Blue Cayenne

These days many food sites exhort us to “eat the rainbow”–a colorful visual cue to remind us of the importance of incorporating a variety of nutrients into our daily diets.  Good advice. I know I need the nudge.

Here is a recipe for a rainbow in a bowl, a nutritious roasted edamame salad redolent in garlic and marinated in a delightful basil vinaigrette. It is so good that I’ve found myself raiding the refrigerator late at night for this salad rather than the usual desserts. How funny is that?

Edamame?

Edamame are (Aargh! Is edamame plural or singular? )  young soybeans and they are powerfully nutritious–high in protein, dietary fiber and micronutrients.

While records indicate they were first available in the United States in the 1920s, they didn’t take off here until the 1980s when, depending upon the food writer you read, the Shogun series hit U.S. TVs and American interest in everything  Japanese  (including Japanese food)  spiked or the U.S. organic food movement took off. Maybe it was a bit of both.

Edamame has long been a staple of Asian cuisine. In fact, the consumption of young soybeans in China and Japan predates American interest in the food by a couple thousand years. It was the Japanese who gave the young beans their modern name edamame, beans on a branch.

In Asia, edamame was consumed for both its culinary flavor and its medicinal applications for conditions as varied as diabetes and hypertension. A 17th Century Chinese writer even claimed that beans would “kill evil chi.”

Modern nutritional research has validated many of the earlier beliefs about edamame’s value in the human diet, noting that the bean is a complete protein with all the essential amino acids and a single serving provides substantial amounts of your daily dietary needs: 17% Iron, 78% folate, 26% vitamin K.  A cup has only 120 calories but 10 grams of protein. Wow!

Try this great and great-for-you recipe. Who doesn’t need to exorcize a little evil chi anyway?

Yields 4 Servings

Edamame Salad

15 minPrep Time

15 minCook Time

30 minTotal Time

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Ingredients

• 12 ounces frozen shelled edamame (about 2 cups)
• 1/2 C. fresh corn kernels
• 1/4 C. finely diced scallion
• 1 clove garlic (minced)
• 1 T. olive oil
• 3/4 t. kosher salt
• 1/4 t. freshly ground black pepper
• 1 C. chopped fresh tomato
• 1/4 C. chopped fresh basil leaves
• 1 T. red wine vinegar

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Combine edamame, corn kernels, diced scallion, minced garlic, olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper in a bowl and toss to combine all the ingredients and coat them in the olive oil.
3. Spread vegetable mixture on a rimmed metal tray and bake for 10-15 minutes. Remove roasted edamame mixture from the oven and chill in your refrigerator for 30 minutes.
4. Add tomato, chopped basil leaves and red wine vinegar to the chilled edamame mixture. Toss to combine. Adjust your seasonings to your taste and serve.

Nutrition

Calories

52 cal

Fat

4 g

Carbs

3 g

Protein

1 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

55

https://bluecayenne.com/edamame-salad

This recipe is an adaptation of one that appeared on The Good Network. Here is the link: Roasted Edamame Salad

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My friend Sarah recently went to lunch at the new Farmhouse Restaurant at Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach. She came home raving about the food. The cauliflower steaks with chimichuri sauce particularly impressed her.

I decided to see if I could recreate the dish and went on an online searching expedition. I found several recipes. Coincidentally, I also attended a Sur La Table cooking class where cauliflower steaks were one of the dishes we prepared.

It turns out that cauliflower steaks are having their moment and they are being served with a rainbow of complimentary sauces–romesco, vinaigrette, pesto and on and on. Epicurious even has a recipe for cauliflower steaks sauced with cauliflower puree. That one sounds kind of redundant to me but I haven’t made it. Maybe it is wonderful.

Once my cauliflower steak was roasted, I had some fun plating it. I decided that it should sit on the sauce rather than having the sauce as a topping. I also added roasted pine nuts as a garnish and that turned out to be a major flavor and texture treat with this dish.

Hope you enjoy this.

