A panini, a quesadilla, a tosti, a croque-monsieur, a Welsh rarebit…. it has been thoroughly tested the world over, and has been unequivocally determined: a grilled cheese is a good thing. In conjunction with Wilson Farm’s Grilled Cheese Weekend (my childhood neighborhood farm and farm stand hosting their First-Ever Grilled Cheese Weekend, March 1 & 2, 2014), I’m having what has become my favorite way to enjoy a grilled cheese sandwich.
Thanks to a thematic overhaul and a particularly lively addition, the grilled cheese recently jumped up in the ranks of my favorite sandwiches. The new theme is probiotics - those BFF bacteria we can’t live without and live much better with. Filling my sandwich with as much life as possible, I’ve been opting for a true sour dough bread (which is naturally fermented), layered with sliced raw milk hard cheese (naturally cultured Cheddar being the favorite choice in my area), topped with a generous scoop of sauerkraut or kimchi (lacto-fermented cabbage teaming with probiotics), all melted together to the point of perfection.
Add even more life to your meal, by washing it down with a tall glass of kombucha (a naturally fermented tea), ginger bug, kefir or a lassi and you are in good bacterial hands!
Anyone else showing love and making Valentine’s Day treats with fruits and vegetables? I know it’s a holiday celebrated with candy and chocolate (according to CNN, people dropped $1.6 billion for candy on this day last year!), but aren’t they all? And if you really love someone, don’t you want to give them something that is good for them?
With a heart-shaped cookie-cutter (or a good knife and a steady hand), almost anything can take on a heart shape, and with some strategic cutting several fruits and vegetables have built-in hearts ready to shine!
We selected red bell peppers with a particularly hearty shape, sliced them and made personalized heart pizzas.
We also made strawberry heart toasts, by cutting toast into heart shapes, spreading them with cream cheese or another soft cheese, and placing heart-shaped slices of strawberry on top. Sprinkle with shaved chocolate, coconut flakes, freshly ground nutmeg or cinnamon, and it’s a Happy Valentine’s Day!
Other posts related to Valentine’s Day you might like:
Just about all children like bananas, most likely as a breakfast or snack food, eaten raw. Let’s give them their familiar banana but fry it up, which both softens the fruit and heightens the flavor, then offer a selection of toppings from chocolate to nutmeg to nuts and seeds for personalization fun. This makes an easy and special dessert, and the third recipe in our “Kids Cook Monday” series.
Fried Bananas with Chocolate and Coconut
½ -1 banana per person
butter or coconut oil for frying
chunk of chocolate (dark, milk or white)
grated coconut
Method:
With peel on, cut bananas into quarters, then peel (makes process a little neater).
Heat skillet and melt butter or coconut oil.
Place banana pieces side by side in pan and fry until starting to brown. Turn and fry other side.
Serve with shaved chocolate and/or grated coconut sprinkled on top.
Additional serving ideas:
top with cinnamon, nutmeg and/or cardamom
serve with ice cream or vanilla yogurt
drizzle with maple syrup and/or honey
top with nuts
top with berries
slide inside a peanut butter sandwich
sprinkle with black sesame seeds for a beautiful visual contrast
for a savory, more Latin American version, use plantains instead of bananas and serve with salt or refried beans and sour cream.
A few fun banana facts:
A banana is technically a berry (and so are watermelons, coffee, pumpkins and avocados) which grows on the world’s largest herb, not a tree.
There are more than a 1,000 types of bananas worldwide. In the US, you’re probably familiar with just one: the Cavendish.
In addition to edible fruit, a banana plant also offers an edible flower. We’ve never tried a banana flower - they are hard to find in Vermont - but would love to hear what they taste like, if you have.
If you’ve been to Costa Rica, you’ve likely been welcomed with the typical tico (Costa Ricans’ pet name for themselves) dish, Gallo Pinto, meaning “painted rooster.” A delicious and easy-to-make version of the classic vegetarian rice and beans (despite its name, there is absolutely no poultry involved), it is traditionally served for breakfast with an egg on top, but can, of course, be enjoyed any time of day.
I had the life-enhancing opportunity to live in Costa Rica for a semester while in college. I stayed with a host family, with a host mom who cooked and fed us well. Very well. One of the things I loved about her cooking is how one meal gracefully became the next. I don’t know that she ever started from zero, because she always seemed to have something already prepared which she would elegantly refashion into something new. This seemed to happen intentionally and artfully, and not, as we in the US would call it, “having left-overs.”
