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Thursday, 31 October 2013

Conjuring things up with Google for Halloween



With today being Halloween, the folks at Google got creative with today's doodle. It allows you to join a witch in her cave to brew up some potions that lead to different scenes.

Join her in her lair with her recipe book and see what you can cook up!

Select your ingredients carefully, as they will affect the outcome of your potion. 
 
I conjured up some ghosts dancing around the full moon. 
 
Have fun today, and see what you can conjure up of a more edible variety.

Saturday, 26 October 2013

Apple, Potato and Egg Bake


Last night as I was getting ready for bed I realized I wanted to try a different mix of flavours. While I know russet patatoes are better for baking than white patatoes, it was the latter  which I had on hand. I had just seen a recipe for carmalized apples as a filling for crepes and I though to myself, “What would apples together with potato taste like?"

This morning I was up long before sunrise and after checking out a few things on the web, I headed to my kitchen.
I grabbed a baseball size white potato, and a slightly smaller apple, it think the are courtlands, though you could use what ever type of apple you have a fancy for. Availability will vary in different parts of the world so take that into consideration. I rinsed off the potato and cut it into thin slices less than a quarter inch thick. I cleaned the apple of its core and few dinged spots on its skin after washing it and cut it into slices as well. I took my wonderful 6 inch cast iron skillet and put on the stove with a about a table spoon of olive oil in it, and got it warmed up with the heat on medium-low, while at the same time I preheated my oven to 375 degrees Farenheit. 

The first thing to go in were the apples slices wanted them to release some of their sugars, right after that I put the potatoe slices on top and mixed in about a cup of sliced and cleaned leek. I covered it for a wile so that the leeks would get soft. This was for about two minutes and I got out my cummin, turmeric and parsley flakes. Uncovering the pan I sprinked about a third of a teaspoon of turmeric, the same for the cumin, a dash of cayenne pepper. I mixed everything up and cooked it all for another four minutes or so, ensuring that all the ingredients were covered with the mixture of spices. Doing so gave all the ingredients a bit of a start regarding both cooking, and giving a change for their flavours together with those of the spices, a bit of time to interact.

Then I removed about six slices of potato, cracked two eggs over the remainging goods in my skillet, and covered the eggs with the potatos that I had removed just a minute before. Once that was done, it went into the oven and I should be taking it out in about 15-20 mintues after it went in. [This first section was actually written while it was all in the oven!]

Once it came out of the oven and I plated it, it looked like this:

Dish is 8.5 inches across
The potato used was a bit bigger than the one pictured.


 
Half an hour later

After enjoying my breakfast of the above there are some adjustments I would clearly make to make this a bit more of a flavourful dish. The first being would be to add a second small apple for the following reason. When I took a piece of apple, leek and potatoe together on my fork and placed it in my mouth the explosion and combination of tastes was really something different and I really enjoyed it. So in short the ingredients would be as follows and could easily serve two individuals who like a smaller breakfast.

1 potato – about the size of a baseball
2 small – apples
1 cup – clean and sliced leek so you have ringlets
2 medium – eggs

Extra virgin olive oil – 1 tablespoon

1/2 teaspoon parsley
1/3 teaspoon cumin
1/3 teaspoon of turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)
`

The instructions are the same as outline above while my meal was in the oven cooking. Don't be afraid to try different food combinations. Below is a table of what you get as nutritive value for what I am from now on going to call the APE Bake. The values below are approximations based on each ingredient included in the recipe. The last four values are estimations of my recommended daily allowance based on my own personal dietary needs, and are here only to serve as a guide.

Calories
691
Carbohydrates
94 g
Fat
25 g
Saturated
6 g
Polyunsaturated
3 g
Monounsaturated
13 g
Trans
0 g
Cholesterol
325 mg
Sodium
168 mg
Potassium
1861 mg
Dietary Fibre
11 g
Sugar(s)
4 g
Protein
20 g
Vitamin A
20%
Vitamin C
120%
Calcium
14%
Iron
60%

So if you have an idea of things that might go together, don't be affraid to try it. Now that I think back at my meandering mind of last night, I was going to use some cinnamon as well, as we all know how well cinnamon and apples go together! Oh well, there is always another day! This is not the first time that I have tried different combinations of types of food and have been surprised. Have a great weekend everyone! I know it is miserable outdoors but I have to get out for a walk, I will just have to dress approriately for the the weather!

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

A Question From a Friend



Late last week I received the following statement and question from an ex-pat friend of mine in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

"I came to the realization the other day that I need to lose some serious weight. Except for cutting out bread and beer, I'm not sure what to do. You know what resources / foods we have here. Is there any approach you'd recommend?"

The first steps

The first thing I want to address is what my friend calls resources/foods in his question to me. While he may not realize it, much of the food in Ukraine that is available is probably available to him is closer to real food than many of us have in the West have had as we have been subjugated to a great deal of processed foods over the last forty years. In fact the idea of processed foods and what was provided to the average population, in my speculation, is that many of the companies providing rations for the troops in Europe provided a great deal of food stuffs and food like products during the war effort against the Nazis. The money they were making must have been a pretty penny and when the war was concluded they needed a new market for these food stuffs. Yes, I am using the world food stuffs here on purpose because they were no longer real food.