Roasted Cauliflower

Yields 4 Servings

Roasted Cauliflower Steaks

20 minPrep Time

40 minCook Time

1 hrTotal Time

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Ingredients

• 4 1/2-inch thick cauliflower steaks cut from a heavy and firm cauliflower
• 2 T. olive oil (or more)
• Sea salt and freshly-ground pepper
• For the sauce:
• 1/4 C. pitted green olives
• 1 T. capers (rinsed and dried)
• 3 T. roughly-chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 1 small garlic clove (minced)
• 1/2 t. Dijon mustard
• 1 t. lemon zest
• 2 T. fresh lemon juice
• 5 T. extra-virgin olive oil (or more)
• Garnish with roasted pine nuts, chopped parsley (or cilantro), a strip of tomato peel, and an extra drizzle of your best olive oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper. Move oven rack to the top position.
2. Wash the cauliflower and discard the leaves. Do not core the cauliflower. You will need the core to keep your "steak" slices in one piece. Cut the cauliflower in half and begin slicing the steaks about 1/2 inch thick. As you move to the outside of the cauliflower, the pieces of the cauliflower will not hold together. You can either roast those pieces and serve along side the steaks or reserve them for another purpose.
3. Brush cauliflower steaks with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast until a knife inserted in the steaks punctures the steaks easily. This will take about forty minutes. Turn each steak over at the mid-point in roasting. When the steaks are done, you will have pretty golden brown bits on the edges of some parts of the cauliflower.
4. Make the sauce by combining all the sauce ingredients except the oil in your food processor. Process until the ingredients are well combined and the greens are chopped into small pieces. You will want to use a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides of the processor bowl once or twice while you are processing the sauce. You don't want to over-process because you want some texture in your sauce. Next, with the food processor running, slowly drizzle the oil into the bowl until the oil combines with the other ingredients. Add salt and pepper to your taste.
5. To plate the cauliflower, smear some sauce on a white plate. Arrange the cauliflower steak on top. Sprinkle chopped parsley and roasted pine nuts over the steak. Decorate with a strip of tomato skin and drizzle with some extra olive oil.

Nutrition

Calories

903 cal

Fat

97 g

Carbs

7 g

Protein

2 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

53

https://bluecayenne.com/roasted-caulifower-steaks

I often look to David Tanis’ food column for inspired food ideas.

He was a lead chef for more than thirty years at Berkeley’s legendary Chez Panisse. That credential alone positions him in the pantheon of culinary immortals.

Since leaving Chez Panisse in 2011, Tanis has written a weekly column, City Kitchen, for the New York Times. The guiding concept for his column is “big city, small kitchen, busy cook,” so his recipes are aimed at people who like to cook (and eat)  at home. That would be me. If you are reading this blog, I suspect that describes you, too.

Tanis’ culinary signature is the showcasing of fresh seasonal ingredients in accessible recipes, often in Mediterranean-inspired dishes. Susan Goin of Los Angeles’ Luques wrote of him: “If I could have one person in the world make me a snack or one good dish, it would be David Tanis.” Enough said.

This recipe from a recent City Kitchen column is excellent. Fortunately, it instantly caught my attention with its headline: “My New Favorite Beans.”

That’s a pickup line for me. I’m a sucker for recipes where the chef touts his food with superlatives.

Favorite. Best. Killer. If a recipe title uses any of those words, I’m in. Throw Grandma in (as in “Grandma’s Absolute Favorite Biscuits”) and I’m over the moon.

Sometimes I get “burned” that way.  (Oh! No!  Was that a shameless food pun?  Sorry.)  Not with this recipe! This bean creation, packed with all manner of good and good-for-you vegetables, is full of flavor and deserves all the superlatives Tanis can throw at it.

It is versatile, too. Serve it as a satisfying main dish or as a bold side dish. It would be beautiful on a Spring buffet. I used my stew to construct a rice bowl. Topped with its garnish of lemon zest, chopped mint, chile and parsley and crowned with a pretty hard-boiled egg, the rice bowl presentation hit all the right notes for me. The flavor of the fennel in particular was exceptional against the flat flavor of the steamed rice and the little explosions of sour, hot, and minty tastes from the garish moved the dial on this dish from excellent to wonderful. I had the rice bowl for dinner two nights in a row!

Speaking of fennel, I was particularly intrigued by Tanis’ use of the under-appreciated vegetable in this recipe. I don’t often use fennel but I always enjoy trying new tastes and I’ve long wanted to cook with fennel in a serious dish. Now I’m thinking that a fennel gratin would be pretty terrific.

