This year we weren’t dreaming of a White Christmas, we were having one! We have had snow on the ground for the past month or so, and although it wasn’t snowing on Christmas, it was beautiful, picturesque and quaint here on the homestead. Perfect for my mom who is visiting from Florida and hasn’t had a White Christmas for several years.

Although I don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, many people we know do, so we incorporate it into the 12 Days of Yule which begin on December 20th and ends on January 1st. The twelve days of Yule kicks off on December 20th, the night before the solstice, with Mother’s Night where we celebrate the divine feminine and our long line of female ancestors. I like to spend this night baking cookies and preparing foods that were dear to my ancestors, celebrating the long line of people who have contributed to making me who I am. This year I made Pfeffernusse Shortbread cookies to honor my newly found German heritage.

We always celebrate December 24th by setting out an offering of cookies and milk or eggnog for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.
On December 25th we often have another feast dinner, a feast to share with family, having the same intensity of fanfare are the feast we have on the Winter Solstice. This year we had lamb. I have never been a fan of the Christmas Ham, and it has only been a few weeks since our last turkey feast. So for our own household tradition, we have lamb on this night.

This year’s lamb was a very special dish – it came from a lamb that Roberto and I butchered this fall. Since moving to Vermont we have bought meat very differently. We either buy whole animals locally or join farm meat CSAs. We have in our storage freezer, half a lamb, parts of a pig as well as beef, veal and poultry from our monthly CSA. This should get us through the winter, happy and deeply nourished.
For Christmas dinner we prepared the leg of lamb. I marinated it in a mixture of red wine, balsamic vinegar, yogurt, lemon juice and rosemary. I prepared it in my tagine and made a layer of fresh lemon slices on top. It was slow cooked at 350 F for 2 hours. Then I took the lid off to allow it to brown for about 15 minutes. We served it au jus. It was absolutely simple and the lamb was incredibly juicy and succulent.

We served it with glazed carrots and a brown rice risotto with fresh cranberries, wilted spinach, goat cheese and toasted pine nuts.
It was a wonderful evening spent with family. Hope that all of my readers who celebrate the winter holidays are having a most wondrous time with your dear ones!

Wishing you all health, happiness and love this coming year – and of course full bellies!

(Me, Mom and Michelle)

This year it was my turn to host the Christmas festivities for my family. For a variety of reasons, we didn’t have a huge Christmas celebration, like the days of yore. In days gone by my great aunt hosted a Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve for the whole extended family and we went every year to Western Pennsylvania to enjoy it followed by Christmas Dinner the next day, at my Grandparents house. The feast on Christmas Eve was held in my aunt’s basement and when you walked down there, from the main part of the house, it always smelled so good! Like you were entering a restaurant with so many smells. I remember those warm, happy times spent with my extended family, when everyone was still with us. We will never have those days back and so…

This year I wanted to honor those old and cherished family traditions and memories. I have found often, in my life, that food can bring back the past . One small bite of something or a long forgotten smell, can make the past come swooshing into the present. If only for a second. Since we will be moving in April, I don’t know when the next holiday will be that I can share it with both my mom and my cousin Michelle who both live in Florida. So I decided this was the year to bring back the Feast of the Fishes!

This feast is an Italian American tradition – not celebrated in the motherland, and is derived from a time of abstinence, as it says on Wikipedia: “ in this case, refraining from the consumption of meat or milk products—on Fridays and specific holy days. As no meat or butter could be used, observant Catholics would instead eat fish, typically fried in oil”.

But I must admit, that for me, it was always about the food!

We haven’t done a Feast of the Seven Fishes in my immediate family for years, but it is certainly a tradition that we all enjoyed. So this year, since I was in charge of the menu for Christmas Eve – I decided to bring this tradition back. It was a small gathering this year, only 4 of us, so I decided to do 4 fish courses – including 5 fishes, not the copious amounts of fish dishes from the past, but a revised menu. The menu was dictated by what was available at our local fish store the day before, and what the guests enjoyed from the past. I also wanted to make each course easy to prepare, so that I could enjoy time with my family without being too stressed. Most of these dishes we prepared in between courses together, or while we were eating other courses. So much fun was had in the kitchen with family!

Roberto and I love ceviche, but have never made it at home. In fact it is one of my favorite things, first having fell in love with it in Jamaica on our honeymoon. It is kind of become a “special occasion” dish for us. We had it for our one year anniversary, and most recently for my birthday. So I knew I wanted to make a version of ceviche for this special occasion. I found and used a recipe for Shrimp and Scallop Ceviche from The Ravenous Couple which was excellent. It was the perfect course to enjoy with our champagne toast. The beauty of this dish is how flavorful it is, and also so easy to prepare. It would surely be a hit at any dinner party – elegant, beautiful and fresh.