While I never did military duty in Canada, I can't recall one of my friends in either Canada or the United States of America who did, who ever actually peeled potatoes during that part of their stint in the army. On the other hand, I had plenty of friends who served in the Soviet Army before Ukraine's Independence who understood what it was to clean potatoes for their fellow servicemen. I am not saying that serving in the Soviet Army was better, but the fact that their society was not solely motivated by profit of big conglomerates, did clearly have an effect on the quality of their food supply; and at this point in my life I would say that it was for the better.

While, I spent nearly ten years living in Ukraine and understand what is available in the stores, at its markets and in general, the decisions of selecting real food will truly depend on my friend. He will have to learn to make healthy eating choices. We have all heard that more is not necessarily better, it's the quality that counts.

If he realizes that he really does have to lose some weight as I did a year ago, I think he will have to make some sacrifices. Some of those sacrifices, unfortunately for him will be those that I also made! Bread and beer! For the most part the bread that my friend has been eating is closer to real food than most of all the foods combined that North Americans eat. It is bread which is is produced from whole wheat that has had minimal processing, and this is much better than eating “Wonder bread”! Nonetheless, while I am not a nutritionist or dietician, research does seem to suggest that bread and something that some are calling “Wheat Belly” is caused by an intake of bread and wheat based products.

Last year, I had to travel to Germany for business. It was during that period that I basically took a close to a three month vacation from a North American lifestyle, I knew that I couldn't simply diet, but needed a complete lifestyle change. When you have a hard time bending down to tie your shoe laces sitting on the edge of your bed, you realize that you really do need to change. That trip was an ideal opportunity to make a change in my life. We all have to realize that change doesn't come without some sacrifice!


Ukraine's cornucopia of options

Wherever you live has a cornucopia of options when it comes to making healthy food choices. How you make those choices does of course depend on your budget, though nonetheless, if my friend wants to loose weight then he will have to make some sacrifices for about six weeks or so. I understand his love of beer; however, in order for him to pull his system into one that recognizes what he is feeding it he will have to give up beer, and bread for some time. I did it, it didn't kill me and I know for a fact that if he is fifty pounds lighter he will be much better off if the lift/elevator decides it is on strike for a few days due to the lack of service in the country. 

I would like to tell my friend that it is worth taking a break form beer and any alcohol, I did this while living in Ukraine and I lost about 10 kg during that period. I did so for about three weeks, and in the end it made it easier for me to walk everywhere in the city, and get to my fifth-floor flat when the lift was not working. There were a few other things I abstained from, added new things to my diet that I had not been eating before. The first of these was Oatmeal in the morning, on occasion with with some dried raisins, chopped up figs, or other fruits that I had available – and never adding any type of processed sugar to it. Last year when I was in Germany I would often prepare some polenta and supplement it with some bio-yogurt and fruits.

While in Ukraine some of the other things that I ate or didn't eat were very carefully selected. These were selected by a friend of mine who practices non-traditional medicine, though I full trusted him and still do. He is a gifted individual, and if you take the time to listen to him you can gain a great deal of knowledge. 

One of the most important things I learnt from my friend was to understand the health of my stomach. What what microbes were living in there and how it effected my health. There were things I could and should not eat. One of the should not's were wheat products, though buckwheat or hrechka as we all know it in Ukraine is not related and is fine.

When it comes down to the number of different factors, the most important one that few talk about in diet or lifestyle change regimes is the most normal and one that can make sense to everyone. In order to loose weight, not only do you have to have a healthy diet that doesn't screw up your natural body functions; you must also find a way to be more active – burn more calories than you consume and the only real way doing this is to become aware of both your caloric expenditure as well as your caloric intake. It is only when the later is lesser than your expenditure of calories will you see a loss in weight. In the long run, the only way to loose weight and keep it off is a lifestyle change. That change for me came in the form of making better food choices and becoming more active.

A different mode of commitment

Clearly my friend is willing to cut out beer and bread, though it is more than that. It comes down to making selection of different foods. I am far from an expert in this realm but I do know from experience that when I am more active physically, I don't crave, what we can call -”bad foods”. Those are the ones that we prepare in bad ways, and not so much in the way they are in their raw form. My friend is on the right track, but unless you don't get out and move, things aren't going to go well for you in the long run.

He asked me for an approach that I would recommend, and this will vary from every individual though I believe that he is more or less in control of what we call our working day – very much like I am – so I will recommend the following and what I have found works for me. He will have to do a little bit of research to determine his BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate though I have sent him in the right direction with that link for understanding, but you won't have to do the calculations that is what you have a BMR calculator for. In addition to his BMR he should also know what his ideal BMI or Body Mass Index number is currently and what he should be aiming for. I still have a long way to go to reach my ideal BMI, and my goal is for that to happen sometime next spring to early summer.

Based on a great deal of reading, and self examination, I became to understand that the most important fact was caloric expenditure versus caloric in take. There is no other way for this to work in a metabolic process. After all our bodies are nothing but big chemical plants that try to process what we put into them! If we consume a great deal of empty calories that do not contribute to your body's operation, then we are clearly not heading in the right direction. In short you have to maintain the proper balance between what you are consuming, making sure that you are getting the protein, vitamins and nutrients your body needs as well as the carbohydrates needed.

