Roasted Red Pepper Hummus Pasta

Roasted peppers are one of the most versatile ingredients to have on hand and also one of the easiest to make yourself. (You can buy jarred roasted peppers, but it’s much more cost- effective to pop some raw peppers into the oven.) And since most bell peppers are pretty big, one roasted pepper can go a long way: in this case, I had enough to make a batch of roasted red pepper hummus and also enough to chop and toss with tuna fish and extra-virgin olive oil to make a quick meal.

You can roast whatever kind of pepper you like. My favorite peppers are mild, sweet bell peppers — being a contact-wearer makes me leery of handling hot peppers — but if you like hotter peppers, look for poblanos. They tend to be on the spicy side and are especially nice to roast. (Poblanos look like pointy dark-green bell peppers.) The key is to roast until your pepper of choice is quite charred on the outside; this will make it easy to peel once it’s cooled enough to touch. If you have a gas stove and a penchant for playing with fire, you can poke a long metal fork through your pepper and hold it just above the flame to roast it, turning until all sides are blackened. I am a wimp when it comes to fire and prefer to use a closed oven for my pepper roasting.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

1 red bell pepper
4 cloves garlic, chopped
15 oz. can of chickpeas, preferably Eden (they use BPA-free cans)
1 T. tahini
Sea salt
2 servings whole-grain pasta of your choice (I used Tinkyada’s brown rice linguini)
Sweet paprika for garnishing

Make the oven ready for roasting by placing a sheet of aluminum foil on the bottom-most rack. This will catch any potential drips coming from the pepper and will potentially save you tons of clean-up time. Preheat oven to 425F. Place pepper on the middle rack, being sure to center it over the foil. Roast for 10-15 minutes or until all sides are blackened and blistering. (The larger the pepper, the longer the roasting will take.) Remove and slip into a plastic bag. Seal bag and let sit until cool enough to handle. When it is, the skin should easily peel away. Do so over a cutting board, because water will leak out of the pepper as you handle it. Cut away the seeds and stem. At this point, if you’d like to save half of the pepper to use later, just put it in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to 4 days. Or use all of the pepper in the hummus.

While the pepper is roasting, sautée the garlic in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat for 3 minutes or until garlic is soft and fragrant. Slip into a food processor. Drain chickpeas, reserving the juice, and add chickpeas to the garlic. Scoop in tahini and sprinkle in some salt. Add the peeled roasted pepper and process until smooth. If the mixture seems too dry, add some of the reserved canning liquid OR a dash of water. (If you use the whole pepper, you probably won’t need to add any liquid; if you only use half the pepper, the hummus might be a little dry.)

Let the hummus sit and the flavors marry while you prepare the pasta according to package directions. Toss cooked and drained pasta with as much of the hummus as you’d like (leftover hummus makes a great dip!) and garnish with a dash or two of paprika. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Sunny Side Up Eggs with Smoked Salmon & Dill

Smoked salmon isn’t just for bagels and cream cheese any more — it’s too delicious and convenient to not serve it in a wider variety of ways. And as long as you opt for wild salmon, you’ll be enjoying an anti-inflammatory omega-3-rich boost to your meal. Here’s why: that gorgeous salmon hue is due to the salmon’s diet of red-pigmented krill. The krill are red because of the algae they eat, which in turn contains astaxanthin (the name of the phytochemical that causes the red color) and omega-3 fatty acids. Farmed salmon don’t eat krill, they eat dye chips. If they didn’t eat dye, their flesh would be gray rather than “salmon”-colored.

So what else aren’t the farmed salmon eating because they aren’t eating krill? You got it: the omega-3s. Hence, farmed salmon is nowhere near as anti-inflammatory as wild salmon. Sustainably managed wild Alaskan salmon is also is much better bet for the environment. Point is, it’s worth choosing wild salmon. If you also go with eggs from pastured hens to make this quick breakfast, your day will be off to one heck of an energy-rich, anti-aching day!

Note that smoked salmon, lox, and gravlax are all terms used to described salmon that has been cured and/or smoked in various ways. “Kippered” refers to herring that has been smoked.

Sunny Side Up Eggs with Smoked Salmon & Dill

Ghee or butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Smoked wild salmon, minced
Dried dill for garnish

Melt a pat of ghee or butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Crack in eggs — figure on two per person — and let cook undisturbed for about 3 minutes or until egg whites are opaque and lightly brown on the bottom. Using a large spatula, gently flip/slide over eggs and cook for an additional minute. Serve topped with minced salmon and a sprinkling of dill. Talk about five minutes deliciously well spent!

