"Ordinary" Food

A reader asked if Lady Sally and I ever ate "ordinary" food, rather than the, to him, "fancy" things I keep writing about here.  OK, Jim, "This Bud's for you..."

Lady Sally's Mac & Cheese
Lady Sally admits she's glad to have her own Personal Chef these, days.  She spent years making and serving meals to her family.  But at least once or twice a year she cooks something for me.  A week or so back, we'd somehow gotten onto the subject of the ubiquitous Macaroni & Cheese, and I had explained that my Mom's Mac & Cheese was unlike any other I'd ever seen (one of these days I'll tell you about that). Sally said she made good M&C too.   A few days later, she took the opportunity to show me just how good hers is.

3 Tbsp Butter or Margarine
3-4 Tbsp Flour
1 to 1-/2 cup Whole Milk or Half & half
2-1/4 cups shredded Sharp White Cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup reserved for topping
2 cups uncooked Macaroni
1 tsp ("a squirt") Yellow Mustard, to taste

In one pot cook and drain the macaroni to package directions.  Don't overcook, let the mac have a bit of 'tooth'.

In a second pot, melt the butter over medium heat and stir in the flour to make a roux.  Cook the roux for a few minutes, but don't let it go brown.  Stirring constantly, slowly add the milk, to build the white sauce. Alternate adding cheese and milk to get a nice creamy sauce.  Add the mustard for color and flavor.  A pinch of nutmeg or black pepper or white pepper would not go amiss here.  Remove from the heat and pour over the cooked macaroni in an oven-proof dish.  Stir to combine.  The mac should not be swimming in sauce, but everything should be coated with it.  Fire up the broiler,  top the dish with the reserved cheese, and broil for 5 minutes or so until you get some nice browning action.

To go with this marvelous Mac & Cheese, I made grilled pork chops, bone-in, dusted on one side with paprika and on the other side with fresh cracked black pepper.  The vegetable side of frozen peas is one of my favorite simple veg.

Chef Ken's Signature Chopped Salad
If you're like me, you used to think that a salad was a bunch of lettuce on a plate, drowned in some dressing.  Then I discovered restaurant Salad Bars, and discovered that folks put all sorts of yummy goodies on top of their lettuce.  I'd go to the Salad Bar, lay down a token piece of green stuff, then pile on the mushrooms, olives, bacon bits, tomato, cheese and other stuff, and call that a salad.

Then I discovered the concept of a Chopped Salad.  Ignore that watery green leafy stuff and just have a big ole bowl of all the yummy bits.  After a year or so of experimenting with various ingredients, I've come up with a combination that I love, and Lady Sally takes a container for lunch almost every day.  Here's the scorecard:

From top center:  jicama, apple, yellow squash, celery, sugar snap peas, red bell pepper, carrots, zuccini and daikon.

Nuts of various kinds are an optional extra, as are cubes of various cheeses. Red or yellow cheery or grape tomatoes are nice too. If you can find them, those marvelous Peruvian spicy 'corn nuts' are great.  Use a taste-full apple, not a Red Delicious or Granny Smith.  I like Honeycrisp when they're in season, or Cripps, or even Gala.  Can't find jicama?  Substitute turnip or rutabaga.  Can't find sugar snap peas, try shelled edamame (a.k.a. soybeans) or a can of drained garbanzos.  No daikon?  Just use ordinary round red radishes, quartered.

Dice or chop everything large. This need not take a lot of time as long as you have decent knife skills. No more than 20 minutes, tops.   Lady Sally has the fabulous Saladmaster(tm) machine, which makes chopping vegetables a real speedy operation.

Saladmaster Machine

 Peel the daikon and jicama.  Trim the ends off the snap peas and halve them.  Don't bother to "string" the celery (does anybody do that anymore?). Even with the magic machine, I still hand cut the apple and bell pepper. Toss everything to combine.  Lady Sally likes Marzetti(tm) brand Slaw Dressing, which she calls "salad cream".  I like an Asian Sesame type dressing.  Just a bit, don't drown the goodies.


Chicken Gumbo
We eat a lot of chicken, in various guises.  Lady Sally likes a  Soup & Salad lunch, and Chicken Gumbo is one of several soups she really likes.  Here I can get a bag of Vegetable Gumbo in the frozen veg case.  I always doctor it up anyway.  The recipe below (for 4-5 quarts) doesn't include bag veggies.

