Moroccan Salsa

From ras-el-hanout to harissa to preserved lemons, Moroccan cuisine features some of the most stunning flavors on the planet. Sadly, there’s no Moroccan restaurant in my neck of the woods, but it’s easy to include some signature North African inspiration when you’re in your own kitchen. To make this batch of salsa, I blended sautéed peppers and onions with harissa, sweet paprika, and cilantro to make a chunky tomato-based salsa that’s a fusion of Mexican and Moroccan ingredients.

Since I am an unabashed wimp when it comes to hot sauces, I only added a tiny spoonful of harissa to my salsa. If you embrace all things hot and spicy, by all means add however much harissa suits your taste buds. (Harissa is a fiery-hot paste made of hot chiles complemented by a hint of garlic, coriander, and various spices.) You can find harissa in the “ethnic foods section” at well-stocked mainstream grocery stores or in stores specializing in North African goods. Or you can use your favorite hot-chili sauce in its place.

Once you’ve whipped up your as-hot-as-you-want-it salsa, you can serve it with chips or veggies for dipping, you can use it to season soup and chili, or you can use it as a marinade for chicken, beef, or seafood. I like to ladle some of the salsa over sheep’s-milk feta cheese and eat it straight out of the bowl. It also makes a darned refreshing (and somewhat zingy) chilled gazpacho. Or toss it with cooked pasta for an easy last-minute meal.

Moroccan Salsa

1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
28 oz. canned diced tomatoes (or the equivalent of fresh chopped tomatoes)
1 heaping tsp. sweet paprika
Dab (or more) of harissa OR your favorite chili sauce
Bunch of fresh cilantro, rinsed well, damaged leaves removed, stems chopped off at the base

Sautée onions and pepper in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until onion is soft and nearly translucent. Stir in garlic, reduce heat to medium-low, and continue to cook for another 3 minutes or until garlic is just starting to turn golden brown. Add the tomatoes, paprika, and harissa and stir well. Simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes to allow the flavors to marry.

Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Pour into food processor and add cilantro. Blend until you have a chunky-but-still-well-blended salsa. If you like, add a few dashes of sea salt to taste. You can also add more harissa if you want more tingle on the tongue. Leftover salsa can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

Cilantro-Marinara Pasta

Conceptually speaking, one of my favorite things to do for dinner is to embellish something I already have. Creative embellishing is an ideal way to translate leftovers into new dishes. (Although there’s a lot to be said for the whole idea of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — i.e., if you loved a dish the first time around, by all means skip the embellishing and enjoy it just as it is.) Creative embellishing is also a great way to use what you’ve got in your fridge rather than ignoring it and then wind up throwing it away a week later.

Incidentally, here’s a hot tip: if grocery economics seem complicated and not worth figuring out, you could always attach what you spend in cold hard cash to each item in your fridge for a week and then see how much $$ you’re literally throwing away on a weekly basis. I guarantee that’ll make you an even bigger fan of re-enjoying and embellishing your meals!

In this case, I had a bunch of cilantro I had initially purchased to make Indian recipes. Half of the bunch had been happily eaten; half of it was still sitting pretty in my fridge. Seeing as I also had some leftover marinara on hand, too, I figured I would put the two of them together and toss them with pasta for a quick meal. Marinara is such an easy-going sauce that it pairs well with almost any fresh herb, so you could use this idea to enjoy whatever kind of herb you might have on hand.

Cilantro-Marinara Pasta

Leftover marinara sauce (home-made or store-bought)
Fresh cilantro, basil, or any other leafy herb
Whole-grain pasta (make sure to get gluten-free pasta if that’s what you’re aiming for)

Cook the pasta according to package directions. While it’s simmering, rinse and then chop/mince the herb (or leave it whole). Although my favorite fresh herbs are cilantro and basil, this would also be nice with dill, oregano, or even mint.

While pasta is draining, heat the marinara in the pot the pasta was in for a minute or two, stirring often, until the sauce has warmed through. Stir in pasta and herb(s), starting with just a handful of herb and adding more to taste if you’d like.

