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!

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!

Roasted Delicata Squash & Purple Cauliflower

Trees aren’t the only plants that acquire jewel tones in fall — cauliflower does, too. And the thick-skinned winter squashes certainly have their own quirky multi-colored and multi-shaped  lumpy and bumpy appeal. In other words, this is prime time to find unusual produce at the farmer’s market! Especially since these cool-weather crops last longer than do the tomatoes and peaches and eggplants you find during the peak of summer.

This week, I found a gorgeously colorful collection of cauliflower at the market: white, purple, green, and orange. (Or, if you will, pearl, amethyst, emerald, and amber.) I chose the purple one, of course — purple-toned veggies are my favorites. I also picked up a small striped delicata squash to include in my autumn pantry. Squashes come in handy more often than you’d think! Delicatas are particularly nice since their diminutive size means they’re easier to cut and handle than the big pumpkins and butternuts.

There are plenty of ways to prepare both cauliflower and squash, but I went with the easiest and tastiest: roast ‘em. Cauliflower acquires a pleasing nutty flavor when you roast it, anyway, and when you toss the florets with a drizzle of unrefined peanut oil before roasting, cauliflower gets even more nutty. The same peanut flavor works well with the squash. If you don’t have unrefined peanut oil, extra-virgin olive oil is another good choice.

Roasted Delicata Squash & Purple Cauliflower
Serves 2 as a full meal, particularly if you add a wedge of cheese and/or a handful of nuts to the plates.

1 head purple (or any other color) cauliflower, base removed, florets cut into bite-sized pieces
2 delicata squashes, cut in half and seeds removed (if you like, rinse the seeds well, toss them with oil, and roast them, too)
Unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt & freshly cracked pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375F. Cover three baking sheets/trays with parchment paper. Lay the cauliflower out on two of the sheets and the squashes on the third sheet. Lightly drizzle the cauliflower with oil, sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper, and use your hands to toss well. The squash is a little easier to prepare: just pour a little oil into the center of each half and sprinkle on some salt and pepper.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until cauliflower is just starting to turn golden brown. Remove cauliflower and bake squash another 5 to 10 minutes or until you can easily pierce the flesh with a fork.

Serve immediately. If you add a wedge of cheese and some fresh-cut fruit, this dish becomes a ridiculously delicious and simple fall meal. Leftover roasted veggies can be refrigerated for 4 days.

Enjoy!

Yuca Tossed with Cilantro-Cashew Pesto

You say pa-tay-to, I say pa-tah-to…or I say yuca. Or maybe ñame or taro or edo or any of the  many other tuber vegetables there are out there. (Although I would assume that Peruvians — who were the world’s original potato growers — would also say patata since they enjoy over 3,000 varieties of them.) But while potatoes are wonderful, other tubers are, too, and it’s always fun to try something new.

However, many of our more exotic tubers are shipped across long distances, so it can be hard to find a fresh taro or ñame. When I did come across a nice yuca at farmer’s market, I was thrilled. And when I got it home, I decided to keep the Latino flair going by tossing the cooked yuca with a Mexican-inspired version on the classic Italian pesto. Although pine nuts are popular in Mexico, too (they’re pignoli in Italy and piñones in Mexico), I went with cashews, which are more widespread south of the border than pine nuts tend to be.

When shopping for unusual tubers, make sure you choose ones that are unblemished and firm. Stay away from the cracked tubers! And double-check them for signs of whitish-bluish mold, too. Fresh tubers shouldn’t have any scent; if they do have a faint sweet/vinegar scent, that’s the mold you’re whiffing. Should you pick unwisely, try your best to trim away the dried-out and blemished parts — there might be enough left to still use.

Yuca (or Potatoes) Tossed with Cilantro-Cashew Pesto
This makes enough for a side dish for 4 or a very filling meal for 2.

