March came in like a lion, and I am already eagerly anticipating its lamb-like exit.  At the end of the month is Passover, and soon after that, Easter.  Which means, of course, that spring dessert season is upon us!

For those of you who have previously been oppressed by dense, uninspired Passover desserts laden heavy with potato starch and coated in cloyingly-sweet icings, perhaps this year is the time to celebrate your freedom from bondage.  With our vast experience in wheatless baking, we gluten-free eaters are well-poised to shepherd the temporarily-flour-free flocks into a promised land flowing with delicious, indulgent desserts that are flourless by design.

Delicious and Flourless by Design

I’ve always thought the best gluten-free desserts were those designed to be flourless, rather than reverse-engineered, gluten-free approximations of wheat-based ones.  This philosophy holds especially true when it comes to Passover desserts: if God had wanted us to make cakes and cookies from matzo meal and potato starch, he would have given us digestive systems with built-in pipe cleaners and Dran-O.  Since he did no such thing, I feel a divine calling to share some ideas on how to make light, flour-free desserts for your Passover Seder or gluten-free Easter lunch that are good enough to enjoy year-round.

You might be surprised to learn that the French patisserie offers some of the best inspiration for flourless pastry-making. If you’ve allowed your sour grapes at not being able to eat croissants deter you from exploring the other fineries a patisserie has to offer, you may have missed:

• the ethereal classic meringue-based French Macaron (NOT to be confused with the coconut-based Macaroons so common this time of year)
• the decadent flourless Chocolate Walnut cookies developed by the venerable pastry chef Francois Payard
• delicate, spongy Chocolate Financiers, made gluten-free by Paris-based pastry chef and food writer, David Lebovitz
• Mark Bittman’s almost custard-like flourless Chocolate Souffles, which can be made dairy-free by greasing the souffle dishes with margarine instead of butter.

If all of this chocolate and Frenchiness is overkill, you can try:

• recycling my favorite New Year’s  Flourless Honey Almond Cake recipe for the occasion

Note that most of these recipes call for confectioner’s sugar, which some Jews choose to avoid during Passover for its cornstarch content.  If this is your practice, there’s an easy Kosher-for-Passover substitution you can make for confectioner’s sugar, courtesy of Epicurious.com: just take 1/3 cup granulated sugar and 1/2 tsp potato starch and grind them together in an electric coffee/spice grinder or mini food processor.  (Multiply the recipe as needed). Voila!

The Chocolate Financiers recipe is lovely just the way it is, but I think I’ve managed to take it from great to greater by substituting hazelnut meal and hazelnut extract for the almond flour and almond extract the recipe calls for.

Hazelnut chocolate financiers are a lovely little way to celebrate your freedom from flour

This gives these wonderful little cakes a divine Nutella-ish flavor.  Also, a madeleine mold can be used in place of the Financier or mini-muffin mold the recipe calls for; if you use silicone molds, no need to grease them before filling.  To make them dairy free, use margarine instead of butter.

If you’re making Payard’s Chocolate Walnut cookies, be warned that the recipe will easily make at least double the number of cookies it says it will, and they’ll still be pretty huge.  Keep an eye on them while baking and take them out a smidge before you think they’re done; overbaking will make them too crispy.  When baked properly, they have a gooey, almost brownie-like texture.  They are insanely high in sugar, which is why I make them but once a year.

More on Macarons

Macarons are a delicate french confection that resemble mini pastel-colored hamburgers. Made from eggwhites, sugar and almond flour, they are naturally gluten-free.  They’re becoming quite trendy these days, with reporters from NPR to New York magazine proclaiming them to be “The Next Cupcake.”  (In fact, even Starbucks dabbled in some packaged ones from Chateau Blanc during Christmastime last year…to my expert macaron palette, they weren’t half bad!)

A rare at-home macaron- making success

Zoe le chat sniffing out the final product

Unless you’re super ambitious and can afford to waste a fair amount of pricey almond flour on failed experiments, I recommend buying Macarons instead of baking your own. They are an incredibly temperamental confection, and achieving the ideal texture for the sandwich cookie–delicate as an eggshell, but moist and chewy upon biting in– is as much a function of good fortune and ideal oven conditions as it is good skill.  If you’re up for the challenge, however, I’d suggest taking a class.  (Here in New York, my husband took a class at the Institute of Culinary Education.)  As far as buying your macarons Pret-a-Manger, while I have yet to find a place in New York that makes a macaron even remotely as good as those made by Pierre Herme in Paris (the veritable Platonic ideal of a macaron and the standard-bearer for macarons worldwide), I have found enjoyable versions sold at Macaron Cafe in the Fashion District, Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center and J’ Chanceaux Macarons (found at Green Apple, 202 Mott Street in Nolita).  As macarons have very short shelf lives (and a bad macaron, unlike bad sex, is NOT still worth having), I’d only buy them from places that specialize in them, are known to bake them fresh daily and have high turnover.  Avoid the ones sold at Whole Foods at all costs.