Enjoy!

DIY Tapas Plate

It’s Monday, it’s lunchtime, and you’re lunch-less and hungry. Odds are, you’re stuck going to the nearest faux-healthy restaurant. (Ever looked at the ingredients in a Panera sandwich? If you print out what’s in the Turkey Artichoke Panini, it’ll take up almost a full 8 1/2″ x 11″ page. But hey, I guess that’s better than Jimmy John’s — they refuse to disclose what’s in their sandwiches. If anyone ever does succeed in breaching their corporate “we won’t tell you what you’re eating” wall, I’d love to hear about it.)

While you might be up the prandial creek without a fork on Monday, take heart! The rest of the week can be much tastier and healthier. All you’ll need to do clean out your fridge, pantry, and fruit bowl by enjoying a midday assortment of odds and ends. If you were in Spain, you’d be calling the idea tapas; if you were in Greece, you’d be lunching on mezze. And your truly tasty and healthy meal will cost you under $10 (mine was $5).  So don’t be afraid to explore the corners of your fridge!

Suggestions for your Tapas Plate

Fruit
Cheese, preferably made from grass-fed milk
Nuts
Olives
Deli meats from pastured animals (such as Applegate Farms and Niman Ranch products)
Hard-boiled eggs
Pickles
Whole-grain bread
Any leftovers that need to be eaten

Remember, simplicity is your most delicious ingredient! Not throwing away money is probably the second most delicious one…which is what you’ll achieve by tossing some tasty leftovers into a bag and taking them to work with you rather than throwing them away and going out to eat.

For this plate, I went with what I had on hand:

Wedge of Prairie Fruits Moonglo raw goat cheese $2.10
Wedge of ricotta salata cheese made of sheep’s milk (I love cheeses made with sheep and goat milk) $1.00, garnished with sweet paprika
Satsuma mandarin orange $0.58
Half an organic Gala apple $0.30
Olives $1.36
For the heck of it, I threw in an anchovy-wrapped caper $0.20

Total: a very delicious $5.54 (Prairie Fruits cheeses are amazing!)

In other words, an adult version of Lunchables…except much more health- and cost-effective.

Enjoy exploring your fridge and cupboards!

Baked Pasta (with Homemade Marinara)

This is a tale of two culinary possibilities: turning a classic pasta dish into a pizza of sorts and how to save your summer tomato surplus without having to resort to canning. I’m all for canning, mind you, but it’s a lot easier to throw something into a bag than can it. The fact that you can combine these two possibilities is the…um…cheese on the pasta. (The savory version of “icing on the cake.”)

Freezing tomatoes and then making sauce with them months later — or, as in my case, 18 months later because I’d forgotten that I’d stuck my 2010 batch in my mom’s cavernous downstairs freezer — is ridiculously easy. First, wash and thoroughly dry the tomatoes, then trim off the stems and plop them into a gallon freezer bag. Freeze them.

When you want to use them,  put the frozen tomatoes in a large stockpot, fill the pot with enough water to cover the tomatoes, and bring to a boil. Let the tomatoes boil for about 3 minutes or until the skins start to look wrinkly. Poke one of them with a knife tip to see if the skin will easily jostle away. (This might take up to 5 minutes of boiling.) Use a slotted spoon to carefully lift the tomatoes one by one into a large bowl. Give them a few minutes to cool, then grab each one with your fingertips and let the inner flesh slip out, leaving the skin behind. Spill the peeled tomatoes — and any juice/water that dripped out of them — back into the stockpot. Mash the tomatoes with a potato masher. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and let them gently simmer on medium-low heat for at least 20 minutes to concentrate their flavor and get rid of some of the water that will inevitably be in them as a result of the freezing process.

Voila! You have a lush, garden-fresh tomato sauce that you can use however you’d like. Note: if you want a chunky sauce, wield your masher with discretion. If you want a velvet-smooth sauce, run the sauce through a food processor to get all the lumps out. You’ll never have to curse a summertime tomato excess again! (I realize this is a tad out of season, but I thought I’d mention it now so that it sticks in the back of your mind for the next six months and prompts you to look forward to an overabundant garden. Now that I know how easy it is to transform frozen tomatoes into a rich sauce, I’ll get a few extra plants this summer!)

