I mean, have you SEEN this thing?

Romanesco Cauliflower

It’s the Christmas Tree Broccoli!

I first encountered this wonder if the form of a locally grown version while dining at the Local Chop & Grill House. It was delicious, and I’d never seen or eaten it before. I promptly forgot the name of the veggie, until I saw it today at the Friendly City Food Co-Op (and, it’s locally grown!). (BTW, juicing is expensive!! I’m going through produce like crazy, and that’s with only drinking 16 oz of juice per day!).

I just had to pick one up… not to juice, but to eat!

This thing was a blast to chop up. I tried so hard to maintain the cute little Christmas trees! It turns out, this thing isn’t broccoli. (Well, some countries call it broccoli, and there are cauliflower-broccoli hybrids out there that are similar, but this wackadoodle is a species of its own. In the US, we typically call it Romanesco Cauliflower. It chops up similarly to cauliflower, but it tastes more like broccoli.

Chopping the Romanesco Cauliflower

Now, personally, I’m not a huge broccoli fan (though I do eat it once a week or so), and I really don’t like cauliflower (even though I keep buying it anyway and then either tossing it because it goes bad before I convince myself to eat it, or I end up not liking whatever recipe I use it in). Is it just me, cauliflower-dislikers, or does it just look like it has so much potential?

But this Romanesco Cauliflower – it tastes more like a mild broccoli, and it’s really, really good! (It’s also gorgeous and funny looking and quite amusing to eat Christmas Trees).

The internet told me that this delicious little weirdo was best prepared either steamed or briefly boiled. One site suggested 2 minutes in boiling water, followed by a brief stir fry in a seasoned oil mix. I went that route, but tossed it in a quickie vegan garlic cream sauce instead (1/4 cup soy milk, 2 Tbsp nooch, a few cloves of garlic, a Tbsp or so of Earth Balance, and 1/2 tsp of basil).

Christmas Trees!

I had a bag of Shirataki tofu noodles in the fridge that needed to be eaten…

Shirataki Noodles

… so I served the Christmas Trees atop those, with some leftover Pumpkin Chickpea Fritters on the side.

Pumpkin Chickpea Fritters and Romanesco Cauliflower in Vegan Garlic Sauce with Shirataki Noodles

Wonderful dinner! Fantastic vegetable! I hope it sticks around so I can enjoy the Romanesco Cauliflower a few times before it goes out of season.

Dinner is served!

Yes, I know. You missed me yesterday. I’m back this evening for your foodie enjoyment, and a little birdie told me there’s a morning edition on its way, too.

First up: pesto veggie sandwiches! Oh. You mean, you’ve seen those before here? Or here? Hey – I promised I’d try to make 20 posts about food in the month of October. I never promised it’d be different food every day!

What can I say? I eat a lot of pesto veggie sandwiches. To make this instance a tiny bit more palatable, I will show you one of my magic kitchen weapons. This little beast makes chopping veggies super easy:

Pampered Chef Food Chopper

It’s the Pampered Chef Food Chopper. I couldn’t really tell you if other choppers work as well. I’ve used this one for years and it still looks and works like the day I bought it. The thing can take a beating (I’m a clutz) – it just keeps chopping away.

Now, I didn’t use it to chop these leeks…

Chopped Leeks

… but I did use it on the baby bellas (got a sweet deal on organics!) and the red peppers:

Leeks, Baby Bellas, and Red Peppers

Sometimes I use onions instead of leeks. It just depends what’s in my fridge. These leeks were on their last legs, for sure. This mix is made of 1 carton of baby bella mushrooms (16 oz), 1 large sweet red pepper, 3 leeks, and 3 cloves of garlic. Saute and salt to taste… voila!

Pesto Veggie Sandwich and Green Bean Fries

With my buddies the Green Bean Fries on the side (baked, not fried… 18 mins at 400F… salt and pepper… nom).

Enter: the Vacu Vin Pineapple Easy Slicer. Between it and its plastic siblings, this little gadget has nearly a gazillion positive reviews. Yet, my “gimmicky” radar was going off like Spidey Sense.

