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.

Whipped Pumpkin Cream

Nothing adds an easy touch of elegance to holiday desserts like freshly whipped cream. (Skip the aerosol can!) Be sure to chill your beaters and bowl before whipping away, either by putting them in the fridge for a good 30 minutes or by popping them into the freezer for a quick 10. I like to sweeten my cream by drizzling in a little bit of maple syrup before I begin to whip; sometimes I add a bit of vanilla or almond extract for flavor, too.

The key to lush whipped cream is choosing lush cream to begin with. Ideally, you want cream from grass-fed cows — it has a richer, fuller taste and a lighter, fluffier texture — and cream that has not been UHT pasteurized. UHT means “ultra-high temperature,” which in turn means that the cream will be difficult to whip since it’s been thoroughly cooked and in the process has lost a great deal of its natural thickness and ability to hold that thickness when whipped. (Whipping simply incorporates air into the cream. The fat in the cream stiffens around the air pockets and holds itself up to create the fluff effect. Cold fat is stiffer than room-temp fat, which is why using chilled equipment and chilled cream is so important.) Take a look at the ingredient list on UHT whipping cream — you’ll see that it’s been thickened with carrageenan, gums, and other stabilizers to recreate the thick texture the cream has lost through having been overheated. Not exactly an ideal scenario.

I’m in a cowshare program*, which means that I can order fresh raw cream directly from my farmer. It’s a lovely pale yellow color (the cows eat grass and the orange-hued beta carotene in the grass shows through in the milk) and whips to fluffy peaks in less than a minute. If you live in a state like California that allows retail sale of raw dairy products, by all means go for the raw cream. If you live in a state like Michigan that allows cowshare programs, join one! If you simply can’t find raw cream, try to find whipping cream that isn’t UHT.

Note: if you want to whip cream, you need whipping cream! The other types — coffee cream, light cream, even light whipping cream — don’t have enough fat in them to whip, particularly not when they’ve lost so much of their natural texture through pasteurization.

Pumpkin Whipped Cream
This amount is enough to serve 2 people; double, triple, or quadruple as necessary to suit the number of guests.

1/4 cup whipping cream
1 T. maple syrup
1/2 tsp. vanilla OR almond OR hazelnut extract (optional, but adds a nice flavor dimension)
1/4 cup puréed pumpkin (canned is fine, or you can roast your own and then put the cooked flesh through a food processor with a splash or two of water to make your own fresh purée)

Chill your beaters and bowl for at least 30 minutes in the fridge or 10 in the freezer. Pour the cream, syrup, and extract into the chilled bowl and whip at the highest speed until the cream has gone from liquid to a fluffy consistency. If you’re lucky enough to be using raw cream, you’ll be done in less than a minute. If you’re stuck on the opposite end of the spectrum and are using UHT cream, this could take three or four minutes. Either way, if the cream starts to take on a grainy look, STOP! You’re about to make butter.

Fold in the pumpkin with a spatula, occasionally turning the bowl and scraping the sides as you carefully lift and tuck the pumpkin into the cream. Raw whipped cream is very stable and can handle a fair amount of pumpkin; UHT cream collapses quite easily.

Serve the cream atop cake (here I spooned it onto pumpkin bread and had it for breakfast), as a dip for fresh fruit (apples and pears are especially nice), or as a treat all by itself. Feel free to sprinkle on some spices for additional flavor and as a garnish.

Enjoy!

* To find cowshare programs in Metro Detroit, check out my Local Farms & Markets list; to find them across the nation, check out sites like www.eatwild.com and www.localharvest.org.

Dark Chocolate Bark with Pistachios

Some things in life are just worth being picky about, no matter how much they cost (okay, within reason) or how far you have to go to seek them out (which, in the Internet Age, usually isn’t too far).   I’d say cheese, beer, and chocolate fall into that “picky is good” category.  You can usually find good examples of all three if you just do a little extra hunting and poking in your local stores.

But you know what?  I’ve been stumped when it comes to finding very dark percentage chocolate with neat stuff in it — you know, nuts, crispy bits, dried fruit, spices, etc.  It’s pretty difficult to find 85% chocolate that’s anything but sheer chocolate.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but sometimes it’d be fun to have some optional elements, and when it comes to chocolate, I’ve acquired such a not-so-sweet tooth that I can’t really get into the bars that list sugar as their first ingredient.  They just aren’t chocolatey enough to suit my taste.

