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    This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.

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Pinned for Purim!

Posted on February 25, 2013 by DebbieN

Thanks to Yael Shuval for choosing my Low-Carb Hamantaschen for her board at Pinterest.com.

Three years ago I developed almond-meal based hamantaschen for my daughter, who had been diagnosed with Type I diabetes only a couple of weeks earlier and needed something that was low enough in carb that (at the time, anyway) she could actually have one or two when all the other kids were having theirs and without having to get an extra shot of insulin.

Almond meal has only about one-fourth as much carbohydrate per cup  as wheat flour, so it seemed like a good substitute. To our surprise, although the dough was a little finicky to work with, the hamantaschen came out tasting pretty good, and they were indeed pretty low carb, about 4-5 grams per mini-hamantaschen. Granted, they were also pretty small, but it was a symbolic triumph in the first few weeks and made us all feel like being diabetic wasn’t going to be the end of having fun.

Now that my daughter is on an insulin pump, getting an extra shot is no big deal, though in our experience the pitfall is that it’s now just a little too easy, especially for a preteen, to “eat anything you want, at any time, without thinking about it, as long as you program the insulin for it” which is one of the less responsible marketing messages in Medtronic’s brochure for teenagers (note: the pump itself is pretty good, but it still doesn’t mean you don’t have to be careful about what you’re eating). Those sour gummy heart candies the teacher handed out for snack earlier this week and left on my daughter’s desk, for instance….well, candy never seems like as much food as it really is, and I think my daughter gained a valuable lesson when she added up what she’d really eaten…she wouldn’t be the first one.

It’s always good to have a general plan in place for holiday eating so you don’t overdo the treats or eat an entire meal’s worth of carb in just a few cookies or candies or whatever…what can I say, we’re working on it.

Still. In the last year or two I’ve mostly gone back to making standard hamantaschen based on Joan Nathan’s classic cookie-dough recipe, which I like a lot and which looks and tastes much, much better than the dry, pasty-white horrors at the annual Purim carnival.

hamantaschen1

What I like about the standard flour-based recipe, other than that it tastes and looks good and is easy to work with, is that I can roll the dough out very thin and get crisp, delicate hamantaschen that are a decent cookie size but still hold together nicely and are not extravagantly carb-laden, particularly if the fillings are reasonable and you don’t eat ten at a time (the big challenge). They’re not as low-carb as the almond meal ones, but they still work out okay–about 7 grams apiece for a 1.5-2″ cookie. They taste good even made with pareve (nondairy) margarine instead of butter.

The LA-area idea of hamantaschen usually involves M&Ms, colored sprinkles, anything completely artificial. I bet gummy sour hearts (this afternoon’s culprit) would be a huge hit too. I don’t think they’ve heard of either prune or poppyseed out here in at least a generation.

Traditional fruit or nut fillings are a much more decent bet for carb, and they taste better (and look nicer too, because I’m not 6 years old and don’t insist on rainbow colors anymore). They’re also easy to make from scratch in a microwave or on the stove top so that you can decide how much sugar to put in them. Continue reading →

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A Slow Food Fast Thanksgiving

Posted on November 23, 2011 by DebbieN

Pumpkin pie in the microwave

I’m not sure how to take all the following good news–it’s been such a strained year that the sudden release of pressure is going to make me zip around the room, once the coffee kicks in.

1. My mother-in-law has threatened to favor the brand-new kosher butcher in her town this holiday season so that we can eat the turkey too this year (and maybe not fight about it). She promised not to smear said turkey with butter. We’ll cross our fingers. But at least we won’t have to cook. I’m keeping that firmly in mind.

2. As of this week, my daughter’s finally on an insulin pump and fairly thrilled about it, so she can navigate dinner AND dessert at my in-laws’ without breaking down and crying that she only gets two tablespoons of pie for a reasonable serving. We are still encouraging her to count carbs and not go hog-wild or she’ll be zipping around the room until midnight.

3. The school concert’s in less than two hours. Is that really enough time to do everything, or at least something? Naaaah. Well, maybe coffee and something other than the news.

4. We still have to schlep up Interstate 5 for about 6 hours tomorrow, starting “early” (i.e., an hour and a half after the time my husband announces this evening as the absolute latest), passing the Harris Ranch and its attendant aromas, which can be more than slightly offputting if you’re not an avid horticulturist. But at least when we get to my in-laws’ we don’t have to cook. As I said, I’m keeping that firmly in mind. I know I already said it, but it’s so important I figured it was worth saying twice.

