Spinach, Fig and Prosciutto Pizza

A pizza for the winter season. I have loved getting feed back on my pizza creations, as unusual as they are. This one was inspired by the local restaurant Le Grande Orange. It is so perfect for this time of year; the lemons are just starting to ripen and the spinach will soon be flourishing (that is if I can keep the rabbits off of it). I have never tried it with fresh figs, but would imagine that would be good too. Prosciutto is a dry cured ham, it is super flavorful, a little goes a long way. I have found the best place to get it is Trader Joe’s.

Pizza is just the thing to mix up those thanksgiving-dinner leftovers. Spread the dough with cranberry sauce or gravy, add turkey, maybe a little dressing or potatoes and top with cheese! Mmmm. It’s really good, trust me. So there you go, a two for one on this thanksgiving eve day.

Per Medium Pizza:
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup fresh spinach
4 dried figs, sliced
1 slice prosciutto, thinly sliced and cooked
1/2 fresh lemon

Preheat oven and pizza stone to highest setting (mine is 550) Roll out the dough and place on parchment paper. Sprinkle ¼ of the cheese evenly on dough. Lay spinach leaves as flat as possible on cheese. Layer figs on spinach, sprinkle with cooked prociutto and remaining cheese. Bake for 5-7 minutes, until crust is brown. While still hot, grate lemon zest on top of cheese and sprinkle lemon juice over entire pizza.

This post is part of  Whole Foods for the Holidays, Real Food Wednesdays.

Red Quinoa Coconut Sweet Potatoes

For years I worked with Chef Brad, a local chef who has a passion for whole grains, and he really got me hooked on red quinoa. It can be hard to find, but is slowly becoming more widely available. It has the texture of white quinoa, so that would be the best substitution, but the flavor is pleasantly nutty and is worth getting your hands on.

Yams and sweet potatoes are very different tubers. You will not find an authentic yam at a regular grocery store, even chain health food stores have them mislabeled. Instead we see an orange variety and an orange-red variety, sometimes you may come across a whitish yellow variety. They are all very similar in texture and even flavor and nutrition, so find the one that suits your taste.

This is a recipe from Chef Brad that I adapted many times over as my food knowledge expands. Again I urge you to try using slightly less sugar each time you make sweets, you will notice more flavor and crave less sweetness in all your meals. This dish goes perfectly with Thanksgiving dinner and with many fall season meals. We have this for dessert on most days. The sweetness is a happy medium, I could do with less, but for a big family gathering I use more.

I like that there are no oats to worry about soaking and such, still the nuts give a nice crunch. I use this same topping for apple crisp on the apples from my apple turnovers. Save time by making a double batch of topping and refrigerate up to a week to use on a fruit crisp.

4 cups cooked sweet potatoes
1/4 cup honey
½ cup milk
2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups soaked and cooked red quinoa
1 cup unsweetened coconut
1 cup roasted or soaked and dehydrated walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup sucanat
½ cup sprouted flour
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 tablespoons maple syrup
½ teaspoon nutmeg

Mash sweet potatoes and mix with sweetener, milk, butter, eggs, vanilla and salt. Spread evenly in a 9x9 dish. Layer quinoa over potato mixture. Combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and sprinkle on top of quinoa. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

If you need to free up some oven space and cooking time on thanksgiving day, may I suggest this cold, make ahead side. For more great ideas on thanksgiving sides go to this gallery.

links; Whole Foods for the Holiday's

Oldie but Goodie

I have edited my Coconut Rice recipe to include the traditional method of soaking. Two simple extra steps, soak and rinse. Soaking with the acidic solution breaks down phytic acid and the rinsing washes away the sour flavors. So the breakfast tastes the same, but is more nourishing.

To learn more about soaking, Lindsay has a great post on Passionate Homemaking of the how's and why's.

Apple Turnovers

When it rains, it pours! I seem to be accumulating apples these days. I had ordered a 30 pound box of honey crisps at the beginning of October, soon after I came across a really good deal on organic granny smith’s and thought I needed to have them for baking. Every week since then, I have gotten a bag of apples in my bountiful basket. Therefore apples have made their way in my tummy for the last 30 some days, and I am not complaining.

There are so many apple recipes out there, some things to watch out for are;

1) too much cornstarch, apples have a natural pectin that helps them “set up” so they are naturally not as watery as cooked peaches, plums or berries. A dab will do ya, less you end up with a gooey, hard to swallow mess. I have replaced cornstarch with arrowroot powder for a healthier alternative.

2) too much sugar, I can’t stand an overly sweet dessert. Learn to appreciate the natural sweetness of foods and just enhance the sweetness slightly when it comes to desserts.

3) too much spice. Cloves, ginger, all spice, nutmeg, cinnamon even cayenne pepper, all go nice with apples, just not all at once. Keep spices simple and let the apple flavor be the star.

This is an easy dessert that has a grand presentation for guests. I talk a bit about puff pastry here. Turbinado sugar is not much better than white sugar, but I use it for the unique crunch in lends. You could use white sugar in a pinch, but don’t even think about insulting my dessert with cool whip!

