Pomegranate Seeds—A Wintertime Treat

 

 A few years ago I learned about the almost magical method of getting the seeds from pomegranates by conducting the entire process with the pomegranate immersed in water. And now, I buy them from the first time I see them in grocery stores in the late fall until the last ones disappear from the shelves in January -- store them in the fridge, or, like pineapples, they'll go bad quickly at room temp.

The seeds are a wonderful addition to guacamole.  (Trust me, it’s true!) When I make a chocolate pudding cake, I like to sprinkle them alongside for a great contrast in flavor and texture. Occasionally I also add them to brown rice pilaf along with chopped apricots and toasted almonds or pecans, butter, salt and pepper.

I know that many cooks add pomegranate seeds to green salads, but I find it annoying that they fall off my fork so easily.  Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, authors of “The Flavor Bible,” recommend a long list of parings, to include: almonds, beets, chicken, cinnamon, fish, ginger, grapefruit, hummus, lamb, roasted meats, parsley, vinegar and walnuts.

My favorite and most frequent use for pomegranate seeds is as part of dessert. Mostly I simply toss them on top of fruit and add a dollop of yogurt (or ice cream if we’re being decadent). And when I haven't gone to the grocery store to get  fresh fruit, we simply have a bowlful of pomegranate seeds along with the yogurt.  I occasionally finish the dessert with a sprinkling of either toasted coconut, granola, brown sugar or honey. (Toast coconut in a 350 degree oven for 6 minutes or so to intensify its flavor and give it a crunchy texture.

Here’s my listing of fruit at goes well with pomegranate seeds. Note that the pairing works well with just about any fruit.

Fresh or baked apples

Sliced bananas

Cooked bananas (Don’t forget the chocolate chips.)
Kiwi

Diced oranges

Fresh or baked pears (I microwave pears for just 2 minutes when I’ve forgotten to put them in the oven.)
 

How to Seed a Pomegranate:

                                         

1.   Fill your largest mixing bowl or your salad spinning bowl with lukewarm water (lukewarm only so your hands don’t get cold). I like to place the bowl in the sink so I can easily discard the peel next to the bowl.

 

2.   Cut the fuzzy top off the pomegranate but not so deeply so as to cut into the fruit.

 

3.    Score the pomegranate into quarters.

4.    Pull the quarters apart under water to keep any juice from splattering, working on small segments at a time and discarding the rind into the sink.  Don’t worry too much about getting all the white pith off the each seed; you can do that later.

 

5.    Swirl the water around, letting the pith float to the top, then scoop up handfuls of seeds and remove large chunks of pith.

 

6.    Repeat step 5 until you have most of the pith removed. Drain the seeds on a clean dishtowel. They will keep well in the refrigerator for up to a week.

 

Curry with Sweet Potatoes and Tofu

I love to buy pineapples, but with just two of us here I sometimes get tired of it before it's gone. That's where curry comes into the picture. I got this recipe years ago from my sister and I make it sooner or later whenever I buy a pineapple. If you're needing a plant for the kitchen, save the top of the pineapple to root in a jar of water.

We usually have curry with chicken, but last night's version had tofu instead. I also use whatever vegetables I have on hand, cauliflower, red bell pepper, zucchini, green beans, spinach, etc. Last night we had sweet potatoes, broccoli and some dried tomatoes.

Here are the basics:

Cut a block of tofu in half and wrap the half you plan to use in a dish towel to press out excess water. I put a small cutting board over the tofu and put a heavy pan on top of that.

Cook 1 small, diced onion and 2 cloves of garlic in a large  frying pan.

Add 2 T of oil, 3 T of flour,  and 3 T of curry powder. Cook the mixture for a few minutes.

Add about 2 cups of heated chicken or vegetable stock in 1/3 cup increments. Cook and stir until thickened. If the mixture gets lumpy at any point, remove it from the heat and continue stirring until the lumps disappear. Add the liquid just a little bit at a time, stirring in completely after each addition.

Here are the sweet potatoes cooking away.