Gumbo has been described as a Cajun sup made with anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies.  It is thickened to varying degrees by one of three additions -- roux, okra or filé (fee-lay).  Roux gumbo starts with the roux, then liquids are added to create the broth and other ingredients for body.  Okra gumbo has that vegetable cooked with the rest of the soup, and as it breaks down the juices thicken the gumbo.  Filé gumbo has the dried, powdered leaves of the Sassafras tree sparingly sprinkled over it.  Yep!  Sassafras!  As a kid, we grew up around acres and acres of sassafras undergrowth oak woods.  We knew about sassafras root as the base flavor for rootbeer, but as Yankees we didn't know about gumbo.

The Cajun Trinity:
3 sticks Celery, sliced
1 large Onion, diced large
2 Red Bell Peppers, diced

Other things:
1 large Tomato, diced
1 cup Corn off the cob
1 cup sliced Mushrooms
2 Chicken Breasts, cubed (and/or shrimp, pork, fish, squirrel, possum, whatever)
Other veggies, as desired
Thickener:
[1 cup chopped fresh or frozen Okra]
or
[1/4 cup or less filé]
or
[Flour & Butter for Roux]

Tony Chachere's(tm) Creole Seasoning - to taste (or similar Cajun/Creole spice blend)

If using a roux thickener, start with that, then add liquid, and lastly the veggies.  If using okra or filé, cook the meat(s) and veggies in a splash of oil until the onions are translucent and the celery is softening.  Then add about 4 quarts of water or broth.  Simmer everything for about an hour to marry the flavors.  Serve over rice, or just in a bowl, and if using filé, now is the time to add it.

Pineapples & Bananas

Growing Pineapples

Even as a kid growing up in Ohio, we cut the top off of a store-bought pineapple and tried to grow it. It'll actually work too, but it will have to be a potted plant brought indoors if you live in frost country, and may take two years to produce a fruit. If you live here in Florida, you might find discarded plants along the road on “yard waste” pick up day. That's how Lady Sally got her first half dozen plants – from a neighbor who was “thinning the herd” so to speak.

Mature pineapple plant with fruit nearly ready to harvest

Don't put that sliced-off pineapple top in a glass of water the way we did when we were kids. After few days it'll really start to stink – probably before any roots form.

I don't know where people get the idea that everything needs to be started in a glass of water. With pineapple (and many other plants)  it's better to let it cure or dry just sitting on the kitchen counter for a day or two before planting. Make sure you remove all the fruit flesh, and all the small bottom leaves. Just pull them off.

Actual planting is dirt simple. Sorry about the pun... Poke a hole a couple inches deep in the ground or in a an 18” diameter pot, and insert your pineapple top. Push the soil back in and firm it around the base so the pineapple sits straight and doesn't fall over. If the soil is dry give it some water.

Newly planted pineapple top

And that's it. Given sufficient light and temperatures above say 50F, and it'll grow.

If you have more than one start, plant them about a foot apart. The leaves can get as much as a yard wide and high, but the roots don't need much room, and close spacing will help cut down on weeds and weeding (an otherwise painful exercise and the leaf tips are needle sharp).

If you're going to pot your pineapple top, choose a pot about 18" in diameter; but it only has to be about 6" deep.  Choose a pot with good drainage.  In spite of being a tropical species, and loving loisture, pineapple do not like soggy roots.  Choose a sandy, good draining soil.

Pineapple plants can fruit a total of three times, although not all plants are capable of producing multiple fruit and some plants may fruit more. Indoor potted plants are more likely to produce only one or two fruits because they do not always receive the optimum conditions necessary for thorough fruiting. Each flower stalk produced by a plant has the capability of setting fruit. The first fruit typically grows largest, with subsequent smaller fruits produced later.

The mother plant, or the first plant grown, produces a single fruit from the center of the crown of leaves. A bright red flower of leaves appears about two weeks before the fruit begins to form.

Pineapple flower

The time from initial planting to fruit setting varies. Pineapples grown outside in the optimum climate can set their first fruit in as little as 16 months. Indoor plants may take 16 to 24 months, or longer, before they flower and form their first fruits. If mother plant isn't setting a fruit, you can force flowering by setting pieces of apple around the center of the pineapple. Ethylene gas, produced by the cut apple, forces flowering.

