Editor’s note: This post is a “Real Food” recipe that follows the core philosophy of this site: Eat Real Food in Moderation. The idea is to find delicious, practical, seasonal alternatives to industrial food products. Of course, the recipes do not focus on low fat/low carb dietary ideas, so the key as always is moderation. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

Green corn tamales are a seasonal favorite in the American southwest, various areas of Mexico including Sonora and Veracruz, and even a few islands in the Caribbean. If you’re unfamiliar with green corn tamales, one of the hallmarks is the texture: where a traditional, well-made tamale is moist and cake-like, a green corn tamale is generally a little “wetter”. Depending on the version, the texture can range from nearly a creamy corn salad to somewhat like a thick custard. They are best made when corn is in season, generally from May to October in northern regions.

After doing some digging, it’s clear that there are a variety of theories on why they’re called green corn tamales. I’ve read ideas ranging from the use of the green husks to wrap them, to the fact that some include a non-traditional whole green chile (I highly doubt the latter as the reason). The theory I find most likely however is the use of fresh corn straight off the cob. Where “traditional” tamales rely on corn flour (masa) as the primary ingredient for the dough, green corn tamales generally use fresh corn as the main ingredient. The physical difference is obviously the moisture content in fresh corn, but I’ve also found that the flavor is (usually) slightly sweeter (particularly if the corn is ripe). The flavor also has an “earthy” quality to it that I don’t seem to get as much of in corn flour tamales. I also tend to think that the use of fresh corn for the tamale probably predates corn flour, but I don’t have any proof – it’s just a hunch.

Are green corn tamales worth the effort?

When I decided to try to make green corn tamales for the first time, I received a variety of responses from folks I knew who had made tamales before. But mostly it seemed that each comment echoed two themes: a) It is a LOT of work, and b) what time should I come over for dinner?

In making these tamales, I can confirm that they are right – there is a fair amount of work involved. But I would counter that it is no more work than many other traditional “real food” dishes we’ve tried so far (for example, authentic Indian meals we’ve prepared took nearly twice as long to prepare).

They are truly delicious, satisfying, and…did I mention delicious?

So the answer is YES. It is time consuming and does require some manual labor, but for me the payoff is well worth it.

One last thing…

I freely admit that I am far from a tamale-making expert, but I do love to eat them (big surprise). I developed a love for authentic tamales while living in Los Angeles for years, where abundant Latino culinary traditions are fundamental to the cultural landscape. These days I have some definite opinions on the qualities of a good tamale (translation, I’m rather picky at times), but I certainly fall into the Gringo category when it comes to making them. In fact as I made these, I really wished that I had my brother-in-law’s mother from Mexico looking over my shoulder and telling me what I was doing wrong – because truth be told it took a few tries to get them right.

Real Food Recipe: Green Corn Tamales

This version of the recipe happens to be vegetarian, but substituting beef or pork would be excellent as well. One of the great things about making tamales is you can really use any filling that suits your taste. Most typical savory tamales have shredded beef or pork of some kind, but I’ve found that this basic cheese and green chile vegetarian option is excellent (and does not require the extra steps of preparing the meat). Experiment; see what tastes good. For example, we recently had a Nicaraguan version of a tamale called a Nacatamal, and they used ingredients like a savory meat and asparagus with sweet plums, which was a great combination.

One alternative to try? Goat cheese and sun-dried tomato is excellent. And I imagine that a more dessert-like version would be wonderful as well.

Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

20 ears yellow corn, ripe and in season
1 package of corn husks* (optional, see notes)
2 cups medium grind cornmeal
1/2 cup unsalted organic butter**
1/2 cup organic shortening**
3/4 cup agave syrup (sugar also works if you don’t have agave)
1/2 cup cream
1 Tbsp. salt

Filling:
16  strips medium or sharp cheddar cheese
1 24-oz. can of whole green chiles

Parchment paper (optional)

Makes approximately 16 tamales

Preparation

Cut the ends of the corn off, leaving the husks easy to remove in large pieces. Reserve the husks and discard the silk. With the corn still on the cob, rinse each in cold water and pat dry. Cut the kernels from the cob.

In a blender, grind the kernels with the corn meal in roughy equal batches to make sure the corn meal is distributed evenly. The length of time in the blender depends on the texture you prefer, but we blended each batch pretty well until the hulls of the corn were mostly gone. Using a large spoon, mix the batches together in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, beat the butter with the shortening until the mixture is creamy. Add the agave, salt, and cream, and then mix lightly. Add the cream mixture to the corn and mix together well.