Next up was Bergensk Fiskesuppe, Bergen Fish Soup. I had received a soup starter from my buddy and Norwegian food blogger Siri, from Transplanted Baker. I was saving it for a special occasion, and this was the perfect one. I added fresh clams to it, and it was very much like a clam chowder, creamy and delicious. Again, with minimal effort. Everyone loved it. All that needed to be added was a bit of cream, water, a splash of wine and the clams. Bring to a boil and serve. Perfect and delicious! I am going to have to get Siri to send me some more!

The third course was Zeppole con Alici. These are basically Italian donuts. However, there is a surprise stuffed inside these Calabrase zeppole or zippoli – they are not sweet like donuts, but savory, and filled with anchovies! I grew up with these, and they were the treat that everyone in my family looked forward to the most at my aunt’s Christmas Eve dinners. Since I entered the world of food blogging, I had seen various recipes for zeppole, but never our anchovy filled ones, until one day, I read my friend Michelle’s post on Bleeding Espresso . Then again last year, here . Apparently Zeppole con Alici, or anchovy filled zeppole are common among the Calabrese, and she grew up in PA with them as a child too. Michelle and I have a lot in common besides being born in PA and growing up with Calabrese relatives! But this post was a revelation to me! Finally a life long mystery solved! Especially since my Italian husband had never heard of these! He loves them now too!

Although my great aunt never did give away her secret recipe, my mom did a bit of recon this year, and found a recipe for zeppole dough. Although you can use Michelle’s – it is pretty much the same one – except her’s has a splash of wine added…yum….We had a great time making zeppole – all of us got in on the action, me, my mom, cousin Michelle and Roberto! Even the pups and cat were excited, smelling all the anchovies. These turned out differently than the zeppole of our youth, but were still delicious. So good in fact that we ate the entire plate of them!

The next course was the main dish, a Stuffed Flounder prepared by my mom. She made a stuffing of toasted pine nuts, bread crumbs, Italian parsley, and capers. Then used it to stuff rolled fresh flounder fillets. You then bake them in some white wine, until flaky. We served this with an easy spinach salad. They were delicious – an easy and great way to make fish. I will certainly do it again in the future.

The last dish was dessert – Trifle with an Italian Twist and no fish included. A few weeks ago, I was watching an episode of the Barefoot Contessa and she was making a holiday meal for a blogger – for her blog (lucky girl). For dessert she made a Red Berry Trifle with a cognac pastry cream, and it looked delicious and festive. I adore trifles – well any desserts made up of cream and custard is a winner in my book! So I decided to make a version of her trifle, except with more Italian flavors. Instead of cognac cream, I made frangelico cream. I also put frangelico in my whipped cream, and skipped the sugar. I also skipped the strawberries, opting for full on raspberries and sprinkled it with more frangelico instead of framboise. And I opted for Pandoro – which is a plain version of Panettone, in lieu of pound cake . Pandoro is usually served this time of year in Italy. The trifle was delicious. So delicious that my cousin, Michelle, who vows that “eating any dessert not made with chocolate is a waste”, ate every bite and loved it!

We had a really great night, full of laughter, and good times! This is how I remember Christmas Eve’s of yore and so I guess it all worked out!

Lately I have been trying to make breakfast more interesting. We seem to be always on the move lately and so I have been experimenting with portable breakfasts that taste good and use up what I already have on hand. I found a recipe for apricot-almond Dutch babies – a kind of muffin with a soft center. You use a lot of whipped egg whites and it has a wonderfully creamy batter. I decided to turn the muffins into a cake that I would fill with the rest of a jar of apricot preserves and the rest of the Nutella from World Nutella Day. We have given up Nutella for a while because they now have switched to palm kernel oil in their recipe – and we are definitely off of that! If you missed my rant on the subject, click here. But I did make an exception for World Nutella Day.

So anyway, this little cake was born. The photos didn’t turn out too great, but it was very satisfying for breakfast and lasted about a week, which was perfect. Hope you enjoy it!

METHOD:

1 ¼ cups flour – I used half unbleached white and half whole wheat
3 TBS light brown sugar
¼ tsp salt
1 cup skim milk
2 large eggs, separated
¼ cup apricot preserves, plus more for filling
2 TBS unsalted butter, melted
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp almond extract
2 TBS pine nuts

INGREDIENTS:

Preheat oven to 400 F. Combine flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Whisk together milk, egg yolks, preserves, butter and vanilla in a small bowl. Stir into dry ingredients. Beat egg whites for about 4 minutes until soft peaks form and fold into the batter. Grease a round cake pan and fill with batter. Sprinkle pine nuts on top and bake for about 25 minutes or until center is cooked. Unmold and let cool. Once cool, cut in half, horizontally and spread with Nutella and Apricot preserves.

