Collard Greens

Last week, I ran into ANDI while shopping at Whole Foods.

ANDI–which stands for Aggregate Nutrient Density Index–is a food-rating system developed by Dr. Joel Fuhrman that assigns a score of 1-1000 to all foods based on their “nutrient density.”  The more nutrients a food has per calorie, the higher the score.  Like one might expect from a food rating system that has to account for foods from a wide variety of groups (nuts, oils, fruits and vegetables alike), the ANDI score system is admittedly imperfect.  (Dr. Fuhrman makes it clear that some essential and healthy foods will, by design, have a low ANDI score–think peanut butter and olive oil).  To be sure, there are plenty of foods with low to moderate ANDI scores that are very worth eating (oatmeal, salmon, almonds, eggs), which is why for me, the ANDI score is most useful not as the basis for all food selection, but rather to remind me of all the nutritious foods that I’m not already eating but totally should be. For this purpose, I looked to the top of the ANDI list.  And that’s how I discovered that Collard Greens scored a perfect 1000.  And so, I decided it was time to put some collards in my grocery cart and learn how to cook them as well as experience had showed me they could be cooked.

ANDI’s pick in the Produce Aisle?  Collard Greens.

ANDI rankings featured in the Whole Foods produce department

The first time I had bona-fide, Southern collards was on a business trip to Savannah, Georgia back in 2005.  My colleagues and I wound up at Mrs. Wilke’s Dining Room, a venerable institution of down-home, Southern cooking.  As a pretty dogmatic vegetarian at the time, I was delighted to see such a wide selection of veggies on the menu!  We ordered up a whole bunch of them–Collards included– and shared them, family-style.  I enjoyed them so much, in fact, that I bought the Mrs. Wilke’s Boardinghouse cookbook on my way out.  Which, of course, was how I discovered that all of the vegetables I had just devoured were prepared with generous amounts of bacon drippings and salt pork.  Oops.

Indeed, authentic southern Collards are generally prepared with pork fatback, bacon, ham hocks or other undoubtedly flavorful fats of porcine origin.  But they needn’t always be, and can be delicious in their own way when cooked with flavorful,  vegetarian ingredients.

Cooking Collards

Generally, you’ll find collard greens prepared by braising: a method of cooking in both dry heat and liquid used to soften tough foods.  With heavy-leafed greens like collards and kale, cutting the out the thickest, toughest ribs and then chopping the greens into small pieces (or even better, chiffonading them) will help tame the texture of the cooked product to one quite similar to that of spinach.  But unlike spinach, whose raw leaves cook  down to absolutely nothing (not the most cost-effective greens to cook), braised collards maintain some real substance even when cooked down to a softer version of themselves.

No doubt this was the thought behind Rick Bayless’ unexpectedly delicious recipe for Braised Greens Tacos (pictured), which I used as the inspiration for my first collards experiment this week.  You can follow his recipe to

My riff on Rick's Braised Greens Tacos

the letter, or you can tweak it (as I did) to fit the ingredients on hand in your pantry.  (In his cookbook, he also suggests adding flaked tuna, hot smoked salmon or smoked tofu cubes to the taco to make these a heartier meal).  Personally, I added some canned black beans on my taco before piling on the greens (for protein), and used shredded yellow cheese instead of crumbled white cheese.  And instead of a red salsa, I used some homemade salsa verde we had leftover from a recent enchilada-making escapade.  The result was a fast, easy and surprisingly substantial dinner.  I’m more than a little bit embarrassed that I waited so long to jump on the Collards train!

If you’d like to enjoy collards in a vegetarian-version of the traditional manner– as a cooked vegetable side dish– one way to approximate the smoky flavor of pork-infused collards is to use chipotle (powder or sauce) or smoked paprika to season them. For a super-simple, vegetarian smoked paprika version, try this recipe for Smoky Collard Greens from Maggie at Dog Hill Kitchen.  If chipotle is how you roll, I’ll refer you to this simple and beautiful recipe for Shredded Collards with Chipotle and Garlic from Nanette at Cooking in Color, who, incidentally, also grows her own collards.  Impressive!

Collards: Nutritional Summary

Collard greens are closely related to kale, and as such, are members of the calcium-rich, cancer-preventing cabbage family (whose other members include ANDI-chart-topping mustard greens, turnip greens, watercress, bok choy, broccoli rabe, brussels sprouts and arugula).  They’re almost too nutritious to be true: a modest 1 cup serving of boiled collards contains almost 900% of the daily value for bone-building and blood clot-enabling Vitamin K; 120% of the daily value for immunity-enhancing and vision-enabling Vitamin A; 60% of your daily Vitamin C needs, 45% of your daily folate needs and ~20% of your daily calcium needs. And thanks to their 5g of fiber, all of this nutrition will only cost you about 50 calories, which makes Collards an exceptional bang for your buck.

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When your doorstep, car and city are buried under 2 feet of snow, the situation calls for a very specific meal:

Something warm, filling and maybe even a little spicy to melt the chill away from snow-shoveling husbands returning home from their seasonal duties.

Something satisfying but not too high-calorie to compensate for the lethargic laze of a snow day spent mostly on the sofa.

Something cooked from scratch that draws heavily on one’s deep pantry and requires minimal fresh ingredients (it’s not exactly good weather for running out to the store, you know?)

For me, today that meal was a nice big pot of Mulligatawny (literally: “pepper water”): a heavily-seasoned Indian soup that commonly (but not always) features lentils.

I love this recipe, which I’ve adapted over the years from one served in the now-defunct “Daily Soup” restaurant chain and published in their eponymous cookbook, for lots of reasons.  First, it takes advantage of my beloved spice collection, calling for a laundry list of Indian seasonings that I’ve collected over years of dabbling in South Asian cookery.  Second, the prep effort is minimal: just one onion to chop and some ginger and garlic to mince.  Everything else is just opening cans or measuring spices.  Third, it fills the house with an intoxicating perfume… a nice touch when you’re likely to be stuck indoors until the Spring thaw.  Oh, and lastly: it’s insanely delicious.  Sort of like a spicy Indian chili of sorts.

If your pantry is extra-well-stocked and you happen to have a package of pappadum laying around, fire up the gas range and toast a few of them on the open flame using a pair of tongs. (See photos below).  Pappadum are those round crackery snacks served at Indian restaurants and made from lentil flour; they’re gluten-free and are sold in shelf-stable packages at Indian groceries.  Pick up a package next time you run into them; they’ll last an eternity in your cupboard and add a restaurant-quality flair to your next Indian-style meal.

