Lentil & Mushroom Soup with Roasted Potatoes

What do Brussels sprouts, potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms have in common? They were all in my pantry begging to be made into soup. The lentils looked lonely, too, so I threw them into the mix. Hearty soups are best made in the winter, after all, even if the term “winter” doesn’t seem to currently imply snow. (Glad I’m no longer a little kid in snow pants raring to go with my toboggan!)

It’s worth keeping a few soup essentials on hand in the chilly months: good-quality broth (my favorite is Pacific’s organic free-range chicken), onions, garlic, dried spices, maybe a few root vegetables like carrots and turnips. All of those make great backdrops for heartier elements like beans, lentils, whole grains, and meats. Stirring in some cream and cheese at the last minute is another simple way to transform a thin broth into a thick, rich soup.

For this batch, I opted to roast a few of the veggies and sautée the rest to create a variety of textures in the finished soup. You can go the roasting route, too, or you can stir in the potatoes and Brussels sprouts with the lentils and let them simmer to tenderness.

Lentil & Mushroom Soup with Roasted Potatoes
Makes 6 ample servings.

1 baking potato (Idaho), cut into 1″ cubes
About 10 Brussels sprouts, halved
2 small onions OR 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped or slivered
4 cups/32 oz. chicken OR vegetable broth (if you go with chicken, opt for free-range)
1 T. dried Italian seasoning OR a total of 1 T. of rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, and sage
1/2 cup brown lentils
1 carrot, diced

Preheat oven to 350F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Put the cubed potato in a large bowl, drizzle in a little extra-virgin olive oil, shake on a little salt and pepper, and toss well with your hands. Spread out onto one of the baking sheets. Put the Brussels sprouts in the bowl and repeat the same process (oil, salt, pepper, toss). Place cut side down on the other sheet.*

Roast for 20 minutes, then pull out the sprouts. Let the potatoes bake for another 15 minutes or until they’re golden brown and very dry to the touch. (That crispy dryness means they won’t get soggy in the soup!)*

While your veggies are roasting, make the soup. Begin by sautéeing onions in a dab of ghee/butter or a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until soft and translucent. Add mushrooms, reduce heat to medium-low, and continue to sautée for another 5 minutes or until mushrooms are shrunken and soft. Stir in garlic and continue to cook for another 3 minutes.

Pour in broth. Stir in spices, lentils, and carrot. Simmer over medium-low heat (reduce to low if the soup is bubble-boiling rather than ripple-simmering) for 20 minutes or until lentils have reached desired tenderness. By now, the potatoes should be done, so go ahead and stir in the roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes. Season with a pinch or two of salt — taste as you go! — and serve. Leftover soup can be refrigerated for up to a week.

Note that soup will thicken upon standing. I like not-so-brothy soup, but if you’d rather have more broth, pour a little fresh broth into your next-day soup and mix well before reheating. Serve with grated or shaved Parmesan if you like.

Enjoy!

* If you’d rather skip the roasting, proceed directly to making the soup. When you add the lentils, set your timer for 10 minutes. Add the halved sprouts and the cubed potatoes at that point and simmer everything for a final 10 minutes.

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!

Baked Potato "Cake"

If you have a bit of spare time and a sacrificial kitchen towel*, making a baked potato cake — which can be turned into the world’s tastiest hash browns if you have leftovers! — is a fun way to prepare potatoes. All you need is butter, salt and pepper, and baking/starchy potatoes. (As opposed to waxy potatoes, which aren’t quite starchy enough to do the job here, especially since we’re leaving the skins on.) It’s also quite helpful to have a oven-safe wire rack and a plate that will fit over the top of a 9″ skillet. You can bake the cake directly on a covered baking sheet rather than on a wire rack, but going the rack route will make for a crispier cake.

The flipping part is a little bit tricky, but just remember this: you can’t go wrong with potatoes and butter. Even if you wind up with a smashed cake rather than a flipped one, it’ll still taste delicious.

