Perfect Orange Sections

September 19, 2018 by Nan Posted in Blog, Ingredients, Kitchen How-to Leave a comment

Orange sections liven up a main dish salad like nobody’s biz. How do you get them out of the orange in one piece?

Well, here’s what I do. This is how I was taught when working in the pastry shop at Louie’s Backyard in Key West, Florida. I had to switch there because I was pregnant and I had that smell thing going on, and I could not handle being around all the meat in the regular restaurant. I wasn’t very good at pastry, but I did learn a thing or two, including this technique and how to break an egg with one hand.

This method yields lovely section with no pith, as well as a little bit of juice for good measure.

Perfect Orange Sections: How To

First off, choose your knife. A curved blade is best. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my boning knife handy; they really work the best. But this one did in a pinch, though it wasn’t so sharp for the first couple of cuts, until I ran it over a steel.

Slice off the skin at the “poles” of the orange. Yeah, I know. I should have done a thinner slice. Stupid dull knife. I’ve been yelled at by so many kitchen employers for wasting food. If this happens to you, buck up, little tomato! Just squeeze the top of the orange for more juice, or dig out that little bit of flesh for a snack.

Set the orange down on one of its now flat surfaces. Remove the peel by making vertical cuts down the sides of the orange. This is where that curved blade comes in handy (especially if it’s sharp enough), as it nicely slices away the curved surface of the orange.

Just keep going…

…until you have a naked orange. (#naked gets SO many more clicks.)

Now, it’s time to get the orange sections. Make sure you have a bowl. Hold the orange in your hand over that bowl. Carefully slice out a section of orange at a time.

It’s kinda like you’re shaving the membrane away with the knife. Sometimes, I actually just lift it from the second side after the first side’s been freed.

Once you have all the orange sections, give the membrane a good squeeze.

Not only are you the proud possessor of a bowl of perfect orange sections, you’ve got a couple of tablespoons of orange juice, which you can throw in the dressing, or just drink out of the bowl. Like the orange-juice loving kitten that you are….

WTF, CSA? Collard Greens

July 15, 2018 by Nan Posted in Blog, Ingredients, Kitchen How-to Leave a comment

Even more than dinosaur kale, collard greens look like they’d be perfectly home in Jurassic Park. Leathery and hued a calm, deep blue-green, collards are perceived by many to be the quintessential green of the U.S. south, and a staple of the great cuisine invented by enslaved African-American cooks. In fact, when Warren Beatty as Jay Bulworth visits Halle Berry’s family in that movie, he automatically assumes that the big pot of greens is collards, which he says he “loves.” (It’s fairly obvious that’s he’s never eaten collards in his life.)

“That’s kale,” says Ms. Berry’s grandma Mama Doll, the marvelous Helen Martin. She rolls her eyes.

While, from a cooking standpoint, collard greens can interchange easily with kale or chard, they look quite different and have their own virtues, as well as unique flavor and texture. They are an old world plant, mentioned by ancient Greeks and Romans. Their lovely large leaves thrive in gardens braising under the big summer sun right up to very cold snaps. Their play between crunch and chewiness, bitter and sweet, gets enhanced depending on your cooking technique. Some options follow.

Collard Greens: Raw

You can mix finely chopped raw collard greens into a salad, but they do require a fairly vigorous chew. Rubbing with salt and oil doesn’t transform them the way it does kale, as you can see in this post. So skip that in favor of a truly genius use for a big collard leaf: as a super-healthy, mildly-spicy, fiber and flavor-rich gluten-free wrap for basically filling as you would normally drop in a tortilla.

To execute this, you do need to get out your trusty paring knife and shave down the stem. Then, simply add your ingredients in a narrowish strip down the center of the leaf.

Tuck in the sides, then fold up. Ish. Obviously, my collard green wrap folding skills have some evolving to do. This was a messy meal, but a tasty one.

I’ve found that, for a while now, I’ve been ripping away considerable swaths of tortilla, because I can’t for the life of me discover a reason to eat all that flour. So now, I get virtue points for noshing away on more greens, which nicely complement the starch in the burrito. The collard green wrap proved particularly wonderful with this refried black-eyed pea and sauteed greens interior, inspired by the glorious Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Topped with watermelon salsa, it earned a big yum.

