Food Discoveries

Yes, I know it’s been a while since I’ve updated my food blog. I’ve all that new energy that comes with a new year, or just a desire to share all my food adventures of late.

In brief, my biggest discovery for 2009 has been raw desserts – pies, cakes and other confections – that all share one major component they are not baked. I know this may sound more than just odd to many but it has been a boon for me and surprisingly enough, the whole family as well as various outsiders who’ve tasted some of our treats.

Raw desserts do what they need to do – they’re sweet, tasty and provide that punch of ‘fat’ and ‘sugar’ that make dessert eating so dear to many.  I have found that eating raw treats has helped me tame my considerable sweet tooth and that I don’t desire the more typical sweets that are served to me – that I generally can’t eat anyway because of the gluten or various other ingredients that don’t suit me well.

Ah, you say, she’s one of those ‘I don’t eat this and that.’ Yes, it’s true; I am one of those and have been in one way or another for many years. The good news is that I’m at peace with it.  I went predominantly raw after last Passover for about 4 months. I stuck with fruits, salads and a bit of cooked vegetable dishes. I tried not to go to wild with nuts and dried fruits – they don’t always agree with me. I felt okay but not great. In July, I started an unusual diet that should be better known for my gut – always my Achilles heel. Called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet or the SCD diet for those in the know, it essentially rules out all complex carbohydrates – like grains, potatoes, sweet potatoes, milk (although fermented products like homemade yogurts or Kefir are allowed as well as some hard cheeses), and all sweeteners except for honey which rates as a simple carbohydrate.  The diet, which has lots of interesting science behind it, is considered quite effective for people with Crohn’s, Colitis, Celiac and gluten issues as well as all sorts of IBD problems. Of course, it tends not to be recommended by mainstream doctors – big surprise – and yet, you read positive story after story on the website, including fairly impressive ones from families with kids with Autism who adopted the diet and found their children’s issues greatly reduced and their overall health greatly improved.

It sounds horrible, right? No grains, no bread, no nothing. But there’s a lot left to eat once you settle in to the regimen; veggies, proteins (no tofu, sorry), fruits and nuts. I became very skilled at a host of nut breads and muffins (check out this blog for excellent recipes). My stomach calmed down – almost completely. Certain things still gave me pause – too many nuts (I cut back on the baked nut treats), too much raw stuff at times. I had to find balance.

And making raw treat after raw treat made me happy and reduced any real feelings of unhappiness. As long as I had something sweet to eat during the day – and I’ve found that I prefer my dessert these days earlier in the day during that mid afternoon energy lull, that I’m content. I’ve cut back and late night snacks – can’t digest ‘em and I suspect that many of us feel that way and anyway, I eat dinner too late to really have time to snack as well. I’ve kept dinners really simple since we eat late. The end result? I feel so much better. And that is truly something.

I’ll post some recipes over the next few weeks.

Meringues - Fluff n' Stuff

Meringues
It's been meringue season around here. Given that I try to limit my gluten intake - makes my belly happier - I'm always looking for good dessert options. When Ira and I were in Stowe together back in February - ah, the memories, the snow, the margaritas, the time alone - we found these great meringue cookies in the local store. They had a great crunch and taste, punctuated by sweet, chewy raisins, nuts, and tart cranberries. And they were basically a meringue base although they had a nice cookie-like feeling. After much meringue baking these past few months - and let's not forget Pesach baking (okay, not for some time thankfully), it's become clear to me that's it's all about the baking time and what you fold into your cookies that will determine their texture and crunch. If you want a drier meringue, bake them in a low, slow oven and wait for them to dry out. If you like the bit of 'marshmallow' inside to your meringue, bake them less time and make them bigger so there's more of a gooey pocket inside.

I can add a new note to the baking process. We have a new oven - I am deeply thankful about this, in particular to our friends Robert and Mona, who in arriving in Israel with their worldly goods in tow, shlepped in said oven. Our last batch baked up...perfectly. They baked properly and with only a hint of brown to their white exteriors. They were, in a word, glorious. An airy pocket of sweetness with just a hint of softness inside. It's amazing what a well-calibrated oven will do for you. Thank you American Range.