(This is not the actual picture of the dish, but I don’t know where they have gone – so imagine these eggplant slices rolled around the cheese (which is dotted with fresh herbs) on top of couscous instead of salad!)

We got some really cute eggplants at the Farmers Market recently. I didn’t really have a dish in mind for how to prepare them, but I love eggplant, so I knew I would get inspiration at some point. They sat in the fridge for about a week, and then I got a bright idea! Recently we had gone out to eat and I had a rolled, stuffed eggplant dish that was breaded in panko and fried. I didn’t really want to fry the eggplant, but I wanted to roll them and stuff them. I love the combination of chevre and eggplant, and I had some nice chevre in the fridge. I stuffed the eggplants with fresh herbs and chevre and broiled them in the oven. I drizzled balsamic-pomegranate reduction over top and served it with raisin and pine nut dotted couscous. The flavors were really magical and took my taste buds to new heights! I was really pleased with the way the dish turned out – I think the combination of herbs really made it. This is a great dish for the last days of summer and I am betting it would be phenomenal on the grill!

INGREDIENTS:

3 small eggplants
8 oz. chevre
handful of fresh mint leaves
handful of fresh basil leaves
handful of fresh parsley
3 scallions
salt & pepper to taste
olive oil to drizzle before broiling

1/2 cup balsamic vinaigrette
1/4 cup pomegranate syrup

couscous cooked according to the package, drizzled with olive oil and mixed with 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts and 1/4 cup raisins.

METHOD:

Cut the eggplants lengthwise in thick slices. Place them in a salt water bath for 30 minutes. In the meantime preheat the oven to 350 F. After 30 minutes rinse and squeeze out the water. Place slices on a cookie sheet and bake for about 10-15 or until soft. Place a TBS of chevre and a pinch of herbs on each slice and roll up the eggplant. Secure with a toothpick. Set the oven to broiler setting.

In a small sauce pan combine the balsamic and pomegranate syrup. Heat up on medium – low and reduce by half.

While the sauce is reducing, place the eggplant rolls on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Broil on high for about 5-7 minutes or until golden – be careful not to melt the cheese too much!

Serve over couscous. Serves about 4.

Here is my O Foods recipe. If you have not heard about the O Foods for Ovarian Cancer Awareness month contest, please check the details on my last post!

Quick breads are like cake to me. I am not a big fan of icing and so for me the subtle sweetness that quick breads offer is perfect for me. I love the idea of banana bread and there are variations on banana bread wherever you turn, but I am not a lover of bananas. For some reason I just never really got into them. I find that their taste overpowers everything and for me they mess up and overwhelm and ruin the flavor of smoothies to quick breads. I understand that they add sweetness and bulk, and are great for binding ingredients together. But I am still plagued by childhood memories of the banana in my lunch box that made my turkey sandwich taste like bananas, and my chips too!

So when I came across a recipe for oatmeal date carrot mini muffins, I knew that I wanted to experiment with making it a quick breakfast bread. It is chock full of great ingredients that are healthy and delicious! I changed it up a bit using what I had and it turned out moist, flavorful and filling. This is a great bread for breakfast or snacking and perfect for an afternoon spot of tea (or coffee).

This is adapted from floridagirlinsydney‘s blog Deviously Delicious
Don’t forget to start coming up with your O Foods recipe!

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/4 cups quick cooking oats or rolled oats
1 1/4 cups milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup hazelnut oil (or rice bran oil)
1 carrot finely grated
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup of chopped dates and raisins mixed
3/4 cup white chocolate chips (leftover from a DB challenge – figured they wouldn’t be as offensive in a bread)
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

METHOD:

Combine oats and milk in a large bowl and let stand for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F . Grease the bread pan. Into oat & milk mixture bowl, add egg, oil, brown sugar, grated carrot, chopped dates, raisins, white chocolate chips, pine nuts and coconut.

In a separate bowl combine regular flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix to combine.

Add the bowl of dry ingredients to the large bowl of wet ingredients and stir only until everything is moist (do not over stir). Pour batter into bread pan.

Bake at 400 degrees F for about 55-65 minutes . Stick a toothpick in the center, if it comes out clean- it is done. Remove from oven and let cool – remove from the pan.

Cook times for other types of breads/muffins:
(this is floridagirlinsydney’s standard guideline chart she use for all bread/muffins)

10-12 minutes for mini muffins
30-40 minutes for mini-loaves
55-65 minutes for regular loaves
10-15 minutes for mini-muffins
25-35 minutes for regular size muffins

(Stick a toothpick in the center and if it comes out clean, they are done).

Nothing says comfort food like a Tropical Storm!