2 lbs. apples, peeled and diced/sliced (whatever you like)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ cup sucanat
1 tablespoon arrowroot powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon
2-10x10 sheets of puff pastry
1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of water
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar

Place apples, lemon juice, sucanat, cornstarch and cinnamon in a sauce pan and simmer until apples are slightly tender and create a thick sauce. Let cool to room temperature. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Roll pastry sheets out to 12x12. Place side by side on a sheet pan with one of the corners of each sheet hanging over the two short sides of the pan. Spoon half the filling onto the inside halves of the pastry sheets. Dab egg wash on two sides of each pastry. Fold over into a triangle and pinch the seams to seal. Brush the top of each turnover with the egg wash and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Cut 2-1 inch vents in the top of each pastry and place in the oven for 20 minutes or until golden brown and delicious. Cool 15 minutes before slicing. This recipe makes 4 hearty servings, 6 regular servings and 8 dainty servings.
links;  Whole Food for the Holiday's

Sweet Potato Oven Fries

I tried growing sweet potatoes this year, all the leaves that were growing on top of the dirt made me think they were doing well. After 120 days in the ground, I decided it was time to dig some up and see what was down there. Lots of roots, that’s about it. I was bummed.

I have been making sweet potato fries for years and had found a way that yielded pretty good results, but it involved carefully slicing into sticks and arranging on a baking sheet in a single layer with no two sticks touching. It was a high maintenance side dish that never was quite as crisp as I'd like. I admit to buying frozen packages of pre cut and fried sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s for convenience. They use cheap oils and give me a tummy ache.

This recipe evolved from regular potato oven fries when I decided to give sweet potatoes a try. PERFECTION. It helps to shop for potatoes with good shape and like in size. You know when a recipe calls for sucanat, you can substitute brown sugar, right? Probably works better because it will dissolve in the oil. I choose to avoid white and brown sugars where ever possible so I always list my alternative sweetener in my recipes.

3 lbs sweet potatoes or baking potatoes
1 tablespoon sucanat
1 dash cayenne
1 teaspoon homemade taco spice mix or chili powder
2 tablespoons corn starch
3 tablespoons melted coconut oil
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees, it helps to use convection. Wash and cut potatoes (no need to peel) into wedges of equal size. Combine sucanat, cayenne, taco seasoning, cornstarch and coconut oil (it will be clumpy, that’s okay), toss the wedges in mixture. Lay wedges on sheet pans in a single layer and bake for 20 minutes. Turn over with a spatula and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and serve. We usually do a “fry sauce” (mayo and ketchup) with a little horseradish. I am ready for a change. Please post a link or a recipe in the comments section for me to try.

links; Whole Foods for the Holiday's

Roasted Butternut Squash

Working with butternut squash can be quite a chore when you don’t have the right tools. First off you will want a sturdy vegetable peeler, that is comfortable to hold, is sharp and has a swivel blade that can easily run along the squash’s wide curves. If you tire, get blisters, peel off (your)skin, get frustrated or take more than 3 minutes to peel your squash, you need a new peeler.

Next would be a real knife that is made with German steel, properly maintained with a honing steel and regular sharpening. I like a 7 inch chef’s knife, mine is made by J. A. Henckels. If you have to exert a dangerous amount of force while slicing the squash in half or the metal flexes, creating a concave slice, it is time to get yourself a better tool.

I also like a grapefruit spoon to scrape the inners out. The serration and the curve of the spoon make the task of removing the stringy mess a breeze.

One of the main purposes for roasting vegetables (opposed to steaming) is to draw out moisture, which concentrates flavor. If you have a convection setting on your oven, this would be the perfect application to use it. Convection baking moves the air around more for even baking and browning.

2 lb butternut squash
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (convection if possible). Peel squash, cut in half lengthwise and remove seeds. Place one half on cutting board flat side down. Make one inch slices horizontally all the way down the length of the squash, then cut each slice into 1 inch cubes. Toss in oil to coat, arrange cut squash in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Serve as a side dish or snack.

Vote With Your Forks!

I have not read a book for pleasure in a long time. Finally, I figured out my ipod (who said Apple programs were user friendly?) and loaded the audio book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It is so refreshing to hear a voice defending real food against the “edible food-like substances” of our time. Pollan advises a simple diet of eating high quality real food that consists mostly of plants. There are no restrictions in the way of real food; if you love potatoes, eat them every day. If you hate eggplant, you never have to eat one again and you can still be entirely healthy. The obvious issue with our society is HOW things are grown, raise, formulated and processed.

My favorite quote so far is “…a health claim on a food product is a strong indication it's not really food." This is referring to A) it is in a box/bag to advertise a claim and B) the claims are “low fat, no cholesterol, heart healthy, good source of whole grain, sugar free and high fiber. All of these latter claims are slapped on packages of fake food that can be synthetically altered to make such claims.

