Limeade Made with Palm Sugar

You tap a maple, you get maple syrup. You cut into the flower buds of a palm tree, you get palm nectar that you can cook down into palm sugar. (Specifically, you can tap sugar date palms, sago palms, and coconut palms.) If you let the palm sugar dry out and go from a semi-liquid to a hard block, you can grind it up to create granulated palm or coconut sugar.

Typically, the term “palm” sugar refers to the sap tapped from sugar palm and sago trees, while “coconut” sugar indicates that the source was a coconut palm tree…but often the terms are confused and/or used interchangeably. No matter which palm was tapped, though, these natural sweeteners taste absolutely lovely. And seeing as palm sugar isn’t processed into send-your-blood-sugar-rocketing, over-the-top sugar oblivion, palm sugar also imparts flavor along with its pleasant not-too-sweet sweetness.

Palm sugar in its semi-liquid form dissolves easily in hot and cold liquids and is my favorite sweetener for hot chocolate. Granulated coconut sugar is perfect to sprinkle onto fruit, desserts, or ice cream…or to whisk into quick breads and muffins in place of refined white sugar. To me, the semi-solid palm sugar has a slightly stronger and more unique flavor than the granulated coconut sugar.

Coconut nectar is another lush sweetener and is more free-flowing than semi-solid palm sugar. That’s because the nectar is the liquid that initially wells up out of the cut flower; the darker, semi-solid palm sugar is created by boiling down that nectar. Again, I prefer the deeper-tasting palm sugar. (It somehow reminds me of candy corn!) And because it’s so flavorfully sweet, I find that I use a lot less of it. When I make hot chocolate, for example, I either use a full tablespoon of maple syrup or a half tablespoon of palm sugar.

Whichever you’re looking for, you’ll find these palm-sourced sweeteners in the baking section of well-stocked natural foods/health foods stores and sometimes in mainstream stores. Since palm sugar — also called “jaggery” in Indian cuisine — is used extensively in Southeast Asia, you might also find the palm sugar nestled into the Asian section.

Fresh Limeade with Palm Sugar

To make this refreshing and decidedly tropical drink, pour the juice of 1 lime into a tall glass. Stir in 1 tsp. vanilla and 1 T. palm sugar, stirring well to dissolve the palm sugar. Add 4 ice cubes and top it off with water. Stir again. (This would make an excellent base for a rum or tequila cocktail, by the way.)

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!

Chili-Spiced Broccoli Stems & Tomatoes

Sometimes kitchen “scraps” are actually the best part. Plenty of classic dishes are based on that “Waste not, want not!” mentality: French ratatouille, Spanish paella, wedges of Italian polenta served with garlicky white beans. Good thing there have always been thrifty cooks among us! Just goes to show that great flavor doesn’t have to have a big price tag attached to it.

Some thrifty-minded ideas take a little extra thought, like tossing unused veggie ends and bits into a freezer bag for a batch of homemade broth down the road. (When the bag gets full, dump the carrot ends and onion scraps and whatever else you’ve got into a pot, cover the veggies with water, and gently simmer everything for an hour. Strain out the liquid, discard the veggies, and voila! you have homemade broth. If you have any meat bones on hand, throw those in, too. Then you have stock.) Another save-it-for-later idea is to toss the rock-hard rind on a hunk of Parmesan into a bag. The next time you make soup, sauce, stew, or anything you want to thicken and intensify, add the rind to the pot and let it work its Parmesan-imbued umami magic.

But my favorite use of a commonly overlooked “scrap” is broccoli stems. They taste even better than artichoke hearts — but are much, much easier to get at than artichoke hearts — and have the bonus of being pleasantly crunchy, too. To enjoy the stems, first cut off the top where the trunk turns into bifurcating branches, then trim off the bottom 1/2″ or so. (If the broccoli is older, the stem may be very hard and woody at the bottom. Keep trimming the bottom until you hit a crisp, still-moist point.) Turn the stem right-side up so that one of the cut-off flat ends is resting on the cutting board. Trim away the sides of the stem, rotating the stem as you go so that you can easily trim all of the sides. You’ll see that the center is pale green; once you trim away the drier, woodier outer layer, you’ll have a slim stem that doesn’t show any marks of branches or leaves coming off of it.

You can cut the trimmed stems into pieces and cook them with the florets if you like, but I prefer to eat the stems raw. I like them even better than the flowery part!

