Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt

One of the many beauties of crepes is that you can fill them with whatever you like, whether that’s sweet or savory or something in between. And by varying the kind of flour you use to make the crepes themselves, you can tweak their base flavor to suit your mood. Want a nutty, rich-tasting crepe? Use teff, buckwheat, or chestnut flour. How about a mild crepe that would work with any filling? Try brown rice, sorghum, millet, or corn flour. For a decidedly savory crepe, go with chickpea or potato flour. In a chocolate kind of mood? Use unsweetened cocoa powder as one of your flours…and maybe throw in some coconut, too. Mesquite flour lends crepes a caramel flair; plantain has a hint of the tropics. Your options are endless.

Although I often make savory crepes intended for lunch wraps and chutney roll-ups, I made these for breakfast and filled them with chocolate yogurt and some blackberry jam. The whole-grain-ness of the crepe + the protein-rich whole-milk yogurt makes for a deliciously satisfying breakfast…and you can make both elements ahead of time and simply roll them at the last minute. Quick breakfasts can be classy and easy!

Buckwheat Crepes with Chocolate Yogurt
This crepe recipe makes about 12 crepes; the yogurt is enough for 2 servings. Feel free to downsize the crepe portions or upsize the yogurt portions as desired. I like to make a full batch of the crepes so that I have some leftovers to enjoy however I like.

For the crepes:
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup buckwheat flour*
1 1/2 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Dash of sea salt
Butter or ghee for cooking the crepes, preferably from grass-fed cows

For the chocolate yogurt:
1/2 cup whole-milk plain Greek yogurt (Fage is my favorite)
2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T. maple syrup

To make the crepes, whisk all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Get out a (or two or three) 7″ nonstick crepe pan and place a dab of butter in the pan. Heat over medium heat — I go with mark 4 out of 10 on my electric burners — until butter has melted and is sizzling. Pour in 1/4 cup of the crepe batter and cook for 2-3 minutes or until crepe is set on top and browned on the bottom. Use a heatproof spatula to flip over the crepe and cook the second side for another minute or two or until equally browned. If you’re adventurous, by all means go ahead and flip that sucker up into the air to turn it over. Just don’t do that directly over the burner! It’s much easier to rescue a misdirected crepe from a cool element than a hot burner.

Place the cooked crepe on a wire rack. (If you put it on a plate, it’ll collect condensation and get soggy.) Make a second crepe in the same pan using the same technique. I find that I have to put a fresh dab of butter into my crepe pan every other crepe to keep them from sticking. Leftover crepes can be stacked in a sealed container and refrigerated for a week.

To make the yogurt, use a fork to thoroughly mix the ingredients in a bowl. Leftover yogurt can be kept up until the “expires by” date on the original package.

When you’re ready to assemble your chocolate-filled crepe, just spoon some yogurt onto the center of the crepe, roll up, and enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based crepes, substitute 1 total cup of spelt, kamut, and/or whole-wheat flours for the brown rice and buckwheat.

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!

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!

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!

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!

(Mayo-Free) Deviled Eggs

As their name implies, this classic appetizer can be devilishly delicious or hellishly horrid. It all depends on the quality of the three main ingredients: the pickles, the mustard, and most importantly the eggs. I also prefer to make deviled eggs sans mayonnaise or with homemade mayonnaise — the jiggly white stuff you buy in the store has zero resemblance to actual fresh mayonnaise. (The latter ought to be egg yolk whisked with unrefined oil and a splash of lemon juice or vinegar. Simple, delicious, and versatile; add a knifetip of minced garlic, and you have aioli.) When I made these eggs, I opted for the easy route and drizzled in just enough extra-virgin olive oil to create a spoonable consistency.

Deviled eggs are ideal party appetizers since you can prepare them a day ahead and unveil them as soon as the first guest walks in. And leftover eggs make a fantastic breakfast!

(Mayo-Free) Deviled Eggs
This makes enough for 8 deviled egg halves. Feel free to double or triple the recipe as needed.

4 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
3-4 dill pickle spears (I adore McClure’s Garlic & Dill pickles, so I always use those), minced
1 T. capers
1/2 tsp. to 3/4 tsp. mustard, depending on how hot your mustard is and how much you like mustard (I prefer German-style mustard that’s smooth and medium-spicy)
Juice of 1/4 lemon
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sweet paprika for garnishing

Place the eggs in a medium pot and fill the pot halfway with water. Cover the pot, put it on the stove over high heat, and keep an ear perked for the sound of the lid starting to rattle as the water comes to a boil. As soon as you hear that, turn the heat down to medium, keep covered, and simmer the eggs for 10 minutes. You may wish to add a splash of vinegar to reduce the likelihood of the eggs getting foamy and boiling over. (I skip the vinegar and take my chances.)

When the 10 minutes are up, put the pot in the sink and run cold water into it until you can comfortably reach into the water. Hold the eggs against the pot while you pour out all of the water. Refill with ice-cold water and let the eggs sit in the water until they’re cool enough to touch. Cooling them promptly and thoroughly will prevent the yolks from discoloring. At this point, you can dry them off and keep them in a bowl in the fridge for a week if you like — hard-boiled eggs come in quite handy.

Lightly tap the eggs on a hard surface and then peel off the shells. (Note: if the shells are difficult to peel away, congratulations! You have very fresh eggs indeed.) Cut each egg in half the long way and pop the yolk into a mixing bowl. Mash the yolks with a fork until fluffy, then stir in pickles, capers, mustard, and lemon juice. Taste a bit to see if you’d like to add more mustard or lemon juice. Drizzle in just enough oil to make the mixture spoonable.