Recipe: Mulligatawny

Adapted from The Daily Soup Cookbook, makes ~12 cups or serves ~8 people

1 TBSP minced ginger2 garlic cloves, minced

2 TBSP canola oil

1 large onion, chopped

1/4 cup black mustard seeds

1 TBSP garam masala

2 tsp tandoori spice mix (OR, can use 1 tsp cumin + 1/2 tsp ground coriander + 1/2 tsp turmeric instead)

2 tsp curry powder

2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp ground cardamom

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (leave this out if you don’t tolerate spicy!)

1 28 oz can OR 2 14-oz cans diced tomatoes

5 cups cold water

1 lb brown lentils, rinsed and picked over to remove debris

1 cup lite coconut milk

Optional: 1 10 oz bag spinach  (great if you happen to have it; if not, can leave it out)

1 TBSP lemon juice

Optional garnishes: 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro (or anything green you have on hand; fresh mint or chives work well) and/or plain fat-free greek yogurt (to tame the heat if desired)

1. Heat oil in a large stockpot
2. Add ginger, garlic and onion.  Saute about 4 minutes until soft and golden.
3. Add mustard seeds and cook until they start to pop
4. Add: garam masala, tandoori spice mix, curry, salt, caradmom, cayenne.  Stir to coat vegetables.
5. Add tomatoes (with their liquid), stir well to combine, and simmer for 5 minutes,
6. Add water and lentils and bring mixture to boil.  Reduce heat, partially cover, simmer for 1 hour until lentils are tender.
7. Stir in coconut milk and simmer 2 minutes.
8. Remove from heat and stir in spinach (if desired) and lemon juice.
9. Serve garnished with cilantro and/or plain yogurt as desired

Approximate nutritional info per serving (assumes recipe serves 8 and includes spinach.  Does not include yogurt garnish):  ~310 calories, 44g carbohydrate (of which 19 enormous grams are fiber!  That’s almost a full day’s worth for women!  That amount of fiber means this portion has a net of 25g of carbohydrate, or about 2 diabetic exchanges), 16g protein, 8g fat.  It also has about 6mg iron (30% of the daily value for women).

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An inviting citrus display recently spotted at Dean & Deluca

On the eve of the Super Bowl, I’ve got the Citrus Bowl on my mind.  Only in my world, the Citrus Bowl actually refers to a huge platter on my kitchen counter piled high with mounds of sunny, spherical fruit.  (Sorry football fans; I don’t even know who’s playing tonight…)  You see, I’ve been on a major citrus bender recently.  The available offerings this year seem even more plentiful than usual, with amazingly sweet mandarins, dramatic blood oranges and exotic pomelos playing wingman to winter standbys like navel oranges, tangelos and pink grapefruits.  It’s enough to make a girl forget about her beloved Clementines, whose season has pretty much passed.

Much Ado About Citrus

Diets higher in citrus fruits have been associated with a decreased risk of stroke. A large, prospective study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association back in 1999 quantified the protective effect as follows: each additional serving of citrus fruits (including juices) in the diet was associated with a 19% reduced risk of stroke (the effect size was even greater for women than for men).  High citrus fruit consumption in the diet has also been shown to correlate more closely with a reduced cancer risk than high Vitamin C consumption, indicating that there’s something protective going on in those citrus fruits beyond just the Vitamin C.

As the above suggests, citrus fruits are a prime example of a whole food being greater than the sum of its parts, nutritionally speaking.

California Mandarins--stems, leaves and all--are in stores now. They're astonishingly delicious.

The membranes of a citrus fruit, for example (those white and translucent skins and stringy bits that surround the fruit segments) are loaded with several phytonutrients called flavonoids.  Examples of such flavonoids found in oranges, for example, include limonoids and hesperidin; both compounds which are currently being investigated for their cholesterol-lowering and blood pressure-lowering effects.  And according to the research scientists at the USDA whom I grilled recently, while it’s true that these compounds do make it into citrus juice, levels tend to be higher in fresh-picked, unprocessed fruits (or fruit juices squeezed at home from fresh fruits)–particularly when you eat the membranes too.  And while we’re on the topic of squeezing your own juice, here’s a fun little citrus fact I picked up from my buddies at the USDA: there’s a compound that occurs naturally in mandarins/satsumas called synephrine, which is the same ingredient you’ll find in many popular cold and allergy  medications (like Sudafed).  So loading up on some mandarins or squeezing yourself some mandarin juice if you find yourself under the weather this cold season is a scientifically-based, natural way to get some relief while getting some fiber and meeting your Vitamin C requirements for the day. Take that, Sudafed!  (Note that synephrine is also the same compound that replaced ephedra in many diet pills under the code name Citrus Aurantium, although there’s no compelling data to suggest it actually helps people lose weight.)

A Caveat about Grapefruit

You may have heard that you should avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice if you’re taking certain medications, including certain calcium channel blockers (for high blood pressure), statins (for high cholesterol), immunosuppressants and antidepressants.  Not only is this true, but the interaction also occurs with grapefruit-related citrus fruits such as Pomelos and Seville Oranges (otherwise known as Sour Oranges or Bitter Oranges; they’re popular in Hispanic cuisine). There are multiple culprits in these fruits that are responsible for the interaction, including the flavonoid called naringin, which competes with these drugs for the same metabolic pathway in the liver.  Grapefruit wins the competition, which means the drug circulates for longer in the body before being broken down.  This results in potentially dangerous blood levels of the drug and a high risk of adverse effects.

Citrus Salads, Sweet & Savory

There are so many awesome citrus flavor combinations:  Orange and mint.  Grapefruit and fennel.  Orange and beets.  Grapefruit and vanilla.  Orange and almond. It’s really hard to go wrong.  But just to get you started, here are a few of my favorite ways to work through the mounds of wintry citrus love on my kitchen counter:

• Mark Bittman’s easy and visually-arresting Winter Citrus Salad

• Fennel Grapefruit Salad from the queen of content, Oprah.  (You can use gluten-free croutons from Gillian’s or Gluten Free Pantry if you so desire)

• Mâche salad with blood orange, pistachio and pomegranate from Bon Apetit.  (Use arugula if you can’t find mache).

• Grapefruit Vanilla Salad (serves 4):  Combine 2 cups water + 3/4 cup sugar + 1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise, in a saucepan.  (Don’t worry, you’re not actually going to be eating all of this sugar…)  Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves.  Once its dissolved, stop stirring, turn up the heat and boil the syrup for 1 minute.  Turn off the heat and let cool completely.  Remove the vanilla bean and either discard or reserve for garnish.  Pour the syrup in a bowl with 3 lbs of sliced pink grapefruit, mix well, and let marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.  Serve with a slotted spoon.    A great brunch dish.  Works beautifully with a sprinkle of fresh, chopped mint leaves, too.