Stir in whatever vegetables you want to use. Last night we had diced sweet potatoes that I cooked for about 15 minutes before adding 4 broccoli stalks cut into pieces, some dried tomatoes I had on hand, and 1/2 a carton of tofu cut into pieces.

Serve the curry over rice and add condiments. The condiments are actually one of the things I like best about this recipe! We usually have raisins, peanuts, 1 sliced banana, and pineapple chunks. Spoon a dollop of plain yogurt and some chopped cilantro over the top.

Spinach Salad -- with a Poached Egg and Roasted Sweet Potatoes



My daughter Kate asked her FB friends about the absolute best way to poach eggs so you don't get those ugly, wispy bits of white to mar the picture.


Kate, in her younger days.


If you were cooking for the Queen you could just snip off those bits with a pair of kitchen shears, but we want perfection for the entire cooking process, right?

Of course Kate broke the egg into a cup first, not directly into the water. And yes, she did put a bit of vinegar in the water itself. Yep, she swirled the water as well. Here are some of the FB replies she got that she hadn't tried:

--Let a bit of water go into the cup first and let the egg begin to turn white before finishing sliding the egg into the water.

--Use a bit less water to begin with.

--Poke a tiny hole in the egg and boil it for 10 seconds. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer, and add the vinegar. Scoop the egg out just before you think they are done (Julia says 2 minutes, but others say that is too long) and put them in cold water to rinse off the vinegar.

--Forget about the water and poach the egg in a couple inches or so of salsa with indentations made for the eggs. Cook for 10 minutes.

I must confess though, when it came time for me to poach the eggs for tonight's spinach salad, the only tip I remembered was holding the egg in the cup part way into the water. Maybe I wasn't patient enough, but the egg wasn't turning white at all. Maybe the water wasn't hot enough? Maybe the cup wasn't big enough, or too big? Anyway, my egg ended up with those wispy white bits.  I will give these methods another try next time I need an egg to go on top of something (Kate had hers over polenta).

That said, our spinach salad with sauteed mushrooms, roasted sweet potatoes, feta cheese and a poached egg was really a great dinner (of course it wasn't my own invention -- I saw Antonia put an egg over a spinach salad one season on Top Chef).  If there had been any bacon around the house, I would have added that too (fat chance in my house!).

I made this because 1) I had a carton of spinach that needed to be used, and 2) we really love to order the spinach salad at the TreeHouse Cafe. Their salad has feta, walnuts,  bacon and a warm maple vinaigrette dressing. Don gets a whole salad and I get a 1/2 portion -- it's huge. You really need to try it if you ever visit Bainbridge Island.

TreeHouse Cafe



Pizza and Salad -- Again!

 
We eat a lot of pizza and salads. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Who wouldn't want pizza and salad for dinner every night, I ask you?

Tonight's was a pretty basic version -- tomato sauce, goat cheese, mushrooms, basil and a bit of Parmesan on top. Click here, and here for other pizzas I've posted about.

Lately I've been using the pizza stone I've owned for about 20 years. I used it once or twice way back when, but the pizza stuck, so I stopped using it. Now, I just put the pizza on a cookie sheet directly on the stone so sticking is not a problem. It really does help crisp up the crust.

Every once in awhile I like salad with just lettuce. Period. Then I toss it first with olive oil, the vinegar, then salt and pepper.

But most of the time, I like to load up salad with lots of other healthy treats. Tonight's salad had: watercress, red leaf lettuce, left-over radish sprouts, left-over green beans, left-over basil leaves, and half a left-over half avocado --  aha, a pattern emerges!
 

We had really great peaches for dessert. The first of the season for us. Sprinkled with lime juice and sugar and left to macerate for just a bit while we ate dinner. So good -- they didn't need yogurt (which I sometimes thicken and put on top of fruit) or ice cream or anything.

 

I buy this frozen pizza dough at Central Market.

 

The dough starts out in a fairly small circle.



I try for a vaguely rectangular shape to fit my cookie sheet. Also, I use whole-wheat flour when I roll it out, so by the end of the process, I figure that the crust is half white and half whole-wheat.

Voila!