1 lb. yuca or potatoes
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large bunch cilantro, chopped off just above the band holding the bunch together (discard the bottom stems)
Handful of cashews (or more if you’d like your pesto to be particularly nutty)
Sea salt (optional)

Prep the yuca by cutting away the rough outer skin. You can be generous with how much you cut away since you don’t want to use the flesh immediately underneath the skin, either, not unless you get an astoundingly fresh yuca. Odds are that you’ll see white threads running through the flesh just below the skin. Trim those away, too. (If you’re using potatoes, you can leave the skins on.) Get a medium pot of water boiling.

Cut yuca (or potato) into 1″ chunks. Drop into the water, reduce heat to medium-high, and let simmer for 10 minutes. Immediately drain.

While the yuca is simmering, sautée the garlic in a splash of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat for 4 minutes or until garlic is soft and fragrant but not brown and burnt. Put the sautéed garlic into a food processor and add the cilantro and cashews. Process until smooth, adding a drizzle more oil or a splash of water if necessary. Salt to taste.

Toss cooked yuca with pesto and serve. Since cilantro is hardier than basil, pesto made with cilantro tends to keep better than the traditional basil-laden pesto. Any leftover pesto will probably still be green the next day. (The basil-based version turns black within a matter of minutes. Still tastes great, though!)

Enjoy!

Plantain Cakes with Banana Salsa

Potato pancakes are good, but plantain pancakes are even better. Especially when you serve them with a matchingly tropical side like banana salsa. (Okay, I’ll admit that my main reason for including bananas in the salsa was that they had to be eaten, but necessity wound up being the mother of a tasty invention.) The baby bananas I used are far more fragrant than the typical Cavendish banana we’re all accustomed to, plus the baby versions are a compact size. One per person seems to be an excellent rule of thumb when it comes to figuring out how to portion them.

I was listening to a podcast about the state of bananas recently (yes, recipe developers and chefs eschew national events in favor of stuff like this), and the interviewee was talking about the hundreds of non-Cavendish bananas he’d sampled over the course of his banana-oriented career. Baby bananas, he said, are by far the best you can get here. I agree — I accidentally let mine get more brown than I would have thought ideal, and when I finally got around to eating them, I couldn’t believe how flavorful they were! And the texture was ideal, too. Turns out baby bananas are more brown when they’re at their peak of deliciousness. So word to the wise: next time you spot little baby bananas — either yellow or red — snag them, let them brown a fair amount, and then enjoy them. Bet you’ll be as surprised by their exponential banana-ness as I was.

Sweet Potato & Plantain Cakes with Banana Salsa

For the cakes:
1 plantain (if it’s yellow, it’ll be sweet; if it’s green, it’ll be starchy and taste more like a potato — use whichever you like)
1 sweet potato
1 egg

For the salsa:
2 baby bananas, peeled and chopped
24 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 banana bell peppers OR 1 sweet bell pepper, minced
Squirt of lemon juice
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper

Get a pot of water boiling, then peel the plantain and sweet potato and cut them into chunks. Plantains are buggers to peel: I find it easiest to score them along their seams and then wedge the knife tip underneath one of the sections to get it to poke out so that I can grab it and start the peeling process. You’ll probably wind up unwrapping them more than peeling them, actually — pull off the sections as you rotate the banana in your other hand.

Simmer the plantain and potato for 10 minutes. While they’re simmering, make the salsa by combining all salsa ingredients in a bowl and tossing gently.

When the 10 minutes are up, drain the plantain and potato and put them back in the dry pot. Mash them with an egg and form them into patties about 3 inches across.

Either melt a pat of coconut oil, ghee, or butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add as many patties as will comfortably fit in the skillet and sautée them for about 3 minutes per side or until they’re golden brown on both sides. Work in batches, placing the cooked cakes on wire racks as you go. (That way they won’t get soggy.)

Serve your tropical cakes with your tropical salsa and enjoy!