As for the biggest problem with meringues, the leftover yolks, I no longer obsess about it. I often combine them with a few whole eggs for a dinner frittata or accept the loss or make these nut cookies (read the article and look all the way at the bottom to the last paragraph for these simple cookies) with them.

Recipe (adapted from Viana La Place's Dessert and Sweet Snacks):
3 egg whites
1 tbsp white vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2lb coarsely ground or chopped toasted almonds
1/2lb coarsely ground or chopped bittersweet chocolate

Notes:
We always double or even triple this recipe. We usually use chocolate chips because they are lighter and easier to combine in chip form but chopped chocolate is always lovely.
I usually combine 1 cup of ground toasted nuts along with 1/2-1 cup sliced toasted almonds. I also like toasting a cup of flaked, unsweetened coconut and grinding that along with the toasted almonds and/or hazelnuts. (To toast nuts, lay them on a baking pan and roast at 350 for 5-8 minutes, tossing them around every 2-3 minutes and sniffing in order to avoid burning them. Coconut will go quickly.)
1/2-1 cup cranberries are great along with the nuts and chocolate. Swapping in raisins or chopped apricots in part or whole for the cranberries also works just fine.

Preheat the oven to 250.
Beat the egg whites with the vinegar and salt until stiff but not dry. Meaning, they'll look fluffy like snow and have soft drifts in the bowl but not stand up at attention. Very gradually, add in the sugar and continue to beat until meringue forms stiff peaks. It will look like a craggy pile of marshmallow in the bowl - shiny and irresistible but you wouldn't really want to eat it. Gently fold in vanilla, nuts, chocolate, etc.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper and drop mixture by teaspoonfuls about 1" apart on the prepared pans. Bake until firm, without browning significantly, about 45 min. Cool and remove to cooling rack. Store in an airtight tin - don't put them away until they're really cool and if the day is humid, don't cover tightly as they'll get stickyish. Not that you can't eat them this way, but I like them dry.

Gracious Gratin

This is an older post that I just rediscovered I had been in the middle of writing. I have to find a way to write regularly. I'm still cooking but life has made posting hard - I will endeavor because I like thinking about what I've been cooking and what's been working and what is seasonally interesting.

So, from April:
It's been a busy bunch of weeks and yet, Shabbat still shows up with regularity, complete with hungry guests and family members eager for that nice meal that they've been denied all week (as if I don't feed them anyway). My recent 'go to dish' has been a vegetable gratin - a simple saute of greens and peppers, or mushrooms and greens, or white beans, greens and whatever else catches my eye, bound together with a bit of tasty cheese (I have a large and lovely hunk of parm from Rome that I'm using judiciously), topped with some fresh bread crumbs and baked briefly in the oven to toast the crumbs and set the gratin.

Last week, along with a light soup - carmelized leek soup (nice this time of year) - fresh, crusty bread, a few spreads and side salads, it was a relatively easy meal. (If you make the soup, I don't use chicken broth, I fiddle with wine, veg broth and water as needed. Do use the butter, but you can combine it with olive oil.)

Master Recipe:
1 large onion, chopped
2-4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 bunches of cooking greens - Kale, Collards, Chard. Trim the stems and cut the stems off by the beginning of the leaf. Clean and chop the stems as if you were preparing celery and keep them separate from the leaves. Chop the leaves (I stack them and slice down the middle and then across and rough chop them further) and place them in a bowl with water to soak.
1-2 red peppers, chopped
10 oz sliced mushrooms, optional but tasty
1/2 cup grated hard cheese, like parmesan or manchego.
1 cup of fresh bread crumbs. Add 1-2tbsp of olive oil and season with salt, pepper and thyme.
(Toast the crumbs in the oven, spread on a baking sheet for about 3-5 minutes. Keep an eye on them but you do want them to lightly brown.)