Gallo Pinto is a perfect example. Rice (often cooked with a chopped red pepper) is a dinner staple, as are black beans (prepared with onions and garlic), commonly served along side meat or fish with vegetables and tortillas. When you cook more rice and more beans than you will need for dinner, you are just minutes away from a delicious breakfast (or lunch, or dinner) the following day.
Gallo Pinto: Costa Rican Style Rice & Beans
It is often made in its simplest form: cooked rice, cooked black beans, onions and cilantro, served with Lizano sauce. I liked that my host mother generally added color, flavor and texture with a few additional vegetables. So, this is how I make it too. Gracias, Doña Isabella, for all the wonderful meals while I lived in your home and for the lasting inspiration to recreate them.
Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sauté until softened and translucent.
Add pepper, sauté 1-2 minutes.
Add corn and garlic.
Add spices and sauces and mix thoroughly.
Stir in rice and beans until mixture is heated through and well combined.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
In a separate skillet, fry one egg per person.
Serve warm topped with an egg, and garnished with plenty of cilantro and additional sauces to taste.
* Ideally, starting with dried bulk ingredients, soaked overnight or for several hours, and cooked separately.
** Two good oils to use for hot applications. Less stable oils mix with oxygen when heated. Oxidated oils can be very damaging to your health. The praised extra virgin olive oil is best used for dressings and other cold uses.
Cooking Dried Beans
Select dried, locally grown and organic if possible.
Soak under 2-3 inches of water overnight. Alternatively, bring pot of beans and water to a boil for 1-2 minutes, remove from heat and allow to soak for “quick soak” method.
Drain soaking water, and rinse beans.
Cover with fresh water in ratio of 1 cup beans to 3 cups water.
Add small piece of kombu seaweed (2-3 inch piece) to cooking water to increase mineral content and digestibility (reduce potential gassiness).
Cook until soft, 45-60 minutes, scooping off foam if/when necessary.
Add salt and pepper to taste near the end of cooking time.
Use in any bean recipe or freeze or refrigerate for later use.
Cooking Rice
Select organic and locally grown if possible. Brown rice offers more nutrition than white.
To increase nutritional availability and digestibility, soak grains overnight or at least for 2 hours before cooking.
Drain soaking water, rinse until water runs clear, and cook rice in clean water in a ratio of 2 cups brown rice to 3 cups water and a good pinch of salt.
Bring water to a boil, then reduce heat to a low simmer. Keep pot covered while cooking. Brown rice will take about 45 minutes to cook.
At a recent “Kids Cook Monday” cooking class, my daughter and I were joined by a room full of parent and child(ren) cooking teams. We had a great time and cooked a fabulous meal together. At the end of the class, the tables in the back of the cooking classroom were pushed together, and were beautifully set by a group of children complete with improvised folded napkins, and the nineteen of us sat down to a nourishing meal of kale and collard chips, Pad Thai-inspired rice noodles with tofu and vegetables*, followed by a dessert of fried bananas with shaved chocolate and shredded coconut*.
Initiatives such as The Family Dinner Project and The Kids Cook Monday Campaign are actively promoting eating (and cooking) meals together as a family for a list of results which resemble a parent’s dream come true (from life-long healthy eating habits, to an expanded vocabulary, improved conversation skills, boosted self-esteem and better grades in school). Studies have also shown that children are more likely to try new foods, expand their palate and choose healthier options when they have been involved in the growing, selection and/or preparation of a meal.
So today, we’re skipping the more familiar frozen peas and corn, and giving our young cooks large dark green kale and collard leaves to make an appetizer (fancy word for after school snack). Some were familiar with kale chips, and all had the chance to build on the basic recipe and adapt it to other greens.
Collard greens photo thanks to Indiana Public Media
Vermont Maple-Mustard Kale/Collard Chips
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ tablespoon apple cider vinegar
½ tablespoon maple syrup
½ tablespoon mustard
1 large bunch of fresh kale or collard greens
salt & pepper to taste
2-3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
red pepper flakes (optional)
Basic Kale/Collard Chips
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 bunch greens
salt to taste
Method:
Preheat oven to 350˚.
Wash and dry green leaves with kitchen towel or a salad spinner.
Cut or rip leaves into chip size pieces.