If you insist on trying your hand at making your own, I’ll refer you to David Lebovitz’s online resource guide for everything macaron-related.  Good luck!

Making Room for Dessert

As if it needed to be said, nothing you read about here today is remotely healthy.  It’s delicious, indulgent, sweet stuff.  If it seems strange that a nutritionist is celebrating the confectionery arts–particularly a nutritionist who has been known to come down pretty hard on sweetened yogurts and such–then allow me to explain.

The tough love I dispense with regard to sugar is not because I hate sugar, but rather because I love it.

And because I want to be able to indulge in the occasional sweet of my own choosing without guilt or weight gain, I am vehemently opposed to the sneaky sugar in flavored yogurts, allegedly-healthy breakfast cereals, so-called “nutrition” bars, sauces, beverages, breads and countless other packaged, convenience foods.  I want to spend 100% of my precious and limited sugar budget on small portions of the sweet things that give me the most pleasure. I make room in my diet for dessert by relentlessly cutting out silly, hidden sugar from places I won’t miss it and from foods that don’t need to be sweet, anyway.

According to the American Heart Association, the average American consumes 22 teaspoons (!) of added sugars per day. By way of context, the recommended added sugar budget is 6 teaspoons for women and 9 teaspoons for men.

You can see, then, why I get all riled up when others try to spend my modest 6 teaspoon sugar budget for me without my knowing it!  Be aware: there are numerous ways that your daily food staples are spending your sugar budget before you even contemplate reaching for that piece of chocolate, but plenty of easy swaps you can make to save room for dessert.  Here are but a few examples:

• Choosing plain yogurt over flavored saves 2-4 teaspoons of sugar per day.
• Choosing an unsweetened (or lightly-sweetened) whole grain breakfast cereal (Cheerios, Shredded Wheat, plain Kashi Go Lean, Puffins, oatmeal) over other cereals masquerading as healthy choices (like Kashi Go Lean Crunch, Kellogg’s Smart Start, Raisin Bran) can save you another 2-3 teaspoons per day.
• Choosing unsweetened soy milk over Vanilla soy milk saves a teaspoon and a half.
• Choosing plain water or unsweetened tea saves 3 tsps of sugar per cup over Vitamin Water (and each bottle of Vitamin water is 2.5 cups).

(For a fun, visual representation of how much added sugar is in some of your daily food staples, you can check out the Sugar Stacks web site.)

Eating a single serving of any two of the sweetened versions of the foods above blows your entire target sugar budget for the day if you’re a woman! To me, this is sugar that could be spent much more enjoyably on a daily one-ounce dose of chocolate, or perhaps a bowl of ice cream every couple of days.  Of course, that’s just my personal preference.  Everyone is free to spend their sugar on what matters most to them!

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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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The yogurt which established a new Greek Empire in your supermarket

But the google-searches for lactose-free yogurts continue unabated, and since I posted that initial article, the only brand of dairy yogurt on the market that used lactose-free milk (True Yogurt) has become unavailable due to the loss of their production facilities.

Despair not, my fellow lactards.  There is another yogurt option that your intestines may find tolerable: European Style yogurt.

You may have noticed the European invasion in your local dairy aisle: there’s a veritable Greek Empire led by brands like Fage, Oikos, Chobani, The Greek Gods, Trader Joe’s Greek Style yogurt and Brown Cow Greek yogurt; then there are the Icelandic Skyrs (Siggi’s), and the continentally-inspired “European-style yogurts” (Cultural Revolution).  What these products all have in common is that they’re strained to remove a large amount of the lactose-containing liquid (whey) found in your typical American-style yogurt, so they’re a) very thick; b) naturally higher in protein; c) naturally lower in carbohydrate.  Now: since all of the carbohydrate naturally found in yogurt is lactose (milk sugar), a lower carbohydrate yogurt means a lower-lactose yogurt. For some people who can tolerate small amounts of lactose but still have trouble with conventional American-style yogurt, these products may be perfect for you.