By the way, fennel, with its distinct anise aroma, is in the carrot family. Did you know that? I didn’t. It is also related to parsley, dill and coriander. That’s quite a family of flavors! You buy fennel in the market by the bulb. It can be eaten raw (in thin slices) in salads or cooked in any number of dishes. All parts of fennel are edible, but this recipe uses only the bulb.  Fennel is often served braised or cooked in a gratin.

Fennel probably originated in the Mediterranean and is known to have been popular with the ancient Greeks and Romans, both as a food item and as a medicine. Interestingly, in Greek mythology, knowledge was delivered to man in a fennel stalk filled with coal.

You can feel virtuous about eating fennel. A cup of fennel provides 14% of your daily requirement for vitamin C, 11% of your daily fiber needs and 10% of your daily requirement for potassium. Did I mention that a cup has only 27 calories?

Here is the link to Tanis’ original recipe:

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018666-white-bean-stew-with-carrots-fennel-and-peas

Yields Six to eight servings

White Bean Stew with Carrots, Fennel and Peas

2 hr, 30 Total Time

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Ingredients

• 2 C. dried white beans (about 1 pound)
• 1 medium onion (peeled and halved and stuck with two cloves)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 small sprig rosemary
• Salt and pepper
• 3 T. extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large white onion (medium diced--about 1 1/2 C.)
• 3 celery stalks (medium diced, about 1 C.)
• 6 orange carrots (medium diced, about 1 1/2 C.)
• 1 or 2 fennel bulbs (medium diced, about 1 1/2 C.)
• 1 t. crushed fennel seed
• 1/2 t. red pepper flakes
• 1/2 t. minced garlic
• 1 bunch small yellow carrots (peeled and left whole or halved lengthwise)
• 1 C. fresh or frozen peas
• 3 T. roughly-chopped parsley
• 2 T. roughly-chopped mint
• 1/2 t. grated lemon zest
• 1/2 serrano chile (seeds removed and finely chopped)
• 4 large eggs (boiled 9 minutes, chilled in ice water, peeled and halved)

Instructions

1. Put beans in a large pot with onion halves, bay leaf and rosemary. Add enough cold water to cover the ingredients by about two inches. Cover the pot and bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat, shift the lid on the pot until it is slightly ajar, and simmer the beans. Check the beans regularly to be sure that you maintain about one inch of water above the beans. After approximately forty minutes of simmering, stir 2 t. salt into the beans and continue to cook until the beans are tender. This will take approximately one and a half hours depending upon the age of the dried beans. Alternatively (and more quickly), you could cook the beans in your Instant Pot. When beans are cooked, set aside to cool.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet and sauté diced onion, celery, carrots, and fennel. Season with salt and pepper and add fennel seed, red pepper flakes and garlic to the mixture. Continue to cook this mixture until the vegetables are softened. This takes approximately ten minutes. Lower your heat as necessary. Be careful not to burn the garlic or otherwise brown the vegetables. Set aside.
3. Simmer yellow carrots in a pan of salted water until they are tender but firm. This will take about five minutes. Remove carrots from water, drain, pat dry and cool. Set aside.
4. Put peas into a pan of salted water and simmer for about two minutes (or less if you are using frozen peas). Drain the peas and add them to the sautéed vegetables.
5. To assemble the dish, heat the vegetable mixture over medium high heat. Add drained beans. (Discard the onions but reserve a cup of the cooking liquid from the beans.) Continue cooking until the mixture is evenly heated. As you are heating the vegetable mixture, add reserved cooking liquid to keep the mixture moist. Add salt to taste. Add cooked yellow carrots and let them heat in the mixture.
6. To serve, either serve this dish spread on a platter and garnished with the mint/parsley/chile mixture and the halved boiled eggs or serve over rice in a pretty rice bowl. Just before serving, drizzle with a bit of olive oil.

Notes

I used Rancho Gordo pretty yellow eye beans in this recipe. The original recipe simply calls for dried white beans.

Be generous with the mint/parsley/chile garnish. The fresh flavors of the garnish elevate this recipe to high level of taste.

Nutrition

Calories

300 cal

Fat

13 g

Carbs

44 g

Protein

8 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

7.8.1.2

48

https://bluecayenne.com/white-bean-stew-carrots-fennel-peas