Aside from a vacation in Honolulu, I’ve never had fresh pineapple. It’s my favorite fruit, but being the clutz that I am, I deemed it much too dangerous to attempt chopping a pineapple myself. With visions of warm sea breezes and sweet, sweet pineapple nectar of the gods dancing in my head, I rolled the dice on this gadget. I went with the stainless steel version, hoping for some durability if in fact it worked. (Oh, who am I kidding? I just like how stainless stuff looks).

I ordered the slicer on Amazon, and then bought a pineapple in anticipation. An observation on pineapples: they are an angry fruit! Wow! I couldn’t figure out how to pick the thing up and carry it without drawing blood! I eventually wrapped my hands in my hoodie sleeves to pick the darn thing up.

Several reviews of the slicer mentioned that if the pineapple is too large, fruit will be left on the inside – so I tried to get one of the smaller pineapples of the bunch. I’ve since learned that this “medium” sized slicer is good for pineapples in the 3-5 pound range.

I took the pineapple slicer for a test drive this morning.

Vacu Vin Pineapple Slicer, and a Pineapple

The slicer did not come with instructions (gah!!) but thankfully the Amazon product page had a video demonstration, so I knew in a roundabout way what to do.

First, slice off the top of the pineapple.

Cut the top off the pineapple

Then, center the slicer on top of the pineapple and screw it in, clockwise. The teeth on the bottom of the slicer cut into the fruit with no problems.

Center the slicer on top of the pineapple and screw in

Continue to turn the slicer handle clockwise until it reaches the bottom of the pineapple. The only tricky part here is holding the pineapple in place, because – like I said – it’s an angry fruit! I ended up putting an oven mitt on my left hand while turning the slicer with my right, to prevent the pineapple skin from tearing my hand up. It was much easier to turn the slicer than I’d expected. I didn’t really have to use any force at all.

Twist the slicer into the pineapple until it hits bottom

Once you’ve hit bottom, pull the fruit out of the shell of the pineapple. It helped to twist it a bit while I pulled.

Pull the fruit out of the pineapple shell

Tada! A sliced and cored pineapple! I can see where a larger pineapple would leave more fruit in the shell.

Tada! A sliced and cored pineapple

Press the buttons on the side of the slicer handle to remove the handle, then slide the round pineapple slices off of the slicer. Serve as rings or cut into wedges. Yum!

Round pineapple slices

The way this slicer works, most of the juice is retained inside the pineapple shell. I poured the juice into a glass and got about 4 oz. from it. You could also use the remaining pineapple shell as a fruit bowl – nice party trick!

This little gadget, in my opinion, is genius. It’s brilliantly easy to use, and there’s very little risk of me losing any digits this way. If you’ve got a Bed Bath & Beyond store locally, the plastic version of this tool is on clearance for $6 (at least around the Chicago area), and it’s also available on Amazon ($8-ish for the plastic one, $16-ish for the stainless one).

Bravo! Fresh pineapple for everyone!

I made friends with butternut squash this past winter, early into my “try new foods” experiment. This week, I made friends with a dear relative of the butternut squash – the spaghetti squash. And what a perfect name! This squash makes spaghetti! For real!

It makes a great substitute for traditional pasta noodles, and I plan to try it in every noodle dish I’ve ever had! Last night, though, I did a double-dip into the new foods arena: I roasted a spaghetti squash, and topped it with a sauteed mushroom sauce. Pretty brave, methinks. I’ve been terrified of mushrooms pretty much my entire life. Ironically, I think that they taste good – but I still have to avoid thinking about what I’m eating in order to tolerate them.

I got this recipe from Emily at The Front Burner – Spaghetti Squash and Vegan Mushroom Cream Sauce

Now, I’m certain this recipe would work just as well as a traditional non-vegan cream sauce. (In fact, I had to make mine an almost-vegan cream sauce, because the local grocery store didn’t have non-dairy creamer and I didn’t feel like making the 30 minute trek out to Whole Foods, so I had to get the dairy kind – but I did use soy milk as my sauce base).

Here’s what my dinner looked like (you can find many more photos of the process at the original link):

It was delish!

