Blogging the produce-centered eatstyle.

I think that one of the biggest challenges new cooks face is timing. How many of us, when new to cooking, thought we could chop the vegetables while the eggs scrambled or the onions sweated? While there are some recipes in which this can be done, there are plenty, maybe most, in which it’s a mistake to try. The results can be a bit disastrous, and at the very least stressful: suddenly your pot is ready for those chopped vegetables and they aren’t ready, and the rest of the food cooks without them, or becomes overcooked, or mushy, etc. This kind of thing happened to me a lot when I was a beginner cook.

The answer to this is mise en place. The phrase literally means “put in place” in French, but in the kitchen can be loosely translated to mean “everything in place”, and it means having your ingredients and equipment prepared before you begin cooking. Professional cooks know that mise en place is key in cooking.

If I am using only a few ingredients in small amounts, I may just heap them at opposite ends of my cutting mat. If I am working with several ingredients, I chop or slice each one and put them in small bowls (tip: ingredients which will go into the pot at the same time can go into the same bowl together.) I get out the pots or pans I will be using, and preheat the oven (if needed) while I chop the veggies. When it’s time to actually cook, everything is ready when I need it- so nothing gets overcooked.

I’ve found that adopting mise en place has made cooking much more enjoyable to me- there’s no rushing about. I can add ingredients to the pot in between bouts of cleanup… and dancing around the kitchen

Summer’s winding down and I’ve been too busy to post this week. I’ve been getting ready for the Fall semester (I am in college) and also doing more crafting than usual (gotta make some money.) So even though I’ve thought longingly of writing here, I just haven’t done it. Which is to be remedied, because I have lot to say!

Right now, though, I want you to give me your basil recipes! August is our rainy month, and though the rains were late this year, they did arrive. So we’ve had a lot of rain this week. My basil is waist-high, and all this rain makes it falling-down drunk: the basil soaks up a lot of rain and then falls over with the weight of all that water. A few weeks ago, a big branch snapped right off; I made pesto! But even pesto (on pasta, pizza, vegetables, and sandwiches) gets tiresome, and so does pasta with various sauces.

So tell me how you use fresh basil. Summer is almost over, and I need to use this stuff up before it gets brownish and holey. I’m especially interested in recipes that can be frozen. Please share!

I am just tickled pink to announce that Foodielicious! has been selected as one of Nursing School Search’s Top 100 Women’s Health Blogs. And my site is number SIX out of 100!  Thank you, Nursing School Search!

This year, I’ve been dedicating myself to making Foodielicious! a better site than ever.  And it’s really had an effect- I’ve made so many new blog-friends, and really felt good about my cooking and photography, and the site in general.  I struggle to maintain my voice here while still incorporating great recipes and writing accessibly.  Being included in this list helps me to feel like I am succeeding, both in communicating and remaining true, and in getting the word out about the deliciousness of a healthful, produce-based eatstyle.

This fall I expect to include some more awesome features, to make this site even better, and I hope you will all be along for the ride.

I recently found a new social networking site that I think a lot of you would like: MustLoveFood.  Unlike other social networking sites, this one is about food!  It’s a networking site for foodies. I think that’s a pretty neat idea, so I joined up.  It will be cool to see where it goes.  I’ve already joined the vegetarian group there.

If you join up, friend me!  I am “Foodielicious” there, of course

One of the benefits of living in a largely Hispanic neighborhood is that my local grocery store makes fresh flour tortillas every day. (For my European readers: I am speaking here of the Central American tortilla, which is a flat, unleavened bread made usually from wheat or maize flour.) In Texas, tortillas can be found at most groceries, but fresh ones are quite rare, and infinitely more delicious than their pre-packaged counterparts.

Yesterday, in anticipation of making enchiladas, I asked my partner to pick up some tortillas on his way home from the gym. He came in with a big smile on his face, and said “You have to make something with these tortillas right away!”

“Why?” I asked, all oblivious… I’ve never seen him excited about tortillas before.

“Because,” he said, “they’re fresh out of the oven!”

And they were. They were soft, warm, moist, and delicious. We snacked on them immediately, with butter and honey… the best way to eat a warm flour tortilla, in my opinion. They tasted to so good!  With difficulty, we did manage to save just enough for the enchiladas.