Chili-Spiced Broccoli & Tomatoes

Toss chopped tomatoes and thinly sliced broccoli stems (see above paragraphs for instructions on preparing the stems) with extra-virgin olive oil, a sprinkling of chili powder, and either a squirt of lime juice or a drizzle of red wine vinegar. You could add any other veggies you’d like to this, of course, or even add strips of cooked chicken and some crumbled soft goat cheese. Just be sure to try some of the broccoli stems all by themselves so that you’ll know what they taste like. Bet you can find plenty of other uses for the part of the broccoli you used to throw away!

Enjoy!

Chopped Salsa with Capers & Sweet Onion

I have a new love: capers. I’ve been on my caper honeymoon for a week now, and it doesn’t look like the affair will be over any time soon. (A week is a long time for an inquisitive foodie who rarely makes the same thing twice.) Sure, I’ve always had a passing fancy for the salty little unopened flower buds in creamy sauces and dips, but to be honest, I hadn’t taken capers much past tartar sauce. That all changed a week ago when my mother suggested we include capers in a salsa that started out as salsa verde and quickly morphed to our own creation. Her idea was brilliant — the capers didn’t just add a salty/sour tang, they somehow added a smooth, rich aspect to the salsa, almost like a creaminess. Most unexpected, but most welcome!

Now I’m on a quest to see what other settings might be oddly ideal for capers. In the meantime, I’ll pass on the salsa recipe we came up with that evening.

Chopped Salsa with Capers & Sweet Onion

4 medium-large tomatoes, chopped (I have several different tomato plants in my garden, so I used 2 Green Zebras, 1 yellow tomato, and a handful of cherry/grape tomatoes)
1/4 sweet onion, chopped
1 T. capers, drained
Juice of 1/4 of a small lemon (or juice of 1/2 of a lime)

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and stir gently. If you’re a fan of hot salsa, try adding a chopped jalapeño or a dash of red pepper flakes. This salsa is fantastic with fish — especially a mild-fleshed kind like the wild Canadian trout pictured here* — or shrimp or chicken. Or you could add more veggies to the salsa, toss in some cooked pasta and chopped fresh herbs, and call it a Pasta Verano (“Summer Pasta”) salad.

Enjoy!

* I prepared the trout by sautéeing it in ghee for about 3 minutes on each side (starting with the skin side up), covered, over medium-low heat. Trout is a very thin filet, though — most fish takes 5+ minutes per side, and extra-thick fish such as salmon and ahi tuna can take 10 minutes per side.

Lime, Basil & Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread may not seem like an obvious summer dessert, but buttery shortbread cookies spiced with citrus and fresh basil are unexpectedly refreshing on a hot summer day. The light, sandy texture typical of shortbread — pecan sandies and other “sand” or “sable” (French for “sand”) cookies are essentially shortbread cookies — means that the tender cookies fall apart in your mouth and melt on your tongue.  That feather-light sensation is an ideal platform for summery flavors like lemon and lime.  The poppyseeds add a contrasting crunch.

If you don’t have basil, fresh mint would work, too, or you could omit the fresh herb.  I’m such a huge basil fan that I leap at any excuse to include fresh basil in my dishes, whether they’re sweet or savory.  Adding some garden-fresh basil my cookie dough was a whimsical idea that proved itself to be a delicious reality — fresh basil has a scent and flavor that dried basil just doesn’t, and that elusive fresh greenness pairs very well with the bold fresh character of the lime juice and lemon zest.  Stay tuned for Lemon-Basil Ice Cream!

Lime, Basil & Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies

1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup millet flour*
1/2 tsp. fine-grained sea salt
2 T. poppy seeds
Zest of 1 organic lemon (since you’re using the skin, it’s worth choosing organic)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 sticks butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (Kerrygold is a great choice), cut into chunks and left to soften at room temperature for 10 minutes
1/2 cup + 1 T. powdered sucanat (I powder mine in a coffee grinder — in about 10 seconds, you’ll have fine powder)
1/4 cup lime or lemon juice
2 tsp. vanilla
10 large basil leaves, cut into thin strips RIGHT BEFORE you add them to the dough (they’ll begin to darken almost immediately)

Preheat oven to 350F. Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper or grease VERY well — these tender cookies will tear easily if they stick to the pan.

