Savoy Cabbage

For dinner tonight I had baked apple chicken and sauteed cabbage with apple cider butter. My lovely friend and roommate gave me a cookbook for my birthday called Fast, Fresh & Green: More Than 90 Delicious Recipes for Veggie Lovers by Susie Middleton. The cabbage recipe is the first one I attempted from this new book. I like the way the book is organized. It is sectioned off by cooking method (quick-roasting, quick-braising, sauteing, etc) with a nice intro at the beginning of each chapter explaining how the cooking method works. For this recipe I sauteed cabbage strips and yellow onion in butter. And drizzled the cabbage with some apple cider butter made by boiling down apple cider to a syrupy consistency, and adding butter and rice vinegar.

The end result gets two thumbs up! I especially liked the browned bits of caramelized onion and cabbage. The slightly sweet and fruity apple cider butter added a nice kick of flavor to the nutty sauteed cabbage.


Savoy cabbage has pretty crinkled leaves that are dark green on the outside and get paler as you get nearer to the almost white core.

Cabbage is from the cruciferous family and like other members of that family savoy cabbage also has anti-cancer properties. It is a good source of vitamin C.

Recipe, "Sauteed Savoy Cabbage with Apple Cider Butter" taken from:
Middleton, Susie, and Ben Fink. Fast, Fresh, & Green. Chronicle Books Llc, 2010. Print.

Moroccan Lamb Tagine (with PARSNIPS!)

On my birthday the UPS man delivered a big brown box shipped from Williams Sonoma. Found buried deep within layers of protective packaging was a beautiful hand-painted Tunisian tagine! My mother sent it to me as a birthday gift. While I was in Morocco I had high hopes of bringing one home with me, but decided against it--the conical lid is bulky and the chances of it making it home in one piece were slim. I did bring home a Moroccan tagine cook book though...now I can make some of those recipes! (I may need to pull out my Arabic-English dictionary though because my Arabic is a little rusty and the recipes are all in Arabic).

The tagine is a heavy clay pot used for slow cooking of stews. It's like a Moroccan crock pot! The base is round with low sides, and its lid is conical with a hole in the top. The conical shape is supposed to return condensation (and hence moisture) to the dish. "Tagine" or "tajine" refers to both the clay pot that is used to cook the dish and also to the food--the dish itself. As I typed that sentence I realized that the word "tajine" is similar to the English word "dish" which similarly has two uses which can refer to either the vessel or to the food within the vessel.

the many ingredients that went in the tagine, photo by Erik

Sunday night with the help of my friend Erik, I made my first tagine. I printed out a few lamb tagine recipes and combined them together to make my own Frankenstein-creation. I made one minor mistake that turned the meal into a monstrous creation. Because I was pulling from multiple recipes I should have thought about changing the ratio of spices to rest of ingredients. We only used 1 lb of lamb, and added in various other ingredients (carrots, parsnips, chickpeas, apricots, dates, and almonds). I forgot to take all of my additions, subtractions and substitutions into consideration when I was measuring out the spices. The dish was overseasoned.


It smelled wonderfully fragrant and rich! Maybe that should have been a clue (I am sick and extremely stuffed up, and so should not have been able to smell anything.) It was over-seasoned for me (the sick lady with an impaired sense of taste due to her missing sense of smell) which means that for the average person the spices were probably overwhelming to say the least. I was sad that I could not taste the flavor of the apricots, dates or even the lamb over the spices. It was a fun experiment and I learned a valuable lesson.

the plated tagine (and the tagine) photo by Erik

In addition to cooking with a tagine for the first time, I also had my first cooking experience with parsnips! I can cross another veggie off of my "to try" list. They look like white carrots. The texture of a parsnip is less crisp than it's carrot cousin and has a more stringy fibrous texture. I thought they weren't as sweet as carrots (but I was sick and with dull tastebuds). Erik thought the sweet flavor was reminiscent of coconut.