* I say “sacrificial” because the pigments/antioxidants in the potato will turn the towel black. It’s a fascinating process to watch, actually — when you first squeeze the grated potato in the towel, the towel acquires a brownish hue, but as the pigments oxidize, the brown becomes dark brown and finally almost black. Washing out the towel in running water will turn it grey. Potato-scented grey. So be sure to use a towel you don’t care about…or use one you’ve been wanting to make a potato-scented grey. I’ve designated my sacrificial towel as a potato-twisting towel and plan to re-use it accordingly.

Baked Potato “Cake”

Butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 baking potato (the Idaho variety generally works out to be 3/4 to 1 lb. per potato), scrubbed but not peeled
1 sacrificial kitchen towel
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425F. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and top with a wire rack. If you’re going to put the cake directly on the sheet, cover it with parchment paper. Melt about 1 T. butter in a 9″ nonstick skillet over low heat.

Grate the potato with a cheese grater, piling the potato onto the sacrificial towel as you go. Wrap the grated potato securely into the center of the towel, then hold it above the sink and twist it as hard as you can. You should see plenty of juice trickle out. Scrape the grated potato into a large mixing bowl. Stir in melted butter and a generous helping of salt and pepper.

Melt another tablespoon of butter in the 9″ skillet. Add the potato, pressing down gently but firmly with a heat-proof spatula to smooth out your cake. Increase heat to medium-high and cook for 3 minutes or until the underside looks brown when you use the spatula to gently pull up a side so that you can peek underneath.

Take the skillet over to the counter and put a large plate on top of it. Invert the skillet quickly — but securely! — so that the cake drops onto the plate. Slide the cake back into the skillet, return to heat, and cook for another 3 minutes.

Slide the cake onto the wire rack/sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool for at least 5 minutes before shifting/cutting the cake. (The cake will harden into place as it cools.) If you used a rack, place a clean large plate over the cake and flip it over. If the cake sticks to the rack, use your fingers to gently press the cake down and away from the rack, poking your fingers into the space between the bars and gradually working the cake free from the rack. (Starch sticks; that’s why the cake sticks together to begin with.)

Serve immediately, either plain or topped. Yummy pairings include smoked salmon and whole-milk Greek yogurt with a dill garnish (a Russian approach) as well as black beans, corn, and Cheddar cheese (a Mexican approach). Leftover “slices” can be kept for up to 4 days in the fridge. Just sauté them in butter for a few minutes over medium heat, and you’ll have the most amazing hash browns you’ve ever tasted. Even die-hard fast food lovers would have to admit that your potatoes beat the heck outta those McDonald’s fries that people say they like so much.

Incidentally, ever looked at the ingredient list on those fries? Here it is, direct from the McD’s website: “Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola oil, hydrogenated soybean oil, natural beef flavor [wheat and milk derivatives]*, citric acid [preservative]), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate (maintain color), salt. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane added as an antifoaming agent.” Note the hydrogenated oil (a.k.a. trans fat) and wheat and milk derivatives.

All your potatoes have is potatoes (with skins!), butter, salt, and pepper.

Enjoy!

Mexican Pozole

Who says you can’t have a fiesta in the wintertime? (Especially when it’s 48F outside. It’s like spring in the winter!) Unlike mexicanized restaurant food in the U.S., actual food in Mexico is fresh, vibrant, and light in a satisfying and hearty kind of way. Case in point: a crisp, refreshing version of pozole, served with Applegate pastured bacon and Greek yogurt as toppings. I added chayote squash and navy beans, too — I like having something to chew on in my soups — but as long as you include hominy and chili powder in your batch, you’ll capture the essence of pozole.

Pozole
Makes enough for 4 hearty servings, especially if you include all of the toppings.