Baked Pasta (with Homemade Marinara)

If you’re making homemade marinara:
1 large onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 T. balsamic vinegar
Several pounds of fresh or frozen tomatoes OR at least 1 lb. of canned tomato sauce; if you use fresh or frozen tomatoes, follow the steps above to remove the skins and make your own sauce
At least 1 T. dried Italian seasoning OR 1 T. total of any/all of the following: thyme, oregano, rosemary, basil, parsley, marjoram, sage
Sea salt

With the marinara (homemade or store-bought), include:
Whole-grain pasta of your choice (I used corn spaghetti in mine)
Hard Italian cheese such as Parmesan or Asiago, grated

Preheat oven to 350F. If you’re making your own marinara, heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat for 1 minute, then add onion. Cook for 5 minutes or until onion is soft and starting to turn golden brown. Stir in garlic and balsamic vinegar and continue to cook for another 2 minutes or until garlic is fragrant. Add tomatoes, spices, and a pinch of salt. (If you’ve made your own tomato sauce, you’ll need to use more salt; store-bought sauce has a fair amount already.) Gently simmer sauce over medium-low for at least 20 minutes to let the flavors marry. This is one you can walk away from: assuming you have a nice low simmer and not a furious boil, the sauce can chug merrily along without your supervision.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Toss pasta with sauce and place on an oven-safe plate. Top with grated cheese. Bake for 15 minutes or until cheese is melting and turning golden brown.

Leftover marinara can be refrigerated (in glass containers, please — plastic ones can leach when subjected to acidic tomatoes) for a week, or freeze in a suitable container for a year. I like to use my leftover marinara as a dip for everything from crackers to shrimp. Or put it on scrambled eggs. Or serve with chicken, or even stir into chili. Homemade marinara has endless uses…including as pizza sauce, which was also put to good use in the previous post about Tuna Fish & Spinach Pizza.

Enjoy!

Whipped Pumpkin Cream

Nothing adds an easy touch of elegance to holiday desserts like freshly whipped cream. (Skip the aerosol can!) Be sure to chill your beaters and bowl before whipping away, either by putting them in the fridge for a good 30 minutes or by popping them into the freezer for a quick 10. I like to sweeten my cream by drizzling in a little bit of maple syrup before I begin to whip; sometimes I add a bit of vanilla or almond extract for flavor, too.

The key to lush whipped cream is choosing lush cream to begin with. Ideally, you want cream from grass-fed cows — it has a richer, fuller taste and a lighter, fluffier texture — and cream that has not been UHT pasteurized. UHT means “ultra-high temperature,” which in turn means that the cream will be difficult to whip since it’s been thoroughly cooked and in the process has lost a great deal of its natural thickness and ability to hold that thickness when whipped. (Whipping simply incorporates air into the cream. The fat in the cream stiffens around the air pockets and holds itself up to create the fluff effect. Cold fat is stiffer than room-temp fat, which is why using chilled equipment and chilled cream is so important.) Take a look at the ingredient list on UHT whipping cream — you’ll see that it’s been thickened with carrageenan, gums, and other stabilizers to recreate the thick texture the cream has lost through having been overheated. Not exactly an ideal scenario.

I’m in a cowshare program*, which means that I can order fresh raw cream directly from my farmer. It’s a lovely pale yellow color (the cows eat grass and the orange-hued beta carotene in the grass shows through in the milk) and whips to fluffy peaks in less than a minute. If you live in a state like California that allows retail sale of raw dairy products, by all means go for the raw cream. If you live in a state like Michigan that allows cowshare programs, join one! If you simply can’t find raw cream, try to find whipping cream that isn’t UHT.

Note: if you want to whip cream, you need whipping cream! The other types — coffee cream, light cream, even light whipping cream — don’t have enough fat in them to whip, particularly not when they’ve lost so much of their natural texture through pasteurization.

Pumpkin Whipped Cream
This amount is enough to serve 2 people; double, triple, or quadruple as necessary to suit the number of guests.

1/4 cup whipping cream
1 T. maple syrup
1/2 tsp. vanilla OR almond OR hazelnut extract (optional, but adds a nice flavor dimension)
1/4 cup puréed pumpkin (canned is fine, or you can roast your own and then put the cooked flesh through a food processor with a splash or two of water to make your own fresh purée)

Chill your beaters and bowl for at least 30 minutes in the fridge or 10 in the freezer. Pour the cream, syrup, and extract into the chilled bowl and whip at the highest speed until the cream has gone from liquid to a fluffy consistency. If you’re lucky enough to be using raw cream, you’ll be done in less than a minute. If you’re stuck on the opposite end of the spectrum and are using UHT cream, this could take three or four minutes. Either way, if the cream starts to take on a grainy look, STOP! You’re about to make butter.