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While the universe of food bloggers readies its collective arsenal of chocolate dessert porn in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided to take a fashion risk and pay homage to a red-colored, heart-loving delicacy that gets notably less airtime at this–or any–time of year: Borscht.

Now, if the word ‘Borscht’ conjures up romance-quashing images of hardscrabble nineteenth-century Eastern European peasantry for you, then I’d like to make the case for why this beautiful potage has just as much right to kick off your Valentine’s Day meal as the Red Velvet cupcake has to finish it off.

Of course, if you’ve never heard of Borscht, then I’m delighted to introduce you to this versatile and time-honored beet soup.  You may find it served hot or cold, vegetarian or meaty, Ukranian style or Russian style, clear and magenta or spiked with sour cream to produce an opaque, creamy pink color.  However it’s executed, you can be sure that every self-respecting Borscht-lover will claim that their grandmother’s version is undoubtedly the best.

Borscht is heart-y

Borscht is made with beets, and beets are loaded with nutrients that nourish your heart and support cardiovascular health. (It’s not a coincidence our grandparents lived so long despite their habit of spreading chicken fat (schmaltz) on bread and eating chopped liver by the gallon.)

For starters, beets are an excellent source of folate and a good source of blood-pressure-lowering potassium.  Diets rich in folate-rich foods have been associated with a decreased risk of heart disease in multiple large studies, though researchers are still trying to figure out why.  (Folic acid supplementation has not been shown to have the same effect.  Go figure.)   1 cup of boiled beets contains about 75 calories, 16g of carbohydrate (of which 3.5g are fiber), ~35% of the daily recommended intake of folate, and 15% of the daily value of potassium. (Canned beets lose about 30% of their folate compared to beets you boil yourself, but remain a very good source despite that).

Betacyanins are the purply red pigments that give beets their rich, gorgeous magenta color, and they happen to be powerful antioxidants.  While antioxidants are used throughout the body to help prevent cell damage that can give rise to mutations, animal studies suggest a possible benefit in colon cancer prevention in particular.

Betaine, another compound found naturally in beets, has anti-inflammatory properties. Studies have shown that people with diets rich in foods containing betaine had lower levels of inflammatory markers in their blood–like C-reactive protein and homocysteine–compared to be people with diets low in betaine-rich foods.  These inflammatory markers are associated with an increased risk of heart disease, so it seems that the lower the level, the better.

Borscht is hip

Veselka, the venerable and hip Ukranian diner in NYC’s East Village, features Ukranian Borscht as the very first item on its menu, and reportedly serves 5,000 gallons of it every year.  A photo of the restaurant’s famous borscht adorns the cover of its recently-published cookbook, whose pages feature not one but FOUR separate recipes for their intoxicating magenta brew, including their Famous Borscht, Cold Borscht, White Borscht and Christmas Borscht.  (You can get their famous Borscht recipe here, but vegetarians beware that their version calls for pork butt and beef stock.  Try their Christmas Borscht version for a meatless option, and see below for some cooking tips.)

Borscht is so hip that I suspect its only a matter of time until Bobby Flay challenges Veselka owner Tom Birchard to a Borscht Throwdown.

How to cook and enjoy Beets

While beets can absolutely be eaten raw (usually you’ll find them grated in a salad), you’ll most often encounter them roasted or boiled. Beets cooked from scratch are a thousand times more flavorful than canned beets, and have a much lovelier texture, so if you’ve tried the latter and were unimpressed, you might want to give them another try!  Cooking beets is a cinch, but can be a bit messy.  Here’s how it goes:

If you buy beets still attached to their greens, trim the greens off, leaving about an inch on top. Leaving some of the stem helps keep the healthful pigments from leeching out during cooking.  Save the trimmed portion!  Beet greens are super nutritious and you can chop them up and drop them into any ol’ soup… they’re sort of like swiss chard taste-wise…a bit bitter.)  Just soak them a few times in cold water to remove all of the dirt before cooking.  Wash them if you’re going to boil, but really give them a good scrub if you’re planning on roasting them.  DO NOT PEEL the beet before cooking, or they will bleed more of their nutritious colorful pigments… and make a giant mess.

Nothing says 'I love you' like a bouquet of boiled beets

To boil: Drop trimmed beets into boiling water.  Let them boil until they are soft enough to be pierced easily with a knife, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, depending on size.

To roast: Rub clean beets with a little bit of oil (olive or grapeseed works well), wrap well in foil, and place on another foil-lined pan.  (The double-foil will make sure that the sugars from your roasting beet don’t drip onto the pan and burn).  Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour (depending on size).  Your beets are ready when they can be pierced easily with a knife.

To peel cooked beets: peel cooked beets while they are still warm (but cooled off enough to handle.)  Some people like to use gloves for this to avoid staining their hands.  My favorite way to peel a beet is by scraping the sides of the beet with a plain ol’ spoon while standing over the sink… the peel will slide right off and the mess will be contained.  I do it bare-handed ‘cuz that’s just how I roll.

One of my favorite ways to eat beets is cooked, in a composed salad, spiked with some sort of vinegary drizzle (a syrupy balsamic vinegar works great here) to cut the sweetness.  Beets pair beautifully with citrus fruits for a colorful, seasonal salad that injects some gorgeous color into your wintry food wardrobe. Try this classic (and easy) recipe for Beet, Citrus & Mint salad to take advantage of the amazing bounty of winter citrus available right now.

Beet Pee

Don’t be alarmed if, after eating a heaping serving of beets or borscht, your pee is tinted pink or reddish. It’s called “Beeturia” (I swear, I don’t make this stuff up), and it’s totally harmless.  Be forewarned that your number twos might also take on a bit of a rosy hue a day or so after you’ve gone on a beet bender…. once again, totally normal and totally harmless.  Consider it a post-Valentine’s Day treat for your colon.

Now, back to the Borscht

There are countless versions of Borscht.  Russian style tends to have more “stuff” in it: piles of cooked or pickled beets, cabbage and/or potatoes, making for a heartier soup.  Ukranian style tends to be brothier, but often features some meat or a mushroom dumpling or two floating around, which adds some heft. You can approximate the homemade dumpling effortlessly by tossing some store-bought mushroom tortellini or ravioli into your soup.  For a gluten-free version, look forDePuma’s (amazing) gluten-free Wild Mushroom Ravioli, or  Conte’s gluten-free Potato Onion Pierogis. Other common borscht accessories include lima beans, hard boiled eggs, meat, potatoes, or any combination thereof.  All borschts are generally garnished with dill and a dollop of sour cream, which can be swapped out for a fat-free plain, greek-style yogurt seamlessly if you’re looking to keep your borscht on the lighter side.