1 small onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
28 oz. can of tomatoes
15 oz. can of navy beans (my favorite brand of beans is Eden)
1 T. chili powder (I adore chili powder from Spice Hunter)
1 chayote squash, peeled, spongy core removed, flesh cut into 1″ cubes (optional, but adds to the Latin flair of the dish); if you can’t find chayote, opt for sweet potato
15 oz. can of hominy (I prefer yellow, but white works, too)

Optional toppings:
Cooked bacon from pastured hogs (see the Baked Bacon post for tips on finding and preparing top-quality bacon)
Whole-milk Greek yogurt
Chopped cilantro
Lime wedges
Thinly sliced cabbage
Chopped avocado

Drizzle a splash of extra-virgin olive oil into a large soup pot. Add onions and sautée over medium heat for 5 minutes or until the onions are soft but not yet brown. Add garlic, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for another 2 minutes or until garlic is fragrant and soft. Pour in chicken broth, 1 cup of water, the tomatoes, and the beans. (Seeing as Eden beans are canned in BPA-free cans with sea salt and a pinch of seaweed, I add the contents of the entire can.) Stir in the chili powder and bring to a boil.

Add the chayote/sweet potato, reduce heat to a gentle simmer, and let the squash cook for 10 minutes. Poke a piece to see if it has reached its desired tenderness. (I like mine a bit chewy.) If you’d like to add more chili powder or a dash of sea salt, now’s a good time to do that, too.

Stir in hominy, simmer for another minute to heat everything through, and serve. Garnish with any or all of the optional toppings. Leftover pozole can be refrigerated for up to 5 days — like all tomato-based soups and sauces, the flavor deepens upon standing. You may like it even better the next day.

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!

Tuna & Spinach Pizza

Happy New Year, everybody! I thought I’d start off 2012 by breaking an established culinary tradition: pizza toppings. Don’t get me wrong — I love mushroom and (pastured) pepperoni as much as the next guy — but I also enjoy venturing into off-the-spun-dough territory. I first had Thunfisch (tuna fish) pizza in Germany and have been making in my own kitchen ever since.

Before you start thinking that’s just too weird (“Tuna fish on pizza?”), let me remind you about the hallowed American lunch known as the tuna fish melt. This is essentially the same thing, except you’re adding a zesty tomato sauce and are eating the tuna on triangular wedges of crust rather than squared-off toast. And you’re including spinach. All in all, putting tuna fish on pizza makes for a heartier, more satisfying meal. For pizza lovers, it’s a chance to try something new; for folks wanting to upgrade the health quotient of their meals, this is a great way to add natural omega-3s to your dinner in the form of tuna + spinach. (On a whole-grain crust, of course.) I’m a member of both camps — upgraded meals always involve better flavor, too.

Tuna & Spinach Pizza
Makes one 12″ round pizza; feel free to double the recipe to make two pizzas if you have two pans.

For the crust:
1 heaping teaspoon yeast
1/2 cup + 1 T. fairly warm water (not scorching hot, but pretty hot from the tap)
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup corn flour* (not starch!)
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup chickpea flour*
1/2 cup potato flour* (not starch!)
Up to 1/2 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the toppings:
Pizza or spaghetti sauce, homemade or store-bought (if using store-bought, try to find one that contains extra-virgin olive oil rather than soybean or canola or any other type of oil; the latter will almost certainly be highly refined and probably also GMO)
Canned tuna fish
Baby spinach leaves
Onion, sliced thin
Shredded cheese of your choice (think of what you like with a tuna melt; I prefer Gruyere, Parmesan, or any other hard, aged cheeses)

Preheat oven to 425F. Combine yeast and water in a large mixing bowl and let sit for 5 minutes. The yeast should bubble and create a light foam on top of the water as it comes to life. In another bowl, whisk together the salt and the flours. Use extra-virgin olive oil to thoroughly grease a 12″ round pizza pan. I like to use the type that’s aerated — i.e., has little holes in the bottom. That seems to create a thin, crisp crust. (European pizzas have very thin, crisp crusts, especially compared to doughy American crusts.)

Stir the flours into the yeast. Add the milk, starting with 1/4 cup and adding a bit more if the dough is too dry and crumbly. I find that 1/2 cup works out perfectly if I use the four specific flours I listed. You’ll probably need to mix the dough with your hands towards the end to wind up with a not-too-dry, not-too-wet ball. No need to let your dough rise since you’re going for a thin crust; you’ll still get a pleasantly yeasty taste without the rising time.

