Spiced Sorghum & Yogurt Cake

What’s a grain, a flour, and a sweetener? Hint: it used to be a popular foodstuff in the U.S. back in the pioneer days, and it’s still popular in African and Indian dishes. You can make beer out of it, too. It has more fiber (and iron) than and nearly as much protein as soy and wheat. And it’s gluten-free!

I’m talking about sorghum. It’s my #1 go-to flour — I like it even better than brown rice flour — and I often include whole sorghum grains in my main dishes. Sorghum syrup tastes a lot like blackstrap molasses and is fun to bake with; sorghum-based beers are tasty, too. The U.S. still grows plenty of sorghum, but most of it is used as animal fodder rather than as food for humans. What a shame! It’s nutty and chewy and is lovely tossed with a simple drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a shake or two of sea salt. It’s true that it takes a good 50 minutes to cook — sorghum is a hardy grain — but you can cook a big potful of it and keep it in the fridge for up to a week, dipping into it whenever you want cereal or a hearty grain-based meal.

This recipe makes use of both sorghum flour and sorghum syrup. The former is getting easier and easier to find in grocery stores (health food stores, ethnic stores catering to African and Indian clientele, and well-stocked stores like Whole Foods almost always offer sorghum flour), but sorghum syrup is  a bit trickier to find…although it is quite popular in the southern states. If you can’t find the syrup, feel free to substitute blackstrap molasses.

Spiced Sorghum & Yogurt Cake
This recipe makes a cake big enough to serve ten people. Since it isn’t overly sweet and also packs a ton of whole grains and whole-milk dairy products, I like to have it for breakfast.

3/4 cup sorghum flour*
3/4 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup teff flour*
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 stick (8 T.) butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold and Organic Valley are great choices), softened
1/2 cup sucanat
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/2 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt
1/2 cup sorghum syrup OR blackstrap molasses
3/4 cup buttermilk, preferably from grass-fed cows (you can make your own last-minute buttermilk by filling the 3/4 cup just shy with whole milk and then squeezing in enough fresh lemon juice to finish filling the measuring cup; let stand for 10 minutes before using)
Raspberries for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 325F. Grease the bottom and sides of a 10″ springform pan. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, spices, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the butter for at least 2 minutes. Beat in sucanat, mixing for another full minute. (The creamier and more aerated the butter is, the fluffier the final cake will be.) Beat in eggs until well-blended, then beat in yogurt and sorghum syrup.

Add half of the flour and mix well, then add half of the buttermilk and mix well. Repeat with remaining halves. If you’re making a gluten-free cake, you can beat these in with your mixers; if you’re making a wheat-based cake, stir them in with a spoon. (If there’s gluten involved, you don’t want to overdevelop it and make your cake tough. No need to worry about that with gluten-free baking.)

Pour into the springform pan and bake for 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. (This may take 50 minutes, but you want to check it at 40 so that you don’t risk overbaking it and drying it out.) Garnish with raspberries — or any kind of berries — if you like. You could top it with a dollop of yogurt, too.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d rather make a wheat-based version, use a total of 2 cups of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flours.

Banana Vanilla Smoothie

When I was a kid, every mall had an Orange Julius kiosk and every grocery store sported dry-mix packets of faux fruity milkshakes. (I absolutely loved those kiosks and those little packages.) I’m still a big fan of creamy fruit shakes, but nowadays I go the qualitarian route: whole milk plus suitable fruit (bananas, pears, and berries seem to be the best) plus dash of vanilla. Eureka! You have your creamy, fruity shake. Without the questionable powdery stuff.

A word to the wise on the vanilla front: I recently upgraded my vanilla to Nielsen-Massey vanilla. These people know their vanilla, and it shows! (And tastes!) Just about all they do is vanilla…which is far more complex than you’d think.  Madagascar vanilla, Tahitian vanilla, Mexican vanilla; vanilla extract, vanilla powder, vanilla paste. And a few other extracts, like coffee and almond.