We are still waiting for the storm to hit. Latest news reports say that it will not have enough time out in open water to turn into a hurricane once it hits land again, which is good, but it will hit land again as a tropical storm, right here in our lovely town of Saint Augustine. We are right on the coast here in Northern FL. Less than a five minute walk from the water. We have already seen rising waters and some low lying areas (well everything is low lying around here) have flooded and the storm isn’t even here YET. We should be expecting it tonight or more likely tomorrow. Everything is closing up and our county has declared a state of emergency. The National Guard is already here, thankfully, and we live on the second floor, so we are staying put. We are ready with supplies and we have just moved everything off the porch. The wind is starting to pick up, but nothing severe yet.

The summer has been pretty rainy here especially since the end of July, which is like monsoon season in Florida – it rains everyday, and even if it doesn’t rain, a large part of the day is gray and the sky rumbles.

So much for The Sunshine State.

My appetite begins to get confused – from inside, looking out it seems like a fall day, but as soon as you step outside it is sweltering hot and sticky humid. Even so, during the first week or so of this, my brain temporarily goes from cooling summer foods, right back to the land of comfort food. Which in this case, was Pasta al Forno – or oven backed pasta, much like a Mac n’ cheese of sorts. This dish was creamy and satisfying – chock full of flavors and textures. Roberto took one bite and he was transported back to childhood memories of tortellini with peas in bechamel. This may be a new family favorite. It certainly does hearken to rainy days under a blanket with a good book and glass of rich red wine under a Tuscan sky… Or perhaps just a storm safe closet!

But maybe this will even stave off Fay!

Italian Style Mac n’ Cheese

INGREDIENTS:

1 package penne pasta

3 TBS olive oil
5 small sweet Italian multi colored peppers, diced
1/2 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup white wine
6 green olives, sliced
1 9 oz. pack of frozen artichoke hearts, thawed and chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/2 cup frozen peas
2 strips of bacon, chopped

Pesto-Bechamel Sauce

3 TBS butter
2 TBS flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
2 TBS pesto

Bread Crumbs, Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top

METHOD:

Cook pasta for about 6 minutes in boiling salted water. Remove while still kind of hard. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 400 F.

In a large skillet, sautee the peppers, onion and garlic over medium high heat until they begin to brown. Pour wine into skillet and turn heat down to medium, allow to reduce down all the way.
In a large bowl combine sautee with olives and artichoke hearts. Set aside.

Make Bechamel Sauce. In a small saucepan, heat up milk. In a larger sauce pan, melt butter. Once butter is melted, quickly whisk in flour, making sure there are no lumps. Cook for a minute or two until it is a light brown color. Immediately begin whisking warm milk in, slowly. Keep whisking until all milk is incorporated. Whisk a few minutes more, while it thickens. Once it is the right consistency, add pesto and mix thoroughly Set aside.

Butter a large baking dish. Dump pasta into dish. Add sautee, pine nuts, peas, and bacon. Stir to mix. Then add the bechamel and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Sprinkle bread crumbs and parmesan cheese over top, cover with foil and bake in the oven for about 35 minutes. Remove the foil, and place under the broiler for about 2-3 minutes to brown the cheese. Serve hot and enjoy!

We have been getting ourselves re-familiarized with pasta lately. Due to rising food costs, I have been trying my best to stretch things, like our veggies and meat and following in the footsteps of my Grandparents, pasta often comes to mind. There are a lot of great pasta types out there now that are more healthy than your garden variety enriched “white” pastas. Roberto, like a good Italian, has always been big on pasta meals. Before he met me, he used to eat pasta every single day of his life.
For myself, I have always joked that I am not a good Italian, because I have never really been a big pasta eater, even less so as I got older, because it really likes to stick to certain parts of my body that I really wish it would not. But now, with all these varieties to choose from, I have found healthier versions.

Not all pasta is created equal…

One of my favorites is De Boles. Not only is De Boles organic and all natural, but it offers gluten free and whole grain varieties as well as my favorite, the ones made with half Jerusalem artichoke flour and half semolina flour. This means it has a lower glycemic index. Jerusalem artichokes also contain inulin which is a pre-biotic (not pro-biotic – although those are good too) that stimulates the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract that in turn aids digestion and lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. Texture wise, it is just like regular pasta. You are unable to tell the difference. Take it from the Italian and the Italian American.

When using regular pasta, my favorite brand was always Barilla. It always cooks perfectly and is the preferred brand of most Italian households. The company was founded in Parma, Italy and has for 130 years been family owned and operated. Also in 2007 they were one of the six out of 5,000 globally recognized companies evaluated as “most ethical”. So you can also feel good about eating this pasta. Another reason to feel good about eating Barilla is that they too have some out with new healthier varieties with their Barilla Plus – multigrain line of products. Barilla is also way cheaper than De Boles, so it is often what we have in our pantry.