Press the dough evenly into the greased pan and bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Pull out of the oven, let cool for 5 minutes, and top with your toppings. Begin with the sauce, add everything except the cheese, and end by covering everything in a good layer of cheese. Reduce heat to 375F and bake for 10 minutes or until the cheese is melting and turning golden brown.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you don’t have all four of them, just be sure to use a total of 2 cups of flour. The potato flour is highly absorbent, so if you don’t use any potato flour, only use 1/2 cup of water (omit the tablespoon). If you would prefer to make a wheat-based version, use a total of 2 cups of spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour.

Tortilla Pizzas

Here’s a truth that’s inconvenient for the dinner-in-a-sack industry but is great for the rest of us: fast food doesn’t have to be junk food. You’ve probably already got a lot of tasty quick meals loitering about in your kitchen, from canned beans that can be made into hearty salads to canned squash or pumpkin that can be fried into patties to an assortment of cheese, nuts, and fruits that can easily comprise a meal.

Or if you have some corn tortillas and some salsa and cheese, you can pop it all into the toaster oven to make savory Mexican-style pizzas. After I took this picture, I decided to make the pizzas into calzones by carefully turning one of the pizzas over and pressing it onto the other one. Crusty outsides, gooey insides…so much tastier than a $5 pizza that’s more like cardboard than food. And you’ll be enjoying your mini pizzas in a lot less time than it takes to drive up to the nearest dinner-in-a-sack outlet, too.

Tortilla Pizzas

Corn tortillas
Fresh salsa, either homemade or store-bought (I adore Garden Fresh salsas, although I added extra chopped cilantro to the one I used since I think you can pretty much never have too much cilantro)
Cheddar, Monterey Jack, or Colby cheese, preferably made with grass-fed milk (I opted for Farm Country White Cheddar), grated

If you’re using crisp tortillas, there’s no need to heat them first, but if you’re using frozen or not-so-crisp tortillas, you’ll need to dry-toast them in skillets over medium heat for 4 minutes — flipping halfway through — or until they start to turn golden-brown around the edges. I stash my Whole Life whole-grain corn tortillas in the freezer and heat them individually as needed.

Place the crisp tortillas on a foil- or parchment-lined baking sheet or toaster oven tray. Spoon some salsa onto each tortilla and sprinkle on some grated cheese. If you’re using a toaster oven, bake for about 10 minutes at 300F or until the cheese bubbles; if you’re using a conventional oven, go with 10 minutes at 350F. (The smaller interior of the toaster oven means it’ll heat much more quickly.)

Enjoy!

Cranberry Ice Cream with Cranberry, Apple & Orange Chutney

I don’t have many fancy gadgets in the kitchen — sous-vide cooking and flavored foams just seem like too much work to me — but I consider my ice cream maker to be an indispensable culinary aid. Ditto for my blender. If you have those two kitchen helpers, making ice cream becomes ridiculously easy. Not only can you upgrade your ice cream by using high-quality ingredients (dairy from grass-fed cows, natural sweeteners, etc.), you can let your imagination run wild and you can make whatever flavor you want. Avocado and coconut? Done. Creamed corn with cinnamon? Sure. The scoop is yours.

Seeing as Thanksgiving is just around the corner and ’tis the season for every market to showcase cranberries in all their crimson glory, I thought I’d give cranberry ice cream a shot. And because I had the delicious joy of sampling ice cream made with blackberries and buttermilk when I was in Germany earlier this year, I decided that I’d use a similar approach for this batch. (Tip for travelers: if you are in Konstanz, visit the Aran coffeehouse + ice cream shop!! The Touch of Singapore restaurant is another must-taste destination in Konstanz.)

You can serve the ice cream all on its own or you can serve it with the chutney as I’ve done here. Or serve the chutney all on its own — I originally came up with the chutney because I wanted to serve a tastier and healthier version of the time-honored but sugar-drenched cranberry & orange dish that’s typically offered at the Thanksgiving table. Rather than white sugar, this chutney features apples, ginger, and a touch of honey.

