Roasted Root Vegetable Pizza

I used to be a thick crust pizza gal. I liked a Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza. Most of the thin crust pizza that I had eaten tasted like cardboard. When I moved to New York, I had heard about the famous New York style pizza. Sure, there is a pizzeria on every other corner and you can pick up a slice for a few bucks most hours of the day. But that pizza was just okay, some better than others, but certainly nothing to write home about.

Then I went to Grimaldi’s pizza in Brooklyn. My pizza world was forever changed. Grimaldi’s is one of many pizzerias in New York with coal-fired ovens, any of which could have been the first to rock my pizza world.

Pizza from a coal-fired oven is different. The intense heat works magic on the crust. The thin crust is crispy on the outside yet somehow remains tender and chewy. It is often dotted with delightful, giant dough bubbles. The coal imparts a slightly smoky flavor. In my opinion the way to order it is with few toppings, too many and the thin crust can get soggy. I like just tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and basil.

There are many factors that go into making a great pizza. One, which the home cook may find challenging, is heat. To get that perfect combination of chewy and crisp crust, you need heat. 700 degrees should do it, which is a couple hundred degrees above the highest setting on most home-kitchen ovens.

People will go to great lengths to work around this limitation.

One way is to build an outdoor brick pizza oven. A grill can also reach staggering temperatures. Seeing how there is a chill in the air, I’m more interested in people who’ve tricked out their indoor oven to achieve intense heat.

In It Must’ve Been Something I Ate,Jeffrey Steingarten, food critic at Vogue magazine, details his pursuit of heat hot enough to make a proper pizza at home. (Let me first say that I want his job. Steingarten decides to write about pizza and gets sent to Naples, Italy, the birthplace of Neapolitan-style pizza. I, on the other hand, pay for my own flour.) Steingarten tried such things like covering the heat sensor on his oven and cooking (or rather burning) a pizza using the self-cleaning setting (which locks the door and imprisons your pizza).

The LA Times has another DIY indoor pizza oven idea. You take some firebricks and make a little box in your oven. Then you heat it on its highest setting for about an hour. The bricks hold the heat and increase the heat inside the brick box. Pretty cool.

The only pizza equipment I have is a pizza wheel. I would love a pizza stone and a pizza peel (yes, this is a hint to any gift buyers). The pizza stone retains heat and helps give the pizza a nice crisp crust. The pizza peel is that fancy paddle thing you see pizza makers skillfully use to slide pizzas in and out of a hot oven. For now, I make due with a plain old baking sheet.

Steingarten had a good tip. He suggested that if you have a gas stove, place the pizza stone directly on the bottom of the oven. I placed my pizza on a baking sheet then placed it on my oven’s floor. With a leery eye, I peered in every couple of minutes. I was hungry and didn’t want to risk burning the bottom. While I love a crisp crust with maybe a couple of chard spots, I don’t like burnt pizza one bit. Luckily, it worked beautifully. Though not as good as Grimaldi’s, I did end up with a darn fine pizza with a near perfect crust.

No-knead pizza dough

This is adapted from Sullivan Street Bakery’s Jim Lahey’s recipe. It takes a day to make, but don’t fret, the hands on time is only about 10 to 15 minutes.

Lahey’s version uses all white flour. I added whole wheat and buckwheat flour. I’m a little obsessed with buckwheat flour these days. I love its slightly nutty, complex flavor. If you are trying to replicate a Grimaldi’s pizza, use all white flour.