I wanted to try some different pastas that are not traditionally Italian in taste, to spice things up a bit. So recently I made a curried penne. I had finally found an Indian market near where my mom lives and I picked up some great spice mixtures and had a hankering to try them out. I am a huge yogurt lover, and yogurt (which contains PRO-biotics) is found prominently in Indian cuisine, so an idea for this spicy pasta started coming together. However, I doubt you would ever find this on a menu in any Indian restaurant! It is a Leftover Queen classic

Curried Penne Pasta

INGREDIENTS:

1 box of penne pasta (of your choice)
3 TBS pine nuts
1 TBS olive oil
1/2 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 cup frozen corn
1 /2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup thinly julienned carrot
2 Roma tomatoes
1 tsp cumin
2 TBS curry powder
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp Garam Masala
pinch of cayenne pepper
handful of baby spinach
1 cup Greek style yogurt

METHOD:

Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add pine nuts and toast about 2-3 minutes or until browned. Remove immediately and transfer to a small bowl. Add oil to skillet and ad onions, garlic, peas, corn, and carrots. Cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and all the spices and the spinach. Cook all together for about 10 minutes for all the flavors to marry.
Drain the pasta and add to the skillet with the yogurt. Toss together and top with the toasted pine nuts.
Makes a real lot.

It is no secret that I adore hummus. I think if I had to pick a favorite food, hummus would be it. It even won us a bottle of rum in Jamaica! We played a newlywed game when we were on our honeymoon there and they asked Roberto what my favorite food was. When he thought about it, the most logical answer was hummus. When they asked me to guess what he said, I had to think about it for a minute. I mean I love all kinds of foods and have so many memories in my mind of different food experiences, it is hard to imagine choosing just one. But when I thought logically about what Roberto would have answered, I knew it had to be hummus, because it is the most consistent staple of my diet. I eat it almost daily, and it is not only filling and delicious, but it is really healthy and easy to grab when you have the munchies. Not only that, you can be as creative as you want with it. Purists may balk, but I say be adventurous with your hummus! So when I read that Tony Tahhan’s Taste of the Mediterranean event this month was focused on Lebanon (one of my favorite cuisines) and Hummus (my favorite food), I knew I was in!

I adore the original, unadulterated hummus. The one with just a few essential ingredients: chick peas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and salt, maybe a little water to thin it out. There is nothing better….except for when you add a little somethin’ somethin’. For this event, in honor of hummus and Jamaica, I have decided to add some special Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce we got while there (because I adore it) and adorn it with a few pine nuts for some added texture! bring on the heat!!!

INGREDIENTS:

1 can of chick peas, skinned (skinning them gives you that creamy texture!)
½ cup tahini
1 tsp sea salt (or to taste)
1 tsp cumin
juice of 2 lemons (or more to taste)
2 cloves of garlic smashed and finely minced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
as much scotch bonnet pepper sauce (or any other hot sauce – smooth or chunky) as you can handle. Harrisa would go great in this!
2 TBS toasted pine nuts for taste

METHOD:

Place all the ingredients, except the olive oil, hot pepper sauce and pine nuts, into a food processor. Blend until it is the desired consistency. (I prefer a smooth hummus, but hummus can also be chunky. If you prefer a really chunky hummus, I recommend using a mortar and pestle). Start streaming the olive oil in slowly. Add water by the teaspoon if the hummus is to dry or pasty. Place in a serving bowl, drizzle with hot pepper sauce, a little more olive oil and top with pine nuts.

Eating healthy is a way of life, some may argue that it is a boring way of life. They might say, food is about passion, and that you shouldn’t dumb down that passion through making it healthy all the time. I am certainly one to splurge but I really believe that some of the healthiest foods are the tastiest. For me there is no question of what I would prefer given the choice of a nice juicy marbled steak with Bearnaise sauce or a sushi roll. Who can argue that fresh vegetables from the garden are something most of us look forward to every year?

A list of my favorite foods include cheese, beans, hummus, olives, yogurt, papaya, salads of all varieties, avocados, almonds, artisan bread, ice cream and nice fresh sushi. So for me, healthy does not equal tasteless or boring – to me it equals fresh, unrefined, un-tampered with goodness. “Healthy” means something different to different people. For me, it is about moderation and the above qualifications are more important than calories and fat, calories and fat are natural, they are in everything, there is good and bad and they are important for a balanced diet. For me it is more important that my food is free of chemicals, hormones, additives, preservatives and dyes. So when you think about that, a diet of all my favorite foods fit into my category of “healthy”.

Here is another Leftover Queen classic! It was one of those meals which kind of cleaned out the fridge of Farmers Market finds and the pantry of dry goods . I made this when we were spending a weekend at home and had some time to kill. Usually if we are home on the weekend, we spend one day making and prepping food for the following week. We made bread, ice cream, sauces and usually a nice meal – that will produce leftovers!

When we made this we had some for dinner one night and then the next day, ate it like a cold salad at the beach. It is so flavorful, healthy and full of goodness. This made quite a lot so we had lots for lunches the following week.

