dried pineapple

If you find yourself in possession of a pineapple or two and don't feel like making pineapple salad or pineapple crud (really quick and yummy!), you could always make dried pineapple. I like the kind I make better than the kind you get from the store, mainly because of its texture; I don't dry it as long, because I expect to eat it up within a few weeks, so it turns out much more tender. I also like to sprinkle a little herb salt over the pineapple pieces before they go in the dehydrator. You should end up with about a quart of dried pineapple per whole fruit (the jar pictured above has two pineapple's worth in it).

Dried Pineapple
a pineapple, peeled and cut up into fairly thin pieces--a little less than a centimeter, maybe
a small amount of Yamuna's herb salt
    3T dried cilantro 
    2T dried basil
    1T dried dill 
    2t dried marjoram 
    1t dried oregano 
    1/2t dried cayenne 
    4T coarse sea salt 
    Grind everything together in a blender, then store in a little jar.

 Spread the pineapple pieces out on your dehydrator trays, then sprinkle lightly with herb salt. Dry at 118° till dry but still  tender and pliable. The time required will vary according to the thickness of your pineapple slices, but should be somewhere between 8 and 24 hours. Just keep checking every once in a while!

Rachael's birthday pineapple salad

I guess pineapple's really in season in the spring, but they've been on sale in all the stores here lately so I've been eating lots of them. I took a pineapple salad to a potluck last week--not my usual Indian one, but a Vietnamesish version I used to make for Rachael's birthday dinners. This salad's not as universally popular as the Indian one--only one person asked me for the recipe--but I like it equally well. A key ingredient is tuong cu-da, a soybean sauce which has a stinkiness similar to that of fish sauce.

SE Asian Pineapple Salad
salad:
A nice, ripe pineapple, peeled and cut up
a red bell pepper, cut into short strips
a couple of firm but ripe tomatoes, if there are good ones available to you, halved and cut into thin semicircles
a generous handful of peanuts, toasted in a pan on the stove and then roughly chopped
a shallot, minced
a chile, minced
herbs (coriander, Thai basil, mint--whatever you think will be good)
dressing:
juice of a lime
tuong cu-da, the same amount as the lime juice
a clove of garlic, crushed
sugar (palm sugar if you have some), optional, depending on how sweet the pineapple is

Mix the salad ingredients together in a big bowl, and the dressing  in a smaller bowl.  Taste the dressing for balance of flavors before tossing it into the salad.



This sauce can be hard to find--when Annie and I were looking for it at the Viet Wah, where I'd bought it previously, a helpful employee directed us to the thick, cloudy fish sauces as they have a similar taste. When we said we wanted a fish-free sauce, she found a man who told us that they didn't carry it any more but that we could get it at nearby Minh Tam. If you can't find it and you don't care if your salad is vegetarian, fish sauce would be a good substitute; otherwise, try some regular soy sauce.

yet another post about kale chips....

It seems like every blog in the world has posted about kale chips and how delicious and easy to make they are, but I thought I'd better add one of my own in case any of my followers haven't gotten the message. You should make them! They're so easy and good! And if you can't help but eat a whole batch at one sitting, well, it's better than if you'd eaten a bag of potato chips.

I think it's easiest of all to make them in a food dehydrator, as you just leave them in till they're dry and don't have to worry about overdoing them, but if you don't have one you can bake them in your oven. I've read various recommendations for temperatures and baking times--from 30 minutes at 250° to 5 minutes at 450°--but the key to success when using an oven is frequent stirring and checking so they don't get too dried out and brittle.


You can use any flavors you like--make them fancy and cheesy like these, or add lime and chile if you'd like them zippy.  I usually make them like this:


Kale Chips
1 bunch of kale, minus the stems, torn into chip-sized pieces
 a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed
a couple of sprigs of thyme, roughly chopped
a big pinch of salt
a smaller pinch of Aleppo pepper
1 T nutritional yeast
1T olive oil

Mix everything together in a big bowl, and kind of massage the seasonings into the leaves till they're really well coated.  Spread out on a Silpat-lined cookie sheet if you're using your oven (be sure not to crowd the leaves; you may have to do a couple of batches) or on your dehydrator racks. If you're dehydrating, it should take about six hours at 115°. 

