Healthy Food Journal

ZING!
launch your lunch

Everyone knows you shouldn’t play with your food. But hey -
sometimes you have to defend your dinner! Now there’s a new
weapon in your homeland security arsenal - load up a particularly
mushy pea or corn niblet, aim, pull back the spring-loaded handle,
and watch your food take flight. ZING! It’s WAY more fun than a war
of words. Available in Red or Assorted (Red, Purple, Green),
packaged in clear, recyclable, peggable display boxes.

“You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” - Yogi Berra

I use agave syrup in place of sugar or honey most of the time. It looks like honey with a bit more viscosity. It is a product of the agave plant from the southwestern regions. Being sweeter than honey or sugar, a recipe requires less, thus cutting back on the carbs. Diabetics and athletes love it because it has a low glycemic index and does not cause spikes in the blood sugar. The natives of the southwest say it removes “sludge” from the brain caused by contaminants such as food preservatives and coffee, causing one to be more cheery and intelligent. 

From the Madhava Honey agave page: “The raw agave juice is regularly harvested from living plants by Indian peoples native to central Mexico. To do so, they must slice off the top of the plant and hollow out its core. Then the plant is capped with a stone. The pineapple shaped agave plant secretes its nectar into the center of the plant, rather than into flowers like most plants do. It collects in the hollow center for several days, after which the milky white “juice” is removed by ladle, one plant at a time. In a way it is similar to tapping a tree for maple syrup collection.”

“Sticky cinnamon buns belong to Philadelphia as do Independence Hall and the Twelfth Street Market. This is a bun of true cinnamon flavor, of a stickiness incarnate.” — Best Recipes of 1949 (This Week Magazine)

Cinnamon is a relatively common spice that adds a delicious aroma to just about anything, sweet or savory.  Did you know there are some amazing health benefits in cinnamon? Studies have shown that there is evidence cinnamon is good for us in the following ways:  

• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon a day can lower LDL cholesterol.
• The smell can boost memory and cognitive function.
• Cinnamon can help regulate the blood sugar — beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes.
• Cinnamon can stop medication-resistant yeast infections.
• Cinnamon  can lessen the growth of  leukemia and lyphoma cancer cells.
• It can be an anti-clotting agent for the blood.
• It is a great source of iron, manganese, fiber and calcium.
• It can reduce arthritis pain when taken with honey.

This recipe is from Spanish Fiestas. It was collected by the author from “Emilio at Bar Victoria in Miraflores de la Sierra, a village in the Sierra de Guadarrama just outside Madrid.” This recipe does not actually mention using saffron, however, where it says to use food color is where I would add a pich of saffron threads.

Paella ingredients:
For 6 - 8 people

1-2 large onions
1 head of garlic
2 large peppers (I use a green one & a red one)
Plenty olive oil (not extra virgin)
1 chicken stock cube (use a fish one if you prefer)
1 chicken chopped up into small pieces (could use chicken breasts)

250g small prawns
250g baby clams or clams
250g calamares in rings
Mussels - 1 or 2 per person
Large prawns - 1 or 2 per person

Food colouring
Rice (short or long grain)
1 bag of frozen peas
Tin of pickled red peppers
Lemons

You’ll need a paella pan and three large saucepans for the preparation.

Preparation:
Your purist Spanish chef will cook the dish from start to finish in a paella dish. I found that this caused a lot of spitting of hot ingredients considering the large open area of such a pan so I begin by cheating!

1) Take a large, deep saucepan and cover the bottom with the olive oil … no worries about quantity as you can’t go wrong. Add the chopped chicken and stir until you hear that the frying has started. Now throw in the chopped onion, pepper and garlic and fry away gently until everything is cooked. Lots of juices come out of the chicken during this stage leaving you with a pan full of delicious contents and a great smelling kitchen. Put this pan aside now as you won’t need it until we get to using the paella pan in the final stage.

2) This is the messy part of the preparation which you can begin while your pot of chicken is cooking away. You’ll need to take the heads and shells off all the small prawns and keep all the heads and shells. Put the peeled prawns to one side along with the calamari rings which should be halved. Also wash the mussels and clams.

The next stage is crucial ….

3) You MUST work with the correct quantity of liquid in this recipe. Whereas everything else is quite flexible this isn’t. I work on the basis of half a mug of rice per person so if we’re cooking for 8 people that’s 4 mugs of rice. Emilio taught me to use double the quantity of water to rice “plus a bit” which I’ve taken to be 9 mugs of water when cooking for these 8 people.