Boniato Empanadas

American cuisine has some instant-hit classics — corn bread, macaroni and cheese, bison burgers — but compared to other cuisines, we really don’t do much with tubers. Potatoes are pretty much the extent of our tuber dabbling. And who doesn’t like potatoes? Stands to reason other tubers would be tasty, too. If you hang around in ethnic markets or well-stocked grocery stores that serve immigrant populations, you’ll start seeing all kinds of oddly shaped, vaguely potato-ish dwellers in the tuber section. Yuca (also called manioc and cassava), edo root (also called taro), ñame root (a.k.a. true yams), boniato (or Cuban sweet potatoes)…they’re there in all their knobby, bumpy glory. Although they can be prepared the same way potatoes can, most of these tropical tubers have a much stickier texture and a more pronounced flavor — some are sweet, some are nutty, some are creamy-tasting.

The fact that these oddball-to-us tubers are particularly sticky means that they’re particularly useful in dishes that have a bready, doughy element that needs to stick together. (Especially when you’re making a gluten-free version and can’t rely on the elasticity of gluten.) Most ethnic traditions include a “packaged” dish involving a filling and an outer layer: Latin empanadas, Indian samosas, Polish pierogi, Chinese gyoza. Sticky tubers can provide you with a dough that’s sticky enough to be pressed into place around a filling and then baked.  For these empanadas, I used boniato. It was the first time I’d ever cooked with boniato, actually, and I was happy to discover that simmered boniato is fluffy, sticky, smooth-textured, and has a pleasantly sweetish flavor. Bet they would make great chips if you sliced them thinly and sautéed them in a bit of coconut oil!

Boniato Empanadas

For the boniato dough:
About 2 lb. boniato (sizes vary tremendously from one tuber to another!) or yuca or taro or ñame
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1/2 cup corn flour
1 tsp. sea salt
Extra-virgin olive oil

For the filling:
2 medium carrots, minced
2 banana peppers or 1 medium bell pepper, minced
4 green onions, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup black beans, drained
1 T. chili powder
Handful fresh cilantro leaves, chopped

Preheat oven to 375F and cover two baking sheets with parchment paper. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil so that you can simmer the boniato as soon as it’s cut. (It will start to brown immediately!)

To prep the boniato, cut it in half and then trim away the outer skin, putting it flat side down on the cutting board to make them trimming the rounded surfaces easier. Cut the inner flesh into rough cubes and simmer for 10 minutes, reducing heat to medium or even medium-low if they’re boiling too furiously. Drain.

While the boniato is simmering, make the filling. Start by sautéeing the carrots and pepper in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for about 3 minutes or until the carrots have begun to soften. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring often, for another 2 minutes. Stir in the beans, chili powder, and cilantro and reduce heat to low. Let cook very gently for another minute or two, then remove from heat.

Place the cooked boniato in a large bowl and mash well. Stir in eggs, flour, and salt. You want a dough with a medium consistency: not too loose (it needs to be thick enough to easily stick to your hand) and not too dry (you don’t want a sandy, pebbly dough that won’t hold together). Add a little water if it seems too dry or a little more flour if it seems too wet.

Scoop the dough out in spoonfuls and place on the prepared baking sheets, patting/flattening each scoop into a small disk and spacing them an inch apart. (You may need to flour your fingers to keep them from sticking to the dough.) Place a spoonful of filling onto half of the disks, being careful not to take the filling too far out to the edges — it shouldn’t touch them. Working with one already-topped disk at a time, slide a spatula under an untopped disk and lay it on top of one of the filled ones, creating a top layer of dough. Gently press the edges of the top layer into the edges of the bottom layer to seal it. Repeat until you’ve used all the dough.

Gently brush each one of the empanadas with extra-virgin olive oil. Bake for 35 minutes or until the edges of the empanadas are golden brown. Let cool a few minutes before serving. Leftovers can be refrigerated for up to 4 days. (Note: they make delicious breakfasts and snacks!)

Enjoy!