 

Dinner on a Warm Day: Pesto over Salmon & Green Salad with Strawberries

I wanted to try the Orangette Shortcut Basil Aioli recipe, but at the last minute made a healthy substitution and exchanged half the mayonnaise with half no-fat sour cream. Also, I couldn't resist adding more basil than the recipe called for, so my sauce was more sturdy and less creamy than it might have been. Nonetheless, it was full of basil, so was, by definition, delicious.

We piled the pesto with abandon over the salmon and the green beans (as well as over some brown rice and French bread for the next day's lunch).

I poached the salmon in the microwave, as I always do with any fish when I want it poached. I try to do that ahead of time so it can come to room temp or cool off for an hour or so  in the fridge. That way the pesto or cucumber sauce won't get all melty.

This sounds heretical, but I actually prefer cucumber sauce on salmon instead of pesto. Same ingredients -- sour cream, mayonnaise salt, pepper, and minced garlic -- and then a substitution of a generous amount of finely chopped cucumbers (salted, drained, rinsed, and squeezed dry) instead of basil. Stirred, not blended.

We had just a few strawberries still lingering in a carton, so those went into a salad, along with slivers of red onion and a handful of sunflower seeds, which it turns out, pack a lot of nutrition into their very small seeds -- is that why baseball players eat them constantly? (No, I don't think so either.)

Nothing Fancy -- Barbecued Chicken Sandwiches and Onion Rings

Dont' get me wrong. I love fancy food as much as the next person. But ever since we got a new bakery in our neighborhood, Pane d'Amore, we've been having lots of sandwiches for dinner on fresh panini rolls.

We also eat a fair amount of chicken breasts, and barbecued chicken sandwiches livens them up a bit. Last night we had the chicken sandwiches, red cabbage coleslaw with Granny Smith apples and Newman's Own Sesame-Ginger dressing, and oven-baked onion rings. Simple, but tasty -- perfect to eat while watching baseball on TV (Mariners won!).

Barbecue Sauce:

I like making my own barbecue sauce because it's so easy and I don't need an extra bottle taking space in the fridge. My sauce consists of ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and chili powder. If I leave out the Worcestershire and put in lemon juice, it becomes cocktail sauce. Last night I also added a bit of chipolte Tabasco sauce.

Oven-Baked Onion Rings: So fun to buy a giant onion!

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

 

Slice the onion rings about 1/4 inch thick.

Prepare 1) a plate with flour, 2) a bowl with a beaten egg or egg white (add cayenne pepper if you want), and 3) a plate with Panko bread crumbs.

 

Dip the onion rings first in flour, then in the eggs, then in the breadcrumbs, pressing the crumbs onto the onion rings.

 

Place the onion rings on a greased baking sheet.

Spray lightly with oil and bake for 10 minutes. Turn and bake for another 5 or 6 minutes or until golden-brown.  

 

Chocolate Pudding Cake – When You Need a Chocolate Fix

There are a million and two recipes out there for a hot fudge or pudding cake. I’ve been using mine for over 10 years and its origins are long gone. If you are feeling in need of a chocolate fix, this is definitely worth a try. I'll admit that it's not the most attractive dessert out there, but it works for us.

I like this cake because:

1)   It’s easy to make. I don’t even use a mixer, just a wooden spoon.

2)   It’s very chocolatey. If you like a more mild chocolate taste (but why would you??) you might not like this one.

3)   I used to think it was relatively healthy because it has no fat whatsoever. But I think the abundance of sugar negates that lack of butter. (I know -- some of you might consider the lack of butter to be a negative in itself!)

4)   It’s really good with strawberries (or raspberries) on the side.

Chocolate Pudding Cake

1 cup flour (I use whole-wheat)

¾ cup sugar

3 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa

2 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

½ cup milk (I use soy)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 Cup brown sugar

3 Tbsp. cocoa

1 ½ cup hot water

1.       Combine the first five ingredients and mix well.

2.       Stir in the milk and vanilla.

3.       Spread the mixture into a greased a 9 inch square baking pan

4.       Combine the brown sugar and 3 tbsp. of cocoa. Sprinkle it over the batter.

5.       Pour the hot water over the batter. Do not stir.

6.       Bake for 40 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.

7.       Go ahead and take the cake out after 40 minutes, even if it doesn’t look done, because by the time it does look done, it will be overdone.