Assembling the tamales

On a piece of parchment paper roughly 12 inches square, place two large husks, overlapping them lengthwise so that the narrow ends are pointing outward. Your little tamale nest should be shaped something like an American football. Using a large spoon, spread the batter into the husk – somewhere around a half a cup or so depending on the size of the tamale you want. Add a piece of cheese and a green chile in the center, and then cover with more batter.

Roll the long edges of the corn husks over the tamale, and then fold in the ends to seal in the batter. Roll the tamale up in the parchment, and then twist the ends of the parchment several times to seal the package. You can also tie them shut, but twisting seemed to work just fine.

To cook, steam on a rack for about an hour depending on how you’ve packed the tamales. For us, I stood the tamales up on one end and packed them into the steamer pot. This increased the overall cooking time to about 1.5 hours, but allowed for many more to be cooked at once. To test if they are done, take one out and open it up carefully (the steam is of course scorching hot, so use caution). If the tamale pulls away from the husk in a single piece, it’s done.

One side note: I don’t believe that the parchment is strictly necessary. If you package the tamale properly in the corn husk, you don’t necessarily need the paper to wrap it in – you can use string to tie off the ends. But if tamales are not in your regular rotation of cooking, the parchment is a shortcut that makes it a little easier.

To Serve

One of the brilliant things about green corn tamales is they really do not need a sauce since they are by nature very moist. That said, a good fresh mango salsa is excellent with this version. Serve with a side of seasoned rice and black beans, or eat it by itself – it’s up to you. Tamales are typically served in the husk, so that the person eating unwraps the little package and enjoys the melting, comforting contents.

Notes

One of the great things about these tamales is they freeze and reheat very well, so it’s worth taking a little extra time to make a large batch. By freezing them, green corn tamales transform from real food into “convenience” food for later. Forget the frozen TV dinner or awful tasting Hot Pocket – opt for the homemade comfort of a tamale.

*Corn husks: To wrap the tamales, there are basically two options. Traditional green corn tamales use the green husks from the corn you use, which does work, though your success depends on both your skill and the size of the green husks you have removed. The second, easier alternative is to use pre-dried corn husks that are pre-soaked in warm water. I tried both ways and found that I had better results with the pre-soaked husks, as they are much larger and easier to work with. So, if you go with the easier choice, you’ll want to pre-soak the husks in warm water for at least 10 minutes. Dried husks can be found in ethnic food aisles at most grocery stores, and a package of 100 or so costs all of five bucks.

**Lard as a better alternative: The next time I make this I’ll use locally obtained lard (not the hydrogenated store-bought version), which not only has health benefits but is undoubtedly closer to the original recipe. For more information on the health benefits of lard, see this Seattle Times article: The Real Thing. The Weston A Price Foundation also has some excellent information on the subject.

All in all, this recipe was well worth the time and effort. I’ll be making another batch soon – so be on the lookout for a dinner invitation.

Thanks for reading.

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Since I’ve started making all of our own bread, having bread dough around has meant that pizza has become a staple for us. The great thing about homemade pizza is you are in control of the ingredients, meaning that you can eat very well using the pizza “format” for your meal.

Throwing a handful of fresh ingredients on homemade dough is not only simple, it is something everyone should know how to do. From start to finish, this meal takes no longer than ordering the delivery of an industrially produced pizza that generally includes ingredients that you can’t verify as being real food. At least, in my long, prior history of ordering pizza delivery, I do not believe I’ve ever asked the person who answers the phone whether their pepperoni has nitrates, which should probably be the least of my concerns.

In talking over dinner and evaluating the meal, my wife and I figure that in the last 6 months I’ve probably made over 100 pizzas at home, often as dinner for friends. The keys to this are the bread dough recipe from Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day, and a decent baking stone. That’s truly it. I generally make 2-3 smaller pizzas per meal, 1 for the kids (though I enjoy it too), and one that is a little more on the experimental side. I’ve made as many as 5 for one night of entertaining, serving them to guests as they came out of the oven.

For tonight’s dinner, the first pizza course was a classic tomato sauce and mozzarella pizza with artichoke hearts and olives. Believe it or not, that was the “kids” pizza; our kids love things like olives, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts – a fact that I attribute (science or not) to the fact that these elements are common in the food we eat, so our kids have developed a taste for them.