How low-lactose are European-style yogurts?

Ounce for ounce, your typical European-style yogurt will have about half or less of the amount of lactose as a standard American-style yogurt.  (This is also very good news for people with diabetes, as plain European style yogurts are very low-carb.)

Let’s start with a standard American-style product for comparisons’ sake: a 6oz container of plain, Dannon low fat yogurt, which contains 11g of naturally-occurring sugar, all of which is lactose (milk sugar).  All conventional yogurts will contain roughly this same amount of lactose, which means any additional sugar listed on the label beyond 11g is added sugar for flavor.  (As a sidebar: if you’d like to read more about how much added sugar is too much added sugar when it comes to yogurt, read this response to a reader who asked that very same question.)

By way of comparison, a standard 5.3oz container of Greek-style yogurt contains 6g lactose (or about 7g for brands sold in a 6oz container), which amounts to 45% less lactose than American-style yogurt.

If that doesn’t excite you, there are thicker, more strained versions out there with even LESS lactose.  A standard 6oz container of Siggi’s Icelandic-style yogurt contains a mere 4g of lactose, or 64% less lactose than American-style yogurt.  (It also has 16-17g of protein and 20% of your daily calcium needs.)

If their labels don't lie, 2% fat Cultural Revolution yogurt has the least amount of lactose (2g) you can find in a milk-based yogurt

And finally, there is Cultural Revolution yogurt, whose low-fat version (2%) is an unimaginably low-lactose product: Just 2g of lactose in a standard 6oz container. That’s 82% less lactose than a conventional American style yogurt.  (Note that the whole milk version (5%) has more lactose: 5g per 6oz container.)

One last–and important–lactose-related factoid when it comes to yogurt is this: the live, active cultures (bacteria) in your yogurt will have predigested some of its lactose before you even eat it, which is why yogurts (and cheeses) are often better-tolerated than straight liquid milk in people with some degree of lactose intolerance.

To put this in mathematical terms: a very low lactose yogurt + some lactose pre-digested by the yogurt cultures= a very good chance people with some (but not complete) lactose intolerance will be able to enjoy yogurt again.

Ready to give real yogurt a try again?

My recommendation is always to choose plain (unflavored) European or Greek-style yogurt if you like how it tastes–or if its convenient for you to doctor it up with a touch of your own sweetener or favorite add-in (I’m partial to almonds + 1 tsp honey, or just a sprinkle of granola).

Virtually all flavored yogurts are loaded with added sugar–often over 3 tsp worth in a teensy little container.  (As a rule of thumb, 6 tsp added sugar per day is a good limit for most women.)  Flavored Greek Yogurts are no exception, and all sugar listed on the label beyond the lactose content detailed above is straight up added sugar.  (In fact, I’ve seen many Greek yogurt products with an unheard-of 30g+ of sugar per container!  I won’t name names, but you know who you are, you sugar-pushing bullies…)  Note: if you’re concerned about lactose, you may want to avoid Cabot’s Greek Style Yogurt: their yogurts contain added whey protein concentrate, which contains lactose.  As a result, their Greek Yogurt has the same amount of lactose as your standard, American-style version.

You make a mean Skyr, Siggi.

If your tastebuds simply won’t adapt to the flavor of plain, then there are some brands that have less added sugar than others.  When I’m not buying plain, here’s what I’d buy:

• Siggi’s Icelandic style yogurt in Vanilla, Grapefruit, Blueberry or Orange-Ginger  (These flavors have 10g total sugar, or 1.5tsp added sugar.  So does the Acai flavor, but I think it tastes kinda weird.  Sorry, Siggi.)  Plus, its made with milk from hormone-free, grass-fed cows.
• Cultural Revolution yogurt in Vanilla, Strawberry, Peach or Raspberry.  These flavors have 10g-11g total sugar in the whole milk variety, which is ~1.5tsp added sugar; and only 8g total sugar in the 2% (lowfat) variety.  And bonus, its made from organic milk.
• Stonyfield Farm’s Oikos Greek-style yogurt in Vanilla only (has 11g total sugar per container, and it’s made with organic milk.)  The other flavors have way too much sugar added for me to recommend them.
• In a pinch, Brown Cow Vanilla Greek Yogurt isn’t egregious at 12g sugar per container… but it’s pushing the limits.

