Alert The Press: Miraculous Okra

I have an important announcement to make: This weekend, I was successful in getting my husband, Doni, to eat okra!



Are you as excited as I am? You may remember that last August, I declared my love for okra. I'll take it steamed, fried, roasted, stir fried, and especially pickled any day of the week. I'm a big fan of the flavor and texture, and I don't mind the slime at all. Doni, on the other hand, was less than enthused and wanted nothing to do with the slime.

This weekend, I tried a new technique: The fake fry. And a new ingredient: Panko bread crumbs. Check out the easy step-by-step recipe at Baked from the Heart's Baked Blog! Do you have a favorite okra recipe or a tasty strategy to trick your loved ones into eating their veggies? Share it below!

Breakfast of Champions: Asian Pear Cream o'Wheat

Last night was New York City's first real snow. When I woke up this morning, our street was lightly dusted with the white stuff and I was desperately craving a warm, healthy breakfast. Trying hard to shed the cold that I (and the rest of my family) caught from my adorable baby niece over Thanksgiving, I finally felt strong enough to return to my trusty kitchen and give myself the nutrition that I needed. After rummaging through the fridge and pantry, I found an asian pear and a nice big box of semolina (Cream of Wheat) and I knew that was all I needed to feel better.


Asian Pear Cream O' Wheat

3 T Semolina
2/3 cup, 2T water separated
1 asian pear
1/4 cup milk, if desired
1.5 t butter (I use Smart Balance)
1/4 t cinnamon
dash freshly grated nutmeg
1 t stevia
1/4 t vanilla or almond extracts

In a small bowl, mix together the semolina and 2/3 cup water and microwave for 1 minute. Meanwhile, chop the asian pear into small chunks, cover with 2T water in a small bowl and microwave for 1 minute. Toss the fruit, spices, butter and milk (if desired) into the creamed wheat and stir until just combined. If the mixture is too thick, add in a T or two of water or milk. If it is too thin, microwave for an additional 30 seconds. Microwave cooking times vary.

Enjoy!

Food Photography

Because I have taken so many photos over the years of foods that I or others have made, I thought it would be fun to upload them all here in a slideshow. Enjoy!

Planning Ahead: A Veggie Thanksgiving

I was perusing the New York Times food section this morning and stumbled upon a fantastic post about veggie thanksgiving recipes! I felt a little giddy at first, amazed at all of these fantastic recipes and pretty excited about starting to plan Thanksgiving with my mom. Then I realized that this is actually a collage of recipes from an array of amazing articles on various food sensitivities, restrictions and diets. My favorite recipes out of the bunch?

Harvest-Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms

Gordon Maybury's
Baked Kataifi-Wraped Goat Cheese

Chloe Coscarelli’s
Maple-Roasted Brussels Sprouts With Toasted Hazelnuts

Silvana Nardone’s
Gluten-Free Apple-Pecan Cornbread Stuffing

Garden Vegetable Gratin

Skillet Macaroni and Broccoli and Mushrooms and Cheese

All of these photographs are property of The New York Times.

If you like the above recipes, check out these articles as well: Vegetarian Comfort Food at Thanksgiving, Joan Nathan's Jewish-French Thanksgiving, A Gluten Free Thanksgiving, Dr. Weil’s Simple Roasted Root Vegetables, A Vegan Chef Dishes Up Thanksgiving, Food Festival Cuisine for Thanksgiving, and Giving Thanks for Vegetables, Not Turkey,

Happy Eating!

Shabbat This Week: Picnic Zucchini

This week, three close friends of ours--A, J, and adorable little N--are moving away into the great beyond: New Jersey. To celebrate their awesome new house and stifle our tears, a bunch of us had a lovely pot-luck Shabbat lunch picnic in Central Park this afternoon in their honor. As the resident vegetarian, it was my job to bring a vegetable and I chose summer squash.

Zucchini and yellow squash looked amazing at the farmer's market and I was craving something on the juicy side. I also happened to purchase some purslane, a mild, sweet and almost citrusy leafy green veggie that is high in omega 3. I thought it would work nicely as a herb with the squash. In my opinion, the trickiest part of working with summer squash is that they can end up on the soggy side and I wasn't in the mood for an accidental soup. I remembered how my friend Tracy once made some excellent roasted tomatoes with garlic and breadcrumbs and I decided to use the same model with the zucchini.

The recipe worked very well--the zucchini held up in texture and only the few slices at the bottom were soggy. The garlic was nice and mild, while the purslane was sweet and simple. The best part of this dish is that is works well both warm and cool. I served it lukewarm at the picnic, which I think was just perfect. All in all, this is an excellent picnic dish and it serves a lot of hungry adults and children.


Picnic Zucchini
Parve & Vegan

7 large zucchini and/or yellow squash, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp margarine
salt and black pepper, as desired
Purslane, as a garnish

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour the olive oil, minced garlic, salt and black pepper in the bottom of a large baking dish. Add in the squash and toss to coat. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top and dot with margarine. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the squash is tender and the breadcrumbs are golden. Sprinkle with purslane and enjoy with 10 of your closest friends!

