Lebanese tabouleh salad

Tabbouleh is the national Lebanese dish. In Syria and in Lebanon it is often eaten by scooping it up in Romaine lettuce leaves. In the Middle East, it is truly a salad with the green ingredients dominating. In North Africa it is made with couscous in place of bulgur.



2 bunches of fresh parsley leaves, chopped
2 Tbsp of fresh mint, chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
6 ripe tomatoes, diced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup bulghur, medium
3 Tbsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp olive oil

lettuce leaves (optional)
pita bread (optional)

Optional add-ins: chopped cucumber, chickpeas, chopped bell pepper, lentils, chopped green onions, cinnamon, allspice, crushed garlic


Bulghur, fine grain

Soak bulghur in cold water for 1 1/2 to 2 hours until soft.. Squeeze out excess water from bulghur using hands or paper towel. Combine all ingredients, stirring to mix. Serve immediately or, if you prefer, chill first.

Serve tabouleh on a bed of lettuce, accompanied by extra lettuce leaves, lemon wedges and warm pita bread.

Twinkies from scratch

The other day we were talking about Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Swiss Rolls, Zebra Cakes and other similar American treats. So by the time Jonathan mentioned them today, I had already worked out my plan for a copy-cat recipe using yellow cake batter and a can of whipped cream (the real dairy kind, not the all-chemical kind).

1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp almond flavoring
can of whipped cream

In bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt.

In a second bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla and mix until completely combined. Slowly add flour alternately with milk. At end of addition batter should be smooth.

Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake in preheated oven at 350° for 25 minutes or until golden and a knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool 5 minutes in muffin tin, then invert onto a rack and cool completely. Refrigerate 1 hour.



Poke a hole in the bottom of each cupcake using a toothpick. Wiggkle it around to create an empty space in the center. Stick the whipped cream nozzle in the hole and gently fill it. Refrigerate until set, about 15 minutes. Or, go for the more fun, more delicious version of squirting a bit on each bite before eating. It loses some authenticity - but sure it good!

Crispy oven fries

Scrub potatoes well and cut into 1/2 inch thick fries.. In a large mixing bowl, toss potatoes with oil. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.Spread on baking sheet in single layer. Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven at 400° until potatoes are tender and browned. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot.

Steak au poivre (peppercorn steak)

Adapted from a recipe by Julia Child and Jacques Pepin

2 faux filet steaks (sirloin)
1 Tbsp cracked black peppercorns
pinch of salt
1 tsp butter
1 tsp olive oil butter

Sprinkle salt to taste on the top and bottom of the steaks then press each side into the cracked peppercorns, encrusting the steaks lightly or heavily, as you prefer.

Heat the oil and the butter in a frying pan over high heat. When the pan is quite hot, lay the peppered steaks in. Fry for about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, until the undersides are well seared. Turn the meat and cook the second side for about a minute. Press with a finger to test for the slight springiness that indicates rare. Cook to desired doneness and remove to a warm platter.

Tuna salad

I think tuna salad gets a bad rap. Sure, it can be mushy and flavorless. But it doesn't have to be. This recipe is very flexible and can be easily adapted to your tastes and preferences.

1 can tuna, packed in water, drained
2 hardboiled eggs, cooled and chopped
1/2 Granny Smith apple, chopped
2 Tbsp red or purple onion, finely chopped
3 Tbsp sweet pickle relish
-- OR, if you live in France: finely chopped cornichons + 1/4 tsp sugar
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp yellow mustard
1-2 Tbsp sweet pickle / cornichons juice
pinch of cinnamon (I know it's odd, but very good)

Optional add ins: chopped celery, chopped carrot, chopped cucumber...

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Serve on crackers, dry-toasted sandwich bread or wrapped in a pita. For extra crunch, layer thin slices of Granny Smith apple on the sandwich.

NOTE: I also use this same basic recipe for egg salad. Just substitute 3 more hard boiled eggs for the can of tuna.