Since I have practically eliminated all processed foods from my diet, there is seldom a time that I have a craving for something. I treat myself to things I like on occasion, but I make sure I don't over do it. There are plenty of tools online that can help you understand your caloric intake, when my friend or anyone else starts to understand that and really how much you really need to eat, and how much exercise you need to do in order to slowly but steadily loose weight that is when the real changes start to happen. It was my understanding of these two elements that lead me to experimenting more in the kitchen, because I realized that eating healthy food didn't mean that it couldn’t or shouldn't taste good.

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Human food not fish bait


Went out for my walk this morning and it is very clear to me that autumn is definitely here to say, and what follows this season is the one many of us dread, while others make the best of winter. As I returned home I walked around the back of the house, picked some of the Swiss Chard from the garden, and a few of the yellow cherry tomatoes, one of those to items would become a part of my breakfast, which I had been thinking about during my walk. Today it would be something totally experimental, and therefore in my books fun. I wanted something warm, filling and good for me, on this what had turned into a cloudy and rainy Montreal day.

Some childhood memories

When I was young there were two uses for corn meal, one was for eating and the other was as a bait for carp fishing. Anytime I cook up Mămăligă or what the Hutsuls in the Carpathian mountains would call Banosh, conjures up some great memories of spending time with my father in the kitchen, be it because we were making breakfast together, or because I knew that we would be using that mămăligă as bait for fish, a type of fish that most of North American's simply didn't understand, nor seemed to care very little about as a food source. Somehow, there is a stigma about eating fish that are bottom feeders, though this is really selective discrimination, because while carp dos fit into this category of fish, no one seems to have a problem with eating bass, cod, halibut or sole
 
For anyone who has ever fished pound for pound a carp will put up one heck of a battle once hooked. Over the years that my father started fishing for carp in Canada, even before I was a twinkle in his eye, he understood that mămăligă could serve as bait for these fish. Over time the method of preparation of it as fish bait varied, from ensuring it was a gummy paste that would hold it's form around the fairly large hooks, or a combination of cooking it with cornstarch and baking it into like a one centimetre thin pancake. The later method seemed to work much better and held its form better than any of the other methods I remember us using when fishing for carp. 
 
In short mămăligă to me is what many others in the English speaking world would call polenta. The way I have developed to cooking it over the years for human consumption is much different than its preparation to be used when fishing for carp, but it might also get you hooked. Though my father's method seemed to serve its function well, because we would catch some one to two dozen carp during the fishing season, where probably just as thrilled of our mămăligă, until they realized they were hooked, as I am when cooking it now with a totally different purpose in mind.

The goods and process

Unlike banosh, I used to make while still living in Ukraine, mămăligă and polenta are both prepared on a water based liquid which could be a vegetable or other broth, or in many cases simply water. Polenta is primarily corn meal however, I like to do a few different things with it other than simply cook it up and eat it as a porridge, and that is what I did this morning.

There are plenty of different types of polenta from slow cook to quick and ready in a very short period. I happened to have just enough for an nice wholesome meal. While we haven't hit any sub freezing temperatures in Montreal yet, there is this certain dampness that is starting to permeate our lives and this being the case, I decided this morning that I would be using the oven as part of my brunch creation. I turned the oven up to 375 degrees Fahrenheit before I started the prep of all my other ingredients. Remember, timing is extremely important in the execution of any project – and this includes cooking. In doing so it would and a bit of warmth to our kitchen along with the fragrance of something that would get my olfactory glands working and ready to enjoy a meal well deserved.

The other things included here on this day are simple things, as I have posted in places, that I love simple foods that anyone can cook and not something that will break your bank.

Unlike some things that take a long time to prepare, polenta even the slow cook type can be fulling cooked in between 6-8 minutes from my experience. So today we have no long or short cook parameters. I had a lovely wholesome meal in about 35 minutes total, and I don't mind spending the time because I find preparation of food to be a healing and meditative process.


Olive oil – about a table spoon

Polenta – corn meal – 1/2 cup

Yellow onion – 1 medium - yeild about 2/3 of a cup diced

Swiss Chard stems – about 1/4 of a cup chopped into 1/4 inch pieces

Turmeric – 1/4 teaspoon or to colour and flavour

Eggs – 2 medium

Unsalted butter – about a table spoon

Cayenne pepper – just a smidgen

Basil – fresh leaves about a tablespoon when finely chopped

Before having started to cook my polenta, I diced up my onion and cut off the stems of the Swiss Chard which I had picked from the garden. In a six inch diameter cast iron skillet, I started cooking the onions in about half table spoon of olive oil, nice and slowly, they would continue to cook later together with everything else in the oven. Shortly after adding my polenta to the boiling water I added the stems of the Swiss Chard to the now softening onions. I could see how the natural dies of the chard began to effect the colour of the onions. It only took about two to three minutes to that point, once the two ingredients had somehow come together naturally, it was time to turn off their heat source.

It is such experiences that help us understand now our ancient ancestors began to understand how to colour the cloth that they had began to weave into clothing could be changed by the natural dyes in certain plants. Many of us take too much for granted in this day and age, and as a result we make big problems out of those that should not exist at all.