Unripe pineapples are, of course, green; and if eaten have been known to cause severe gastro-distress. A partially ripe cut pineapple can be final ripened by turning it on its head for a week or ten days. Putting it in a brown paper bag, as you would other fruit, does NOT work.

Quick Banana “Bread”

Bananas are another locally grown fruit here in Southwest Florida. The bunch pictured is growing along the creek at the back of Lady Sally's property. Notice the flower, which is itself edible, still on the stem. We see then for sale at the local Hispanic farmer's market.  The blossoms are used in a variety of Indian and Asian dishes.

Visually you can tell this bunch is not ready for harvest. When approaching maturity, the hands of bananas will “lay down” so that the individual fruit are nearly horizontal. Then the entire stem is cut and placed inside a plastic bag and hung outdoors for a week or so, where it will ripen in the concentrated gas produced by cutting the stem.

Ripening bananas

Here's a quick and easy (and pretty healthy) banana “bread” that's best made from nearly over-ripe bananas – the ones with the nearly black skins.  No added sugar, for those of you watching such things in your diet.  Gluten free too.  Easily made lactose free.  All that good marketing hype.

3 ripe Bananas, peeled

1/3 cup Applesauce (no sugar added variety)

2 cups Rolled Oats

¼ cup Almond or real Milk

½ cup Raisins or other dried fruit

1 tsp Vanilla extract

1 tsp ground Cinnamon

Mash everything together in a bowl until well mixed. Turn out into a 9x9 baking dish or 9x4 loaf pan. Bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes.  Makes a dense, chewy 'bar' that would be a great lunch bag addition.

Banana Quick Bread

Chef Ken's Five Spice Blend

Made another batch of Butternut Squash Soup for Lady Sally to take for lunches this week:  

1 Butternut Squash

1 large Onion

1 large Apple, not a Granny Smith or Red Delicious

My Five Spice

6 whole Allspice berries

6 whole Cloves

1 tsp fresh ground Cinnamon

1 whole Star Anise pod

1 tsp ground Cardamon (I prefer Black Cardamon for this dish, but Green works well too)

Dice the onion and start saute-ing it in a deep pot.  Skin the squash and chop it fine. Pre-cook in the microwave for 8-10 minutes then toss in with the onion.  Likewise chop the apple, but don't bother trying to peel it.  Add the spice blend and about 6 cups of water.  Cook for 1-2 hours.  Puree or mash if desired.

Mamey & Longan Update

Lady Sally and I went to the Ortiz Road Farmer's Market, a wonderful, mostly Hispanic run collection of vegetable vendors, and and others.  We found lots of longans and mamey for $2 per pound.  We bought two pounds of each.  I'll be making Longan Jam and Mamey smoothies later in the week.

Dragon's Eye Pie

Dragon's Eye Pie??   What is this, Game of Thrones gourmet cooking class?  We'll get there... just keep reading.

Lady Sally called after work the other day to tell me that she'd been gifted with a bag of lychees, and wanted to know what I could make with them.

But when I opened the bag I didn't see the familiar red pebbly globes. Rather, the fruit looked sort of like a miniature kiwi – medium brown – but with a firm rind rather than a soft skin.

Longans!

Longans? You ask? Yep. One of three tropical fruits from the Sapindaceae or Soapberry family of flowering plants, which also includes lychees, maples and horse chestnuts. The third fruit is called Rambutan.  All three summer-season fruit are grown commercially and in backyards throughout southwest Florida.  

All three have very subtle flavors, mildly sweet, and somewhat aromatic when fresh.

Longan, or lóng yǎn in pinyin Chinese, means literally "Dragon Eye because it resembles an eyeball when the fruit is shelled and the black seed shows through the translucent flesh like a pupil/iris. Can you see where this is going yet?  

Lychee (Litchi chinensis) is native to China, and is now cultivated in many parts of the world. The lychee has been cultivated in China for over 4000 years (yep four thousand).

Rambutan is native to Indonesia and Malaysia. The name is derived from the Malay word rambut, meaning “hair”. In Vietnam it is called chôm chôm, or "messy hair".

With the rind removed, all three fruits look very similar – like a peeled grape, if you will; and contain a single hard, dark pit which is easily removed. Although the taste and aroma are unique to each fruit, from a culinary standpoint the three can be interchanged in both sweet and savory recipes.

Longan pits.  Anyone who grew up in The Buckeye State (Ohio), as I did, will see the resemblance to Buckeye/Horse Chestnut seeds.