Hence, I decided to take a plain bar of 85%, melt it gently, stir in whatever fancy extras I wanted, and let it reform into chocolate “bark,” which should really just be called a “refashioned bar.”  This, I discovered, is the ideal way to have exactly the percentage you want with exactly the custom ingredients you want.  And it is far, far less expensive to reform your own bars than pay top dollar for the high-end bars that actually do feature good chocolate and nice extras.

Dark Chocolate Bark with Pistachios (or anything else you want)

100 gram bar of 80% or 85% chocolate (3.5 ounces)
1/2 tsp. coconut oil
1/4 cup chopped pistachio nuts OR whatever else you’d like: any other nut, flaked coconut, chopped dried fruit, unsweetened plain puffed whole-grain cereal or broken-up brown rice cakes, etc.
1/4 to 1/2 tsp. extract, such as vanilla, orange, peppermint, hazelnut, whatever you like (optional)*
Pinch of spice, like cinnamon or cloves or cayenne pepper (optional)

Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper.

Snap the bar into pieces and place them in a small saucepan over low. (And I do mean the LOWEST setting! Burnt chocolate tastes terrible and can’t be fixed.) Add coconut oil. Let the chocolate melt, occasionally stirring with a metal whisk to help break it up. It’ll probably only take 2 or 3 minutes to be mostly melted. Remove it from the heat and whisk it to finish melting the pieces. (If you leave it on the heat until it’s completely melted, you might wind up scorching the chocolate.)

Stir in your extras, whether that be nuts or fruit or extract or flavors. I usually only put one or maybe two extras in — no sense in flooding out the individual flavors by heaping on too many.

Pour the chocolate onto the prepared baking pan, spreading it with a spatula if it doesn’t pour evenly. Place sheet in refrigerator for at least an hour, then snap bark into pieces. Store in airtight container in a cool place. If it’s a hot day, you might want to keep the chocolate in the fridge.

Enjoy your endless options!

* 1 tsp. espresso powder would probably work, too, if you’re into coffee-flavored chocolate. I’m not a huge coffee fan, so I haven’t tried that variety yet.

Aztec Atole

One day, I hope to live in the Chocolate Belt: that narrow strip around the equator where cocoa trees grow.  How great would it be to have your very own cocoa pods dangling outside your front door?  The process of transforming the raw bean into a chocolate bar is a very long and complicated one, but it sure would be fun to try!  Until then, however, I’ll be content with seeking out close-to-the-source chocolate products like nibs and bars made with 100% Criollo cocoa.

Chocolate was originally consumed in large quantities by the Aztecs, who mostly enjoyed theirs unsweetened (or lightly sweetened) and in liquid form.  According to accounts written by Spanish explorers, the modern-day Mexican atole — a corn-based drink — is probably similar to what the Aztecs would have prepared.  Key ingredients include ground dried corn, spices, and a hint of sugar.

Given my obsession with not-so-sweet chocolate, I decided to come up with my own version of atole con chocolate.  It’s quite different than an American hot chocolate — much, much less sweet, for one thing, plus it has a spicy kick.  And thanks to the toasted cornmeal, it kind of reminds me of popcorn.  (In a chocolatey kind of way.)  Just be sure to use sweet paprika and not smoked paprika!

Aztec Atole con Chocolate

2 T. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T. toasted, ground cornmeal (toast some coarsely-ground cornmeal at 200 degrees for about 5 minutes or until the grains are fragrant and slightly browned, then grind the toasted cornmeal in a coffee grinder, saving any leftover toasted and ground cornmeal in a glass screw-top jar)
1 tsp. powdered sucanat OR honey (see previous post about creating healthy chiffon cakes by powdering your sucanat)
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground sweet paprika
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Use a fork or a whisk to stir all ingredients EXCEPT the vanilla together in a mug, then fill mug with boiling water. Stir until the sucanat and cocoa dissolve. Add vanilla to slightly-cooled cocoa and stir again. (Since the vanilla extract is water-based, blending it with boiling water would cause much of its aroma and flavor to dissipate and be lost. Adding it at the end ensures that that won’t happen.) Taste to see if the blend is sweet enough for you — if it isn’t, add another teaspoon of sucanat and stir again.

Enjoy!

Note: because atole is a much thicker mixture than traditional American cocoa, you’ll probably have to keep stirring it as you drink it.  Apparently, the Aztecs made theirs so thick that their stirring utensils would stand straight up.  Now, that’s a chocolate drink!

Cranberry-Orange Relish

When I was a kid, I thought cranberries were sweet — after all, cranberry juice sure was!  But then I finally tasted an honest-to-goodness whole cranberry and realized that good ol’ Ocean Spray had added a fair amount of sweeteners to make the juice palatable for the American tongue.  Now that I’ve veered off the Sweet Track and onto the Street of Deeper Flavors (my current chocolate preference is 90% cocoa, and I finally made the switch from Riesling to Rioja), I rather enjoy the extreme tartness that a cranberry offers.

