Mushroom & Tomato Tapenade

Traditional tapenade includes the holy trinity of salty garnishing ingredients: olives, anchovies, and capers. It’s an intense blend of flavors and a perfect example of the “a little goes a long way” school of thought. For this batch, though, I’ve decided to go alter the main ingredients and go with the holy trinity of umami, or savoriness: olives, mushrooms, and tomatoes. While both the olives and canned tomatoes are salty, the mushrooms gentle their saltiness and provide a smooth, rich base.

Throw in the herbs and aromatics, and you’ve got yourself a versatile purée that you can use alone as a dip, thinned with more tomatoes as a sauce, or as a flavoring to add to other dips and sauces. If you blended it with a dash of extra-virgin olive oil, you’d have a great dressing for a bean- or lettuce-based salad. I opted to enjoy my tapenade as a spread for an impromptu giant cracker — namely, a corn tortilla I pulled out of the freezer and pan-toasted for a few minutes over medium heat.

Mushroom & Tomato Tapenade

8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
1 small onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, chopped
At least 20 pitted black olives (or green, if you prefer)
15 oz. canned diced tomatoes
1 T. Italian herbs

In a large skillet, sautée mushrooms and onions with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for 8 minutes. Stir in garlic and olives and continue to cook for another 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and herbs and let simmer for at least 10 minutes, reducing heat to medium-low if the tapenade is bubbling too furiously. You want to reduce the mixture slightly, but not to the point of cooking away the tomatoes.

Purée the finished tapenade in a food processor until mostly smooth. (You can leave it chunkier if you’d prefer.) Not only is the tapenade ideal for dips, sauces, dressings, etc. — see intro paragraphs for more ideas — you can freeze it in ice cube trays for easy access in case you’d like to have it on hand as instant soup seasoning.

Enjoy!

DIY Tapas Plate

It’s Monday, it’s lunchtime, and you’re lunch-less and hungry. Odds are, you’re stuck going to the nearest faux-healthy restaurant. (Ever looked at the ingredients in a Panera sandwich? If you print out what’s in the Turkey Artichoke Panini, it’ll take up almost a full 8 1/2″ x 11″ page. But hey, I guess that’s better than Jimmy John’s — they refuse to disclose what’s in their sandwiches. If anyone ever does succeed in breaching their corporate “we won’t tell you what you’re eating” wall, I’d love to hear about it.)

While you might be up the prandial creek without a fork on Monday, take heart! The rest of the week can be much tastier and healthier. All you’ll need to do clean out your fridge, pantry, and fruit bowl by enjoying a midday assortment of odds and ends. If you were in Spain, you’d be calling the idea tapas; if you were in Greece, you’d be lunching on mezze. And your truly tasty and healthy meal will cost you under $10 (mine was $5).  So don’t be afraid to explore the corners of your fridge!

Suggestions for your Tapas Plate

Fruit
Cheese, preferably made from grass-fed milk
Nuts
Olives
Deli meats from pastured animals (such as Applegate Farms and Niman Ranch products)
Hard-boiled eggs
Pickles
Whole-grain bread
Any leftovers that need to be eaten

Remember, simplicity is your most delicious ingredient! Not throwing away money is probably the second most delicious one…which is what you’ll achieve by tossing some tasty leftovers into a bag and taking them to work with you rather than throwing them away and going out to eat.

For this plate, I went with what I had on hand:

Wedge of Prairie Fruits Moonglo raw goat cheese $2.10
Wedge of ricotta salata cheese made of sheep’s milk (I love cheeses made with sheep and goat milk) $1.00, garnished with sweet paprika
Satsuma mandarin orange $0.58
Half an organic Gala apple $0.30
Olives $1.36
For the heck of it, I threw in an anchovy-wrapped caper $0.20

Total: a very delicious $5.54 (Prairie Fruits cheeses are amazing!)

In other words, an adult version of Lunchables…except much more health- and cost-effective.