Cranberry Ice Cream with Cranberry, Apple & Orange Chutney

For the ice cream:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, preferably from grass-fed cows
4 egg yolks that you don’t mind eating raw (I always stick with eggs from pastured hens)
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. almond OR vanilla extract

For the chutney:
12 oz. fresh or frozen cranberries
1 large apple, chopped
1 seedless orange, peeled and split into segments
1 tsp. ginger
1 to 2 T. honey or to taste
Apple cider (optional)

To make the ice cream, place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour into an ice cream maker and follow manufacturer instructions.

To make the chutney, place all ingredients in a medium pot and simmer over medium-low heat for 20 minutes or until thickened, stirring and smashing the chutney occasionally to help the orange segments release their juice and the apples and cranberries release their pectin. (Pectin thickens as it cooks.) Add another drizzle of honey or a splash of cider if you’d like your chutney to be sweeter. Serve with the ice cream, on its own, or even on a cheese plate or with a helping of turkey or chicken.

Enjoy!

Red Rice with Roasted Kale & Onions

Roasted kale and popcorn are probably my two favorite snacks (or dinners, for that matter). They’re both crispy-crunchy and can be tossed with a variety of spices and umami-rich flavors: kale with tamari and sesame and popcorn with anything from Ethiopian berbere spice blends to Indian curry powders. My only problem is that I tend to overshoot on how much I make and then wind up with more than I can eat. Popcorn is simple enough to keep as leftovers — it readily keeps its crunch — but day-old roasted kale loses its crunch and becomes pretty chewy. (Still tastes great, though.)

Recently, I came up with the perfect way to repurpose my leftover roasted kale chips. You could use fresh kale, too, but you’ll get maximum yum if you use already-seasoned kale chips that have been steeped in flavor for a few days. And if you know you’ll have a delicious way to use leftovers, you’ll probably be more likely to roast the kale in the first place. Either the chips or the repurposed chips would be great additions to a holiday dinner!

Red Rice with Roasted Kale & Onions
I purposely left out exact measurements here because you’ll be using whatever leftover kale you have on hand. If you are more of a fan of rice than kale, make more rice than kale; if you prefer kale, go easy on the rice. A general rule of thumb, though, is that 1/2 pound of kale (raw or roasted) and 1 cup raw rice will make a meal plenty big enough for two.

Yellow onions, sliced
Roasted kale chips (see recipe)*
Dash of tamari or soy sauce (choose wheat-free tamari if you’re making a gluten-free dish)
Sprinkling of powdered ginger
Cooked red rice OR cooked brown rice (gently simmer 1 part rice in 2 parts water/broth in a covered pot for 35-40 minutes or until all the liquid has been absorbed)**
Rice wine vinegar (optional)
Toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Heat a drizzle of unrefined peanut oil OR a pat of ghee/butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sautée, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Stir in roasted kale chips, the tamari, and the ginger. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to sautée for another 10 minutes, again stirring once in a while. Stir in cooked rice and taste to see if you’d like to add any more tamari or ginger. If you’d like your creation to be more moist but you don’t want to keep adding tamari/soy — it can get awfully salty — then spritz on some rice wine vinegar instead.

Garnish with sesame seed if you like. Is this a great use of leftovers or what? The combination of whole-grain rice + hearty kale makes this a surprisingly filling dish.

Enjoy!

* If you’re using fresh kale, rinse and chop the leaves and sautée them over medium heat for 5 minutes before adding the onions. Proceed with the recipe as written, adding extra tamari and ginger to taste.

** Cooked whole-grain rice (red, brown, black, purple) can be refrigerated for up to a week, so feel free to make a big batch and then use it whenever you like.

Blueberry Buttermilk Ice Cream

While it may seem odd to be making ice cream when it’s getting cold outside, I say what the heck — damned tasty ice cream is damned tasty any time of the year. And you can always stand over/in front of the heating vent while you’re eating your ice cream. It’s fun to play up the whole hot-vs.-cold concept even more that way.

