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17 Dec 18 Reasons to Love Healthy Holiday Treats…

And, the food is back!

Last weekend I had a great opportunity to work with fabulous personal chef Zoe Phillips and beloved neighborhood champion for all things food and art (especially the art of food), 18 Reasons.

18 Reasons is a San Francisco non-profit in the Mission district that programs innovative, though-provoking and fun food and art focused events that deepen our relationship to food and each other, and inspire collaborative action toward creating a just and sustainable food system. From picking workshops to cookbook book clubs, sumptious dinners and food art exhibits, 18 Reasons is building community and connection. I heart them very much and was thrilled to have an opportunity to be on the other side of the table this time, teaching a class with a talented friend.

After weeks of recipe development and testing, Zoe and I, with the assistance of Rosie, program director for 18 Reasons, taught a healthy holiday treats cooking class for families. (By the way, we had the best attendees, including two teenage girls who blew us away with their knowledge of and commitment to healthy eating. Totally. Inspiring.)

The two-hour class was hands-on, focused on three easy recipes and introduced several alternative ingredients for the families to experiment with, including brown rice syrup (my current sweetener of choice), almond flour, coconut flour, tapioca flour, chia seeds and arrowroot powder. We played with sweet and spicy spice blends; cookies, cakes and candied corn; candied fruits and good ol’ dark chocolate … all in a teeny tiny kitchen.

One of the recipes we shared with our crew of cooksters was a chocolate, cherry, almond biscotti. Inspired by and adapted from Elana‘s Double Chocolate Mocha Biscotti, a recipe I booked marked long, long ago but never had time to play with until now. These biscotti are vegan, gluten-free, refined sugar-free and, yet, still thoroughly delightful. They’re also a wonderful introduction to two of my favorite baking ingredients: almond meal/flour and brown rice syrup (see below for more info). The mix of spices gives these biscotti a subtle holiday feel, and the dried cherries combined with the dark chocolate deliver little bursts of sweet and tart. A light, satisfying treat, perfect for nibbling with a cup of tea on a cold night or to finish off a hearty meal.

Chocolate Cherry Almond Biscotti

1 1/4 C almond meal or almond flour, scooped and leveled (not packed)
1 T arrowroot powder
1/4 t salt
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/8 t ginger
1/4 C brown rice syrup
¼ C almonds (chopped medium-fine)
¼ C dark chocolate (chopped fine)
¼ C dried cherries (roughly chopped)

optional dipping toppings:

melted dark or milk chocolate, for dipping
diced candied dried fruit
unsweetened coconut flakes
chopped pistachios or pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine almond flour, arrowroot powder, salt, baking soda and spices in a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Add brown rice syrup and process until ingredients come together in a ball. Meanwhile, place chocolate, almonds and cherries in a large bowl. When “dough” is ready, remove from processor and add to large bowl. With hands, knead add-ins into dough. When thoroughly combined, shape into a long log. The dough will expand somewhat, but not greatly, so make the log wider or thinner depending on how long you want the biscotti (you’ll be cutting it on the bias, so a fat log will yield long cookies, whereas a long thin log will give you two- to three-bite sized cookies).

Bake for 15 minutes, remove from oven and cool completely (~ 1 hour).

Preheat oven again to 300 degrees. When the log is cool, use a serrated bread knife to slice each log on the bias into ½-inch pieces (less than ½ inch will make for a very, very crisp cookies). It’s important to use a sharp serrated knife to get the cleanest cut (on the flip side, a dull knife will give you lots of broken bits that you’ll have to eat right there, so do what you think is best). Turn pieces on their side (so they lay flat) and spread them out evenly on same parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake for ~12 minutes (if cut greater than 1/2 inch, they’ll need for the second bake, but only a minute or two). When finished, remove from oven and let cool again (I like mine just a little bit soft when cooled, so I remove them promptly at 12 minutes). The biscotti will still be soft hot from the oven, but will crisp as they cool.

Once completely cooled, either store in an airtight container, or dip in melted chocolate and roll in nuts, coconut or other toppings to take them over the top (place on parchment paper lined tray or plate to dry – putting in the refrigerator speeds this up). Don’t tell, but I’m jazzing some up to give as gifts this year – it’s a treat I can feel good about giving friends and family. Shhh!