Mix oil, vinegar, maple syrup and mustard in a large bowl.
Add leaves to bowl and coat thoroughly (using hands works well).
Line cookie sheets with parchment paper (not necessary but makes for an easy clean-up), and arrange leaves in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and/or Parmesan or chili flakes.
Bake in oven for 8-12 minutes, watching them closely since they go from perfect to burned quickly.
Serving ideas:
in place of packaged chips
as a garnish on soups, such as potato-leek or squash soups
as a topping on mashed potatoes
grind several chips as a popcorn topping
create hors d’oeuvre in kale chips used as edible serving cups
experiment with any greens you have.
For additional recipes for green leafy vegetables, I recommend the following excellent vegetable cookbooks:
For more ideas, inspiration and multi-generational cooking tips, you’ll find plenty of food for thought on The Kids Cook Monday site.
If you would like to join us for our next “Kids Cook Monday” cooking class, click here for more information and to register. Classes are held at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, Vermont.
* These recipes coming soon in the “Kids Cook Monday” series.
This is the kind of soup, which, ideally you start making a day (or two) before you plan to eat it (true, actually, for most soups, but if you’re curious enough to confirm the theory, this would be a good one to do that with). For the richest corn flavor, shuck and de-kernel the cobs to make a stock on day one, then make and eat the soup on day two. On day three, you will be happy if you made a large pot full.
Day one, you will need:
6-8 ears (or more) of just picked sweet corn (organic if possible, GM sweet corn is genetically engineered to be herbicide resistant (“roundup ready”) and to produce its own insecticide. Like all GMOs, genetically modified sweet corn has not been thoroughly tested to ensure that it is safe to eat, and is also not labeled, so the best way to avoid it is to purchase organic corn or buy directly from a local grower who can confirm the use of natural seeds.
6-8 cups of water
2 bay leaves
fresh thyme
several large pinches of salt
In a large soup pot, heat the same number of cups of water as number of cobs.
Shuck corn, then remove all the kernels from the cobs. Stand cobs upright on a cutting board, and cut down the length of the cobs, or lay them down and cut off enough to make a flat surface. Then roll the cob so that it lies on the flat side and cut off kernels (this method tends to result in fewer kernels skipping over the cutting board and landing elsewhere). Save kernels in a covered bowl in the refrigerator for tomorrow.
Submerge de-kerneled cobs in heating water, add bay leaves, thyme and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and allow to simmer for 1-2 hours. Remove from heat, and let sit until tomorrow.
Day two, you’ll want to have:
1-2 tablespoons butter
1-2 onions, minced
2-4 cloves of garlic, minced
2-3 potatoes, cut into small cubes (again, ideally organically grown, which allows you to skip peeling them and include the peel which is full of fiber and nutrients otherwise lost)
small handful of fresh herbs: oregano, basil, thyme (or substitute with smaller amounts of dried, if fresh is not available)
1 cup half & half
salt and pepper
fresh parsley
Heat butter in large skillet and sauté onions. Add garlic when onions are soft, translucent and thoroughly limp, and cook for another 2-3 minutes.
Meanwhile, remove cobs and bay leaves from the corn stock. Add contents of skillet, potatoes and herbs to stock. Bring to a boil, turn down heat and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes.
Remove from heat, add half & half, and fresh corn kernels. Adjust flavor with salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with a garnish of snipped parsley.
Corn is ubiquitous in our modern world with all the corn oil, cornmeal, corn starch, and high fructose corn syrup in processed foods, and the vast quantities we grow for animal feed and ethanol, and yet the very satisfying, sweet-savory, juice-spraying, floss-requiring, face-and-hands eating experience of gnawing the kernels off the cob is, for most, only a special short season treat. This is when we get to savor zea mays at its best, and as a vegetable. Corn is a food which wears many hats (grass, grain, flour, oil, sweetener, gasoline, even compostable forms of plastic) but it is the plant’s vegetable hat (making up less than one percent of all the corn grown in the US) that is saluted in this chowder.
Nutritionally, corn is a good source of antioxidants, fiber, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin B3, vitamin B5, magnesium, iron and plant protein. Organically grown corn will generally offer more nutrients than non-organic.