Enjoy exploring your fridge and cupboards!

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!

Orange & Olive Salad with Macadamia Nut Dressing

Traditional fats are one of the building blocks of food: they carry flavor, they provide a creamy taste and texture, and they have more nutrients per gram than their cousins carbohydrates and proteins.  (When I say “traditional” fats, I mean fats from whole foods — both plant and animal — not man-made, refined fats that are the mainstay of most processed foods.)  And if you know just a little bit about how fats themselves are built, it’s easy to use them to your advantage.

Fats from whole foods are composed of a mixture of various kinds of fats — no food is 100% one particular fat.  When we say something is “saturated” or “monounsaturated,” what we’re really saying is that the food in question is primarily a saturated or monounsaturated fat.  Or a polyunsaturated fat.  Those are the three chief types of fats: saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated.  Almost all food labels distinguish between saturated and unsaturated fats; most oils and many other labels also state the monounsaturated and polyunsaturated breakdowns.  That’s where a little knowledge can come in very handy.

For now, let’s just focus on one particular aspect of fat-type characteristics: how fats react to temperatures.  Saturated fats can handle high heat (over the stove, in the oven) and are solid at room temperature.  Put them in the fridge, and they get even harder.  Butter is a great example of this, or unrefined coconut oil.  Palm oil is an even better example.  Palm and coconut are stable enough to not deteriorate (i.e., go rancid) for at least six months, even when kept at room temperature.

Monounsaturated fats can handle medium heat and are liquid at room temperature; in the refrigerator, they turn into a cloudy semi-liquid.  Think of olive oil and peanut oil.  Monounsaturated fats can be kept for about three months at room temperature or six months refrigerated.

Polyunsaturated fats are too delicate to heat — they’re very liquid at room temperature and equally free-flowing in the refrigerator.  They’ll deteriorate much more quickly than monounsaturated and saturated fats, even when they are refrigerated.  Examples include flaxseed oil, walnut oil, and pecan oil.  Be sure to consume these must-be-refrigerated oils within no more than six months, preferably within three.

Like oils, whole nuts also have different fat profiles depending on which fat is their primary fat.  Different nuts also contain different amounts of fat by weight — chestnuts are almost oil-free, almonds and hazelnuts are fairly unoily, pecans and walnuts are considerably oilier, and macadamia nuts are richly oily.

Seeing as nuts are primarily unsaturated, if you grind nuts into butter, the nuts that are the oiliest will make the most free-flowing butter.  Macadamia nuts are so free-flowing, in fact, that a spoon stuck into chilled macadamia nut butter will come out of the jar dripping.  That makes macadamia nut butter the perfect topping/dressing for fruits, salads, desserts, breads, you name it!  Dip a square of dark chocolate into it, garnish soup with it, drizzle it onto a bowl of oatmeal.  Even straight from the fridge, you’ll find that macadamia nut butter is easy to work with and that it is one of the most creamy and delicious things you’ll ever taste.

Olive & Orange Salad with Macadamia Dressing

On a plate, arrange mixed lettuce leaves, halved olives — black or green — and orange sections.  Drizzle salad with macadamia nut butter and serve.

It is seriously that easy!  Two minutes of effort yields a surprisingly balanced plate of creamy and salty (the nuts and olives) and sweet and bitter (the oranges and lettuce).

Enjoy!

Lebanese Pizza

The concept of stacking various foods and seasonings atop a flat, fairly resilient piece of bread is such a good idea that most culinary traditions do it.  Some breads are flatter and rounder than others, and some are more flexible than others — burritos are tidy, bread-bound packages, too — but if you’re willing to let die-hard definitions slide a bit, you can find “pizza” nearly anywhere.  Playing with your pies is just too much fun to resist!

Although this recipe features middle Eastern ingredients, you could just as easily use guacamole as your pizza sauce and queso fresco as the cheese.  (Yes, you can bake avocadoes.)  Or try coconut-curry sauce with paneer for an Indian pizza.  Once you break the traditional pizza boundaries, your options are endless.