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This year, Valentine’s Day coincides with the Chinese New Year, providing a welcome distraction to those who would rather avoid a world that seems to have vomited up roses and expensive prix-fixe dinners at every corner.  On February 14, celebrate the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Tiger!

In its favor, Chinese cuisine hosts some of the most nutritious, calcium-rich veggies one can eat: Chinese mustard greens (aka Gai Choy: one cup chopped has the same amount of bioavailable calcium as a cup of milk!), bok choy and Chinese broccoli (aka Gai Lan) are among the highlights.  Alas, Chinese can also be among the trickiest cuisines to navigate for those of us who must avoid wheat and gluten.  Wontons and dumplings are wrapped in lovely little wheat-flour dough pockets… Lo mein noodles are made from wheat… fried dishes are battered in flour-based coatings…and the savory sauces and condiments used to prepare most every dish almost always contain wheat or a derivative thereof.

But do not despair.  As Confucius didn’t say but surely meant to: where there’s a will to partake in Chinese food, there’s a way to partake in Chinese food.  As such, I offer you my personal guide to Chinese food for those with rebellious intestines:

Gluten-Free Chinese Food: Eating in

It won’t come as a surprise to hear that cooking at home is the best chance you have at enjoying Chinese food without worry of wheat.

Build your gluten-free condiment pantry

A large (and growing) number of the staple condiments in Chinese cooking are available in GF versions.  After years of label-reading and searching, I am pleased to offer the following list of gluten-free condiments, many of which I stock in my own pantry for when the Chinese cravings hit.  Many of them are available for purchase online, and all of them are MSG-free.

• Soy sauce: Look for (reduced-sodium) wheat-free Tamari sauce by San-J, Eden Foods or Premier Japan.  La Choy soy sauce is gluten-free, too, but I don’t think it tastes very good.
• Dark soy sauce: There is no commercially-available GF version I’m aware of.  You can jerry-rig a passable version by mixing equal parts GF soy sauce (or wheat free Tamari) with molasses, and simmering over low heat until the molasses is dissolved.
• Oyster sauce: Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Green Label Oyster-Flavored Sauce  (note: only the “green label” product is wheat-free and MSG-free.  The red label product contains both wheat and MSG); Ka Me Oyster Sauce
• Hot Bean Sauce: Lan Chi Black Bean Sauce with Chili
• Chili Garlic Sauce: Most brands will be gluten-free, but check labels to be sure.  Some sure bets: Lan Chi Chili Paste with Garlic, and Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic
• Hoisin sauce: Premier Japan’s Wheat-free Hoisin sauce (its also organic, which means no GMO soybeans were used in its production); Y&Y brand Hoisin sauce; Ka Me Hoisin sauce
• Plum Sauce: Lee Kum Kee Gold Label Plum Sauce, Y&Y brand Plum Sauce

All brands of sherry, cooking wine, rice vinegar, chili sauce, sesame oil, chili oil should be naturally gluten-free.

Also, most home-recipes call for naturally-GF cornstarch to thicken soups and sauces, so you should be good to go on that front, too.

Plan a menu

• Our go-to Chinese cookbook is Dorothy Huang’s Chinese Cuisine Made Simple. My husband had the good fortune to take a class with Dorothy at a Whole Foods in NYC last year, and he claims she made the best Chinese Food he’s ever tasted in his life. Her

  

  If you can't find Chinese broccoli (pictured), substitute broccoli raab/rapini or broccolini

  recipes are authentic, simple, incredibly flavorful and way more healthful than anything you’d get at a restaurant.  If you’ve stocked your pantry with the GF staples above, you’ll be able to make a surprising number of her recipes gluten-free.  The cookbook has chapters dedicated to vegetables, tofu dishes and seafood for those of you who aren’t big into meat-eating, but her book, like Chinese cuisine, is chock full of meat dishes as well.
  

• Don’t forget the greens!  In this respect, Martha is a good place to start.  Chinese she is not.  But when it comes to recipes for healthful, Chinese vegetable side dishes, she delivers.  Try her recipes for Broccoli with Oyster Sauce, fiery Stir-Fried Green Beans, or Lily’s Baby Bok Choy with Dipping Sauce. (You’ll need those GF condiments for some of these if you’re making the gluten-free version…).  Beyond Martha, Epicurious offers this simple recipe for sauteed Chinese Broccoli.