Collard Greens: Sautéed

Collard greens sauté up beautifully, using the same formula you’d use for many of the vegetables I’ve previously cited. These include kale, but also green beans. Follow the same rules: Heat some fat, start with some type of chopped onion, add the greens, and add a little water or broth. Cover and steam. Test after 5 minutes, then 10. Collards are sturdy; make sure you’ve got the chew consistency where you want it.

Additionally, skimp on the salt—though I don’t like to skip it altogether. The deep lustrous greens feature fairly high sodium content. I’m all for judicious salt, with the caveat that it is very easy to oversalt your greens. The key is tasting. Here’s a step-by-step and recipe in case you like that sort of things.

Collard Greens: Boiled or Otherwise Slow-cooked

The classic southern prep of collard greens, by the way, is to boil the hell out of them with a ham hock. This creates pot liquor, often spelled “likker,” the leftover cooking water shaded an electric green and featuring a thin (and to my palate, gross) film of fat. Not something I really want to eat, but I’ve met many a southerner whose eyes get downright misty when describing the stuff. It’s reputed to be a fine hangover cure. So….there’s that.

For that very reason, however, collard greens go the distance in a crockpot. Just cut them fine, either in squares or a chiffonade. You can stir them into whatever you’re slow cooking and all those vitamins will cook into the stew without the greens turning to mush.

Collard Greens: Perfect Partners

Black-eyed peas, yams, corn on the cob, watermelon on the side, peanuts, bbq anything: All marry happily to collards. But don’t limit them to your ideas of classic southern U.S. cuisine—which is, by the way, very similar to the cuisines of Western Africa because, well, read your history if you haven’t already. Collards’ sturdiness renders them gorgeous in many Asian cuisines, including the many regional variations of southeastern, Chinese, Indian, and Korean—collard greens and gochujang may make you squeal in delicious pleasure. They can hold their own throughout western, central, and northern Europe as well. Simply cut into bite-sized pieces, and fold them right into your dish. And finally, and perhaps surprisingly, they co-exist beautifully with eggs. This quinoa-crust quiche used a mix of chopped broccoli, leeks, and kale, but collards will work just as well, on their own or mixed with whatever greens you want to put to good use.

They’ll add a huge hit of vitamins. Most importantly, they’ll make your taste buds and innards equally happy. Chow down.

WTF, CSA? Green Beans

June 27, 2018 by Nan Posted in Blog, Ingredients, Kitchen How-to, Uncategorized, Vegetables Leave a comment

Here’s the thing with fresh green beans: You can’t buy just a handful.

These are roughly 2 pound bags that I recently saw at Whole Foods. Whole Foods’ idea is that you will buy this entire bag, no questions asked. And of course, you can just remove what you want—even just a handful—with impunity.

But optimally, your idea should be to avoid bagged green beans altogether, because frankly, you have no idea what could be in there. You can also see how lumpy those beans are, which means: tough. You’ll be much happier with your purchase if you seek out this type of display. Hey, wait a sec! Those aren’t cucumbers! LOL, Larry.

You can see that many of the stems are still intact, a sign of freshness. Turn a bag inside out over your hand and grab what you need. (Do wash these when you get home, because people have been running their hands through those things All Day.)

Point being, when green beans rain, they pour. Your CSA box may be fair to bursting with beans one day. What’s a cook to do?

Well, first off, snap off those stems. This, I find, is the most satisfying green bean experience. The stems snap off with a nice snappy pop; maybe even the teeniest bit of water pops out when they’re super fresh.

You can also cut them, which is speedy. You just line ’em up, chop one set of tips, then line them back up the other way and repeat. This works if your green beans are maybe a little less fresh; again, not optimal, but still edible. Bonus: Beans make a great first cutting project for a beginning cook. You can practice your monkey claw, and complete the job in 2 quick cuts per pile of beans.