Notes: Almond flour/meal is made from finely ground almonds (sometimes the almonds are blanched first). It is easy to find at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Brown rice syrup is an alternative to baking with refined sugar. This excerpt from an article on Examiner.com (Philadelphia edition) this past May succinctly explains thewhere, what, who and how of brown rice syrup:

Brown rice syrup is produced from brown rice that has been ground and cooked… [it] is about half as sweet as sugar and tastes like not-too-sweet butterscotch or caramel. Sweeteners like brown rice syrup made from malted grains retain at least some of the nutrients found in the whole grain as well as complex sugars which take longer to digest, smoothing out blood sugar levels. Two tablespoons of brown rice syrup has 150 calories and 22 grams of sugar but also provides 3% of your daily requirement of sodium and potassium. The glycemic index of brown rice syrup has been reported to be a low 25 compared to 64 for white sugar and 96 for pure glucose.

You can find brown rice syrup at Whole Foods.

18 Nov Sweet, Sweet Love In a Cup …

It is cold in San Francisco. It seems like over night *poof* we went from an Indian Summer to Winter (yes, with a capital W!). So, of course, soup – warm, comfy soupy soup – has been on my mind. The only problem with craving soup is that, no matter how many times I make a pot, I continue to hold onto the misguided notions that soup making (1) is a laborious task, (2) takes forever and (3) will require a special trip to the grocery story (I think the first two are holdovers from childhood memories of chicken soup simmering for hours on the stovetop – delicious end result, but a drawn-out process). So, it’s always a delightful revelation when I throw veggies into a pot, add some broth, maybe blend it up a bit and *poof* just like summer somersaults into winter, raw ingredients suddenly are satisfying soup. So, I guess that makes this sweet, simple and scrumptious Carrot Apple soup a little pot of magic, huh? (Can you tell I’m dying to see the new Harry Potter?)

This recipe is completely straightforward and beautifully basic. It’s also great for an unexpectedly cold and raining evening, requiring few ingredients and cooking up in a flash. The clean simplicity of carrots and apple, with a hint of rosemary, is light enough to be a first course, but also goes really well with a hearty bread or buttery biscuit to satisfy as a main. It’s so warm and refreshing, I’ve already made another batch since last week! Of course, variations are already dancing in my head (swap the rosemary for curry and cumin? add a spoonful of coconut oil at the end? a cup of white beans blended in to give a protein punch?) and maybe some will show up here soon….

Carrot Apple Soup

1 medium/large yellow onion
5 large carrots (or the equivalent, whatever sizes you have on hand)
3 medium apples
olive oil
1 T (heaping) fresh rosemary
2 C vegetable broth
2 C water
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a large pot on stove, medium-high. Roughly chop onion. When pot is hot, add two turns of olive oil. When oil is warm, add onion, give it a dash of salt, and saute until just starting to get soft (~5-7 mins). Meanwhile, give the carrots a rough chop, set aside. Quarter and core apples and, you guessed it, give a rough chop. (The smaller your chop, the quicker the veggies and fruit will cook, but it takes a little longer to chop fine, so six of one, half-dozen of another?… Do what works for you.) When onions are ready, add carrots and saute for another 10 mins or so, then add the apples. The apples will cook faster than the carrots, that’s why they go in last.

After the apples have sauted for a few minutes, add rosemary and a little water or vegetable broth – maybe 1/2 to 1C – keep temperature medium high and cover. As the liquid comes to a boil, the steam will help the carrots and apples cook and sort of deglaze the bottom of the pot, which deepens the flavor. (Don’t leave covered for too long or the liquid will evaporate and you could burn everything.) When liquid is almost gone, uncover and continue to saute as needed until carrots are tender and apples start to soften, but try not to let them completely break down. Turn off heat and get ready to blend into creamy goodness.

You can blend it up two ways: with a handheld wand or in a blender. I’m the kind of genius that never fails to splatter half the soup on the walls with the handheld blender, so I usually opt for the regular blender. Remember, hot food in a closed container will generate steam and pressure: (1) let the veggies cool a little to minimize steamage and (2) HOLD THE BLENDER LID DOWN when you blend to prevent it from blasting off if steamy pressure builds up.