Arrange the egg white halves on a nice plate, fill each one with the yolk filling, and sprinkle paprika over the tops as garnish.

Enjoy!

Cucumber Salad

A lot of us are used to thinking of cucumbers as a summer veggie — especially when they’re growing like mad in our gardens and we’re trying to figure out who we can foist them onto — but I think cucumbers are the perfect winter veggie: they’re crisp and versatile and have long been popular in Nordic cuisines. (The willingness of cucumbers to grow in greenhouses means they’re easy to cultivate in colder climes.) The fact that cucumbers are typically served chilled and raw makes them a welcome contrast to the hot, well-cooked veggies dominating our winter plates.

Cucumber salad is one of the easiest and most crowd-pleasing dishes to take to holiday parties. (Or make for yourself! I had mine for lunch.) I tend to favor the German approach of flavoring the sour cream with dill, but you could just as well go the Mediterranean route and toss the cukes with Greek yogurt and oregano or thyme. Either way, as long as you start with crunchy cucumbers, you’ll have a delicious salad.

Cucumber Salad

Cucumbers (I prefer the long, thin-skinned English cucumbers to the shorter and thicker-skinned conventional versions that always seem to have a layer of wax on them), scrubbed clean
Sour cream made with whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (check out Organic Valley or Calder’s) OR Greek yogurt made from whole milk
Red wine vinegar
Dill, either dried or fresh (if you use fresh, mince it)
Sea salt

Slice the cucumbers as thinly as you can. If you don’t like the seeds, cut the cukes in half and scoop out the seeds before slicing them. (I quite enjoy the crunchy little seeds and always leave them intact. Besides, just as the skin on English cucumbers is usually thinner, their seeds are usually smaller and less distracting, too.) In a large mixing bowl, toss the sliced cucumbers with just enough sour cream to coat the slices. I usually use about 2 T. per 1 long English cucumber.

Drizzle in a little vinegar and sprinkle on some dill and salt. Toss well. Your goal is to have a medium-thick dressing that is thin enough to easily toss with the cucumber (rather than glopping) but also thick enough to thinly coat the slices (rather than running off like water and collecting in the bottom of the bowl). If you’d like the salad to be creamier, add more sour cream; if you’d prefer more tang, add more vinegar. How salty and dill-y you want the end result to be is also up to you, so start small and keep adding until you’ve seasoned it to taste. You might also want to add cracked peppercorns.

Although cucumber salad is best when freshly made, you can refrigerate it for up to four days.

Enjoy!

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!

Wild Rice Harvest Pilaf

It’s funny how tastes change — when I was a kid, I used to hate wild rice (I thought of it as “funny rice,” and I don’t mean funny in a good way), but now it’s one of my favorites. Granted, what we see called “wild” rice is actually a cultivated variety grown in California; in contrast, the real “wild” stuff actually grows wild along the shoreline of the Great Lakes, most notably in Minnesota. Still, though, cultivated wild rice has a grassy, nutty flavor that makes it stand out. If you’re dining with folks who may be newcomers to the wild rice scene, you might want to blend wild and brown rice half-and-half as I’ve done here. That’ll tame the flavor a bit as well as create a visually appealing speckled look.

Since wild rice has a slightly longer cooking time and absorption rate than standard rice varieties (black, purple, brown, red), it’s best to cook each in its own pot. That way you can be 100% sure that you’ll wind up with the ideal texture for each. One nice quirk about wild rice is that it’s considerably less sticky than other rices, making it the perfect candidate for pilafs and other rice dishes that you want to be fluffy and light-textured. (Long-grained rice varieties are naturally less sticky; short-grained are so much stickier in comparison that they’re often called “sticky” rice.) Mixing wild rice with any other variety will amp up the fluffy-and-light factor.

Wild Rice Harvest Pilaf
Serves 4 for a main course or up to 8 as a side.

1 cup raw wild rice
1/2 cup raw brown rice
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth, divided
3 green onions, minced
2 carrots, chopped or sliced into thin rounds
1/4 cup dried cranberries
2 tsp. dried sage (or 1 T. if you’re a huge sage fan)
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Place the wild rice in one medium pot and add 3 cups of broth. Bring to a boil uncovered, stir well, and then reduce heat to lowest setting and cover. Simmer for 40-45 minutes or until grains are starting to pop — they’ll split and reveal their white innards — and have reached a texture you like. I tend to like my rice a little on the chewy side.

While the wild rice is cooking, place the brown rice and 1 cup broth in another medium pot. Bring to a boil uncovered, stir well, and then reduce heat to lowest setting. Stir in green onions, carrots, cranberries, sage, and salt and cover. Simmer for 30-35 minutes or until the grains have reached a texture you like. Ditto for me on the chewiness.

While the rices are simmering, toast the almonds: spread them out in a large dry skillet over medium heat. Dry-toast the nuts, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent any scorched spots, for 4-5 minutes or until almonds are fragrant and have turned golden-brown. Slide them onto a cool plate and let sit until the rices are done.

When the rices have reached their desired tenderness — the wild rice will need to be drained, but the brown will be perfect as is — scoop both rices into a large bowl. Add toasted almonds and toss gently. Season with freshly cracked pepper and additional salt if desired.

This makes a nice winter side dish to take along to holiday parties. It holds well at room temp for several hours and can be kept for up to a week in the fridge.

Enjoy!

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!