When making a dessert relish/sauce (or a raw breakfast compote), though, unadulterated cranberries are even a bit much for me, which is why I thought I’d recreate the wintertime Cranberry-Orange Relish classic in a way that would still be a little bit sweet but that wouldn’t require cup after cup of refined white sugar.

The solution?  Simple:  just use honey instead.  And seeing as orange juice is pretty sweet on its own (so are cocktail grapefruits), you can also squeeze an extra orange and add more fresh juice to counterbalance the acidity of the cranberries.

Here’s a quick formula to get you started:  1 cup whole cranberries (frozen or fresh) + juice of 1 juice orange (or cocktail grapefruit) + 2 T. honey. Just place all in a blender and whirr until you have the desired consistency.  (You can also add a teaspoon of spice — cinnamon is a good choice, or you can blend it with nutmeg, ginger, cloves, or allspice so that you wind up with a total of 1 teaspoon.)  Taste to see if the tartness is to your liking and add more honey if it’s still too sour.  Blend and repeat until your tongue is happily tingling.  Bear in mind that you might want to taste the relish when it’s still rather coarsely-ground in case you do have to keep repeating the blending step (which will make the berries smaller and smaller each time); also, bear in mind that the relish will sweeten slightly upon standing and that you can always stir in more honey right before serving.

Enjoy!

Hot Cider with Coconut Milk

It’s cold.  I realize that when we’re in the depths of January, we Michiganders will look back at the good old “warm” days of October with fondness (and a touch of bitterness mixed with desperation), but to me, right here, right now, it’s cold.  Last week I was riding my bicycle my usual 30 miles/week — it’s amazing how many errands you can do on a bike in the city! — and now I’m huddled in multiple layers and have the heater pointed directly at my feet.

All of this unwanted chill did, however, inspire me to come up with a new winter drink:  hot mulled cider with coconut milk.  Talk about rich, sweet, and creamy!

As long as you have some spicy black tea on hand — like any variety of chai or a spiced citrus tea blend such as Constant Comment — making this winter treat is ridiculously easy.  Proceed as you would when making tea:  put your teabag in a mug (I use Bengal Spice from Celestial Seasonings), heat your cider in a tea kettle, and pour the hot cider over the teabag.  Let steep for 5 minutes before adding a splash of whole coconut milk.  Note that if you don’t have a pre-mixed spicy tea, you could make your own “tea” with cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, cardamom pods, vanilla beans (or a splash of extract), etc.  You could also use pre-mixed mulling spices, like the bags sometimes sold to make Glühwein or mulled wine.

A warning:  do not try this with whole dairy milk … or if you do so, you do so forewarned and at your own peril.  For reasons I have yet to divine (but I will!), the interaction of the cider with the milk does not yield appetizing results.  There’s something inherently different about the fat composition of the coconut milk and the cow milk; while the former blends beautifully with the cider, the latter does not.  Figuring out the chemistry behind this is my current challenge.  In the meantime, just stick to apple + coconut and you’ll be fine.

Enjoy!

Vegetable Coconut Curry with Chickpea Cakes

Creamy or spicy, simple or complex, powerful or understated … a meal’s sauce sets its tone.  Sauces also provide a sense of place and heritage:  take the same basic ingredients, for example, slap a different sauce on them, and all of a sudden you’ve gone from Mexican to Japanese.  (Steak + peppers + onions + cumin + oregano + lime = a basic fajita; steak + peppers + onions + soy sauce + ginger + rice vinegar = a basic teriyaki.)

One of my all-time favorite sauce bases is an Indian coconut curry — it works equally well for veggies, fish, beef, and chicken.  (I say Indian because of the Madras curry powder I use, but there are also plenty of delicious southeastern Asian curries.)  There’s just something  enchanting about the layering of warm spices — ginger, turmeric, cayenne, cumin, etc. — over the backdrop of creamy, rich whole coconut milk.  And nothing could be easier than adding a teaspoonful of curry powder and splash of coconut milk to whatever you’re sautéeing at the moment.

In this case, I happened to have a rainbow of peppers, corn, spinach, and tomatoes in my fridge, so the dish nearly made itself!