Just as with all vegetables, you have a few options—though limited somewhat by the ways of the bean. Prior to any veggie recommendations, it’s important to note that acid turns your beautiful bright green beans a downright fug olive color. Add acid, should you need it, to any preparation of green beans—particularly raw, steamed, or blanched—at the very last minute, and the dish will look fine for the next half hour or so. But leftovers are likely to look a bit sad. More on that below.

Green Beans: Raw

ONLY if you have just picked them out of the garden, and if they are the super skinny haricot vert variety (the ones so thin they look like needles). Even so, they don’t call ’em beans for nothin’. While green beans are actually a flower, they’re a little starchy. A quick dunk in a pot of boiling salted water or a light steaming preserves their bright jade color as it brings out the fresh green flavor, and makes them a little easier to digest as well.

If you do opt for raw, just rinse them well and snap off the ends. If you have to cut off the ends because they’re not snapping cleanly, they’re not fresh enough, in my book, to go on the plate without a little further cooking.

Green Beans: Steamed or Blanched

These methods are interchangeable and provide serious versatility. To steam, put your steamer basket filled with green beans in a pot with an inch or so boiling water. Cover the pot, steam 1-2 minutes, then refresh with cold water.

To blanch, simply dump the beans in a big amount of boiling salted water. More water works great because you want to cook the beans quickly, 1-2 minutes; in a big pot, the water comes back to the boil almost immediately. Pour into a colander and refresh with cold water so the beans don’t continue to cook.

You can pre-cook all your beans either of these ways, and then have them on hand for salads and other dishes throughout the week.

Beans love fresh herbs. Dill and mint get called up the most often, but pretty much any, in any combination work. This bean salad link provides step by step instructions and an actual, adaptable recipe if you like precise amounts.

Feel free add some butter or a tasty oil to your barely cooked green beans, because Fat = Yum. Fresh steamed or blanched beans with butter, salt and pepper are completely awesome.

Green Beans: The Steam Sauté

Green beans love some fat. Stir-fry or saute them raw, then add some liquid for a brief steaming. Alternatively, steam or blanch the beans before steaming. If raw, you may want to consider the so-called French cut, i.e., slicing them lengthwise.

It’s a pain in the ass, quite frankly, but it does serve its purpose; it was invented to help out some of the bigger and consequently tougher beans that often get to market.

As for optimal pairings: Native to the Americas, green beans at this point in time are part of nearly every world cuisine, and consequently go with all sorts of things, like….cherries!

In case you think that’s weird, there’s also corn and some feta cheese added to the mix. I swear, it worked beautifully.

They’re wonderful in a big Asian-inspired stir-fry. I adapted this Mee Goreng recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi barely at all (other than to not be tremendously slavish about amounts, and swapping the sprouts for radishes and the iceberg for radish greens, because I had them on hand).

And, with apologies to non-meat-eating friends and readers, I must report that green beans and bacon are quite wonderful, as this take on a classic southern recipe can attest. (The recipe does provide links to vegan “bacon” alternatives, so fear not.)

Do know that, since acid of some kind is usually added to a saute—lemon juice, vinegar, or tomato—leftovers will turn that dismal color. Additionally, while there are many, many recipes I’ve come across that advocate adding green beans to a long-simmering braise of other vegetables and protein, my personal preference is to keep them and crispy and green as possible. If you dig eating olive drab, go for it, and report back.

Green Beans: Roasted

Green beans can be roasted or grilled, though frankly this prep feels a little gimmicky to me. As always, you do you. The basic vegetable roasting techniques apply. Just toss in oil with salt and herbs. Then roast for a brief period, say 5-8 minutes before giving a good stir, followed by an additional 5-8 minutes.

Green Beans: A Few Cool Options

Having steamed and/or blanched green beans on hand benefits your kitchen throughout the week. You can add them to salads, either green or grain based. You can toss them in a soup for color at the last second, stir them into pasta or rice dishes, and dip them in hummus. Chopped up and mixed with a cooked grain—quinoa, barley, a plump short-grain rice—you can then form them into patties and make cute little cakes; I’m currently experimenting with an old Bert Greene recipe to this effect and will post when I’m happy with it.