Hey Everyone, the latest WordPress upgrade is causing some problems on the backend of Foodielicious! So for the moment I am trying to work those things out before making new posts. Please stay tuned. I hope to get everything fixed soon.

Today I am offering a review of a cookbook: Jack Bishop’s A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen: Easy Seasonal Dishes for Family and Friends.

My sweetheart gave this book to me several months ago. I’ve spent those months reading the book (yeah, I read cookbooks!) and cooking from it, so that I could give a full review. Overall, I can say that this is a good cookbook, as it stands up to the ultimate test of any cookbook: the recipes usually perform according to directions, and they taste good.

A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen is proposed to be a seasonal vegetarian cookbook, and the recipes are arranged by season. I like that idea quite a lot, but I would like it more if the recipes were as seasonal as they purport to be. I think that the author is somewhat confused about the seasonality of some vegetables. For example, he raves about how carrots make him think of springtime, but mentions on the same page that this is because he buys carrots harvested in late fall and “hold them over” in his fridge until Spring. Yuck! Carrots that have been sitting in the fridge for a month are not at their best, and the several “Spring” recipes that feature these “fresh” carrots are not really seasonal. Mr. Bishop mentions that late fall carrots are sweeter than sumer carrots, but doesn’t mention why: cold weather causes root vegetables to increase in sweetness. In another example, he mentions that late Winter and early Spring, “when good fruit is hard to come by, oranges and grapefruits from Florida (and elsewhere) are reliably good.” This essentially meaningless statement was distracting in its pointlessness.

Another complaint about the book is that the ingredients used are sometimes expensive or hard to find. I live in a major port city, and some of those items are rare or dear here; the desperate vegetarian in a small town would have a very hard time sourcing ingredients for many of these recipes. Exotic oils and imported cheeses are beyond the reach of most home cooks.

Also, I have to question Mr. Bishop’s idea of “convenient.” He specifically states, in the introduction, that the recipes in his repertoire must be convenient, because he hasn’t hours to spend cooking. I’ve found that all of the recipes I have prepared took more than an hour from start to finish.

I would be more willing to forgive some of the slips in this book if the author were an unknown, or even known to be a hack. But Jack Bishop is a longtime executive editor of Cook’s Illustrated magazine, a mag renowned for its scientific, explanatory approach. He’s also a principal cast member of a TV show called “America’s test Kitchen” (I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read about it in CI.) And, he’s a home cook who claims to cook for his family every day. The book sometimes reads as though Mr. Bishop wasn’t really paying attention, such as the recipe where he first extols the virtues of freshly shelled peas… then calls for frozen peas to be used in the dish.

What I love about this book: the recipes. They are delicious, healthful, and really packed with vegetables! A lot of “vegetarian” cookbooks rely on starches and treat vegetables as garnish. The recipes in A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen are truly produce-centered! They not only taste good, but they feel good to eat. As a seasonal cookbook, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen isn’t, in my opinion, entirely successful. At best, it’s semi-seasonal. As a cookbook in general, though, it’s a big success. So, I do recommend this book.

I love to cook, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it every day.  Some days I am too tired, other days I’m busy, and sometimes I just don’t feel like cooking.  Cooking can be hot, sweaty, tiresome work.

This may surprise you, but I don’t cook a main meal every day.  Instead, I try to make a few large dishes about twice a week, and we eat them over the next couple of days (I do my cooking on days when I have energy and time to spare.)  When suitable, as when making soup, I make enough extra that I can freeze some to have by for a future date.  For example, last night, we had  tasty pasta and pesto dish for dinner, and I made enough extra for us to use it today as well.  But I also made a Nicoise-esque tuna salad, which we can have for lunches or even dinner today and/or tomorrow (it had to sit overnight for the flavors to marry.)  That means I won’t be cooking today, and I can do other things instead.

Today we’ll eat pasta and the tuna salad; maybe tomorrow we’ll eat tuna salad again, but also pizzas made with leftover pesto.  Tomorrow I might grill some vegetables for us to eat over the weekend.    This is a handy way to eat healthfully, but keep cooking time, and cleaning time, to a minimum.  I like to always have something healthful on hand… but I’m certainly not above grabbing a frozen pizza once in awhile!

