Blogging the produce-centered eatstyle.

Young coconuts are my favorite food right now.  They are also called green coconuts, Thai coconuts, or white coconuts, or by their Spanish name, cocos frios.  Whatever you call them, they are delicious.  I buy them 3/$5 at the farmer’s market, but I am considering purchasing them by the case, so I can eat one every day.  They are that good.

(click the picture, it gets bigger!)

You may have walked past a display of young coconuts before without ever knowing that they were coconuts!  Most of us in North America and Europe think of coconuts as hard, brown, hairy things.  Those are mature coconuts.  Cocos frios (this name actually means “cold coconuts”, as they are best served chilled) look very different from their mature counterparts- they are actually green when they come off the tree, but in markets can be found with their green shells removed, so that what you see is a large, white, faceted object.   I saw them at the market for years without knowing what they were.  They are piled into large tubs of ice to keep them cool.

Young coconuts are not as hard as their mature counterparts, so they are easy to open with a machete or a sharp kitchen cleaver.  Simply skin away the white husk, until you get to the hard shell.  Hit this area with your knife until you break through, then pop off a chunk of the shell.  Inside, ambrosia!  Cocos frios are filled with a clear, mildly sweet-tasting liquid called coconut water.  This delicious fluid is rich in electrolytes and nutrition, with a very low amount of sugar and no fat.  When I am feeling tired, cracking open a young coconut revitalizes me like nothing else.

The coconut water isn’t the only treat inside a young coconut.  The flesh of young coconuts is soft and gelatinous, not at all like the meat of a mature brown coconut.  It is sweet in flavor, and high in calcium, phosphorus, and fiber, and even has some protein and iron!  The youngest coconuts have flesh that is creamy, translucent and slightly pink.  These are the most sweet.

Young coconuts have much less fat, and more water content, than mature coconuts.  But even so, the fat in a young coconut is a healthful vegetable fat.  My policy is that vegetable fats, fish oils, and even dairy fats are healthful in moderation, and I know that eating these fats makes me feel really good and healthy.

I usually drink the water from a young coconut with a straw, then use a spoon to scrape out the soft flesh (this sometimes requires further cutting, to get the hole large enough for a spoon.)  But sometimes I will blend the coconut water with the flesh to make a smoothie; you can even add other fruits.  Sometimes I eat the flesh as-is, or purée it in the blender to eat it like pudding.  It’s nice plain, or with a little vanilla syrup added.

This entry is my contribution to Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Ulrike from Kuchenlatein.

I like good pasta.  I think the quality of the pasta itself is very important to the quality of a dish; pasta should have its own good flavor, not be a flavorless starch.  Because I like good pasta, I buy Italian pasta.  I just have not found a consistently good brand of pasta made in the U.S.

For many years, I bought DeCecco brand pasta, and I have found it to be of excellent quality.  I still buy DeCecco pasta when I want a good egg noodle.  But as prices have climbed higher and higher, I’ve switched to Barilla for my everyday pasta.  Italian cooks have reviewed it as being of almost identical quality to DeCecco, but here in the U.S., Barilla costs much less.  I don’t, to be honest, think that Barilla is as good as DeCecco, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices.

Like everything else, though, the price of pasta is still rising.  Barilla pasta, which for years was priced at $1 per one pound box, has climbed up to $1.39 for that same box.  Sure, one box is several meals for the two of us, but considering that we’ve been eating pasta pretty often, price is something to consider.  Every little bit of money we can save helps us.

What this is all leading up to is that I am considering investing in a pasta machine and making my own pasta.  Pasta machines can be expensive, but with proper care I am told they can last many years.  I wonder how long it would take for such a machine to pay for itself (in terms of savings versus purchased pasta.)  I wonder if making my own pasta would be a huge pain in the neck (I don’t really like to make foods that take a lot of labor or require a lot of cleanup.)  I would probably make pasta in large batches, spending an entire day making vast quantities of various shapes and sizes of pasta, and then storing them all in the freezer.

Ravioli makers are usually significantly cheaper than pasta machines.  They come in lots of shapes and sizes.  I can definitely see the advantage to a ravioli maker: pastas filled with unusual ingredients are hard to find in my city.  I’d love to make my own stuffed pastas, filled with herbs and cheeses and vegetables and etc. Of course, before one can stuff the ravioli, one must roll out thin sheets of pasta, which is where a pasta machine would come in handy:/

Do you ever make your own pasta?  Has it turned out to be worth the expense and trouble?  I’m definitely interested in hearing from you pasta-makers.