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!

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!

Cilantro Hummus

One thing I always have in my pantry: chickpeas. One thing I always have in my refrigerator: tahini. Why? Because hummus is my go-to staple, no matter if I need a last-minute appetizer, a dish to take to a party, or a quick dinner. You just can’t go wrong with hummus. (I omitted garlic and lemon from my pantry/fridge list because those are two ingredients I have on hand no matter what — don’t need to remember to stock those indispensable items!)

Aside from gorgeous flavor and surprising heartiness, another key attraction of hummus is its readiness to be customized. You can blend in anything from herbs to cooked veggies and other beans/legumes. (How about blending in some cooked lentils and white kidney beans for a three-bean dip?) You can also spice hummus to suit your taste buds: add a dash of cayenne if you’re a fan of hot & spicy, add chili powder for a south-of-the-border tinge to your Mediterranean vibe, or sprinkle on some sumac for authentic tang and color.

For this batch, I decided to throw in the bunch of cilantro I had in my fridge that I needed to use. Not only did the hummus turn out to be a beautiful color, the cilantro suited the chickpeas (and everything else) perfectly. I think all my hummuses might be green from now on!

Cilantro Hummus

1 sizeable bunch cilantro
15 oz. can of chickpeas (Eden is my favorite), drained but liquid reserved
4 cloves garlic, chopped and sautéed in extra-virgin olive oil for 4 minutes over medium-low heat or until garlic is fragrant and softened
Juice of 1/4 to 1/2 lemon (some lemons yield a lot more juice than others!)
1 T. tahini
1/2 to 1 tsp. cumin (I love cumin, so I use a hearty teaspoon)

Rinse the cilantro very well — dirt loves to nestle into those edged frilly leaves! — and cut off the bunch right above where the stems are tied together, going a bit higher if the bottom leaves are yellowed. You want the nice fresh green stuff. Put the cilantro tops (stems and all) into a food processor and add the remaining ingredients. Process until somewhat smooth, then pour in a bit of the reserved bean liquid and process again. Add more liquid if necessary, tasting the hummus as soon as it gets fairly smooth to see if you want to add a bit more lemon juice.

You could take this same idea and make your hummus with basil rather than cilantro, or you could even throw in some mint for a change of pace. Herbs + hummus = delicious!

Serve immediately with crackers, chips, flatbread, veggies, pasta, chicken, lamb…you name it. Or you can keep the hummus in the refrigerator for up to a week to enjoy as a quick snack or easy meal.

Enjoy!

Roasted Red Pepper Dip/Soup/Sauce

Raw bell peppers are delicious, but roasted bell peppers are even better. They’re also ridiculously easy to roast yourself: just put the pepper(s) on the center oven rack and roast for 20 minutes at 425F. Immediately drop the pepper(s) into a plastic zip-loc bag, seal, and let sit until cool enough to handle. (The cooling-off time is usually 15 to 20 minutes.) When they’ve cooled, peel off the skin, remove the cores, and discard the seeds. The only tricky part is remembering to place a sheet of aluminum foil on the rack directly below the pepper(s) to catch any drips that might otherwise frizzle onto the bottom of the oven…which, if you’re like me and do not have a self-cleaning oven, are a pain to get off later.

Roasted peppers — of any color: red, yellow, orange, green, or purple — will last for at least 4 days in the fridge. I like to slip mine into a glass jar so that I can see them and therefore not forget they’re there. Or you can immediately use the roasted peppers in a dip, sauce, or soup the way I’ve done here.