Best of all, you can either dip into them through the week—they’ll keep nicely in your produce drawer as long as they don’t get wet, for several days—or steam off the whole bunch the day you get them and just throw in a little bean confetti as the inspiration strikes. Chomp away, mes amis.

Rapini

December 27, 2017 by Nan Posted in Blog, Ingredients, Kitchen How-to, Vegetarian Mains Leave a comment

How do you solve a problem like…..rapini? On the shelf, it looks so adorable, bright emerald green baby broccoli flowers amid plenty of leaves that look like mustard greens, with crispy-looking jade green stems…

You may think, well, there’s nothing to that but to pop it in a pan with some garlic, and…Yum! But should you do that very thing, you are likely to see troubled looks on the faces of your fellow diners—they trusted you, and you give them this?—and may end up barely able to swallow what seemed like a great idea.

If that sounds as if it comes from bitter (pun very much intended) experience with this particular vegetable, you have perceived correctly. I once innocently sauteed up a pan of rapini, blithely served it to Steve and Henry. I insist on honest reactions to my creations here, and I got them. Steve, normally a totally easy keeper on the vegetable front, said, “Wow. This is horrible.” Henry stood up and poured his in the garbage. Steve and I followed suit.

Rapini, you saucy trickster! You’re not broccoli at all, but a very stylish member of the turnip family. Hence the extreme bitterness. So why bother, when you could just get broccoli, which is honestly pretty hard to screw up? Because if you can get rapini right, it’s a wonderful way to zazzle up your taste buds. Tempered correctly, which you will shortly learn how to do, rapini provides a pleasant bang of bitterness, a wonderful texture—it doesn’t get mushy, but you also won’t feel like a horse chewing it—and a veritable powerhouse of nutrition. Vitamin K and C, cancer-fighting properties, anti-inflammatory, alkalizing: Read all about it at this link (though I caution against preparing the soup recipe unless you follow the de-bittering step here).

What is this magical step to render rapini ravishing? A big old pot of boiling water. Bring it to a boil, throw in about a tablespoon of salt, and blanch for about 2 minutes. (I break off any tough-looking stems prior to boiling.) The process mellows the bitterness to a manageable amount, and the broccoli stays bright green. Then simply drain, squeeze out as much water as possible, and chop coarsely. The amount shown below is the yield from the big batch of rapini at the top of the page (probably about 2/3 of a pound).

Rapini loves garlic. Heat your pan, heat some oil (olive is perfect), sauté your super thin garlic slices with a little salt for about 45 seconds so they’re just starting to turn gold. Then add your chopped rapini.

Rapini is no delicate creature. I give it about 8 minutes, but it can go longer. You’ll end up with a lovely big batch that you can keep on hand for about 3 days and throw into all kinds of things.

The night I made this up, Steve threw a big handful into some soup. I had some naan on hand, which I brushed with a little garlic oil, toasted briefly in the oven, then topped with the sauteed rapini, some leftover meatballs sliced thin, and some fresh mozzarella and a little parmesan. A heavenly little personal pizza. Don’t stop there. Throw some sauteed rapini into pasta or rice. Use it as your green in a bowl; it would be amazing as a bi bim bop component. Just one warning: Now that you know how rapini should taste, you would be wise to avoid ordering it in U.S. restaurants, and if you see it in a deli case, be sure to get a sample. Rapini always looks good. It stays bright green pretty much no matter what.

Of course, if you see it in Italy, go nuts. They kind of invented the stuff.

Kale: How to Love It Again

November 16, 2017 by Nan Posted in Blog, Ingredients, Kitchen How-to, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I first encountered kale at a Portuguese Christmas dinner. But not like this.

So a little background—but if you want to jump past the story straight to the cooking, click here. My first husband was half Portuguese on his mother’s side, but looked entirely Portuguese. The German half of his genes always eluded me, probably just as well given that neither of us ever got along with his father. His mother didn’t either; when I met Karl, they’d been long divorced. Karl was born in New London, CT, then moved to New Milford before coming to New York to act. He made his living as a bartender. I knew him for exactly 5 years. We met on July 10, 1984, and he died on July 10, 1989. He was fond of saying, “The 80s are NOT my decade.”