Saute the onion and garlic, seasoning with salt and pepper, red pepper flakes and some fresh or dried thyme. Let the onions color a bit and begin to carmelize, 5-7 minutes. If things seem to dry in the pan, add a splash of white wine, water or apple juice/water and a squeeze of lemon (which is an old veg tip for the non-alcohol cookers). Add the stems and chopped pepper, stir a bit and let that cook a bit further. Another good way of adding some liquid is simply to cover and let the veggies soften and steam and then uncover to get some browning happening.

Add the chopped greens, lifting them out of the water and shaking lightly before adding to the pan. This way, the greens arrive with some water clinging to their leaves which helps things soften and cook down nicely. Even if it seems like too many greens for the pot, shove them in and cover them and let them cook down and soften but not turn to mush, stirring occasionally as they begin to collapse and fit into the pan better - about 7-8 minutes.

Strain the vegetables and add some cheese. You can add about 1/2 cup shredded parmesan and I recommend a dry and crumbly kind of parmesan to add lots of flavor in that 1/2 cup. You could go with a soft cheese and crumble in about 3-4 oz of soft goat cheese. Or, choose a hard cheese of your liking - smoked gouda or manchego, for example. The cheese is enough to bind this lightly without adding egg but you could add an egg or 2 mixed with a spot of milk for a more 'bound' gratin but that's more like a quiche and I wasn't looking for that.

Spread the gratin into a large baking pan - 9x13 or thereabouts. Top with toasted crumbs and bake just to combine everything and melt the cheese and further brown the crumbs - about 20 minutes tops.

Fete du Kale

Food in Israel is grand. Produce is local and fresh. The organic marketplace is growing and developing but the cooking greens leave a bit to be desired. The spinach is tasty but not delicate enough and the beet greens/mangold, are the only cooking greens regularly available. They're a bit like chard, without the lemony flavor, and while hearty and tasty, we all grow tired of them. I pine for collards and kale. Once last year, I caught someone who posted on Janglo, the local listserv of all that interesting and available, that they had a glut of kale in their garden. I went over immediately to investigate and found a rather unusual kind of guy, who had a massive garden in what was basically an empty and untended lot next to his garden apartment and who had ton of kale - curly and flat leaved varieties growing. I bought up 2 bags and went home and cooked and spent the rest of the year remembering the experience fondly.

I've asked Meir of Hachavah Haorganit a few times about varieties of greens and he's assured me that his growers are hoping to offer some alternatives. Two weeks ago, the kale arrived. Beautiful, flat-leaved and purple veined, Red Russian variety, kale. I practically swooned with pleasure. I had ordered 3 bunches of Kale along with 2 bunches of mangold and was ready to have my calcium and vitamin C raised along with my tastebuds.

Kale is lovely steamed and dressed or sauteed simply with or without onion and garlic and chopped red pepper, let's say, and then eaten (once it's been lightly salted and peppered and splashed with lemon juice). It's good roasted - develops and intensifies the flavors and yet sweetens the result through the roasting process. It's great, a la Marion Stein, sauteed - first saute onion and garlic, salt and pepper, then the kale stems, then add cubed new potatoes and stir-fry. Cover and let them cook for a bit, adding a bit of liquid as necessary - like white wine, or water as well. As the potatoes get a bit more tender, add the chopped kale and saute some more. Cover and cook until potatoes are fully cooked. Stir together, adding salt and pepper to taste and a squeeze of lemon juice and eat - either plain, or on pasta but I like it plain. Hearty and good.

Kale is great in soup and that's what I did with it over the past 2 weeks. It was chopped and added into a fish soup, then a veg soup and then my favorite - Sweet potato and Kale Soup.

Sweet potatoes - 3-4 chopped. (You could also use winter squash)
Carrots - 3-4 diced.
Celery - 2 ribs sliced.
Onion - 2 medium, diced.
Garlic - 3-4 cloves, chopped.
1 bunch Kale - Trim ends, chop stems and wash, reserving to saute with celery. Chop greens and soak in water, changing as needed if very dirty.
Water - 8-10 cups
Bay leaves, salt and pepper
Lemon juice - 1 lemon
Miso - mellow white or light colored variety (you can make the soup without this but it does give a lovely flavor and is quite good for you).