Roasted Red Pepper Dip/Soup/Sauce

2 roasted red bell peppers
1/4 cup raw or toasted almonds (I like to pan-toast mine in a dry pan over medium-low heat for 4 minutes or until lightly browned)
4 cloves garlic, chopped and sautéed in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat for 4 minutes or until softened and fragrant
Squirt of lemon juice
1 tsp. anchovy paste OR tomato paste
1/2 tsp. to 1 tsp. berbere or chili powder
About 1 T. whole-milk Greek yogurt
Fresh cilantro, chopped (you can include the stems since you’ll be blending them anyway), optional

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend for about 1 minute, scraping down the sides once or twice. You can either stop when you still have a chunky mixture, or you can keep going and make it velvety smooth. If you want to use it as a dip, either chunky or smooth works; add more yogurt if you want a creamier dip.

If you want to make sauce, you may want to thin the blend with a little bit of water or more lemon juice (although bear in mind that extra lemon juice will make the tangy factor shoot up). If you want to make an unusual chilled soup, blend in a cup or two of vegetable broth or free-range chicken stock. Or maybe you want to triple the batch and try all three ways.

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!

Summery Moroccan Lemon & Almond Soup

It’s summer, it’s hot (since when was Detroit in the middle of the Sahara?), and I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to spend much time over a hot stove right now.  Hence, this soup!  Although it involves a bit of simmering time, the heat is on low and you don’t have to be near the stove stirring — instead, you can hang out by the cool sink and lazily rip cilantro leaves free from their stems.  This soup also has the advantage of tasting fabulous whether you serve it hot, cold, or at room temp.  (Fabulous flavors tend to happen when you use fresh ingredients like ginger root and organic lemon zest!)

Summery Moroccan Lemon & Almond Soup
Serves 2 for lunch, especially if you include some flatbread/crackers and some fresh fruit on the side.

2 cups chicken broth, preferably from free-range chickens
1 medium clove garlic, minced
About 1″ of peeled ginger root (use a paring knife to cut away the bark)
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. coriander
Zest of 1 lemon, preferably organic since you’re using the peel (if you have a microplane zester, use that to zest the lemon; if you don’t have a microplane, use a vegetable peeler and then mince the pieces of zest)
About 1 cup ground almonds (the finer the grind, the smoother the soup; coarsely ground or chopped almonds will make for a chunky soup)
Juice of 1 lemon, divided (be sure to zest the lemon before squeezing it!)
Dash of whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows
Fresh cilantro leaves for garnish

Pour the broth into a medium pot and add the garlic. Hold a garlic press directly over the pot and press the ginger root in it to get the juice out. Discard remaining dry root. (If you get a very fresh piece of ginger and you’d like to include it all, mince the peeled root and add that instead. I usually have a hard time finding ultra-fresh ginger, so I press out the juice and skip using the fibrous strands left behind — the older the root, the more fibrous it gets.) Stir in cumin, coriander, and lemon zest. Add the almonds and half of the lemon juice.

Heat the soup over medium heat or medium-high heat just long enough to get a gentle boil, then reduce to low and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. (This is when you can casually pluck your cilantro leaves from the stems.) Remove from heat and stir in remaining lemon juice and the dash of milk. If you want a velvet-smooth soup, run the finished soup through a food processor.

Serve soup hot, cold, or at room temp, garnishing with the cilantro. Leftover soup will keep in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. If you’d like to make the soup again with a slightly different twist, try using fresh mint leaves in place of the cilantro.

Enjoy!

Savory Goat Cheese & Avocado Dip

Savory dips are just about the most versatile thing you can make, because not only can a neverending variety of items be considered dippables, the dip itself can become a sauce if you thin it a little bit and then toss it with pasta, whole grains, meat, you name it.  Or you could thin it even more and call it a soup.  (To thin a thick dip or sauce, add more of the most-liquid ingredient, or add water if that most-liquid ingredient would dominate the rest if it were increased.  Too much lime juice, for example, would make guacamole too acidic, but adding more tomato juice to gazpacho wouldn’t knock the balance of flavors out of whack since tomatoes already are the predominant flavor.)

This savory dip is very savory indeed thanks to the olives and sun-dried tomatoes it contains.  You could also use black olives if you prefer that flavor, but I’m a green-olive fan.  Besides, I thought that pairing green olives with green avocado would make for an overall happily green dip.