Samphire

Today’s post is going to be a splurge for the food-curious out there.  By “splurge,” I mean that the topic is a bit obscure and that you might not find this particular ingredient in your neighborhood store.  I found it when I was happily haunting Feinkost Böhm — a.k.a. Food Paradise — this past week in Stuttgart, Germany.  (The same store was home to Australian wattle seed and tropical tonka beans.  I had never seen or heard of those before and had no idea what they would taste like, so of course I had to buy them.  Stay tuned!)

For years, I had been seeing an odd sea vegetable featured in British and Irish cookbooks.  It was called samphire and was touted as being briny and fresh, just like the sea.  I’m not sure if it also grows along our New England coastline, but I most certainly couldn’t find it in Metro Detroit, nor had I seen it in on the West Coast or in tropical parts of the world or even in the Mediterranean regions of Europe.  Being a sea vegetable, though, I knew it would be high in iodine, plus I figured it would also be salty.  A perfect combination if you have a low-functioning thyroid (that’s where the iodine comes in handy) and you like salty foods!

Having unsuccessfully looked for samphire for years and not having found it, you can imagine how surprised I was to spot it in Germany.  It was nestled between the rolled-up picked herrings (insanely delicious, I swear) and the Black Seaweed Salad with Sesame & Lotus Root (one of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten) in the seafood section of Feinkost Böhm.  I of course bought it immediately, left the store, found a handy step to sit on, and proceeded to have an impromptu seafood picnic in the middle of Königstraße, the main drag that arrows through the pedex shopping part of Stuttgart.  I was too thrilled by my food finds to wonder if anyone thought I was odd.

The verdict?  Samphire is lovely.  It’s crunchy and juicy and briny, and you can eat it raw out of hand, you can add it to salads and sandwiches — it works especially well in sandwiches since it adds a salty kick along with crunch — or you can serve it with fish or other seafood as a garnish.  If you like, you can simmer samphire for 3 minutes to soften the briny taste a little, but you’ll lose some of the pleasing crunchy texture that way.  It keeps for at least a week in the fridge.  I thought I didn’t have a refrigerator in the hotel (turned out there was a mini-bar tucked away under the desk that I didn’t notice until my last night), so I left the samphire out at room temp overnight, and it was still fine several days later.

If you ever stumble across samphire, give it a try.  And even if you don’t, at least now you know what it is.  You never know when food trivia will come in handy at a dinner party or a game show!

True Yam (with Coconut-Yam Thinbread)

A yam is a yam is a yam?  Nope.  What Americans know as “yams” are actually just variants of sweet potatoes.  About the only thing our yams have in common with true yams is that they both grow underground — the comparison pretty much stops there.  True yams have a nutty, buttery flavor and a slippery, sticky texture; American “yams” are sweet and decidedly dry.  True yams are squat, not long, and they look like they’re covered with bark.  When you cut them open, you’ll be greeted with a speckled, tan interior rather than a smooth orange-pink hue.

The slipperiness of true yams makes them ideal for making doughy breads, filling custards, and thick porridges.  They’re also used to make fritters in the regions where yams are staple crops…which is nearly everywhere but here.  You may find true yams labeled “Chinese yams” (they’re quite popular in Asia) or “ñame root” (they’re widely cultivated in Latin countries, too).  Or you might simply find them labeled “yams” if you’re in a market that caters to Caribbean, African, or Oceanic shoppers.  (Oceania refers to the islands scattered throughout the tropical Pacific Ocean, like New Zealand and Polynesia and the Philippines and all those other places most of us are aching to visit.)

If you do happen to come across true yams, snap one up!  Choose a yam that’s firm and doesn’t have any cracks, splits, or soft spots on the skin.  Shriveled, wrinkled yams are past their prime — pass them up for fuller, less-wrinkled young yams.  To peel them, either use a sturdy vegetable peeler, a sharp knife, or a combination of the two.  Remove all skin and cut the yams into slices or cubes or wedges, depending on how you want to use them.  (Tip: true yams can be used much like American yams.)