Just to the point before when my polenta was about half cooked I emptied the cup or so that I had with the remaining liquid into the mixture of my onions, chard and turmeric. I mixed all this up ensuring that it was all one nice mass, the polenta becoming that kind of more of an orange colour then the yellow of the turmeric. While mixing the ingredients together I added the other half table spoon of olive oil, knowing that this would be going into an oven and wanting to be able to separate it all from its cast iron baking vessel.

With my wooden spatula I carefully hollowed out two little trenches, or maybe hen holes would be a more appropriate term as I would be laying one egg into each of these. Once I broke the egg shell and place the egg and its yolk in the first hen hole, I could see how the latent heat was cooking the egg white. I repeated the process with the second egg, and then like a mother turtle covered my eggs with the polenta from around the sides of the skillet. Once I was ensured that they were covered and safe from the demons of the oven world, I placed my dollop of butter between those two little mounds and topped it off will a little cayenne pepper.

Into the oven it went! And baked for for just about 18 minutes at max. Had I wanted runny yolk eggs, 12 minutes would have been sufficient. In any case, experiment and have fun in your kitchen. Don't be afraid to try new things. New foods, new spices; something simpler in our very complicated world.

Monday, 21 October 2013

Hummus with a bit of a bite...


Yesterday as I was writing up my long story about how to use what was on hand I had a number of different types of beans cooking. The black turtle beans were to be used for dinner this evening, but the chick peas and white navy beans were going to experience a different fate.

They were both going under the rapidly spinning blades of my food processor, together with three cloves of garlic, some cold pressed virgin olive oil, and a few red hot chili peppers. Two to be exact!

And while I know all the hummus aficionado’s will lambaste me for not including tahini, I believe in using what is on hand and not running around the face of the planet to satisfy tradition. We have to remember that not everyone has the budget or access to certain products.

I had cooked up all my pulses yesterday so this morning when I got up I really wanted to get those things into a more spreadable form. While I have read people who go t the trouble to take the husks off of all these legumes using all kinds of methods, from high pressure water, to giving them all a good going over in a bath of water in order to get really smooth hummus, that is a complete waste of time, and possibly are removal of a good portion of dietary fibre we should be consuming.

The main goods...

Primarily I cooked up a cup of dry chick peas and as a cup of white navy beans the other day. I put them in separate bowls and the following morning I figured that they would complement one another in two different ways.

Take a look at this data that the World's Healthiest Foods has compiled:

Food source – 1 cup or 164 grams
Nutrient and
% DV
Nutrient and % DV
Nutrient and % DV
Nutrient and
% DV
Nutrient and
% DV
Chick peas
Aka Garbonzo beans
Molybdenum
164%
Manganese
84.5%
Folate
70.5%
Fibre
49.8%
Tryptophan
43.7
White Navy beans
Fibre
76.4%
Folate
63.7%
Tryptophan
56.2%
Manganese
48%
Protein
29.9%

Though if you want to see just what else these two different types of beans pack, take a look for yourselves on the two different prime ingredients of my version of hummus. Over the last number of years we have been hearing a great deal about the importance of dietary fibre, so in putting together a hummus that you can use as a dip or spread on your toast in the morning you will be contributing in a positive way to your well being. Oh and yes, some other hummus aficionado will want to slaughter me for using garbanzo beans as opposed to real chick peas – apparently there is a difference, but I am certain they could never tell the difference in a finished product.

The bite...

While so many talk about the smooth texture of hummus, that is fine; though, somewhere along the line you may want to be going over the edge and and give your hummus a bit of a bite.

My way to do this was to to add nearly double the usual amount of garlic about two cloves to the pound of beans, as I never like hummus to simply taste like garlic. I can eat that raw without a problem. Though I did add two dried red hot chili peppers to the mix, to make sure it had a good bite. In this case the two different types of cooked beans come to close to two pounds, and thus I used four cloves of garlic.

While some people have some chopped parsley with their hummus I decided to do something different. Yes, you know you want to see a picture of this, but it won't happen right away, because of some technical problems I have been having lately with my phone... But I often throw things like steamed Red Swiss Chard and beet greens into dishes sometimes having interesting results as well as nutritive benefits. With what I have left in my garden at this time of year and with frosts just around the corner I will be using these for a soup in the next day or two, so none of that in today's hummus.

Under the blades

So what is it that we have here that is going under the blades to be turned into a puree of sorts? As I mentioned earlier, I will be listing long cook ingredients first. The were for the record:

Long cook ingredients

Garbanzo beans or chick peas – one cup dry

White Navy beans – one cup

As I mentioned the softness of beans will be attributed to the length of time that they cook, so take your time cooking those two types of beans. You can do them in tandem in two separate pots, or one at a time. They both have different cooking times, to soften them up, but it is all up to you. Don't be afraid to be in the kitchen and start learning about how the foods you prepare for yourself cook – time, temperature and the effect both of those have on the produce you are preparing to feed yourselves!

Once these are cooked and nice and soft, they will all fall victim to the blades of your food processor, together with the other ingredients that are not cooked at all.