Savory Goat Cheese & Avocado Dip
(or Green Monster Dip if you’re serving it to kids)

1 avocado
2 large spoonfuls soft goat cheese
8 green onions, green part only, minced
4 sun-dried tomatoes, minced (you’ll need a very sharp knife to easily mince these)
12 green olives, pitted and minced (or use black if you’d prefer that flavor)
Small squirt of lemon or lime juice (to help prevent the avocado from browning)
1/2 jalapeño, minced, or 2 T. canned diced green chiles (optional, although I used the canned variety and thought it added a nice, not-too-kicky kick)
Handful cilantro or fresh basil, minced (optional, but again a nice touch: go with cilantro for a Mexican twist or basil for an Italian one)

Bite-sized raw veggies or whole-grain crackers/chips for dipping

Mash the avocado and goat cheese together with the fork, then stir in the remaining dip ingredients and serve with the veggies and/or crackers and chips. This would also make a great sandwich topping, or you could add a teaspoon or two of water to thin it and then toss with with hot pasta. The dip would be a nice side for chicken or fish, too.

Enjoy!

Skate with Cilantro & Lemon

Although I normally steer clear of fish on Seafoodwatch.org’s “avoid” list, if skate shows up at my local fish market, I sometimes buy it.  (I actually hadn’t realized skate was on the “avoid” list until after I’d made this dish.)  It tastes a lot like scallops, which is a bonus for me since scallops are the #1 thing that I can’t eat — they are, in fact, the only food that is guaranteed to make me miserable within an hour of eating it.  Despite scallops’ attitude towards me, however, I like them a lot, so it’s a rare treat to be able to enjoy a scallops-y flavor without the unfriendly scallops having to be involved.

That said, you could certainly use scallops instead of skate in this dish, or you could use a light-flavored, light-textured fish like trout or perch.  Likewise, if you aren’t such a huge cilantro fan, you could use parsley or dill or even basil instead.

Skate with Cilantro & Lemon
Serves 2 hearty fish-lover meals or 4 standard meals.

4 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 lb. light-flavored, light-textured fish (trout, perch, skate), rinsed in cold water and patted dry*
Squeeze of fresh lemon juice
About 1/4 cup minced cilantro (or other leafy herbs such as parsley, dill, or basil)
Chopped fresh tomatoes or canned diced tomatoes
Sprinkling of sea salt (optional)

Drizzle a little extra-virgin olive oil into a large nonstick saucepan and place over medium-low heat for 1 minute. Add garlic and sautée for 2 minutes, then push garlic to the edges of the pan and place the fish in the center of the pan with the skin side up. Cook for another 2-3 minutes or until the flesh is opaque about halfway up — the surface touching the pan will cook first — and then gently flip the fish over. Continue cooking for another 2-3 minutes or until the center of the fish flakes cleanly when you poke it open with a fork.

Remove pan from heat and stir in lemon juice, cilantro, tomatoes, and salt. Serve immediately, making sure to give each diner a good portion of the pan drippings.

Enjoy!

* Or feel free to use scallops, although I must admit that I’m unfamiliar with how to cook the little buggers since they clearly don’t like me.

Indian-Spiced Popcorn

As far as whole-grain snacks go, you can’t beat freshly popped popcorn.  But I’m not talking about chemical-drenched “buttery” microwave popcorn — I’m talking about organic plain popcorn you pop yourself and flavor any which way you’d like.  You can stick with the classic butter approach, or you can go with whatever’s on your mind and in your pantry.  I’m talking using spices, nuts, cheeses, fresh herbs, maybe even honey … popcorn can be made a million different ways.  My #1 go-to easy favorite is drizzling the popped corn with extra-virgin olive oil and dusting it with sea salt and berbere or chili powder.  A hint of cayenne pepper and a dusting of finely grated Parmesan is another sure-fire winner.  For dessert popcorn, I swap the oil for honey and the savory spices for cinnamon.

