carrots if you’d like. Mushrooms, too, could be pre-sautéed and then added to the crab mixture, and if you have some favorite spices that pair well with crab, don’t be shy to add a teaspoon of those!
** The package directions for cooking millet say to cook it for 30 minutes, but usually I find that’s a bit too long — I wind up with rather mushy millet. For this recipe, however, you want the grains to be a bit sticky, so go ahead and cook the millet until it’s almost mashable with a fork.
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Tags: alioli, crab cakes, gluten-free, millet, parsley
Fusion Enchiladas
Things are not always as they seem, not even in the world of cheese. Having grown up eating my share of pizza, I thought I knew what mozzarella tasted like, but when I took my first bite of mozzarella di bufalo — made of 100% buffalo milk — I realized I’d been missing out on true mozzarella all along.
Given how much I’ve always enjoyed lasagna, I thought I’d experienced the full flavor of ricotta, too. Then I tried ricotta salata last week and was surprised once again: for one thing, it was from Italy and therefore made of sheep’s milk (cow-milk ricotta is more common in the U.S.), and as its name implied, it was indeed salty. It was also a fairly dry, hard cheese, yet one that didn’t taste overly sheepish. Reminded me of Greek mizithra.
I had a feeling the ricotta salata probably wouldn’t be the best melting cheese…and it wasn’t. Nonetheless, its intriguing salty tang and dry, almost crunchy texture works on baked dishes and pastas.
For these “enchiladas,” I used leftover savory crepes that I’d made with a 50/50 split of corn flour and brown rice flour. I happened to have leftover roasted pepper, too, so I sautéed some zucchini rounds, simmered some broccoli heads (5 minutes and they’re ready to be drained!), and added those to the peppers for the filling. It was a truly simple dish: I rolled the filling in the crepes, topped them with fresh-style salsa, sprinkled some grated ricotta salata on top, and baked the whole thing at 350 degrees F for about 15 minutes. (The cheese won’t melt, but it will get just a bit brown and crispy.)
You could use ricotta salata as a topping for a wide variety of sprinkle-and-bake meals, from casseroles to lasagnas to frittatas. (And you could fill those crepes with anything you’d like, too. ) The salty dryness of ricotta salata also means that it contrasts nicely with sweet, crunchy fruits like pears and apples. Give it a shot — it’s bound to be a new cheese experience!
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Tags: broccoli, crepes, enchiladas, Italian cheeses, ricotta salata, roasted peppers, zucchini
Italian Flag Risotto
Americans tend to think of pizza as Italy’s national dish, but Italians — particularly northern Italians — would probably beg to differ. Wheat fields in the south give way to rice paddies in the north, and where you find rice, you’re more likely to find risotto on the menu rather than wheat-based pastas, breads, and crusts.
Risotto is made from Arborio rice, a specific type of grain that is short/starchy enough to absorb a fair amount of liquid but is long/less-starchy enough to maintain its integrity and not clump and mass to all the other grains. The result is a dish that straddles both the short- and long-grain worlds: savory rice that takes on the flavor of the liquid but still has a bit of crunch. Truly toothsome, you could say.
Getting this effect requires the slow addition of liquid — you add a bit, let the grains simmer and soak, and then add a bit more…and a bit more…and a bit more, until you have a pan of full-flavored-but-still-separate grains. What kind of complementary ingredients you add is up to you: peas, mushrooms, saffron, Parmesan, fresh basil strips, etc. For this dish, I thought I would make a quintessential Italian dish even more so by adding roasted red peppers and peas to make a culinary Italian flag.
Italian Flag Risotto
Note that the 2 cups rice to 8 cups liquid serves 4 as a main course; double or halve the recipe as needed.
8 cups chicken broth
2 T. butter
2 cups Arborio rice
2 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup peas (fresh or frozen and thawed)
1/2 cup roasted red pepper strips
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil
2/3 to 1 cup grated Parmesan (optional)
Heat the broth in a pan as you’re cooking the rice. This is to keep the broth as warm as the cooking rice so that you don’t drastically affect the temperature (and hence cooking time) of the rice when you add more broth to it.
In a large, flat-bottomed pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in rice, turning heat down to medium-low, until each grain is coated with butter. Stir in garlic. Cook for another 3 minutes, then add white wine. Let rice absorb wine before adding a cup of the heated broth.
Continue to do the absorb-add-absorb-add procedure (add about 1/2 cup of broth at a time, less if you’re not making the full recipe) until the rice has swelled up but is still a bit crunchy to the tooth. Stir often throughout the process and make sure that the rice stays at a simmer rather than a boil.
The overall process will probably take at least 30 minutes, but it’s worth it!! You may want to add a bit of sea salt to taste, bearing in mind that the broth may be salty and that you may be garnishing the final dish by adding a salty cheese like Parmesan. Towards the end of the cooking time, stir in the peas so that they have a chance to defrost.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the roasted pepper strips. Add the olive oil and cheese if you like, then serve immediately.
Buon appetito!
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Tags: italian, peas, rice, risotto, roasted red peppers