Whisk flours, salt, poppy seeds, zest, and baking powder together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream butter and sucanat with a mixer for 1 minute or until you have a well-blended, creamy mixture. You’ll note that if you use a pastured butter like Kerrygold, the butter will be much softer than conventional butter, even when it’s fresh out of the cold fridge. That’s because there is a lot less saturated fat in butter made from milk given by cows who actually roam around eating grass and exercising. Kerrygold is so nice and soft that you can almost cream it straight out of the fridge; conventional butter sometimes has to sit at room temp for an hour or more before it has softened. (Saturated fat gets very stiff when chilled, and since conventional butter has more saturated fat than grass-fed butter does, conventional butter takes a lot longer to soften.)

Beat in lime juice and vanilla, then gently stir in basil. If you want less-crumbly, more standard-textured cookies, add 2 eggs whites when you add the juice and vanilla.

Use a teaspoon to portion out small bits of dough. Roll each one into a ball about 1″ across and space them out so that you have 16 or 20 cookies per sheet. Press each ball down gently to flatten it. I used the bottom of a small bowl as my press — it left slight round indentations in each cookie, and I liked the textured look. If the dough sticks to whatever you’re using to press your cookies, gently pull the dough free with your fingers, pressing it into place with your hand if necessary. You might also want to refrigerate the dough for about 20 minutes if it starts getting too soft to work with.

Bake 2 cookie sheets at a time for 15 minutes, removing them when the tops of the cookies are starting to turn golden-brown and you can see a slight hint of brown at the base of each cookie (that’s a sign that they’re golden-brown underneath). Yield will be about 4 total sheets or 64 cookies.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you’d prefer to make wheat-based cookies, use a total of 2 cups of any combination of whole-wheat, spelt, or kamut flours.

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.

Lake Trout with Grape Salsa

Even though we think of salsa as necessarily involving tomatoes, onions, and garlic, “salsa” just means “sauce” in Spanish…which kicks the pantry cupboard doors wide open to interpretation.  (There’s also the dancing kind of salsa, but I won’t even get started on that for fear of ditching my food writer’s post in favor of the nearest Latin club!)  You can have sweet salsas or savory salsas, creamy salsas or spicy salsas, fruit-based salsas or even meat-based salsas.

To accompany fish dishes, I like to throw together a simple salsa consisting of chopped veggies and/or fruits, a splash of citrus, and maybe some garlic or pepper.  The light, cool flavor makes a refreshing contrast to hot-out-of-the-pan fish.  Not only that, both sautéed fish and freshly chopped salsa are ridiculously easy to make, so you’ll have a flavorful, fit-for-guests dinner in about 20 minutes.  Feel free to come up with your own homemade salsas by substituting various chopped fruits for the grapes in this recipe.  (Likewise, while the radishes add an earthy, mildly spicy dimension that pairs well with sweet fruit, you don’t have to include them.  Jicama or water chestnuts would provide a similar flavor and crunch…or skip the garlic and go with onions to provide the crunch.)

Lake Trout with Grape Salsa
I love fish and generally eat 1/2 pound per serving, so in my opinion, this recipe serves 2 for dinner. If you serve a side dish or appetizer with it, though, you could stretch it to 4 servings.

Pat of ghee or butter for sautéeing (you can also use extra-virgin olive oil, but the ghee or butter will spatter less)
1 pound lake or rainbow trout, rinsed with cold water and patted dry
1 small clove garlic, minced
About 12 grapes, quartered
3 radishes, chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Heat ghee in a shallow, wide saucepan over medium-low heat for 1 minute or until ghee is melted. (I use mark 4 out of 10.) Place trout onto pan SKIN SIDE UP and cook for about 4-5 minutes or until you can see that the flesh has turned opaque about halfway up, indicating that the pan-side-down side has cooked through. Very carefully flip the fish so that the skin side is down. Cover pan and cook for another 7-8 minutes or until you can gently insert a fork into the thickest part of the fish and see that it flakes cleanly and that the flesh is opaque all the way through. Do NOT overcook the fish! It might take more than 10 minutes to fully cook, but you’re better off checking early and often rather than overcooking the fish and drying it out.  (Once you’ve sautéed a few fish, you’ll get the hang of knowing when a fillet is done.  Fish fillets do vary quite a bit in thickness, though, so there is no hard-and-fast cooking time.)

While the fish is cooking, mix together the garlic, grapes, radishes, and lime juice in a small mixing bowl.

When the fish is done, slide a spatula underneath the flesh, letting the skin separate and stick to the pan. (This is the reason why you want to cook it skin side down LAST, not first.) Spoon salsa over the top of the fish and serve immediately.

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!