Smothered hamburger steak

I used to work in a restaurant that sold a hamburger steak. It was basically ground beef smushed flat before being grilled and then smothered in a brown onion gravy. I actually never tasted it, although served it many times. The other night I was insprired to create my own version of it.

1 tsp oil
1 lb ground beef
2 slices dry bread, crumbled
2 eggs
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1-2 cloves crushed garlic
salt and freshly ground pepper
1 chopped onion
1 cup sliced mushrooms
1 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
1 tsp beef bouillon

Heat oil in a large frying pan over med-high heat.

In a bowl, mix beef, bread crumbs, eggs, Worcestershire, garlic and a little salt and pepper. Shape into four flat patties about 1/2 inch think. Cook in frying pan for about 2-3 minutes on each side, depending on how well done you generaly like your burgers. Once cooked, remove the hamburger steaks and place them on a plate covered with aluminum foil to keep hot.

Sauté the onions in the frying pan with the drippings from the steaks. Once soft, add the mushrooms and cook 1 minute. Sprinkle with flour and bouillon and stir to coat evenly. Pour in 1/2 the milk and stir well, dissolving any lumps of flour. Continue stirring until the gravy begins to thicken. Slowly add remaining milk 1/4 cup at a time. Once all the milk has been added, continue stirring until it reaches desired thickness. Taste and add salt and/or pepper. A pinch of rosemary is nice too.

Serve over hamburger steaks with white rice.

Beignets (donut holes)

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
2 Tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup milk + 1 tsp vinegar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
Oil for frying

In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk + vinegar, egg, butter, and vanilla. Mix until well blended.

Heat 2 inches of oil in a deep heavy pan over med-med high heat. Once hot , drop the dough in carefully by spoonfuls. Don't crowd them. Turn the beignets every 30-45 seconds until browned on all sides. Remove from oil and place on paper-towel lined plate.

Dip them in powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar.

Mafé with spinach

I agree it sounds like something you'd eat on a dare: peanut butter, spinach and hot pepper. But it's actually really good. Really good.

1 onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small can tomato paste
2-3 cups peanut butter*
1/2 cup roasted peanuts
5 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp paprika
2-3 tsp Scotch bonnet hot sauce (to taste)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp oil

* If possible, use all-natural peanut butter without added sugar. Otherwose, you can certainly use 'regular' store-bought peanut butter. If you use crunchy, skip the additional peanuts.

First, cook the carrots. Place them in a microwave-safe bowl and cover with water. Microwave on high for 4-5 minutes or until just tender. Set aside. Do not pour off the water.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook until onion is translucent and soft, stirring frequently. Lower heat to medium. Mix in tomato paste, then stir in 2 cups peanut butter. Add seasonings and carrots with the water, and spinach. Add more water if needed to make a soup consistency. Simmer on low, uncovered, 10 minutes. Taste and adjust if needed.

If too peanut buttery, add more tomato paste - and v.v.
If not enough flavor, add more ginger and hot sauce, maybe a little salt..

Serve over hot, white rice.

Jana's tomato salad

My friend Jana introduced me to this popular summer salad. I jumped ahead a season and made it this weekend, using some surprisingly good early tomatoes from the market.

5 ripe tomatoes, rinsed (at romm temperature)
1 small purple onion
3-4 thin slices good quality mozzarella (or crumbled goat cheese)
balsamic vinegar
8-10 fresh basil leaves
salt
pepper

Slice the tomatoes into wedges and place in a bowl. Cut the onion into thin rounds Crumbles the cheese on top. Sprinkle lightly with balsamic vinegar (maybe 2 tsp for starters). Using kitchen scissors, cut the basil into strips over the bowl. Top with a quick grind of pepper and little pinch of salt.

Life lessons from the kitchen

My sister-in-law Kate is a fellow food lover and recently submitted a video to Cooking Light magazine about the life lessons she learned from cooking with her mother and grandmother. Her video was selected and posted on their website!

Watch the video on Cooking Light's website here.