Nutritional facts:
Parsnips are a member of the umbelliferous vegetable group which possesses cancer-protective properties according to the National Cancer Institute. For about 100 calories one cup of cooked parsnip has 5.5 g of fiber, 58 mg of calcium, 45 mg of magnesium, 90mcg of folate and 573 mg of potassium.



Nutritional Information from:
Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.

Bok Choy

I found a delicious recipe for bok choy at Central Market. I am eating my leftovers as I type!

Here it is:

Ginger Garlic Bok Choy

1/2 of a bok choy, sliced thin
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch of ginger root, minced
1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
1 large shallot
2 TBS toasted sesame oil
2 TBS rice wine vinegar
salt and pepper

1. Heat sesame oil in a large wok over med-high heat
2. Saute bok choy for 3-4 min, tossing frequently, then add in shallots, ginger and garlic. Saute for another 3-4 min.
3. Add vinegar and cook for another 2 minutes, season to taste and toss in cilantro at the end!
   

Bok Choy: (AKA: chinese cabbage, pak-choi, chinese chard)

It's a member of the brassica family, meaning it contains indoles which are compounds that have been shown to lower your risk of cancer.

Bok choy is also filled with calcium, potassium, beta-carotene, and vitamin A.

Nutritional Information from:
Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.

Imo Yamo

I finally conquered the slippery slimy imo yamo that was frightening the rest of the contents of my fridge with it's hairy alien presence. It really was quite a feat to get that thing peeled. As soon as the slime started coming out it was difficult to grasp that tuber. This is one elusive tuber! In addition to it's slippery nature it also has many aliases: 'Nagaimo', 'the long potato' (it can grow 2-3 feet long!), 'the Japanese mountain yam', and 'the Chinese wild yam' to name a few. There are numerous tiny channels running through the length of the tuber filled with the slime. The yam can be grated and eaten raw in a salad (minus its sliminess, it has a similar crisp texture of a jicama).

I made a slimy potato stir fry. I read on wikipedia its best to soak the yam in vinegar water before eating/cooking to neutralize oxalate crystals that are found in the skin. I put a little sesame oil in my pan with some ginger, garlic and the remnants of my previous stir fry, added the circular slices of potato and added some water and fish sauce. I should have gone easy on that fish sauce. It was too umami for my taste. If there's a next time, I will be sure not to over-season/salt/umamize the dish. The potato itself didn't have much of a flavor of its own (not unlike most other potatoes I'm used to eating).


Nutritional Facts:

The nagaimo is sometimes referred to as "mountain medicine" and is used for medical purporses in Chinese medicine. It is also known to help reduce high blood pressure, regulate digestion and relieve fatigue. It may help lower cholesterol levels and acts as a tonic for general vitality. Since the nagaimo contains high levels of amylase and other digestive enzymes, it can help to digest starchy foods, such as rice eaten with it.

I stole these facts from this website:
http://www.nagaimo-aomori.com/

The "P" fruits: Pummelo and Pomegranate

The Pomegranate: was a lot of work to eat!! It was very time consuming to get this bowl of edible parts extracted. These are the seeds and a translucent red pulp surrounding the seeds.

The facts: research suggests that the regular consumption of pomegranate juice may help slow aging and protect against heart disease and cancer. It contains "the highest antioxidant capacity compared to other juices, red wine, and green tea" says Professor Michael Aviram who led an Israeli research team looking into the benefits of the fruit.

**Research published recently in the Journal of Urology showed that pomegranate juice could be a "natural Viagra" because of its powerful antioxidant capabilities and the fact that free radicals are a contributing factor in ED.

Nutritional Information from:
Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.



The Pummelo: was delicious! To me it tasted like a cross between a grapefruit and an orange. It was sweeter than a grapefruit but had a more mellow less bitter taste. It wasn't quite as sweet or citrusy as an orange.

From Wikipedia:

The tangelo is a hybrid between the pummelo and the tangerine. It has a thicker skin than a tangerine and is less sweet. It has been suggested the orange is also a hybrid of the two fruits. Other pummelo hybrids include grapefruits and mandelos.