Savory Pineapple Stir-Fry

As already mentioned in my previous post, I love pineapples.  (When I was attending a Spanish-language school in Costa Rica, our chosen names were a combination of our favorite fruit + our favorite color.  That made me Piña Violeta, or “purple pineapple.”)  Most of the time, I cut up a fresh pineapple and eat it; sometimes I throw it into the blender with some coconut milk and bananas.  This pineapple around, though, I decided to include it in a stir-fry loosely based on Vietnamese and Thai flavors.  While I enjoyed the resulting savory mélange with pasta, it would also pair beautifully with brown rice, chicken, or pork. The tamarind is optional, but lends the dish a tangy/sweet flavor reminiscent of lemongrass. (I find that it’s easier to get my hands on fresh and plump tamarinds than fresh and zingy lemongrass.)

Savory Pineapple Stir-Fry
Serves 2 as is, or 4 with the addition of pasta, rice, chicken, or pork.

1 T. unrefined coconut or peanut oil
2 carrots, slivered
1/2 a yellow squash OR 1/2 a zucchini, slivered
4 oz. button mushrooms, chopped
2 cloves garlic, cut into thin rounds
Flesh of 1 fresh tamarind OR 1 T. tamarind paste (optional)
1 head of broccoli, florets only, simmered for 5 minutes and drained
1/4 of a fresh pineapple, chopped
1-2 T. tamari or soy sauce (if you’d like to make this dish gluten-free, use wheat-free tamari)
1 tsp. fish sauce
4-6 leaves mint, cut into ribbons
Juice of 1 lime

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat for about 1 minute. Add carrot and yellow squash and cook for about 3 minutes to soften them, then add mushrooms and tamarind and stir. Let cook for another 5 minutes or until the mushrooms have shrunk to about half their original size. Stir in cooked broccoli, chopped pineapple, tamari sauce, and fish sauce. (If you like your dishes salty, use the 2 full T. of tamari.) Let cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently, to allow flavors to marry.

Remove from heat and stir in mint leaves and lime juice. Let sit for at least 5 minutes before serving. If desired, toss with pasta, rice, cooked chicken, or cooked pork. (This is a great way to use up leftover cooked meat!) An additional sprig of mint and a wedge of lime would be nice garnishes.

Enjoy!

Vietnamese Noodles with Savoy Cabbage

Cabbages aren’t exactly the hottest item on the vegetable menu:  they don’t have the slim elegance of a green bean or the curvy voluptuousness of an eggplant.  From Sauerkraut to Asian cabbage-parcel soups, however, they do feature prominently in most world cuisines.  (To achieve the latter, stuff a leaf, tie it off with chives, and simmer in the broth for about 20 minutes to make sure the bundles are cooked through.  The stuffing can be any combination of minced veggies, aromatics, seasonings, and/or ground meat.)

While some cabbages are hearty — some might say “sturdy” or even “tough” — other types of cabbage are a bit more mild and lend themselves to a quick sautée.  The Savoy cabbage I opted to use in this recipe was tender enough to be sliced into strips and cooked with the sauce.  (It would have been a good candidate for stuffing, too.)  That mildness and slight crunch made it the perfect match for the pungency of Vietnamese seasonings and the full-flavored, grass-fed pork.

Vietnamese Noodles with Savoy Cabbage

2 servings noodles (soba or brown rice noodles work particularly well with this dish, and as long as the soba noodles are 100% buckwheat — always read the ingredient label! — both are gluten-free options)
1 T. butter, ghee, or coconut oil
1 medium onion, diced
About 1″-long piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced (or 1 tsp. ground dried ginger)
3 cloves garlic, sliced into thin rounds
1/2 lb. ground pork, preferably from pastured pigs
About 5-6 leaves of Savoy cabbage, sliced
1 T. nuoc mam (fish sauce)
1 T. soy or tamari sauce
1 T. pomegranate molasses OR 1 T. tamarind paste (both have a tangy, sour, citrusy flavor that goes a little way towards mimicking the lemongrass flavor typically found in Asian dishes)
2 T. lime juice
1/4 cup loosely packed chopped fresh cilantro

Prepare noodles according to package directions.*

While they’re simmering, in a medium-sized pan, sautée onions and ginger in butter over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until onion is nearly translucent and both onion and ginger have softened. Turn down heat to medium-low, add garlic, and sautée for another 2 minutes, stirring often. Stir in pork and cabbage and raise heat back up to medium. (When you’re using grass-fed meats, they’ll cook more quickly at a lower temperature — if you rachet up the heat to scorching, you’ll dry out your dinner!)