a quick idea

I made myself some squash soup recently and didn't feel like making pumpkin seeds with the squash's guts. I hated to just throw them away, though, so I made some pumpkin milk. I just covered the seeds and stringy stuff with water and let it soak while I worked on my soup, and after a couple of hours whizzed it all in my blender till it was very smooth. I squeezed it through a nut milk bag (If you don't have one, a big piece of cheesecloth would work nearly as well) and put it in the fridge. The next morning I used some as the liquid for a spinach smoothie. I think it would also be good used in place of water when cooking rice or oats.

cauliflower tomato

I've made this dish a couple of times lately, and I really like it so I thought I'd better record it so that I don't forget all about it. It's good either fresh out of the oven or later on at room temp ( the second time I made it I took it to a potluck, where it was a success), and you can get all the vegetables cooked the night before so that it only needs a quick run through the oven right before you plan to eat it.

Cauliflower Tomato Bake
serves 2, and can easily be multiplied to serve more.


1 small cauliflower, thinly sliced so that the pieces look like little tree silhouettes
8 oz cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
olive oil
ground cumin and coriander
a couple of sprigs of marjoram, leaves stripped from stems and roughly chopped
salt and pepper

1/4C tahini
juice of a lemon
1 fat garlic clove, crushed
walnut parmesan*

If you're cooking your vegetables in advance, do them on a tin foil lined cookie sheet so they take less time. Otherwise cook them in a greased 8"x8" pan. Toss the sliced cauliflower with some olive oil, cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper. Spread it in your prepared pan and bake at 450°F  till tender.  Meanwhile, toss the tomatoes with a little more olive oil and salt and pepper, plus the marjoram. When the  cauliflower's ready, scatter the tomatoes on top and cook for ten more minutes.  At this point you can let the vegetables wait till the next day, or proceed to the final bake.
Heat (or turn down) the oven to 350°F . Whisk the tahini, lemon juice and garlic together, then add enough water to make it into a pourable sauce. Pour it over the vegetables in their 8"x8" pan, spread it around, and sprinkle some walnut parmesan over the top. Bake for 10-20 minutes more (it will vary according to how hot things are when you start), till browned and tasty looking.
*Walnut parmesan: walnuts,nutritional yeast, salt, and a little lemon zest, all chopped together to a fine meal in a food processor. 

this year's quinces

My quince tree did well this year--I picked 2700g of quinces altogether, leaving one stunted, under-ripe one behind. The squirrels seem to have learned that quinces are sour and hard and unlike apples, so they've stopped picking one and throwing it away in disgust after ruining it by taking a single bite.



The first thing I did with them was to include one in a batch of baked fruit, along with apples, pears, prunes and dried apricots. A single quince really enhanced the flavor!



Then I made some jam according to Christine Ferber's version of Nostradamus's recipe. This recipe takes five days--each day you simmer it for a couple of minutes, then let it rest till the next day--and I finally finished it today. It got a little singed on the bottom of the pan, but still tastes really good.

According to the Telegraph, greenish quinces will ripen off the tree, so I'm letting my remaining quinces sit in a bowl and perfume my house till they're ripe enough to make some quince vodka and roast quinces.

health-food chocolate pudding

 I've made this pudding a couple of times lately, and it really does seem pretty healthy for how good it is. I used to make puddings out of tofu sometimes, and they were never satisfactory as there was always a jarring note of soy. In this recipe the avocado fits right in, and the chia seeds add a pleasantly tapioca-y texture. It would even be suitable for a raw-foodist if you used raw cacao instead of the regular cocoa I had on hand.

 

Chocolate Pudding
serves 1-3, depending on your appetites
3/4C + 1/3C milk (I used almond milk)
 3T chia seeds
1 small, ripe avocado, peeled and seeded
4 dates, seeded and torn apart
1/4C cocoa or cacao
1/4t cinnamon and a pinch of salt

Mix the chia seeds with 3/4C milk in a big bowl and let soak about half an hour. Try to remember to give them a whisk every few minutes as you proceed, so they don't clump together too much.

 Whiz the remaining ingredients--including the 1/3C milk--together in your blender till they're really smooth. Stir into the soaked chia seeds. Cover and let rest in the fridge for a while. It will taste unpleasantly of raw cocoa at first, so don't bother to taste for seasoning till it's been there at least half an hour.