Artichokes and Memories

When I was born, my parents gave up their small apartment in San Francisco and moved to the suburbs, along with thousands of other young couples who were able to buy homes with loans from the GI Bill. We lived in Daly City, on Stoneyford Drive, a stone’s throw from the San Francisco city border.

We traveled into San Francisco on a regular basis, to visit our Aunt Rose, who owned an apartment building that smelled of dust and old carpeting; to dentist appointments in an office off Union Square, where we sometimes got to feed the pigeons (a disgusting pastime that the city eventually  outlawed); to see Santa and the four-story high City of Paris Christmas tree in December; to Fisherman’s wharf for fresh crab that vendors plucked out of steamy vats on the sidewalk; and to Italian restaurants, such as San Remo's and Alioto's.

At lunch one day in Alioto's, my mother made me and my brother approach a table where Joe Di Maggio was sitting with some friends to ask him for his autograph. My brother remembers that Joe asked if we wanted our picture taken with him too, but we didn't have a camera. I remember Joe's kindly smile, but mostly I remember the crusty the sourdough bread on every table. We lost track of the autograph itself, although my brother thinks that my mother still has it somewhere. The incident occurred sometime between Joe's glory days  and the early 70's when Joe morphed into being Mr. Coffee.

Behind our house were miles and miles of artichoke fields – this was California, land of lush valleys and thriving agriculture. Later, probably when I was around 10, we would watch the bulldozers come and turn the fields into the iconic ticky-tacky houses from the folk song that Malvina Reynolds wrote for Pete Seeger in the early sixties.

When you grow up eating artichokes, you think nothing of the work needed for cooking and eating them. They seem natural, don’t you know. I don’t remember what we had with artichokes, maybe crab. But today when I buy them in the late spring, I have pasta, or shrimp or risotto. My “Flavor Bible” cookbook says they go well with butter, cream, garlic, lemon, Parmesan cheese and parsley – all ingredients that go well with pasta and risotto too.

Like everything else, today’s artichokes seem bigger than the ones I remember eating – almost a meal in themselves. Nonetheless, Don and I each had our own at dinner last night. We have them with a mound of mayonnaise for dipping, because that’s how I at them as a child. I recommend this method.

I have since had whole, grilled baby artichokes that are utterly delicious and I would recommend that method as well.

Here are the artichokes from last night:

First, cut off the stem. And then, cut about 1 1/2  inches down from the top of the artichoke.

Next, pick off, by-hand, about two to three layers of the small leaves around the bottom of the artichoke and re-cut the stem close to the base. Needless to say, perfection is unnecessary.



Cut the tips off of each leaf with a pair of scissors so you don't prick yourself when pulling off the leaves to eat them.

 

Wash the artichoke and place upside down on a steamer basket in a large pot with a fitted lid. Steam for 45 to 50 minutes. Test an outer leaf for doneness by pulling it off and tasting. Some cookbooks suggest putting lemon juice in the water to reduce discoloration, but I don't bother with that.



When you get to the point where you can't eat anymore, begin the process of taking off the choke part of the artichoke so you can get to the heart. I think I ate a few more leaves at this point before starting to disassemble the artichoke.

Lift off the top mass of leaves.

Keep lifting off the leaves until you see the thistles.

Cut the thistles off with your table knife and enjoy the heart with even more mayonnaise.

Pizza with Potatoes -- It Works!

I've been wanting to put potatoes on pizza for quite some time now. I did it last night and really loved the taste and texture of creamy soft potatoes along with the mushrooms, kale and bits of seasoned tofu crumbles.

The potatoes here don't look especially attractive, I'll admit -- I might have turned the broiler on for a minute or two to brown them up. But the taste was just right.

Because I have an unreasonable fear of using yeast, I don't make pizza dough from scratch. Once or twice in the past, I had bread dough that didn't rise and ever since then, I hesitate to try using it again.  (You think maybe because the yeast was over 10 years old?) So instead of making pizza dough myself, I buy frozen dough from the grocery. (Click here for my last pizza with frozen dough.)