I made Veselka’s vegetarian Christmas Borscht (pictured to the left, recipe link above) and used the gluten-free Conte’s Pierogis instead of the (homemade, 2+ hour-prep time mushroom-onion dumplings) the recipe called for.  Considering my grandma used to serve store-bought Borscht from a jar, I figured she probably wouldn’t have disapproved of this little shortcut.  It was delicious, and the house smelled amazing while the beets were pickling on the stovetop and the aromatic vegetable broth was simmering.

A multi-culti V-day: Ukranian borscht with Polish pierogis (hidden) and Greek yogurt

However, in case you want to find your own Borscht beshert (that’s Yiddish for ’soul mate’) before committing to the recipe I used, here are some other attractive candidates for you to consider, both vegetarian and non:

Hot Beef Borscht: for the meat and potatoes man…and the woman who loves him.

Russian Borscht: vegetarian; served chilled, with hard boiled eggs.  To cool down after a passionate Valentine’s encounter, perchance?

Hot Borscht recipe styled after the version from the Russian Tea Room of old: A quicker version; uses store-bought beef broth and includes cabbage and tomato.  For nostalgic New York couples who can’t afford the new, $18-a-bowl version offered on the restaurant’s current menu.

Borscht with Beet Greens: for the frugalista and her coupon-clipping man, who love the idea of using every last bit of the beet…greens and all.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your Borscht of choice!

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Gigante beans: Some foods are OK to supersize

If you know not the creamy comfort that is biting into an enormous and aptly-named gigante bean, then it is my mission today to convince you to seek out this elusive packet of leguminous deliciousness.

I’ve gone on about my love for beans–and their nutritional virtues–in the past.  And while many folks profess to like beans well enough, too, they fail to see what inspires my unbridled passion for these little packets of complex-carbohydrate goodness.  After all, the American bean vocabulary tends to be pretty limited: we know garbanzos, kidneys, black beans and cannelinis.  Occasionally we dabble in pintos or black-eyed peas.  But unless it comes in a can, most of us can’t be bothered to expand our bean horizons.

If ever there was a bean to inspire a nation to abandon its lazybean tendencies, however, surely the Gigante (aka: Gigande, Yigante, Hija) must be it. Most popular in Greek cuisine (yes, the same clever people who brought us geometry and democracy have also retained this most delicious of beans in their collective leguminous repertoire), gigante beans boast a divine creamy texture and the ability to maintain their shape after all sorts of cooking.  I decided it was time to start making my own gigantes after the $9.99/lb Antipasto bar at Whole Foods lured me in one time too many with that ridiculously delicious Gigante Bean salad of theirs.  (What kind of person spends $18.98 on an impulse bean purchase?!)  Like all bean varieties, Gigantes are an excellent source of complex carbohydrate, protein, fiber, antioxidants and a good source of iron.

Buying Beans

My new favorite place to buy beans is Purcell Mountain Farms, an Idaho-based farm with an excellent online store.  In addition to having the most reasonable prices for my favorite hard-to-find Gigante beans and Beluga lentils, they offer a surprising variety of organic and heirloom bean varieties with romantic names and fashionable appearances.  If you’re bored to tears with your kidneys and pintos, surely an Eye of the Goat, Jackson Wonder or Mortgage Lifter bean will liven up your winter soups–and spirits–mighty fast.    And if you’ve eschewed standard beans for their dull, lackluster appearances, might I suggest the speckled Dapple Grey variety, or perhaps a melange of Orca, Jacob’s Cattle and Painted Pony beans to match the animal-print napkins at your next dinner party?  There are so many gorgeous, interesting, delicious historic bean varieties to try if you’re willing to venture beyond the supermarket aisles.  And by buying heirloom bean varieties, you’re doing your small part to support environmentally-sound practices that promote biodiversity.  Forget  blue ketchups and animal-shaped nuggets to entice your finnicky kids to eat; let them pick out their own mix of fashion-colored and patterned beans and see if that doesn’t get them engaged in the healthy eating process.

If you are a bean buff and are interested in learning more about the folklore behind the wide, wonderful world of beans–as well as how to prepare them–I strongly recommend Aliza Green’s essential cookbook, Beans, from which I learned, for example, that Gigante beans are a variety of so-called “runner beans” that were brought to America from Greece and Spain.

Cooking beans from scratch

While I resisted it for years, I have come to discover that cooking beans from dry isn’t nearly as annoying as I had thought it would be. If you have the foresight to plan ahead, tomorrow night’s dinner beans into a big bowl of water in a ratio of about 3 cups water per 1 cup beans before you go to bed is the easiest way to prep your beans for a faster cooking time the next day.  And if you’re as Type A as I am, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with multi-tasking overnight will lull you into a happy, albeit geeky, slumber.   This would be the regular soaking method.

The quick-soaking method takes about an hour to an hour and a half.  In this case, you’d put your beans in a large saucepan so that they’re covered with 2 inches of water.  Bring the water to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes.  Then, turn off the heat, cover the pan, and let your beans soak in the water for 60-90 minutes, until tender.  Drain the water and proceed with your recipe.

The #1 rule when cooking any dry bean is to avoid adding acid of any kind with the bean until it is already tender.  Don’t add any vinegar, wine, citrus juice, tomato product or anything else acidic to the cooking water until your beans are nice and soft; otherwise, the acid will prevent your beans from softening no matter how long you cook them.

Gigante Beans: Two Ways

Yigandes Plaki: Loosely translates to "Why, oh why, was I not born to a Greek grandmother?"

