Spiced Sorghum & Yogurt Cake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!

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

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!

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!

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!

Tartar Sauce Made with Greek Yogurt

They call it raita in India, tzatziki in the Middle East, and tarator in Bulgaria. We call it tartar sauce, and we make it with pickles instead of cucumbers and mayonnaise instead of yogurt. Frankly, though, it’s time to revisit the original versions for some inspiration, because rich, creamy Greek yogurt kicks commercial mayonnaise to the curb any day. (If you make your own mayonnaise, that’s a different story — just be sure you have fresh eggs from a trusted source so that you can enjoy them raw.) Unadorned, whole-milk yogurt is a far better nutritional and flavor bet than commercial mayonnaise — the latter consists mostly of refined soy oil. And don’t even get me started on the euphemistically (to me, anyway) named “Miracle” Whip. I’ll pass on that particular miracle.

The traditional way to serve tartar sauce is alongside fish, but it’s equally lovely with potatoes, coleslaw (you could thin it with a bit of water or extra-virgin olive oil to make a dressing), chicken, lamb, or as a dip for veggies.

Tartar Sauce Made with Greek Yogurt

Whole-milk Greek yogurt (Fage is a great choice)
Spritz of fresh lemon juice
Minced pickle (my favorite pickle is McClure’s, so I minced some garlic & dill pickles)
Capers, drained (take them out of the jar with a fork)
Horseradish (the older the horseradish, the less hot it’ll be; taste before adding to see how much you’ll want)
Dried dill
Sea salt & freshly cracked pepper

Making any sauce is a highly subjective activity: you may want a thick sauce or a thin sauce, and of course the level of seasonings (salty, spicy, zesty, etc.) is up to you. I began with about 1/4 cup yogurt and 1 tsp. lemon juice, then stirred in enough pickle and capers to make a slightly chunky sauce. My horseradish is pretty fresh and hot, so I used less than a teaspoon to start. On the flip side, I love dill, so I used almost a full teaspoon to start.

If you’re going for a smooth sauce, mince the pickles very fine; if you want a spicier sauce, go for more horseradish; if you want a thinner sauce, go for more lemon juice (or add some water or extra-virgin olive oil if you want a thinner sauce that isn’t so lemony). You get the idea. Assuming you’re using fresh yogurt, prepared sauce will last for a week or more in the fridge. A final note: you can also include raw or sautéed garlic in your tartar sauce if you want that extra zip, but then I would only refrigerate the sauce for 3 or 4 days.

Enjoy!

Two-Minute Salad with Herbed Yogurt Dressing

Remember the Ranch days? The days when everything was dipped in and topped with Ranch dressing? Ranch fries, Ranch burgers, veggies swathed in a sea of slightly speckled white. There’s no denying Ranch’s creamy, herby appeal…but you can create a much tastier, much more nutritious version of it using plain Greek yogurt and fresh or dried herbs. Considering that the first ingredient in Hidden Valley Ranch dressing is [probably heavily refined] soy oil and that other ingredients include mass-produced-food-world darlings like MSG, modified food starch, artificial flavors, and unpronounceable additives like disodium guanylate, it’s a sure bet that your homemade version of Ranch is going to bring home the proverbial prize.

Another beauty of taking a minute (literally) to whip up a DIY version is that you can spice/herb it the way you want to — if you’d like an Italianized version, shake in some Italian seasoning; if you’d like your dinner to have a Mexican flair, add a dash of chili powder. For this batch of dressing, I opted to use some of my fresh garden herbs.  Feel free to toss your dressing with the salad pictured here, or use it as a dip or topping the way most of us grew up using Ranch.

Two-Minute Salad with Herbed Yogurt Dressing (a.k.a. Ranch-Made-Better Dressing)

For the dressing:
Plain whole-milk Greek yogurt (the whole-milk version will give you the thickness and creaminess you’re looking for; Fage whole-milk yogurt is a great choice)
Red wine vinegar
Herbs/spices of your choice (if you use fresh herbs, mince them)
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper
Garlic, minced (optional)

For the salad:
Torn lettuce leaves (I used arugula and baby spinach, but any tender green will do)
Cashews
Red grapes, sliced in half
Raw green beans, chopped (or simmer them for 5 minutes, then promptly submerge in cold water, drain, and chop)
Mild pepper such as bell or banana, minced

To make the dressing, stir yogurt and vinegar together, using about 1 T. for every 1/2 cup of yogurt. You want a creamy, smooth consistency that will be easy enough to toss with the salad — i.e., not too thick — but also one that is creamy and has some body — i.e., not too thin. I usually drizzle in some vinegar, stop to stir, and then add another splash of vinegar before I do another consistency check. Stir in herbs/spices, a dash of salt, and a grind or two of pepper. Dried herbs are more concentrated than fresh herbs, so start with 1 tsp. dried herbs per each 1/2 cup. Use 1 T. of fresh herbs…or eyeball it, tasting as you go. (Frankly, that’s easier.) If you do add garlic, start with half a small clove — a little raw garlic goes a very long way. Do a taste test to see if you want to include more.