You’re only cooking for 4 people? Okay, so that’s 2 mugs of rice which requires 4 mugs of water “plus a bit” so up to 5 mugs of water.

Now add this water to another deep saucepan and throw in the mussels and clams. Bring them to the boil and continue until all the shells are open (discard any that don’t open) then sieve the water into another large saucepan. Set the mussels and clams aside as we won’t need them until the final stage.

4) Now in the water which you’ve just boiled the shellfish add the heads and shells from the small prawns. Once they’re boiling add some yellow food colouring (saffron is of course the choice of the purist here but it doesn’t create that fabulous paella colour and it’s expensive). Also add the chicken stock cube. A fish stock cube is an alternative but I use chicken to tone down the fish flavour slightly. The rice will take its salt from this stock cube.

After a few minutes of gentle boiling the water will have taken on the flavour of the prawn heads and shells and will have turned into a deep yellow colour. Turn off the heat and use a colander to sieve out the shells which can now be disposed of leaving you with a pan of delicious stock.

5) Now we can move outside and cook in the paella pan. In Spain we have burners that connect to a gas bottle and the paella pan sits on this burner. Alternatively you can place your paella pan on the gas rings of your cooker though you must try to make the heat supply equal on all parts of the pan.

Heat up the paella pan and add the contents of the saucepan containing the chicken, onions, peppers and garlic as well as the clams or baby clams. Once these start sizzling throw in the rice (remember.. 4 mugs for 8 people and 2 mugs for 4 people). Stir the rice into the juices and don’t worry if some bits stick as this becomes the favourite part of the paella in its home region of Valencia where the burnt bit is known as ’socorrat’. Also add the peeled prawns and calamares at this stage.

Immediately pour in the yellow fish stock, stir and allow to boil very gently. Don’t worry if all the stock doesn’t go in immediately, just let some cook off and add it later. Now you throw in the frozen peas and place the mussels, large prawns and strips of red peppers carefully to make the dish look as attractive as possible. This is where the guests start complementing the chef!

6) Allow the paella to cook gently for around 20 minutes, turning the pan occasionally to make sure that all parts of it are cooking equally. Towards the end I like to put a newspaper over the pan which ensures that the rice on top cooks properly (keep the ink off the rice!). Once most of the liquid has been soaked up by the rice your masterpiece is finished. Just place a few halves of lemon on top and place the whole paella pan in front of your very impressed guests.

Spanish saffron is one of my favorite spices ever. There is nothing that compares to its exotic, pungent aroma. But you must use the real thing - not one of the cheap knock-offs. Saffron is the slender thread at the center of a small purple crocus, where the pollen catches and develops. There are precisely 3 threads per flower. These are hand-picked and then dried. It takes 13,125 threads to make an ounce and is the reason why saffron is the world’s most expensive spice.

Thankfully, saffron has an intensley aromatic flavor and it takes only a pinch to bring flavor and color to a dish. It brings more than this — it brings a dish alive with a flavor reminiscent of sunning oneself on a sultry Spanish beach. It is the most vital element in the French bouillabaisse, in many Spanish paellas, Italian risottos, Portuguese rice dishes, Persian pilafs, and Indian biryanis. Don’t you dare use the ground version or the fake stuff imbued with turmeric.

It has been used as a for remedy sore gums, fatique, eliminating mental blocks and  lowering the rate of heart disease. Therapeutically it strengthens the heart and nervous system. It aids digestion, by increasing the appetite and can help relieve nosebleeds, fatique and exhaustion.

Sauerkraut is of German origins and is made by fermenting thinly sliced cabbage in salt. In my family, we always made our own — I did not discover the packaged or canned varieties until I moved to the city. We typically had a large ceramic crock pot sitting on steps to the cooler regions of the basement.

Wikipedia gives this description of the fermentation process:

“Traditionally, sauerkraut is prepared in a stoneware crock and the seal is created with a piece of wet linen cloth, a board, and a heavy stone. This arrangement is not fully airtight and will lead to spoiled sauerkraut unless the surface of the brine is skimmed daily to remove molds and other aerobic contaminants that grow on the surface where there is contact with air.”

Cabbage is a major source of Vitamin C, and sauerkraut was often the only source during the winter months. Anything pickled correctly through a fermentation process will last for months without refrigeration. Sauerkraut is also a good source of Vitamin K, Calcium and Magnesium, Vitamin B6, Folate, Iron, Potassium, Copper and Manganese. It’s got plenty of dietary fiber. High sodium content is one of its downfalls, but after all, the salt is the pickling agent.

“I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”

– George W. Bush