I think what “made” the dish was the garlic and olive oil rub that I did on the spaghetti squash before roasting it. I’ve heard that butter and cinnamon works well too, for a more dessert-style side dish (thanks, Athir!) There really isn’t much to it other than, cut the squash in half, scoop out the guts, rub with seasonings, and roast for an hour or so at 375F. When it’s nearly done, prep your sauce, and voila.

The spaghetti squash is a little crunchier than pasta, but not much. It’s also a little bit sweet (so I can see where it would make a great dessert side). It tasted great with garlic!

I plan to try a marinara/cream sauce mix this evening with the leftovers

Tonight, I made my first vegan recipe out of Alicia Silverstone’s book, The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet: Polenta Casserole with Seitan. It contained a few of those adventurous ingredients, so for those new to them, I’ll explain:

• Seitan – “wheat meat” – a protein-rich food made from wheat gluten that resembles the texture and taste of meat
• Tamari – a soy sauce made from soybeans, water, and sea salt, usually wheat-free
• Umeboshi vinegar (or ume vinegar) – technically not a vinegar, but a fruity, salty, sour product made from Japanese umeboshi plums
• Tahini – nut butter made from sesame seeds

OK, that covers all of the ingredients that I hadn’t heard of prior to reading this book! I was able to find them all at Whole Foods Market.

Step 1: seitan, asparagus, and corn.

Next, I employed my new kitchen laptop to look up how to chop parsley. I’ve never used fresh herbs before, and wow – fresh parsley smells amazing! I also felt like a freakin’ chef chop-chop-chopping by the time I was done with the parsley. Such a pro I am. (LOL!)

Before:

After:

I over-estimated how many parsley stems I’d need to end up with 1/4 cup of fresh chopped leaves, so hopefully I can think of something to do with my leftover chopped parsley soon. For those new to chopping parsley, you pretty much hold the knife as usual in one hand, then place your other hand on top to guide the knife as sort of a rocker back and forth over the parsley leaves.

Next up – the cornmeal mixture got spread on top of the seitan mixture, with some tamari sprinkled on top:

After baking, I did not read the instructions closely enough. They said to let the casserole sit for 15 minutes before cutting it into squares. I did not wait, and my casserole was mushy (though I also didn’t use as much cauliflower as the recipe called for, so that might have contributed to my mush-factor).

Done:

I got 9 servings out of this recipe, though I used a 9×13″ pan instead of the recommended 8×8″ pan (couldn’t find my 8×8!) The original recipe notes 6 servings.

And here’s what dinner looked like! I served the casserole with a side of spring greens with organic caesar dressing:

The meal turned out delicious. I like seitan – if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was meat (minus the cholesterol and saturated fat and other bad-ness that comes along with animal based meat). I have happily survived my first vegan meal!

[recipe-show recipe=polenta-seitan]

EpicOrganic.net

Actually, I think this mission is quite possible! I am embarking upon what I call the Stealth Ninja Vegetable Experiment. You are about to bear witness to Phase 1: Prep.

It all started when my sister in law Amanda suggested that I check out this book: Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food by Jessica Seinfeld (yes, Jerry’s wife). Since I was already sold on the possibility of hiding veggies in my smoothies, I thought this book might hold some promise (though I’d be attempting to deceive myself, not kids). I picked it up at my local library (Homer Township Library ftw!) and decided to give it a test-drive.

The basic premise of the book is that you puree a variety of vegetables and store them in 1/2 cup portions in little ziplock baggies, then sneak them into recipes as needed. Sounds good to me!

But first, I would need a food processor, as mine arrived DOA last week from the cupboard, when I was making the spinach stuffed shells with tofu ricotta. I wasn’t really ready to sink a lot of cash into this food processor, so I settled on a well-reviewed $99 model – the KitchenAid 7 Cup Food Processor. I’m only cooking for one most of the time, so I doubt I’ll need anything bigger.

Next, I would need some organic vegetables. Luckily, Peapod had just delivered my groceries earlier that day (including a couple that caused me to say, “What on earth is that?!” when I pulled them out of the bags). (Peapod review here if you missed it!) My fridge was stuffed with zucchini, broccoli, sweet potatoes, beets, cauliflower, and butternut squash, amongst other things.