Makes four 12-inch pizza crusts

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose white or bread flour, more for dusting
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup buckwheat flour (substitute white or wheat flour)
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
11/2 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 cups water
cornmeal for dusting

Method

  • In a large bowl, mix the flour with the yeast and salt. Add the water and stir until well mixed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave in a warm spot for 12 to 24 hours. If your house is cold in the winter like ours is, plan to leave it out for 24 hours.
  • Place the dough on a floured work surface and sprinkle the top with flour. It will be sticky, so flour your hands. Fold the dough over on itself a few times. Divide the dough into four pieces. Shape each piece into a ball. Set each ball in an oiled bowl (or plate). Cover with plastic wrap (oil the wrap if it might touch the dough when rising) and let rise for two hours.
  • Preheat oven to 425 degrees. If using a pizza stone, place it on the floor of your oven if it is gas, or on the bottle rack if it is electric.
  • Stretch or toss the dough into the desired shape. I roll the dough out on a piece of floured wax paper. If you are using a pizza stone, assemble the pizza on a pizza peel or flat baking sheet lightly dusted with cornmeal, then carefully transfer the uncooked pizza to the hot pizza stone. If using a baking sheet, lightly dust with cornmeal, then transfer the rolled out dough to the sheet and cover with toppings (see below).
  • Place baking sheet on the floor of your oven if it is gas, or on the bottle rack if it is electric.
  • Bake at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes or until the bottom is crisp, but not burnt and the toppings are bubbly.

Roasted root vegetable pizza topping

This pizza was inspired by the Isabella Pizzarella at Baba Louies in Hudson.

Ingredients
2 medium-sized beets
1 medium sweet potato
2 small onions
3-4 garlic cloves
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
8-10 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced into thin rounds

Method

  • Heat oven to 400 degrees.
  • Slice the beets, onions and sweet potatoes about 1/4 inch thick. Crush the garlic cloves with the back of a chef’s knife and remove peel, leaving the clove whole.
  • Toss vegetables with olive oil to coat well. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
    Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet.
  • Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, turning at least once.
  • Remove and let cool enough to handle before adding to pizza.
  • Lightly brush prepared pizza dough with olive oil. Arrange vegetables in a single layer, covering the whole pizza.

Roasted Smashed Potatoes

This recipe is adapted from this month’s issue of Cooks Illustrated. They call for roasting the potatoes at 500ºF. They must (a.) have a powerful exhaust system and (b.) have a very clean oven. Two things I do not have. Any thing much above 425ºF and I have to take the batteries out of our smoke detector.

When these potatoes are done correctly, the insides taste like creamy mash potatoes and the outside like crispy fries. What’s better than that?

Ingredients
-1 1/2 –2 inch-sized potatoes (medium to low starch). Three potatoes per person should do it, though I could easily eat five.
-Olive oil
-Butter (optional)
-Sea salt and pepper

Method

  • Add well-washed, unpeeled potatoes in a single layer to a pot with a lid. Barely cover them with salted water. The water shouldn’t be higher than largest potato. You want to steam them more than boil them.
  • Bring the water to boil, cover and continue to cook over medium-high to high heat for 10-15 minutes. Check it occasionally to make sure all of the water hasn’t evaporated.
  • Heat oven to 400ºF.
  • Drain and let cool slightly, they smash better when cooled.
  • Transfer potatoes to a baking sheet. Roll potatoes in a couple tablespoons of olive oil to coat.
  • Use a potato masher to squash each potato flat.
  • Drizzle each smashed potato with olive oil then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Bake the potatoes for 25-30 minutes until crisp and golden. During the last ten minutes of cooking, I like to add a little butter to each potato. I use grass-fed butter, which is full of all kinds of good nutrients like omega 3 and CLAs (conjugated linoleic acid), so I don’t feel a smidgen of guilt in doing so!

Serve hot.

Potatoes

My husband and I are not good potato growers. We’ve tried. Last year we only got a handful, many of them micro-sized, which I think will be very trendy someday, mainly because the gum-ball sized tubers are so darn cute.

This year I did a little research and came across a method that insured a bumper crop. It involved building a box of sorts (no top or bottom). You plant the tubers in the ground inside your three-foot tall box and as they grow you cover them with dirt.

The box allows you to build up the dirt giving the potatoes plenty of growing room. I guess this is old news to farmers who have used old car tires to achieve the same thing, but the idea was new to me and I was excited.