• Eat like a local!  Fish dishes are traditional on Chinese New Year, like this recipe for Whole Black Bass with Ginger and Scallions.  (Worry not: wild, U.S. black bass is currently listed as a “good alternative” by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch from a sustainability standpoint.)  The vegetarian dish called Buddha’s Delight is also a common New Year’s offering.  Mandarin oranges are a healthy way to finish off the meal (in season now!).

Make your own Potstickers!

Feeling ambitious?  Glutenfreeda.com offers an online won ton tutorial where you can learn how to make your very own GF Pot Stickers from scratch.  The trick, of course, is that you need a pasta machine to do so (not exactly a staple in GF homes, and even if you do have one, there’s a risk of cross-contamination if it’s been used for wheat-based pasta previously.)  But if you’ve managed to overcome those two obstacles and have an afternoon to spare, I think this would be a worthwhile and terribly fun way to celebrate the Chinese New Year!  If you get really good at it, consider selling them to potsticker-less, lazy folks like me who would pay a pretty penny to partake of an authentic potsticker again someday…

Gluten-free Chinese Food: Eating Out

If you’re going to brave the restaurant scene, it’s best to be prepared.  Here are some options:

• In NYC, visit Lilli and Loo or Lili’s 57, two Chinese restaurants with  gluten-free menus.  Nationally, P.F. Chang’s offers a gluten-free menu, as does Pei Wei Asian Diner, though I refuse to vouch for the healthfulness of their offerings or appropriateness of their portion sizes.  P.F. Chang’s also offers gluten-free soy sauce for your table on request.  To find a Chinese restaurant near you that has GF offerings, you can scour one of the various national restaurant registries at this link.

• BYOS.  That’s Bring-Your-Own-Soy sauce.  Mini packets of GF soy sauce are available from a company called Kari Out.  You can order them online from glutenfree.com.

• Download the free “Gluten Free Restaurant Cards” app onto your iPhone. It explains your dietary restrictions and in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese dialects (and close to 40 other languages), which you can show to your server in hopes that they will help you navigate the menu appropriately.  Still, be very skeptical of saucy and savory stir-fried dishes, because it may not be apparent from the menu card’s translation that even soy sauce is going to be off-limits for you.
  

• If you’re willing to spend a few bucks ($19), Triumph Dining cards offers wallet-sized, cuisine-specific lists of off-limit foods that contain hidden gluten so you can more effectively interrogate your server.  The cards are written in Chinese and can be handed to the server and chef to help ensure your needs are clear.

• For a $7 investment, you can arm yourself with the Chinese Gluten-Free Passport to take with you on your next trip to a Chinese restaurant.  According to the marketer, it identifies the safest soup options, entree choices (chicken, vegetable and seafood) and dessert selections, as well as a list of questions to ask your waiter to determine whether a food is safe for you to eat.

• If good communication is not an option, stick to some of these ordering guidelines to help avoid the most common sources of Chinese restaurant gluten:
  • Among soups, there’s a good chance that Egg Drop soup will be safe (but try to double-check that it’s thickened with cornstarch, not flour.  It should be).  Ditto for Chicken and Corn soup.
  • Steamed seafood and vegetable dishes are usually your safest bet.  (Not terribly exciting, but who needs the kind of excitement than an accidental gluten ingestion entails, really?)
  • White sauce is the most likely to be safe, but again, double-check that they use cornstarch to thicken it rather than wheat flour (they probably will).  Other sauces (e.g., brown, black bean) are not going to be gluten-free.
  • Mei Fun and Chow Fun are rice-noodle pastas, which makes them safe if they’re not cooked with any gluten-containing condiments such as soy sauce.  Fried rice dishes can easily be made safe if you ask the kitchen to prepare them without soy sauce or oyster sauce.  (You can season them yourself with the little GF soy sauce packets you brought along…)
  • Avoid imitation (”vegetarian”) meat and seafood ingredients (including imitation crab or surimi).  These are always made with gluten.
  • Avoid anything deep fried (the batter and the cross-contamination in the fryer are a double-whammy).

Happy Year of the Tiger to you!

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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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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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This relative newcomer to the mainstream supermarket has earned itself a reputation as a low-glycemic sweetener that many believe to be safe for diabetics or healthier than sugar. Given these widespread perceptions, I thought it prudent to do a little bit of nutritional truth-seeking, to help my sweet-toothed readers understand what Agave Nectar really is: benefits and drawbacks alike.