For the second pizza course, I took a few risks. Tonight’s pizza creation, the Ham and Creole Cream Cheese Pizza turned out exceptionally well – good enough that I thought I’d share it right away. Actually, given that I’ve been quiet on this site over the last couple of months (I will explain in an upcoming post), I’m going to call this December’s recipe. I’ll be returning to writing more soon, including a fresh batch of food suggestions, but for now you get pizza. There could be worse fates.

Recipe: Ham and Creole Cream Cheese Pizza

First things first: This pizza has nothing in common with low fat anything – and in my opinion, it’s probably best to let it stay that way. The key to enjoying this pizza is, as always, moderation. The richness of the ingredients makes this possible if you slow down a bit and listen to what your stomach (not your tongue) is telling you. That of course is easier said than done; but you will find that with a glass of wine and a salad, a couple of pieces will satisfy. And if after a 1/2 an hour you’re still hungry, have another piece! But if you play your cards right, you’ll have a great lunch of leftovers the following day. Or breakfast, if like me, you just can’t wait.

One other thing: The Creole cream cheese is important in this dish because it is lighter in flavor (and a different texture) than typical cream cheese. We were lucky this week because our raw milk supplier was also selling homemade Creole cream cheese, so that is where we found it. If you can’t find Creole cream cheese, Mascarpone is a good substitute, and is that much richer.

Ingredients

- Bread/Pizza dough: Either the Boule recipe or the Olive Oil recipe from Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day (highly recommended)
- Creole style cream cheese
- 1 yellow onion
- Good quality ham, cut into 1/4″ strips
- Goat cheese
- Calamata olives
- Corn meal

To prepare

With the baking stone on the center rack, preheat the oven to it’s highest setting (my oven goes to 550 degrees). While the oven preheats, form an orange-sized handful of dough into a ball (see the instructions in the book on how to handle the dough effectively), and let it rest until the oven reaches temperature. While the dough rests, prepare the toppings. Slice the onion and saute the slices lightly in a combination of butter and olive oil. Remove the onions from the heat as soon as they start to turn toward translucent – meaning slightly undercook them. The onions finish cooking when they’re being baked on the pizza. Slice the ham into strips.

When the oven reaches temperature, sprinkle the work surface and the dough with flour, and then roll the flour out to a roughly 12-inch circle. (I typically roll my dough out to about 6 inches or so, and then throw it to get it thinner, and because, well, it’s fun.) The dough should be about 1/8″ thick when you’re finished, with no holes. On a bread peel or the bottom side of a flat cookie sheet, sprinkle corn meal to prevent the dough from sticking, and then lay the dough on the peel or sheet. Immediately add the cream cheese – if you wait, the dough will shrink. Sprinkle the ham, caramelized onions, and calamata olives on top of the cream cheese. Using your fingers, drop good-sized pinches of goat cheese around the surface of the pizza according to your taste.

Slide the pizza directly onto the stone and bake for 7-10 minutes. Watch the pizza carefully once you reach 7 minutes, and let it cook until the surface starts to brown.

Note: You’ll notice that I didn’t specify the quantities of some of the ingredients. That is primarily because all of the toppings should be added “to taste”. We happen to love goat cheese, so we add it liberally. I find that roughly equal amounts of onions and ham is a good measure. But experiment and see what works for you.

To Serve

Serve while it’s hot, alongside a good salad. In our case the salad was spinach and romaine, blue cheese, pears, candied pecans, and an orange muscat vinaigrette.

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Editor’s note: Welcome to Almost Fit. This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing. Thanks.

With fall finally here, in many parts of the country it’s time to start pawning off garden-grown squash as fast as is humanly possible. Growing up in a squash-friendly growing zone, it was not uncommon to open our front door in the morning and find a paper bag full of homeless squash having been randomly delivered by a mysterious, mythical creature under cover of darkness.

These days, while we rarely have a visit from the Great Pumpkin or his lesser-known comrade, the Squash Fairy, we do seem to have an awful lot of squash growing, and have to act fast.

So other than carving faces in them or dropping bags of them off in the middle of the night on  neighborhood porches, what do you do with all that squash?

Like most things, if in doubt, FRY IT. Of course, the key is moderation, but squash has a way of filling you up quickly, so it’s a good option for a tasty fried indulgence.

This is a recipe that my wife makes, and we all feel it is a more than acceptable use of zucchini squash. Here’s what she says:

“This is a late summer, abundance of runaway zucchini version of Italian bruschetta.

We often miss a stray zucchini in the garden and within days, we have a rocket size squash on our hands.  When this happens, we love to slice it and fry it like you would an eggplant.”