Vegetable Coconut Curry

1 T. coconut oil
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
The kernels of 1 ear of fresh corn OR 1 cup of frozen kernels
1 medium tomato, chopped
Handful of baby spinach
1/3 cup whole coconut milk
1 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt

Sautée coconut oil, pepper, onion and corn over medium heat for about 10 minutes or until onion is translucent and you can poke through a kernel of corn with the tip of a sharp knife. Add remaining ingredients and carefully stir, then turn heat down to low and let simmer for another 2-3 minutes.

If you like, serve with a bread or grain on the side. A few chunks of pineapple would also be a nice compliment to the meal.

Enjoy!

Chili-Spiced Walnuts with Sea Salt & Olive Oil

The first time I made popcorn with chili powder and olive oil, I thought I’d found snack nirvana…but last week I tried the same combination on crispy walnuts and ascended to post-nirvana sublimity.  The butteriness of the walnut perfectly compliments the spiciness of the chili powder; in the meantime, the fruitiness of the olive oil provides the perfect backdrop for the sea salt.  All in all, one of the tastiest things I’ve ever concocted.  And since preparing the nuts this way involves soaking them overnight, the nutrients in the nuts become much more available to us and are much easier to digest.  (Ideally, all grains, nuts, legumes and seeds should be soaked, fermented or sprouted before consumption.)  The saltwater soak also makes the walnuts somehow…walnut-ier.  It’s hard to describe–you’ll have to try it and see what I mean!

Crispy Spiced Walnuts

Soak raw walnuts overnight–just place in a bowl with 1 tsp. of sea salt and enough warm water to completely cover the nuts.  Leave on the counter overnight. (You may want to cover the bowl with a clean handtowel.)  In the morning, dump them into a colander and let drain.  Spread them out on a baking tray/sheet and toast them at a very low temperature for several hours, occasionally stirring to keep them from sticking to the pan.  (The lowest my oven goes is 170 degrees F; you can go as low as 150 degrees.)

When the nuts are pleasantly crisp, remove them from the oven and let cool.  Place in a glass jar and shake in about 1/2 tsp. to 1 tsp. each of chili powder and sea salt (depending on how spicy/salty you like it).  Pour on a tablespoon or so of high-quality olive oil, screw on the jar lid, and shake to coat nuts with spices and oil.  You can either store the nuts in the fridge for several weeks or leave in a cool, dark place.

Note:  you could toast a batch of nuts and combine them with any spice you’d prefer.  Or coat them with cinnamon and maple syrup to make a healthy dessert, or add a pinch of cayenne and serve them with a creamy cheese for contrast, or simply eat them plain.  They’re great to take on trips as road snacks or keep in your desk at work!  This recipe also works beautifully with pecans.

Enjoy!

Ethiopian Tuna Casserole

“Casserole.” Just seeing the word can conjure up uncomfortable childhood memories of gelatinous, salty tuna and noodles drowned in processed and canned soup. (“Soup” in this case being somewhat euphemistic. “Liquid cardboard” might be a more apropos description.)

But casseroles don’t have to be that way—like the Moroccan tagine, the word “casserole” refers to the covered container in which the dish is baked. Anything can be a casserole: tuna or salmon, vegetables or eggs, lamb or pork. The only limiting factor is your imagination!

Ethiopian Tuna Casserole

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare:

1 small onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
2 cups peas, fresh or frozen
1 tomato, diced
1 tsp. berbere
1 can tuna (6.5 oz.)
2 T. tomato paste
½ tsp. sea salt
Homemade breadcrumbs (the next time you have good-quality, whole-grain leftover bread that’s going stale, whirr it in a food processor to make crumbs; you can freeze your fresh crumbs for several months and use as needed)

Sautée onion in a pat of butter over medium heat. When translucent, stir in bell pepper, peas, tomato and berbere. Transfer to glass baking dish and bake, covered, for 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and stir in tuna, tomato paste and salt. Cover and return to oven for another 10 minutes. Remove from oven one final time and top with breadcrumbs, then bake uncovered for another 5 minutes to get the topping golden brown and crunchy. (You could also mix in grated Parmesan cheese with the breadcrumbs.)

Enjoy!

Middle Eastern Feast

Middle Eastern cuisine is famous for its rich flavors and liberal use of garlic, lemon and spices…cumin and coriander, anyone?  The fact that almost every town boasts a Middle Eastern restaurant also testifies to the cuisine’s universal appeal.  (When I was living in Germany, my favorite dish was the Turkish Döner Kebap.  My second-favorite was the slightly-more-traditional Currywurst.)