We lovingly tended the plants all summer, not even disturbing the soil to grab a few early potatoes. We wanted them fat. We added a mixture of dirt and compost from our backyard compost bin, which we affectionately call our “little black gold maker.” I imagined having to add a storage bin in our basement to accommodate the pounds of potatoes we were sure to harvest. I had the perfect spot all picked out.

In early fall we decided to start digging. My husband loves to harvest potatoes because it is like a subterranean Easter egg hunt– every potato is a big surprise… especially in our case. We ended up with about eight, medium-sized potatoes and a few micro-potatoes, which we split amongst the four people sharing the garden. Dang.

Luckily we have plenty of talented farmers in our area who can easily pick up the slack for us. I’ve added the Farm at Miller’s Crossing in Hudson, NY to my list of favorite farms. They meet my two criteria: They are organic and reasonably priced. Plus they are quite skilled in potato growing. I am particularly enamored with their “majestic purple” potatoes.

James Beard in his Theory and Practice Of Good Cooking categorizes potatoes into two types: mealy and waxy, neither of which sound too appetizing to me. Seems the more modern nomenclature is “baking potato” or “boiling potato.”

“Cooks Illustrated” has an excellent “Potato Primer” on their site. This tells you everything you want to know about potatoes. They add a third category, appropriately named “in-between” potatoes.

Here’s the low down:

Mealy and Baking Potatoes: These potatoes have a high starch content and are good for baking, frying, and mashing. Examples: Idaho or Russet potato.

In-between Potatoes: These potatoes have a medium starch content and are good for steaming, baking, roasting, grilling, and au gratin dishes. Examples: Yukon Gold, Purple Majestic.

Firm, Waxy or Boiling Potatoes: These potatoes have a low starch content and are good for boiling, roasting, grilling, sautés, stews, salads, and au gratin dishes. Examples: Red Bliss, French Fingerling.

Potatoes sort of get a bad health rap, mainly because they are a carbohydrate and have a high glycemic index. If you are watching your sugar, don’t go overboard on them. On the plus side, they are rich in magnesium and copper, high in potassium and vitamin C and a good source of dietary fiber. Go for potatoes with blue or yellow flesh. These contain more phytonutrients than their white-fleshed cousins.

Eating the skin ups their nutritional value but with a caveat. Potatoes contain a glycoalkaloid (solanine), which is a mild toxin and most of this toxin is found in the skin. The amount found in most potatoes is considered harmless, but some nutritional experts still recommend that you peel all potatoes. I love a good crisp potato skin so I usual don’t peel them. Green and sprouting potatoes contain a higher amount of the toxin so I do peel those.

The blog Whole Health Source has an excellent three-part series called “Potatoes and Human Health.”

Potatoes were added to the latest Environmental Working Group dirty dozen list. This is a list of the top 12 of the most pesticide contaminated fruits and vegetables. So I search out organic potatoes.

Potatoes can be stored for up to 6 months. Ask your farmer about which ones are better for storage. They should be stored in a cool, dark, well-ventilated area. Exposure to light will turn them green. Nobody wants green potatoes.

If anyone has extra potatoes to store, we have the perfect place in our basement for them!

Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Barbara Kingsolver
Harper Perennial (April 29, 2008)

I’ve long been a fan of Kingsolver’s fiction and was happy to see this memoir. The author and her family spent a year only eating food that was produced locally. Each family member was allowed one indulgence not found locally, so they did keep a bit of coffee, chocolate, and spices around, but other than that, they strictly adhered to their mission. If they didn’t grow or raise it, or their neighbors didn’t grow or raise it, then they didn’t eat it.

Reading the book, I realized how much I had taken for granted. If I needed a tomato in February, I could choose from fresh or canned at the grocery. Kingsolver denied herself this option. If she wanted tomatoes in February, she needed to can them in the summer herself or hope that a neighbor was industrious with their summer crop.