Friday Fit Recipe #13: Fried Zucchini Bruschetta and Fresh Mozzarella

This recipe calls for a simple herb and flour dredge that really adds a lot of flavor to the zucchini. For this version of bruschetta, the zucchini replaces the traditional grilled bread. The basic tomato topping is also a great way to “use up” some of the tomatoes in the garden, particularly if you had a late ripening like we did this year.

If we have leftovers, we use them later, chopped up and put into soups or sauces. The flavor is an excellent addition.

[Ed. Update: Sheesh. So the original post did not show the recipe number (see the heading, above). I have had huge problems this week with my site due to "server abusers", and the loss of the script that automates this process is one of the casualties. My apologies for showing a little of what's under the covers. In other words, "Folks, move along...nothing to see here...."]

Ingredients

One large zucchini (approx. 3-5 inches diameter) sliced into 1/2″ thick rounds
2 cups of herb flour mix (11/2 c. flour, 1/2 c. masa or corn meal, 1 tsp each dry thyme, oregano or marjoram, basil and a pinch of ground sage, salt and pepper)
3-4 fresh vine ripe tomatoes, (preferably different varieties for color)
1 sm. sweet onion, preferably a Walla Walla sweet or cippollini, finely diced
Lots of fresh basil – about two large leaves per slice of zucchini
1-2 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
10 or so ounces of fresh mozarella

Olive oil for frying

Serves 4, depending on the length of the zucchini

Preparation

For the tomato topping: Seed and dice the tomatoes.  Finely chop the onion and garlic. Mix in a bowl and toss with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.  You can either finely chop the basil and add it to the tomato mixture, or you can leave the leaves whole and add them when you assemble the final dish (our usual preference).

Zucchini: Pat the zucchini slices with a paper towel to remove excess moisture. In a large cast iron skillet, add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, and heat to medium-high.  Coat one slice of zucchini at a time with the flour mixture and carefully place in the slices in the pan in a single layer.  Leave enough room in the pan so that the slices are not touching each other.  You will need to fry several batches.  Depending on how much you are cooking, you may need to add more oil to the pan between batches, letting the added oil heat before you add more slices.  Cook the zucchini for several minutes or until golden brown before turning.  Cooking times will vary.

Remove the fried zucchini and place onto a platter lined with paper towels.  Immediately place about 1 tablespoon of the tomato topping on each zucchini slice.  Top with about a tablespoon of fresh mozzarella.

Finish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a bit of fresh basil, salt and pepper and serve warm.

To Serve

It is best served as soon after cooking as possible, however as it can get a bit soggy if it sits for too long.  Our children love this dish!

Notes

In the U.S. (I am not sure about elsewhere), there has apparently been a semantic shift on what the term, “bruschetta,” actually means. Most Americans think of bruschetta as the tomato, onions, garlic, and herbs that are usually added to a grilled slice of artisan bread. However, the traditional meaning of bruschetta is actually little more than the grilled bread itself rubbed with garlic and then dipped in olive oil, with toppings (if any) added based on what you’ve got. (See this article on bruschetta on Wikipedia for more information.)

In classic Italian form, it sounds an awful lot like eating seasonally.

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Editor’s note: Welcome to Almost Fit. This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

In case you haven’t guessed from the title of this post, I have a very long and fragmented relationship with beets that has always teetered between love(occasionally) and hate (mostly), good and evil, starvation-if-that’s-all-there-is and, well, ok-I’ll-try-it-again-but-I-KNOW-I-won’t-like-it. I have never been a beet fan; I mean it’s pretty amusing from a geek standpoint that eating beets does all kinds of weird things to color your vital organs and their perfunctory processes (as in the next morning, groggily shouting, “HOLY CRAP! Why am I bleeding internally?!? Oh. Nevermind.”), but other than that, I’ve always felt that beets taste rather like, well, dirt.

Who knew I would develop a taste for dirt?

As part of our organic garden project this year my wife convinced me to cast aside my skepticism, and despite my gut instincts, grow beets (Oh, the horror.). I mention this because it’s a key distinction between what I knew of beets as a child (my, “beets? Not so much.” phase), and how good they can actually taste when you grow them yourself. And now that we’re here in beet season, well, it’s time for the rubber to hit the road with this whole, “eat seasonal” thing I’m always talking about.

I grew up feeling that beets were a mysterious form of food torture that was concocted by some closeted sadistic department of the Del Monte canning company. In fact I also saw a certain movie when I was young involving Charlton Heston, that although the food he was afraid of was technically green in color, I was convinced that beets had to be somehow involved. See the video at the end of the recipe to see what I mean.