Fold in the pumpkin with a spatula, occasionally turning the bowl and scraping the sides as you carefully lift and tuck the pumpkin into the cream. Raw whipped cream is very stable and can handle a fair amount of pumpkin; UHT cream collapses quite easily.

Serve the cream atop cake (here I spooned it onto pumpkin bread and had it for breakfast), as a dip for fresh fruit (apples and pears are especially nice), or as a treat all by itself. Feel free to sprinkle on some spices for additional flavor and as a garnish.

Enjoy!

* To find cowshare programs in Metro Detroit, check out my Local Farms & Markets list; to find them across the nation, check out sites like www.eatwild.com and www.localharvest.org.

Orange & Olive Salad with Macadamia Nut Dressing

Traditional fats are one of the building blocks of food: they carry flavor, they provide a creamy taste and texture, and they have more nutrients per gram than their cousins carbohydrates and proteins.  (When I say “traditional” fats, I mean fats from whole foods — both plant and animal — not man-made, refined fats that are the mainstay of most processed foods.)  And if you know just a little bit about how fats themselves are built, it’s easy to use them to your advantage.

Fats from whole foods are composed of a mixture of various kinds of fats — no food is 100% one particular fat.  When we say something is “saturated” or “monounsaturated,” what we’re really saying is that the food in question is primarily a saturated or monounsaturated fat.  Or a polyunsaturated fat.  Those are the three chief types of fats: saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated.  Almost all food labels distinguish between saturated and unsaturated fats; most oils and many other labels also state the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated breakdowns.  That’s where a little knowledge can come in very handy.

For now, let’s just focus on one particular aspect of fat-type characteristics: how fats react to temperatures.  Saturated fats can handle high heat (over the stove, in the oven) and are solid at room temperature.  Put them in the fridge, and they get even harder.  Butter is a great example of this, or unrefined coconut oil.  Palm oil is an even better example.  Palm and coconut are stable enough to not deteriorate (i.e., go rancid) for at least six months, even when kept at room temperature.

Monounsaturated fats can handle medium heat and are liquid at room temperature; in the refrigerator, they turn into a cloudy semi-liquid.  Think of olive oil and peanut oil.  Monounsaturated fats can be kept for about three months at room temperature or six months refrigerated.

Polyunsaturated fats are too delicate to heat — they’re very liquid at room temperature and equally free-flowing in the refrigerator.  They’ll deteriorate much more quickly than monounsaturated and saturated fats, even when they are refrigerated.  Examples include flaxseed oil, walnut oil, and pecan oil.  Be sure to consume these must-be-refrigerated oils within no more than six months, preferably within three.

Like oils, whole nuts also have different fat profiles depending on which fat is their primary fat.  Different nuts also contain different amounts of fat by weight — chestnuts are almost oil-free, almonds and hazelnuts are fairly unoily, pecans and walnuts are considerably oilier, and macadamia nuts are richly oily.

Seeing as nuts are primarily unsaturated, if you grind nuts into butter, the nuts that are the oiliest will make the most free-flowing butter.  Macadamia nuts are so free-flowing, in fact, that a spoon stuck into chilled macadamia nut butter will come out of the jar dripping.  That makes macadamia nut butter the perfect topping/dressing for fruits, salads, desserts, breads, you name it!  Dip a square of dark chocolate into it, garnish soup with it, drizzle it onto a bowl of oatmeal.  Even straight from the fridge, you’ll find that macadamia nut butter is easy to work with and that it is one of the most creamy and delicious things you’ll ever taste.

Olive & Orange Salad with Macadamia Dressing

On a plate, arrange mixed lettuce leaves, halved olives — black or green — and orange sections.  Drizzle salad with macadamia nut butter and serve.

It is seriously that easy!  Two minutes of effort yields a surprisingly balanced plate of creamy and salty (the nuts and olives) and sweet and bitter (the oranges and lettuce).

Enjoy!

Vanilla Chiffon Cake Made with Powdered Sucanat

In the world of natural sweeteners — i.e., unrefined sweeteners like maple syrup and molasses — there aren’t as many solid sweeteners as there are liquid ones.  Normally, this works out fine when baking, because most baked goods include liquids (which allows you to tinker with the overall total amount of liquids), but some baked items are meant to be airy and towering rather than have a more dense, lower-to-the-pan crumb.  Case in point: chiffon and angel cakes vs. brownies and cornbreads.  Frosting is another thing that normally works best when made with a fine, powdery sugar rather than a liquid one.