All three are Super Fruits.  Seems like everything except Apples and Oranges is a Super Fruit these days, doesn't it?  All three contain significant amounts of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Likewise, all three have been used in folk medicine--  and many of those usages have been supported by reliable medical research. That's OK – they still taste great!

Alright.  Like me, you've scored some Longans, Lychees or Rambutans. What do you do with them?

All three are actually best eaten fresh at room temperature. Pinch the rind and peel it away, pop in your mouth, spit out the pit, and there you are with a mouthful of flavor! But if you have a couple pounds of fruit there are some wonderful things you can make in both sweet and savory recipes.

Can't find fresh Soapberries? All three are available, to some extent, as canned fruit in your local Asian/Indian market. Canned fruit loses much of the delicate aroma of fresh, but that's not so critical when cooking the fruit.

Soapberry Fruitsicles

Freeze any of the soapberry fruits whole and unpeeled. Don't thaw, just peel and eat – careful of the pit!

Soapberry Smoothies

Combine any of the soapberry fruit with other subtle-flavored fruits like dragonfruit, cheremoya or passionfruit.  Since the soapberry fruit are very firm, you'll end up with a texture similar to those drinks with the giant tapioca pearls in them...

Soapberry No-Cook Jam

4 cups fruit,  peeled, seeded, and chopped, with juice
1 cup sugar (or to taste – start with a half cup and work up)
1 packet freezer pectin (not the regular pectin)

Combine fruit, juice, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the pectin, and stir for 3 minutes. Fill plastic freezer jars or snap-top plastic containers. Rest for 30 minutes before use! Keeps in the refrigerator for a month, or store in the freezer for up to a year.

Creamy Soapberry Pudding

Reminiscent of rice pudding but a bit more aromatic.

1/2 oz Gelatin granules (2 packets)

5 oz Water

1-1/2 cups chopped Fruit

1 can Sweetened Condensed milk

Soak the gelatin in cold water for about 5 minutes, then gently warm and stir the mixture until the gelatin dissolves.  Combine milk, gelatin mixture and fruit. Pour into pudding molds, papered cupcake pan, or a bowl and chill for 4 hours, or until set. Also delicious as a tart in a Graham cracker crust.

Well, I had longans so I had to call this next recipe...

Dragon's Eye Pie

½ oz Gelatin granules (2 packets)

2 cups peeled, pitted, chopped longans

8 oz softened Cream Cheese

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

9” Crust – sweet or pre-baked savory

Finely powdered cardamon for dusting

Soak the gelatine in 1/2 cup of cold water for 5 minutes. Gently warm the mix and stir until the gelatin dissolves. Reserve.

Combine cream cheese and milk. Add bloomed gelatin and fruit, and stir to combine. Pour into pie crust and dust with just a hint of finely powdered cardamon. Refrigerate 4-5 hours or overnight. Serve cold.

 

A good dessert needs to follow a great meal. Sally's Mum said she hadn't had this in years. So for lunch this Sunday I made...

Beef & Mushroom Pie

1-1/2 lbs Beef for Stew cut into bite sized pieces

8 oz Button Mushrooms, some sliced, some whole

2 frozen, rolled up Pie Crusts

3 Tbsp Bisto Gravy granules

1 Tbsp Worchestershire Sauce

1 Tbsp 24/7 type general seasoning blend

Season the beef with the 24/7 spice blend, put it in a pot and simmer for about an hour a pound. You want the meat really tender.  Drain, reserving 1-1/2 cups of the liquid.

To the reserved liquid, whisk in 3-4 tablespoons of Bisto(tm) brand gravy granules, bring to a low boil stirring the whole time.  If you've not tried it, Bisto makes the best quick gravy on the planet.  You can find it in the British foods section of your local megamart.  

Saute the mushrooms with a splash of oil and the Worchestershire sauce, an essential British flavor.

The preceding steps can be done a day or more in advance.

On “Pie Day”, preheat the oven to 350F.

Thaw the pie crusts according to package directions, and put one in a 9” deep dish pan. Dock the bottom with a fork. Add the cooked beef and mushrooms. Pour the gravy over all, until the crust is nearly full – “there's no such thing as too much gravy”. 