I am obsessed with this first recipe for Greek-style Baked Gigante Beans, (aka Yigandes Plaki) which was adapted from Nancy Harmon Jenkins’  The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook and posted on another food blog.  (Better they should have to deal with the copyright issues than me!)  While I’ll admit that it took forever and a half to make, don’t forget that I live in a freezing house and am all for any recipe that involves keeping the oven on for long periods of time.  (If you pre-soak your beans overnight, the first 40-50 minute bean simmering step can be cut in half.)  It strikes me that this recipe would be perfectly suited for a slow-cooker, but since I have yet to figure out how to use the slow-cooker I got for my wedding, I will defer to any ambitious crock-pot enthusiasts out there to adapt this recipe on our behalf and post their findings in the comments section.)  Since I didn’t have fresh herbs, I used a bunch of dry ones (including basil and oregano), which resulted in a final product that, in addition to being mouth-meltingly creamy, gave a similar flavor effect to lasagna…in the best possible way.  In fact, I would recommend serving it like you would lasagna; accompanied by a nice garlicky side dish of broccoli rabe or sauteed bitter greens to counteract the sweetness and bring some green to the plate.  It is absolutely delicious.  If your children don’t like this recipe, then send them back for a refund.

Another easy way to serve gigantes is as a room temperature bean salad appetizer.  Gigantes are commonly featured among the mezze in Greece, and a salad is a perfect way to pay homage to this civilized bean.  Mark Bittman offers an easy-to-follow formula for a Greek-style gigante bean salad in his modern kitchen staple, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Of course, to replicate the Whole Foods Antipasto version that I’m so addicted to, here’s the closest recipe approximation I could come up with, reconstructed from the posted ingredient list on their salad bar signage:

Recipe: Tamara’s Whole Foods Gigante Bean Salad Knockoff

• Cook 1/2 lb of gigante beans per the cooking instructions above
• Roast 1 small red pepper and 1 small green pepper over open flame (your gas burner will do just fine).  Peel their skins off and slice peppers into super-thin strips.
• Mix cooked beans with 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 2 TBSP olive oil, 1 TBSP fresh chopped parsley, 1/2 cup (or more, to taste) or roasted pepper strips, 1-2 minced garlic cloves and salt to taste.
• Let salad marinate in fridge for several hours so flavors can blend.
• Serve at room temperature.

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T minus 17 days until Thanksgiving and the short-list of potential side dishes is already being negotiated in our family.  This year, my submission for healthy, gluten-free stuffing substitute comes from, of all unlikely places, the Executive Chef at the hospital where I work.  Now, while I’ll admit that hospital food rarely inspires much beyond a general sense of dread, the day that Chef George whipped up this delicious and autumnal Wild Rice Salad for a catering event, I found myself inspired to have seconds… and ply him for the recipe.

Wild rice is a whole grain variety of rice that’s even more nutritious than brown rice. It’s super high in protein– a standard serving (1/4 cup dry) has 6g of protein—ranking it right up there with king quinoa as far as protein content goes. Most people don’t like to bother with it once they learn of its 50-minute cooking time, but it’s not like you have to stand there and stir it while it cooks.  Just bring the water and rice to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, cover, and go bake a Thanksgiving pie or something.  Or watch someone else bake a Thanksgiving pie on the Food Network.   Of course, if you feel like being productive during that 50-minute cooking time, get going on this addictive recipe for Koshari for dinner and put that wild rice to good use.

Since Chef George never did get around to detailing the exact quantities of the ingredients in his recipe for me, I was forced to play around with the inputs a bit until I landed on the proportions that suited my tastes.  By all means, add more or less of any ingredient to your liking.  However you put them together, the recipe is a cinch.

A Thanksgiving-worthy side dish that's a little bit chewy, a little bit sweet and a little bit tangy.

Recipe: Chef George’s Wild Rice Salad (serves 6)

1 cup wild rice/wild rice blend  (I used Lundberg’s Wild Blend)

2 scallions, thinly sliced (~1/3 to 1/2 cup)

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped

1/2 cup chopped pecans (if you have the time or inclination to toast the pecans before chopping, all the better)

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup raspberry vinegar

2 TBSP olive oil

1. Prepare the wild rice according to package instructions (probably 2 cups water to 1 cup rice).  When finished, set cooked rice aside to cool.
2. Add the remaining ingredients to the cooked rice and mix until well-blended.
3. Salt to taste.
4. Serve warm, room temperature or cold.

Note: You can make the rice up to a day in advance and keep refrigerated in a sealed container.  Don’t mix in the rest of the ingredients until just before serving.

Nutrition info per serving: 225 calories, 29g carbohydrate (of which 3g are fiber), 5g protein, 11g (healthy, mostly monounsaturated) fat.

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Behold, the noble Honeycrisp. (Courtesy of New York Apple Association © New York Apple Association)

This time of year poses one of the greatest produce dilemmas one could fathom; a veritable Sophie’s Choice of  botanic proportions:

Should one allocate one’s finite capacity to eat high-fiber foods on a watermelon, peach, tomato and zucchini bender while these fleeting vestiges of summer are still available at the Farmer’s market?  Or should one get a head start on the too-short Honeycrsip apple season and eat as many as one possibly can before they’re gone?

Such is the quandry I find myself in this week, now that Honeycrisp apples have just made their first appearances in the New York City Greenmarkets.

Not all Apples are Created Equal

Let’s start with the birds and the bees of apples.  In our topsy-turvy world, apples are bred, not born.  In other words, you don’t just plant a Macintosh apple seed and grow a Macintosh apple.  When left to their own devices to reproduce in the wild, appleseeds produce rebellious offspring; the resulting fruits of apple trees planted from seed will not necessarily share the same characteristics as their parent trees’ apples.  As a result, commercial apple breeds are grafted: in other words, the tissue of one plant is placed into contact with the tissue of another plant, they fuse together to produce a single plant, and the fruit that is borne out can be predicted and controlled.  Unfortunately, the global apple gatekeepers underestimate our collective appetite for a diverse assortment of different apple varieties, and in their tyrannical quest for visually appealing, consistently-sized apples, they choose only to propagate a tiny fraction of the magnificent apple cultivars that once existed on our planet. And it’s not even the tastiest fraction at that.  (Yes, I’m talking to you, Red Delicious apples.)

(For an excellent–and entertaining–account of American Apple History and a state of the current global Applescape, I strongly recommend reading Chapter 1 in Michael Pollan’s book “The Botany of Desire.”)

Fortunately, the clever researchers at the University of Minnesota heard our collective cries for apple diversity, and bred a fabulous new variety of apple called the Honeycrisp.  They made it by grafting together a Haralson and a Honeygold to produce a hybrid, which they then combined with a Macoun.  (Don’t try to splice your own, though, amateur apple-breeders: the University of Minnesota owns the license.)  If you live in the Northeast and haven’t experienced the divine pleasure that is biting into a Honeycrisp, get yourself to a Farmer’s Market pronto. (While Honeycrisps are also grown in Minnesota, Michigan, Washington State and some other midwestern and East coast states, your growing season may be a little different, so check with your local farmers to see when they’ll arrive in a bushel near you.)   Better yet, check out your local U-pick farm and pick yourself a bushel of them this weekend. To find an orchard near you for picking, you can search the “All about Apples” website by state, and then call/e-mail an orchard near you that grows Honeycrisps to see when your favorite apple variety is being picked, and whether they allow self-picking.