Virgin olive oil (cold pressed) two table spoons

Garlic – four cloves

Dried Red Hot Chile Peppers – two whole de-stemmed

Lemon juice – one freshly squeezed

Execution

I eye ball about two table spoons into my food processor, then I drop both the garlic and the red hot chili peppers into the food processor while pulsing it. My desire is to get those two ingredients with a bit of a bite mixed in well with the oil. In turn I slowly alternatively add both type of beans trying to ensure that they become a paste. This was the first time using this particular food processor with this volume of beans, and there were a few times that I had to take the top of and push some of the surviving beans down closer to the centrifugal forces of the rapidly spinning blades. Ensuring they were torn asunder and that they became part of what we call hummus.

It was during these moments of removing the top that I would drip in some of my lemon juice, adding a bit more fluid to the mixture and lending it some viscosity. Within about ten to fifteen minutes my hummus was ready. It was time to clean up and enjoy the fruits of my labour.



Saturday, 19 October 2013

Making good with what's on hand!

Yesterday I took a quick look in the refrigerator to see what I had on hand, in fact I kind of felt like Old Mother Hubbard felt when she opened her cupboard, though I wasn't looking for a bone for my dog, but something to put to use before for it would spoil and I would have to be throwing it away. This probably happens more often to people who have gotten used to eating out of a can, box or something else that they for some reason seem to think has an infinite shelf life. When they buy something fresh, they think they can put it in the fridge and it will keep forever, however this isn't the case. The refrigerator simply delays the spoilage of certain foods for different periods of time.

What's in the cupboard?

I always have a number of containers of different legumes on hand as they have become an important part of my new and healthier food lifestyle. At the given time I have about a pound or two of each of the following: black turtle beans, brown lentils, plain green lentils and green Du Puy lentils, pinto beans and white navy beans. My mother has asked me more than once, “Why do you buy so many beans?” and has often says to me: “How and why can you eat beans, don't they give you flatulence?”

The answer to her first question is simple. I like variety. Each of these different type of pulses has a different taste and different characteristics. I also tell her that they are high in dietary fibre, protein, and contain many vitamins and minerals. Regarding the answer to the second question she poses, I tell her it's all chemistry and how they are prepared, and what spices and other foods I eat with them she doesn't believe me. I understand why she doesn't believe me and I long ago decided it wasn't worth my efforts to read her lectures about food. She, like I had become victims of our circumstance in a number of different ways.

For the most part my father loved to cook while he was still with us and I he didn't like things in cans, he liked real food! I probably made my first crepes with him in the kitchen was I about ten or eleven years, old. I had gone berry and mushroom picking with him, we had tapped birch trees for their sap and had gone fishing. We knew where most of food came from. If we had any type of beef it was because my father together with his good friend, would find the farmer who raised healthy beef cattle, and together they buy an entire head to have slaughtered, butchered and packed for freezing.

During my childhood years I can remember the onslaught of advertising of frozen TV dinners, different food stuffs in cans and boxes all aimed at home-makers to make their preparation of meals for their families more convenient. That was one of the first circumstances which effected the way my mother looked at food. The second circumstance was the loss of my father when I was a teenager. It was a very disruptive event in the life of our family, and bit by bit anything that was healthy slowly crept out of regular diet. This happened both due to both reasons of economics as well as the perceived time saving factor of getting your food out of a box, created by the major food processing concerns and the food like substance manufacturers of the day.

So yesterday from the cupboard I pulled two ingredients: pinto beans and basmati rice. The first thing I did was put about a cup and bit, into a bowl and topped it off with filtered water. Covering the beans completely, I have read a lot and even seen some top top chef's suggest this should be done to eliminate some of the lectin and phytates and stachyose found in beans, which will to different degrees contribute to flatulence, because of their difficulty to digest. Remember, gas in our digestive tracts is a “byproduct of bacterial fermentation”, the less material that is there to ferment, the less flatulence you will have.

However, I think that the greatest amount of chemistry that does take place is in one's digestive track, and once your have developed the proper chemistry in your stomach, and you properly chew your food, which is the first step in the digestive process, the level of flatulence will decrease. In addition, when I cook beans I often include either and ginger and turmeric as part of the finished dish, as these two ingredients aid in the digestion process.

Not quite bare – so let's get cooking

While the refrigerator was practically bare, I had a few leeks that I decided to make use of along with some yellow onion, garlic and what I have left of cherry tomatoes from the vegetable garden by the side of the house. Just about enough cherry tomatoes to fill a cup with once they were halved. As for the ingredients to add some taste to whatever it was that I was going to be cooking up there was cayenne pepper, turmeric, and a little bit of fresh basil, that I have growing in a small pot and it's always in the kitchen. This was my first stab at growing fresh herbs, but now I'm certain I'm going to be planting a few more to go along with my fresh basil. When they are fresh they just taste so much better than when they are dried.

There are a few different aspects of the ingredients of what I ended up putting together yesterday, but one of the most important aspects I have learnt to appreciate over the years is understanding how long different foods take to cook. Hence, we will call that timing! And timing just doesn't only apply to how long certain things take to cook, but when you will be adding certain spices to your food. At times you may want to spice things earlier in the cooking process as well as towards the end.