Despite my firm resolve after last week’s marathon kiddush that I will strive Not To Cook (could I possibly be Peg Bracken’s unacknowledged lovechild? Unfortunately, no. However, my mother was a devotee of the Don’t Cook Too Much school of thought, and I’m starting to appreciate that. Really I am.)…where was I? Oh yeah…I will probably bring at least two lemons, some thyme and rosemary, a head of garlic and a couple of bags of fresh cranberries with us on the road. Call it flavor insurance. For whatever reason, my in-laws, who have developed what can only be called fanatical devotion to Italian food of every possible kind (having both grown up in white bread country), always run out of these basic essentials about halfway through, and my mother-in-law tends to tell my father-in-law to go back out and pick up extras just as the stores are closing…

The cranberries, I’m well aware, aren’t Italian. They’re for making 5-minute microwave cranberry sauce with about half the sugar of regular. My mother-in-law tends to try out her fancier cranberry chutneys and relishes every year, and every year they contain things like chardonnay–which is fine for the grownups but I’m no grownup. Her chutneys have more than 10 ingredients and sit stirring on the stovetop for at least 45 minutes. I don’t know how she does it–I’d go stir-crazy. I’m just not that good.

So anyway–I wish you all a great Thanksgiving at somebody else’s house, so you don’t have to cook or do the dishes. My idea of heaven.

But if you absolutely have to cook, here are a couple of posts for speeding up a few of the obligatory or not-so-obligatory Thanksgiving items–most can go in a microwave (I always, always think that’s worthwhile. Well, usually). A few of these are dairy, so use your discretion.

5-Minute Cranberry Sauce

Microwave Pumpkin Pie

Basic instructions for microwaving green beans, brussels sprouts and other vegetables

Creamed Spinach Variations

“Marbella”-style cooked vegetable relish with artichoke hearts, olives, tomatoes and prunes

Turkey Breast with Ta’am (flavor) –not microwaved, not a whole bird, but it is a lot quicker and tastes unusually good if you have a small crowd. DO keep it covered in the oven to prevent it drying out.

Some options for vegetarian centerpiece dishes… (ideas more than recipes)

Spice mixes because sometimes you want to liven up the party…

Syrian Jewish stuffed vegetables (baby eggplants and onions) with an incredible lentil filling (NOTE–this one is “not exactly quick”; well, maybe for the eggplants microwaving would be enough, but the onions still take some serious roasting even after microwave assistance.  However, it is delicious and impressive.)

Microwave gingerbread and microwave flan (and a recommendation for mead…)

 

Filed under: baking, Beans and legumes, cooking, Desserts, holiday cooking, meat and poultry, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, sauces and condiments, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Slow Food Fast Thanksgiving

Prunes and Lentils III: The Lentil Variations

Posted on July 20, 2010 by DebbieN

Today’s (and last week’s, and the week before’s) topic is STILL the lentils-and-prunes challenge.

Before I get on a roll about lentils, I should mention that the first Prunes and Lentils post was my 101st post for this blog. I don’t know if we should celebrate, but why not. Woo-hoo! Good enough. Consider it celebrated.

It’s taken me a full two weeks to put up this post because this is where the rubber meets the road, or at least where the lentils meet the prunes. The moment of courage. And I don’t know whether it’s going to be great or whether people will go back to wondering why anyone ever let me in a kitchen. (That’s easy: because no one wanted to do the cooking  themselves.)

Ordinary brownish-green lentils are kind of a workhorse ingredient in European, Mediterranean and Near East cooking (also in Indian and African cooking, though red lentils are better known). Unlike restaurant chain buffalo wings, lentils are actually rich in protein and iron, and they aren’t surreptitiously pumped up with sugar, salt and fat to entice you to overeat. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is not likely to sue, because a bag of lentils doesn’t come with a deceptive toy to con the kids. (See? we can be topical and up on the hot news of the moment even while discussing an arcane Slow Food subject like lentils).

And lentils are CHEAP–the whole point of starting this Prunes and Lentils challenge in the first place. Somehow even the big supermarkets that push shoppers to the middle aisles to buy boxes instead of actual food always carry dried store-brand lentils over near the bags of rice and split peas and kidney beans and such. It’s one of the few middle-aisle purchases that are worth it.