Caramel pear cake

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp almond flavoring (opt)
3 cups chopped ripe pears

Sauce caramel

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

In a second bowl, mix the sugar and oil well. Beat in the eggs, followed by vanilla and flavoring. Stir in the pears.

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet until just mixed.

Pour batter into non-stick round cake pan.

Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean. Let the cake cool before cutting. Serve with warm caramel sauce poured over the top.

Mafé, or sauce arachide

This recipe was inspired by three things:

1. Sauce arachide, a spicy peanut-based sauce made with chicken from Côte d'Ivoire, the country where I grew up. On special occasions it is served with a variety of toppings.

2. Mafé, a peanut-based sauce made with beef and carrots from Sénégal, the country where we lived for two years.


Senegalese mafé (photo from insenegal.org)

3. Our vegetarian friends coming for dinner.

In many African countries you may be served a variation of mafé or sauce arachide made without meat, sometimes adding greens in its place. I'm not a big fan of greens (but will happily accept recipe ideas to try) so decided to make a meatless version combining the best of both sauces, the delicious carrots from the mafé and the spiciness and toppings of the sauce arachide.

1 onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1 small can tomato paste
2-3 cups peanut butter*
1/2 cup roasted peanuts
5 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp paprika
2-3 tsp Scotch bonnet hot sauce (to taste)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp oil

* If possible, use all-natural peanut butter without added sugar. Otherwose, you can certainly use 'regular' store-bought peanut butter. If you use crunchy, skip the additional peanuts.

Toppings
These are optional. You don't have to have all of them, but I really recommend the first five or six.

coconut, grated
tart apple, chopped
raisins
red onion, chopped
bananas, sliced
green onion, chopped
pineapple, chopped
green pepper, chopped
oranges, chopped
roasted peanuts

First, cook the carrots. Place them in a microwave-safe bowl and cover with water. Microwave on high for 4-5 minutes or until just tender. Set aside. Do not pour off the water.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook until onion is translucent and soft, stirring frequently. Lower heat to medium. Mix in tomato paste, then stir in 2 cups peanut butter. Add seasonings and carrots with the water. Add more water if needed to make a soup consistency. Let simmer on low, uncovered, 10 minutes. Taste and adjust if needed.

If too peanut buttery, add more tomato paste - and v.v.
If not enough flavor, add more ginger and hot sauce, maybe a little salt..

Serve over hot, white rice and add toppings. Get creative! Be sure to have more hot sauce on hand for people who like it with a kick.

5 steps to greener eating

An excellent article from What's 4 Eats: International Recipes & Cooking Around the World

These days we all want to help improve the environment, minimize global warming and leave behind a better world for following generations. But the enormity of the environmental issues we all face can be overwhelming and intimidating. What can little old you do to make a difference in such a big, big world?

You’re in luck! You can take some simple, small steps that work out to a big effect. I’ve put together a list of 5 things you can do to have a maximum impact with a minimum effort. These suggestions don’t call for a radical change in your behavior, just a modest adjustment to what you buy and when you buy it.

1. Aim Low on the Food Chain

Avoid highly processed foods, those that come in brightly colored boxes or shrink-wrapped plastic trays and have accompanying powdered flavoring packets. All that processing uses gobs of water and energy to make an end product that is basically predigested for you.

Buy whole grains, fresh fruits, seasonal vegetables. Make simple meals that you prepare yourself. You don’t have to cut out processed foods completely. They are simply too convenient in our time-pressed world. And some are mighty tasty. But change your emphasis toward fresh and buy your food as close to its original form as possible.

2. Stick to the Season and Buy Local

When you buy produce in season, you’re not just getting the freshest fruits and vegetables at their peak flavor. You are also cutting back – way back – on the carbon-based fuel needed to get them to you.

It’s a simple equation. A bunch of grapes from Modesto, California, travels about 1,800 miles to get to a market in Des Moines, Iowa. Grapes from Santiago, Chile have to be hauled over 5,500 miles to make it to that same market. The California grapes use about 1/3 as much energy in transit as the grapes from Chile.