 Add the top crust, cut a couple slots in the top to allow the steam to release, and bake 45 minutes to an hour, until the top crust is nicely browned. Allow to rest for 15 minutes or so before slicing and serving, to allow the gravy to thicken a bit. I served this with a side of peas & pearl onions.

This 'n' That

Food photography is an art I admire, but will never master...

One day last week I was looking at a recipe. Shocker, right! The author/creator was lauding the recipe as low-carb and gluten-free and suitable for paleo-diet folks. That's all well and good. BUT...

Low Carb

All carbohydrates become sugars (blood glucose). Even “good” carbs metabolize into blood glucose, maybe not immediately like “bad” carbs from white bread, white rice, and sugared sodas - but the “good” carbs will also turn into sugar in about 40 minutes.

If you swap out the carbs of, say a cake recipe, but double or even triple the amount of sugar that that recipe would have had if it were a 'normal' recipe with flour, in order to make the tasteless palatable – you're fooling yourself. Cut the flour in half but double the sugar. Right. That's like skipping the bottle and going straight for a vodka IV!!

Quick! What's the equivilance between sugar and carbs?

1 teaspoon of sugar = 4 grams of carbs or 4 grams of sugar.

Although a recipe sounds like it's a good thing, because it's carb-free or low-carb; it may still not be good for you; particularly if you're a diabetic, if the carbs have been replaced by sugar. Read the ingredient list and the Nutrition Facts label.

Nutrition Facts label for a can of Black Eyed Peas

Gluten-free

Gluten-free is the new marketing hype for foods, have you noticed? Gluten-free flavored waters (seriously!). Gluten-free corn tortillas. Gluten-free beef (that's not the same as corn-fed BTW). Gluten-free-this and -that. Makes things sound really good. Special. Makes you think the manufacturer has gone out of their way to be careful about your diet. Bull hockey!

If a food does not contain wheat, it is gluten free. That's all there is to it. Beef does not contain wheat, even if it eats grain. Water either. Corn tortillas either. Anyone with real gluten allergy, or Celiac's Disease, rather than those reading some New Age book about gluten free living or diets, learns to read ingredient labels pretty darn fast. Living a gluten free lifestyle is easy; but you do have to read. Some foods contain wheat starch or other wheat products as a trace ingredient, but unless you are truly allergic to gluten, that's not going to bother you.

I understand that many people feel better when they decide to consume less processed wheat – white breads with lots of preservatives, wheat-based pastas, etc. More power to them, I say. But let's not get silly over things like gluten free water or coffee. Flavor agents are not made from or with wheat or wheat byproducts.

Nutrition Facts For Your Favorite Recipes

If you're serious about eating healthy, you'll want to know exactly what the Nutrition Facts are about your favorite recipes, family favorites, and new creations. Happily the process is relatively easy with a the program called SelfNutritional Data, formerly Nutrition Data –

http://nutritiondata.self.com/

You enter ingredients from their massive database, and amounts, and in no time you'll KNOW how healthy Aunt Jane's Double Dutch Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge is!

Here's a really good explanation of how to read and understand what you see on a NutritionFacts label: 

http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/labelingnutrition/ucm274593.htm

Found on Facebook:

Slick Mango Trick

Can't find a mango pitter and you're tired of getting all messy trying to peel and pit them? This is the slickest trick I've seen in quite awhile, and it really works. All you need is a knife and a water glass with a firm edge. Stand the mango on the stem end, find the ridge of the pit, and slice along wither side, so you get two “mango filets”. Then check out this Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BT1cd49pIw

Once you've got as many peeled filets as you want/need, run the tip of your knife just under the skin of the pit slices to remove it. Slice away the extra yumminess that clings to the pit. Or not. It's up to you. Now when Lady Sally and I travel with mangos we don't bother packing the mango pitting tool.

Fun with Food

One of Sally's co-worker's was retiring and a party was called. The theme of the party was to be “toucans” as the retiree had long had a fascination with the big billed birds, and intended to make a “freedom trip” to South America to see them up close and personal. So, Sally says to me “what can you make that's toucan related?”. After a bit of thought I came up with the FrootLoops(tm) Marshmallow Toucan. Same thing as Rice Crispie(tm) Treats but with FrootLoops cereal. The bird took an entire large box of cereal, a banana, and a bag of marshmallows. A few seconds in the microwave to soften the marshmallows, and stir. Then shape quickly before the mass hardens. Details were 'painted' on with a squeeze tube of chocolate frosting from the megamart.