Coconut-Yam Thinbread

About 3 cups grated yam (peel it first!)
About 1 1/2 cups grated cotija cheese
1 cup coconut milk
1 T. palm sugar OR maple syrup (with its tropical taste, the palm sugar blends better with the yam and coconut; you can find palm sugar in the Thai section of well-stocked markets or in Asian markets)
1 tsp. sea salt

Preheat oven to 400F. Grease an 8×8 glass baking dish and set aside.

Mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, then pour into the pan. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown. The thinbread will be nutty, rich, and slightly sweet; I enjoyed it for breakfast and ate it for snacks. Believe me, this will probably be one of the most unique dishes you’ve ever made!

Enjoy!

Mexican Salad with Sweet Lime

Something new — at least, new to me — is going on the citrus world: sweet limes.  Citrus fruits have long been cross-it-over favorites, of course, like the tangelo.  (Although I haven’t seen those in a while, I can still remember when they were the “in” fruit.)  That deliciously juicy hybrid is a combination of tangerines and pomelo grapefruits.  And there are lots of less-common species like kumquats and ugli fruits that aren’t on our citrus radar.

Sweet limes just cropped up at my favorite produce market, so of course I had to see if they really were sweet or lime-ish.  The verdict?  Much sweeter than lime-ish — sort of like a toned-down cocktail grapefruit.  They’re so mild and sweet that you can drink the juice straight, actually.

Their sweetness makes them useful in salads, too, where you might normally use orange juice.  Mexicans typically use the more traditional sour limes in their dishes, but sometimes it’s fun to put a naturally sweeter spin on dressings.  For this salad, you could use either sweet limes or standard limes, whichever your taste buds desire.

Mexican Salad with Sweet Lime
Serves 2 for lunch, but can easily be doubled or tripled, or you can add more ingredients to make a heartier main dish.

Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved OR 2 medium Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 avocado, chopped
About 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped (or however much cilantro you like — I prefer a good amount)
About 1 T. chopped white or green onion
1 cup black beans, drained
1 cup cooked brown rice (optional)
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 sweet lime
1 tsp. chili powder

Toss all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, adding the beans and rice to make a more filling dish. Serve immediately.

Note: You could also add chopped cooked chicken or fish, or you could use this salad as a salsa and serve it alongside a main meal. It could also be a chunky dip for corn tortillas.

Enjoy!

Scapes

You may not know its Latin name, but I bet the allium family is one of your favorite relatives!  Alliums include beloved aromatics like onions, garlic, shallots, leeks, green onions, and chives.  What would a meal be without one of those?  All of the world’s cuisines hold aromatics in high regard.

Lots of allium members grow wild and are typically foraged rather than cultivated.  You might find the wild ones at farmers’ markets…or you might find them in your backyard.  Happily, these pictured scapes grow rampant in mine.  Another common wild allium is ramps, which I’ve seen at farmers’ markets more often than I’ve seen scapes.  (What great names, right?  “Scapes and ramps.”  I’ve been enamored of them ever since I saw them profiled in Fine Cooking when I was a kid; it was quite a thrill to realize they were growing in my backyard!)

These wild alliums are at their peak in late spring and early summer.  In the case of the scapes, you can see that they curl coquettishly.  That elegant curve signals that they’re still tender enough to be lightly sautéed and enjoyed.  As the summer progresses, the stalks harden and straighten, until finally they’re pointing towards the sky.  By that point, they’re just too tough to eat.

If you’re lucky enough to find scapes that are still curling, try using them in your daily cooking: just cut off the upper third of the stem, cut off and discard the head, and then start chopping the stem.  Depending on what stage the scape is in, you’ll probably notice the stalk getting tougher to cut once you’ve gotten about four or five inches down the curve of the stalk.  Discard the part that seems too woody and difficult to cut through.

Very young/tender scapes can be eaten raw; slightly older/tougher ones are best sautéed over low heat with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil for about 5 minutes or until softened and fragrant.  Add them to salads, pilafs, stir-frys, soups…anything you’d like to flavor with a bit of onion.

