Persimmon

It's fall in the rest of North America, which means that tomatoes and fresh vegetable are out. Unless you live in California, where due to a mistake by God we ended up with no weather, no seasons and a long annual growing period. Fortunately the long, dry growing season also means certain fruits grow well almost exclusively in California, such as pomegranates and persimmons. Growing up we had a persimmon tree and more persimmons every year than could be reasonably eaten fresh by five people. So persimmon inevitably went into everything - oatmeal, pancakes, smoothies, desserts, to name a few. (Picture: Hachiya persimmon)

So here is a recipe for persimmon bars, from my mom. This works best with the soft persimmons (Hachiya variety, can be found in the farmer's market, shaped like an acorn) as opposed to the hard persimmons (Fuyu, better for fresh eating because they are not messy, shaped like a squat tomato). The soft persimmon need to be very soft - almost liquid - in order not to be astringent. This also means the pulp does not need to be processed much before baking with it.



Persimmon bars:
1 cup persimmon puree (or soft pulp)
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp molasses
1/2 cup oil
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp each: salt, cinammon, nutmeg
1/4 tsp groud cloves

Glaze:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp grated lemon peel

In large mixing bowl, stir baking soda into persimmon puree. Beat in egg, sugar, oil and molasses. Stir in salt, spices, then flour. Beat well. Spread into 9"x12" pan. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes or until dough springs back to touch.

Mix powdered sugar with lemon juice and peel. Spread over cookies while still hot. Allow to cool, then cut into squares.

Dorm Food

This is a quick post to go with a quick recipe. I visited a college student friend this evening. We were discussing the blog and he offered me a recipe. Here it is:

1 box of cake mix
12 ozs of soda
Mix, put in a greased 13 by 8 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 mins (less if you want it less cakelike and more pudding like)
Cool
Serve by itself, or with ice cream or whipped cream.

I stopped on the way home, spent $4 at a convenience store and bought a Devil's food cake mix and black cherry soda. 35 min after I got home, I had finished baking the cake. 15 min later, while still warm, I served it.

Serves 12; each serving cost 35 cents and was 195 calories.

My friend likes the combination of Sprite and yellow cake mix.

THANKS, E!!!!!!!!!!!

Suicide Prevention and Food

Yesterday I participated in a community walk, Out of the Darkness. It was sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As I was walking with hundreds of others I started thinking about if food could be part of suicide prevention. (Somehow, I think everything relates back to food for me.) Food is more than nutrition - it is a very social part of life. We all have busy lives - if you are a student, you've got classes to go to, studying, Facebook, etc. If you are parent, you've got car-pooling, play dates to arrange, etc. If you just started a job you've got your career to plan; I could go on and on. But we all have to EAT! So look around you and if you don't have a "family" to eat with daily, make one. Don't eat alone, or in your car or at your desk for every meal.
When I was growing up with 2 working parents, we still sat down as a family and ate together almost every night. When I went to college I had my friends that I ate dinner with every night and felt sad for those students who took their dinner back to their room. What I should have done is invited them to join us. I suspect some of them might have been depressed, and depression often is a precursor to suicide.
In my adult life, even though I am a doctor, I make sure my family sits down and eats dinner together. It is a way to connect, to keep in touch with their daily lives, to enjoy their company.
So, if you have been eating alone, find someone to share meals with. If you already eat in a group and know someone who is alone, have them join you. Maybe, if we include others we can help someone who is going through a difficult time and we don't even know it. I have no proof that this social "recipe" will prevent suicide, but I know it can't hurt.
It seems I can't end a post without a recipe. There are those that believe dark chocolate has natural substances that boost your mood and is good for your health. As much as I love chocolate, I'm not willing to consider it a health food quite yet. But I do know that one to two pieces of the following recipe a day will bring a smile to anyone lips!

CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES
Make a chocolate ganache. (The one I use is below)
1 cup whipping cream
12 ounces dark chocolate (56-70% - the higher the percentage, the less sweet it tastes. You can also use semi-sweet chocolate chips.) Break them up into small pieces
2 tbsp sweet butter (that means no salt)
2 tbsp sweet stuff - white sugar, brown sugar or honey. Each one of these will give it a slightly different flavor(I got told I was pretentious when I spelled this word the British way in a different post.)