The point here is that the Nielsen-Massey vanilla is BY FAR the best vanilla I’ve ever used, and it especially comes through in minimal-ingredient situations like this smoothie. Or vanilla water, which is where you just trickle a bit of vanilla extract into a glass of ice water. Bottom line: it is absolutely worth seeking out Nielsen-Massey vanilla. I ordered a 32-ounce bottle of it and just keep refilling my standard small bottle whenever I run out. You’ll pay the same amount for a 32-ounce bottle of their insanely fabulous vanilla as you would if you did your normal thing and eventually bought eight not-nearly-as-good 4-ounce bottles at the store. And vanilla can be stored nearly indefinitely in a cool, dark place.

Banana Vanilla Smoothie

1 ripe banana, peeled
2 ice cubes
1 cup whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows, OR whole coconut milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla, Nielsen-Massey if you can get it

Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until frothy and smooth.

Best. Smoothie. Ever.

Enjoy!

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!

Smoked Salmon Dip

If you visit my e-kitchen on a regular basis, you know that when I like an ingredient, I tend to use it a lot. The only thing better than having plenty of [insert favorite ingredient here] on hand is getting creative with it! Recasting a favorite is also a delicious way to love your leftovers and not waste a single scrap.

In this case, I had some extra smoked wild salmon on hand after I’d used half of it to make my egg-and-salmon breakfast. I briefly tossed around the idea of making crepes and then stuffing them with the salmon, but in the end I decided to go a completely different route and blend the salmon with some Greek yogurt to make a quick dip. Once you’ve got your dip, you can put it on crackers, serve it with raw veggies, or even spread some on a sandwich (or a crepe). The lovely hue — and flavor! — of the wild salmon shines through even when you dilute it with the yogurt, so you don’t need much salmon to make a good-sized batch of dip.

Smoked Salmon Dip
This makes enough for a nice appetizer for two, but seeing as smoked wild salmon is often sold in 4 oz. packages, you may wish to double the recipe.

2 oz. wild smoked salmon
1/2 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt (Fage is a great choice)
1 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
A few grinds of peppercorns
Whole-grain crackers/breads and raw veggies for serving

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Taste and see if you’d like it to be a little brighter in flavor. If you do, add another teaspoon of lemon juice. (Smoked salmon can be quite salty sometimes, so you may want to counter that with extra lemon.)

Dip can be enjoyed immediately or refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Savory Artichoke Custard

If you’re in the mood for an unadorned artichoke, nothing beats a freshly steamed one, but if you want to make a dish featuring artichokes as the main ingredient, the canned route suddenly gets a whole lot more appealing. To make this savory baked custard — which is fantastic for either breakfast or lunch — all you need to do is blend some drained canned artichoke hearts in a food processor with the other four ingredients, pop it in the oven, and wait 25 minutes.

If you’d rather make a soft artichoke dip to accompany crackers or raw sliced veggies, omit the eggs and the baking and simply serve the blended artichokes, cheese, Greek yogurt, and garlic. Talk about an easy appetizer!

Savory Artichoke Custard (or Dip)

5 cloves garlic, chopped
14 oz. can of artichoke hearts, drained
1/2 cup plain whole-milk Greek yogurt
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens*
3 oz. aged hard cheese such as Parmesan, preferably from grass-fed cows, grated (I used Sartori’s basil & olive oil asiago cheese; Sartori is a fantastic American cheesemaker with an impressive array of traditional-Italian-relocated-to-modern-day-Wisconsin selections)

Preheat oven to 400F. Sautée the garlic in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat for 3 minutes or until garlic is just beginning to turn golden brown. Immediately transfer to food processor and add remaining ingredients. Process in spurts until well-blended, using a spatula to occasionally scrape down the sides of the bowl.

* Note: if you’d rather make a dip than a custard, omit the eggs, skip the oven preheating, and stop here. Serve dip in a pretty bowl.