This book showed me that it is possible to truly live locally and spurred on my desire to grow a garden and learn to preserve produce. While you still might find a banana in my shopping cart, you will also find me canning tomatoes at summer’s end.

Vampires Beware, we’ve been eating garlic!

Vampires cross the street when they walk by our house, especially since our visit to Virginia Ambrose from Scarecrow Farm. We met her at the Hudson Farmers Market last weekend. And we’re glad we did.

If you have a question about garlic, ask Virginia. She knows her garlic. They grow more hardneck varieties than softneck. Apparently hardneck is the garlic connoisseur’s choice. The flavor is said to be more complex. The cloves are larger, but fewer. They are easier to peel but don’t store as well as the softnecks. Softneck garlic is the type you most often see in the supermarket, though I doubt our local supermarkets carry either the Korean Red or Mediterranean Soft neck that Scarecrow Farms grows.

Scarecrow Farm has many types of garlic, each with their own characteristics. Virginia will mark each bulb with the name so you can go home and have your very own garlic tasting, which is exactly what we did.

I methodically set up for the tasting. First I labeled plates with each type of garlic.

The line-up was:
Two porcelain hardnecks: Carpathian and Romanian Red
One purple stripe hardneck: Siberian
One soft neck: Mediterranean.

Then I heated up bread with a little butter and placed the raw, minced garlic on each piece. I’m sure you could also conduct this taste test with cooked garlic, but I felt we would catch more subtleties eating it raw. Plus vampires hate raw garlic.

We sampled each one, noting their bouquet, start and finish. We cleansed our pallet between each sample, which with raw garlic is no small feat.

I had hoped to be able to pick out the nuances of each variety and write something that mimicked a wine review, but my pallet just isn’t trained that way. The only thing I got was hot and hotter. The Carpathian was by far the hottest.

My husband claimed that after our dog got a whiff of his garlic breath, she hopped off the couch, something she usually only does with great reluctance and a dirty look.

I’ve always used a lot of garlic in my cooking— going through at least a head a week, if not more. Conventional wisdom says that I’m doing my body a favor. Garlic is purported to have a host of medicinal properties including anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, antibacterial and antiviral benefits. I do believe it can ward off a cold, which may or may not be the result of its lingering aroma. In my experience, other people are the main cause of colds, so I feel garlic is pretty effective at keeping them at arm’s length. They don’t call it “the stinking rose” for nothing.

All food prices have increased in the last year but the price of garlic has skyrocketed. Last year I found that much of the garlic that you find in the supermarket comes from China. Apparently there has been a bit of speculation in the China garlic market and people have been pouring money into it. I read stories of farmers hoarding their garlic crop and of businessmen investing in fields of garlic rather than real estate. Is there irrational exuberance in the China garlic market?

I don’t know what the price of garlic in China has to do with our local crop, but the prices have risen here also. Last year I paid 50¢ a head, this year it is double that.

But I buy it anyway. Maybe if I hold on to it, I can sell it and double my money next year. Yes, I’m giving out investment advice in a food column!

Roasted Garlic
While I will eat garlic raw, I love the mellow taste of roasted garlic. Roasting garlic caramelized the cloves and creates a delicious, creamy paste. Spread it on bread or toss it into mashed potatoes.

Ingredients
Whole heads of garlic
Olive oil

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
  • Peel away any loose outer skin of the garlic bulb. Using a knife, or kitchen shears, cut off about 1/4 inch of the top of bulb, exposing the individual cloves.
  • Place the garlic in a baking dish, I use a small ramekin for each head, but they can all be in the same dish. Drizzle each with olive oil.
  • Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.
  • Allow the garlic to cool. You can either use a fork to gently pull each clove out or squeeze the garlic clove directly into your mouth, I mean directly on a piece of nice, crusty French bread.

Roasted garlic may be stored in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator for several days.

————

Shared on The Nourishing Gourmet.

Paper Bag Microwave Popcorn

The oil/butter in this is optional; it just makes it taste better!