Acorn Squash

For dinner last night I made a Thai lemongrass chicken breast (marinated by Central Market) and baked acorn squash. The acorn squash was split in half, the seeds were scooped out, I put some olive oil in the bottom of a dish and placed the two halves cut-side down on the oiled dish. They went in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes. Then I flipped them over and steadied them with foil rings. I sprinkled salt and pepper on them, filled the cavity with orange juice and crushed garlic and then put them back in the oven for about 20 more minutes. Acorn squash is GOOD!! It has a nutty flavor, and the orange juice added a little sweetness. One whole clove of garlic was overkill. Next time I will use less.

Squash facts:

There are two categories of squash--summer and winter. Acorn squash is a winter squash (along with butternut and spaghetti). Winter squash has a higher carbohydrate content than the summer squash.

Bowden calls acorn squash a "fiber heavyweight" with 9 g of fiber in 1 cup of cooked acorn squash (for only 115 calories). It also has 896 mg of potassium and about 2 mg of iron.

Squash is a good food for weight loss. Foods like squash with a high water content are classified as "high-volume" meaning it is filling and low calorie.


Nutritional Information from:
Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.

Citrus Dinner

Tonight I made orange honey habanero chicken (marinated by the Central Market meat-masters) and rainbow chard with mandarinquats and shallots.

I found the recipe for the chard on my handy-dandy iPhone app, "How to Cook Everything." (Which is a misnomer, I looked up that funky Japanese potato on the app and there were no ways to cook it). Anyways, I sauteed the strips of shallots in olive oil, added 2 tablespoons of sugar (which I wish I would have left out) then added cut up mandarinquats. To that I added sherry vinegar, and threw in the chard to steam in the juices. The end result is a citrusy-sweet mixture of greens. The recipe called for an orange and I substituted the mandarinquats, and I might have gone overboard. I tried to throw in what appeared to be the equivalent of one orange-worth. If I make this recipe again I will reduce or completely omit the sugar. Sugar in vegetables?? REEEEALLY America?? Really Martha?



Chard: Johnny Bowden calls this leafy green "a nutritional powerhouse"! At 35 calories 1 cup of cooked chard gives 4 g of fiber, more than 100 mg of calcium, 961 mg of potassium, and more than 30 mg of vitamin C. Also more than 10,000 IUs of vitamin A, more than 6,000 of beta-carotene and 19,00 mcg of lutein and zeaxanthin.

It's a member of the goosefoot family of plants, and a relative of beets. Don't overcook it or you will compromise the nutrients!


Nutritional Information from:
Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.

Went a little crazy at the market...it's 'Citrus Fest' YO!

I stopped by Central Market (my place of part-time employment) on my way home from my second improv class. I worked Thursday night and left my food in the refrigerator (carrots, broccoli & hummus). I didn't want it to get thrown out on Sunday night when they empty the fridges.

This week at Central Market it's "Citrus Fest"! Which means: we are promoting citruses! The meat market has meats that have been marinaded in citrus. The produce section has some uncommon citruses on display. The free recipe cards around the store are all citrus-themed. The cooking school offers classes citrus-specific.

I went crazy in the produce section.

Starting at the bottom left (going clockwise) that funky looking root is a Japanese Imo Yamo potato, mandarinquats, acorn squash, pummelo, pomegranate, & rainbow chard


Man! It was hard to find anything on that Imo Yamo potato. I found this entry in a food dictionary

yamo no imo Japan See mountain yam (NOTE: Literally 'long potato')

I pulled this from Wikipedia:

It is eaten raw and grated, after only a relatively minimal preparation: the whole tubers are briefly soaked in a vinegar-water solution to neutralize irritant oxalate crystals found in their skin. The raw vegetable is starchy and bland, mucilaginous when grated, and may be eaten plain as a side dish, or added to noodles.

Brussels Sprouts, Artichoke & Persimmon

Brussels Sprouts are a vegetable I distinctly remember trying as a child. My mother made the frozen brussels sprouts--they came in a box with a butter sauce. Those little green alien balls were my least favorite vegetable, being that they always induced my gag reflex. I will sheepishly admit that I had not given them a second chance since my childhood experience.