Once you locate a good source for fresh, sweet and juicy corn, and get in the rhythm of shucking and cutting off the kernels, you may want to earmark a full day to do only this, make large pots of corn stock and freeze corn kernels. Corn can be frozen either on or off the cob. Amount of available time in late summer/early fall, and/or amount of available freezer space may make the decision easier. The Pick Your Own website gives clear directions (with pictures) for both methods. With your own frozen corn in the freezer, you can recreate this soup throughout the year and bring back one of the quintessential flavors of summer whenever you need to be warmed by it.
It’s time to bring in the hay. Not something I am directly involved in, but see happening all around me and am impressed by the long days the haymakers put in. Something exceptionally energizing must be fueling this operation…
As it turns out, haymaking has its own energy drink, or at least, traditionally it did. Switchel has been reached for on hot August afternoons for more than a hundred years in these parts. It is possible that this undeniably refreshing drink made from cold well water, sweet maple syrup, electrolyte-filled molasses and energizing apple cider vinegar, traces its roots back to a similar drink enjoyed in Hippocrates’ day. Oxymel was a medicinal mixture of water, honey and vinegar. Apparently, we’ve been drinking vinegar for a good long time.
A few years ago my daughter attended a summer camp at Shelburne Museum, called “A week in 1795.” She introduced me to Switchel with the following recipe:
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon grated ginger
water, to taste
Combine the vinegar, molasses, maple syrup and ginger in a bowl. Vinegar mixture serves as a concentrate. Combine with water in a glass or pitcher to taste.
I like to make it with seltzer water (store-bought, or made from tap water with the help of a counter-top SodaStream soda maker) for an sparkly effervescent libation. For the highest nutritional value, I would recommend using raw apple cider vinegar, blackstrap molasses, and grade B maple syrup. If you want to substitute honey for maple syrup, look for raw (unfiltered and unheated) locally harvested honey as your healthiest option.
With an interest in keeping traditional foods alive, the Vermont Switchel Co has emerged on the real food scene. If you are Vermont, make sure to look for her ready-made bottles of switchel on more and more grocery and general store shelves, and on YourFarmstand.com. Her website includes in-depth nutritional information as well as recipes in which to use switchel.
If you’re inspired to mix up a batch of your own, I’ll leave you with another recipe. Today, on a glorious August day, I’ll raise a glass to Scott Nearing (who would have been 130 years old!), and all the back-to-the-land, homesteading, traditional customs and foodways he honored, practiced and wrote about. Therefore, from his wife’s cookbook Simple Food for the Good Life: Random Acts of Cooking and Pithy Quotations (Good Life Series) here is the Nearing’s Switchel Recipe:
1 quart cold water
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup vinegar
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
Stir up together and dilute to taste with more cold water. A pinch of baking soda will make it foam up like beer or ginger ale.
Either recipe can be tailored to taste (more or less ginger, maybe a slice of lemon, or a pinch of nutmeg, etc) without skimping on the real food refreshment. It’s an easy-to-make replacement for expensive, mass-produced and increasingly worrisome (including, - yikes! - death!!) commercial “energy drinks.”
Keep it simple and safe, staying cool and hydrated with real food and water.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, the saying advises, but what if life gives you (too much) lettuce? A problem of the “embarrassment of riches” variety for sure, with an elegant solution to remedy it: cream of lettuce soup.
Starting with the lettuce, whether raw or cooked, there’s quite a range of nutritional value. Here’s a comparison chart from the World’s Healthiest Foods website, which may help direct your next purchase.
Nutrition Comparison of Salad Greens - Based on a 1 cup serving
Salad Greens
Calories
Vitamin A (IU)
Vitamin C (mg)
Calcium (mg)
Potassium (mg)
Romaine
8
1456
13
20
65
Leaf Lettuce
10
1064
10
38
148
Butterhead (Bibb and Boston
7
534
4
18
141
Arugula
5
480
3
32
74
*Iceberg
7
182
2
10
87
Nutritionally speaking, it’s unfortunate that iceberg remains the top seller in the US, however romaine and other darker greens are seeing a comparative rise in consumption rates. And, with the popularity of salad bars and the introduction of packaged salads, all lettuce types are enjoying increased sales.
Lettuce has also gained ground with the growing interest in gardening and local foods. It’s a great choice for home growing (even does well in a container), where you can make sure it is grown organically. Lettuce ranks 11th out of 53 on the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce, placing it in the “buy organic whenever possible” category due to the high pesticide use in conventional growing practices. Food poisoning is an additional concern with mass market lettuce, after several recent cases of Salmonella, E. Coli and Listeria are alleged to have come from “bagged lettuces” from large scale producers. Selecting organically grown dark leaf varieties from small scale and/or trusted local growers offers the highest quality produce.