No, in our case, I discovered that when you roast beets that you’ve pulled fresh from the garden, something miraculous happens: They do NOT become magical purple jello globs that are capable of sliding out of a can, already sliced. No, friends, these beets are food-like, almost as if they were related to other familiar root vegetables that I love, rather than the eggs of extraterrestrials that are preparing to terrorize the globe.

I found, much to my chagrin, that I actually like them. Well, mostly. I still reserve the adolescent right to complain about it.

Friday Fit Recipe #12: The “I Hate Beets. What am I Doing Eating Beets?” Beet Salad

This beet salad is ideally made with leftover roasted beets. You can roast them the same day if you like, but roasting generally takes about an hour, and then you have to let them cool. In our case, we usually roast a larger batch of beets for dinner, and then use the leftovers the next afternoon or evening in this salad.

Ingredients

Green leaf lettuce, the darker the better
Handful of fresh mint leaves
6 medium-sized roasted and peeled beets (roasted in olive oil with salt and pepper), refrigerated
10 to 12oz. Goat cheese, feta, or paneer – whatever you have/prefer
Basic balsamic vinaigrette (3 parts oil to 1 part good balsamic vinegar, with herbs to taste)
Salt and pepper

Serves: 4 beet lovers, or 9 billion non-beet lovers

Preparation

Cut the skinned, refrigerated beets into roughly bite-sized chunks. Tear or chop the lettuce into bite-sized pieces. Combine the beets, lettuce, mint leaves, and balsamic vinaigrette in a large salad bowl and toss. Salt and pepper to taste. crumble the cheese on top and serve.

To Serve

Serve as a side dish with protein. It goes particularly well with chicken or fish, in our experience.

Options

This recipe is also great with fresh spinach rather than lettuce. For the photo, we happened to have some herbed paneer from our local dairy resource, which was wonderful. I don’t know that I’ve seen herbed paneer anywhere else, but we’ve also had this salad with goat cheese, as well as feta, and it is excellent.

And finally….

For all my film geek friends out there, I couldn’t resist. Just insert “Beets” when you hear the word “Green”, and you’ll get the idea. Nobody ever said that soylent green didn’t taste good. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

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I have been anxiously waiting for something to happen, and in the last few weeks, it did.

Our tomatoes have begun to ripen. (The photo above was taken this morning in our backyard.)

Tomatoes may sound like a pretty mundane thing to anticipate, but believe me, when you’ve shoveled a dozen tons of dirt into a large garden space and gone to the trouble of tending to them through the odd summer we’ve had, getting a few beautiful round red, green, and yellow orbs to spring from the ground is a welcome reward.

Summertime and fresh tomatoes are a childhood memory of mine. Somewhere around 6th grade, my memory was emblazoned with the sensory experience of growing our own tomatoes in a square-foot garden. My Dad was a fan of sliced tomatoes with salt (I was not, at the time – ah, how things have changed), and I remember the first harvest from the garden as being a momentous occasion.

These days, we are passing this memory down to our kids at their very young ages, one at 18 months and the other at 4 years. I recently listened to a program where the host described growing cherry tomatoes in his garden and then serving them to his children like grapes. We do the same. In fact, our biggest challenge with our cherry tomatoes is getting the ripe ones into a salad before anyone else gets them.

Not a bad problem to have.

Friday Fit Recipe #11: Jamie Oliver’s Mothership Tomato Salad

Today’s entry is based on a simple recipe that we stumbled across while watching Jamie Oliver. His program, Jamie At Home, is one of our absolute favorites. He cooks much like we do, so his fresh palate of ideas really gets our creative juices flowing. If you are interested in eating seasonally and enjoy a good English accent sprinkled with a passion for food combined with a great sense of humor, Jamie At Home is the place to be on Saturday mornings. (Sorry – I like run-on sentences. )

Last weekend we watched Jamie making “The Mothership Tomato Salad“, and both of us could practically taste the goodness. When we made it at home this week, it didn’t disappoint – for such a simple recipe, it was incredibly good.

Ingredients

2 1/2 lbs fresh, locally grown tomatoes of different varieties (varying color is a great touch)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A good pinch dried oregano (we used fresh oregano blossoms from our herb garden)
Red wine or balsamic vinegar (we used balsamic vinegar)
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and grated
1 fresh red chile, seeded and chopped

Serves: 4 as a side

Preparation

For a more complete description, see the recipe link, here. I highly recommend both checking out the original recipe, as well as looking for Jamie’s show – the recipe is very clearly explained on the show, and really does make your mouth water.