Scoop the mixture into a 9″ glass pie pan and bake for 25 minutes or until custard is set and the edges are turning brown. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Leftover custard can be refrigerated for 5 days…and makes a very satisfying instant breakfast!

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 Red Bean Dip

Sometimes recipes develop out of necessity. This dip, for example, happened because I was out of chickpeas. (Not sure if there’s been a massive chickpea crop failure or Metro Detroit is in a chickpea feeding frenzy right now, but lately I’ve had a heckuva time finding my favorite brand of canned chickpeas!) I was out of every variety of beans, actually, except for one lone can of small red beans and two of black beans. I opted for red since I figured they’d be milder and creamier than the black beans and would create a smoothly spiceable dip — my original intent had been to make hummus.

Seeing as hummus consists of chickpeas, garlic, lemon, tahini (sesame paste), and sometimes cumin, I opted to include garlic and cumin in my red bean dip. I skipped the tahini, though — I went with a Mexican rather than Middle Eastern spice palette — and used the liquid in the can to make the dip smooth and creamy. Eden sells their beans in BPA-free cans and sticks to a simple formula of beans + sea salt + pinch of seaweed, so there’s no need to drain the beans and ditch the juice. Another way to add a creamy dimension to the dip would be to blend in half a peeled avocado, but my avocado inventory was the same as my chickpea inventory: zero. Nor did I have any whole-milk yogurt on hand. (Yes, I went shopping the  next day and restocked my pantry and fridge.)

Mexican Red Bean Dip

1 small onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
15 oz. small red beans, preferably Eden brand, liquid reserved
1 T. or more chili powder (my favorite is Spice Hunter’s blend)
1/2 tsp. or more cumin
1 tsp. sea salt
Whole-grain crackers or bread for dipping (pictured: Mary’s Gone Crackers, which are whole-grain and gluten-free and quite delicious)

Drizzle a splash of extra-virgin olive oil in a medium skillet and sautée onions over medium heat for 5 minutes or until onions are translucent and just beginning to brown. Stir in garlic and reduce heat to medium-low. Continue to cook for another 3 minutes or until garlic is soft and fragrant.

Add beans and cooked onions and garlic to a food processor. Blend for about 30 seconds. Add spices and salt and briefly blend again. Scrape down the sides of the processor bowl and trickle in a tablespoon or two of the reserved bean liquid. Blend dip until smooth, trickling in a little more liquid if you’d like the dip to be creamier. (Or you could add half a peeled avocado or a dollop or two of whole-milk Greek yogurt if you have either of those on hand.) Taste and add more spice/salt as necessary, blending again every time you add seasonings.

Dip can be eaten right away or refrigerated for a week.

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!

Sautéed Kiwi & Manzano Bananas

Yes, when I get on a kick, I get on a kick. My current one is tiny plantains. They’re so cute! And so handily single-portion-sized. (Note: I mean “tiny plantains” as a descriptive term — you’ll find them under guises such as “manzano bananas” and “burro bananas” and any other official label attached to short, squat bananas with hard, ridged skins.) Like full-sized plantains, the tiny versions aren’t sweet until they’re nearly all black on the outside. You can enjoy them non-sweet, too — in that case, think of them more like a potato-y vegetable that you’d treat like a starch — but I prefer them at the very-ripe stage, when they’ve hit their sweet peak and their insides almost melt when you slice and sautée them.

Since I had a kiwi lying in the fruit bowl next to the manzano bananas/tiny plantains, I thought I might as well cook that, too, and make a tropical warm winter fruit sautée. What better way to take a gustatory break from 30F weather? Besides, kiwis are stunningly elegant with their neat rows of black seeds and inner flesh that hovers somewhere between peridot and emerald. (And as a health bonus, kiwi seeds are also a great source of omega-3s.)

