The Importance of Washing your Produce

29 Jan

I once mentioned to you I use a product wash to clean my produce.  But even if you don’t feel you don’t want to buy a product to clean your fresh fruits and veggies, I wanted to show you how much dirt and grime is released from the produce you purchase.

It’s important to clean all produce because of the dirt, the insects and all the man-handling your produce goes through before reaching your home.  But if you buy organic produce, this is as important, because when no pesticides are used, many insects and bugs can lodge in your produce. 

 wash-ur-produce-1 

 

For fruits and vegetables I clean them under the faucet.  But for lettuces and leafy greens, fill your clean sink or a large bowl with fresh water and let the leaves soak for a few minutes.  Swish them gently with your hands as a delicate washer.  After a few minutes, you’ll see how much dirt and grime falls to the bottom.  You need to make sure you have enough water so the leaves will float and have space to release the dirt.

 

dirt-in-produce

Imagine… if you didn’t wash them, you would be eating all that!!!!

I clean my lettuces in the bowl of my salad spinner.  I fill it with water, swish it, drain it, move it into the colander thing that spins in the spinner, place the colander thing inside the bowl and spin it away.  You’ll have clean and dry lettuce in no time.

Yellow-Mustard Fingerling Potatoes

27 Jan

Last year we already established how much I love potatoes with my Potato Festival, celebrating the Year of the Potato…  but I have only shared only a fraction of all the potato dishes I know how to make and love to eat.

I made these potatoes for the first time when I visited my sister in her new Florida home last year.  I wanted to make something with these incredible potatoes she had bought and this is what I came up with.  I ate them with a veggie hot dog, and in my opinion, if you don’t have chips around, these are great with any veggie hot dog or veggie burger.

They’re super easy to make and after you put them in the oven, you can literally forget about them for about an hour.  So they’re great when you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to tend to the cooking.

I like to make these with fingerling potatoes because when you quarter them, they actually look like “steak fries”… don’t’ you think?

 yellow-mustard-fingerling-potatoes

 

YELLOW MUSTARD FINGERLING POTATOES

About 10-12 fingerling potatoes, washed well and quartered lengthwise
2 tbs yellow mustard
1 tbs olive oil
1 clove of garlic minced or grated
1 tsp salt
A few grinds of freshly cracked black pepper
A few sprinkles of Italian Seasonings
  1.  Pre-heat oven to 400 F.
  2. Mix all the ingredients, except the potatoes, in a bowl that can fit the potatoes eventually.  Toss the potatoes to coat well with the mixture.
  3. Place the potatoes in a sheet pan and roast in the oven for about 1 hour.  At about 35 minutes into the cooking, look at them and see if they need turning.  I sometimes turn them, sometimes I do not… but anyway, they turn out great. (it rhymed and I did not planned that…)

 Let them cool a bit before digging in…

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Open-Faced Veggie Hot Dog

25 Jan

These days I am on a hot dog kick… don’t know why, but I get these sometimes.  Not often, but I do.

I love these Smart Dogs… to me, they taste like the hot dog that has a first and last name and moves around in a wiener mobile. I love them on these sprouted wheat hot dog buns.  But I can’t eat that much bread when I make myself a hot dog, so I started making them open-faced.  That way I can eat 2 dogs and only one bun…  you know, trying to keep ourselves in shape.

So now that the hot dog is exposed on top of the bun… what are we going to do so the dog does not roll away from the bun???  Easy, butterfly them.  And while we’re at it, why not crisp up the hot dog to give it more taste and texture???

So here’s my version of a great veggie hot dog…

 open-faced-hot-dog

OPEN-FACED VEGGIE HOT DOG

2 Smart Dog hot dogs
1 sprouted wheat hot dog bun, defrosted and sides separated
Egg-free mayonnaise to taste
Ketchup to taste
Mustard to taste
Canola oil spray
 
  1. Bring to a boil a small amount of water in a small pot, about 1″to 1 ½” of water.  When the water is boiling, insert the two hot dogs and retreat from the heat.  Leave the small pot standing covered with the hot dogs submerged for about 2-3 minutes.  Do not turn off the stove…
  2. In the same burner you were boiling the water, place now a small non-stick skillet.  Spray lightly with canola oil spray and let it heat through.
  3. When the 3 minutes have passed and the skillet is hot already, take the hot dogs out of the water, pat them dry and cut them open in half length-wise.  Place them on the skillet to brown.  Turn them once the first side is crispy and golden brown.  When the second side is about to be done, turn off the stove.

butterflied-hot-dogs

4.  Meanwhile, toast the two halves of the bread.  Spread them liberally with the mayonnaise.  Place the hot dog pieces on  the bread and drizzle to taste with ketchup and mustard.

 

This goes great with a nice side of Lay’s Natural potato chips and a cola-flavored Ginseng-Up…  yummy!!!  Great vegetarian junk food, don’t you think???

Smoked Gouda and Spinach Risotto

22 Jan

I love this dish… to me, this dish is comfort food at its finest and easiest.

You know me, I make risotto from a box, but I never eat it straight as is… I always embellish the risotto from Archer Farms with lots of flavor and ingredients.  I actually started making this risotto a looooooooooong time ago, more or less 10 years.  But I used to make it with a Lipton’s Creamy Garlic and Parmesan Risotto mix.  Unfortunately, that product was discontinued… but now I can continue the legacy buying rice at Target every time I travel.