In my quest to remove refined white sugar from my repertoire of baked goodies, I’ve been struggling with a way to make Qualitarian airy cakes and frosting.  This quest became especially pertinent a few weeks ago — one of my best friends was about to graduate from law school, and since she’s celiac and therefore can’t have gluten, I’d said I would bake several cakes for her party as her graduation present.  One of the cakes I wanted to make was a Vanilla Chiffon with Strawberry Frosting.  (Others were a Caribbean Chocolate-Banana Rum Cake and Chocolate-Cranberry Squares, but since those weren’t meant to be high and airy, I knew they’d be easy to do gluten-free — brown rice flour and sorghum flour make wonderful stand-ins for the traditional all-purpose wheat, and that was the biggest tweak I’d have to pull off.)  But I knew that the sucanat I normally use in place of white sugar would be far too grainy to make a successful chiffon.  How would I be able to make a Qualitarian cake that everyone would recognize as a chiffon?  (Albeit a far more flavorful one — natural sweeteners retain their signature tastes rather than just hitting your tongue as sheer sweetness.)

Two days before the party, I had an epiphany: use my trusty coffee grinder to grind the sucanat into powdered sucanat the same way I use that coffee grinder to grind grains/nuts into flour.  How had I not thought of that trick before??

It worked as well as I’d hoped it would!  In fifteen seconds, I had plenty of wonderfully-fragrant powdered sucanat to use in all of my cakes, not just the chiffon.  I used about 7/8 of a cup for every cup specified in the recipes (mostly garnered from the ever-classic Joy of Cooking) to account for the fact that the powdered sucanat is more densely packed in the measuring cup than standard white sugar, and I was very happy with the results.  (When using the cups-and-spoons measuring system, volume differs tremendously from one ingredient to the next.  This is the #1 reason why we’d be better off using the weight-based metric system rather than the volume-based English one, but that’s another topic for another post.)  The frosting came off equally well.

So, there you have it!  If you have a coffee grinder, you can have powdered sucanat in your chiffons, too.  Compared to one made with refined white sugar, the made-with-sucanat-cake’s color and flavor will be far richer, its texture will be fantastically fluffy, and you’ll have made a dessert that’s far better for your health and environment than anything you’ll find on a supermarket shelf.

Oh, and one more tip: store your extra powdered sucanat in a glass screw-top jar and use it to make your own hot chocolate (or any other sweetened beverage) from scratch.  It’s so fine that it’ll dissolve almost instantly.

Enjoy!

Quick Summer Salad with "Homemade" Croutons

Grocery stores ought to have an aisle labeled “Truly Scary Food-Like Substances.”  That aisle would contain low-fat flavored yogurt (the majority of which contains a host of unpronounceable sugars and fillers), low-fat salad dressings (ditto), breakfast cereals (up to 40% sugar), breadcrumbs (the ingredient list is the entire length of the can!), and croutons (more often than not, stripped-out white bread coated with a collection of chemicals).

The good news is that you can easily make your own dressings, cereals, breadcrumbs, and croutons, and you can purchase whole-milk plain yogurt that you can flavor yourself (stir in strawberries and honey one day, top with homemade granola and maple syrup the next).

As far as croutons go, you can cut stale whole-grain bread into cubes and then toss them with extra-virgin olive oil, dried herbs, and/or grated Parmesan.  Bake/toast the croutons for a few minutes to make them crispy and brown.  And here’s a bonus idea: you can grind the rest of the stale bread into crumbs with a food processor and then freeze it in glass jars to use whenever you need fresh breadcrumbs.

Then again, if you’re looking for a super-simple crouton — and one that happens to be gluten-free — you can just break apart organic tortilla chips and/or veggie chips.  After all, when you’re going for croutons, you’re going for crunch, right?  Sometimes the texture/mouthfeel is the most important aspect of a food…and tortilla chips are plenty crunchy!

For this salad, I topped chopped tomatoes, chopped green beans (simmered for 5  minutes and drained), and chopped rapini (added them to the beans for the final 3 minutes of simmering) with some multi-seed organic tortilla chips I found at Trader Joe’s.  The fact that the chips featured poppy seeds, chia seeds, and hemp seeds added a wonderful nuttiness to the salad.  The dressing was a simple 2:1 ratio of extra-virgin olive oil to balsamic vinegar.