Honeycrisps are among the first apple varieties to ripen, so by the time you start to get in the mood for apple picking around Halloween time, these delicious beauties will be long gone from the U-pick trees, and their days at the

September is the time to pick your own Honeycrisps at an orchard near you. (That's now!)

Farmer’s Market will be numbered, too.  Thankfully, their popularity has led farmers to plant more Honeycrisp trees, so the supply isn’t nearly as limited as it used to be;  Just a few years ago, Honeycrisps made only about a 3-4 week appearance in NYC before disappearing for the year.  If memory serves, last year, the local ones lasted through early/mid November in the Farmer’s Market, and were then supplemented by Washington State grown Honeycrisps in Whole Foods for another month after that.  Still, by the time the holidays roll  around, we’re still likely to be facing a solid 3-4 months of bleak, Honeycrispless winter months during which time we’ll just have to drown our sorrows in Clementines by the crateful.  Unless, of course, you hoard them as I do; Honeycrisps will last a solid 4-6 months in your fridge.

So what is it about the Honeycrisp that inspires such a cult following? Well, it starts with the texture.  Honeycrisps are a very hard, crisp apple.  In fact, the New York State Apple Association website captures it perfectly when it describes this variety as “explosively crisp” and having a characteristic ability to “shatter” when bitten into, as if it “snaps apart… and comes off the core in chunks.”  In that respect, think of biting into a Honeycrisp as producing the same effect as snapping off a piece of a perfectly tempered chocolate bar: that sound… that snap… it’s perfection.  Of course, that’s just the beginning.  Honeycrisps positively drip with juice, and they’re sweet with just the right balance of tartness.  They are a brilliant addition to the American applescape, and hopefully an example to apple-growers that if they offer us delicious new apple varieties, we will buy them and we will eat them.  In fact, the inside scoop is that the U of M researchers were so encouraged by their blockbuster Honeycrisp success, that this year they released a sequel called the SweeTango.  It should be piloting now in Minnesota, and if it does well, is planned to launch onto the national scene in 2010 or 2011.  You heard it here first!

An Apple a Day

The health benefits of apples are pretty well-established scientifically.

For starters, apples are an excellent source of fiber: both the cholesterol-lowering kind (soluble) as well as the digestive regularity-promoting kind if you eat the skin (insoluble).  Studies suggest that even just 3 apples per week (or, an apple every other day) is enough to have a LDL-cholesterol lowering effect.  1 medium apple (5oz) has 4g of fiber, but bear in mind that most apples you come across in the supermarket are likely to be bigger than this.  In fact, one large-ish apple can easily count as 2 fruit servings, which is an efficient way for you to meet your daily fruit intake targets… but a note of caution to people with diabetes who need to control their carbohydrate intake.  4oz of apple counts as 1 carbohydrate exchange for people with diabetes, which is roughly the size equivalent of a tennis ball.  (And let’s be honest, with American fruit being bred to look like it’s on steroids, when’s the last time you saw an apple that small?)

What you may be less aware of is the high antioxidant content of apples.   Apples contain multiple phytochemicals that have an antioxidant effect in the body, the most famous of which is called quercetin.  (This compound is also found in onions).  In fact, gram for gram, apples have higher antioxidant capacity than red grapes, strawberries and oranges.  Furthermore, apples appear to have among the highest levels of a particularly bioavailable type of phytochemical (called free phenolic acids), meaning that the antioxidants in apples are highly absorbable by our bodies.  Even better, apples hardly lose any of their antioxidant content even after months post-picking, so long as they are stored properly refrigerated.

As far as how this antioxidant content translates into actual health benefits, epidemiological evidence has linked 1-apple-per-day intake to a lower risk of developing lung cancer, particularly in women and possibly in men as well (so here’s a shout-out to all of you reformed smokers trying to undo the damage: eat that apple a day!). The lung cancer connection is suggestive of a more general benefit on pulmonary health that research has attributed to apple-eating.  Higher apple intake has been associated with decreased risk of asthma, lower incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and generally better lung function… even in smokers.

Other epidemiological studies have shown an inverse relationship between apple intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease: the more apples, the lower the risk.  Ditto for the risk of developing Type II Diabetes.

How about them apples?

Now, it’s important to remember that much of an apple’s antioxidant content is stored in its skin, so if you peel your apples, you’ll be losing a large percentage of the fruit’s antioxidant power.

But it’s also worth mentioning that apples have made the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list for being  among the most pesticide-heavy fruits out there.

So rather than peel away some of the fiber and most of the antioxidants from your apples, I’d recommend a) seeking out organic apple varieties whenever possible (especially for children), and b) in the absence of organic options, be sure to wash your apple very thoroughly before eating it… peel and all.

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If you’ve written off sardines based on a fear of the silvery supermarket version sold in tins, then you’ve probably never had the privilege of tasting the real deal: fresh, big, fat sardines, salted, oiled and grilled outdoors until the skins are charred. These “Sardinhas Assadas” are a Portuguese summer staple, as much a national signature as gelato is in Italy and crepes are in France.  And they are absolutely nothing like the kind you get from a can.  Well-grilled, they are packed with smoky flavor and not the least bit fishy-tasting.  

Not that I have anything against canned sardines.  Quite the contrary: I have grown to appreciate canned sardines, which is a good thing; a 3oz serving of the canned variety (with bones) has 38% of the daily value of calcium, in addition to a full day’s worth of heart-brain-and eye-protective omega-3 fats. Sardines are also one of the rare natural food sources of Vitamin D, an essential nutrient that many (most?) Americans may be deficient in, according to a handful of recent studies; that same 3oz serving has well over 100% of the recommended daily intake.  But if you’ve been unable to acquire a taste for the canned version of these swimmingly healthy fish, the fresh variety are worth giving a second look.  After all, sardines are low on the food chain and reproduce rapidly (one might say they’re like the bunnies of the marine world), making them a very sustainable fish option in a sea (literally) of overfished and endangered seafood options.  Being low on the food chain also means being low in mercury and PCBs, which makes sardines an especially smart choice for pregnant women looking to meet their recommended fish intake goals to support brain development in their bundles of gestating joy.  