I have vowed to make this year one that is full of second chances and reevaluations of my former beliefs. Challenge #1: change my belief about brussels sprouts! The brussels sprouts I bought were grown here in the Texas hill country, in Johnson City, home of our 36th Prez, LBJ. After doing an impromptu survey at work, (I asked every person coming through my lane with the brussels sprouts how they planned on cooking them) I decided to roast mine.

I tossed the brussels sprouts in olive oil, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, threw them on a cooking sheet and in the oven at 400 degrees F. I forgot to set the timer but they were probably in there for about 30 minutes. The outer leaves were browned when I pulled them out. I didn't hold back on the salt. They were tasty right out of the oven. They were crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. The flavor was mild, slightly sweet and very salty. I thought to myself, "I could eat these things for breakfast!" But to be honest, at the end of my meal by the time I got down to my last fork-full of B.S. the gag reflex came back. They had cooled off too much and the texture and temperature combo was no longer appealing.

Tortilla encrusted tilapia and roasted brussels sprouts

I made an artichoke as my other veggie. I have had artichoke before but never solo, it has always been a topping on a pizza, or part of a dip. I've cooked with artichoke before, but not fresh artichoke, my experiences have been with the canned or jarred variety.

I found a website with step-by-step directions (and photos) showing me how to go about it. There were even pictures showing you how to insert the leave into your mouth and use your teeth to pull out the soft pulpy (edible) portion. After all of the leaves were pulled off I was full of wonder when I saw the furry center (called the choke) that covers the heart of the artichoke. I had no idea that was what was waiting for me! The choke resembled an eyeball. It was creepy and wonderful.

It's the eye of the CHOKE!

On to dessert. I bought a persimmon to try (first time!) It's a fruit that looks similar to a tomato, but it's firmer and orange in color. I did some reading and found that there are astringent and nonastringent varieties of persimmons. Both contain tannins, but the astringent varieties have very high levels of tannins so if you eat one before its ripe, it will be bitter and sour. My persimmon was an Israeli Sharon which is one of the nonastringent varieties. I cut it into pieces I would with an apple and ate it. The skin is thick and crunchy, the inside is soft almost like a peach. The flavor is mild. All I can describe it as is sweet. It's sugary and juicy.


Nutritional Details-

Brussels Sprouts: Brussels is the capital of Belgium, and it was in Belgium that these little mini cabbages were first widely cultivated. They are a member of the cruciferous vegetable family. They contain a chemical called sinigrin which suppresses the development of precancerous cells by promoting apoptosis (programmed cell-death) of these precancerous cells. Additionally they are high in two other compounds (isothiocyanates and sulforaphane) that help fight cancer and detoxify environmental toxins.

Artichokes: They are a liver-cleansing food thanks to a compound called silymarin which is the active ingredient in milk thistle and helps protect and nourish the liver. The plant is also a bile-stimulant, so can be helpful with indigestion. One artichoke has about 60 calories, 72 mg of magnesium, 425 mg of potassium, 6.5 g of fiber (for a medium sized artichoke), a little folate, lutein and zeaxanthin (eye-friendly carotenoids).

Persimmon: both the pulp and peel are good sources of fiber. It also contains potassium, magnesium, manganese, and iron.


Nutritional Information from:
Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.

Rutabaga and Turnips

As a 27 year old woman (I'm getting ahead of myself, I still have 20 days as a 26 year old woman, but nonetheless as a grown-ass woman) I should know my vegetables by now. I have been working part-time at a grocery store where fruits and vegetables, both the exotic and common (organic and not) from all over the world are sold. There are too many PLUs to memorize! But in addition to those 4 digit numbers, sometimes I don't even know what some of the fruits and veggies are that pass down my rotating black rubber lane. Which makes it hard to look up the code in my 100+ page binder. Someone bought an "ice cream bean" the other day. WTF is an ice cream bean!?! (Apparently it's similar to a vanilla bean, FYI.)

I want to educate myself on the fruits and vegetables that have evolved on this beautiful planet of ours. I am tired of the same old same: carrots, broccoli, peas, corn, etc...