You could use your “homemade” croutons to top any kind of salad, from simple summer salads to classic Caesars.  Just be sure to choose organic chips that are made with expeller- or cold-pressed oils.  Much healthier (and tastier) than anything you’ll find in the Truly Scary aisle!

Triple-Nut Jumblecake

When it comes to most things in life, I think it’s safe to say that the difference between “failure” and “success” is largely a matter of perception.  This philosophy is certainly true in the kitchen!  It’s even more true when it comes to baking — you never know when breads won’t rise or muffins will turn out to be too grainy or cakes will have an odd shape.  Most of the time, everything still tastes great, but it doesn’t look the way it’s supposed to and/or it doesn’t have the expected texture for that particular category of baked goods.  (Too-crumbly muffins, for example, wouldn’t be too crumbly if they were meant to be scones…but then they wouldn’t be shaped like muffins.)

Enter the Jumblecake.  I made up this new category of baked goods last week when my triple-nut muffins didn’t quite work out the way I’d hoped they would.  (I had used all freshly-ground nut flours in place of wheat, and I think the added moisture of so many nuts backfired in terms of muffin structure.)  To put it bluntly, the muffins were a disaster: they came out of the oven completely concave.  They tasted fabulous, though, and were actually one of the best baked goods I’d ever concocted.

I tried to use the concave muffins as cups to hold more tasty items like fruit and/or ice cream, but they were so tender that they fell apart under the strain.  I resorted to enjoying them straight out of the muffin tin with a spoon, which was fine by me but not the classiest way to serve them.  That’s when I decided to spoon all of them into a large bowl and then serve spoonfuls of them as individual heaped Jumblecakes.  In that form, they could be garnished, adorned with fruit, nestled next to ice cream, whatever I wanted.

So, that’s the trick: if your baked good doesn’t have the shape or texture you expected, make it into a Jumblecake!  This works for any and all baked goods that are cake-/bread-like in nature.  (Doesn’t work for soft items like custards, cheesecakes, or pies.)  Your guests will be impressed by your one-of-a-kind, highly-customizable baked item and will probably ask for the recipe.

Whether you share the secret of your success is entirely up to you.

Lime Sections

Limes have a certain pizazz that lemons just don’t.  Grapefruit doesn’t, either…in fact, not even tangerines can match up to a lime’s potential to play a sweet/sour role as a  keynote flavor or background blend.  A squirt of lime juice also lends a dish a Mexican or Caribbean flavor that an orange simply can’t provide.    Besides, not many populations are nicknamed after fruits — Limeys and Kiwis are the only ones I can think of.  (The British acquired theirs because their navy routinely stocked its ships with limes to prevent British sailors from getting scurvy, a deterioration of the body that happens when vitamin C is in scant or no supply.)

From a cook’s standpoint, there’s also a lot to be said for the juiciness of limes vs. lemons — despite their smaller size, limes yield just as much juice as lemons do, especially if they’re squeezed at room temperature rather than fresh from the fridge.  This juiciness has to do with their thin skins, which equals more juice per volume and wedges that are more easily compressed and wrung out.  A lime’s skin, however, is its Kryptonite as well as its headlining feature since it means that the lime will dry out and shrivel more quickly than a lemon or orange or grapefruit.  The low humidity of a refrigerator will hasten its descent into hard woodenness.

Hence, the best way to store limes is on the counter, not in the fridge.  Once cut, a lime wedge won’t fare any better than a refrigerated whole lime, however, and for the same tendency-to-dry-out reason.  The best way I’ve found to prolong the life of my limes is to place the cut sections in a ziploc plastic bag with a small piece of damp paper towel — that arrangement seems to provide enough humidity to keep the lime juicy for about a week before it begins to mold.  It’s still not a terribly long-lived fruit, but if you have extra pre-cut lime wedges on hand, just pop them into a cool glass of water for a refreshing drink.  You can also use them to zip up salad dressings, add zing to fish (or nearly any other dish), make guacamole, acidulate water, etc.  The limeabilities are endless!

Simple Two-Bean Pasta Salad

Even though most stovetops have four burners, why not do some creative subtraction and just use one?  (Assuming you have a big enough pot.)  Dishes based on starches, grains, and vegetables are prime candidates for honing your math skills:  just figure out how many minutes each item takes to cook and then subtract them from the longest-time-taker to the shortest-time-taker, making a mental note — or a physical one — of when you’ll need to add each item.  The following recipe is an easy and delicious exercise for flexing your math muscles in the kitchen.  (The math-based, one-pot method may seem like a lot of work when you first start doing it, but with a little bit of practice, you’ll be amazed at how much time you save … and how many fewer pots you have to clean!)