Sadly, the USDA does not publish nutrition data for fresh sardines, and I don’t quite trust the random data floating around the internet, so it’s probably safe to assume that fresh sardines more or less compare to canned on the Vitamin D and omega-3 front (perhaps slightly less, since you’ll be removing the skin, where many of the fish oils are stored), but will have considerably less calcium since you’ll be removing the bones before eating.  Ready to give them a try?

When the skin is blackened and bubbled over about 50% of its surface, it's time to eat!

How to make Portuguese Sardinhas Assadas

I’ll admit that I’m a relative latecomer to the world of grilled sardines, so I consulted my friend Peter (of Morel mushroom-hunting fame) so that we could all benefit from his vast sardine-grilling experience. His recipe and sardine-grilling tips follow below.  

Buy fresh sardines.  Here in the New York area, Whole Foods sells them, and you can buy them pre-gutted.  (Chances are, you’ll encounter wild-caught sardines from the Pacific Northwest, which the Monterrey Bay Aquarium deems to be a ‘best choice’ from both a health and sustainability standpoint.)  If you’re planning to grill them, leave intact the skin, scales, heads and tails. (You will easily deal with this when the fish is cooked and on your plate.)  You can also buy frozen sardines, in which case you would thaw them before proceeding. Peter says to plan on about 6 fish per person, but it will vary widely by fish size and appetite size.

Sprinkle the fish with coarse salt and rub on some olive oil. Lay the fish out on a piping hot grill.  (The fire/heat should be hot enough to give their skin a good char quickly enough such that the fish don’t dry out.)  Peter recommends grilling the fish for around 5 minutes before flipping, and further suggests that we not be afraid to give our fish a good char. Most of the recipes online, he laments, show sardines not nearly grilled enough for his taste.  For a visual guide, see the photo above; those fish are just about done.  When they have an even char on their skin, they are ready to eat.

Next: Remove the sardines from the grill and peel the charred top skin off.  Insert a knife along the backbone near the tail and work the top fillet off the bones. Remove the top fillet and set it next to your roasted pepper salad (more about that later). Next, insert your knife under the backbone, grab hold of the tail, and separate the  tail, bones and head in one peeling motion away from the bottom filet.  You will be left with a head, bones and tail that remind you of the cartoon fish from Tom & Jerry when you were a kid.  

Finally, eat the filets. You will smile. Traditionally, Portuguese sardines are served with a roasted green pepper salad.  To do as the locals do, Peter recommends placing green peppers on the fire until the skin turns black and bubbles over the whole pepper. When they are well roasted and cooled, skin and seed them under running water, slice the peppers up, then toss with sea salt and some sliced sauteed onion.  Dress with a simple dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar, and  pinch of thyme dressing.  And if you’re looking for a nice white wine to pair them with, might I suggest a New York State chardonnay?  And don’t forget drink a toast to my friend for the fantastic sardine tutorial.  (Obrigado, Peter!)

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My sister Ariella, an NYC Sommelier-at-Large, suggested that I dedicate this week’s installment of What I’m Eating Now to What I’m Drinking Now.  It just so happens that she’s been on a quest to help me find local (New York State) wines to serve at an upcoming event on Sustainable Seafood.  The quest has led her to fall in love again with the much-maligned Chardonnay grape, which, being the grape of most champagnes, has a special place in her boozy little heart.  And so, I’ve agreed to turn over my soapbox this week so that she can plead her case in favor of us giving New York chardonnays a taste this summer as we grill ourselves some healthy and sustainable fish.

Perhaps you’ve overheard someone order “ABC” wine (that’s code for “Anything But Chardonnay”), and have been shamed into eschewing this varietal of wine.  Or perhaps you’ve tasted enough mediocre chardonnays at weddings to have categorized the entire varietal as a sort-of generic catering-hall white.  Ariella explains that Chardonnay’s current reputation results from the fact that chardonnay grapes  themselves are not aromatic per se, so the flavor of the wine depends more on a winemaker’s skill than the characteristics of the grape itself.  In this way, chardonnay is like the tofu of the grape world: it’s sort of plain when cooked by itself, but it takes on the flavor of whatever you “cook” it with.  Traditionally, California winemakers have chosen to flavor their Chardonnays by fermenting them in brand-spanking new, toasted oak barrels, which impart a strong vanilla smokiness to the wine that totally overwhelms the fruit.  The result is a heavy wine that isn’t particularly “sippable” on its own during cocktail hour.  Rather, it needs heavier foods to stand up to it: think richer, meatier deep sea fish.  Unfortunately, many such fish are of the overfished–and therefore environmentally unsustainable– variety (think Chilean Sea Bass and Bluefin Tuna).

So what to pair with those lighter, more sustainably-caught fish, you might ask? 

Our resident sommelier recommends you give a New York State chardonnay a try.

All across the state, from Long Island to the Finger Lakes, winemakers have been producing un-oaked chardonnays fermented in stainless steel tanks (or lesser-oaked chardonnays, in which only a small portion of oaked wine is mixed into a batch of unoaked wine to produce a more balanced flavor).  The result is new wave of “fruit-forward” chardonnays (don’t you love it when sommeliers say things like that?) that are crisp and bright and summery with apple-y and stone fruit flavors.  These light and lovely wines are way more versatile and sippable, and pair divinely with sustainable fish at the low end of the food chain: think grilled fresh sardines, clams and mussels.

Interested in trying some of New York’s Finest?  Ariella recommends Channing Daughters 2007 Scuttle Hole chardonnay (~$16/bottle), which she likes for its sweet, peachy quality that tastes like summer in a bottle.  Try pairing it with any seafood, or spicy foods of all varieties… like Thai or Vietnamese.  She also likes Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Salmon Run (2007) chardonnay from the Finger Lakes region, which has crisp green apple and citrusy notes for about $10/bottle.  The wine is named in honor of the wild salmon that live in nearby Keuka Lake and pairs well with briny shellfish or a happy wild fish like salmon, wild striped bass or brook trout.

Of course, all this talk about white wine begs the question as to whether it’s indeed healthy to drink wine at all?

Perhaps you’ve heard that red wine is heart healthy… and healthier for you than white wine, at that.  Well, although it’s true that red wine contains higher levels of a phytochemical called resveratrol that has been associated with cardiovascular health benefits, there isn’t much scientific data that compares health outcomes of red wine drinkers to white wine drinkers. Therefore, it’s not clear that red is definitively “healthier” than white… and there’s certainly no evidence that passing up a heavy, spicy red in favor of a cold, fruity glass of chardonnay on a hot summer night is somehow going to put you at some sort of disadvantage health-wise.  For me personally, supporting small, local NY State wineries does my heart quite good, thank you very much.