This trio of delights features a chickpea terrine (top), a carrot salad with goat cheese and baby spinach (right), and a fattoush salad (bottom).  Since fattoush and carrot salads are standard Middle Eastern fare, I’ll focus on the chickpea terrine, a hearty dish that can easily serve as the main course. This recipe will provide two diners with plenty to enjoy; increase the amounts as you see fit. You can make it several hours–or even a day!–in advance and store it in the refrigerator. (Be sure to let it come back to room temperature an hour or so before serving.) It can be eaten straight from the dish or served with pita/toasted pita chips.

Chickpea Terrine with Figs & Blueberries

Mash together:
1 sweet potato, cut into chunks and boiled to tenderness (8-10 minutes)
1 15-oz. can of chickpeas, drained
1 T. butter
1 tsp. sea salt

Spread in the bottom of a 9″ round baking dish or any other dish with medium-high to high sides.

Sauteé in a T. of butter:
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
Several handfuls of baby spinach, sliced into ribbons
3 T. pine nuts
3 dried figs, chopped
1 T. dried blueberries
1 tsp. za’atar spice mix

Remove from heat and stir in:
1 T. tahini

Carefully spoon onion mixture on top of the chickpea-and-potato mash. If you’d like, sprinkle on some crumbled Feta cheese and/or garnish with halved cherry tomatoes.

Enjoy!

Spiced Lamb Salad

Here’s a twist on taco salads:  Ethiopian lamb salads!  Simple, satisfying, and significantly lighter than its North American cousin, this salad was a happy meeting of leftovers and inspiration.  (I had cooked ground lamb with berbere spice mix, chopped onions, minced garlic and diced tomatoes the day before.)  When I saw the lettuce and Greek yogurt in my fridge, it occurred to me that I could build an Ethopian meal on a Mexican foundation.  Voilá! In less than a minute, I had a decadent-yet-healthy dish.  From the ground up, this consists of:

Arugula
Spiced lamb mix
Greek yogurt
A sprinkling of paprika

A nice garnish would be a wedge of Feta cheese and a sprig of mint.

Enjoy!

2 cinnamon sticks, each broken in half

6 whole cloves

8 cardamom pods, lightly smashed (you can smash them with the flat side of a knife blade or with a mortar and pestle)

Note:  breaking/smashing the spices will release their essential oils and sharpen their aroma.

2 cloves garlic, sliced thin

1 c. sliced mushrooms

1 medium carrot, sliced

½ cup frozen peas

½ of a red bell pepper, sliced into long strips

¼ of a red onion, sliced thin

¼ of a jicama, sliced thin

½ tsp. – 1 tsp. of ground ginger, depending on your taste

1 T. olive or sesame oil

2 T. rice vinegar

1 T. soy sauce (reduced-salt or regular, depending on your taste)

pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

bunch of fresh cilantro, sliced into thin ribbons (chiffonade)

bunch of fresh basil, sliced into thin ribbons (chiffonade)

Whole-wheat linguini/spaghetti or buckwheat noodles

Slice the vegetables and garlic and set all aside.

Put plenty of water into the pot you’re going to use for the noodles—you will need some of it to de-glaze the pan you use for the vegetables. When the water is boiling, add the noodles and cook according to the package directions.

While the noodles are cooking, sauté the onions and carrots in the oil on medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes or until the onion is almost translucent. Add the mushrooms and red pepper and continue cooking for another 2 minutes. Add the vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, cayenne (optional), and ginger. If the vegetables get too dry and you need to de-glaze the pan at any point, carefully add a ladleful of the boiling noodle-water. Caution: when you add the water, you’ll get a whoom! of steam, so add it at arm’s length!

When the noodles are nearly done, add the jicama and peas to the vegetables.

Drain the cooked noodles. While they are in the colander, add the fresh basil and cilantro to your vegetables, stir, and take the pan off the heat. Either stir the noodles directly into the vegetables or top the noodles with the vegetables. If you think you need more salt, you can either add table salt or more soy sauce.

Enjoy!

The difference between herbs and spices is simple:  herbs are the leaves of the plants while spices are the dried roots, bark, pods, and fruit.  Coriander, for example, is the seed of a cilantro plant.  Vanilla is an edible pod, cinnamon is bark, and cloves are the dried flower buds of S. aromaticum, an evergreen tree.

Both herbs and spices are most flavorful when fresh.  When using fresh herbs, swish them gently in a bowl of cold water to clean them and then pat them dry.  Chop them just before using–many herbs darken when cut.  Oftentimes, it is best to add them at the end of cooking your dish so that they retain more of their true flavor.  Keep dried herbs in a cool, dark place, and right before using them, crush them between your fingers to release their flavor.  Most spices come pre-ground and thus will lose their flavor more quickly than they would if you ground them at the last minute; just be aware of this and replace them as necessary.