Enjoy your wild alliums!

Stuffed Grape Leaves

There’s something ever-so-charming about edible little packages: tamales, spring rolls, pasties, grape leaves…every culture seems to have a neatly-wrapped specialty.  (Maybe they appeal to our sense of orderliness?)  Not only are these wrappables practical to eat and fun to make, their central position in any given cuisine means that centuries of tradition have fine-tuned their perfect blends of simple and savory ingredients.

One of my favorite stuff-and-wrap dishes is grape leaves — whether you make them vegetarian or with meat, you just can’t go wrong if you start out with authentic sheep’s-milk Feta and good-quality leaves that have been cured in water, sea salt, vinegar, and nothing else.  And nutritionally speaking, since omega-3 fats are primarily found in the supple part of plants (the leaves of a plant versus its roots and berries), including grape leaves on your menu is a smart idea as well as a delicious one.

Stuffed Grape Leaves

(1/2 lb. ground lamb, optional)
1 small onion, diced
1/4 cup pine nuts
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium tomatoes, diced
1 cup cooked brown rice (you can use leftover rice or cook a batch of fresh rice — just remember that 1/2 cup uncooked will yield more than 1 cup cooked rice)
1 T. fresh mint, slivered, or 1 tsp. dried mint
About 4 oz. sheep’s-milk Feta, or more if you’re a big cheese fan
Approximately 20 brined grape leaves (you can find these at Mediterranean markets or well-stocked mainstream grocery markets)
1 lemon, sliced into thin wedges
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Locate and set aside an 11×7 glass pan. (If you add the lamb to the recipe, you might need more leaves and a 9×13 pan.)

Sautée onions (and lamb, if using) with a pat of butter or ghee over medium heat for about 3 minutes, stirring often, or until onions are soft. Stir in pine nuts, garlic, and tomatoes. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook for another 2 minutes to mellow the garlic (and finish cooking the lamb).  Remove pan from heat immediately.

In a large bowl, combine the onion/lamb mixture, the rice, the mint, and the Feta, crumbling the Feta by hand if necessary. Salt and pepper to taste.

To stuff the leaves, pull out a bunch of leaves and carefully unroll and separate them, setting them on a plate as you go. When you have about 20 unrolled and ready, place an individual leaf on a cutting board, then spoon a mound of the rice mixture onto the leaf. (Only spoon on about a tablespoon to avoid overstuffing. You may have to add more or less depending on the size of the particular leaf you’re working with.) Carefully wrap the left, right, and bottom edges onto the filling, then roll over once or twice to seal the top flap of your leafy “envelope,” so to speak. Transfer the stuffed leaf to the glass pan and place it seam-side down.

Repeat until you’ve used up all your stuffing. (Extra leaves can be stored in the refrigerator for at least a month.) Your pan should be fully stuffed with individual leaf packages. Stud the packages with the lemon wedges and then pour the stock over the entire pan. (If you’re making lamb-stuffed grape leaves and are using a 9×13 pan, you may need a full 2 cups of stock.)

Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. Reduce temperature to 325 degrees F and bake for another 30 minutes.

Serve hot as a main dish or an appetizer, or serve any time within 3 days of having refrigerated your leftovers. Top with additional Feta if you like.

Enjoy!

Custard Apple

Until I lived in Costa Rica (and had to watch out for falling coconuts on my way to Spanish class!), I never knew how intriguing and bizarre fruits could be.  In the Midwest, we’re fortunate to have a world of berries and apples and pears and cherries at our fingertips — and of course we have tropical staples like avocadoes and bananas in our markets — but when you get closer to rainforests, fruit gets downright odd.  I mean that in a good way.

Take the cherimoya family of fruit.  It includes custard apples (pictured) and soursops, both of which have the texture of custard and a flavor that’s…well,  so fragrantly tropical that you just can’t compare it to anything else.  (Vanilla/pineapple/banana/passionfruit, maybe?)  Soursops are slightly less sweet than custard apples, but both are studded with large, easily-removed seeds nestled into a soft flesh that can be scooped out or cut into quarters and eaten like an apple.  Just don’t try to peel a ripe cherimoya — the thin, green, almost-scaly-looking skin would tear.