In our case, here’s a quick summary of how we prepare it:

Cut the tomatoes into bite-sized pieces, varying the size and shape. For example, cut the cherry tomatoes in halves, and the larger heirlooms into several larger bite-sized chunks.

In a colander, season the tomatoes with a healthy dose of salt and let them sit for about 15 minutes, draining away a decent amount of liquid. The salting, true to the recipe’s description, didn’t make the tomatoes salty at all; the salt seemed to draw out moisture, leaving each bite even more flavorful.

In a bowl, toss together the tomatoes, oregano, grated garlic, and finely chopped chili (no seeds) with a mixture of 1 part vinegar to 3 parts oil (the basic salad vinaigrette ratio). Removing the seeds from the chili is one of the keys, as this removes the majority of the heat from the chili, but leaves a crisp, sweet chili flavor.

To Serve

Jamie recommends serving with fresh mozzarella, which is fabulous. In our case, the salad became an accompaniment to dinner over the next couple of nights.

Options

The original recipe called for dried oregano blossoms, but we found that the fresh blossoms, though not quite as concentrated, also added a brilliant aroma and flavor.

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Editor’s note: This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

With the school year coming to a close, we had the end of the year picnic last weekend complete with a parachute, hula hoops, and a pot luck lunch spread. In addition to being a great time for the kids, one of the best things about such events is to see the variety in familial food culture. Our instructions were to bring a dish to share, and to bring our own plates, glasses, and utensils, so as to cut down on the waste. It was a great plan, and left very little to clean up.

In our case, we brought sandwiches using some of my freshly made loaves of bread (Can you make artisan bread like this? In only 5 minutes?). Other offerings included Asian noodles, enchiladas, and pizza, all of which quickly disappeared. There were simply too many good things to try, but by the end it was very clear that the quinoa salad in particular was a huge favorite.

Quinoa – the often forgotten grain

In a recent blog post by Lisa over at Iowa Avenue (What is Quinoa?), quinoa was featured as a great alternative to some of the grains most of us are more familiar with. Quinoa is a popular gluten-free alternative for folks that are sensitive to wheat, and has a better nutritional profile than many of the more common grains.

Here’s a quote from Lisa’s article that really got my attention:

“Health bonus: Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete food. This means it takes less quinoa protein to meet one’s needs than wheat protein. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest.”

Lisa’s post at Iowa Avenue is an excellent primer on the benefits of quinoa and it’s history. It also includes a great Minestrone recipe. Well worth a visit.

Friday Fit Recipe #10: Gluten-free Summer Quinoa Salad

This recipe is a customized version of the salad we had at the picnic. Thanks to our friends C. and W. for the great recipe – it went particularly well with a salad made with organic greens from our garden, a light vinaigrette, and a roasted free range chicken, which was our dinner last night. It was excellent.

Ingredients

1 cup uncooked red quinoa
2 cups water
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
2 avocados, diced
1 cup artichoke hearts
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
2 tablespoons of pine nuts, toasted
2 tablespoons of capers, to taste

Caramelized onions:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 thinly sliced red onion

Basic vinaigrette dressing:
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon or lime juice, with zest
2 cloves minced garlic
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

Preparation

Bring the quinoa and water to boil. When the water boils, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the water is absorbed, approximately 10 minutes. When cooked, quinoa has a texture similar to perfectly cooked pasta, or rice. Strain and rinse well under cold water.

While the quinoa is cooking, in a skillet heat olive oil over medium heat and saute the onions until transparent.

Prepare the vinaigrette by combining the ingredients and whisking.

In a large salad bowl, toss all of the ingredients together, including caramelized onions and the vinaigrette.

To Serve

Serve cold or at room temperature. With very little to spoil, this would make an excellent accompaniment on a picnic. Couple this salad with fresh greens, chicken or fish for protein, and your wine of choice, and you have an excellent, healthy meal.

Options

The original recipe did not include the artichoke hearts, but we found that it was a very flavorful addition.

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Editor’s note: This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

For many of us, Friday night means either one of two things: Ordering takeout so that you don’t have to cook, or going out to eat – so that again, you don’t have to cook. However, with two kids, in our home sometimes even just getting out of the house is more than we want to do at the end of the work week. And where we live, the delivery options are limited to $20 bucks for a warmed cardboard pizza box full of questionably preserved meats, a random mushroom or two, and some packets of powdered cheese to soak up the orange-ish grease.

(Granted, a few years ago, that would have sounded appetizing.)