Toss salad ingredients together, then re-toss with dressing. I would use equal amounts of nuts and grapes; you might want to use a little less raw beans and peppers in comparison since they have a stronger taste. Feel free to add cooked chicken or shrimp to this salad — either would pair well with the creamy dressing. (Note: cheap farmed shrimp from Central American and Southeast Asia continues to be a big environmental problem, so when buying shrimp, I go with seafoodwatch.org’s recommendation and choose wild-caught U.S. shrimp.)

Serve promptly. Leftover dressing can be refrigerated for at least 4 days. If your yogurt is fresh, the dressing will probably keep for a week.

Enjoy!

Sheep's-Milk Yogurt with Grapes & Honey

I’ve been on a yogurt kick lately, and there’s a darned good reason for that: I finally found sheep’s-milk yogurt! Old Chatham Sheepherding Company sells their sheep’s-milk yogurt in various grocery stores to the lucky folks on the East Coast and through their website to sheep-curious shoppers who aren’t within shouting distance of New York.

Even though the shipping costs as much as the yogurt — it has to be shipped in cold-packs — it’s worth the splurge. (If anyone knows of a store in Metro Detroit that sells sheep’s-milk yogurt, please let me know!) Sheep milk is richer than milk given by cows or goats, and it strikes a flavor balance between the mildness of cow milk and the grassy, earthy character of goat milk. And the whey doesn’t separate from the solids the way the whey separates with cow milk, so no need to stir sheep’s-milk yogurt back together. (Although herein lies a tip for the lactose-intolerant: since most of the lactose is in the whey, draining it off will leave you with a decreased-lactose yogurt. The cultures gobble up the lactose to live, too, so the more cultured the yogurt/dairy product is, the less lactose it will have.)

Incidentally, most yogurt made in the Mediterranean is from either sheep or goat milk, not cow — cows don’t do well in rocky, hilly terrain where vegetation is sparse. Sheep and goats do. So if you’re having Greek yogurt in Greece, odds are you’ll be eating sheep’s-milk yogurt. But since plenty of the States are dairying areas and since cows give much more milk than sheep and goats do, practically all yogurt in the U.S. is made from cow milk.  Let’s hope those of us who adore sheep’s-milk cheese and yogurt can change that!

[Sheep's-Milk] Yogurt with Grapes & Honey
This recipe is sized for an individual serving, but feel free to make as many servings as you like! Makes a delicious and easy breakfast, snack, or dessert.

1/2 cup whole-milk yogurt, preferably made from sheep milk, but whole-milk yogurt from cow milk works, too (Fage Greek yogurt is a great choice)
Drizzle of honey
Splash of vanilla extract (about 1/4 tsp.)
12 small red grapes

Stir honey and vanilla into yogurt and taste to see if you’d like it to be any sweeter. Be careful about adding too much vanilla — a little bit goes a long way. Start with 1/4 tsp. and work your way up. And remember that the grapes will be sweet, so don’t overshoot with the honey, either. Add grapes and serve promptly.

Gingered Mango Crepes

Until I took my first bite of this fruit-filled crepe, I had forgotten about blintzes, but then fond memories of the frozen blintzes from Trader Joe’s came rushing back.  If you haven’t had a blintz, though, don’t worry — you’ll still be amazed by how creamy, rich, and sweet these crepes are.  Happily, they’re a lot easier to make than a blintz (no re-frying needed) and only require four ingredients: frozen mangoes, Greek yogurt, a sprinkling of ginger, and crepes.

Crepes can be kept for up to 5 days in the refrigerator, so you can make a double batch and then have Gingered Mango Crepes whenever you’d like.  If you make neutral crepes — don’t put in any sweetener, and use flours that can go sweet or savory — you can use the same crepes to make dinner, too.  I used the other half of this batch to make savory crepes stuffed with Indian-spiced brown rice, peas, spinach, garlic, onion, and halloumi cheese.