A good example of this, though it doesn't directly apply to what I cooked up yesterday, is that I would never bother adding fresh parsley or dill to a soup at the beginning of the cooking because all of their taste and aromatics would be gone by the time you are ready to serve your soup. Whereas, depending on how it is being cooked, garlic that is still fresh will have its nice sharpness though if you put a few whole clean cloves into a soup, their flavour will infuse the other ingredients in your soup with quite a different and milder taste.

The ingredients and putting it together

While it may seem simple enough, because I am a storyteller and not a professional cook,
I am making a decision today that I will try to stick to in the future as to how I write about the foods I'm preparing. That decision is to list the main ingredients in order of those things which take the longest to cook first, and then leading down to those things which you add later on, based on either their properties – particularly with spices, and their cooking times – other ingredients.

Long cook ingredients

Pinto beans – 3/4 cup

Medium cook ingredients

Basmati rice – 2/3 cup

Quick cook ingredients and spices

Cayenne pepper – ground, amount according to heat desired on the Scoville scale

Garlic – two cloves, cleaned, finely chopped

Ginger root, raw about one and half table spoons – peeled, finely sliced and cut into thin strips

Leek – one, cleaned, sliced 1/2 inch to 3/4 pieces, separated

Yellow onion – one medium, cleaned, finely diced

Turmeric, ground – one teaspoon

Yield: For two adults

Yield: For two individuals each

Calories
Carbohydrates
Fat
Protein
Cholesterol
Fibre
476
51
1
7
0
7

As you know from above my pinto beans have been soaking in water so at this point I drain of the water add fresh water and add them to my pot for cooking, with enough water to cover them completely. Some friends of mine who are all thumbs in the kitchen have often asked me. “How do you know how long you should cook things?” A lot of this comes with experience, but that experience truly started to develop once I was living on my own and developed a a desire to make things other than macaroni and cheese. I went out and bought myself a paperback edition of The Joy of Cooking published by Plume. It has served me well and in retrospect, now that I think about it, it was my first cook book and somehow maybe the Irma S. Rombaurer's non-traditional style of culinary writing may have rubbed off on me.

In regards to cooking beans, you want to make sure the are soft enough to bite and chew as a rule and depending on the type of bean they will take different times, based on factors such as their age, their fluid levels when you start the cooking process, and their size. Though I have told most of my friends who ask me about cooking beans, that if you can boil water you can cook beans. Having soaked my pinto beans in water did cause them to expand a bit as the absorbed some the water, and there are other beans such as navy beans and Lima beans which both usually absorb water at a greater rate than pintos and will expand much more.

Patience is a virtue

Don't try rushing your beans by turning the heat up to high on your stove. My experience is that beans are the best when slowly simmered. So patience is definitely a virtue with any types of beans. From my reading and experimentation in the kitchen over the last year, my beans have always been the tastiest when allowed to simmer slowly. I will later on in my personal food journey, take you back to some soup recipes whose two or three main ingredients were different types of beans. This soup or stew, which took as long as three hours on top of the stove, was wholesome tasty and full of goodness for that cool November night when I was in the heart of Catholic Germany.

 At the beginning you can bring your water up to a boil at first just to give them a jumps start, then turn them down to simmer and let them stew away. Check them on occasion and stir them tenderly. Quite often I do select a pot which is a little too small for the volume of beans I have, though at other times, I used whatever vessel I had at hand and if need be about 30-40 minutes into the cooking process, given that some of the fluid had boiled off, I would add up to a cup of room temperature water.

Every once in a while I always pluck out a bean or two on the end of a spoon, and check it out. I check it in two different ways. The first test is purely mechanical. As we have all observed, beans have a thin skin on them, which is the membrane which kept all the good stuff in place before they were dried for long term. If you simply blow on the bean you have on your spoon and that membrane separates itself from the body of the bean, your beans are cooked. If it doesn't you can let cook it off a bit and pop it in your mouth and give it a chew for texture. If you like it kind of al dente then you can check a couple more to see if they are of the same consistency, if they are and to your liking, then get those things off your fire.

Multitasking is nothing new

While it may have not happen the first time, as you become more experienced in your kitchen you will understand when to start cooking the other ingredients. As time goes on you make better judgement calls, and you start to understand that you should have started cooking one of your ingredients sooner than later. If you have ever watched any of the cooking shows that are on both on PBS, the main networks and cable, you will very quickly understand how much multitasking is going on in any kitchen. This multitasking is so related to understanding you ingredients, how long they need to cook and at what temperature.

I don't know how many of you had to experience beef liver or any other liver as children that was as tough as shoe leather? If I am not mistaken, as a result of this you hated liver. In short it wasn't the fault of the person who was trying to provide you with protein and iron and all the other good things that liver is supposed to contain, but their lack of understanding of how it should be prepared. Liver is one of those things that if over cooked does become as hard as shoe leather. So, please take note, liver and many other things have their optimal way of being prepared. This also applies to the beans and rice that make up the core protein and carbohydrate component of this meal.

Some time during prior to or during the period that you have started you beans on their merry way, you will have wanted to start to prep your quick cook ingredients: garlic, ginger, leek and onion. This all goes pretty quickly and with time you can do all of this within ten to fifteen minutes.