A great disservice has been done to food. Scientists create synthetic beta carotene and call it a carrot. Whether using this to create a vitamin or enriching an “edible food-like substance,” it is in direct violation of God’s creation and in turn our very bodies. Conspiring men believe and are good at making others believe that they can make foods better than nature. Our society is brainwashed into thinking fake foods are better than the real thing because they can formulate it and reformulate it to fit the fad of the season.

There was a really interesting section in the book where it talks about the evolution of food labeling. From 1938 to 1973 the term “imitation” was used on the product labels of fake foods posing as a real one. The FDA changed this law to one of broader interpretation; “as long as the new fake food were engineered to be nutritionally equivalent to the real article, they could no longer be considered fake.” This is when traditional grocery items like bread and yogurt were reformulated from a simple 2 to 5 ingredient lists to recipes containing 30 plus ingredients.

When I was growing up, my poor mother didn’t stand a chance, it was impossible to get foods grown without synthetic chemicals and pastured animals raised without pharmaceutical. Even most people growing/raising their own, had no idea it would be wise to avoid such mainstream practices. It is such a blessing in our day to be able to obtain real, high quality food. In Defense of Food reminds us that you can “Vote with your forks!” Support local, organic farmers and local, organic farmers will become more accessible.

Carmel Banana Pecan Topping

We were in need of a new syrup for Friday Morning Waffles. My last creation was a bomb; a goopy, grainy, bitter mess (I blame the peaches, anybody found a way to use up icky mushy peaches?) Usually fresh berries and whipped cream suffice, only one problem, berry season is gone. We have done syrups from frozen berries and those are nice too. But for this morning I came up with a nice buttery topping with bananas that was such a treat. I can see this going well on a lot of things… hot cereal, ice cream, brownies, vegetables.

For the waffles I used the same recipe as my soaked pancakes, sometimes changing up the grains to spelt and oats. Make sure you have a nice, clean, nonstick waffle iron that gets really hot to prevent sticking. Even with all that, I still spray the iron before the fist one goes on, just for good measure.

1/3 cup sucanat
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup soaked and dehydrated pecans
2 bananas, sliced

Melt sugar and salt in butter until smooth. Add vanilla, pecans and bananas. Heat through and serve.

Cinnamon Pizza

Another blast from my past of high school employment at The Pizza Ranch. There they called this dessert “Cactus Bread,” remember the western theme. Of coarse I had no recipe to work off of at this chain restaurant. The instructions included mixing this bag with water to make the dough, open this bucket for the preserved margarine stuff and that bucket for the strudel, then cut open a bag of frosting. I may have made the cinnamon sugar from scratch. Anyway, it was pretty darn yummy, so I did a little experimenting to recreate and here you have it; made with whole grains and all real food, from scratch, cinnamon pizza.

½ batch of multigrain pizza dough

parchment paper

2 tablespoons butter, melted

3 tablespoons sucanat

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Roll dough out to ½ inch, place on parchment paper. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Strudel

2 tablespoons butter, softened

3 tablespoons sucanat

3 tablespoons sprouted flour

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

dash of salt

Cut butter into dry ingredients. Crumble the strudel on top of the dough and let rise for 30 minutes. Bake at 500 degrees for 5 minutes.

Glaze

1 teaspoon milk

1 tablespoon butter, melted

¼ teaspoon vanilla

¾ cup powdered sugar

Whisk until smooth. Let bread cool slightly and drizzle with glaze.

I have heard you can powder sucanat in the vitamix. I'll have to try it and let you know how it goes. I am really trying to avoid white sugar without sacrificing flavor, any tips?

Coconut Carrot-Ginger Soup

I’ve been jonesing for some soup for the last few weeks. On Tuesday, when it was 108 degrees outside, I gave in. I turned my thermostat down to 76 and downed a couple bowls of soupilicious. If I had been able to wait just one more day I could have had my first soup of the season on a more appropriate, under 90 degree day. I suppose it was the lack of groceries that pushed me into premature soup making.

Brilliant orange, sweet, creamy and a hint of spice. Eating vegetables is so dang easy! I serve this to my kids in a cup with a straw as a “warm vegetable smoothie.”

Don’t forget to adjust the seasonings at the end. There is no way to give you a good amount of salt to use as it depends on your stock. I add another good teaspoon because my stock is sodium free. Also important to heat the stock to boiling as it freshens it up a bit and kills some of the froth created by your blender. Do in batches if your blender is smaller than 8 cups. Sautéing in the case of onions improves the flavor of them, but the carrots could be easily steamed first to save time.

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 medium onion, diced
8 large carrots, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
pinch of cayenne (optional)
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups vegetable/ chicken stock
2 tablespoons grated ginger
1 can coconut milk

Sautee onions in coconut oil, add carrots and salt, cook through. Season and add garlic. Cook for 30 seconds and remove from heat. Place vegetables in a blender with stock and ginger, blend well. Return to heat and bring to a boil for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in coconut milk. Add more salt to taste. Makes about 8 cups of soup, I can eat half of it in one sitting. Leftovers reheat well.

links; Whole Foods for the Holiday's