This is one of those recipes that you can substitute anything you like. For us, the combination of the shrimp, pine nuts and raisins backed by the curry flavor was amazing! I am submitting this in Ben and Ivy‘s Fat Chefs or Skinny Gourmets event promoting healthy foods. I wanted to show that cooking healthy is a lifestyle and not something that needs a lot of planning to achieve. If you have a well stocked pantry full of whole grains, legumes and whole wheat pastas, as well as a freezer and fridge full of vegetables that have already been washed and are ready to use, cooking healthy is a breeze. You can create awesome stir fries, couscous, hash and healthy pasta and bean dishes in a flash.

Healthy foods are not boring, especially when you are using local, seasonal produce that is at the height of flavor and freshness in tandem with what is already in your pantry.


Shrimp Curry Couscous

INGREDIENTS:

1 box of instant whole wheat couscous – perfect to have on hand for a quick meal
2 TBS olive oil
2-3 carrots cut in small dice
½ red onion
½ can of organic garbanzo beans
¼ cup pine nuts – toasted
¼ cup raisins
couple handfuls of frozen peas
handful of assorted greens – beet and chard
1 TBS curry powder
1/2 tsp cumin
½ tsp tumeric
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
8 oz. extra large raw shrimp

METHOD:

Cook the couscous according to package directions. In a large skillet, heat the oil and sautee the veggies, peas, raisins and pine nuts together. Add the spices and sautee until veggies are tender and raisins are plump. Add the shrimp and cook until pink and look like a “c”. In a big bowl toss the sautee with the couscous and serve. Can be eaten hot or cold.

Summer is here and with it comes a fresh plethora of herbs! If you are like me, sometimes you get really excited about that and can’t help but scoop up big bunches of fresh herbs when you see them at the Farmers Markets or the grocery store. Then you end up throwing half of them away after they have sat rotting in your fridge for days on end…well that is just no good. Herbs are a wonderful way to get more greens into your diet and many of them also have other health properties – not to mention they improve the smell of ones breath!

So what does one do with an over abundance of herbs? On a recent trip to the Farmers Market I procured rather large bunches of Arugala, Basil, Mint and Dill. I brought them home, filled up some vases with water, stuck the herbs in the vases and put them promptly into the fridge to use whenever the mood took me. Then, said herbs, sat all pretty in my fridge for about 2 weeks. I had barely touched them. They were still looking pretty good, but I noticed some were starting to take a turn for the worse. I knew if I chopped them in salads or put the mint in iced tea, it wasn’t going to cut it and I was going to end up losing much of the rest. So I took drastic measures. I pulled everything out of the fridge and looked at it on the counter until I figured out what to make with them. Here is what I came up with!

ARUGALA

I love arugala pesto. I am Italian, but since we are from the South, pesto was not something that we traditionally ate. So I don’t feel bad about straying from the original here. I actually first learned about Pesto from my Dad, who is Scottish! So I have no Italian loyalty to pesto.

There is just something so beautiful and appetizing about all that green. The taste is so fresh and earthy and I am so glad that it has become a part of my diet. Arugala pesto, beyond that verdant taste also has a pungent peppery-ness . I find it is a welcomed change from the traditional basil pesto, because I do like a bit of bite in any kind of sauce.

To create this Arugala Pesto, I pretty much just make a standard pesto, but instead of basil, I use arugala leaves. I am entering this in Tony Tahhan’s Taste of the Mediterranean event, featuring none other than, Pesto!

Arugala Pesto (I also made basil pesto with my basil)

2 cups fresh arugala leaves, packed
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese – the good stuff here, you guys!
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts – toasted
3 garlic cloves

Place arugala leaves in food processor and whirl until well chopped. Add the nuts and garlic, blend again. Add Parmesan cheese; blend while slowly adding the olive oil, stopping to scrape down sides of container. Process pesto until it forms a thick smooth paste. Serve over pasta, or mix with a little balsamic for an awesome salad dressing! Pesto keeps in refrigerator one week, or freeze for a few months. Here is a trick from my dad – put the pesto in ice cube trays, and pop out one or two pesto cubes when you need it! Buon Appetito!

MINT

For the mint I made a nice batch of mint syrup and then with the leaves I used to make the syrup, I made a mint paste.

For the Mint Syrup:

1 cup water
1/4 cup raw cane sugar
1/4 cup raw honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup fresh mint leaves

Place the first 4 ingredients into a small sauce pan. Heat over medium high heat until boiling. Turn off heat, add mint leaves and steep for 15 minutes. Strain the syrup into a container and place in the fridge.

For Mint Paste:

mint leaves from mint syrup
1 TBS Greek Style Yogurt

Place these in the food processor and whirl until blended. I put mine into a plastic ziplock bag and right into the freezer for future use.