Ingredients
1/4 cup popcorn kernels
2 teaspoons olive oil or butter
1/4 teaspoon sea salt (and other desired seasoning)
Paper lunch bag

Method

  • Place the popcorn with the olive oil, salt and seasoning in the paper bag.
  • Fold the top of the bag over twice.
  • Place the bag in the microwave, fold side down. Microwave on high for about 2 minutes. Stay close and listen. Once the pops slow down to about 5 seconds between pops, it’s done. If left on too long, it will burn.

Popcorn Accidents

Making popcorn is dangerous. My top two kitchen accidents happened while making popcorn. First there was fire. In my early 20s, I invited a date over to watch a movie. I thought homemade popcorn would be a nice touch. I placed oil in a pot, turned it on high, and then retreated to my bedroom to quickly finish getting ready. I returned to near ceiling-high flames. Yes, this is how people burn down kitchens. Luckily, that didn’t happen to me. I managed to turn off the heat and place a lid on the pot. We watched the movie while snacking on saltines.

Lesson learned: Ask the date to bring the popcorn.

Second, there was an explosion. I had recently learned that you could make popcorn in the microwave with a paper bag. Brilliant. It’s a fraction of the cost of store bought microwave popcorn, you know exactly what you are eating and there are no perfluorooctanoic acid lined bags. When I ran out of paper bags, I thought why not try a glass bowl with a lid. I recently told my friend Christine this, and she laughed and said something like “Everyone knows you can’t microwave glass covered dishes.” Almost everybody.

I placed the oil and popcorn in a glass casserole dish and covered it with the lid. Shut the door and turned it on high. The gentle popping sound was followed by a big “BOOM.” Oops. One of my much-used casserole dishes exploded. It didn’t just crack in half; it shattered into tiny little pieces. The microwave nicely contained the disaster, but we kept finding glass bits for weeks.

I was surprised the microwave even worked after that. I still shy away from it. This week I started to use it to store flour (a tip I got from “Cooks Illustrated.”) I keep waiting for my husband to protest. I imagine it is coming.

Lesson learned: Microwaves are great for storage.

I finally mastered cooking popcorn. I make it on the stovetop in about five minutes. This method makes the best tasting popcorn and it is easy and cheap. A big bag of popcorn kernels will last forever. You only need a third of a cup to make a large bowl of the snack.

My new favorite popcorn topping is nutritional yeast. I first bought it for our dogs. My aunt told me that a sprinkle or two on their food is good for them. I then discovered that it is delicious. It has a tasty, cheesy flavor. It also supplies a bit of protein and a good dose of B-complex vitamins. I’ve been adding it to everything, but especially love it on popcorn. You can find nutritional yeast in the bulk section of most health food stores.

Of course, I also always add melted butter. Everything is better with a little melted butter!

Stovetop Popcorn

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons olive or coconut oil (I use a combo. Other types of vegetable oils will work, I just feel these two are the healthier option. )
1/3 cup popcorn kernels

Method

  • Heat the oil in a 3-4 quart saucepan over medium-high heat.
  • Place 3 popcorn kernels into the oil and cover the pan.
  • When the kernels pop, the oil is ready. Add the rest of the popcorn kernels. Cover and gently shake pan to distribute kernels.
  • Once the popping starts, gently shake the pan by moving it back and forth over the burner. Keep the lid slightly ajar to let the steam from the popcorn release (but be careful to keep all popped kernels in the pot).
  • Once the popping slows, remove the pan from the heat. Remove the lid, and dump the popcorn into a wide bowl. While hot, season as desired.

Makes 2 quarts.

Shared on http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/

Beet Humus

I modified this from the blog Simply Recipes. Even if I were a beet hater, I would make this dip just to look at it. My husband says it is a deep maroon color, I say it’s a dead ringer for Pantone 249.