Put the broken-up chocolate in a bowl
Put the cream, butter and sugar in a pot with a good bottom so it won't burn. Stir it constantly until it is boiling.
Pour the mixture over the chocolate.
Let it stand for 2-3 minutes and then stir until it is smooth. (A whisk or 3 chopsticks works best.)
Wait for it to return to room temperature (about an hour)

Now comes the MESSY part.

CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES
Ingredients
ganache
cocoa powder
Take your ganache. Refrigerate it for 15 mins, stirring every five. Line a pan with wax paper or parchment paper. Put a tbsp of individual ganache mounds. Roll in your palm to make round. (I coat my hands in cocoa powder so I don't have to wipe my hands so much.)
Roll the truffle in cocoa, nuts, coconut, sprinkles, or whatever you like. Put in individual small "cupcake paper holders"
Serve at room temp, but you can keep them in the refrigerator for a few days.

If you get tired of making these and you still have ganache left over, you can use it as frosting, or heat it up and put it over ice cream.

Ratatouille - the food, not the movie

Fall is a great time at the Farmers' Markets in Southern California. There is abundant and amazing produce. The problem with that for me is that I have a tendency to buy more than 2 people could possibly eat in a month! Each stands' eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes look better than the ones I just bought. And this week was no exception - I came home with way too much. So I did what I always do each fall, I made ratatouille.
I am not a vegetarian, but I do eat mostly vegetables and use meat almost as a condiment. I believe that dishes should taste good, not just fit a philosophy of eating. So many of my vegetable dishes have some sort of meat product in the recipe, usually for flavour. This dish, however, is a pure vegetarian dish that is delicious, uses the too many vegetables that I bought, is a hit with most people, including children, and freezes well. It is easy to make, and does not require precision. All the amounts of the ingredients are approximations. If you like one vegetable more than another, then change the proportions. I have NEVER followed the amounts nor the vegetables exactly that I am giving you; consider these guidelines only. If you forget to buy one of the vegetables listed in the recipe - no big deal. You do need onions, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes, but after that, do what you want. The fresher and better quality the ingredients, the better it tastes.

RATATOUILLE
Ingredients

1-2 onions, sliced thin
2-3 sliced (about 1/2 inch) bell peppers (In the fall, when I can get red, yellow and green, I use one of each)
1-2 lbs eggplant (I prefer to use Japanese, Chinese, or Italian ones. The big, purple ones that are available at grocery stores require the salting described in the recipe. The other ones, if fresh, will be okay if you don't have time to salt them.)
1-2 lbs fresh tomatoes (I use Romas because they don't have to be peeled.)
1-2 lbs zucchini (I like the light green or yellow ones because they are a little sweeter than the dark ones. You can also substitute any summer squash that you like.)
2 stalks of celery, diced
1/2 cup cured olives (I use Greek ones, but if I have a different kind in my refrigerator, I use them)
2-4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 c. pine nuts
olive oil
salt

Cut the eggplant in 1" slices. Put salt on both sides, and then put in a colander until needed.

As you slowly cook each vegetable, start cutting the next one you need. When you are done cutting, add it to the pot.

Take the onions, pepper and garlic and cook slowly in 2-4 tbs of olive oil for about 10 minutes. Stir intermittently, and do not let brown.

Dice the celery and add it to the pot.

Cube the zucchini, and add it to the pot.

Rinse off the extra salt on the eggplant, squeeze it flat, and then cube it. Add it to the pot. Eggplant absorbs oil, so you will probably need to add extra olive oil at this time to keep the vegetables from sticking.

Remove the seeds from the tomatoes, chop them and add to the pot.

Chop the olives and add them and the pine nuts to the pot.

Cook on simmer for 1-2 hours. Add salt and pepper to taste.

You can serve this hot or room temperature as a side dish or over pasta as a main dish. This tastes even better the next day.