Today I went to the farmer's market at the Triangle and bought a pound of turnips and a rutabaga from Johnson's farm.

I used a recipe off of my iphone application "How to Cook Everything" for braised and glazed root vegetables. I love this app. I love my iphone. I was anti-iphone for a while. The iphone came out during my last deployment in Iraq. After each deployment, upon my return to the states I was bombarded with the materialistic American culture of excessiveness. I had gone seven months without a cell phone, seven months without regular internet access. No one biologically needs as much variety and as many options as we are given in America. We are culturally conditioned to believe we need our 1,001 options. I was against the iphone at first because I did not see why I would want or need to have access to the internet 24/7, in both populated environments and in areas where cell towers were sparse.

Flash-forward: I am now a college student at UT. There are throngs of young girls donning Nike tempo track shorts, sorority t-shirts, and teds ambling across campus unaware of their surroundings absorbed in the facebook app on their iphones.

I despised these people! One day I even played a game with myself. I counted the number of people total that I saw walking on the street, in addition to counting the number of people who were completely engrossed in their cellular device or mp3 player. The ratio of "connected" people to plain old people-people was unsurprisingly high.

So I was against getting an iphone, or a smart phone or any form of technology that would take me away from the present reality of life. I wanted to experience the real world, not amble around like a somnambulist in a technological dream.

Wow. I've digressed. This is supposed to be about my Veggie Quest. Let me get back on track. Americans today eat an alarmingly large amount of processed foods. (Watch the documentaries King Corn or Food Inc. for an intro.) America is a suburbanized nation. Everything about the way we live is preplanned. Shouldn't an increased amount of planning equate to a better outcome? Not always. With plans come zoning restrictions. Can you imagine a small farm amidst your typical suburban neighborhood? No. Because everything is zoned. Food is transported in from far far away. People shop for food at Walmart, or the other large supermarkets where produce is shipped in from around the world. It may not be in season, but it has been genetically enhanced to be able to grow out of season (which may mean it loses flavor and/or nutrients, but hey! at least we can eat tomatoes year round!)

The majority of children today do not know what real food looks like. They could recognize cheetos, oreos, and any of the other alien food forms that can withstand a nuclear fallout such as the twinkie. But what about a rutabaga? What about a turnip?

My generation may recognize the turnip from Super Mario Brothers games. But who has actually eaten one?



Now I can say that I have. I know what it tastes like. I know what it looks like.

I am going to document the nutritional information as well.

I hope to try a new vegetable at least once a week. I don't want to get too ambitious with once a day, I like my leftovers as much as the next joe.

Here's a photo of tonight's meal:


I made braised and glazed rutabaga, turnips and carrots. Accompanying the veggies was a chicken breast seasoned with cilantro, cumin, cayenne, olive oil and topped with diced tomatoes.

The turnips were buttery and had a crisper texture than the rutabaga. The rutabaga was mushier almost like a potato. Neither of the roots had a very strong flavor to them.

The mixture of root vegetables worked well together, they were thrown in a saucepan with olive oil, chicken and vegetable stock, salt and pepper, a dash of cayenne and salt and pepper. The liquid was boiled off until there was a nice glaze left, to which I added lemon juice.

Here's some nutritional info:

Turnips and rutabagas are both members of the Cruciferae family (AKA the Mustards) which includes broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, cress, bok choy, kale, collard greens, kohlrabi, rapini, radish, daikon, wasabi, arugula, and a few others which sound even more alien to me (who works at the Central Market grocery store).

Turnips and rutabagas are also both in the Brassica genus who's members contain multiple nutrients with potent anti-cancer properties. And additionally contain high amounts of vitamin C and soluble fiber.

1 cup of cooked turnips has about 35 calories, 3 g of fiber, more than 250 mg of potassium, 18 mg of vitamin C, and 51 mg of calcium

1 cup of cooked rutabaga has 94 calories, 4 g of fiber, 782 g of potassium, 45 mg of vitamin C, 115 mg of calcium, and 55 mg of magnesium.

Nutritional Information from:

Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.