Lately, though, I’ve started adding fresh herbs and freshly squeezed citrus juice to my popcorn.  Both of those ingredients give the crunchy kernels an amazing amount of zing; lime juice is a particularly welcome ingredient.  For this batch of popcorn, I opted to add some Indian spices directly to the cooking fat.  That way, the heat expands the flavor of the spices and makes them even more savory.

Indian-Spiced Popcorn

1 T. coconut oil OR ghee
2 tsp. curry powder
1/3 cup raw, plain popcorn (preferably organic)
Lime juice from 1/2 a lime (or more if you’d like more tartness)
Fresh cilantro, minced (I like a lot of cilantro, but you may prefer just a hint)
Roasted peanuts, finely chopped (again, I like peanuts a lot, but you may want to just scatter a small handful over the popcorn)
Sea salt to taste (if the peanuts are salted, you won’t need much additional salt)

Place the oil in a large pot that has a tight-fitting lid. Heat over medium-low heat for 1 minute before adding curry powder and popcorn kernels. Place lid on pot and let kernels swell and pop, shaking pot often while holding the lid down tightly. Kernels will take about 5 minutes or so to fully pop; you’ll hear the furious sound of the kernels hitting the underside of the lid as they turn inside-out. When the barrage of sound fades to a tiny, occasional pop, spill the popped kernels into a large mixing bowl.*

Drizzle lime juice over popcorn. Toss popcorn with cilantro, peanuts, and a dash of salt. Taste to see if you’d like to add more salt (or lime juice or cilantro or peanuts) and toss one more time. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

* Note: if you have a popcorn popper, by all means use that instead.  I just find that I’m inclined towards keeping everything as simple as possible and using basic kitchen tools for a lot of different purposes (rather than having single-purpose items like popcorn poppers, rice steamers, etc.).

Indonesian Peanut Noodles

Natural peanut butter is one of my favorite foods.  Not only does it taste so good that it’s addictive, it transcends sandwiches and chocolate cups to create lusciously creamy soups, sauces, and sautées.  PB is also easy enough to make yourself: just put 1 cup of unsalted peanuts, 1 tablespoon unrefined peanut oil, and a dash of sea salt into a blender or food processor and whir away.  You can determine how crunchy you want the PB to be by simply blending it until you reach your desired consistency.  Same goes for the salt level — you decide.  Or try various brands of natural PB until you find the one you like best.  (My favorite is the Trader Joe’s Organic Crunchy Salted PB.)

Indonesian Peanut Noodles with Carrots & Snap Peas
This serves 4. Recipe can easily be doubled.

4 servings whole-grain noodles (I used brown rice noodles, but 100% soba noodles — made entirely out of buckwheat — would be another great choice)*
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1″ matchsticks
8 ounces snap peas
Drizzle of unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 or 2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce, depending on how salty you’d like your stir-fry to be (be sure to choose wheat-free tamari/soy if you’re making this a gluten-free dish)
1/4 cup natural peanut butter
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp. ground ginger
Fistful of fresh cilantro leaves (I adore cilantro, so I use a lot of it in my dishes, but you can notch down to a few stems’ worth of leaves if you’re not a huge cilantro fan)

Bring large pot of water to a boil and add pasta. Take a look at the cooking time required for the noodles, then subtract 5 minutes from that. When the timer goes off, add the carrots and peas to the same pot and keep simmering for another 5 minutes. (My noodles took 10 minutes to cook, so I simmered the noodles alone for 5 minutes, then added the veggies and simmered it all for another 5 minutes. This saves you from having to cook the veggies separately.) Drain noodles and veggies and set aside.

While the noodles and veggies are cooking, drizzle the oil into a pan and heat over medium-low heat for 1 minute. Add garlic and sautée, stirring often, for 3 minutes or until garlic is starting to soften. Stir in tamari and PB and let the mixture cook for 1 minute. Add lime juice and ginger and cook for 1 or 2 more minutes. At this point, the mixture will be fairly thick and bubbly, so add 1 or 2 tablespoons of water (start with one and see how it looks) to thin the sauce. You should wind up with a creamy, light-brown sauce.