Ingredients
1 pound beets (about 6 medium sized beets), trimmed, scrubbed clean, cooked (roasted, steamed or boiled), peeled, and cubed
1/3 cup tahini sesame seed paste
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1-2 clove garlic, chopped
Zest from one lemon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

Method

  • Place all ingredients in a food processor (or blender) and pulse until smooth.
  • Chill for an hour to let flavors meld.
  • Serve with pita chips, vegetables or use as a sandwich spread. Store for up to a week in a refrigerator.

This post is a part of The Nourishing Gourmet’s Pennywise Platter.

Beware, picky eaters…

The world is divided into two camps-those who love beets and those who hate them. I’m firmly in the first camp, though I wasn’t always. It took my friend Jan and her perfectly roasted beets to change my mind. I think the problem was that I had never had beets prepared properly. In fact, I believe, correctly or not, that proper preparation is the key for anyone to like any food. And I often feel the need to prove it.

When people tell me that they don’t like a particular food I’m usually a little incredulous. I try to be tolerant, but often feel it is my duty to prove picky eaters wrong. Case in point, my friend Sydney despises eggs. She will steer clear of anything with the slightness whiff of egg. She doesn’t eat her father’s pancakes because they are too eggy. Once when she was visiting, I made a delicious custard-based (a.k.a egg-based) ginger ice cream and served it for dessert. I waited for her to taste it and I asked how she liked it. When she said, “Yum, delicious!” and took another bite. I jumped up and yelled, “Ha! Got you. There are six egg yolks in that ice cream!”

I never said I was the most congenial hostess, but don’t worry, if you are allergic to shellfish, I won’t sneak in any shrimp. If you are a vegetarian, I’ll use vegetable stock rather than my normal chicken stock. But if you tell me that you hate mushrooms, I just might chop them into teeny, tiny pieces and serve them to you hidden in a meatloaf. Fair warning, you picky eaters, you.

Thankfully, my husband is an excellent eater. The only thing I will occasionally find pushed to the side of his plate is raw green peppers. I guess I’m not hiding them well enough.

We both are beet lovers and fall is a great time to get them. This past weekend I went to the Hudson Farmers market. Red Oak Farm had beautiful red and golden beets. I picked up a bunch of each, roasted them, sliced them and served them with a roasted chicken. The two beet colors were quite pretty together. My husband and I ate them all. I meant saved some so that I could try a new recipe, but didn’t set any aside.

Earlier this week, with a deadline looming and a preference for local produce, I got on the phone and called some farms. I called Fog and Thistle to see if their road-side stand was open and if they had beets. It wasn’t open but a nice person offered to go out, in the rain no less, and pull some beets for me. Got to love that!

Red Oak and Fog and Thistle have become my favorite farms. Of course anyone who helps me out of a beet crisis gets points in my book, but I like both farms for two reasons. One, they are organic and two, they are reasonably priced, satisfying both my frugal nature and my quest for healthy food. They give me hope that you can eat pesticide free produce on a budget!


Roasted Beets
If you have particularly large beets, or just want to speed up the cooking time, half or quarter them before roasting.

Beet juice can stain your skin, so wear kitchen gloves if you don’t want pink fingertips. I also like to peel them in the sink to contain any beet juice splatter.

Ingredients
2 pounds medium beets
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Method

  • Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
  • Rinse the beets and trim off any leafy tops, cut any large beets into smaller pieces.
  • Place beets in a deep-sided pan, add water and cover with foil.
  • Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until beets can be pierced with a fork and the skin comes off easily.
  • Peel and slice the beets. Drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Serve warm.

Serves 4-6

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays at The Food Renegade!

Book Review: Nourishing Traditions

Nourishing Traditions:
The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
By Sally Fallon
NewTrends Publishing 1999

My friend Jan gave me this cookbook. I love it. It doubles as a reference book. It’s loaded with well-referenced material seemingly debunking many of the current trends in nutrition. This book is for the person who is ready to change their diet and is willing to put the time into doing so.