What Agave Nectar is…and isn’t

Despite what the name might lead you to believe, Agave Nectar in its ready-to-use form doesn’t actually exist in nature.  In other words, you couldn’t just put a spigot in an agave plant and expect some sort of sweet, golden liquid to start pouring out of it like sap from a maple tree.  Whether it’s labeled “raw” or not, Agave Nectar is a man-made sweetener derived from Mexican agave plants that must undergo several processing steps to produce the end product.  The pulp is macerated to produce a juice that is filtered to varying degrees and then must be heated to break down the starch into its sugary components that make it taste sweet.  (It can also be enzymatically-treated to create the same effect.)  The less filtered the nectar, the darker it will be and the more minerals (like calcium, iron, potassium and magnesium) it will retain.

Because the agave plant’s natural starches are largely composed of long chains of fructose (a monosaccharide, or single unit sugar), the resulting syrup that is produced when this starch breaks down will also contain a relatively high degree of fructose.  Unlike other monosaccharides (namely, glucose/dextrose), fructose must first be metabolized by our liver to produce usable energy rather than being immediately absorbed into the bloodstream and available for use.  As a result, fructose does not raise blood sugar to the same extent that glucose does, and can thus be said to have a lower-glycemic effect.  This is why many people believe that Agave nectar is safer for diabetics than other sweeteners.

The first catch, however, is that you have no idea how much fructose is actually in that Agave nectar you bought. While available information would suggest that Agave nectar routinely contains 90% fructose, in fact some products have been shown to contain only 55%, and most commercially available products appear to fall in the 70-80% range.  (The ratio of fructose to glucose will vary by the species of agave plant used, the processing method and whether anything is added to the agave nectar.)  Just by way of comparison, plain old table sugar is about 50% fructose.  And High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is usually 55% , too.  Which means that some brands of Agave nectar may have no different an effect on your blood sugar than plain old white sugar or HFCS.  Unless you verify the amount of fructose or the glycemic index of the particular brand of Agave nectar you buy, you cannot assume that it’s any safer for diabetics than any other caloric sweetener. Not all products are 100% agave nectar, and some brands have been reported to mix in corn syrup (glucose) or other ingredients to their agave products.  I should also mention that there have been no clinical trials investigating the glycemic effect of Agave Nectar in subjects who actually have diabetes that I’m aware of, so I would emphasize that caution is key when your blood sugar control is at stake.

The second catch, of course, is that we rarely eat our sweeteners alone. The ACTUAL blood sugar effect of a food will depend on the rest of the meal eaten with that food.  Protein, fat and fiber all moderate the impact of carbohydrates on our blood sugar.  The amount we eat of a food will also impact its effect on our blood sugar, and a larger portion of a “low-glycemic food” could easily produce a higher spike in blood sugar than a smaller portion of a “medium glycemic food” like table sugar.  The only way to truly know how swapping out your current sweetener or adding agave nectar to a typical meal will affect your individual blood sugar is to actually test your blood sugar before and two hours after the meal.

Is Agave Nectar Low-GI?

Caveats aside, the glycemic index can still be a useful tool when comparing foods to one another. And so a little bit of poking around online

Glycemic index of Agave Nectars varies widely by brand

yielded the following Glycemic Index information on some leading Agave Nectar products from the manufacturer’s web sites. I have not independently verified any of these claims.  Note that to be considered “low glycemic,”  a product must produce an indexed blood sugar response of 55 or less when compared to a standard (pure glucose=100).  By way of comparison, table sugar–which, if you’ll recall, is half fructose– has a glycemic index that ranges from 58-65 (it varies depending on the source of the sugar), rendering it a “medium glycemic” product.

• Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Blue Agave: 75% fructose and 20% glucose.  Claims a glycemic index of 39 or less.
• Madhava: The manufacturer’s website claims that their product’s glycemic index “measures in the range of 32.”  (It strikes me that 32 isn’t so much a ‘range’ as a single data point, and I’d be interested to know whether the aforementioned range has a higher end…?)
• Nekulti agave nectar: claims a GI range of 34-38
• Volcanic Nectar Blue Agave: This is the only agave product I have come across that is verified by a 3rd party agency, the Glycemic Research Institute, to be a low-glycemic product.  It clocked in at a 27.
• Sweet Cactus Farms: GI of 19, as listed in the University of Sydney’s generally reliable GI Database.