Simple Two-Bean Pasta Salad

Note that this recipes has four items that require simmering:  carrots, green beans, pasta, and spinach; cooking times are noted for each item in descending/mathematical order.

(makes enough for 4 servings)

Enough whole-grain pasta of your choice for 4 servings (I used corn spaghetti, which takes 8 minutes to cook)
1 lb. green beans, rinsed and stems snipped off (this will take 5 minutes to cook)
2-3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4″ rounds or chunks (if you like crispy carrots, plan on 1 minute of cooking time; if you’d like them more tender, plan on 3 minutes of cooking time)
2 cups loosely-packed spinach, chopped (this will cook in 1 minute)
1 15-oz. can pinto beans, drained
Extra-virgin olive oil & white balsamic vinegar for tossing

Get a pot of water boiling. Add pasta and begin the countdown to the next-to-be-cooked item. In my case, the pasta took 8 minutes to cook and the green beans took 5, so I set the timer for 3 minutes.

As soon as your friendly timer beeps, add the beans and set the timer for 4 minutes so that you’ll know when the final minute is at hand. <Beep!> Add the carrots and spinach to cook for the final minute, then quickly pour it all into a colander to drain. (Unless you want tender carrots, in which case do the math accordingly.)

Stir the drained pinto beans and about 2 T. each olive oil and balsamic vinegar into the drained pasta and veggies, then taste to see if you’d like to add more smooth richness (the oil) or piquancy (the vinegar). Salt and pepper to taste, then serve immediately. A hard cheese like Parmesan or Manchego would be a nice garnish.

Enjoy!

Moroccan Pizza

One day a pot of simmered and marinated vegetables, the next day a cold gazpacho soup, then finally a luscious pizza topping…it’s just a few days in the life of a leftover.  It’s like kitchen magic!

Remember the Moroccan caponata?  I’d made such a big batch that I wound up freezing a bowl of it.  When I defrosted it, I threw it into the blender and turned it into bright, fresh gazpacho.  When I served it to the same person who’d sampled it as caponata, she absolutely loved it–and couldn’t believe it when I told her its secret origins.  “But it tastes totally different now!” she said.  Isn’t it amazing what texture can do for the tastebuds?

But that wasn’t the end of the caponata–two days after the cross-cuisine gazpacho, I topped a half a pita with the remaining gazpacho, added some blue cheese, and stuck it in my toaster oven for five minutes.  Voilá!  I had yet another dish:  caponata-gazpacho Moroccan-French pizza.

In other words, a leftover with a makeover.  What creative dishes do you have hanging out in your refrigerator?

Roasted Red Pepper with Chicken & Noodles

Leftovers can be magic–especially versatile leftovers like roasted red pepper and chicken.  Just add a bit of pasta and olive oil, sprinkle with parsley, and poof! you have a delicious meal.  With a bit of purposeful overproduction, in fact, you can create your own healthy freezer meals/leftovers.  (But be sure to stick with your original plan and actually save the extra portions.  Eating them all at one sitting defeats the whole scheme!)

There are many reasons to create your own next-day delights:  you know EXACTLY what the ingredients are (let’s face it–you’d have to be a chemist to correctly pronounce the ingredients on a typical frozen dinner), your own leftovers are much more fresh than store-bought ones (how long have they been sitting on the shelf? in the warehouse? in a truck?), and you can control the portion size.  Also, since you’ve already tested the meal and you know you like it, you can treat yourself to a potluck-style surprise by simply not labeling your leftover.  It’s like going to your favorite restaurant and just asking for the chef’s special.

To make roasted red peppers for this dish or for any other meal that strikes your fancy:

[Optional:  place a tray or a piece of aluminum foil underneath the center of the main oven rack to catch any possible drips.]  Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.  When it’s piping hot, place the whole washed pepper directly on the rack.  Roast for about 20 minutes or until the skin of the pepper begins to blacken and blister.  (You may wish to turn it over halfway through the cooking time.)

Remove pepper from oven and IMMEDIATELY place in ziploc bag.  Seal and let the pepper rest until it’s cool enough to handle.  (This could take 30 minutes.)  When you remove it from the bag–which will be foggy with condensation–the skin will be very easy to peel off.  Remove stem, seeds, and all skin.  At this point, you can purée the roasted pepper for dips or smooth sauces, slice it into strips to serve alongside main dishes or on sandwiches/wraps, or cover it with olive oil and save it for later.  (You can refrigerate roasted red pepper for about a week.)  If you’d like to flavor your pepper, add garlic and/or herbs to the oil.  They can be directly added to the dish later on.