Sautéed Kiwi & Manzano Bananas

Manzano OR burro OR any “tiny plantain,” as I call them (see the first paragraph for a description) OR a standard plantain, cut into slices about 1/4″ thick
Kiwis, skins removed, hard inner white core removed, each kiwi cut into about 8 cubes
Coconut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil (the coconut will taste more tropical and will have a slight sweetness that will complement the fruit)

Melt a dab of coconut oil in a medium-small skillet (it should be just large enough to hold the fruit) over medium heat. Add the plantains and cook undisturbed for 3 to 4 minutes. The oil should coat the bottom of the skillet, so if it doesn’t, add a bit more. (This is why it’s best to use the smallest skillet possible — no point in wasting nice coconut oil.) Lay out a sheet of paper towel on a large plate.

Examine the banana slices to see if the edges are browning. If they are, use heat-proof tongs to flip one over to see if the underside is golden brown. If it is, flip over all of the slices and continue to cook for another 2 minutes or until the second side is brown. Slide onto the paper towel and let drain.

Add the kiwis to the same skillet and cook, shaking the skillet occasionally, for 3 minutes or until kiwis are starting to lightly brown. Slip into a bowl and gently toss with the tiny plantain slices. Serve immediately. This would be a great breakfast or dessert as is, or you can top it with plain whole-milk Greek yogurt or coconut ice cream. Try making it again with other tropical fruit in place of the kiwi: mango, papaya, pineapple.

Enjoy!

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!

Sautéed Spiced Chickpeas

It’s nearly New Year’s Eve, and chances are you’re looking for a tasty and quick appetizer to serve your guests.  One of my recent favorites involves just three ingredients: chickpeas, berbere or chili powder, and extra-virgin olive oil. That plus 15 minutes of occasionally shaking a pan will get you deliciously unique bite-sized appetizers to fortify your guests until midnight. Warning: you may have to make multiple batches to account for your own nibbling! I was fortunate to be alone in the house the first time I made these, because they wound up being my dinner.

Sautéed Spiced Chickpeas
Feel free to double, triple, or even quadruple this recipe as needed. You may, however, find that your largest skillet may only accommodate 2 standard cans of chickpeas at once.

15 oz. can of chickpeas, drained well
1 or 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
1 T. berbere, chili powder, or your favorite spice mix

While the chickpeas are draining, drizzle a tablespoon of oil into a medium-sized nonstick skillet. You want a skillet just big enough to accommodate all of the chickpeas in one layer — if the skillet is too small, the chickpeas will bunch up and miss out on the olive oil action; if the skillet is too big, you’ll have to add more oil in order to give the chickpeas enough olive oil action. No need to waste oil when you can simply use a smaller skillet! The oil should cover the bottom of the skillet, but the chickpeas don’t need to be drowning in it.

Heat oil for a minute over medium heat, then add drained chickpeas. Sautée for about 15 minutes or until the chickpeas are turning golden brown (several will crack and split slightly), shaking the pan occasionally to roll the chickpeas around. While they’re cooking, lay several pieces of paper toweling on a large plate.

Roll the golden-cooked chickpeas onto the paper towels and let drain for a minute. Pour them into a large bowl and toss them with the spices. Taste one — careful, they’re addictive! — and toss in more spice if you’d like.

These miniature spicy appetizers are best served hot, but they’re tasty at room temp, too. And if you have any left over (doubtful), you can pop them in the fridge for up to 4 days and enjoy them whenever you like, either alone, as salad toppers, or even tossed with other veggies.

Happy New Year!

Chili-Dusted Burro Bananas

When you think of a banana, chances are you think of a Cavendish banana: yellow, curved and long, typically eaten when sweet and soft. But there are hundreds of varieties of bananas — albeit from one genetic source that has been replanted from cuttings for thousands of years — that range from small to large and from sweet to starchy. Plantains and related varieties can be eaten when green (at the starchy stage) or yellow (at the sweet stage), red bananas are a deep maroon-red, banana flowers are purple, other varieties are brown. The only reason Cavendish has come out on top is because it emerged as the most disease-resistant and easily shipped variety back in the 1950s when the previous #1 banana, the Gros Michel, got wiped out by a ravaging fungus.