Ice cream is typically made with cream, of course — and milk — but you can make ice cream with nearly any thicker, higher-fat dairy product: buttermilk, whole-milk yogurt, even sour cream. The higher fat levels are necessary both to provide a rich flavor and to inhibit ice crystals from forming/growing. If the latter happens, your ice cream goes from smooth to crunchy, and it becomes well-high impossible to scoop straight out of the freezer.

Another way to prevent ice crystals from forming is to add a litany of chemical stabilizers, thickeners, gums, fillers, and refined sugar…which is exactly what you’ll see on cheap, low-fat ice cream labels. Needless to say, that is not the kind of ice cream I would recommend making. (Actually, it would be impossible to make that kind of ice cream at home since you won’t find monocalcium phosphate or propylene glycol monostearate on grocery store shelves. [Unless you're looking at the label on Edy's Cookies & Cream ice cream, that is. And that's just one example out of dozens if not hundreds.] Propylene glycol is used for things like antifreeze and hydraulic fracking.) I’ll take my good-quality fat over that, thanks.

Blueberry & Buttermilk Ice Cream

2 cups half-and-half, preferably from grass-fed cows (if you’re in Metro Detroit, check out Calder’s products)
2 cups buttermilk (ditto on the Calder’s)
2 egg yolks that you don’t mind eating raw (preferably from free-range hens)
1 tsp. almond OR vanilla extract
About 1/2 cup honey
16 oz. frozen wild blueberries (I like the ones from Trader Joe’s)

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until velvety smooth. You’ll need a 5-cup or bigger blender to make this since it comes out to about 5 cups total. Taste and see if you’d like it sweeter; if so, add a touch more honey.

Pour into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer directions. SO simple and SO delicious!!

Enjoy!

Polenta with Marinara

Thinking of Italy probably makes you think of pasta…and with good reason. But in many parts of Italy, pasta isn’t the preferred culinary co-star. Arborio rice — the kind used in the famed Italian risottos — isn’t always a front-runner, either. Polenta is. The Romans adored this simple corn-mash-turned-cake and ate it everywhere, from the farms to the fields to the family dinner tables. Many a centurion was fueled by polenta while on the march.

It’s easy to see why polenta has become such an entrenched culinary tradition: it’s simple to prepare, requires a minimum of ingredients to prepare (corn grits and water), and pairs well with just about any other ingredient or dish. And before polenta is cooked into existence — when it’s still just a bag of dried corn grits — it’s easy to store for an extended period of time. In other words, the ideal pantry item, whether you’re a Roman army cook in 200 B.C.E.* or you’re wondering what to make for dinner in 2011. (*For you archaeology buffs out there, that would be “Before Common Era.” B.C.E. has pretty much replaced the overly-Christian-oriented “B.C.” in the archaeology/anthropology world these days.)

The only tricky part about making polenta is that you have to spend about 15 minutes stirring the grits as they cook. On the plus side, though, cooked polenta can be refrigerated for up to a week, so 15 minutes once means several days worth of meals. Or you could opt for buying a log of pre-cooked polenta; many stores carry at least one brand of it.

Polenta with Marinara
Serves 4

3 cups water, vegetable broth, or chicken stock (or a combination of these; you can even throw in a dash of white wine if you like)
1 cup polenta (I really like Bob’s Red Mill polenta)
Pat of butter or drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt & freshly cracked pepper to taste
Marinara sauce, either homemade or store-bought
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Drizzle a large bowl or pie pan with extra-virgin olive oil and set aside. Bring water to a boil in a medium-sized pot. The polenta will bubble quite a bit as it cooks, so you want a pot that’s a bit on the deep side — then at least some of the popping polenta will burp back into the pot rather than onto your stove (or you). Stir in polenta and immediately reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring often and standing back — use a long-handled wooden spoon — for 15 minutes or until the polenta has gotten so thick that it’s hard to stir. Stir in butter and salt and pepper and take off the heat.