I don’t know if lentils have even kept up with inflation over the past 20 or 30 years, because they’re always something like $1-$1.25 for a one-pound bag. Same as when I was a student on a $20 a week food budget. And a pound makes 5-10 meals, not just one serving.

Actually, the recent agroeconomics of growing lentils in the US makes unexpectedly interesting behind-the-scenes reading for policy wonks like me. Lots of people are now clamoring for the US to change the crop subsidy laws to encourage more nutritious crops than corn, soy and wheat. Lentils are still a minor crop, but apparently the USDA introduced new marketing loans and other incentives for lentils, peas and chickpeas under the Farm Act revisions of 2002 and 2008, and exports for pulses have risen by about 45% in the last few years to India, Spain, the Philippines, and other major lentil and chickpea consumers. The rest are bought for animal feed and international food aid programs, especially those for sub-Saharan African nations.

That’s because lentils still fly under the radar here. The average annual consumption in the US is still just about a pound per person. Up from 0.8 pounds in 2008, so a 20 percent jump, but still. One pound per person in a year. If my continuation of the Prunes and Lentils Challenge posts has no other benefit to humankind, I would hope that it inspires you to buy and cook–and eat–at least one additional pound per year in a creative and satisfying way. Pass it on–Two pounds per year? At a cost of $2-3 total? We can but dream…

Of course, now that bean cuisine has become a point of pride for Meatless Mondays and other trends in eating green (if not eating local), lentils don’t just come dry in bags or bulk anymore–not glamorous enough, perhaps? If you’re upscale, you can get them precooked in little cans at your Whole Foods or steamed in vacuum packs at your Trader Joe’s, but those chic packages are much, much more expensive per meal and don’t taste as good. I frankly wouldn’t bother unless you’re on the road or camping or something and don’t have a kitchen at your disposal. Dried lentils don’t need a presoak to cook up within about half an hour even on the stove top, and they’re so easy to cook in a microwave (and avoid the watched-pot-never-boils problem) that the extra expense and time trying to find the precooked ones is usually not worth it. (And what about all that extra plastic and metal packaging? Be righteous–buy ’em dry.)

If you cook up a whole pound bag at once, you can use it throughout the week or (better, for a lot of people) freeze half of it with a bit of cooking liquid in a microwave container and save yourself some time the next time you want a batch. I keep thinking of that old “Cook Once, Eat Twice–That’s Italian!” lasagna ad (can’t remember if it was for noodles or sauce) from the 1970s. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but still a good idea for  when you’re too tired to cook for real.

In this post, I’ve got 3 or 4 main “strategic” ideas for the prunes and lentils challenge, along with more recipes and variations than should really go in a single post (and THREE more prune accompaniments as well), so just roll your eyes, bear with me, and if you decide never to let me in your kitchen, I’ll understand (plus I’ll never have to do the dishes–win/win!).

So first things first–gotta cook that bag of lentils (and recycle the bag). This recipe is probably longer than the actual process but it contains valuable Continue reading →

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Prunes and Lentils II: Prune Sauces for Savory Dishes

Posted on July 8, 2010 by DebbieN

Following on from Sunday’s post (have you recovered yet? Should I be selling Tums futures?) I should add that NOWHERE in Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg’s The Flavor Bible can a mention be found of prunes paired in any way, shape, or form with lentils. Don’t have the faintest why not. They do state that plain old green lentils have more flavor than red or brown.  They also pair prunes with olives, mushrooms, gorgonzola and walnuts as well as sweet spices and red wine. Somewhere in that crossroads there’s got to be some confluence of flavor, but wherever it is, they haven’t considered it.

Others have, however–notably Nathan Lyon of the Discovery Channel, ABC’s “Beat the Chef” show in Australia from a few years back, Hello! magazine (OK, copying straight from the California Prune Board’s UK division–wait a minute, they HAVE a UK division?!–and borrowing its press photo)…Oh well.

The benefit to considering prune sauces is that you can serve them with a lentil dish if you’re ready for that or to lift a more familiar savory dish with meat, fish or poultry.

Pan-seared tuna steak with microwave prune and wine chutney

Pan-seared tuna steak with microwave prune and wine chutney

And yes, I said “lift”. Make of it what you will, but any one of the sauces below is better than whatever Hello! magazine has to offer, even if it were original.