Apart from the energy used in delivery, the regulation of pesticides abroad is often less stringent than in the U.S. Produce bought in the winter from Mexico and other Central American countries can contain levels of pesticides higher than those allowed in domestically produced fruits and vegetables.

Check out the Whats4Eats Seasonality Page to find out what to buy when. Support local agriculture by shopping at your local farmer’s markets. Join an organization dedicated to community-supported agriculture (CSA). Local Harvest is a non-profit dedicated to promoting organic and local food. Their website has a nation-wide directory that can guide you to farmer’s markets, CSAs and other local food sources near you.

3. Moderate the Meat (and Seafood)

It has been estimated that it takes anywhere from 1,000 to over 2,000 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. Compare that to the roughly 50-75 gallons needed for a pound of corn.

Meat and poultry are energy and water-intensive to produce. Cattle, pigs and chickens eat large amounts of grain from fields sprayed with fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. And once that grain is digested, it comes out the other end as methane– a powerful greenhouse gas. Large, corporate chicken and pig farms ooze waste and tend to poison local water supplies.

Commercial salmon farms spread parasitic diseases to wild salmon, and fish that escape the farms weaken the wild gene pool. Trawl nets wipe whole areas of the ocean clean and decimate the ocean floor where they are dragged.

Not a pretty picture, huh? But you don’t have to turn vegan. Just cut back. Have meatless nights. Eat smaller portions. Use meat more as a condiment than as the center of the meal. Buy organic, free-range meats and poultry. Don’t buy fish that is raised or caught in unsustainable or damaging ways (Monterey Bay Aquarium is a great resource).

4. Go for Organic on Staples

Organic is definitely healthier for the environment. But it’s also more expensive. Too expensive for the budgets of many families. So how about targeting just a few items? Choose organic for staples like potatoes or milk. Or focus your organic purchases on those vegetables and fruits that aren’t peeled before eating. (Pesticides are concentrated on the surface of produce.)

Taking a targeted approach is easier on the pocketbook and can have a bigger impact than focusing on smaller purchases like organic herbs or potato chips.

5. Minimize Your Waste

Choose paper over plastic. Or better yet, buy a reusable cloth bag. They’ve become trendy and can be found in designer styles. Avoid overly packaged goods. You know what I mean. Foods that come in a pouch in a bag in a box wrapped in plastic and tied up with a bow. Recycle any packaging you can.

Start a compost pile for your vegetable scraps. You’ll keep waste out of landfills and produce a rich soil additive for your garden or your neighbor’s. Even if you live in an urban apartment there are composting options available to you.

You don’t have to lead the life of an ascetic to be eco-friendly. The fight against global warming and environmental degradation doesn’t require enormous personal sacrifice. Follow these 5 Simple Steps to Greener Eating and you’ll be amazed at the impact you can have and how easy it is to do!

Stuffed zucchini

This recipe is one of Jonathan's favorites. I adapted it from a recipe I used to make in Senegal. It doesn't take long and makes a great lunch treat.

2 medium-sized zuchini, rinsed
1 small can tomato paste
Italian seasoning (basil, oregano, thyme)
2-3 cloves crushed garlic
2 rounds of soft goat cheese
OR 1/2 cup fromage en faiselle
OR 1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup cheese for topping (I use Gouda, but Cheddar or Colby would work well)
olive oil



Cut each zucchini in half lengthwise. Using a spoon, scoop out the white pulp and seeds. Get as much as you can, leaving a hollowed-out 'zucchini canoe'. Rub the canoes lightly with olive oil. Place them on a plate and microwave on high 3-4 minutes or until softened. Check every two minutes to be sure they don't dry out or overcook (look wilted).



Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-high. Add a little olive oil then cook the pulp and garlic, stirring often. Once soft and light green, add Italian seasonings to taste (I use just under 1 tsp of the mix).



Add the can of tomato paste and mix well. Remove from heat and stir in goat cheese, fromage en faiselle or cottage cheese. Fill the canoes with the tomato mixture. Top with cheese and broil under browned.