Gingered Mango Crepes

Sliced mangoes, either frozen or fresh
Sprinkling of ground ginger
Crepes (see recipe below)
Sprinkling of sucanat or palm sugar
Whole-milk Greek yogurt

Place mangoes and ginger in a large skillet and simmer over low heat, uncovered, for about 15 minutes to allow the flavors to meld. Do not let it come to a boil. Spoon mango onto crepes, then top with sucanat/palm sugar and yogurt. Fold or roll up crepes and serve immediately. So simple!

To make the crepes:

1/2 cup brown rice flour OR sorghum flour*
1/2 cup millet OR amaranth OR corn flour*
3 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 1/4 cups milk, either dairy, coconut, nut, or grain
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Dash of sea salt

Whisk all ingredients together in a bowl, adding 2 T. sucanat or palm sugar if you’d like your crepes to be more on the sweet side. (I did not since I also wanted to use the crepes for savory dinners.) Note that you can mix the batter up to 24 hours in advance if you’d like and then refrigerate it until you’re ready to make the crepes; the flavor will become richer upon standing.

Place a little pat of butter or a slight drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil into a 6″ crepe pan and place over medium-low heat for 1 minute. Add 1/4 cup batter to the pan and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until you can see little bubbles forming on the surface. Use a heat-proof spatula to lift up an edge of the crepe to see if the bottom is golden brown. If/when it is, flip the crepe over and continue cooking for another minute or until that side is golden brown, too. Slide the finished crepe onto a cooling rack or large plate. Continue making crepes 1/4 cupful at a time until you’ve run out of batter, adding a little butter or oil to the pan now and then if the crepes are starting to stick.

Note that you may have to turn down the heat as you continue to cook the crepes since the pans will keep getting hotter and hotter. I find that I’ve notched down the heat once or twice by the time I’m on my third crepe. (I usually start at mark 4 out of 10; eventually, I wind up at mark 2 or so.) Also, you can make multiple crepes at the same time if you have multiple 6″ pans. Bear in mind that pans may heat differently, so you may have two different heat levels going on as you proceed. One of my pans, for example, makes perfect crepes on mark 2 with hardly any oil; the other needs mark 4 and a decent drizzling of oil. You can make crepes on larger pans, but they’ll probably be odd-sized with uneven edges. The 6″ pan keeps the edges defined as a perfect circle.

Final note: try to arrange cooling crepes in a non-overlapping way so that they don’t stick to each other. I lay mine out on two cooling racks for at least 20 minutes to let them completely cool before I stack them in a large container or bag. If you’re going to eat them all immediately, then stack them on top of each other with a paper towel in between so that they’ll stay warm and pliable.

Enjoy!

* These are all neutral-tasting flours (as opposed to bean flour, which to me is firmly in the savory, “dinner crepe” category), so you could mix and match them any way you’d like. You could also use whole-wheat, kamut, or spelt flour, although if you want gluten-free crepes, stick with gluten-free flours like the ones listed in the recipe.

Garlicky Homemade Cream Cheese Dip with Balsamic Mushrooms

Greek yogurt is the latest craze in the dairy aisle, and rightfully so: it’s thicker, creamier, and tastier (in my opinion, at least) than standard yogurt.  In large part, that’s because it’s double-strained instead of single-strained, which means more of the whey drips out, leaving a more concentrated, full-bodied yogurt behind.  Another difference is that authentic Greek yogurt is made from sheep’s milk.  (Although sadly not the yogurt varieties that are exported to the U.S — those are all made from cow’s milk.)

My favorite brand and variety of Greek yogurt is Fage’s whole-milk yogurt.  No contest!  Sometimes I even strain it yet again to make what’s essentially homemade cream cheese.  It’s much fresher and tastier than the plasticized molded blocks you find on grocery store shelves.  Just fit a colander over a large bowl, scoop the yogurt into the colander, stick the whole assembly in the fridge, and let it drain overnight.  In the morning, you’ll have yogurt-turned-cream-cheese so thick that you can stand a spoon in it.

That ultra-creamy, ultra-luxurious texture allows you to mix just about anything into it to make whatever dip or sauce you can dream up.  In fall, for example, try mixing your homemade cream cheese half-and-half with cooked, mashed pumpkin (or canned pumpkin), a sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a splash of maple syrup.  It’s just like the inside of a pumpkin pie!  It’s the perfect dip for fall fruits like apples and pears.  For this dinner dip, though, I went with savory seasonings like garlic and capers.  You know what it reminded me of?  A seriously tasty and fresh version of Doritos Cool Ranch Tortilla Chips.  (That used to be my favorite junk food when I was a kid.)  Just goes to show that you can re-fashion junk food into real food any time you like!