I like to add 1/3 of the veggies and a cup of vegetable broth and blend well. Then (without emptying the blender) add another 1/3 C of veggies and blend well again (adding more broth as necessary for the mixture to churn freely in the blender. Finally, add last 1/3 C and blend. When I toss all the veggies in at once, even if I let the blender go for a few minutes, the soup just doesn’t get as smooth as when I do it in increments like this. When everything is blended well, pour back into soup pot and add any remaining vegetable broth and water until you reach desired consistency (of course, you can always use all vegetable broth or all water, as desired).

Bring soup back almost to a simmer. Salt and pepper to taste. Remember, if you accidentally add too much liquid, just let the soup simmer until it cooks down a little.

This last batch (which looks oddly oily in the picture below, but that’s a trick of light since there’s barely two tablespoons of oil in the whole thing), I garnished with some diced radish to give some tart, crunchy contrast to the smooth sweet soup. I think diced avocado and/or Roma tomato would be good, too. Gives me four, main meal-sized servings. Yum!

06 Nov Is It Still “Carb Loading” If It’s Spaghetti Squash…

First pumpkin, now spaghetti squash has taken over the healthy living/eating blogosphere. And for good reason. It’s easy to make, fun to watch the transformation from solid flesh to pasta-like strings, good for you (winter squashes are full of carotenes – the darker the flesh the better) and versatile – you can smother it in marinara, use it as a bed for sauteed veggies, toss it with a green curry paste or, my current favorite, saute in a butter sage sauce.

Spaghetti Squash in Butter and Sage

1/2 large spaghetti squash
2-3 T butter
1 generous handful fresh sage
salt and pepper, to taste
nutritional yeast or parmesan cheese, to taste (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. There are two general approaches to cooking spaghetti squash: (1) bake whole, which takes longer to cook, is easier to cut open, but more difficult to scrape out seeds and pulp without also scooping flesh, or (2) bake already cut in half, which is harder to open (the squash being raw), but easier to scrape out the guts without taking out flesh and faster to cook. Obviously, I choose the path with the most “easiers” on it, even if it means wrangling with a stubbornly hard raw squash. There may be more graceful ways to do this, but this is my method for cutting open an uncooked winter squash (pretty much any oblong variety). Find your sharpest, most substantial knife. Cut off the stem end (I find this to be the toughest bit to hack through otherwise), then stab the sucker in the middle (see below). Slice down to one end (in pic below, I followed the knife to the right). Flip squash around, reinsert knife and slice down to other end.

Scoop out the seeds and the guts. Place flesh side down on a rimmed baking sheet or in a baking pan. Bake. While I know it always takes 40 minutes in my oven, I usually check after 30 minutes, just in case.

Now that you have ~40 minutes to kill, go take a stroll through your garden. Check on the newly transplanted dwarf Meyer lemon tree, make mean faces at the aphids munching on your kale (make mental note to spray with diluted dish soap), whisper sweet nothings to the lettuce that is finally looking lively and cut a small bouquet of sage.

Pretty….

When the squash is finished (should yield slightly to touch or easily to a fork), remove from oven and let cool a a little while. If you’re impatient, just wait until you can comfortably hold one of the squash halves in place with a finger or two. Use a fork to gently scrape out the flesh of one squash half (make lengthwise strokes and it’ll come out pretty easily in strings or “spaghetti”).

Once you’ve scraped out all of the “spaghetti” from the squash half, set aside and heat a large pan on medium. Add butter, keeping the flame fairly tame. When almost completely melted, toss in sage and saute. Keeping the heat on the low side of medium makes everything take longer, but … that allows me to slowly saute the sage to crisp, drawing out more of the sage flavor, without burning the butter.

When sage starts to crisp up, add the squash, mix thoroughly so it soaks up all that sagey buttah! Salt and pepper to taste. Serve and top with a sprinkle of nutritional yeast or parmesan for a little extra zing.

This is a bright dish (not heavy like real spaghetti) and goes well with fish, tofu, beans or more veggies (braised greens and roasted root veggies are two of my favorites). Leftovers also make good taco filling.