Ease the polenta out of the pot and into the oiled bowl. Let sit for at least 10 minutes. (Now is a good time to re-heat or make the marinara sauce.) Cover the bowl with a large plate and invert the whole thing. When you carefully lift off the bowl, the polenta should easily slide out of the bowl and should stay on the plate.

Cut polenta into wedges and top with a generous helping of marinara sauce. Add Parmesan if you like. Polenta is essentially a very simple version of cornbread, so just as cornbread goes with dang near anything, so does polenta. Feel free to add other components to this dish, whether that’s chicken sautéed with garlic and balsamic vinegar or spinach cooked with mushrooms and herbs. You could even cut yourself a slice of polenta first thing in the morning — just top with butter and honey for a delicious whole-grain breakfast.

Enjoy!

Trail Mix Muffins

Dried fruit + nuts + seeds = an incredibly handy snack. Even dinner if need be. (Like when you land in an European city late at night on a Sunday and realize that NOTHING is open.) In this case, the trail mix is breakfast. If you don’t have any “official” trail mix on hand — i.e., a bag of mixed fruit and nuts and seeds sold as a mix — it’s easy enough to make your own out of any fruit, nuts, and seeds you have in your cupboards. One of my favorite simple mixes is cashews + raisins or dried currents. Another great one is macadamia nuts + raisins or currants or even cranberries. The combination of the rich, buttery macadamia with the sweet, chewy raisins reminds me of an oatmeal cookie.

Whether you’re using store-bought mix or making your own, be sure to get dried fruit that is simply dried fruit, not dried fruit coated with corn syrup/sugar. Dried fruit is quite sweet enough on its own, but for whatever reason, food manufacturers typically coat dried fruit — especially cranberries! — with cheap refined sunflower oil and cheap refined corn syrup/sugar. Raisins are about the only dried fruit that is not typically oiled and syruped. But if you read ingredient labels with a saber-toothed eye, you can find the occasional mix that’s just dried fruit + nuts + seeds. And if you like the idea of putting trail mix in your muffins, you might also like this idea/recipe that involves putting trail mix in your cookies!

Trail Mix Muffins

1/2 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup millet flour*
2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup trail mix
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
6 oz. whole-milk yogurt (Fage is a nice choice; I’ve even made this with sheep’s-milk yogurt)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375F and either thoroughly grease two muffin tins (one can be a six-muffin tin rather than the standard 12, or both can hold 12) or line the tins with paper cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, and trail mix. In another large bowl, whisk together the remaining (liquid) ingredients. Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour and whisk together until well-blended, scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times. If you’re using wheat-based flours, only whisk gently until just blended; if you’re using gluten-free flours, you can whisk like mad until you have a perfectly smooth batter.

Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full. This will probably mean you’ll wind up with 16 to 18 muffins, so you may have some empty places in your second tin. That’s fine.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until tops are just starting to turn golden-brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based muffins, use a total of 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flours.

Chili-Spiced Broccoli Stems & Tomatoes

Sometimes kitchen “scraps” are actually the best part. Plenty of classic dishes are based on that “Waste not, want not!” mentality: French ratatouille, Spanish paella, wedges of Italian polenta served with garlicky white beans. Good thing there have always been thrifty cooks among us! Just goes to show that great flavor doesn’t have to have a big price tag attached to it.

Some thrifty-minded ideas take a little extra thought, like tossing unused veggie ends and bits into a freezer bag for a batch of homemade broth down the road. (When the bag gets full, dump the carrot ends and onion scraps and whatever else you’ve got into a pot, cover the veggies with water, and gently simmer everything for an hour. Strain out the liquid, discard the veggies, and voila! you have homemade broth. If you have any meat bones on hand, throw those in, too. Then you have stock.) Another save-it-for-later idea is to toss the rock-hard rind on a hunk of Parmesan into a bag. The next time you make soup, sauce, stew, or anything you want to thicken and intensify, add the rind to the pot and let it work its Parmesan-imbued umami magic.