I first learned the basics of flavors for this recipe from something I had read in Cooking Light magazine…  I saw the recipe but I said to myself I would never stand in front of a stove stirring rice for 20-25 minutes.  I love how this tastes… and no one who has had it has ever asked or noticed that the base is from a box, because the flavors are so restaurant like.

I do have to warn you, this recipe is addictive… and with the amount of cheese, it is a bit fattening.  But for special occasions, to celebrate others or yourself, this recipe is easy, reliable and most importantly, delicious.

 smoked-gouda-risotto-2

SMOKED GOUDA AND SPINACH RISOTTO

1 box of Archer Farms 4-Cheese Risotto mix
1 ¼ cup cut-leaf spinach, defrosted and squeezed, but not too much
8-10 button mushrooms, cleaned well and sliced
½ a round of smoked Gouda cheese
3 oz of cream cheese
1/2 cup Fontina cheese, grated
½ cup Pecorino Romano cheese, grated
¼ cup sun dried tomatoes, sliced (optional, but highly recommended)

 

  1. In a large pot, bring 2 ½ cup of water to a boil… we’re basically preparing the risotto according to packaging directions… when the water boils, dump in the rice packet and the seasonings packet.  It might seem the pot is too large, but the mixture will bulk up with the cheeses and mushrooms, specially.
  2. While that cooks a bit, you have some time to slice mushrooms, slice the sun-dried tomatoes and grate the cheeses.  Even though the spinach I buy is cut-leaf spinach, I usually run my kitchen scissors through it to make sure the pieces of spinach are manageable when eating.
  3. When the rice is partly done, add the spinach to the pot.  Mix well and cover partially so the rice comes again to temperature quickly.  After the rice has come to temperature, add the cheeses one by one… I usually start with the cream cheese, then the Gouda, then the Fontina and then the Pecorino.  Mix well to help the cheeses melt into the rice/spinach mixture.
  4. When the cheeses have melted well, but the sauce is still runny, add the mushroom slices and the sun-dried tomatoes, if using.  Mix everything well and let the mushrooms cook a bit.  
  5. When you feel the rice is done, cover the pot and let it stand there for about 10-15 minutes. 

 

While you’re waiting, you can make a side salad or some baked plantains…  the sauce will thicken a bit after waiting a little while and it will be at a nicer temperature where you can really enjoy the cheese and spinach flavors.  If it’s too hot, you won’t taste anything…

This recipe reheats very well.  All I do for the sauce to return to its creamy consistency is to heat it any leftovers up with a bit of cream, half and half or even milk.  I reheat it on the stove top and in a few minutes it’s creamy as it was the night before.

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Sorullitos de Maíz- Cornmeal Fritters

4 Jan

After a whole week of fasting, these sorullitos de maíz were the first actual food I ate after I finished my spiritual retreat.  Not the best choice, but you have to “go with the flow”. And the quality of these sorullos, it was well, well worth it.

I visited my sister on New Year’s Day…  She had welcomed the New Year with her husband and his family at their house with a typical Puerto Rican fare – arroz con gandules (rice and pigeon peas), pasteles (a plantain or yucca- based boiled “thing” similar to a tamal), pernil, potato salad, etc. – and the only vegetarian-suitable thing on the menu were these sorullos…  pero qué sorullos!!

My brother-in-law made the recipe according to Carmen Valdejuli’s recipe, the author of Cocina Criolla and the authority on Puerto Rican Cooking.  (The book also comes in an English version.)  He did double the batch because he was unsure of how many sorullos the recipe would yield.  Apparently he was too busy to read right underneath the recipe’s title it yielded 50 sorullos… so he made enough to make 100.  My sister said she was not making 100 sorullos, so she made these “mega sorullos” – not that thick, but extra long.  Regular sorullos are usually about the size of a small index finger.  These ones are like 6 inches long.  But you get the drift.

Most cornmeal bags – at least the ones sold in Puerto Rico – include a sorullito recipe on the packaging.  They’re easy to follow and very reliable.  This recipe, to me it’s the ultimate… the Gouda cheese is melted into the batter giving them a really nice and salty taste.  Some people add a little piece of cheese inside the sorullito so that it melts inside when you fry them.

sorullitos-maiz

SORULLITOS DE MAIZ

Recipe from Carmen Valdejuli, Cocina Criolla – Makes about 50 sorullitos

2 cups of water
1 ¼ tsp salt
1 ½ cup cornmeal
1 cup Edam cheese, grated – my brother-in-law used Gouda cheese…
 

1.  Bring the water with salt to a boil. Take away from the heat and add the cornmeal. Quickly, mix the water and cornmeal together and cook under moderate heat. Continue mixing about 3 to 5 minutes until the mixture separates from the bottom and sides of the pot.

2.  Take away from the heat and add the grated cheese – you’ll see the mixture will loosen a bit when you add the cheese.

3.  Immediately, take spoonfuls of the mixture and form balls in the palm of your hands. Press them to form like small cigars of about 3 inches long. As you can see my sister/brother-ion-law version are much longer than the original recipe calls for.

4.  Fry them in plenty of vegetable oil at 375 F. Take them out when they’re golden and place them onto paper towels to drain the excess oil.

And the only way to enjoy sorullitos is with a great MayoKetchup Dip.  My brother-in-law showed me a new version of MayoKetchup.  A nice little twist with even more flavor… check it out.

This is not diet food… but it is certainly, food of the Puerto Rican gods…  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

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