Break up the pork, making sure that the aromatics and cabbage are evenly dispersed throughout the meat, and cook for another 3 minutes. Stir in fish sauce, soy sauce, and pomegranate/tamarind, standing back a little when you first add the sauces so that the quickly-rising steam won’t burn you. Stir well to combine and continue to simmer for another 3-4 minutes. If the liquid evaporates too quickly, add enough of the lime juice to deglaze the pan and keep just a little bit of simmering sauce at the bottom of it.

Just before you remove the pan from the heat, add the (rest of) the lime juice and the chopped cilantro to the pork mixture. Stir in well, let simmer for another 30 seconds, and remove the pan from the heat. (Citrus juices are very vulnerable to heat, so if you cook the juice for long, you’ll lose most of the flavor.)

Stir in cooked and drained noodles, putting the entire pot back on the stove briefly if the noodles need a bit of reheating. Serve steaming hot.

Enjoy!

* You may want to toss a bit of extra-virgin olive oil into the cooked and drained noodles while they stand so that they don’t stick together.

Lime & Cornmeal Cookies with Sucanat

Although I don’t have much of a sweet tooth (these cookies are dusted with sea salt), when I get the urge to bake cookies, I reach for sucanat.  It stands for “sugar cane natural” and is essentially dried sugar cane–no more, no less.  It’s the only cane sugar that has not been stripped, refined, and processed into nutritional negativity.  While it still chiefly consists of sucrose, it doesn’t have as much sucrose as white sugar does; sucanat also retains many more trace nutrients than any of the other refined sugars.  (Note:  brown sugar, turbinado sugar, demerera sugar, and raw sugar are perceived as being more “natural,” but they’re not–they’re simply white sugar with a bit of molasses added for color.)  In biological terms, having less sucrose and more nutrients means that sucanat doesn’t hit your body as hard and as fast as refined sugars do.  This gives it a lower GI (glycemic index) value and makes it less likely to cause a spike in blood sugar levels.

Nutrition aside, I vastly prefer the flavor of sucanat over any other type of granulated sugar.  Just as raw agave and blackstrap molasses have a unique flavor, so does sucanat:  it tastes like the fresh chunk of sugar cane a farmer once handed me in the middle of a cane field in Costa Rica.  Sucanat’s aroma, too, is heady and tropical; the grains are dark, rough, and almost smoky…yet in baked goods, it simply underscores the overall flavor rather than overwhelming it.  Once you’ve come to appreciate the warmth of sucanat, in fact, baked goods made with white sugar taste sickeningly sweet and listless.

Sucanat is also easier to substitute for white sugar since it’s a 1:1 equivalent.  (Liquid sweeteners like honey and maple syrup are a bit trickier to use, although substitutions can easily be made in recipes that contain other liquids such as milk, yogurt, melted butter, oil, etc.)  The catch?  You probably won’t find sucanat in a standard grocery store.  If you have a health-food store in your area, though, you’ll be sure to find some bags of sucanat on the shelves.

Rapadura is another name for non-refined sugar cane; like sucanat, it has a rich, full flavor and intoxicating scent.  The form is different, though–it’s generally in cone-shaped blocks or rounds and is sold as piloncillo or panela.  Chunks of it are scraped off and dropped into boiling water to make agua dulce (“sweet water”).  In many Latin American countries, agua dulce is served alongside breakfast as an alternative to coffee.

So the next time you reach for sugar, reach for sucanat.  You’ll never want boring white sugar again!

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 cup quick-cooking barley (you can also use quinoa or couscous)

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups chicken broth

1/2 teaspoon salt (or less, depending on the saltiness of the broth)

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 can (16 oz) chickpeas, drained

1 1/2 cups corn kernels (can use frozen or fresh)

1 red bell pepper, diced

1/2 cup (4 oz) Feta cheese, crumbled (or more to taste)

Heat the oil and add barley and garlic.  Sauteé for 5 minutes.   Add broth, salt, and pepper.  Cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until the barley is chewy and tender.  Drain and place in a large serving bowl.

Add the chickpeas, corn, red pepper, and Feta.  Toss to combine.

Toss the barley mixture in the dressing.  (Recipe follows.)

Citrus Dressing

1/2 cup olive oil

juice of 2 limes

1 tablespoon minced red onion

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Combine all ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake vigorously to blend.

Dressing yield:  3/4 cup

Salad makes 8 side-dish servings.

Enjoy!