Happy roasting!

Tilapia Taco with Black Beans & Corn

Rather than being a daily chore, cooking can be a daily stress-reliever: you can use your time in the kitchen to express your creativity, to unwind after a long day, to gain immediate satisfaction from serving healthy food to yourself and others…or all three! Here are some tips to help you enjoy your culinary adventures.

- Make self-assembly dinners (like the fish taco shown above). Not only does it save you the step of adding ingredients, it allows your guests to custom-flavor their meals. All you have to do is chop/grate/dice the separate ingredients and serve them in individual containers. Salads work particularly well for this kind of meal; so do hearty stews with toppings (think chili) and fold-’em-up type dishes such as tacos, burritos, sandwiches, wraps, and pitas.

- Instead of going to a restaurant, invite your friends into your kitchen and cook together (or ask each person to bring a dish). That way, no one is stuck doing all the work…and if your friends are familiar with a certain type of ethnic cooking, you can hold an impromptu cooking class. You’ll probably come up with your own fusion cuisine!

- Keep your kitchen clean and organized. A tidy kitchen is inviting to use; a messy one is not. Besides, cleaning as you go is much quicker than having to chisel off dried-on gunk the next day.

- Try sampling ethnic cuisine. If you have a favorite ethnic restaurant, make a mental note of your favorite dishes and then look up some recipes. Or pay a visit to your local library and head for the 640s–that’s where all the cookbooks hang out. They’ll be grouped by ethnicity, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. (If I don’t have a particular cuisine in mind, I just let my hand trail along the shelf and then stop randomly on a book. Wherever it lands is whatever I cook.)

- Look for cheap and fun kitchen items at garage sales. Ceramic, glass, and metal items can be easily cleaned and can be great bargains. You’d be amazed at how many folks get a full set of china on their wedding day and then never use it. (Or they get three sets and only use one of them.) And some items can be beginner art projects to boot–I got this champagne glass for 10 cents and then painted it. For 10 cents, who cares if it doesn’t turn out perfectly?

- Crank up the music! Cooking should not be a high-pressure situation. Put on some good tunes, sing along, and dance if you want to. (Just try not to drop anything.) I’ve found cooking to be a great way to practice bellydance moves–if you can shimmy while you’re whipping up a meringue, then you’ve got some great hip isolation.

- Give yourself plenty of time. Of course, not all meals are going to be an objet d’ art, but even a slapdash one can be more enjoyable to prepare if you’re not rushing madly from one utensil to another. And if you know you have some hectic evenings heading your way, make extras on the days you do have time and then have leftovers.

- Keep a stack of recipes on hand. That way, you can plan a week at a time and save yourself a lot of time at the grocery store. Rip recipes from magazines, flip through cookbooks once in a while and write down a few titles and page numbers, or hit a website like allrecipes.com to get dinner ideas. (Allrecipes has a great “Ingredients” feature where you can enter ingredients you do want the dish to have and ones that you want to avoid. Perfect for cooks with limited ingredients on hand or those with allergies!)

- Whenever you’re shopping for groceries, leave a spot in your cart for one new item. Maybe you spot a tropical fruit you’ve never had before, or a vegetable your grandma used to make. Try it! There may be a sign next to the item with serving suggestions; if you’re in a produce-oriented market, chances are the grocers can help you figure out how to prepare it. The Joy of Cooking is another good source of food-prep information. And as for spices and herbs, serving suggestions are often given right on their labels.

Happy cooking!

The best way to get an evenly-greased and -floured pan is to use a trifold approach:  spray the pan with cooking spray (non-aerosol, of course), sprinkle it with flour, and then employ the tap-and-turn method.  This entails tilting the pan at a 45-degree angle, then tapping it gently against the countertop to get the flour to slide down the surface.  Give the pan a quarter-turn and repeat until the flour has cascaded down all the sides.  You’ll know you need to add more flour if it isn’t covering the pan.

Flour the edges the same way–tilt the pan so that the flour is resting on the edge, then tap and turn until the entire inside is floury.  Hold the pan upside down over the sink to get rid of any excess flour.  After the first or second time you do the tap-and-turn, you’ll know what angle the pan needs to be to avoid getting any poufs of flour on your countertop.  Then you can set the prepared pan aside and start baking!