Foodist Page 22
Out of all the different ideas you had for meals, choose the ones that can be made with common flavors and overlapping ingredients. See what is available and purchase the ingredients that are the most versatile. Flavors that can be included in several different dishes give you the flexibility to change up your meal plans in the middle of the week, if you are suddenly struck with inspiration. As your ideas solidify, be sure to collect all the elements you need. iPhone apps can be particularly helpful with this if you want to double-check ingredient lists for things you may have forgotten (Evernote is a great place to start). Because most popular recipes are born from available seasonal ingredients, there’s a good chance you will find everything you need while shopping at the farmers market. If not, you might need to pick up the rest of your ingredients at a regular grocery store (this is not the end of the world).
10 Ways to Make Your Salad More Satisfying
I absolutely love salads, but if all you’re eating is vegetables with a little bit of dressing, you won’t get enough calories to keep you satisfied until your next meal. There are dozens of healthy additions you can use to make your salad more filling and delicious. Here are ten of my favorites.
1. Warm Ingredients
Grilled or sautéed onions, peppers, mushrooms, and meats wilt salad greens and make them slightly warm, adding depth and character to an otherwise boring salad.
2. Brown Rice
Adding a half cup of warm rice to a salad adds beautiful texture and flavor and keeps you full longer. Thawing one of your single-serving rice balls will add less than two minutes to your salad prep time.
3. Nuts
Walnuts, pistachios, and sliced almonds are my favorites, but feel free to try pecans, cashews, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, or anything else that sounds interesting.
4. Beans
Chickpeas, black beans, edamame, and other legumes are inexpensive and delicious ways to add some gravity to a salad.
5. Avocado
Half an avocado is sometimes exactly what a salad needs to take it to the next level.
6. Smoked Salmon
For a slightly more upscale salad experience, top your greens with a few slices of smoked salmon.
7. Quinoa
Mix in a small amount of quinoa as an accent or make it the base of a salad and then add cooked or raw vegetables and greens.
8. Grilled Meats
Your salad is a great place for summertime barbecue leftovers.
9. Egg
Boiled, fried, or poached, an egg is a wonderful way to make your salad more substantial.
10. Sardines
Canned fish is one of the easiest ways to get healthy protein and oils into your salad.
It is good to have a rough idea of when you are going to eat each of the meals you visualized. Some vegetables hold up better than others over the course of a week in the refrigerator, so you don’t want to buy a boatload of squash blossoms if you aren’t planning to use them in the next few days. Plan to eat the most delicate produce first, and save the hearty kale and broccoli for later in the week. Creative shopping without lists takes some practice, but you don’t have to be a master chef or flavor expert to get it right. When cooking with delicious, seasonal ingredients, you can’t go wrong with simplicity. Start with the basics and work your way up as you get more comfortable in the kitchen and at the market.
HOME COURT RECIPES
When learning to cook, focus on perfecting a few simple vegetable dishes and main courses that are simple and tasty. These will be your default meals when you’re feeling lazy and uninspired—your home court recipes. As your kitchen skills develop, you will surely explore recipes other than these, but having this base of easy, friendly recipes will make your transition to cooking at home much easier.
Tips to Keep Produce Fresh
1. Shop regularly
It is probably self-evident, but it is still important to state that the freshest vegetables are the ones you bought today. They are even fresher if you get them at the farmers market (picked yesterday) rather than a grocery store that imports produce from around the world. In order to keep fresh vegetables and fruit in the house, shop for produce and groceries at least once a week.
2. Shop strategically
This is my true secret to keeping food fresh. Different foods have different shelf lives, and you can take advantage of this fact when planning your meals for the week. Always make sure you buy a few robust vegetables for your Thursday and Friday night dinners (or try to schedule your restaurant dates for later in the week).
Cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, chard, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts) and root veggies (including carrots, beets, parsnips, radishes, sunchokes, and potatoes) store the best and can last well over a week in the crisper (twist off the greens if they’re still attached—most can be eaten, so feel free to save them and throw them in salads). Summer squash can last for many days in a dry plastic bag in the crisper, and winter squash can last weeks and sometimes months on a shelf. Eggplant has a shelf life similar to summer squash and can be stored in the same manner. Delicate vegetables like lettuce, spinach, and other spring greens are not as robust and should be eaten more quickly. Juicy fruits like berries, stone fruits, and even tomatoes are more time sensitive and should be incorporated into meals earlier in the week.
3. Cook intelligently
Having a rough idea of what meals you are going to make during the week can help you keep veggies fresh in several ways. In addition to planning your dishes around which vegetables last the longest, you can prepare large batches of food early in the week and then freeze or refrigerate the leftovers to eat later. Avoid overshopping by buying ingredients to use in multiple different dishes rather than buying extra items for vastly divergent menus. For example, rather than purchasing red peppers for a stir-fry and radishes for a salad, you can skip the radishes and add the extra pepper to your salad instead.
When buying herbs, I like to get one bunch of Italian parsley (it keeps a long time and is incredibly versatile) and only one bunch of a more delicate herb like thyme, dill, or cilantro. With this strategy you can explore recipes of different cuisines that utilize similar ingredients. For instance, if I have cilantro, I may make Mexican food one night and a Vietnamese dish another night. Both incorporate similar vegetables and herbs, but the flavor profiles of these cuisines are entirely different. This is where it comes in handy to have a well-stocked pantry—go beyond the basics and learn to work with ingredients like fish sauce, coconut milk, and anchovies. This is a great way to delve into a new cuisine and explore different flavors.
4. Store properly
Proper food storage can go a long way in keeping your produce as fresh as possible. Generally speaking, most vegetables maintain their crispness best in the aptly named refrigerator compartment, the crisper. Crispers have different humidity settings than the rest of the fridge and are optimized for vegetables. I find that leafy greens and herbs keep best in dry plastic bags or plastic storage containers. When you get home with a large bag of salad greens from the farmers market, rinse them clean and spin them in a salad spinner. Let them sit out for an hour or so to completely dry, and then put them in large plastic containers to store for the week. With this strategy the crisper is not necessary.
Most fruit I don’t refrigerate to protect the taste, but berries are an exception. I have had fantastic luck storing berries in a jar or storage container with the lid closed tight. I always put my berries away immediately after getting them home, trying to handle them as little as possible to keep any mold or bacterial spores out. I try to roll the berries into their new container without actually touching them with my hands. I buy berries much more often now, since they don’t go bad for me as quickly as they had in the past.
Finally, ripe fruits produce gases that cause neighboring fruits to ripen more quickly. If you have something that is perfectly ripe or overripe, you may want to keep it in the fridge away from the rest (unless o
f course you want the nearby fruit to ripen faster). Likewise, keeping fruits on the counter in paper bags will trap the gases and cause them to ripen more quickly if you want to speed up the process.
5. Don’t give up
Sometimes despite your best efforts you end up with a wilted head of lettuce or a floppy bunch of basil. But if wilting is your only problem and the plant looks otherwise edible (still green and free of mold), then all is not lost. The reason plants wilt is they lose water from their cells to the environment through osmosis. But the osmotic properties of leaves can be used to your advantage. You can revive wilted greens and even roots like carrots by submerging them in a bath of cold water for thirty to sixty minutes, which replenishes the water in the vegetables and allows them to regain their crispness. It is astounding how much they will perk up.
Mold is another issue when storing fruits and vegetables, but you can sometimes salvage a batch of food if you catch it early and carefully remove all traces of it to keep it from spreading to the rest of your produce (I recommend finding a new container for the uncontaminated portion). Remember, mold is a living, growing thing that breeds more of itself. Keeping foods in sealed containers and touching them as little as possible with your hands can help control it.
My lunchtime five-minute bean salad (Heirloom Bean Salad with Winter Vegetables) is a perfect example of a home court recipe I turn to over and over again. I mix it up by switching out the seasonal herbs and vegetables, but the basic recipe is always the same. There are a few simple vegetable dishes I rely on frequently as well. My Roasted Curried Cauliflower is by far my most popular recipe, beloved by adults, children, and former cauliflower haters alike. The recipe is so simple even a newbie cook can get it right and convert an entire family into cauliflower lovers. You can rely on this recipe year-round whenever you’re struggling to think of dinner ideas.
How to Make Cauliflower Taste as Good as French Fries
What’s weird is that this is just roasted cauliflower; it couldn’t sound any less glamorous. But for some reason roasting cauliflower completely transforms it from a vegetable people are pretty sure they don’t like into something they just can’t get enough of.
The coolest part of all is that anyone (like any anyone) can make this. I like to add curry powder to mine, but you can play around with whatever spices you like or just make it plain. (Pssst, try tossing in some fresh cilantro after it’s done roasting.)
The trick is to use a very hot oven, around 500˚. Covering the cauliflower for the first fifteen minutes steam-cooks it, while retaining the natural flavors and sugars. When you remove the foil the high heat browns and caramelizes the florets, giving the cauliflower a slightly crisp texture and complex flavor that is irresistible.
Cauliflower shrinks down substantially when cooked, and the biggest complaint I get from people about the recipe is that they wish they’d made more. It still freaks me out how good this is.
Roasted Curried Cauliflower
SERVES 2 TO 4
1 large cauliflower (or several small ones), about 2 pounds
Olive oil
Kosher or sea salt
Curry powder
Preheat the oven to 500˚F (if you use a convection oven, 475˚F may give you better results). Break the cauliflower head into medium-small florets and place them in a large bowl or baking pan. Be sure the pieces are as evenly sized as possible, or they will cook unevenly. The smaller you make the pieces, the quicker they will cook and the more caramelized they will become, which I consider a good thing.
Drizzle the cauliflower pieces generously with olive oil and season well with salt and curry powder. Distribute them evenly in a single layer on the bottom of a baking pan. If necessary, use a second baking pan to make sure the pieces aren’t too crowded.
Cover the pans with foil and place into the oven. Roast, covered, for 10 to 15 minutes. The cauliflower should be slightly soft and start looking translucent. If it is not, replace the foil and roast another 5 minutes.
When the cauliflower has finished steaming, remove the foil and toss the florets with tongs. Continue to roast, stirring every 8 to 10 minutes until the tips of the cauliflower begin to brown and become crisp (don’t be impatient; it’s better if you wait until they’re crispy), approximately 30 to 35 minutes.
It’s a good idea to have a small arsenal of green vegetables you can be confident about cooking up quickly and easily as well. Kale is one of my home court vegetables, and I typically make it by cooking it in olive oil on medium-high heat, with a little garlic and sea salt. If I have them around, I’ll add some carrots, radishes, or nuts to make it a little more interesting, but it’s tasty on its own. I prefer to use the red or purple kales, rather than the plain green curly kale. At certain times of year I use the darker Tuscan kale (dino kale or lacinato kale), which is easier to clean and chop.
Super Easy Kale with Pistachios
The key to making a plain green vegetable worthy of an entire meal is adding something with protein or fat (preferably both). Nuts work perfectly, as do any kind of beans or lentils. If you want to make your life even easier, look for kale with smaller, younger leaves so the stems are tender enough to cook and eat.
For me this meal is a perfect lunch. Alternately, you can serve it as a side dish for several people. If you would like a little more substance, serve it with lentils and brown rice or quinoa. I sometimes eat it with sardines, smoked mackerel, or trout on the side.
Sautéed Kale with Pistachios and Garlic
SERVES 1 TO 3
1 garlic clove
1 bunch kale (or chard)
¼ cup chopped pistachios (or other nut)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt to taste
½ cup cooked beans or lentils (optional)
Mince the garlic (letting your garlic sit 10 minutes after mincing increases its nutritional value). Rinse the greens and place them on a cutting board. It’s okay if your greens are still wet; the water will help them steam. If you buy younger or smaller leaves, removing the stems isn’t necessary. If the leaves have very thick stems, you may want to remove them by cutting them out or pinching the stem at the bottom and stripping off the leaves by running your hand along the spine.
Pile the leaves on top of each other all oriented in the same direction. Starting at the tip of the leaves, cut 1-inch strips until you have cut the entire bunch. If you are using Tuscan or red Russian kale, with thinner leaves, it will only need to be cut in this one direction. If your leaves are wide, cut them into 1- to 2-inch squares by making knife cuts in the opposite direction, parallel with the stem.
To a frying pan with tall sides and a lid, add the nuts and place it on medium heat. Lightly toast the nuts, stirring regularly with tongs. After 2 to 3 minutes, add the olive oil to the pan and allow it to heat up. Add the chopped greens to the pan, sprinkle generously with sea salt, and toss with tongs. Cover.
Stir the greens occasionally so they don’t burn. Continue cooking the greens as they wilt and turn dark green. If they start to burn, lower the heat, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water, and cover again to steam.
When the leaves are dark green and wilted, remove the lid and use tongs to toss, then clear a space in the center of the pan. Add the minced garlic in a single layer and cover with a small amount of additional olive oil. Allow the garlic to cook until it becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds, then mix it up with the kale and nuts. Add ½ cup of beans or lentils at this point, if desired.
Continue to cook greens uncovered for 1 or 2 more minutes. Taste-test a leaf and adjust salt to taste. Kale is done cooking when it is dark green and the stems are tender. Unlike spinach, it is very difficult to overcook kale, because it retains its crispness very well. Serve immediately.
Broccoli is another easy home court vegetable I turn to often. If possible I buy the smaller broccoli shoots rather than the large broccoli crowns. I cut up all of it, leaves, stems, and all. Broccoli pairs beautifully with toasted cumin seeds and r
ed chili flakes. Just toss in some garlic and a splash of rice vinegar at the end for a delicious side dish. Drizzle with some tahini to make it more filling.
Chard is another fantastic green that is available year-round. I cook it with sweet onions, pistachios, and mint leaves to brighten the flavor. It’s also great with garlic. Chard has a natural salty taste, because it is so rich in potassium, so be careful not to oversalt it. It’s also insanely good for you.
To change it up I also like to have a few red, orange, and yellow vegetables I cook regularly. I add sweet peppers and carrots to many dishes, but heartier vegetables like winter squash or sweet potatoes are great to have in your arsenal as well. I usually roast these because it concentrates the flavor and makes them taste amazing, but you could also pan-cook them in a bit of liquid and then blend them into a soup. Explore different vegetables and recipes until you find a few easy ones you like.
Similarly, it’s nice to have a few easy fish, meat, or tofu/tempeh recipes you’re comfortable making regularly. Roast chicken (Simple Roast Chicken) is a fantastic meat to master, since leftovers can be used for days (another form of batch cooking) and the bones can be saved to use for chicken stock. In fact, any roast is fantastic for batch cooking, and a slow cooker is a great investment if you have a big family or enjoy having a lot of meat around to munch on. Salmon (wild Alaskan), shrimp, and halibut are all wonderful seafood options, and cooking them is incredibly simple. Just a few minutes in a pan on each side should do the trick. Adding a little salt, garlic, and lemon is an easy place to start, but play around with other flavors until you find some you enjoy.