Here's my recipe:

Slice one Yukon Gold potato into 1/8-inch slices and stand them on end around a wire steamer basket.  Cook them until tender. Lay the slices on a dish towel to absorb excess moisture, turning them once.

Remove the stems from about four large kale leaves and wash the leaves. Chop the kale and sauté it for two or three minutes. Add two cloves of chopped or minced garlic and continue cooking for two to three more minutes. 

Sauté about three large mushrooms, sliced. I used to use uncooked mushrooms when making pizza, but my pizza was always way too juicy, because I'm not shy about using lots of mushrooms. So now I cook the mushrooms briefly, just until they release most of their liquid and the problem is solved.

Sauté about 3/4-cup of tofu crumbles with 1 tbsp. of fennel seeds and 1 tsp. each of cumin seeds or ground cumin, sage and thyme along with a sprinkling of crushed red pepper, salt and pepper.

Layer the ingredients on the pizza beginning with mozzarella. I skipped tomato sauce with this pizza because I wanted the flavors of the other ingredients to be prominent.

Add a drizzle of olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper over everything and bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Behind Closed Drawers -- Tools in My Kitchen

I like to think of kitchen gadgets as real "tools of the trade." They make life easier and remind you to expand your repertoire of cooking techniques.

Here are some of my favorites:

I got these fish tweezers for about $7.95 a few years ago, and I see that they are still a bargain all over the web (Here's one site). Prior to that, I struggled for years to pick out bones from salmon and halibut and on the few times we have it, trout. I suppose I might have gone down to the basement and brought up a pair of regular pliers or gone upstairs and found an extra set of regular tweezers. But I am so glad that I didn't do either of those things. These tweezers are sturdy, small and perfect.

I use my garlic press at least every other day. I do have to admit that I'm really bad with changes and when Don bought me this I was initially skeptical, because I was doing just fine with my old garlic press, thank you very much. (For a picture of  Don, click on this post and scroll to the bottom.) My problem was that this press has moving parts that are a little tricky to maneuver. Ultimately,  I discovered that it's worth getting used to -- it's easy to clean and fits lots of garlic chunks in its little basket.

My kitchen was a one-pyrex kitchen for many years (the small one-cup version) until I just recently figured out that I really wanted/needed bigger containers. So, in one fell-swoop I bought two more sizes! (I know -- quite an impulse buy for me!). I use the medium size for saving left-over coffee in case I don't feel like making fresh on the mornings when Don goes in to his office. The big one is great for heating stock when I make risotto. The 2-cup version is handy for mixing the wet ingredients in recipes before adding to the dry ingredients.

Thanks Jenny for this small, hand-held mixer! I had gone many years without a mixer after mine broke about 10 years ago. I was actually beating egg whites for waffles and meringues with a hand-held egg beater I inherited from my mother when I went off to college! I don't use this all that often, but it takes up so little space that it is well worth having it around.

Do you use about 20 paring knives every time you cook dinner? Or maybe just 5? Of course I switch them out if I need to cut a bit of fat off a piece of chicken, but for some reason it is easier to grab a new knife out of this little container next to the stove than it is to look around and see where I set down the previous knife. Don't ask me why.

If I need to measure lemon or orange juice, I use a small, hand  juicer, but if I don't care about measuring, this juicer is the most effective tool -- so simple, so effective, so red and easy to find in the drawer.

If you drink any amount of wine at all, you need to get one of these rabbit-ear cork screws. Ours is from the Chefs catalogue.

The microplane. It fits easily in the drawer, it does a perfect job and it allows you to add lemon or orange zest really quickly and easily. Did the first-users buy them at the hardware store instead of the kitchen store?  

I'm adding this apple corer not because I like it ( I don't) but because Don uses it a lot. I prefer my apples cut and cored by hand (using a handy accessible paring knife, see above). Don says "It's quick. But there's a lot of spray back. When I do it, I always look up so I don't get spray in my glasses."