Garlic is a simple clean and prep. Use a wide bladed kitchen knife, and crush the clove by applying pressure to it the clove under the blade and pressing down on the blade with the heel of your hand. You will then be able to easily clean off the outer skin, and also trim off parts that may have gone bad during storage. Just remember, just like canned goods don't last for ever nor do natural products. Once you have it cleaned, slice it in fine pieces – little one millimetre pieces that will cook rapidly, and mix in with all the other ingredients.

Ginger, has some incredible properties. When I was quite young, I would hear older people say: “If your stomach is upset drink some Ginger Ale!” While it may have been laced with a lot of sugar, there was some truth to their statements. As you read above, I like to mix such food with when I am eating legumes as it helps with digestion and settling the stomach. I have seen some foodies take the outer part of the root of ginger off with the end of a spoon, but I on the other hand always try to select big roots when I am shopping to make it easier to clean with a sharp blade.

The leek, as sibling of garlic and onion, has a much more dispersed structure and not as dense as a clove of garlic. This makes it something special during the cleaning process. Not that I intend on sounding rude or crass, but making sure your leeks are clean, involves a little fingering.

Leeks like other plants have growth rings in order that leek so well cleaned from dirt and sediment that it has gathered in the field while developing what I usually do is the following: first, I remove and of the green part of the leek by peeling it down to its root. This I discard. If you have a compost heap, or if your municipality has pick of for biological matter this is the stuff you want to go into that bin. Then I slice the leek against its grain. If this were a piece of lumber and a great deal bigger I would probably want to be using a cross-cut saw, but a good sharp kitchen knife will do in this case. Cut your leek into pieces that are about a centimetre or half an inch. Toss away the root with all your other waste, and place what you have sliced up some place that you can fill with water and start using your fingers.

With all that leek floating in water, slowly use your fingers to push out each different layer of the leek from its outer leaf. Do this until you have done it to all of the pieces, a process which I have lovingly named – fingering. At times you will find dirt and grit between some of the leaves. I assure you that is not stuff you want to be eating, while it may not kill you, your leeks will taste much better without the dirt and grit. Try to remove the excess water. Do it any way you wish but I have found that a salad spinner works well.

Yellow Onion, this is another quickie! Take your knife and cut of the extremities of the onion. Then cut a slit down the side of the onion from the top to bottom. Having cut this slit you can easily remove the first outer skin, though do not remove to many of the layers. Some research has shown that some of the best nutrients of the onion are in the first outer layers. Once you have have done that, slice your onion against the grain. Then simply by cutting perpendicular against the grain on the slices you end up with nicely diced onions.

Rice and beans – Oh Yeah!

By the time you have had your beans cooking, and have done all your prep, do a quick check on your beans as suggested above. You may have found them ready earlier in the process. For example, I am looking at creating hummus from a number of different types of beans. I found that navy beans cook a lot faster than a number of other beans that I have worked with.

Rice, is the boon or bust of anyone in the kitchen. It either comes out like mush or something else. Sure some people will go out and spend a poor man's ransom on a rice cookers, but that doesn't help you in becoming a better cook. First of all I don't have money to throw away on unnecessary conveniences for inept cooks, and secondly I would never do so. It must be my Scottish/Irish/Ukrainian roots! And I will tell you right now, rice is not part of their regular diets.

What, I has worked well when I prepare any type of rice, is to make sure I have a pot or skillet with a cover. Though while many don't take this into account our elevation above sea level can have its varying effects. Whatever type of rice you use, before you add liquid, you can toast the rice a little with some olive oil or butter. It will give your end product a different taste. The proportions of liquid to rice are are usually two to one... Cooking medium – water, vegetable or other stock to rice. So with two thirds of a cup of rice in our case, we use one and a half (1.5) cups of water. I usually temper my rice with either the butter or oil a bit first. The spices I want to flavour the rice usually comes later, for the reasons I spoke about earlier. The best success I have had is when I bring it all to a boil, and then turn it down to simmer for about twenty minutes.

Ideally, if I have calculated what has to be calculated in my so to speak Nadsat gulliver, I would be able to conjure up a rice that would be perfect. And in the last number of years, since I have understood how important is was of staying undercover, my rice has been delectable!

Quick cook and full of yum...with what is above

With your rice cooking it is time to throw your quick cook into a frying pan with some good wholesome olive oil. Starting with the most dense elements. Your ginger, garlic and onions, followed very shortly by your well fingered and cleaned dry leeks. To decrease the cooking time I often cover all these ingredients in a frying pan, with the top of a some other cooking vessel in order to trap some of the heat, and steam that is escaping from these foods. Let them cook in their own juices!

By the time that all those ingredients are playfully creating an orgy of flavour, your rice and beans should be ready.

Try to monitor your rice to make sure you do not burn it. It does happen sometimes but if you pay attention over time you will learn your stove, its heat and what you are cooking on it. If you have managed not to be over zealous on checking your rice, it should be nice and fluffy, and not soggy and super moist – soggy in short. In time you will learn how to get your rice just right, without spending money on a rice cooker.