Nourishing Traditions arose from the writings of Dr. Weston A. Price. He was a dentist in the 1930s and conducted extensive, in-depth studies of people, all over the world, eating traditional foods. Price had the good fortune to be able to study groups of people who lived solely on traditional diets and compare them to people who had adopted a modern diet. He was able to examine multiple generations and siblings, some of which were born and raised on modern diets, and compare them to family members who were raised on traditional diets.

A dentist, Price focused on each group’s susceptibility to tooth decay and dental-arch deformities. Price found that in the groups who adopted a modern diet that included white flour and refined sugar, dental caries and dental malformations increased dramatically and their overall health decreased.

Nourishing Traditions uses Price’s findings as a starting point and adds to it copious amounts of modern research to develop the recipes.

This book asks you to dispense with the notion that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you. This is a hard one for everyone who, for the last 20-plus years has been taught the opposite. I think her facts are compelling and since saturated fat makes most things taste better, I’m all for it.

Nourishing Traditions also does a hard sell on foods that have a high “ick” factor. There is a whole chapter on organ meats. I haven’t been able to stomach anything except for the liver pate, but she has convinced me that organ meats are good for me.

Enzyme-rich, lacto-fermented foods are of particular interest to me. Making a pickle without a drop of vinegar seems like magic to me!

Pear Walnut Cream Cheese Wontons

My husband made pork dumplings the other night and we had leftover wonton wrappers. He had the great idea of making a pear dessert with them.

Wonton wrappers can usually be found in the refrigerated section of grocery stores. If you are more of a D.I.Y. person, click here for a recipe on making your own.

Ingredients
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
dash of salt
1 medium-sized pears, roughly chopped (peeled or not is your choice)
1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped
10-15 wonton wrappers
1/4 cup coconut oil (or vegetable oil for frying)

Method

  • Add cream cheese, maple syrup, cinnamon and a dash of salt to a medium-sized bowl and mix until smooth.
  • Mix in pears and walnuts.
  • Place 1 heaping tablespoon of filling in the center of wrapper.
  • Using fingertip dipped in water, gently wet around the inside edge of wrapper.
  • Fold wrapper in half. Gently push the filling down to keep edge of wrapper free of filling. Press to seal.
  • Repeat with remaining wrappers and filling.
  • Heat 1/4 cup of oil in a large sauté pan on medium-high heat, keep the oil under its smoking point.
  • Once the oil is hot, gently set dumplings in the pan.
  • Fry for 3 or 4 minutes on both side, or until the bottoms are a nice golden brown. Shift dumplings occasionally to prevent from sticking. (These are sometime called pot-stickers because of their predilection for sticking.)

Serve warm.
Makes 10-15 wontons

Pear Risotto with Mushrooms and Blue Cheese

It is hard to go wrong with pears and blue cheese. In fact, when making this dish, keep some sliced pears and blue cheese handy. You’ll want a snack between all the stirring.

Vialone Nano, Carnaroli or Arborio rice are traditionally used in risotto. They have a high starch content, which gives the dish a beautiful creamy consistency. You may substitute other types of rice but you won’t get the same degree of creaminess. Since we only have white rice in the house when my husband smuggles it in, I use short-grain brown rice. It’s not quite as creamy, but the blue cheese makes up for it. I could easily double the amount of blue cheese, but then that wouldn’t leave me enough for snacking.

Ingredients
5 to 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock (homemade preferably)
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 medium onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups of mushrooms sliced (any fresh type will do)
2 cups rice (short grained, like Arborio)
4-5 medium-sized pears, chopped (peeling or not is your choice)
5 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
Fresh parsley, chopped for garnish
Salt/pepper to taste

Method

  • Using a large frying pan, sauté onions and mushrooms in butter for about 5 minutes over medium-high heat.
  • Add 2 cup of rice to the frying pan; toast the rice over medium-high heat for a few minutes.
  • Keep a pot/bowl of warm chicken/vegetable stock close by. Add a ladleful of stock to the pan with rice. Stir to keep the rice from sticking. Reduce heat to medium. Once the stock has been absorbed, add another ladleful. Keep repeating with the remainder of stock. The rice should be tender but not mushy. If the rice is not tender, you can continue to add small amounts of water until the dish has a nice creamy consistency.
  • Add pears and blue cheese and stir well until cheese is melted.
  • Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve risotto warm. Add a salad for a meal, or serve a smaller portion as a side dish.
Serves 4 as main course.