Lebanese Pizza (you can use your own pizza dough recipe or the gluten-free one given here; the gluten-free version is easier because it doesn’t require multiple rising times)

1 recipe pizza dough
1 recipe roasted red pepper hummus
Roasted beets
Sun-dried tomatoes
Soft goat cheese
Black olives, slivered (optional)
Za’atar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Pour enough boiling water over your tomatoes to cover them, then let them sit for 15 minutes.  Drain and slice softened tomatoes into ribbons.

Build the foundation for your pizza by topping the dough with roasted red pepper hummus. Sprinkle with za’atar, beets, tomatoes, onions, and olives, then crumble on goat cheese. Bake for 10 minutes or until goat cheese just begins to soften and melt. Serve immediately.

To make roasted red pepper hummus:  In a food processor, blend 1 (15-oz.) can drained chickpeas with 3 cloves garlic that have been slivered and lightly sautéed (cook with 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil over low heat for 2 minutes, then add both garlic and oil to the chickpeas).  Add juice from one lemon, a dash of sea salt, and 2 T. tahini.  Add one roasted pepper and blend until smooth.  To roast a red pepper, place a whole pepper on the middle oven rack for about 20 minutes in a 425 degree F oven.  (You may wish to line the rack underneath the pepper with foil in case any liquid drips out.)  When the pepper is starting to blacken, pull it out, carefully drop it into a large ziploc bag, and let it sit until it’s cool enough to handle.  At that point, the skin, stem, and seeds will pull right off.

To make roasted beets: Peel raw beets with a vegetable peeler, then slice into 1/2″-thick slices and place in a glass pan.  Coat with peanut oil, sea salt, and pepper.  Roast in a 375 degree F oven for about 20-30 minutes.  (Beets will start to crinkle at the edges and shrink inwards when done.)

To make za’atar: In a spice jar, mix together 1 T. sesame seeds, 1 1/2 tsp. oregano, 1 1/2 tsp. thyme, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 T. ground sumac. Store unused portion in a cool, dark place for future use.

To make gluten-free pizza dough (this is enough for two 8″ crusts and therefore two pizzas):

Grease an 8″ round pizza pan with butter.  It’s best to use an “aerated” pizza pan — that is, the kind with holes in the bottom.  This allows the crust to cook more evenly.

Stir 1 package (2 1/4 tsp.) of active dry yeast into 1 1/3 cups hot water.  The water must be between 105 and 115 degrees F to activate the yeast without overheating it and killing it. Let yeast stand for about 5 minutes.  You’ll see tiny bubbles forming on the surface.

In a large bowl, whisk together 1 T. sea salt and 1 cup of EACH of the following flours:  brown rice, potato flour (not potato starch), chickpea/garbanzo, and corn flour (not corn starch).  Stir yeast and water mixture into the flours.  Dough will still be very dry, so you’ll have to add up to 1 cup of whole milk to get a nice consistency — dough should be fairly squishable and easy to mold, but not so watery that it’ll run out of the holes in the pizza pan.  It’s best to mix in the milk with your hands so you can feel what the dough is becoming.

With the pizza pan firmly on the counter to prevent the dough from leaking out through the holes, firmly pat dough into pan.  The dough will be sticky, so the best way to do this is to occasionally dust the surface of the dough with additional flour (any of the 4 is fine) while patting dough into place.  Cover dough with plastic wrap and a damp kitchen towel and let sit in a warm, draft-free place for 30-45 minutes while the oven is preheating to 425 degrees F.

Bake untopped crust for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.  Remove from oven, add toppings (or refrigerate pre-baked crust and use within a day), and follow above instructions for finishing pizza(s).

Enjoy!