Remove pan from heat and stir in cilantro. Toss sauce with noodles and veggies and serve immediately, garnishing with a wedge of lime if you’d like.

Enjoy!

* Both brown rice and 100% soba noodles are gluten-free, but whole-wheat noodles would work in this recipe, too.

Cilantro-Almond Pesto (with cherry tomatoes)

You can put whatever you want on top of a pizza and still have a “pizza.”  Pies can have an infinity of fillings and still be “pies.”  The name is all about the structural concept of the dish, not the details.  Category dishes like pizzas and pies are fun to play with — although you have a starting point to get your culinary imagination whisking along, in the end, you can do whatever you like.  (Some people would say that pizzas are pies!)

Pesto is another fun-to-play-with category dish.  We’re used to making pesto with basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and perhaps some Parmesan.  But there are plenty of fresh, leafy herbs to use in place of the basil…and plenty of nuts or seeds to use in place of pine nuts (which are actually seeds from a pine cone, not nuts).  Even the cheese is open to interpretation: an aged Spanish Manchego has a salty, almost-tangy flavor that also pairs well with fresh herbs and creamy nuts.  Aged American Cheddars do, too.

Swapping out your pesto parts at will also means you’re more likely to have some useful ingredients on hand (maybe you have walnuts instead of pine nuts), plus almonds and cashews and many other nuts are less expensive than pine nuts.  Sunflower seeds are another thriftily delicious ingredient possibility.

If you use oily nuts like walnuts or pecans, just be sure to first toast them in a dry saucepan over medium heat for about 4-5 minutes or until the nuts are fragrant and slightly browned.  Any nut gains a deeper flavor when toasted, but the higher oil content of certain nuts makes them more likely to grind into a paste than into nut crumbs, and pesto is made by placing your ingredients in a food processor and whizzing them until you have very finely minced nuts and herbs.  (You could chop the mixture by hand, too, but of course that takes a lot more effort.)

Cilantro-Almond Pesto

Note: pesto comes together very quickly and must be served immediately, so be sure to have whatever you’re going to serve with the pesto ready BEFORE you actually blend the pesto ingredients.

2-4 cloves garlic (if you sautée them first, use 4 cloves; if you use them raw, only use 1 or 2 cloves)
Two handfuls of fresh cilantro leaves (about 2 cups gently filled — don’t smash the leaves)
1/4 cup slivered or sliced almonds
1-2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
Pinch of sea salt

If you’d prefer sautéed garlic over raw garlic — I’m a Latin dancer, so I do! — coarsely chop the cloves and then sautée them in the olive oil over medium-low heat for about 3 minutes or until the cloves are starting to turn golden brown. Remove from heat.

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend in bursts until you have a homogenous mixture of herbs, garlic, and nuts/seeds, adding more oil if your pesto is looking dry. Either serve IMMEDIATELY (toss with pasta, spoon over chicken or fish, add more oil to make it into a dressing or marinade) or immediately place in a container that’s just big enough to hold the pesto and pour a thin layer of oil over the top to protect it from the air. Cilantro is a hardier herb than basil, but even so, any time you chop up fresh herbs, their cut edges quickly begin to turn black — oxidize — from exposure to air. Adding an acidic element like lemon juice slows down that process, but I find that the lemon flavor overrides the flavor of the pesto; I’d rather plan on eating it right away than winding up with lemony pesto. Then again, you might love lemony pesto!

You can serve your pesto with any trimmings that tickle your culinary fancy: tomatoes, additional nuts, cheese, roasted veggies, you name it. I think the cilantro variety goes especially well with fresh cherry tomatoes.

Enjoy!

Caribbean Corn-Coconut Chowder

Chowder is one of America’s great culinary contributions: a hearty one-pot meal that you can customize to your stomach’s delight.  While many chowders sprang out of a seafood tradition (think Manhattan and Boston clam chowders), there are also vegetable-based versions.  I created this one to make use of plentiful summer crops like corn and tomatoes and plentiful summer herbs like cilantro.