But my favorite use of a commonly overlooked “scrap” is broccoli stems. They taste even better than artichoke hearts — but are much, much easier to get at than artichoke hearts — and have the bonus of being pleasantly crunchy, too. To enjoy the stems, first cut off the top where the trunk turns into bifurcating branches, then trim off the bottom 1/2″ or so. (If the broccoli is older, the stem may be very hard and woody at the bottom. Keep trimming the bottom until you hit a crisp, still-moist point.) Turn the stem right-side up so that one of the cut-off flat ends is resting on the cutting board. Trim away the sides of the stem, rotating the stem as you go so that you can easily trim all of the sides. You’ll see that the center is pale green; once you trim away the drier, woodier outer layer, you’ll have a slim stem that doesn’t show any marks of branches or leaves coming off of it.

You can cut the trimmed stems into pieces and cook them with the florets if you like, but I prefer to eat the stems raw. I like them even better than the flowery part!

Chili-Spiced Broccoli & Tomatoes

Toss chopped tomatoes and thinly sliced broccoli stems (see above paragraphs for instructions on preparing the stems) with extra-virgin olive oil, a sprinkling of chili powder, and either a squirt of lime juice or a drizzle of red wine vinegar. You could add any other veggies you’d like to this, of course, or even add strips of cooked chicken and some crumbled soft goat cheese. Just be sure to try some of the broccoli stems all by themselves so that you’ll know what they taste like. Bet you can find plenty of other uses for the part of the broccoli you used to throw away!

Enjoy!

Roasted Potato & Eggplant with Bacon

Yesterday, I raided my garden and pantry for what turned out to be one of the tastiest and easiest dishes I’ve made in a while. It was all the more stunningly easy because of its main flavor: bacon. Yep. Completely non-messy, completely crispy, completely delicious. If you start with bacon from pastured hogs (which has a naturally lower fat content — and, by the way, that fat is mostly monoUNsaturated fat — and is not injected with spray-out-of-the-pan-inducing brine the way commercial bacon is), all you need is a wire rack, a baking sheet, and an oven to make perfectly crispy and light bacon. Hands-off bacon, that is! Couldn’t be simpler.

Besides, if you’re going to turn on the oven to roast some veggies, you might as well slip a tray of bacon onto the third rack. Then you can go outside and relax on the front porch while your meal makes itself. Just remember to bring a timer outside with you! Good-quality, lean bacon is too good to burn.

Roasted Potato & Eggplant with Bacon
Serves 2 for lunch

4 strips of bacon, preferably from Applegate Farms or another company selling bacon from pastured hogs
8 to 10 smallish finger-shape potatoes (I used purple fingerlings)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt & freshly cracked pepper
2 small eggplants (the fresher, the better; eggplants get bitter as they age), top stem removed
Chives, snipped with kitchen shears or minced

Preheat oven to 375F and make sure you have three racks ready to accommodate your baking sheets. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Line another sheet or tray with aluminum foil and set a wire rack on top of the foil.

Lay the bacon strips out over the wire rack, spacing them equally apart. Cut the potatoes into quarters or wedges and pile them onto a baking sheet. Drizzle them with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, then toss them well and spread them out on the sheet. Cut the eggplant in half and then into rounds (they’ll look like half moons). Drizzle them with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss and spread them out on the other baking sheet.

Bake bacon, potatoes, and eggplant for 15 minutes. Check to see if the eggplant is golden brown and shriveled — it probably will be. Pull out the eggplant and let the potatoes and bacon continue to bake for another 10 minutes. The potatoes will be golden brown and crispy on the edges when done; the bacon will be sizzling and dark brown (but not blackening!). Note: if you use conventional bacon, you’ll have to cover it with foil to prevent the fat from erupting in your oven and making a mess. Stick with pastured bacon, and you’ll have amazingly crisp and delicious bacon with nary a drop spilled.

Let potatoes and bacon cool for a few minutes, then toss potatoes with eggplant and chives. Crumble bacon and scatter it over the veggies. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!