Warm olive oil. Saute onion for a few minutes, then add garlic. Stir fry for 2 minutes, not letting it brown. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Add carrot, celery and kale stems and saute for 3-5 minutes letting them soften slightly. Add sweet potatoes (or winter squash) and cook, stirring frequently for another 5-8 minutes. Add kale and cook, stirring until greens are semi-wilted, 3-5 minutes. Add water to cover, stirring as you add - you should be able to stir the veggies but still sense a chunky and not thin mixture. Add 2 bay leaves. Bring to boil and let cook until sweet potatoes are tender, 15-20 minutes.

Dip a cup of hot soup broth out of the pot and add 2 tbsps miso, stirring the miso up and pressing it against the cup to combine it with the liquid. Add the lemon juice and pour the mixture back into the pot. Taste soup. If you like it more miso'y, do process again - it's not necessary to add more lemon juice.

(If you're not doing miso, add some white wine when you add the broth water or puree a can of white beans - strained and rinsed - and add them to the pot for body and taste with some lemon juice and be prepared to add more salt and pepper as well).

This is a lovely soup and it ages well, too. Heat it up and add some noodles or cooked rice for some extra body as well.

Celeriac Salad

Another misunderstood vegetable, unless you're French of course and have grown up eating it as celeriac remoulade - a light and tangy salad of shoestrings of celeriac dressed with a mayonaise-mustard sauce. Actually, a traditional remoulade is an offshoot of the ingredients that it takes to make an aoli or mayonaise, with boiled egg yolk added to thicken the texture and often combined with lemon juice, mustard and something to cream it up, like mayo or in a nod to modernity, creme fraiche or even yogurt which could be enriched with a few tablespoons of heavy cream for improved taste and texture without too much extra calories. Celeriac is great mashed, especially when combined with potatoes to help 'cream' up the texture, or with other root veggies in combination. It's flavor is most definitely celery-like as opposed to fennel which always surprises with it's clean crunch and flavor.

Courtesy of vegetable man Meir Todress, we had celeriac last week and it was a real cause for celebration along with the gorgeous kale!!! and fresh bulbs of garlic that arrived in our box. We cooked and enjoyed these late winter early spring offerings - kale in soup and sauteed with other veggies (I'll write about kale shortly).

Ira and I admired the celeriac and while I considered the various options, he decided that a salad was the best option and the most obvious choice. He proceeded to start julienning. If someone wants to julienne veggies, you don't argue, you make the dressing. I like blanching the veggies before dressing them but Ira wanted it raw.

Before you shy away from julienning - and everyone should own a good mandoline (we need a better one as it just doesn't julienne well). We tried upgrading to the Oxo one which was $75 and discovered that it just wasn't worth it. So, it's clear that it's a $150 investment for a European one or bust. Then again, there's always the knife.

Celeriac Remoulade a la Beth and Ira
1. Pare and Slice the celeriac as thinly as possible. You'll feel like you're cutting away a lot of the veggie as it's a fairly gnarly looking root veg but persevere, there will still be veg left for the salad.
2. Optional: Bring a pot of salted water to boil and blanch for about 2 minutes, just taking the 'rawness' out of the veg. Given that it's julienned you don't need to do anymore than that.
3. Whisk together mustard, mayonaise, lemon juice, salt and pepper, apple juice/water/honey (according to taste and how loose or thick you want the dressing). Dress the salad.
4. Finely mince fresh parsley (dill could be nice as well) and add in some capers (you can use their liquid as your acid instead of lemon juice or in combo if you wish). Mix. Let it sit for a bit before eating and enjoy.

Some variations that seemed respectable.
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000990celery_root_salad.php. With shredded apple/
http://thestonesoup.com/blog/2006/05/one-for-the-ladies/. Using creme fraiche.
http://www.greenchronicle.com/valentines_recipes/celeriac_salad_recipe.htm - the egg yolk method.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/11069. Nice looking option, no apple.

Cabbage Again

Another head of cabbage around. Ira reported that while I was away (in the US), that he made Sweet and Sour cabbage. I checked out a few recipes and noted the essentials - butter, vinegar and sweetener of some sort.