I plan to use the mint syrup to make mojitos and to put in iced tea and perhaps some brownies down the road. With the mint paste, I froze it right away to make a delicious mint ice cream – one plain and one with mango.

Or make Moroccan Mint Tea! Shelly from Flying Foodies, writing about a recent trip to Marrakech, reminded me of this delicious summer (yes, SUMMER) drink!
Check out a recipe here at MoroccanRecipes.com

DILL

With the dill I made a nice batch of Baba Ganoush – with an eggplant I also had laying around from the Farmers Market. Then I used more dill with more mint in a wonderful and refreshing Lentil Tabbouleh.

For the Baba Ganoush:
(this picture is from another baba ganoush recipe I made a while back, but since baba is not the most beautiful specimen to photograph, I am using the good one I already have!)
1 eggplant
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
2 TBS fresh dill
juice of one lemon
salt and pepper
1 tsp each of cumin and sumac
2 cloves garlic
oil oil (about 2 TBS)

Throw everything in the food processor and blend until smooth.

For the Tabbouleh:

1 cup bulgur
1/2 cup brown lentils
3/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
4 large Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 a large cucumber, seeded and diced
1/4 of a colossal red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup of mint
2 TBS dill
2 large green/spring onions, chopped
salt & pepper
olive oil
fresh lemon juice

I was inspired to make this dish because of a discussion going on on the forum about bulgur. I got a great tip from Summer, at Mimi Cooks about using lemon juice or a combination of lemon juice and hot water when soaking bulgur for tabbouleh on the Leftover Queen/ Foodie Blogroll Forum. I thought that sounded great. I always have bulgur around and while I was in the pantry, I spotted the lentils and decided what the heck, I’ll throw them in too! I also then went and cleaned out my veggie bin and thew in whatever I thought would work. I generally make my tabbouleh traditionally, but today I made it in the spirit of using things before they went bad!

So I followed Summer’s directions and I soaked the bulgur with about 3/4 cup hot water and about 1/4 cup of lemon juice to the one cup of bulgur. It is a 1:1 ratio, liquid to bulgur. In the meantime I put on some lentils to boil and then went to chopping all my veggies and herbs. I also made some lentil burgers, which I will be posting about in an upcoming post about Veggie Burgers.

Speaking of which does anyone else use an Ulu? My cousin brought one back for me from a trip to Alaska, and I love chopping herbs with it. It is the Native Alaskan equivalent of a Mezzaluna. Too cool!

Anyway, at this point my bulgur was soaked and my lentils cooked (about a half hour). So I threw everything into a mixing bowl and then drizzled the whole thing with a good quality extra virgin olive oil and the juice of about 1 lemon. It was delicious!

Here we go folks, another Fabulous Farmer’s Market recipe! This is really fun and challenging. Stay with me because I still have two more meals to show you – still from out FIRST Farmer’s Market Adventure! This weekend my Dad and Stepmom are coming to visit and guess where we are going Saturday AM – you guessed it! I will try to get some better pictures of the market itself…this was the best I could find from our maiden voyage.

Anyway, I digress…

I am a die hard beet fan. I just love them. Maybe it is their beautiful color, maybe it is their sweet taste, maybe it is the fact that they just SCREAM health. Whatever it is, when I see good looking beets, I am all over them, I can’t resist.
My favorite way to prepare them, is to roast them. It just really brings out their sweetness – it is like making vegetable candy. I could eat em by the bowl full. But me, I love the entire beet, I love the sweet purple root and I also adore the bitter greens. Nothing goes to waste – just the root if it is still attached.

I got gorgeous beets at the Farmer’s Market. In fact this dish is the dish I made the night we went to the Farmer’s Market. I just could not wait to dig in! I paired the roasted beets with goat cheese and pine nuts and served it on a bed of baby greens and wilted beet greens. It doesn’t get fresher than this guys. We just loved this salad. We ate along side crusty country bread also purchased at the Farmer’s Market dipped in reserve Greek olive oil from Kalamata. It was heaven.

INGREDIENTS:

8 fresh beets
2 TBS olive oil
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried thyme
salt & pepper to taste

nice bunch of fresh beet greens from the 8 fresh beets
1 cup baby greens tossed in good olive oil and balsamic vinegar
goat cheese
2 TBS pine nuts, toasted

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 425 F. Wash and trim beets, leaving their skins on. Wash and reserve beet greens.

Line a cookie sheet with tin foil. Place beets on cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary, thyme, salt & pepper. Shake cookie sheet so that beets get coated with oil and spices. Place in the preheated oven and roast for 45 minutes or until beets are fork tender.

Take beets out of the oven and peel skins off. Note: If you care about your nails, which some people do, wear gloves, or you will have red dye under your nails for days afterwards. Do not run under water as it will wash away a lot of flavor. Cut into quarters. Drizzle with good extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper. Toss and set aside.