For some reason, I don’t often eat corn (maize.) I’m really not sure why, unless it’s that I ate canned corn almost every day as a child, and that’s given me a subconscious aversion to it. Maize is everything I like in a food, though: it’s a native American grain, native even to my region! My Tsalagi ancestors depended on it to survive. Their seasonal religious festival, the Corn Dance, paid homage to this ancient grain. Maize is full of nutrition, and can be pretty tasty if done right. Corn is really a grain, rather than a vegetable as some think, but unlike other grains, we often eat it moist and young.

One of my favorite ways to eat corn is to roast it.  I confess, though, that I don’t do this often, because eating it is messy and Miss Priscilla doesn’t like to get her hands drippy But lately, I’ve been craving some roasted corn, so when I saw it piled up at the market, in beautiful green ears, I decided that it was time to roast. I bought a couple of fresh, clean ears, and brought them home.

Once corn has been harvested, the sugar in the kernels very quickly converts to starch.  This is why you really shouldn’t buy fresh corn at your local grocery store: it’s already spent days sitting on a truck, or in a warehouse, or in a processing center, etc.  In-season, buy fresh whole ears at local farmer’s markets or produce stands, where it’s as fresh as possible.  (If you can’t find such places, or it’s the middle of winter and you’re jonesing for some corn, buy frozen corn at your supermarket.  It’s flash-frozen very soon after harvest.  But it’s no good for roasting.)

Before you buy fresh ears of corn, inspect them.  Peel back the husks a little, to check for mold or other spoilage.  (Sometimes at markets here, you can see little old ladies clustered around heaps of maize, inspecting ears with shocking speed.  Peel, discard, peel discard, peel, keep, peel, discard.  They are a little scary in their single-mindedness.)  Mold and pest damage can hide under the husks.  Some markets cut out a chunk of husk to make a little window, but you still need to peel the other side to look for spoilage.  If the kernels seem discolored or sunken, or you see mold or obvious insect damage, toss that ear and try another one.

On Sunday, I decided to pick up only two ears of corn.  I knew they would lose sweetness quickly, though, so as soon as I got home, I fired up the grill and got to work.  You should too!  Don’t let your corn sit around.  Cook it immediately, while it’s still fresh and sweet.

When you get the ears home, while your grill is heating, peel back all the husks (don’t take them off yet!) and wash the ears.  Pull off as much of the stringy cornsilk as you can.  Then, smooth some extra-virgin olive oil onto the kernels.  This keeps them from drying out while they roast, so they stay sweet and juicy.  Fold the first couple of layers of husk back onto the ear, so it is loosely, but completely, wrapped.  Tear off the rest.

Is your grill good and hot?  Yes?  Then it’s time to roast!  Lay the ears on a very hot grill and roast for about five minutes on one side, then roll over to another side to roast for another five.  Do it again, and again if necessary.  The husks will get brown and shrively and that’s just fine.  The kernels of the corn should become darker in color, shiny, soft, and juicy.  They can even get a little brown on the surface as the sugars caramelize!  Give a kernel a poke to see if juices leak out.  Once all sides of the ear have that glassy, juicy look, it’s ready to eat!

There are a lot of ways to dress roasted corn, but I decided to  get fancy and make a thyme-garlic-infused butter, because I was craving some thyme.  I thought thyme would taste good with the roasted corn, and I was right :)  You can make the butter while the corn grills, or make it a few days ahead.  For this, you’ll need one stick (1/4 pound) unsalted butter, a clove of garlic, and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. Melt the butter in a skillet over very low heat.  You don’t want to cook it at all, just melt it.  When the butter is melted, add the pressed garlic and the bruised leaves of thyme.  Continue over the low heat, stirring slowly.  You should begin to smell the garlic and thyme.  When you judge that they have released their flavor into the butter (you can have a taste!) it’s done.

Peel back the toasted husks and drizzle the infused butter onto the sweet kernels, and eat!  Be sure you have lots of napkins, because this gets drippey :)  And delicious.  I really, really meant to take a picture, but the corn was just too good.  Make some yourself and you’ll see

This is my entry for this week’s Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Katie from Thyme for Cooking.

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.