My vegetables came today and they looked beautiful. I assessed the scene quickly and decided that plain cabbage didn't attract me but a few veggies added to the mix did.

1 large head of cabbage, sliced thinly and cut into small pieces
3-4 carrots, sliced thinly
2 onions, sliced
(garlic could be a fine addition)
winter squash or pumpkin, peeled and chopped - I used about 1.5 lbs
3 peppers - red and yellow, chopped
balsamic vinegar (or red wine vinegar) - 1/4 cup
apple juice - about 1/3-1/2 cup
lemon juice - 1 lemon
salt and pepper to taste
butter/olive oil
organic cane sugar - has a light brown look and flavor - 2-3 tbsp
(Sliced apples are another great addition - put them in before the cabbage so you can saute them a bit).

Warm the pan. Melt a knob of butter and add in 1-2 tbsp of olive oil. Add the onions and saute for 1-2 minutes. Then add the carrot and squash and saute, stirring for 1-2 min and then cover for 5. Add the pepper - stir, saute 1-2 min. Then, the cabbage which will fill up the pan and you'll doubt that it will be the right size but it will settle down. Cover and let it cook down, 10 minutes. Add the apple juice and vinegar and cover for another 5 minutes. Add the sugar, stir and cover for another 5. When things seem tender, uncover and let the juices cook down a bit.

Serve on rice or hearty, whole wheat or buckwheat noodles.

Slaw

We had a run on cabbage. Ordered a big head a week ago and then ended up with another big head. What to do? Coleslaw is long a favorite at our house as well as cabbage soups but I wasn't in the mood to do stuffed cabbage, which I actually prefer to do with mangold greens (or collards in the US) - more digestible and easier to work with.

Our standard coleslaw has a vinegar based dressing, with a bit of fresh cilantro, scallions and jalapeno pepper to snazz it up and give it zip not generally known to the standard, heavier mayonaise coleslaws, which quite frankly hold no appeal to me. I want a salad with a fresh appeal, that will age nicely in the fridge, softening over the week as the acids continue to do their work making it continually appealing to eat when you peruse the shelves.

Plus, aging coleslaw is great with tuna for a quick and zesty tuna salad. Just chop the slaw down a bit and mix with tuna and add a squeeze of lemon and perhaps another drizzle of oil and it's light and refreshing and again, not weighed down by mayo.

Coleslaw:
1 medium head of white cabbage, shredded. (If you're not one to shred, then slice the cabbage in half, through the stem edge (meaning top to bottom), slice thinly and then slice across to get small enough pieces).
1 small head of purple cabbage, shredded (not critical but the colors are nice).
1 lb/.5 kilo of carrots shredded or julienned or thinly sliced.
3-4 scallions, sliced, with the green
1/2 bunch of cilantro chopped
1/2 bunch of parsley chopped
1-2 jalapeno peppers or some equivalent fresh, hot pepper, seeded and chopped (use the seeds if you want it spicier).

Combine the vegetables. Whisk the lemon juice with the salt and pepper and cumin. Add in the oil, vinegar, apple juice, maple syrup and adjust the flavors to taste.
Let it sit at least 1 hour before serving, if you can.

Dressing:
Olive or Grapeseed oil - 1/4-1/3 of a cup.
Lemon juice - 1/8 of a cup
Splash of apple cider or rice vinegar
Salt and Pepper
Cumin - 1/2 -1 tsp according to taste
Salt and Pepper
Apple juice - 1/8 of a cup (give or take)
Dash of maple syrup (really gives it a great taste but honey could work as well or leave it out)

Cabbage Note:
If you really hate raw cabbage, you could dump the cabbage and carrots into a colander and pour boiling water over them to just reduce the 'rawness' of the salad to start. As well, you could salt the cabbage and put a weight on top (meaning stick a plate on the cabbage and a couple of cans of beans) for about 30 minutes and then rinse your cabbage and continue with the dressing. You can also make it raw and it will develop nicely on it's own over time.

If I still have cabbage left over, we can talk about soup later in the week.