Surfas and Lakeshore

When my daughter was young, being a good mother, I went to Lakeshore to buy her educational toys. When I was done shopping for her, I would walk across the parking lot and go to "my toy store", Surfas, where I would look at all their stuff. (In retrospect, I wonder which one of us I was really driving to Culver City for.) This is a restaurant and chef supply store that is open to the public. For those of you who wonder where I got all those weird kitchen gadgets, this is the place. They also have classes, including some great ones on chocolate. Right now I probably have over 30 lbs of different kinds of chocolate in my house for cooking. One of the ones that I always keep on hand is molding chocolate. If you want an elegant, easy to prepare dessert which always gets rave reviews, I would recommend you make an investment in molding chocolate. It keeps for years in a cool, dark place, but once you use this to make some chocolate, dipped strawberries you'll always be asked to bring them so it may not last for long.
Chocolate-dipped Strawberries
Ingredients
Strawberries - buy no sooner than the day before you need them.
Chocolate
Bring the strawberries to room temperature
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Dip the strawberries in, leaving some red and the green stem visible.
Put the strawberries on parchment paper on cookie sheet. You can also use wax paper. Within 1-2 hours the chocolate will be dry.
Helpful hints:
1. Use organic strawberries. Then you don't have to wash them and wait for them to dry.
2. Only use unblemished strawberries. Otherwise, they will leak.
3. They need to be eaten soon after making.
4. You can use chocolate chips with some added solid vegetable fat (2 tsps per 8 ozs of chocolate). This will take longer to dry and doesn't look quite as elegant.
5. If you don't have a double-boiler, put some water in a pot, put another pot on top of it, making sure the water doesn't touch the bottom of the second pot. Voila, a double boiler.
6. If you are going to make a flat of these, get a bunch of kids to help. (My daughter and her friend, Mollie, were making these with me when they were 3!)
7. Sit back and wait for the compliments to pour in.

For full disclosure, much to my dismay, no one is paying me or sending me samples to review their products. One can only hope..........

Soup

It's raining in sunny, Southern California, and my thoughts turn to soup. Today is Wednesday, and as I look at the Food section in the LA Times, they have an article on soup! http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-anna14-2009oct14,0,4620809.story (I prefer the Food section to the Dining Section in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/pages/dining/index.html as it focuses on food with more recipes.)
After checking out the story, I've decided to stick with my chicken soup.
Italian Chicken Soup
The reason I call it Italian chicken soup is that the broth I make is not a chicken broth, per se, but actually what the Italians call a meat broth. I think it is more flavorful.
Ingredients:
1. 3-4 lbs chicken parts (the ones that are stuffed into a whole chicken) These include the heart, gizzard and neck which tend to have more flavor. When I make a whole chicken, I take the parts out and throw them in a plastic freezer bag so they are available at a later date. If you haven't done this, you can use a whole chicken and then it is part of the meal.
2. 2-4 lbs Beef soup bones (only get the ones that do not include the spinal cord. Prions are not destroyed by cooking)
3. 2 onions
4. The top of a bunch of celery (including the leaves)
5. 4-6 peeled carrots
6. 3 garlic gloves
7. 4 stalks parsley
8. 8 pepper corns (or pepper to taste)
9. Salt to taste (at least 1 tbsp, probably more)
10. Crust of parmesan cheese (if you have one)
Throw this all in a big pot, cover with water and cook 2-3 hours.
Drain the broth and then cook with vermicilli or broken up fideo until soft. (about 5-10 mins) Serve with parmesan cheese, after putting some of the chicken and carrots in the soup.
Buon Appetito.

Recipe Source

One of my favorite places to find new recipes is the health section of the New York Times website (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/index.html, scroll down to Recipes for Health). Every week there's a different "featured ingredient;" this week features pastas using the last of the summer produce. The recipes are simple, and there's something for everyone. I like them because they can get me to think about incorporating ingredients that I wouldn't normally consider into my diet. Sometimes, as in the case of swiss chard, I don't like the ingredient, but at least I tried something new.

Rachel's Introduction

I feel that if you love food, you should love all aspects, from the most refined food down to the "lowly" hot-dog. I don't think that enjoying good food means you have to be a snob about it, and so I plan to write about everything. I want to write about kitchen gadgets, recipes, stores, and even food-related tv shows. Additionally, I thought this blog would be something fun that I could do with my food-loving friends from Pomona, so hopefully they'll get on board with it!