Stéphane Reynaud’s Prune Sauce (excerpted for consideration from French Feasts, 2009)

This was designed to go with a simply pan-fried foie gras for six–probably 3-4 oz per person, which seems like a hefty kind of serving, even though I do like liver.  But the sauce–why 18 prunes? 3 per person? and it seems a heavy load of spice for a small amount of wine. Also he has you rest the stuff overnight at room temperature before finishing it. Not sure why–to thicken up, probably, like Elizabeth David’s recipe for peach jam, which also sits out overnight after the first boil-up before resuming.

  • 18 pitted prunes
  • 1 c red wine
  • 1 t ground cinnamon
  • 1 t quatre-épices
  • 2 star anise pods
  • 2 T light brown sugar
  • 2 1/2 T butter, chilled

Boil the prunes 5 min with the wine, spices and sugar, cover and leave O/N at RT. Remove the prunes and reduce the spiced wine to a syrupy sauce. Whisk in the butter, then return the prunes to the sauce.

Microwave Prune Chutney with Wine

My microwave version started out as Reynaud’s wine-based sauce and suddenly morphed, as I was grabbing things out of the fridge for it, with a half-remembered cranberry chutney recipe my mother-in-law served a number of years ago at Thanksgiving. This turns out to be a potent combination, aromatic and sharper, no doubt, than Reynaud’s sauce, with a definite suggestion of saltiness about it–but no actual salt. I don’t recommend eating it straight–too pungent for me, though it’s uncannily close to the relish my mother-in-law served and pretty decent with poultry and stuffing or rice and so on–but cooking 5 minutes or so extra in a saucepan over direct heat or with the food you’re saucing and some extra wine turns it into something pretty special. The whole cloves in particular (which you can take out before using the sauce) do something incredible for any meat or steaky fish you cook with this sauce. Like brisket but just…better, more sophisticated, elevated to the level of cuisine. In fact, put some of this prune sauce with cloves in your next brisket too. 

Makes about 1 cup

  • ½-1 c leftover dark red wine–syrah, aglianico, something inexpensive but rich
  • 8-10 pitted prunes, quartered
  • grating of fresh ginger (1/4 t)
  • grating of 1/2 decent-sized clove garlic or 1 small clove
  • 1/4 red onion, chopped
  • 1-2 t. wine vinegar
  • sprig of thyme
  • pinch of fennel seed
  • 4-5 whole cloves, loose if you can stand picking them out or else stuck through a scrap of onion

Toss the onions with the vinegar and let sit a few minutes while chopping the prunes into quarters–it cuts down on the bite. Mix the onions, prunes, and the rest of the ingredients except the cloves in a soup bowl with a microwaveable lid that can placed on with a gap for steam to escape. Poke the cloves into a larger scrap of onion and add that to the bowl so you can fish them back out easily after cooking. Microwave 1-2 minutes loosely covered on HIGH or until it’s boiling, let sit 5 minutes, stir, microwave again. The prunes will have taken up a lot of the liquid, the onions should be cooked through and garnet-colored, and the wine should be reduced and a bit syrupy.

.  .  .  .  .

From France to China, then:

One year I was determined to make a low-sodium substitute for fermented black bean sauce with roast salmon. I soaked some prunes in a little boiling water and mashed them to a paste, then dressed them up with garlic, ginger and a few other things. It turned out, to my surprise, like homemade hoisin–-dark, glossy, tart and aromatic, less sweet than the commercial stuff, a little smoky from the sesame oil and scallions, with the suggestion of salt Continue reading →

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Prunes, Lentils, and “Cookin’ Cheap”

Posted on July 4, 2010 by DebbieN

When I was a kid, PBS, which had made a gourmet name for itself with The French Chef, decided that if one chef was good, six or seven had to be better. Suddenly the public and cable airwaves were  bursting with the Frugal Gourmet, the Galloping Gourmet, Yan Can Cook, Cookin’ Cajun, various shows with Pierre Franey and Jacques Pépin, and one…ummm…less glamorous show called Cookin’ Cheap.