Part of Fight Back Friday.

Pears

As a kid, I mainly ate two kinds of pears. The first kind were canned. For any special occasion at my grandparents, we would start in the den with shrimp cocktail. Then we would move to the dining room where at each place setting was a glass plate with tomato aspic for the adults and pear salad for the kids. For the pear salad, my grandmother would set a pear-half on a leaf of iceberg lettuce. She would add a dollop of mayonnaise in the center of the pear and top it with a sprinkle of cheddar cheese. Did I just hear all of you mayonnaise haters groan?

The other kind of pear was the kind that grew on the first tree outside of our backdoor. This was a large tree, easily higher than the window of my sister’s second floor bedroom. These pears were hard, gritty and rather bitter. I would occasionally pick one and eat it, but was never impressed with them. I was always under the impression that they just were not good eating pears.

Turns out, maybe I just wasn’t harvesting them right. The pears’ gritty texture is due to something called stone cells. The best way to minimize stone cells is to pick unripe pears and allow them to ripen off the tree. Done correctly, the texture is smooth and the pear is juicy.

Asian pears, totally different in both taste and texture to European pears (the typical ones grown around here), are one exception and should be allowed to ripen on the tree.

Nutritionally speaking, pears are a good source of fiber, have a bit of potassium and vitamin C – good things to have in a healthy snack.

At the farmers market last week, I picked up three types of pears, Bosc, Bartlett, and Comice. Barlette pears are light green and will turn more yellow when ripened. Bosc pears have a classic pear shape and a cinnamon-brown colored russeting. Comice pears, small in size, are the cutest, most perfect pears. I’d buy them just to look at them. Fortunately, they are not only adorable, they are also juicy and delicious. They are my favorite pear.

Store pears at room temperature until they start to soften. When ripe, they should give gently when pressed. Once ripened, store them in the fridge.

I do think about driving by my old house, picking some pears and letting them ripen properly. I wonder if they might boot Comice pears out of my favorite pear spot. I’d like to think that they would.

Book Review: The Omnivore’s Dilemma

If I had to name one thing that most influences my cooking, it would be reading. I’m an avid reader and in the last few years I’ve been eating up many a food-related book. Not only do I find them entertaining, many have completely changed the way that I eat.

I’ve always considered myself a healthy eater. Over the years, my idea of what I considered to be healthy has changed and books have been an important part of that change. I’ll be posting reviews of books that have influenced my eating. Here’s the first one.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
By Michael Pollan
Penguin 2006

The Omnivore’s Dilemma was a “gateway drug” for me. I blame it for igniting my real-food quest, which was a slipper slope to a full-blown obsession. It’s a must read for anyone who eats. After I read it, I bought multiple copies and gave them as gifts. I thought it was enlightening and important to share.

Pollan traces the origins of four meals. The first meal is from McDonalds. This takes us through a commercial feedlot and ends up in a cornfield. Apparently, just about every bit of processed food can trace at least some of its ingredients back to corn.

The next two meals are organic. One leads us to large-scale commercial organic farming operation and the other to an innovative, self-sustaining farm, where we meet Joel Salatin of Pollyface Farms, quite the character.

The fourth meal is one that Pollan hunted, gathered, and grew himself. He takes us hunting for wild boar in California and shows us the secretive world of morels and chanterelles foragers.

This book challenged that way that I looked at food. It brought to light some of the more unseemly practices of industrial food and made me keenly aware of how political food is.