Garlicky Homemade Cream Cheese Dip

1 cup homemade cream cheese, a.k.a. strained whole-milk Greek yogurt (see above second paragraph for instructions on how to do this)
1 or 2 T. capers, depending on how much you like their briny flavor
About 1 tsp. caper brine
1 tsp. fish sauce OR 1 tsp. anchovy paste OR 1 tsp. of a Worcestershire-style sauce without high-fructose corn syrup (sadly, the Worcestershire sauce sold in the U.S. does contain HFCS; the version sold in England does not)
1 small clove garlic, pressed or minced

Combine all ingredients in a small mixing bowl and stir together. You can serve the dip immediately with whole-grain crackers or chips (pictured are Eden’s organic white corn chips), with freshly cut veggies, with toasted whole-grain pitas or thin slices of bread, or even with a savory main dish like chicken or lamb and/or noodles. This savory, garlicky dip would be a great stand-in for sour cream or alfredo sauce!

I enjoyed my leftover dip with button mushrooms that I had sautéed with extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and a pinch of thyme and rosemary.

Dip will keep in the refrigerator for up to four days.

Enjoy!

Scandinavian Slaw

What people traditionally eat depends on what their weather is like — citrus doesn’t like cold weather, but berries don’t like it hot.  (Good luck finding strawberries in a tropical rain forest!  Temperate rain forests are another story…)  Root vegetables and cabbages also like their days and nights to be on the crisp and cool side.  Many animals do better in slightly cooler weather, too, and people who live in places where they can’t plant crops year-round tend to rely on animal products like milk, eggs, and meat more than they rely on fresh produce.

It’s no surprise, then, that Scandinavian cookery depends heavily on dairy products, meats,  easily stored root vegetables (carrots, onions, beets, potatoes), and fruits that grow well in cooler climates (apples, quinces, berries).  Hardy grains like wheat and rye are also extensively cultivated and used, and there is plenty of fish and seafood to be found in the North Sea.

In homage to the crisp, cool weather that’s headed our way, I thought I’d try my hand at making a Scandinavian-style slaw.  The sweet apples and peppery radishes blend well with the carrots and cabbage, and the yogurt dressing only takes a few seconds to whisk together.  This slaw is ideal to serve alongside fish/seafood dishes, with poultry, or simply on its own.  A hard, salty cheese would be a good compliment, or try it with some Swedish knäckebröd (“crispy bread”).  If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, pick up some pickled herring in wine sauce to serve with the slaw!

Scandinavian Slaw
This makes enough slaw for four side servings. Feel free to increase or decrease the amount of individual slaw ingredients according to your taste.

For the dressing:
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1 T. apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. dill
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper to taste

For the slaw:
1/4 head of cabbage, sliced thin
2 large carrots, peeled and grated
1 large, firm apple, washed but unpeeled, sliced into thin matchsticks (Fuji, Gala, or Braeburn are ideal)
2 radishes, washed but unpeeled, sliced into thin matchsticks

To make the dressing, whisk together the yogurt, vinegar, dill, salt, and pepper. If you’d prefer a very creamy and mild dressing, tone down the vinegar; if you like your dressing sharper and thinner, use extra vinegar.

To make the slaw, toss the cabbage, carrots, apple, and radishes together in a large bowl. Add dressing and toss well to coat. Serve immediately, garnishing with a sprig of fresh dill if you like.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Coffeecake

Even though The Great Pumpkin Day has come and gone, pumpkins are still everywhere we look, and they’ll still be seasonally “in” when winter has us in an icy grip.  (Not looking forward to the slick streets, but I am looking forward to soft white carpets of snow making the neighborhood look like it’s been transported to an alien planet.  Every winter, I wonder if the Hoth scenes from Empire Strikes Back were shot in Michigan…)

In the spirit of continuing great pumpkin traditions, I’ve come up with a moist pumpkin coffeecake that can be served as dessert, as breakfast, with tea…or with coffee, of course.  The yogurt and pumpkin in the batter contribute to its velvety richness, and the date sugar and sucanat lend the cake a sweetness that’s flavorful instead of being just sheerly sugary.  You could even make an autumn parfait by layering small pieces of the cake with dried cranberries and Greek yogurt (or ice cream).  One of the versions of a classic trifle, in fact, is really a gigantic parfait, typically layered with whipped cream rather than ice cream and served in a large, clear bowl with straight sides.  Talk about a tasty fall party dessert!