In the US, we tend to think of lettuce only as a raw food. However, in China, where far more of it is grown, cooking varieties are favored. Last summer during the height of lettuce overload season, I cooked some up in a soup, but didn’t write it down. This year, with thanks to Emeril Lagasse and Local Kitchen Blog for publishing confidence-boosting recipes, I made this version.
Cream of Lettuce Soup
2 tablespoons butter
1-2 onions, chopped
6 garlic scapes (or 2-3 garlic cloves, if scapes are not available), chopped
2 medium-sized potatoes, washed, unpeeled and diced
2 tablespoon chives, chopped, plus more cut into several inch long “stripes”
large pinch of fresh or dried thyme
large pinch of fresh or dried oregano
4 cups water or vegetable stock
2 heads green lettuce (any variety), washed and roughly cut
3/4 cup half ‘n’ half or cream (possibly more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon salt (or more to taste)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (or more to taste)
several grinds of nutmeg
pasta stars (optional)
Method:
Warm Dutch oven or large soup pot over medium high heat, and melt butter. Add chopped onions and garlic scapes, reduce heat and allow to caramelize.
Add potatoes, chives, herbs and cover with water or stock. Simmer until potatoes are soft.
Add lettuce and give the soup another few minutes to simmer until lettuce wilts.
Turn heat off and add half ‘n’ half, salt, pepper and nutmeg. In the soup pot using an immersion blender or in batches in a counter-top blender or Vitamix, blend the soup until smooth. Adjust consistency with additional water or stock if needed.
Reheat, if necessary, and serve with garnishes such as fresh herbs, croutons, toasted bread with melted cheese, grated Parmesan, pine nuts and/or a drizzle of additional cream (if your soup tastes too bitter, additional cream will help).
On the occasion of Independence Day weekend, I served this soup with pasta stars and chive stripes. For a second serving, I went with chive fireworks.
On Thanksgiving Day, with a freshly made vegetable juice in hand, Joe Cross gratefully declares, “I’m thankful that I got sick, because, if I hadn’t gotten sick, I would have had a heart attack and died. It was my body’s way of telling me to slow down and get well.”
Now, two years later, Joe is not only fit, healthy and very much alive, but encouraging others (perhaps you too) to join him and get healthy. His Reboot with Joe program provides free tools, inspiration, recipes and a community of film viewers who are inspired to follow in his footsteps. On the new site, you’ll find these impressive statistics.
As a result of seeing the documentary, “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead”:
93 million glasses of fresh juice have been consumed,
93,000 US tons of produce have been consumed,
More than 6.2 million pounds of weight have been lost,
And over 55,000 people are now medication free.
Furthermore, the film has been credited with driving the explosive growth in juicing in the past two years. In January 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported that, “Appliance retailers say it has been hard to keep up with demand for juicers since (the film) hit Netflix, in July 2011.”
If you have not already seen the full movie, you can do so here. The documentary quickly draws you into Joe’s juicy life-changing road trip. A hundred pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe had been a patient of six different doctors, to no avail, when he decided to resort to a healthy diet. To jump start a dramatic lifestyle change, he took himself out of his regular routine in Australia, and spent two months in the US drinking nothing by freshly squeezed juice, and getting better.
Juicing - not to be confused with mixing up orange juice from concentrate or any of the many juice drinks on supermarket shelves - super concentrates the nutrients of more fruits and vegetables than one could consume in a sitting by chewing. This type of cleanse gives the body a break from heavy digesting and metabolizing, while offering easily absorbable micronutrients and plenty of water for flushing and rehydrating. Looking back to our Paleolithic ancestors who often fasted as food was not always and everywhere available, it’s likely a routine to which we are well-suited. Nonetheless, in our modern lives, most of us have taken up fast food eating fast (as in quickly) instead. And we have a health crisis to show for it.
Joe starts his healing journey with Dr Joel Fuhrman, who explains that “you don’t get permanently well, if you don’t permanently change your habits.” With 61% of the American diet being processed, 30% animal products, 5% a white starch and only 5% fruits and vegetables, trading that in for quality time with fresh produce is a drastic change in the right direction. One from which the less drastic, longer term lifestyle changes will follow.