The greenmarket where I buy produce is filled with booths, owned and run almost exclusively by Hispanic families. In the last few years, I’ve seen an increasing appeal to the Latino market- more vegetables and fruits traditionally eaten by South and Central American people have appeared there, like fresh green chickpeas, which I sampled a few years ago. I really like encountering produce that I wouldn’t find in the grocery store.

Regarding purslane, I have hoped for a few years now that it would appear as a “weed” in my garden, with no such luck. I’ve been keeping my eyes out for it, and considered asking around for a cutting. Purslane is often considered to be a garden pest, but it is an edible and highly nutritious plant! It has more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable, as well as high amounts of Vitamin C and other antioxidants. It’s a nutrient powerhouse, really. The leaves and the tender bits of the shoots are edible, and may be eaten raw or cooked. I had never encountered it in person, but definitely wanted to try (and grow) it.

So imagine how pleased I was, as I entered the market on Sunday, to see a box of what looked like purslane! It was at a particular booth that often has unusual leafy vegetables- typically vegetables that I can’t identify, but that are traditional foods among Latinos. Not having seen purslane before, I wasn’t entirely sure that’s what I was seeing, but it sure looked like the pictures on the internet. I excitedly pointed it out to my partner and asked the girl at the booth “Is that purslane?”

“Oh no,” she said, “this isn’t purslane. It’s called verdolagas.” She went on to tell me that it is good in mole and also with squash.

Now, I am sure that those of you who followed the link to Wikipedia get where I am going with this. I looked closely at the herb, ate a leaf, and decided that it sure looked like purslane to me, and that I would bring it home (it was edible, after all!) and look on the internet to see if verdolagas was another name for purslane. And guess what? It was! Verdolagas is the Spanish name for purslane, which is also called pigweed (please comment and tell me what it’s called in your home!) I found this to be a neat (and funny) lesson in the way vegetables and herbs can have different names in different regions and languages. If you live in an area that is bilingual, near the border of another country, or just multi-ethnic, it’s good to bone up on the various names by which an herb can be known. Before my next visit to the market, I’m going to study up on other “regional greens” and see what other adventures I can have.

Once I had the purslane home, I wanted to cook it that very night; it degrades quickly in the refrigerator. I had purchased some red potatoes (we call them “new potatoes” here) as well as some lemons, so I decided to make Red Potatoes with Purslane. I did make one alteration to the recipe: I let the purslane leaves rest with the hot potatoes briefly, just to wilt them a bit. I found the raw purslane to be almost tasteless and I wanted to see how it would taste slightly cooked. (It didn’t have much flavor cooked, either, but the taste was a little stronger.)

Purslane is known for rooting and growing easily, so after I stripped the stems of their leaves and tender shoots, I placed all the large stems in cups of water on my windowsill. In around a week I should see some roots; once the roots are well-developed, I’ll plant this herb in several parts of my garden. It is known to grow in just about every kind of soil- this plant is tough and persistent! I also think it’s pretty, so it will make a nice filler or soil-cover. I can’t wait to be harvesting purslane from my own garden; we’ll eat it again and again!

This post is part of the Wild Foods Series.

This salad originated (in my head) as a twist on a typical tomato salad: I wanted to make tomato salad, but I also wanted it to be a little more substantial. I decided to add couscous and a new salad was born! Basil and scallion greens also contribute their flavors to this fresh, summery dish.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups freshly prepared couscous (flavored or plain)
• 4 medium-sized tomatoes (I prefer Roma) chopped
• a handful of fresh basil, chopped
• a handful of fresh scallion greens, chopped
• drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
• drizzle of white wine vinegar (you can substitute red if you have no white)
• salt to taste

Chop the veg and herbs while you prepare the couscous. After you stir and fluff the couscous, leave it uncovered to cool. Combine everything else in a bowl and toss together. Let sit for 10-15 minutes at room temperature, so the flavors can marry.

When the couscous has cooled and the flavors have mixed a bit, combine the tomato-and-herb bowl with the couscous and stir it gently together. The juice from the tomatoes colors the couscous a nice pink color, like the flesh of a melon. It’s quite pretty!  Check the taste and add more vinegar, salt, or pepper if necessary.  Serve at room temperature.

This is a lovely summer salad that I sense we’ll be having again and again!