There are basically 4 steps to preparing veggie purees for the Stealth Ninja Vegetable experiment:

1. Chop veggies.
2. Steam or roast veggies.
3. Puree veggies.
4. Portion pureed veggies into baggies.

Steps 1 & 2: Chopping, Steaming, & Roasting

Time for some more Adventures in Chopping! I got out the cookbook, the cutting board, my one sharp knife, and some veggies and went to town.

First up: Butternut squash. I’ve never seen one of these before, much less chopped one.

I learned that to prepare a butternut squash for roasting, cut it in half, then scoop out the seeds and roast for 50 minutes or so at 400F, flesh side down.

These reminded me of pumpkins – which momentarily terrified me, as I have a well-documented dislike of pumpkin guts. I don’t know why. My family carved pumpkins every year when I was a kid, and I’ve continued to carve pumpkins most Halloween’s as an adult… but I don’t like touching the guts. Eww.

I survived the scooping of the squash, though, after yelling at myself to grow the heck up.

Here are my squash halves going into the oven:

Next up: my “what on earth is that” vegetable: Beets. Wow – these things had a life of their own! They looked like they were just pulled out of the ground 5 minutes prior! Scary!

They actually weren’t so bad. The stems were easy to cut off (though I did get a little nervous when red juice shot out all over the place, thinking that if I happened to cut myself I wouldn’t notice with all the beet juice everywhere!) Luckily, I did not cut myself and all went well. I do, however, recommend wearing an apron when working with beets. I will be investing in one ASAP.

I cut the stems down to 1 inch and wrapped the beats in foil, and stuck them in the oven next to the butternut squash for roasting.

Time to figure out how to steam some veggies!

My next subject was broccoli. I have to admit, I cheated and used a bag of frozen organic broccoli florets instead of chopping them fresh. Still, they turned out well. I steamed them on the stove.

After the broccoli was steamed, it was time to chop another new-to-me vegetable: cauliflower. Now, I’ve seen cauliflower before, but only after it had been cut up, like on a veggie appetizer tray. I’ve probably even eaten it, though not regularly. I had no idea that it came in such a cute little package! It’s like a little cauliflower softball! I resisted the urge to play catch with it and began looking at it from all angles to figure out how the heck to chop it.

As I pulled back the leaves an examined the anatomy of the head of cauliflower, I couldn’t help but think (and this is going to sound weird, but I’m gonna run with it), “What an intimate plant!” It really is a very intricate, delicate sort of plant. I was really impressed with my new friend cauliflower! I chopped away from underneath to free the stems from the core and ended up with some cauliflower florets. I steamed these in the microwave to try out a steamer tray that I found in the back of one of my cabinets.

Next veggie: zucchini! I had to be careful with this one, as I was unsure for a moment which was the zucchini and which was the cucumber. The stem on the end eventually gave away the zuc’s.

I sliced these guys up into 1 inch chunks and steamed them on the stove.

Zucchini Towers!

After the zucchini, it was time to roast the last of the veggies – the sweet potatoes. I was a little confused, as my bag of sweet potatoes said “Yams” on it, but I figured – well, if I got the wrong veggie, then I’ll be pureeing yams instead! I’ve since learned that these softer, orange sweet potatoes are marketed as yams in the US to distinguish them from the white variety of sweet potato (even though they’re actually quite different than real yams).

The sweet potatoes didn’t need any prep before roasting, so I tossed them onto a baking sheet and into the oven.

Step 3: Pureeing

Now it was time to see if my new food processor could handle my Ninja Stealth Vegetable Experiment!

The butternut squash were done roasting, so I started with them first. Wow, they smelled wonderful! How did I go so many years never trying butternut squash? I got out my ice cream scooper and scooped the flesh out of the skins and set it aside in a bowl to cool.

I continued with the zucchini, the broccoli, and the cauliflower, pureeing each one separately. The KitchenAid food processor worked wonderfully – it was easy to handle and was plenty big for my purposes.

Here’s a before and after: veggies, cooked – and veggies, pureeing:

By the time I got done pureeing the broccoli, the zucchini, the cauliflower, and the butternut squash, I’d been at it for almost 3 hours. I was beat – and still had a tray full of sweet potatoes and a few beets to puree and bag. Ugh! I made way too many sweet potatoes (an hour of peeling worth), and I have no photos of that process because honestly, I was ready to strangle the sweet potatoes (even though I did decide that they’re mighty tasty).