As you can see, there is some pretty wide variation in the reported glycemic indeces of available products, but several options that appear to fit the low-glycemic bill nonetheless.

Is fructose even a good thing?

There is an irony about our collective embrace of Agave Nectar as we simultaneously demonize its metaphysical twin, High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Which is: the very characteristic of HFCS that leading critics argue to be responsible for its obesity-promoting qualities–namely, its fructose content– is precisely the characteristic that Agave-lovers are drawn to about Agave.  So which is it?  Is fructose evil and fat-promoting, or is it wholesome and health-promoting?

The answer is neither.  And both.

The scientific literature shows that people on experimental diets which are unnaturally high in fructose (from any source) have significantly increased levels of triglycerides (a risk factor for heart disease for which diabetics are especially susceptible) and increased production of fat in the liver (fatty liver).  (The experimental doses were usually 2-3x higher than the typical fructose intake in even a crappy American diet).  At lower doses, drinking fructose before a meal has been shown repeatedly to be associated with consuming more overall calories when compared to people who drink glucose (or a sweet, diet drink) instead.  (Our brains do not register fructose like they do glucose, so eating fructose doesn’t trigger the hormonal signals that tell us we’re satisfied in the same way that eating glucose does.)

In other words, a high fructose diet is not a good thing for anyone.  But fructose from any source in SMALL amounts--whether from table sugar, HFCS, fruit juice, Agave or honey– will not contribute significantly to an increase in fat accumulation in your liver or your blood, nor is it likely to be much better or worse than an alternative. A drizzle of honey on your yogurt, a sugar cube in your coffee once a day, a favorite salad dressing or ketchup that contains HFCS, some agave nectar on your pancakes… these are not things to sweat about in the context of a generally healthy diet.  And if you are diabetic, replacing table sugar, maple syrup or honey with a higher-fructose alternative (in small amounts) could possibly–but not definitely–help to moderate your blood sugar spikes.

But when it comes to drinking your sugar– whether that beverage of yours is sweetened with HFCS, 100% sugar, honey or Agave nectar– your brain is not going to register these calories in its internal calculus of whether it’s gotten enough energy to satisfy its needs, and you are not likely to compensate for those extra calories by eating less.  So drinking your sugar in any form is not a habit I’d recommend getting into, and none of these sweeteners are shown to be any better or worse than the others when it comes to sweetened beverages.

To Agave or not to Agave?

Buyer beware: Agave-sweetened products don't necessarily have less carbohydrate or fewer calories than conventionally-sweetened versions.

As you can see, I’m not quite convinced that Agave nectar is all that much healthier than sugar, HFCS or honey.  It has the same number of calories as these alternatives (16 per teaspoon) and it’s not necessarily going to produce lower blood sugars when consumed in the context of a typical diet.

Having said that, there are a few cases I can envision in which Agave could be a better alternative to other sweeteners.

1. As a honey replacement for vegans
2. As a sugar substitute in baking… IF you take advantage of agave’s sweeter taste to reduce the total amount of sugar in the recipe.

Guidelines for replacing sugar with agave vary from conservative to aggressive.  The more sugar you take out, of course, the healthier the end product will be, so I’d encourage pushing the envelope with your favorite recipes to see how they hold up to the swap-out.

The most conservative guidelines I’ve seen recommend a 25% reduction in sugar when using agave, or 3/4 cup agave nectar for each 1 cup of sugar that the recipe calls for.  When doing this, they also recommend removing 1/3 of the liquid in the recipe and reducing the oven temperature by 25 degrees.

Karina Allrich, the Gluten Free Goddess, however, takes it further.  She recommends to use 1/3 to 1/2 cup agave nectar for each 1 cup of sugar that a recipe calls for, and reducing the liquid by just 3 TBSP to compensate.  If this formula works for your recipes, you’ll save at least 72g of carbohydrate and 290 calories in the entire recipe.  That’s non-trivial.

Some food manufacturers are taking advantage of agave’s sweeter taste to reduce the total sugar and calories in their food products, but others are taking advantage of your unconditional love of agave to sell you expensive, agave-sweetened products that have no fewer calories and no less sugar than the original.  You should always read the label and compare.

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A sweet potato pie that comes in both naughty (with crust) or nice (sans crust) versions.