Since my family was all in my native California when Karl and I were in love in NYC, we would spend Christmases with his mom and her many Portuguese relatives and friends near Danbury, CT. That entailed a huge Portuguese dinner, complete with Bacalhau, salt codfish, and a lot of other stuff I wouldn’t eat. Alas, I grew up picky, and before I learned to eat—which was about when I learned to cook, a few years later—even true love couldn’t get me to sample food I deemed “weird.”

But one dish passed my muster: Kale Soup. You cannot, at least in my experience, go anywhere with Portuguese cooks and avoid kale soup. It is wonderful stuff, the green leaves stemmed, rolled into tight cigar-shaped rolls, and sliced into perfect ribbons, alongside grated potatoes cooked to disintegration, and spicy linguiça sausage adding a tiny amount of fire and savory fat to the mix.

The holy trinity of kale, potatoes, and pork unite ever and again in cuisines around the world; when meat is scarce or simply opted out of, kale and potatoes do just fine. But what separates cooks who did kale before it was cool is the cutting technique. Karl’s Portuguese relatives knew this; apparently, most prep cooks dishing up inedible lacinato salads at high-end delis across the country do not.

Because kale is sturdy. Hell, it’s downright tough. It’s a winter crop, and it’s been growing for literally millenia. Dinosaur kale is a thing in more ways than one—as in, not only does it look like the stuff that friendly stegosauri tread underfoot in those 19th century engravings, they actually chomped it down.

You, my poppets, should not feel as if you need T-Rex choppers to finish your kale salad. Yet often, I do. My son brought home a bag of pre-cut kale from Trader Joe’s the other day; the leaves had been cut, but the stems kept intact. People, those stems could dent a molar. Meanwhile, those clueless prep cooks referred to earlier merrily tear the leaves into 1-inch squares and then toss it with a simple dressing. Time after time, I’ve seen kale salads languishing, unfinished, on otherwise clean plates. They looked like a great idea, but nobody had the stamina to chew, chew, chew more than a bite or two.

So here’s how you get the kale-traumatized back into the garden.

Kale: Two Musts

Chop finely. You can do the cigar style roll, which isn’t difficult at all and looks impressive. Or you can just de-stem, stack, and chop. But cut it fine, whether you’re going to cook it or eat it raw. The only time I can countenance tearing the leaves is if you’re going to make chips, which alters the texture to a shattery crunch. For either cooked or raw dishes, I reiterate, CUT IT FINE.

2. Pamper any kale you intend to eat raw with a little oil and salt massage. You don’t need much of either. Then just put on a short-ish song—Green Onions by Booker T and the MGs is a good one—and rub, rub, rub the toughness away. (BTW, if you’re adding cabbage to the mix—a combination that works nicely and that I’m seeing fairly often—don’t massage the cabbage along with the kale unless you like really soft cabbage. I don’t. )

Kale: The Treatment

I do love this stuff, so it will be coming up a lot. For now, I leave you with my favorite super simple sauteed kale…

and an easy salad.

Either makes a welcome addition to your holiday table, a relief from the truckloads of starch and sugar, and a bounty of fiber on a day that can be a bit rough on the belly.

And watch over the next couple of months as I revisit my first husband’s family soup, as well as incorporate these glorious prehistoric leaves in other surprising ways.

Cranberries in the Kitchen

November 5, 2017 by Nan Posted in Blog, Ingredients, Kitchen How-to, Recipes, Sauces Leave a comment

Cheery and garnet-colored when raw, deep rich ruby when cooked: Cranberries beautify any harvest or holiday celebration. Bags begin to appear in U.S. stores right around Halloween. I recommend you stock up; they freeze well, and their tart, spiky flavor cuts through rich fare like a sharp knife through a tomato. And while November and December tend to be especially indulgent months, you may still get a craving for cranberries off-season. You’ll be able to whip out a bag, thaw it in no time, and slam together a sauce that you can use to perk up all sorts of dishes, from cheesecakes to a sandwich, to a super healthy bowl.