Really, on Friday nights it comes down to having something easy, and increasingly these days, cheap.

With that in mind, there are a handful of low cost essential dishes that I think everyone should know how to make more or less from scratch: a simple vegetable (or chicken) soup, a basic vinaigrette, and a quick and easy homemade pasta sauce. If you stock the ingredients for these items in your pantry or refrigerator, you can cover just about any impromptu dinner gathering or simple, end of the week meal at home with very little effort. Of course, if you have room on that Visa card you can also cover it, but this is a lot more fun, and interest-free (please note the restraint in not using the word “priceless” in that description).

In that spirit, here is this week’s Almost Fit recipe. It may not be the Gourmand’s exotic Foodie challenge, but it sure does make Friday nights on a budget a little easier.

Friday Fit Recipe #9: “It’s Friday night and I don’t feel like cooking” pasta sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic – finely minced
3 tablespoons dry red wine
1 28oz. can whole tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon oregano

Serves 2-3.

Preparation

In a sauce pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic and sauté for about 2 minutes. Add red wine and cook down for about 3 minutes. Add entire can of tomatoes, including juice, crushing tomatoes with hands or back of wooden spoon. Reduce heat to med-low and simmer for approx. 15 minutes. Add basil and oregano and cook for 2 more minutes. salt and pepper to taste.

To Serve

Serve over pasta of choice with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

Options

My favorite option: Add 1 teaspoon capers, roughly chopped.

Comments

I think that it is probably an indisputable fact that the absolute easiest, cheapest solution for pasta sauce would be popping the vacuum seal on a jar and dumping it into a pan. We do that on occasion too with good quality sauces (high fructose corn syrup and preservative-free). But if you really want to know exactly what you’re eating in a sauce (particularly things like sodium), there’s no better way than spending a few minutes cooking it for yourself. And particularly if you happen to be entertaining on-the-fly – making a basic pasta sauce is a great source of kitchen conversation (cooking almost always is), and can be done with a glass of wine in hand.

One last thing: This sauce is a one that can be prepared alongside your kids, which can turn into a great gift to impart to them for later in life when they might find the ability to make a solid, basic pasta sauce a useful “impress the in-laws” skill. And who doesn’t need a few of those?

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Editor’s note: This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

This week’s recipe is a relatively new one for us – Sautéed chicken in a late harvest Moscato sauce. We don’t buy sweet wines very often, but we had an open bottle from a recent visit with friends, so April decided to experiment. The preparation was simple, and the results were outstanding.

Late harvest dessert wines are also sometimes referred to as Icewine. Dessert wines tend to be sweeter (the obvious) and are often slightly thicker in consistency. I’ve read elsewhere the term, “viscous,” which is a good way to describe it, and is one of the keys to the success of this dish.

Dessert wines are kind of a breed of their own, and range widely in price. Our late harvest Moscato came from Trader Joe’s – not particularly expensive by any means, but very drinkable. For cooking purposes, I wouldn’t use “the good stuff” – meaning expensive imported sipping dessert wines. A lower priced American dessert wine is more than reasonable.

Friday Fit Recipe #8: Sautéed Chicken in a Late Harvest Moscato Sauce

Ingredients

1 pound (about 4 pieces) boneless chicken thighs
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon butter
1/2 cup late harvest Moscato wine
1/4 cup Marcona almonds
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, or 1/2 teaspoon dried
Salt and pepper, to taste

Serves: 2

Preparation

Preheat the pan on medium high heat. While the pan is heating, add the butter and olive oil. When the butter just starts to brown, add the chicken thighs. Add a light pinch of salt and pepper, and sauté for about 3 minutes on each side. After the chicken is cooked, remove from the pan. Reduce the heat to medium, and then add the wine. Deglaze the pan by scraping up any of the flavor-filled bits left from the chicken, and cook until the sauce reduces to about half of its original volume. When the sauce has almost finished reducing, add the Marcona almonds and the rosemary. Toss for 1 minute or so, and then add the chicken back into the pan. Toss for 2 minutes, and serve immediately. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To Serve

This dish goes great with roasted seasonal vegetables. In our case we used what we had in the fridge – some asparagus, brussel sprouts, zucchini, red onion, and bell pepper. We tossed the vegetables in some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, added a little salt and pepper, and roasted them in the oven.

Options

Although we haven’t tried these variations for this recipe, if you can’t get late harvest Moscato, I think its a safe bet that you could try late harvest Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Chenin Blanc, or Viognier, all of which are generally classed together for domestic late harvest sweet wines.