This was hosted by Larry Bly and Earl “Laban” Johnson, Jr. out of Roanoke, VA–-not too far from where I grew up–and featured two viewer-submitted recipes per episode, which the guys bravely cooked and sampled on the air. At the end of each show, just like Julia Child, they sat down at the table for the tasting… and decided whose recipe had come off worse.

Now, Cookin’ Cheap was not for tenderfoots–if you couldn’t handle ingredient lists that included whole sticks of margarine and self-rising flour, or bring yourself to shop in one of the ordinary supermarket chains that had never heard of organic anything (this was the South in the ’80s), you would have done better not to watch. But if down-home cooking delivered with a touch of schadenfreude was your thing, it was a great little show.

Unfortunately, my favorite early episode doesn’t seem to be available anywhere on the ‘net. But the clip above, the Cookin’ Cheap 2.0 (YouTube) version of about a third of Episode #609, will give you some idea. (see copyright disclaimer below…)

In my actual favorite episode, Bly and Johnson hit their personal limit with a recipe that had them both making faces and apologizing to the audience that “there’s cheap… and then there’s too cheap.”

The dish in question was “Lentils ‘n’ Prunes” (you can guess the entire ingredient list). And it was indeed cheap. Unfortunately lentils, though incredibly cheap and nutritious, cook up kind of gray, especially on a semi-rural public TV station with early-’80s (i.e., yellow-ocher) set lighting. Trust me when I say the addition of mashed prunes did nothing for them aesthetically or otherwise. How on earth could they have put this on the air?

Of course, these guys didn’t have to take the blame for the recipe, and it was great entertainment to see some of the strange things your neighbors might be cooking at home and writing in to the show about with high hopes of being selected. I understand the Food Network is now copying Bly and Johnson’s reality-cooking formula shamelessly for the fall lineup…

[Actually, I didn’t realize the show had such a good run, but it started locally in 1981 and only ended its nationally syndicated run in 2002. Johnson passed away a few years before the end, but he managed to publish the Cookin’ Cheap Cookbook in 1988. Bly kept the show going with Johnson’s friend and successor Doug Patterson and has since made a couple of rescued episodes available on DVD. And the show still has fans on YouTube and — surprisingly just this March–in the New York Times.

Disclaimer: YouTube removed the first clip I linked to for copyright violation–so my apologies to Bly; the intent in linking here isn’t to rip anyone off but to highlight a too-little-known show. Because the original Roanoke station managers were too shortsighted to save the episodes (they apparently trashed them!), Bly was only able to rescue a couple of episodes for the DVD, and I think some of the others posted at this point were recorded at home from TV.]

Ah, well. Times change, horizons broaden, and we aim to challenge our palates in a sophisticated world beat kind of way even with limited cash and ingredients. The wolf may be at the door, we may be on the rice and beans yet again to make up for unreimbursed conference travel, but we are determined to do it in style–that means Indian, Moroccan, Mediterranean–French? Well, at least by not mixing plain lentils and prunes together in a hideous gray mash.

…I’m not actually sure how the French feel about lentils with prunes, or what they’d do about it if you suggested it. But I have a huge bowl of cooked lentils to deal with from a 1-lb. bag at $1.29. And a 1-lb. bag of non-sorbate pitted prunes at $2.99. Less than $5 total. And a number of ideas about how to deal with each of them, separately or together. Enough ideas that I’m probably going to have to split this post so it doesn’t turn into War and Prunes.

This, I think, is going to become my How to Cook a Wolf Challenge, 21st Century Edition.

Because I have fantasies (not many, and relatively tame though entertaining) of the Iron Chef America and Top Chef hosts announcing, for the next quickfire competition, a challenge to find three or four good ways to combine lentils and prunes in dishes where they’re the main ingredients and for which the total bill for the tasting menu comes to something like $10, including spices (prorated as used…) Can’t you just see the contestants’ faces? Take a moment to enjoy their obvious panic. The restaurant industry hasn’t trained them for this.

But seriously. What was actually behind this Cookin’ Cheap dealbreaker, other than the obvious frugality factor plus the even more obvious digestive humor that follows prunes and lentils wherever they roam?

Is there any way on earth that prunes and lentils could really go together?

Well…yes, as a matter of fact. You don’t run across prune and lentil recipes everyday, but good-tasting and intriguing variations, or at least the components of them, exist in a number of respected cuisines around the globe. Even French. For very little more than it cost the Cookin’ Cheap guys, Continue reading →

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