Pumpkin Coffeecake

This cake is gluten-free, but if you’d prefer to use wheat flour, use 1 3/4 cups whole-wheat flour instead of the blend of gluten-free flours.

For the topping:

3/4 cup old-fashioned oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re making a gluten-free cake!)
1/3 cup sucanat
1 tsp. cinnamon
Pinch of sea salt
1/4 cup slivered or sliced almonds
2 T. melted butter, preferably from pastured cows (see note below)

Mix topping ingredients together in a medium bowl and set aside.

For the cake:

1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup amaranth flour
1 cup sorghum flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cardamom OR ground cloves
1 stick butter, preferably from pastured cows (Organic Valley and Kerrygold are good choices)
1/3 cup sucanat
1/3 cup date sugar (which is simply dried dates that have been ground up; you can find date sugar at any whole-foods-oriented grocery store, including health-food stores)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup puréed pumpkin (organic really honestly does taste a LOT better and is well worth seeking out)
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Grease an 8×8 glass pan and set aside.

Whisk together flours, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter for at least 1 minute — the more you aerate the butter, the loftier and more tender your cake will be — and then blend in sucanat and date sugar, beating the mixture for another minute. Beat in eggs one at a time.

Beat in half of the flour mixture, then beat in the pumpkin, yogurt, and vanilla. Beat in the rest of the flour mixture. NOTE: if you are using gluten-free flours, you can work with the batter for as long as you like without making it tough. If you are working with whole-wheat flour, only beat the batter long enough to just blend the ingredients — when you overmix a wheat-based batter/dough, you can overdevelop the gluten and run the risk of having a chewy cake. Either way, though, be sure not to poke along when you’re blending the batter, because baking soda begins to react and poof the moment it comes into contact with an acidic liquid (in this case, the yogurt). The sooner you get that batter into the oven, the better the baking soda will be able to do its job.

Pour the batter into the glass pan, then spoon on the topping. Bake cake for 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Yogurt & Banana Dip with Strawberries

There’s a hot culinary secret just waiting to be discovered in the dairy aisle, one that can create luscious dips, spreads, and sauces, especially when it comes to desserts: full-fat Greek yogurt.  Yep.  If you want amazing flavor and texture, skip the low-fat variety.  (You can always make your own low-fat yogurt by pouring in some milk to dilute the full-fat yogurt.  Two products for the price of one!)

Aside from a naturally thicker texture — the only way low-fat/non-fat yogurt gets thick is with the addition of gums and thickeners — the big advantage of full-fat Greek yogurt is that you can plop into a colander overnight and let more whey drip out.  In the morning, you’ll basically have cream cheese that can be spread or blended to create even more possibilities.  Another excellent point in full-fat’s favor is that good brands like Fage are honestly just milk, cream, and cultures.  That’s it.  Low-fat and non-fat yogurts are often milk, cultures, and six kinds of sugars.  (Remember, anything ending with -ose or -ol is a sugar.)  Flavored yogurts have an even longer list of ingredients and typically include chemical flavorings and dyes along with the horde of sugars.

Full-fat yogurt is so rich and satisfying that you’ll need less of it, too, which means you don’t have to buy as much.  And if you buy plain yogurt, you can flavor it yourself in dozens of ways.  For this dip, I used bananas and honey, but I’ve also used cooked/canned pumpkin and maple syrup to create a sweet, creamy spiced dip.  People love it!  So simple, yet so delicious.

Spiced Yogurt-Banana Dip

Stir together equal parts of undrained full-fat plain Greek yogurt and freshly mashed bananas.  Add a shake or two of cinnamon and a drizzle of honey.  Taste and add more spices or honey if you’d like.  Serve with fresh fruit, use the dip as a natural frosting*, or simply enjoy on its own.

If you’d like a thicker dip/frosting, place the yogurt in a colander the night before.  Put the colander over a bowl, cover the whole thing with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.  The next day, scoop out the yogurt and discard the whey that dripped out.  Your yogurt will be even thicker, which will actually allow you to have a higher ratio of fruit to yogurt and still have a velvety-thick consistency.

* I recently poached pears — minced, de-seeded, and de-stemmed, but with their skins still on — in white wine for about 20 minutes, then mashed them and mixed them with the yogurt.  I served the resulting “frosting” on a butternut squash cake.  The yogurt blend tasted just a little bit tangy, the way a buttermilk frosting does.  Delicious!

Enjoy!