Now as for whether to drink at all, the best answer researchers have is the same, vague party line: *if* you choose to drink any alcohol at all, moderation appears to be associated with the best health outcomes. As a reminder, I’ll re-state what I’ve said before.. and apologize in advance for being a buzz-kill:  

1. If you currently drink ~2 drinks/day or less (males) or 1 drink/day or less (females), you may get a slightly protective benefit against heart disease, so enjoy! While it seems that red wine may possibly afford an even better benefit, any type of alcohol should do the trick. If you’re drinking more than this amount, you may want to consider cutting down.  
2. Bear in mind that “one drink” is not necessarily one glass of wine as poured by your neighborhood bartender in a monster-sized goblet. It’s 5 fluid ounces of wine. In other words, 1 bottle of wine is 5 standard servings. So if you’re used to splitting a bottle every night with your best friend or spouse, try inviting a few more people on on the fun.
3. If you don’t drink at all now, I wouldn’t recommend taking it up for ‘health reasons,’ as there are plenty of ‘health reasons’ not to drink, too.  Even moderate drinking appears to increase the risk for breast cancer in women, and regular drinking can aggravate high blood pressure and increase your triglyceride levels, both of which are actually risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

Got a wine pairing question for our resident sommelier?  Looking for a special recommendation?  Post a comment on this post for Ariella Duker, Sommelier-at-Large, and she’ll respond to your every wine query!

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One of the many guest appearances Ratatouille made on our honeymoon; here, as a base for seared fish

I’m back from my magical trip to Provence, and am delighted to report that the South of France turned out to be a surprisingly GF-friendly place to eat! In fact, it was SO much easier for me to eat out at restaurants there than it is for me here in New York.

Unlike the cuisine that dominates in Paris and in most Parisian-style French bistros in the US, the regional Provencal cuisine is NOT based on the classic French ‘mother sauces’ that contain a butter and flour roux as their thickening agent. Instead, Provencal cuisine employs flour-free vegetable,  fish and/or cream-based sauces such as tomato coulis, anchoïade (anchovy & garlic sauce), and various vegetable cream sauces (mushroom, red peppers…) to accent their vegetable, fish and meat dishes.  Gluten-free vegetable tapenades and terrines (olive, artichoke, red pepper, eggplant…) are also widely served as flavorful accents to a meal,  and you’re as likely to see them served with bread as you are with an omelet or a piece of fish.  After having multiple restauarant owners walk me through their menus item by item to tell me what was safe for me to eat and what wasn’t, I came to conclude that the Provencal cuisine is much more “honest” than is American cuisine; in other words, there tended to only be gluten in foods that one would expect to find gluten in, and I did not encounter any hidden gluten in unexpected places. The only foods that were off limits to me on menus were pastas (obviously) and the toasted croutons served alongside the bouilliabase (obviously).  As a result, I was able to easily gain the requisite weight one would expect to gain on a proper French Honeymoon.  Now back the gym…

The other thing so wonderful and different about eating in Provence in July was the monopoly that locally-grown, in-season vegetables had on the region’s menus.  There was not a head of broccoli or cauliflower in

Another ratatouille sighting, this time as a heaping side dish served at a prix fixe meal to hundreds of revelers at the Vacqueyras Wine Festival

sight at any market or in any restauarant. Instead, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants and artichokes dominated the local markets and the restauarant menus. It struck me that starting around late July through August, we face a similar glut of tomatoes and zucchini here in the northeast; our gardens produce more than we can eat, the farmers’ markets beckon with stacks of inexpensive, sweet heirloom tomatoes that just beg to be bought by the pound… and we collectively fantasize about learning how to can our own veggies at home to capture the fleeting summer bounty and stretch it out beyond its short, natural life.

So what do the French do with their embarassing riches of the world’s most flavorful tomatoes, zucchini and eggplants?

They make Ratatouille.

Ratatouille is a dish that originated in Provence, and it appeared on our plates in some incarnation at outdoor festivals and Michelin-starred restaurants alike.  We had it served to us warm and cold.  We had versions with peppers and without peppers.  We had it offered up as a standalone side dish to fish or chicken and as a filling for omelets and crepes.  Each chef put their own spin on it, and each version we tasted was equally delicious.  It’s hardly a surprise, then, that I chose it as the topic for my first post-vacation blog post.

This recipe for Ratatouille comes from a cookbook I bought while traveling called When Our Grandmothers Cooked in Provence, by Frédérique Féraud-Espérandieu.  (Based on the number accent marks in her name, I decided she must be a huge authority on all things French, so I chose her cookbook above the others.)  Make up a big old batch, freeze some, keep some in the fridge, and serve it for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner, take it to potluck picnics, eat it hot or cold and don’t feel guilty about buying that enormous bag of tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market next month.

Recipe: Somebody’s French Grandmother’s Ratatouille

Serves 6

Olive oil

4 (small) eggplants (or 2 medium-sized ones), peeled and diced

4 (small-medium) zucchinis, diced

4 green peppers, seeded and cut into strips

2 lbs ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded and quartered

2 (large) onions, sliced

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 bay leaf

1 pinch ground thyme

A few chopped basil leaves (to your own taste)

2 twigs of fresh tarragon

3-4 pinches minced parsley

Salt & pepper

Optional: a handful of pitted green olives (the author recommends “Picholine” variety if you can find them; they’re a firm, immature type of green olive)

Directions:

Heat 3 TBSP olive oil in a large saute pan over medium/high heat.

Saute zucchini until golden.  Season with salt & pepper, remove from heat and drain. Set aside.

Using same pan, repeat the same process for the eggplant until brown.

Repeat the same process for the peppers (you can use less oil here…)

Finally, sweat the onion in 3 TBSP of olive oil, add the tomatoes, garlic, thyme, basil, bay leaf and tarragon.  Cook uncovered and leave this “coulis” to reduce.

Add all of the cooked vegetables back into the with the saucepan with the coulis, add the olives if you wish, stir  until blended, and let simmer on a very low heat for an additional 15 minutes.

Check the seasoning and adjust to taste.

Garnish with the chopped parsley.

Because it would be un-French of me to calculate the precise nutrition info of this dish, suffice it to say that even if you use the total of 12 (!) TBSP of olive oil that the recipe calls for, that makes for 2 TBSP per person, or about 240 calories.  The vegetables are so low calorie that each serving will still only come in at around the 300 calorie range, so enjoy it like the French do: avec pleasure and sans guilt.

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