The familiar Cavendish is welcome in my fruit bowl any time, but it’s even more fun to try some less-familiar varieties. Red bananas and baby yellow bananas are soft, fragrant, and make an ideal peel-and-eat sweet snack. Short, squat bananas with hard and ridged outer peels are more like plantains: they’re starchy and hard enough to cut into neat rounds or strips, making them perfect candidates for frying in a splash of unrefined peanut or coconut oil and enjoying as a savory snack. (Burro bananas and manzanos fall into this category.) You can let the plantain-like varieties ripen for several weeks to sweeten them a bit, but you’ll still need to cook them rather than do a peel-and-eat.

Chili-Dusted Burro Bananas

For a sweeter snack, use very ripe, almost black burro bananas (or manzanos or plantains); for a savory treat, use green or slightly yellow ones
Unrefined peanut OR coconut oil
Chili powder
Sea salt

Draw a knife tip along the ridges on the banana, cutting deep enough to pierce the peel but not deep enough to cut all the way through the banana. Cut off the very top and bottom tips, then grab an edge and start peeling away the peel in sections. Cut the banana flesh into either rounds or long strips. Lay a few squares of paper towels on a large plate.

Drizzle just enough oil in a small, nonstick pan to cover the bottom of it. Heat for a minute or two over medium heat, then add banana rounds/strips. Fry for 2 minutes or until the bottom is golden brown. Flip each piece over with tongs and fry for another minute or two. Slide the banana chips onto the paper towels and let drain for a minute.

Toss cooked chips with a dash of chili powder and a sprinkling of salt. If you used ripe and therefore softer bananas, don’t toss them — instead, put them on a plate and dust with the spices. Serve immediately.

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.

Sunchokes Tossed with Dill

Unless you live near an international border, going to a country you’ve never visited before can cost hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars. Even seeing a new movie that’s just come out can cost around $20. (Which is why I quit going to evening shows a long time ago.) But you can try a new food for $2 or less.

Isn’t that incredible? I mean, think about it: we’re forever in search of the latest thing, wanting to check out the hot new trend or the most recent version of [fill in the blank]. We’re willing to spend a fair amount of money and time in that pursuit. Getting to sample new flavors, though, is far more affordable and convenient — all that takes is a quick visit to a good market/grocery store. (By “good,” I mean non-big-box, non-cookie-cutter, non-”super”markets. I’m talking smaller stores that stock a variety of produce and animal products and are more than happy to talk to customers to get our feedback/requests and to answer our questions about what we’re buying.)

My latest-and-greatest food find is sunchokes, otherwise known as Jerusalem artichokes. I’d read about them years ago and had started seeing a few recipes featuring them lately in food magazines, but I still hadn’t tried them myself. They’re roots that look a lot like ginger roots: tan, knobbly, slightly barky, and about the size of a golf ball (or smaller). Sunchokes, though, are actually the roots of sunflowers. The “Jerusalem” in “Jerusalem artichoke” apparently cropped up as a bastardization of girasol — the g is pronounced more like an h — which is the Spanish word for sunflower. Seeing as sunchokes taste remarkably like artichoke hearts (and require infinitely less effort to prepare!), I’m guessing the “artichoke” half of the name sprang from the flavor of the root…much like the more modern term breaks down into sun|choke.

Texture-wise, sunchokes are very similar to potatoes and can be treated the same way: baked, sautéed, roasted, simmered. I chose to simmer mine and toss them with simple seasonings so that I could get a good idea of what the sunchoke itself tastes like. I was thrilled by its artichoke-heart-ness. No two plants taste exactly the same, of course — even when you’ve got two organic Fuji apples, they might not taste identical — but from now on, it’ll be mighty tempting to go for sunchokes before artichokes when I have a hankering for that artichoke flavor.