When I was in Costa Rica, the soursop ice cream was my favorite, so I was almost giddy with delight when I found custard apples in my local produce market.  Tropical produce seems to be getting more and more common — you might stumble across a cherimoya as well.  If you do, choose one that’s mottled with brown spots and is soft to the touch.  Handle with care, though, because these heavy fruits (each usually weighs a pound or more) are delicate and bruise easily.  If there are only fully-green ones available, bring one home and let it ripen out on the countertop.

You can eat it straight out of the skin, you can drizzle it with a bit of lime juice first, or you can scoop out the flesh, remove the seeds, and then blend the flesh with coconut milk or pineapple juice or anything else tropical that strikes your fancy.  Homemade cherimoya-coconut ice cream would be fabulous!  Or how about a cherimoya daiquiri?

If you can’t use it all at once, cut the cherimoya in half, rub the unused half with lime or lemon juice, wrap it securely in plastic wrap, and refrigerate it overnight.  It’ll be just as fresh and tantalizing the next day.

Enjoy!

Macadamia Mango Mousse

Upfront disclosure to the mousse die-hards out there: this is not a true mousse.  True mousses are made with eggs — they’re the key ingredient, in fact — whereas this one is made with macadamia nut butter.  Still, the nutty richness of the macadamia butter is very reminiscent of an eggy richness, and both the nut butter and fresh mango lend this faux-mousse an incredible smoothness.  The chai tea gives it all an exotic, spicy flavor.  (The macadamia nut butter is worth seeking out for this recipe because it’s so creamy and yet easily blends into the background; peanut butter would be far, far too strong and would override the delicate chai.  I think it would also clash with the mango.  Cashew butter is your next-best bet if you can’t find macadamia nut butter.)

Macadamia Mango Mousse (which happens to be egg- and dairy-free)
This is enough for a single serving of mousse. Double or triple (or more) as necessary.

1 ripe mango, peeled and chopped (you can use frozen mango chunks, but the mousse won’t have the lightness you’re looking for)
1 T. macadamia nut butter
1/2 cup strongly-steeped chai tea (I used the leftover pot of chai I’d made the night before)

Place all ingredients in blender and blend just until smooth. (Since you’re starting out with soft ingredients, blending shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds.) If you’d like the consistency to be a bit thicker, add another tablespoon of macadamia nut butter. If you’d prefer to have a smoothie rather than a mousse, add another 1/2 cup of chai tea.

Spoon/pour into pretty glass and serve.

Enjoy!

Roasted Kale Chips

Unbelievably.  Easy.  And.  Delicious.  Best four words I can come up with to describe roasted kale, my latest culinary adventure.

I’d been meaning to try making my own kale chips for almost a year and hadn’t gotten around to it.  (Even though some good friends of mine always have kale on hand to feed to their lizard, and every time I see the lizard, I think he must be on to something.)  But in a recent burst of fulfilling my gastronomical to-do list, I decided to finally try making my own kale chips.  I’m happy to say that the kale experiment yielded a far more impressive result than the rutabaga one.  Not that there’s anything wrong with rutabaga — it certainly has a whimsical name! — but it isn’t nearly as tongue-teasing as kale chips.  Even a recent bag of East of Eden tortilla chips seasoned with Mexican spices couldn’t trump the kale chips.

The secret is tri-fold: tear the kale into smallish pieces before baking them, don’t overcook them, and use a full-flavored, unrefined oil like peanut to give them fantastic crunch and flavor.  You’re ten minutes away from chip nirvana!