I was, however, quite amused by the beets. There were a pain in the behind to handle due to the quick-staining beet juice, but when I was done chopping them, I looked like I could have been in a scene from Psycho:

Yeah, I amused myself.

Finally, after 4 hours of chopping, roasting, steaming, pureeing, and bagging, I was done. I had a variety of vegetables bagged up and ready to sneak into some recipes. I stuck a few in the fridge to use soon, and the rest were put in the freezer. All were labeled with “1/2 cup [insert veggie name here]” and the date. (Can you find the misspelled veggie in the photo below?)

Thus concludes Phase 1 of the Stealth Ninja Vegetable Experiment: Prep.

Stay tuned as I try some Deceptively Delicious recipes with my stealth ninja veggies!

There’s no way I could replicate my dad’s chili, but I decided to try to find a recipe that at least reminds me of his chili and pays a little homage to the chili tradition he left behind. His recipe was a little sweet, a little spicy, and very flavorful. I came across a recipe on AllRecipes.com and modified it a bit. The result: a delicious chili that is pretty darn close to what my dad used to make. Read on for my secrets!

I started out with as many organic ingredients as possible: organic ground beef (I used 1 lb. as that’s all I had in the fridge, but next time I’ll use 2 lb.), organic tomato sauce, organic light red kidney beans, and organic onions and green pepper.

While I was digging through my cabinets for a kettle, I discovered a food chopper – new in the box – from Pampered Chef. I have a lot of Pampered Chef gadgets that I’ve never used, but have always intended to use. Now is their time to shine!

Let me tell you – this food chopper was fantastic! It sure beat chopping the onions and peppers by hand. I just quartered the onions and peppers and pounded away, 12 whacks per quarter. I think I may have gotten out some aggression while I was at it!

This chili was super easy to make. Brown the ground beef while chopping the onion and pepper. Toss everything into a kettle and bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour to an hour and a half (I went with the 1:30).

I was also short a can of beans, so my chili was a bit less thick – but it was still delicious. It had that same hint of sweet and kick that I remember from my dad’s chili, but wasn’t so spicy that it was obnoxious. Most people would probably consider this a fairly mild chili. I like spicy foods, but my Irish and English palate means that spicy to me is still mild to most.

This recipe makes 10 small to medium servings. I was able to get 7 good sized bowls of 2 ladles each out of it. I’ve got a few servings in the freezer for quick meals and a couple in the fridge to eat sooner rather than later (and one in my tummy!)

[recipe-show recipe=flatlander-chili]

EpicOrganic.net

You see, I’m clumsy. ’nuff said.

At any rate, I’ve got a long day ahead of me tomorrow, and I know I will not be waking up early enough to feed myself properly. Since I now have a fridge full of produce (thanks to Peapod), I thought I’d better get chopping (literally and figuratively). I decided to make tomorrow’s breakfast tonight, so I can just grab it and go as I sleepwalk out the door in the morning.

The adventure started like this:

Yes, I had to Google how to chop a bell pepper. I also had to Google how to chop an onion. Now you hush with the laughing!

It took me a good half hour to chop up one red pepper and one onion, but there was no bloodshed – and that’s a primary goal, right?

Mission accomplished.

On a side note, I have to share tonight’s dinner. I wouldn’t normally be so ga-ga over a sandwich, but this was the most delicious lunch meat I’ve ever had in my life… no joke. I will have to review it properly at some point. It was deli sliced herb turkey breast made by Applegate Farms – the organic meat company that touts, “There is no mystery to our meat!” The product description: “Our tender juicy turkey breast meat is lightly salted, coated with an earthy herb mix of parsley, rosemary and sage, then slowly roasted.”

I think that herb mix was more heavenly than earthy! Mighty tasty.

I wish I’d have gotten out the fine china for a sandwich of that caliber of deliciousness! (For the record: the sandwich was turkey breast with lettuce, mild cheddar cheese, and a little mayo on whole grain bread, with a side of vanilla yogurt with blueberries – all organic, of course!)

EpicOrganic.net