Sunchokes Tossed with Dill

Sunchokes do brown easily as you’re prepping them, so have a bowl of cool water handy to toss the peeled chokes into as you go. I find that the easiest way to remove the barky thin skin is to pare it away with a small, sharp knife; I don’t like using vegetable peelers when I’m dealing with something that’s irregularly shaped and has a knobbly surface. If you have a range of sizes of chokes, cut the bigger ones in half or even thirds so that they’re roughly the same size as the smallest ones.

Get a pot of water boiling on the stove. Add the chokes and simmer them for 6 to 8 minutes or until they’ve reached your desired tenderness. I poke the tip of a sharp knife into the biggest one to see if the knife goes through it fairly easily. When it does, I immediately drain the chokes. You definitely don’t want to overcook them and turn them mushy. (Unless you plan on mashing them.)

Toss the drained chokes with extra-virgin olive oil, dill, and a pinch of sea salt. How much you add is up to you, but go with enough oil to coat the chokes (but not so much that the chokes are sitting in pools of oil — drizzle and stir and drizzle and stir, gradually adding the oil until you get to the coated-not-pooled stage) and however much dill you prefer (again, start slow and sprinkle and toss, sprinkle and toss until you like the dill-ness of it all). Same goes for the salt: add to taste. Cooked sunchokes can be refrigerated for four days; uncooked chokes last weeks in the fridge if you loosely bundle them into a plastic bag.

Enjoy your new flavor!

Baked Mochi

For all those gluten-free folks who miss puff pastries and croissants and eclairs, baked mochi is a culinary godsend. For wheat-eating folks who love trying new things and are endlessly curious about food, baked mochi is a fun treat. For folks who love mochi in its more common forms — like ice cream and sweet cakes — baked mochi is  a happy discovery.

Baked mochi (or, better said, bake-able mochi; it comes in flat squares that you bake in your own oven) has been on my foodie wishlist ever since I came across a mention of it in Terry Walter’s latest cookbook. I’d given up on finding it, though…but then spotted a package in the freezer section at Natural Food Patch. It’s as wonderful as I’d hoped it would be! Thanks to the natural stickiness of the short-grain brown rice used to make it (also called “sticky rice”), when you cut the mochi into little squares and then bake it, the water in it turns to steam and creates puffy layers as it’s trying to escape from its sticky confines.

This is exactly what happens in flaky wheat-based pastries like croissants: the water content of the butter turns to steam and pushes up against the gluten-containing wheat dough as it escapes, the elastic gluten strands flex upwards (rather than tear apart and fall back down), and the heat of the oven causes a crust to form and locks the pushed-up layers into place. Until I made baked mochi, I’d thought this process couldn’t be replicated without gluten or a mouthful of unpronounceable chemicals. I am so glad I was wrong!

Seeing as mochi is simply rice and water, the resulting puffy squares don’t have a strong taste. (Nor does an unflavored croissant.) But that mildness coupled with a puffy, crispy, pull-apart texture is what makes these little squares ideal for pairing with simple seasonings like unrefined oils and spice blends: one of my favorite things to do with them is dip them into or drizzle them with full-flavored oils like unrefined almond or extra-virgin olive oil. Or you can sprinkle them with a pinch of sea salt and a dash of chili powder for a savory snack. Or dip them into honey with a hint of cinnamon stirred into it for a sweet treat. Or even pull a few squares apart slightly and spoon a little jam or hummus or salsa into them. Serve them alongside a meal in place of bread, use them to make bread puddings, fill them with cream cheese and dip them in marinara sauce to make tiny pizzas. The possibilities are endless!

Can you tell that baked mochi is my new favorite thing? All you have to do is cut the large square of mochi into small 1″ or 2″ squares, then bake on a bare baking sheet for about 12 minutes at 450F. So simple! The hardest part is waiting for the oven to warm up.

Enjoy!