These frigid days, I find myself seeking out excuses to keep the oven on in the kitchen to help warm up the ground floor of our chilly little house. And thus was the idea born to bake a Sweet Potato Pie, which would entail baking the sweet potatoes for a blessed hour, and then baking the assembled pie for another glorious 60 minutes. If your home has better climate control than mine and you need a different excuse to bake yourself a pie, perhaps you can make it in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.  Admittedly, by all accounts, his favorite pie was actually pecan. But if he were still alive today, he’d be 81 years old and probably watching his sugar and fat intake. And being a reasonable man, surely he would have enjoyed a marginally less sinful, Vitamin A-rich wedge of Sweet Potato Pie just as much.

Having resolved to bake myself a pie, there was, of course, the matter of the crust. I’d suffered through enough of those godawful frozen gluten-free pie crusts from Thanksgiving. And I couldn’t bear the thought of playing around with a sticky rice-flour dough only to be disappointed. So I decided to experiment with my own version of a graham cracker crumb crust made with what I suspected would be a perfect substitute: Puffins cereal, pulsed through the food processor. I used the Honey Rice variety since it’s gluten-free, but the recipe below should work with your Puffin flavor of choice. If you are more virtuous than I was, however, and would prefer to go crust-free, feel free to bake this pie as a souffle-cake of sorts in a well-lubed springform pan. It will still be delicious, and leaving out the crust transforms this indulgent pie into a healthy, sensible dessert with almost half the calories and some very redeeming nutritional qualities (see below for the stats).

One last matter I’d like to clear up before the root vegetable police pounce on me about the whole sweet potato/yam issue. The bright orange root vegetables we tend to refer to as ‘yams’ in this country are almost always the so-called “soft” variety of sweet potato. (True yams, botanically speaking, come from Africa or the Caribbean, and are not related to sweet potatoes.  They are much starchier and lack the same levels of Vitamin A; see the description of Ñame from my previous post on Caribbean root vegetables to see the difference).   There are also “firm” sweet potatoes, which have a paler yellow flesh and bake up to be drier than the moist, soft, orangey soft sweet potato we call yams.  I used jewel yam sweet potatoes in this recipe–can you get over that gorgeous color?–to create the perfect soft, souffle-like filling.

Recipe: Tamara’s Sweet Potato Pie

Serves 8

For the (optional) crust:

1 and 2/3 cups of Puffin crumbs (will require about 3.5-4 cups of Puffins cereal pulsed in your food processor).  For gluten-free, use the Honey Rice or Multigrain Puffin cereal variety.

6 TBSP (organic) unsalted butter, melted

1/4 cup (organic) sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Blend all ingredients in a bowl until well-combined.  Dump mixture into a 9″ pie pan and press it with your hands to cover the bottom and sides of pan evenly.  Bake for 7-9 minutes until set.  Remove from oven and cool before filling.

For the Sweet Potato filling:

2 to 2 1/4 lbs. sweet potatoes (”yams”), scrubbed clean.

3 large eggs

3/4 cup (organic) light brown sugar

2 TBSP (organic) unsalted butter, melted

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

2 TBSP rum

1. Bake the sweet potatoes: pierce them with a fork several times, place on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour until nice and soft all the way through.
2. Split open the baked sweet potatoes and scoop out the orange flesh into a large mixing bowl.  (It should easily peel away from the skin).
3. Add the eggs, brown sugar, melted butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and rum to the sweet potato flesh.  Mix all together using a large fork until ingredients well combined, but so that sweet potato flesh still remains somewhat textured and fibrous.  (Don’t beat it into a super-smooth filling… the somewhat lumpier texture is what makes a sweet potato pie so different than a silky pumpkin pie and gives it a characteristic heartiness.)
4. If you are using a crust, pour filling into crust.  If you are making a crustless souffle-custard-cake, pour mixture into a well-greased 9″ springform pan.
5. Bake for 60-75 minutes at 350 degrees.  The pie is ready when the filling is nice and firm and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Approximate nutrition information per serving (assumes 8 servings):

With Puffin crust: 390 calories, 62g carbohydrate (5 diabetic exchanges…which will certainly blow your entire meal’s budget) of which 4g are fiber, 5g protein, 14g fat, and >100% of the recommended daily intake of Vitamin A for adults

Without crust: 215 calories, 40g carbohydrate (3 diabetic exchanges) of which 3g are fiber, 4g protein, 5g fat and >100% of the recommended daily intake of Vitamin A for adults

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