On the cut of chicken, I imagine that 2 chicken breasts would work as well, but you’ll probably want a little more butter and oil when you cook them.

Tips

One of the keys to this recipe is the Marcona almonds, which are generally harvested in Spain. They have a different flavor than standard almonds, and do not have the “skin” that standard almonds almost always do. They sell them at Trader Joe’s, but I’ve also found them recently at Costco.

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Editor’s note: This post is standing in for the weekly Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. The usual format will resume next week, but as a reminder, if you enjoy Almost Fit, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

The Downtown Portland Farmer’s Market at Portland State University has opened this year, so rather than focusing on a recipe for the weekend I’m going to be documenting our visit on Saturday to the market via photo report. So in lieu of the weekly recipe, I am posting a video of one of my favorite podcasts: Good Food with Evan Kleiman.

In this episode, Evan presents a very simple but absolutely delicious recipe for Mushroom Soup.

Evan’s format typically starts at the Farmer’s Market in Santa Monica, CA, to see what’s fresh each week. However, in this episode she is cooking from her restaurant, Angeli. Her self-described theme for this recipe is “Cooking from Trader Joe’s.” It is well worth watching, and trying!

Who is Evan?

Evan Kleiman is a successful food maven and restaurateur in the Los Angeles area. She is also the very gracious and knowledgeable host of the Public Radio program, Good Food which is presented by one of the most influential Public Radio stations in the country, KCRW. She’s also got an atypical background for such a successful and respected chef. For an interesting (and inspiring) read on what it takes to become a chef without following the traditional route, check her bio out, here.

http://www.angelicaffe.com/allAboutEvan.html

And now, on with the show

Almost Fit’s Friday Fit recipe will return to the usual format next week. In the mean time, keep an eye open for the Farmer’s Market report that I’m writing this weekend!

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Editor’s note: This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed, or joining the email mailing list. Thanks.

One of our favorite branches of cuisine is Indian food. Although the traditional foods vary widely from region to region, in my experiences so far nearly all Indian dishes are comfort food for me, and are generally centered around the use of real food as their main ingredients. There are exceptions as always, but I’ve found that the emphasis on the intricate balance of spices combined with basic meats and vegetables leads to dishes that are not only beautiful, but offer an incredibly wide range of sensory experience on the tongue.

This week’s Friday Fit recipe is a variation on the Indian yogurt-based drink, lassi. Mango lassi is probably the most common version served at Indian restaurants here in the States, but this week’s recipe for rose and cardamom lassi is extremely popular when we entertain at home. It might be just a tad bit early in the year to see rose petals in the garden, but I’m excited for summer to arrive – so it doesn’t hurt to indulge the warm weather imagination just a bit.

A little about roses (and I do mean a little)

Roses are an often forgotten food source, as are many flowers that are edible. Roses and nasturtiums are great salad additions for example, and they are starting to return to favor in the mainstream where you will probably see them more and more in local restaurant dishes.

Roses vary in intensity, but typically the darker petals have more flavor, and the white portion of the rose petal is generally bitter. Nearly all roses are edible, though one exception is the plant that goes by “Christmas Rose” – it can be poisonous in large quantities. Before you eat a rose, just be sure that it has not been sprayed with chemicals, and that it is washed. And as a disclaimer, I’m not an edible flowers expert in any way, so don’t take my word for it. You should do your own verification of any plant, particularly something picked wild or from your own garden, before you eat it.

One of my favorite sensual delights is young roses dipped in chocolate – the flavor is exotic and satisfying. Try it sometime.

Friday Fit Recipe 6: Edible Roses – Rose and Cardamom Indian Lassi

One sidenote: You’ll need to prepare the rose petals a day in advance, as they need to sit overnight to harden.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups whole milk plain yogurt
1/4 cup half and half
2/3 cup crushed ice (or to taste)
3 tablespoons honey, to taste
1 tablespoon rosewater (available in most specialty foods stores)
1 tablespoon ground cardamom, preferrably freshly ground

1 cup rose petals (the more aromatic the better)
1 egg white, beaten
1/2 cup superfine sugar

Serves 2.

Preparation

The rose petals: Using a small pastry brush, coat each rose petal with the beaten egg white, and then sprinkle both sides with sugar. Let the petals dry on wax paper or a silpat overnight.

The lassi: Combine all of the ingredients (not including the rose petals) in a blender, and blend just until smooth. Taste the lassi and add honey as necessary.

To Serve

Serve immediately with a rose petal or two as edible garnish.

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