When your beans are ready drain the water... and put them in the pan with all those quick cook things... Before putting in your cooked rice, this is when I usually add my cayenne pepper and turmeric, and give a a very good mix amongst the vegetative ingredients. Ensuring that everything is coated in a sea of bright red and yellow. Once I have done this, I mix in the rice and also try to ensure a homogeneous mixture of all ingredients. This becomes more apparent as the rice starts to take on the bright yellow of the turmeric. Sometimes this may take up to about five minutes or maybe longer depending on your portion size. In the end you have a tasty and nutritious meal.


 Sure, my description of preparing this little delicious tidbit took some time, nonetheless, I hope anyone who tries this out will give me feedback about it.  

Wednesday, 16 October 2013

Pasta Tomato and Sardine Bake

Today is UN International Food Day, and with that being so, why not share something simple I whipped up yesterday after being out for my second walk of the day.

I was feeling a little peckish and I wanted to make sure I was going to be getting my protein that along with other nutrients are important during any lifestyle change. During this last year I have been doing a great deal of reading and re-educating myself regarding the foods I eat. While I will not be giving you everything I will be including links to things I believe you should know about, because I know that in understanding them, it has helped me change. Yesterday, I wanted something relatively quick and something I could make with what ingredients I had on hand.

Ingredients:
For one very filling serving of about 850 calories total or it could easily be split in half

Cherry tomatoes – 1 cup halved
Yellow onion – 1 medium diced
Garlic – 1 clove finely chopped
Extra virgin cold pressed Olive Oil – one table spoon
Pasta – 1 cup cooked
1 medium egg
1 can sardines in water
Turmeric – 1/2 teaspoon
Oregano – 1/2 teaspoon
Ground Flax Seed – one or two tablespoons
Butter – unsalted 1 tablespoon

While it may be nearly 850 calories, it is a complete meal! And if you take the time to read on you will understand why!

The first thing that I saw was a bowl full of cherry tomatoes on the counter. Well a cup of those would clearly give me a greater part of my daily requirements of vitamins C, A, K, E; potassium from the potassium citrate, lycopene,lutein and zeaxanthin. Sure a lot of small things and big words but all good for you, and that was just the first of things that were going to be cooked up together.

I never balk at using garlic and onions in anything I cook and today was going to be a multistage process, though still child's play regarding how it is all put together. Those two ingredients would also provide me with a number of good things for my body. Including allicin vitamins B6 and C, dietary fibre, manganese, molybdenum, potassium, selenium and calcium. There there are plenty of other good things in those to ingredients to this dish, but I though I would give you a few of the primary ones.

I figure, I could do my garlic, onions and tomatoes in a pan with about at table spoon of extra virgin olive oil as my my cooking medium, and while was doing this nice and slowly, I would set my water to boil for my pasta, and pre-heat my oven to about 375 degrees Fahrenheit or about 190 degrees Celsius. As my finely diced onions and chopped softened up in the hot olive oil I turned my attention to cutting the cherry tomatoes into halves until I was able to fill a cup with them. By the time I had this done, my water was just about boiling and ready for the pasta. So I mixed my halved cherry tomatoes in with my onions and garlic which were starting to take on a golden tint to them and they smelt divine.

Once my the water for my pasta came to a boil I figured I had enough pasta left for it to come to one cup ready pasta once it was cooked ale dente. So that went into the boiling water and I continued to stir my tomatoes while adding half a teaspoon of oregano flakes, and half a teaspoon of turmeric a spice used quite widely in Southeast Asian cuisine. Personally I have always loved the bright yellow it would provide to foods, and if you like ball park mustard that goes with hotdogs at the baseball game, you can thank turmeric for the brightness of the yellow in that mustard.

By the time your pasta is cooked your oven should be at the desired temperature, and your cherry tomatoes will have nicely mingled with your garlic, onions and spices. I have an affinity for using cast iron cookware quite a bit, and having lightly fried my onions, garlic and tomatoes in a six inch cast iron skillet, a greater portion of it would remain in there. However, before draining my pasta and giving it a quick rinse, I opened up the can of sardines and gave them a good mashing with the tines of a fork. Upon completion, the last mentioned task came next and the vessel in which I cooked my pasta was to become something to mix a few prime ingredients in before tossing everything in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Mixing it all up for baking

After draining my pasta, I placed into the pot in which I cooked the pasta, the following: the drained pasta, the mashed sardines, one medium raw egg, and two thirds of my cooked garlic, onions and tomatoes. I gave this all a heck of a mixing to make sure everything was well distributed. I wanted to make sure all the flavour of the spices had coated every last noodle, and there was a fairly homogenous mix of the ingredients, including the egg.

Once I had this all mixed, emptied the ingredients into the six inch cast iron skillet in which everything had so carefully been blended in. On top of that I added sprinkled my flax seed and topped that off with three dollops of butter from my one tablespoon of it. The butter is there to add some flavour and also to percolate throught the flax seed and add a little bit of a crunch to your meal. Food should not only taste good, it should have texture in your mouth!

After the twenty minutes in the oven to ensure that the egg was cooked and holding all the other ingredients to the pasta, it was time for lunch.

I enjoyed in immensely. A tasty combination of many different flavours. This is something that you should never fear in experiencing. Trying new food is like trying new music. You may not like it at the beginning, but it is much better than being addicted to garbage.