In a skillet warm 1 tsp olive oil. Add beet greens and cook until wilted.

To plate put baby greens down, top with wilted beet greens, spoon on top roasted beets with dressing, goat cheese and pine nuts. Serve. Bliss Out.

I am so pleased to be able to end this fabulous event we have been doing for the last 2 weeks! Thank you so much to Gina for writing this amazing cookbook, to Shelley for organizing the event and to Sara, Ilva and Michelle for participating and putting your culinary genius to work! This has just been so much fun and I am so happy I was able to participate!

Now on to the final recipe.

Fresh bay leaf also known as laurel, has a long history in the cuisine and culture of the Mediterranean. Crowns of bay leaves were used by the ancient Romans to award heroes in battle and the winners of sporting contests. It is used so much in Mediterranean cuisine and adapted so well to the Mediterranean climate that many think it is native to that land although it originates in Asia.

I am very interested in the history of food and especially how culinary influences from other cultures can change the cuisine of another country through the trade and communication between the two places. Food is an amazing tool that brings people together, teaches about other cultures and places and warms the soul. Bay leaf is just one of those ingredients – you see it in the cooking all over the Mediterranean – from Greece to Italy to North Africa you can taste its influence and see how it traveled as trade increased between those continents and empires.

I had never thought of using bay leaf in a sweet dish, so when I saw this recipe in Gina’s cookbook: Dolce Italiano, for Vanilla Bean and Bay Leaf Custard, I knew I had to try it. It would be a new flavor combination and something different from what I was used to. These are the kinds of recipes I am always drawn to. Some people are chocoholics, I on the other hand am a “vanilla-o-holic”. I love all things custard and cream. So the fact that this was a custard recipe, just put me over the edge! Roberto got his Chocolate Salami, this one was all about me!

Now if you are new to this Dolce Italiano contest that is going on, here are the quick details. You can win a signed copy of Dolce Italiano, by visiting these blogs below and commenting on the posts about the Dolce Italiano Recipes. Since I am ending this event – what a great honor I might add, I will make it easy for you. Here is where you have to go and comment:

Sara – Ms. Adventures in Italy made:Mosaic Biscotti & Sicilian Pistachio Cookies

Ilva – Lucullian Delights made: Chocolate Kisses & Cassata alla Siciliana

Michelle – Bleeding Espresso made: Ricotta Pound Cake & Sweet Apple Omlette

Shelley – At Home in Rome made: Chestnut Brownies & Chocolate & Tangerine SemiFreddo

Jenn – The Lefotver Queen made: Chocolate Salami & Bay Leaf Vanilla Custards – See it right here!

Please visit these sites and comment on those entries listed above for your chance to win the signed cookbook!

On to the recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

2 ½ C Heavy Cream
½ C Whole Milk
¼ C plus 2 TBS Granulated Sugar
1 Vanilla Bean (I did not have vanilla bean, so I used 2 tsp of Pure Tahitian Vanilla Extract)
3 Fresh Bay Leaves
5 Large Egg Yolks
Pinch of Kosher Salt (I used Sea Salt)
Toasted Pine Nuts for Garnish

METHOD:

Place the heavy cream, milk and ¼ cup of granulated sugar in a medium saucepan. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds out. Add the seeds and bean to the pan, along with the fresh bay leaves. Whisk the ingredients together briefly, place the saucepan over medium heat and heat until the milk scalds (bubbles slightly). Turn the heat off and let the mixture sit for 30 minutes to infuse it with the flavor of the bay leaf.

Preheat the oven to 325 F and position a rack in the center of the oven. Arrange 4 ounce ramekins or custard cups in a roasting pan large enough to accommodate them with a ¾ inch space in between.

Place the egg yolks in a large bowl and whisk them with salt and the remaining 2 TBS of sugar. Remove the bay leaf and vanilla bean pod from the cream mixture and discard them. Whisk the cream mixture into the eggs in a steady stream. Strain the custard through a fine meshed sieve to remove any clumps of egg yolk.

Evenly divide the custard among the ramekins. Carefully add enough hot water to the roasting pan to come 1/3 up the sides of the ramekins. Cover the roasting pan with aluminum foil, tenting it slightly so the foil does not touch the top of the ramekins.

Carefully place the pan in the oven and bake custards for 35 minutes, then rotate the pan to ensure even baking. Bake them for another 15 minutes and then check for doneness. The custards are finished when the centers are no longer liquid but jiggly like gelatin. Depending on your oven it should bake for a total of 50 minutes to one hour. It took my oven 65 minutes to reach the right consistency.

Remove the pan from the oven, remove the foil and allow custards to cool in the water bath until you can safely pick them up, and then allow them to cool at room temperature. Chill custards in the fridge for at least 4 hours before serving,

If desired serve each custard with a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts.