Date-Walnut Granola

I may be in my 40s but – and this may shock you – I don’t eat bran cereal. Hard to believe, right? Isn’t bran a required supplement for people over 30?

Not if you have flax.

Obviously, bran cereal is not gluten free. Also, very sweet. Not that I don’t like it. It’s just, pour a flax/nut mix onto what you’re eating – yogurt, oatmeal, granola, etc. – and fiber, here we come. It does the same thing that we all eat bran for (which I don’t need to write here). Yep, a tablespoon of whole or ground flax seed into muffins and bread, and boom! All taken care of.

Yet there is something about Raisin Bran, that sweet commercial bran cereal from childhood that attracts me. Which is why I love this granola recipe from my sister Rose. It tastes like a somewhat less-sweet version of Raisin Bran.

My other granola recipe is simple and fresh tasting. It doesn’t clump together like commercial granolas do. If you like clumpy, crunchy granola, try this.

The reason it clumps is, you don’t add oil. The fat is added simply by making a paste combining walnuts with dates, grade-B maple syrup and water, which nutritionists say is a better way to get your fat, rather than oils. Getting it from the walnut directly provides a higher dose of vitamin E, and heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and can even decrease cholesterol. You also get phytonutrients that are lost in the process of extracting oils.

All you need is a Vitamix or other high-powered blender to make a good paste. Note: When making a paste in one of these blenders, it’s important not to turn it to high speed until the stuff is pretty well mixed, maybe use it up to 7 or so, until the paste starts to form.

Rose’s Granola 

Ingredients:

For the Granola

1½ lbs. rolled oats (I recommend Cream Hill Estates Lara's Oats)

½ cup hot water

¼ cup maple syrup

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1½ teaspoons almond extract

1 cup pitted dates

¾ cup walnut halves

½ cup dried coconut flakes

Raisins

For the Vegan Rice/Coconut Milk (optional)

4 cups water

1 cup short-grain brown rice

1 cup unsweetened, dried coconut flakes

To make the granola:

1. Preheat oven to 225F. Put 1½ pounds of rolled oats into a large mixing bowl with ½ cup of chopped raw almonds. (If you can only get roasted, add them at the end of cooking, do not add them now)

2. Place into Vitamix or other blender in the following order:

½ cup hot water

¼ cup Grade B maple syrup

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1½ teaspoons almond extract

1 cup pitted dates

¾ cup walnut halves

3. Whiz at a low speed, up to 7, until it forms a paste.

4. With a rubber spatula, mix the paste into the oats/almond mixture until it is well incorporated.

5. Pour granola onto one or two cookie/jelly roll pans and bake for 5½ hours. DO NOT EXCEED 6 HOURS! Flip and rotate trays every half hour.  Mix with a spoon every two hours. Important: The last half hour is crucial – do not overcook. (You can add the coconut during the last half hour if you like it to be a little toasted.)

Let cool. Add raisins and coconut. If you couldn’t find raw almonds, add chopped roasted almonds at this point as well. Store in tightly sealed glass jars for best texture.

To make Rose’s Vegan milk:

First, make Rice Milk:

Blend 2 cups water with 1 cup short grain brown rice and strain twice through fine mesh strainer, discarding the pulp.

Second, make coconut “milk”:

Blend 2 cups water with 1 cup shredded coconut and strain twice through fine mesh strainer, discarding the pulp.

Third, combine the milks together, and add maple syrup to taste

Is Your Olive Oil Deodorized?

Deodorizing and coloring olive oil sounds like something food producers would do in the 1950s, doesn't it? 

But wouldn't you know, in the 1950s, not only did they eat organic produce, but also, their olive oil was REAL. 

Olive oil is the big thing in food these days. Ever since NPR’s Fresh Air  reported the bad news that imported extra virgin olive oil is, in some cases, not extra virgin at all, but lighter oils flavored and colored to taste like they're fresh-pressed. Sometimes other vegetable oils are added or substituted, even. As Tom Meuller says in this report, you could be eating lamp oil!

Yep, shopping in a U.S. supermarket, if you don’t buy extra virgin olive oil produced in the U.S., it might be a fake. That’s not to say if you happen to be in Spain, Italy or Morocco, you can’t get the genuine article. It’s just that, if you buy the imported stuff here in the United States, it might not be genuine at all.

This is important. For most recipes, Filippo Berio or Colavita (whatever oil they are selling in those bottles) work just fine from a flavor perspective. But you can only get the fantastic health benefits from the extra virgin oil, not the lighter oil. Indeed, from a naturally occurring ibuprofen to lowering risk of heart disease, olive oil is one of the reasons the Mediterranean diet is considered one of the healthiest on the planet.

The recipe that follows is best if you have a really good extra virgin olive oil. For this, I would recommend buying a decent one produced in California, just to be safe – not least because you will need a lot of it. (Although, when we go to the grocery store we’ve tried Chilean olive oil and it looks and tastes like the real thing, so just use something you like and trust, I guess.)

Since my mother was not a fan of seafood or fish, I hadn’t learned how to make Brandade de Morue until attending a class in basics at The French Culinary Institute and it has since become one of my favorite comfort foods. Basically, mashed salt cod with Idaho potatoes, some milk or cream, garlic and olive oil. You can eat it nice and hot as-is as peasant food with some steamed kale on the side, or put it into a baking dish, top with cheese and/or breadcrumbs, and brown it under the broiler for a gratin, scooping it up with some French bread toasts.

Living in a neighborhood predominately Italian and Portuguese, we get bags of salt cod (bacalhau) for pennies at the supermarket. Sure you can buy a stiff codfish in a box but that will take days to reconstitute and you have to remove the bones. So, I just buy the boneless one-pound bags that are partially reconstituted. They last for several weeks to a couple months in the fridge until I need something comforting to eat for dinner.

To reconstitute it before making the dish, I just follow the directions on the package – place the fish into a dish under 6 cups of (filtered) water and keep it in the fridge. I change the water every 6 hours until 24 hours is up, and it’s ready to use.

This recipe is just a guide. You could add up to 4 oz. more potatoes, and a little more milk or cream if you like, reducing the oil accordingly. 

I vary the amount of oil every time. The first time I did it at home, I used way less olive oil and it came out delicious. After that I thought, what the heck, and started adding the traditional amounts. 

There is a lot of oil in this version, which you will find in older cookbooks like I Know How To Cook, (that's a French cookbook published in the 1930s and recently re-issued in English). Today, though, Jacques Pepin says it’s just as good with a lot less. You decide. Go to town, it’s your comfort food.

Brandade de Morue a la Scarlet

1 lb. boneless salt cod, the one where directions say should be soaked in water for 24 hours in water changed 3 times

6 good-sized cloves garlic, chopped

12 oz peeled or partially peeled Idaho potatoes (could go to 16 oz.)

¾ cup milk or ½ and ½ milk/cream

300 ml extra virgin olive oil (about 1 1/2 cups!)

   1. Soak the cod for 24 hours, changing the water 3 times.

   2. Cook the potatoes until fork-tender, about 15 minutes. Drain and mash with a fork.

   3. Cut cod into pieces and cook in water at a low simmer for 8-15 minutes, until it flakes easily. It's important to cook at a low simmer to keep it from getting tough, apparently.

   

   4. When cod is cooked, drain. Heat ¾ cup olive oil in cast iron skillet over medium-high heat.

   5. Add cod and mix into oil with a wooden spoon, working until it forms a paste.

   6. Meanwhile, heat milk/cream just to boiling and remove from heat.

   7. When the cod has been mashed into a good paste, remove it from the heat, add potatoes and garlic and mix well. Add milk/cream and olive oil alternately, until you achieve a good smooth mash. (N.B.: Now you know why those old European grandmas have such strong arms! Jacques Pepin and Cooks Illustrated both use food processors, btw)

   8. Season to taste and serve.

Sketti For Dinner? Might As Well Eat Twinkies

I just saw a clip of Honey Boo Boo’s mother making a pasta dish she calls “Sketti,” implying that without road kill, they won't have enough money to get real food from the grocery store this week. Sketti consists of white spaghetti noodles, coated in a sauce made from butter and ketchup.

Right, I say to myself. You are earning a boat-load of money from doing this reality show, which means you have loads of dough in a trust for the children, which can be removed to purchase things like healthy food for them, with 10% of that going to you as Honey Boo Boo’s agent, but you still don’t have enough money to cook a meal with nutritious minerals, vitamins and fiber?

Apparently not.

Not being a cable subscriber I don’t watch Honey Boo Boo's show myself, but have watched clips of the family online. From what I can see, the mother is an intelligent, thoughtful person. She treats her children in a way that they have respect for themselves and others.

But do they eat nutritious, fibrous foods and exercise? Not on TV. The little exercise consists of games (which they call “redneck” games) that include putting on a blindfold and smelling each other’s breath to guess whose it is.

I know no one would tune in to watch Honey Boo Boo learn to be a healthy, responsible contribution to society. Wouldn’t it be neat, though, if they lulled Americans unconcerned about nutrition into watching their show and then got healthier and healthier -- for example, refusing to drink soft drinks that contain high-fructose corn syrup -- and in the end, helped to cause a sea-change in the eating habits of American society?

But if a person isn’t as rich as Honey Boo Boo and really does need to eat pasta and sauce for a meal with nothing else, here’s what I would recommend to replace Sketti: Spicy peanut sauce on buckwheat noodles. The combination of the peanuts and buckwheat makes a complete protein. It’s also gluten-free (or lower gluten, if you  prefer the type that has some wheat flour), full of fiber, and delicious.

Why peanuts, with all the allergy complaints about them these days? I mean that you should use organic peanuts of course. Peanuts, like soybeans and raisins, are the most heavily pesticided crops in the world (or were, the last time I checked). No wonder everyone’s allergic to them! Personally, I get sick from eating non-organic peanuts. (I even get sick from eating Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!) So, I only buy the organic ones and I have no problems.

I make my own, fresh peanut butter in the Vita-Mix (It takes 30-60 seconds) with roasted and salted organic peanuts. But you can buy organic peanut butter in most stores these days, because of all the problems people have with regular brands.

Spicy Peanut Sauce

Adapted from The Natural Gourmet

¾ cup organic peanut butter

3 tablespoons grade B maple syrup

3 tablespoons Tamari (wheat-free soy sauce)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon cumin

Optional: 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper or if available, ground szechuan peppercorns

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

¾ cup water (or to consistency desired)

Cayenne pepper to taste

Chopped scallions and chopped organic peanuts to garnish

1.  Combine peanut butter, maple syrup and tamari, and mix well.

2.  Heat oil until hot in a small frying pan; add garlic, cumin (and if desired, ½ teaspoon ground Szechuan peppercorns or black pepper). Saute for 20-30 seconds, just until cumin releases its fragrance, and remove promptly from heat. Immediately add to peanut butter mixture. Add a pinch of cayenne pepper, or more if desired.

3.  Add water, a little at a time, mixing after each addition, until it is the consistency you desire.

Serve over regular or gluten-free buckwheat noodles, garnished with chopped scallions and chopped organic peanuts.

Vegetarian Chili

Ah, beans. So important for beautiful skin and a healthy cardiovascular system. By helping the body produce nitric oxide, they cause the muscles around the blood vessels to relax and the blood vessels themselves to become larger, which increases blood flow to all the organs of the body. Vegetables and berries aid the body’s production of nitric oxide as well. Hence, today’s post, which is all beans and vegetables, in a delicious winter meal perfect for a day of shoveling snow.

To start with, I’ll help you cook your own beans. These days, dried beans don’t need to be soaked overnight before cooking, so you can start them off immediately after picking them over and rinsing.

Even though I haven’t done the math including the water and electricity used, cooking dried beans yourself instead of buying canned has to be a money-saver. At my Stop n Shop, a can of organic beans, which is about a quarter-pound’s worth of dried, is around $2. Yet, several pounds of dried beans only costs $3 - $4 which is a huge savings on the beans alone. That, and by cooking them with a piece of Kombu seaweed and freezing the unused portions immediately, you can dramatically reduce the possibility of suffering from painful flatulence after eating them.

Yes, seaweed is this miraculous substance that leeches impurities from the skin in face masks, helps gushing finger cuts to stop bleeding in minutes or even seconds, and happens to also cause beans to be safer to eat (when you need to be on your best behavior!).

Basic Recipe for Kidney Beans in the Slow Cooker

1 lb. dried beans, picked over and rinsed

1 large yellow or white onion, quartered

2 bay leaves

1 4”-long piece of Kombu seaweed

2 garlic cloves, crushed (optional)

Place all ingredients into a 5 to 6-quart crock pot and cover with filtered water by 2 inches. Cook on high for 8 hours, up to 12 hours if necessary. Freeze unused beans immediately. To freeze in one-can portion sizes, Fill a 2-cup measuring cup to 1½ cups of beans, and then add just enough of the cooking liquid to reach the top of the beans.

Vegetarian Chili

Adapted from The Frog/Commissary Cookbook

2 Jalapeno peppers

1/3 cup olive oil

1 cup chopped carrots

2 cups diced white onions

1 cup chopped green peppers

¾ cup chopped organic celery

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 cups mushrooms, rinsed, dried and chopped

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon ground cumin

¾ teaspoon dried basil

¾ teaspoon dried oregano

2 tablespoons chili powder

2 teaspoons salt

½ teaspoon pepper

1 ½ cup Pomi Strained Tomatoes

½ cup filtered water

2 14-oz. cans organic diced tomatoes with juice

2 cups undrained kidney beans (from 1 20-oz. can or homemade)

½ teaspoon Tabasco

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

¼ cup dry red or white wine

Optional: ½ cup quinoa (we omit this step and serve with cornbread muffins, the recipe follows below)

Roast jalapeno peppers over fire or under broiler until black, turning as necessary, until done. While the peppers are blackening, assemble all the rest of the ingredients.

When Jalapeno peppers are completely black, place in a paper bag and fold over top, or into a bowl sealed with plastic wrap. Leave peppers for 20 minutes as you continue to assemble the rest of the ingredients.

When all the ingredients are ready to go, scrape the blackened skins off of the Jalapenos. Slice them into quarters the long way, and then chop. Keep to the side.

In a 6- or 7-quart dutch oven, heat the olive oil. Over high heat, add the onions, celery, green peppers, carrots, garlic, mushrooms, spices, salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, stirring. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, uncovered. If too thick, the chili can be thinned with tomato juice.

If you don’t add quinoa to the pot, serve with corn chips or corn bread to make a complete protein with the kidney beans.

Corn Bread Muffins

From the Bon Appetit, Y’all cookbook

Makes one dozen muffins

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 cups fine corn flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 cups buttermilk (or homemade plain yogurt)

1 large egg

Preheat oven to 425F. Grease muffin tin. Mix together cornmeal, baking soda and salt. Separately, whisk together the buttermilk and egg. Melt the butter as you mix together the wet ingredients into the dry. Add the melted butter and mix well. Spoon the batter into the tins, filling each 2/3 full. Bake 25 minutes, or until skewer comes out clean.

These are dense and flat-topped. To get a rounder muffin top, heat oven to 450F and turn down to 425F when you put the batter into the oven.

Either way, I recommend breaking them into pieces over the chili as you enjoy.

This meal is great with a salad. We make a creamy dressing using Penzey’s Creamy Peppercorn seasoning, using the recipe right on the jar.

Truly Decadent Red Velvet Black & White Cookies (Gluten-Free, Of Course!)

Aw, heck. I’m sucking it up and writing about Valentine’s Day, after the fact. Because this dessert is so good I can’t keep it in any longer.

Such a controversial holiday. But why? Why does a holiday have to be created by the church or government to be a “real” holiday? Why not one that’s just because we want to?

I know some people get upset that they “must” do something on Valentine’s Day. But see, when I was growing up, my dad loved to go out and get my mother sentimental cards and tell her how much he loved her, all while she told him it was a bullsh** holiday and – though she smiled – a waste of time and money.

It taught my impressionable little mind that in spite of having 14 kids who were hard to raise (to put it mildly) he still thought she was the ultimate woman, his dream woman. They were a united front in the world.

I decided that people who didn’t like Valentine’s Day maybe just didn’t feel the way he did about her.

I know, I KNOW it was built up by the greeting card companies, in sometimes uncomfortable ads like the one Hallmark ran this year. But isn’t it a good thing, that there are ads to counteract the animosity between the sexes created by auto and booze companies? Ones that bring us together to buy into something instead of creating tension between us?

There, I’ve said my peace, and will now divulge the most decadent Valentine’s Day dessert I know of, Red Velvet Black and Whites. No, these are not dry cookies with flavorless white and chocolate sugar coating, but the lightest, fluffiest soft cakes, with two helpings of frosting – rich chocolate and vanilla cream cheese.

The best part is that the secret to the cookie texture is that they are gluten free, so nothing in them to make them tough.

I make them this way because I always hated black & white cookies, the kind you get wrapped in plastic in New York delis, until I had the version at Lassen& Hennigs, a gourmet grocery and deli in Brooklyn Heights. The frosting is so decadent that they don’t wrap them in plastic but put them in their own containers, sinfully beckoning to one from the cash register. (They are wrong, wrong, wrong!)

This is one of the few recipes I recommend using a gluten-free mix. I’m someone who bakes mostly from scratch. The chocolate frosting here alone takes as long as the cookies themselves. And, I do make red velvet cupcakes from scratch. So you know I wouldn’t be recommending it here if it weren’t a good idea. In this case, the Better Batter all-purpose gluten-free flour really does make a fantastic whoopee pie cookie, with a harder top and soft inside. I just make their cupcake recipe and bake it in a whoopee-pie pan (or muffin-top pan, or to make them even smaller, the bottom of a muffin tin).

Decadent Red Velvet Black and Whites

Makes about a dozen large muffin-top sized cookies

Do make the chocolate frosting a day ahead and reheat in microwave or over a double boiler to frost.

The cookie and cream cheese frosting recipes are from Better Batter’s web site. The chocolate frosting is the Shiny Fudge Frosting from Carole Walter’s Great Cakes.

For the Cookies:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

1 1oz bottle red food coloring

2 cups Better Batter Gluten Free Flour

1/3 cup cocoa

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 tablespoon white vinegar

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

8 oz cream cheese

3 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Chocolate Frosting:

½ cup sugar

¼ cup water

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

4 oz unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

2 cups strained confectioner’s sugar (measured after straining)

2 tablespoons very hot water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Make the chocolate frosting (a day ahead, if possible):

Assemble ingredients before proceeding. Put a kettle on to boil separately, for the hot water you will need later in the recipe.

Combine the sugar, water and corn syrup in a medium sized saucepan. Stir briefly, cover, and bring to a slow boil. Brush sides of saucepan occasionally if necessary with clear water to prevent crystals from forming. When sugar is completely dissolved, simmer syrup about 3 minutes.

Remove the sugar syrup from the heat and add the chocolate all at once, stirring continuously with a metal spoon until the chocolate is dissolved. Beat the butter into the chocolate mixture, then add the confectioner’s sugar alternately with the hot water, dividing the sugar into two parts and the water into two parts. Blend in the vanilla and beat again until smooth and shiny.

Keep chocolate frosting in an airtight container until ready to use. Reheat in microwave oven or over a double boiler but only just til soft, do not let it get excessively hot. This frosting must be kept warm to spread easily onto cookies.

Make the cookies:

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a muffin-top pan, or whoopee-pie pan. Beat butter or margarine in bowl, then add sugar, on medium speed, for about 4 minutes or until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and vanilla.

Meanwhile, stir together buttermilk and food coloring in a small bowl. In another bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa and salt. Turn mixer speed to low. Alternate between the buttermilk and flour mixture, about a third at a time, until just combined.

In a small cup, stir together vinegar and baking soda. Allow to fizz before adding to the batter.

Fill pan, just enough to make a cookie, in each hollowed out area. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until tops lightly spring back when you touch them. Allow to cool on a rack.

Make the cream cheese frosting:

Cream butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Add vanilla extract and beat till very smooth. Add powdered sugar, and beat until frosting consistency.

When cookies are cooled, frost half with chocolate frosting and half with cream cheese frosting.