Kosher note: Check your breadcrumbs! I usually use Panko Italian, but it turned out that they were dairy. I toasted bread to make my own crumbs, but they ended up soggier than expected after reheating. After I returned home from the picnic, I transferred the dish from a parve tin to our dairy corningware and re-baked it with the panko crumbs. Store bought bread crumbs made all the difference! Maybe I'll revisit the breadcrumb issue in the near future and experiment on how I might make them better myself.

Family Dinner: Veggie Chili with Roasted Okra and Polenta

I met up with my close friend, Tracy, today for some computer help--thanks, T! We ended up using free wifi at one of the Starbuckses (Starbucksi?) bordering Union Square. Because Wednesdays are one of the four days a week that Greenmarket hits the square, I thought it'd be a shame to head home without some fresh produce--and maybe a cookie or two.

After my initial walk-through, one thing was clear: this week is all about okra. Now, I haven't been to Greenmarket in a few weeks, so maybe last week and the one before that were all about okra too. All I knew was that I had to bring some home to play with. After my subway ride home, I Googled "okra" to get some recipe ideas. I love it fried--who doesn't--but I just didn't want the calories or cholesterol. I also love it pickled, but I needed some okra in my belly tonight, so we'll have to revisit that idea later. The biggest challenge most cooks have with okra is its natural slime. Doni loves excellent texture as much as I love a good flavor and slime just won't make for a good family dinner.

I searched online to find a less gooey recipe ("okra without goo" doesn't show up any results, in case you were wondering). I found a post on All Recipes that had 1,291 excellent reviews. The method? Roasting! Roasting is actually my favorite way to eat veggies (asparagus, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, brussels sprouts, edamame, you name it, I've roasted it), so I knew I had a winner. Because the farmer's market also had some incredible fresh garlic, I thinly sliced two cloves and added them to the mix.


The results? I think that it could have been roasted a bit longer. The okra took a while to brown--about 25 minutes--and even then, it wasn't quite enough. On the bright side: no slime at all--but Doni still wasn't so enthused and I ended up inhaling the whole bowl myself. (What? I like okra.) I think we'll have to try again soon with pickled okra and see if I can bring D around.


Roasted Okra with Garlic
Parve & Vegan

1/2 lb fresh okra
2 cloves garlic
salt & pepper, as desired
olive oil

Directions. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut okra into 1/2 inch slices. Thinly slice garlic and mix with okra. Drizzle or spray olive oil to lightly coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes, or until golden and cooked through. Serves 2.

Because you can't eat a whole meal of okra (unless it's pickled! mmmm...), I put up an easy veggie chili, loosely based on Jessica Seinfeld's awesome book, Deceptively Delicious. I recently picked one up for $5 at Kohls as part of Kohls Cares for Kids (score!) and you'll definitely be reading a lot more about it on this blog in the future. Her recipe centers around ground turkey. I used ground seitan. She uses chicken broth and I'm all about the vegetable broth. I also added a wide array of beans: black, cannelli, pinto, soy, some bacon bits for a bit of smoke, and because I like to use what I already have accessible: a whole brick of pureed, frozen winter squash. I also thinly sliced up some pre-made polenta (the stuff in a tube) and roasted it along with the okra to use in place of tortilla chips. I made a large portion so that I can freeze half of it for another family dinner in the future.


Four Bean Veggie Chili
Parve & Vegan

3 cloves garlic, minced
4 stalks celery, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 can black beans, rinsed
1 can pinto beans, rinsed
1 can white beans, rinsed
1 can of corn
1 8oz can tomato sauce
12 oz pureed winter squash
8 oz vegetable broth
1 cup shelled edamame
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp chipotle powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili pepper
salt, as desired
black pepper, as desired
1 Tbsp olive oil
8 oz ground seitan
1/4 c bacon bits

Directions. Put a large pot on medium heat. When warm, add olive oil, celery, onion, and red pepper. Stir occasionally. When onions are transluscent, add garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add seitan and bacon bits. Cook for 2 -3 minutes. Add spices and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. Add beans, corn and edamame, stirring to combine. Pour in the vegetable broth and stir with a wooden or silicon spoon, scraping the bottom of the pot. Mix in the tomato sauce and squash puree until smooth and well-incorporated. Bring the chili to a boil on high heat. Serve with tortilla chips or polenta. Serves 8 - 10.

Dairy options: Garnish with cheddar cheese or sour cream and chives, if desired.


The resulting chili is great--smokey, spicy and "meat"y. Very very hearty. My only edit for the future is pre-cooking some of the firmer ingredients like edamame. It just didn't melt into the chili as nicely as we would have liked. The best part of it all was the salted polenta chips. D and I have a tendency to stuff ourselves with delicious food like there's no tomorrow. The polenta chips provided a nice stopping point for us. "No more polenta? Well I am a little full now that you mention it..." So 1 tube is just perfect for 2 people. It also had a fun, hors d'oevre kind of look that could work well for a party. Next time I might use my mandoline (not the musical instrument, people!) to make the slices even thinner and crisper.

Overall, I'd say the Greenmarket trip was well worth my while, even if I did eat up all the okra myself. I stayed strong and magically avoided their cookies, so it looks like this little chef gets an extra big snow cone tonight. More on that later...