Along the way, he meets a few people willing to give juicing a try. One woman, who suffers from migraines, commits to a 10-day fast and enjoys headache-free living. Joe also meets a truck driver with the same rare autoimmune condition he has. What starts as a chance meeting at a truck stop in Arizona, turns into a beautiful ripple effect story. After this own healing in well under way, Joe returns to the US to become Phil’s (the truck driver) personal juice-maker and health coach. Without spoiling too much, Phil, weighing in at 430 lbs and suffering from several painful chronic conditions, commits to vegetables and a juicer and comes out a clear winner.
Both Joe and Phil have powerful personal stories to tell, in which they were able to trade in their costly pharmaceutical prescriptions for farm-aceutical fruits and vegetables and go on to inspire countless others to do the same. They later attended the same holistic nutrition program I did (Institute of Integrative Nutrition) and through health coaching and the Reboot with Joe program are now supporting many more to get healthy and enjoy life.
Have you tried a juice fast? How was your experience? We’d love to hear your stories and any juice recipes you would like to share. A randomly selected commenter will receive a Reboot with Joe bundle (The Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead DVD, companion book and Reboot Nutrition Guide with recipes to help you get started juicing!).
What will be the trendiest vegetable in 2013 was a recent question in a focus group. I sat up straighter in my chair. “Trendy vegetables,” I love it already! That makes vegetables sound as revered as high fashion and haute cuisine. Cauliflower was declared the projected winner. It is certainly deserving: not only does it assemble itself like a bouquet of flowers, offer a mild yet complete and comforting flavor, pack an impressive dose of vitamin C, as well as fiber and potassium, and exemplify fractal design, but Mark Twain referred to it as a “cabbage with a college education.”
Generally thought of as a white vegetable, this member of the brassica family also comes in a yellowish-orange, a deep purple and the fabulous knobby green Romanesco variety. This phenomenal mini moonscape vegetable provides the added excitement of a special spiraling pattern. Who doesn’t want a Fibonacci masterpiece on their plate?
Not sure about the spirals and the Fibonacci sequence? Vi Hart explains it more precisely and certainly more playfully than I could in the following video. You’ll be counting spirals on pinecones, pineapples, artichokes, sunflowers, cauliflower, etc in no time.
With so many ways to enjoy cauliflower, let’s start with one of the simplest, yet very delicious and beautifully presented ways: Roasted Cauliflower
Place sliced cauliflower in a single layer on a baking sheet drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt into a pre-heated 400˚ oven.
Ten or so minutes later, remove the beautifully browned, slightly softened, still crunchy, with a decidedly sweeter and smoother flavor (than when it was raw) roasted cauliflower. Add additional salt or pepper to taste, and enjoy.
Cauliflower also does well as a potato stand-in. Whether you’re cutting down on spuds, avoiding the nightshade family, or just ready to try something new: Cauli-Millet Mashed Potatoes
Place the washed millet in a heavy 2-quart pot. Over medium heat, stir the millet continuously until it dries and then becomes aromatic and ever-so-slightly golden in color. This can take 5-8 minutes.
And water and cauliflower. Bring to a boil. And salt. Cover and simmer over a low flame for 30 minutes.
Remove from heat. Put millet through a food mill or blend in a food processor. Blend to desired creamy consistency.
To make the gravy: heat toasted sesame oil over medium heat in a skillet. Add onion, salt and sauté until translucent. Add mushrooms and sauté until soft. Add water and bring to a boil. Season with tamari, mirin and brown rice vinegar. Simmer for 5 minutes. Adjust seasonings to your taste, and simmer for 5 more minutes.
Add diluted kuzu to simmering mixture and stir constantly as the kuzu thickens.
I made a double batch of the “Mashed Potatoes” part of the recipe above, reserving half to use as the topping in a vegan Shepard’s Pie a couple of days later. My children ate this up so fast….
A sampling of other excellent cauliflower recipes:
If you would rather slide into cauliflower more surreptitiously, try some of Jessica Seinfeld’s recipes in Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food in which puréed cauliflower is “hidden” in such unsuspecting items as banana bread, macaroni and cheese, scrambled eggs and chocolate cupcakes.
The Guardian serves up recipes for a cauliflower pizza crust and a cauliflower-pear bake.
Saveur Magazine is sure to please with their collection of cauliflower recipes.
And there are many, many more recipes. What are your favorite ways to prepare cauliflower?