An Assortment of Spanish Tapas

While many cultures have a “little bites” tradition — Middle Eastern mezze, Russian zakuski, Italian antipasto — it seems like the Spaniards are the most passionate about theirs.  Tapas bars are everywhere you look in Spain, and diners are just as likely to make a full meal of tapas as they are to sit down for a formal dinner.  Most people, in fact, visit several different bars in a single night and enjoy a variety of tapas wherever they go.  (Even outdoor markets offer tapas for the nibbling:  La Boquería in Barcelona features row upon row of freshly-prepared tapas, many of which are displayed in glass cases to make your selection even easier.  There’s nothing quite like snuggling up to the bar with a plate of pistou and a glass of Rioja amidst the hustle and bustle of one of Spain’s busiest markets.  And after you polish off your tapas, there are plenty of candymakers waiting to tempt you with truffles and turtles of the chocolate persuasion.  Not to mention the exotic-fruit vendors selling plastic cups filled with the best freshly-drawn coconut milk I’ve ever had. But that’s another post…)

While tapas may seem intimidating, they really aren’t — on the contrary, tapas are the essence of simplicity.  Any good-quality single ingredient that can stand on its own can be a tapa:  nuts, olives, cheeses, ham, fruit, etc.  All you have to do to make authentic tapas is choose ones that are Spanish in origin, like marcona almonds rather than standard almonds or Manchego cheese rather than Swiss cheese (or any other non-Spanish cheese).

For instance, this round of tapas included (clockwise from left to right):

• Grapes

• Jamón ibérico (Iberian ham; jamón serrano is another popular option)

• Sautéed Apple & Spinach Salad

• Hard-boiled eggs with canned tuna (bonito tuna canned in olive oil)

• Fabas asturianas (a type of large white bean — you could also use Great White Northern beans) tossed with extra-virgin olive oil, parsley, and a splash of sherry vinegar

• Roasted piquillo peppers (you could also use roasted red peppers) tossed with extra-virgin olive oil and sautéed garlic

• Manchego cheese

Other great offerings would be a simple bowl of plump green olives, a bowl of marcona almonds, or a loaf of crusty bread served with extra-virgin olive oil and sea salt.

Tapas can also be gloriously complex affairs, of course — and those can be fun to make, too! — but they don’t have to be.  Just get out your prettiest dishes, fill them with a variety of tasty morsels, and let the tapas night begin!

Olive, Bean & Avocado Salad

Food is like life — it’s all about balance and simplicity.  And although any dish has the potential to hit that sublime yin-yang-ness, salads are probably the easiest and most versatile showcase for a blending of flavors.  Sweet?  Salty?  Sharp?  Smooth?  Those elements are probably already on your shelves and ready to go.

All it takes to make a good salad is a good base, a few well-considered ingredients, and a splash-and-dash dressing of oil and vinegar.  You can mix the dressing in a bowl or simply drizzle on the oil and vinegar and then toss the salad (which is what I do — it’s quicker and works just as well).  Feel free to add herbs and spices as well…and remember that there are many kinds of oils and vinegars to spark your creativity!

The base for this salad: mixed baby lettuces
Other good bases: various tender greens (baby spinach, Romaine lettuce, Boston lettuce, etc.); whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, millet, etc.)

The salty element in this salad: green Queen Sevilla olives
Other good salty elements: salted nuts, salty cheeses such as Parmesan and Romano, soy-based dressings

The sweet element in this salad: sun-dried tomatoes (softened by having poured boiling water over them and letting them sit for an hour)
Other good sweet elements: fruit (including fresh tomatoes), sweet peppers (fresh or roasted), dressings with a bit of honey

The sharp element in this salad: brined artichoke hearts
Other good sharp elements: onions, pickles, capers, pepperoncini, chiles, dressings with sharper vinegars (red wine is more piquant than balsamic or cider)

The smooth elements in this salad: butter beans and avocado
Other good smooth elements: seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame), creamy cheeses such as soft goat cheese or mozzarella, dairy-based dressings with yogurt or cream

Put your chosen elements in a bowl, dress, toss, and serve.

If only balancing a checkbook were this easy!