Roasted Kale Chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Thoroughly rinse kale, shake off excess water, and pat dry with a clean kitchen towel.  Tear the hard “spine” free from the leaf and discard, then tear up the leaves into smaller, chip-ish pieces.  Place pieces on a baking tray or cookie sheet that has turned-up edges (as opposed to a completely flat tray or sheet).  You’ll probably be able to fit about 4 torn-up leaves on a standard-size tray.

Drizzle about a tablespoon of unrefined peanut oil onto the leaves.  (If you use another type of unrefined oil, read the label and make sure it can handle the heat — otherwise, it’ll burn and throw off the flavor of the chips.  Peanut goes up to 395 degrees F, but sesame only handles up to 350 F.  Coconut oil can easily handle 375 F.)  Season chips with sea salt.

Using your fingers, carefully swirl each chip in the peanut oil until each one is well-coated on both sides.  Bake for 4 minutes, then promptly remove chips from oven and use tongs to turn each one over.  Bake for another 4 minutes.

Serve immediately…and beware!  Homemade kale chips are highly addictive and will probably wind up supplanting your potato and tortilla chips.

Enjoy!

Rapini Stir-Fry with Noodles

When it comes to produce, I’m a big fan of the “two-fer” deals: you buy beets with the greens attached and you get two veggies for the price of one, you buy one papaya and get fruit + edible garnishing seeds for the price of one.  Rapini (or broccoli rabe, as it’s often called) is another great twofer vegetable.  It’s also easy to keep crisp and crunchy because you can treat it like a fresh herb — put it in a vase/glass of cold water, loosely cover it with plastic wrap or a plastic produce bag, and keep it in your fridge for up to ten days.

To Americans, rapini is a mysterious, crinkly, is-it-broccoli-or-is-it-not? vegetable.  To a Silician or someone from the south of Portugal or Spain, however, rapini wouldn’t be odd at all.  In fact, it’d be considered darned tasty thrown into a quick sautée or braised with some fragrant garlic, much as we would use curly spinach or any other type of hearty green.

For me, the twofer concept of rapini comes into play when I compare the flavor of the stems to the flavor of the flowered heads — while the stems can get woody and bitter if the rapini is past its prime, after only a few moments of sautéeing, they’re usually tender, a bit sweet, and reminiscent of asparagus.  The flowered heads, on the other hand, taste like toned-down broccoli.  The leaves are a nice greeny backdrop to both.  Very young rapini is also sometimes eaten raw in salads.  With so much inherent versatility, it’s time to give this oddball green a try!  (Note that stores usually keep rapini tucked in with the greens and/or root vegetables.)

Rapini Stir-Fry with Pasta (note that these are general ingredient ideas — double or triple the quantity as needed)

Whole-grain pasta of your choice, gluten-free or with gluten
Red bell pepper, chopped
Onion, chopped
Chopped tomatoes
Black-eyed peas, drained
Garlic, cut into slivers or thin rounds
Fresh or dried thyme, rosemary, basil, and/or oregano
Rapini, rinsed, bottom third of the stem removed, the rest coarsely chopped
(Other tasty veggies to include would be mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, sweet onions, leeks…you name it!)
Extra-virgin olive oil

Prepare noodles according to package directions. While the noodles are cooking, in a large pan, sautée red pepper and onion with a pat of ghee or butter over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until onions are translucent and beginning to turn golden. Reduce heat to medium-low and add tomatoes, peas, and garlic. Sprinkle in some herbs, stir, and let simmer for about 5 minutes or until garlic has begun to cook through and become fragrant.

Add rapini, stir well, and cover pan. Increase heat to medium and let rapini steam for about 3 minutes. If you’d like your rapini super-crunchy, only cook for 2 minutes; if you’d like it to be softer and more wilted, cook for 4-5 minutes.

Immediately remove from heat and place in a large mixing/serving bowl. Toss in pasta and a drizzle or two of olive oil. Season with sea salt and freshly-cracked black pepper. If you’d like, you can accent your stir-fry toss with a grated hard cheese like Parmesan or Dutch Parrano. A few sprigs of extra fresh herbs would be a nice garnish.

Enjoy!