A little background: Cranberries hail from North America. Native Americans harvested them for food and medicine; they’re essential to pemmican, that paste of dried meat and berries that was an early (if not the first) energy bar. Loaded with vitamin C, antioxidants, pectin, and fiber, cranberries pack a health whallop in a small package. (For ridiculous amounts of data on their health benefits, see this article.)

Here’s the rub. Cranberries are CRAZY SOUR. To get them palatable for modern tastes, most of us need to sweeten them with a good amount of sugar. One part sugar to four parts cranberries is most often recommended, but that doesn’t exactly boost the nutritional value. What’s a health-conscious cook to do?

Here at Le Chou Fou, we try to help. So we recommend any of the following.

Cranberries: The Cooked

The cranberry sauce that I grew up was shaped like a can, complete with a bulge around the middle. Then Mom discovered how easy it was to make the stuff from scratch. Cooking the cranberries with some liquid and some sugar until the skin pops releases the pectin; let the fruit stand for a while—overnight is great—and the sauce thickens, giving you that nice jammy texture that’s so good on a sandwich.

Mom did the old school method: A package of cranberries, a heaping cup of sugar, and some water. But you can knock that sugar way back by getting creative with the liquid. You can use fruit juice that you have on hand, or diluted port wine (port full strength is a bit much). Maple syrup, honey, or coconut sugar can substitute for table sugar at about 1/2 the amount; try a 1:8 ratio instead of 1:4. Mince an apple or pear for more pectin and sweetness. You can even add Stevia if you don’t find the taste too weird. (I always taste bitterness with Stevia, but Steve doesn’t mind it.)

Additionally, cranberries love spices and strong flavorings: cinnamon, clove, fresh ginger, rosemary, thyme. All of those contribute to a richer, more interesting cranberry sauce that isn’t so heavily dependent on sugar. Here’s my recipe blueprint for cooked cranberry sauce. Feel free to to make it your own.

Cranberries: The Raw

Raw cranberry relish sparkles—literally, from all the sugar crystals. It’s lovely and wonderful, but the most difficult of the three options to make without sugar. Nonetheless, the same rules apply. Grate in an apple or pear dipped in cider vinegar (less puckery than lemon juice and helpful in keeping the apple or pear from turning brownish). Be generous with orange peel and chopped orange flesh. The great thing here is that you can add the sugar one tablespoon at a time. Steve and I like it with just 1 tablespoon; that a 1:16 ratio, which we think is pretty cool. (The courageous can substitute Stevia.) Always, always, always taste test until you hit the proportions that work for you and any people who may be joining your table. Here’s my recipe blueprint for raw cranberry relish.

Cranberries: Ketchup!

My head remains on my shoulders; I assure you, I have not lost it. Despite what the Heinz corporation would like you to believe, “ketchup” simply means a thick sweet/savory sauce. It can be made with any number of fruits, and the variety made from cranberries is particularly nice. It also works on anything regular old tomato ketchup will work on. The primary difference between cooked cranberry sauce and cranberry ketchup is the addition of onions and vinegar, as well as more savory spices than you’d typically use. But don’t kid yourself that you can eliminate the sugar altogether. Ketchup is meant to be sweet. And man, does it make a dandy topper for a potato waffle (I promise to do a video and post on vegetable waffles soon.) As above, start with a 1:8 ratio, then increase as you taste. Here’s my recipe for sweet savory cranberry beet ketchup.

Cranberries: Other Uses

Cranberries act like a shocking pink pillow in all white room, a welcome kapow or tartness. You just don’t want too many; imagine a dozen shocking pink pillows and you’ll get the idea. Toss a handful of cranberries into a smoothie with plenty of sweet fruit like bananas and mangos; they add beautiful crunch, a hint of pucker, and a ton of antioxidants. Add them to a bowl of vegetables destined to be roasted, coating everything with oil and spices. Fold leftover sweet cranberry sauce or raw cranberry relish into a cheesecake or batch of muffins to turn those comfy sweets into jewel-studded divas of the dessert table. Add any of the recipes in this post to sandwiches, or as the sweet component of a bowl meal. Throw some on top of mashed sweet potatoes. And know that, thanks to a little forethought, you can indulge your cranberry love whenever you like.