Since I also had leftover brown rice in the fridge, I threw that in to give the chowder some extra body and flavor.  You could just as easily use a quicker-cooking grain/pasta like quinoa or a whole-wheat orzo if you don’t have cooked brown rice on hand.  Likewise, if you have frozen corn rather than fresh corn, you can substitute that, too. (Although it’d be a shame not to partake of fresh summer corn, especially for 20 cents an ear!)

Caribbean Corn-Coconut Chowder
Serves 4 people.

2 ears husked fresh corn OR 2 cups frozen corn
1 15-oz. can diced tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup canned black beans (you can also add the bean juice if you’d like; I use Eden canned beans, which are canned in BPA-free cans with water, sea salt, and a bit of kombu seaweed — all great additions to soup!)
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup whole coconut milk
1 cup water
1 cup cooked brown rice OR 1/2 cup raw quinoa or 1/2 cup raw whole-grain pasta*
Fresh cilantro, chopped (use a few sprigs if you’re cilanto-timid or a whole handful if you’re a fan)
1 tsp. dried pineapple sage OR 1 tsp. dried oregano OR 2 tsp. fresh oregano
1 tsp. dried fenugreek (optional)
Sea salt to taste

To prepare the fresh corn, bring a large soup pot halfway full of water to a boil. Ease ears into it and simmer for 3 minutes. Promptly pull out ears with tongs, rinse out pot, and refill with cold water. Place ears in cold water and let cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.  (If you don’t promptly chill the ears, they’ll continue to cook and will be too mushy.)  Remove ears and pat them dry. Use a sharp knife to cut kernels into a large bowl.

Combine all ingredients except corn in the rinsed-out soup pot and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add the corn during the last minute or two.  (By adding it at the end, you’ll preserve its wonderful sweet crispness.)

This soup can be served warm or cold. Like all tomato-and-spice-containing dishes, it’s even better the next day! Avocado wedges and corn chips make nice garnishes.

Enjoy!

* If you use raw quinoa or pasta, add another cup of water to the chowder to account for the liquid the grains/pasta will absorb.

Cornbread "Panzanella" with Goat Cheese

I can’t be sure about this, but I’m guessing Italian panzanella sprang out of that greatest of all culinary traditions: using up the leftovers.  After all, who hasn’t grown up hearing “waste not, want not”?  The original Tuscan recipe calls for making a caprese salad — tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella, red wine or balsamic vinegar, and extra-virgin olive oil — and tossing it with cubes of crusty, almost-stale bread.  The bread takes on the deep flavors of the vinegar, oil, and tomato juice and winds up making the most delicious croutons you could imagine.

That’s the same idea here, except that you’re using southwestern ingredients rather than Tuscan ones and cornbread instead of crusty loaf bread.  Like the original panzanella, this recipe is a great way to use up extra cornbread and to give it new life — cornbread is by nature a bit dry and crumbly, so it soaks up nearly as much liquid as the bread used in panzanella does.  ¡Qué rico!

Cornbread “Panzanella” Toss

Using any cornbread* you like (my favorite is the Crusty Soft-Center Spoon Bread from the Highest Deity amongst the culinary gods, The Joy of Cooking), either cut the cornbread into wedges or cubes.  Toss with drained black beans, chopped tomatoes, and chopped fresh cilantro.  Drizzle on some lime juice and extra-virgin olive oil and gently mix again.  Crumble soft goat cheese over the top of the salad and grind on a few rounds of coarse sea salt and mixed peppercorns.  If you like, sprinkle on some slivers of minced red onions before serving.

Enjoy!

* If you want to make this a gluten-free dish, simply use corn flour (not corn starch!) rather than wheat flour when baking your cornbread.  The majority of the grain in cornbread is cornmeal, anyway, so substituting corn flour for the small amount of wheat flour called for won’t make too much of an impact on the overall recipe.