Cranberry-Chocolate Cake

As a kid, I always liked marbled pound cakes and swirled cheesecakes.  And two-toned frozen yogurts.  Somehow, seeing two flavors intertwined on one plate (or in one cone) makes both of them doubly delicious.  And you know what the best part is?  It’s ridiculously easy to make marbled and swirled desserts — doing so usually just involves a bit of judicious pouring and/or fork-dragging.  (Or, in the case of a thick soup garnished with a curlicue of cream, some skilled spoon-dragging.)

This cranberry-chocolate cake topped with a vanilla batter is an easy two-toning feat: just pour the top layer over the bottom layer, get the cake into the oven ASAP, and sit back and enjoy the scent of chocolate permeating your kitchen.

Cranberry-Chocolate Cake
This cake is gluten-free. If you’d like to make it with wheat, simply substitute 1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour for the gluten-free flours in the bottom layer and then 2 T. of whole-wheat flour for the 2 T. brown rice flour in the top layer.

For the bottom layer:

1/2 cup almond flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup teff flour*
2 tsp. baking powder
Pinch sea salt
3/4 stick of butter (6 T.)
1/4 cup cocoa powder, preferably non-Dutched
3/4 cup maple syrup
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries OR 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

For the top layer:

1/2 stick butter (4 T.), preferably from pastured cows
2/3 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt OR pureed pumpkin
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 T. brown rice flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Pinch sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease an 11×7 glass pan.

To make the bottom layer, in a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the flours, the baking powder, and the salt. Set aside. Melt the butter, cocoa powder, and maple syrup in a medium saucepan over low heat, whisking often to speed along the process. As soon as you have a smooth, well-blended mixture, scrape the chocolate into a large mixing bowl. Stir in eggs and flour mixture, then gently stir in cranberries. Pour bottom layer into greased pan.

In a clean mixing bowl, cream together the butter, yogurt, and maple syrup until smooth. Beat in remaining top-layer ingredients and then pour into pan on top of the chocolate layer.

Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. (If you hit a cranberry, try another spot.)

Garnish with additional cocoa powder or chocolate curls if you like, or serve the cake with dollops of whole-milk Greek yogurt that’s been sweetened to taste with maple syrup.

Enjoy!

* You can easily grind almonds and teff in a coffee grinder if you’d like to make your own flour — it’ll take 10 seconds and save you a chunk of change if you already have sliced/slivered almonds and whole teff grains on hand.

Chocolate Yogurt with Blueberries & Cashews

First it was omega-3s, then it was antioxidants; now, the food rage is probiotics.  (Mind you, these have all been mainstay elements of whole, unprocessed foods for millennia, long before food scientists and genetic engineers and corporate interests got involved in our food chain.  Thankfully, we’re now “discovering” that traditional cuisines contain plenty of foods that keep us hale and hearty.)  Probiotics — literally, “pro-life” in a nutritional/biological sense — are beneficial bacteria that do things like help our digestive systems establish and maintain healthy intestinal flora.  These flora then facilitate our metabolism and enhance everything from our immune system to our neurological functions.  In short, probiotics aren’t just “pro-life,” they’re “necessary-for-life.”

Probiotic foods include fermented specialties like yogurt, kefir, cultured buttermilk, cultured sour cream, coconut kefir (a non-dairy drink), lactic-fermented sauerkraut and kimchee (and/or any other vegetable), miso soup, fish sauce, traditionally-brewed soy sauce…there are plenty to choose from.  Yogurt, however, is probably the most common item on the American probiotic list.

Given yogurt’s popularity and  how much everybody loves chocolate, why not have a probiotic dessert?  Transforming plain Greek yogurt into chocolate yogurt takes less than a minute, and you’ll have a rich, creamy dessert that tastes like chocolate mousse.  Or stir naturally-sweetened jam (i.e., sweetened with grape juice rather than refined sugar or high-fructose corn syrup) for a fruity, ice-cream-like probiotic treat.

Chocolate Yogurt

To make chocolate yogurt, start with about 1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (preferably whole-milk yogurt) in a small bowl.  Using a fork or whisk, stir in 1 T. maple syrup and 2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder until you have a smooth chocolate yogurt.  Taste it to check the sweetness level and add more syrup if desired.

Serve unadorned in a pretty glass or bowl or top with fruit and/or nuts.  (I topped mine with cashews and blueberries.)  If you like, garnish with a sprig of mint or a dollop of natural jam…or swirl in some jam to get a fruit-and-chocolate effect.

Enjoy!