All Those Apples!

It's fall! You know what that means - Apples!

Apple pie, apple cider, apple donuts and apple fritters, apple cake...I sense a theme here.

I'm the first to admit that the first slice of apple pie made with freshly picked apples or warm, fresh-pressed cider on a cold day cannot be beat. Unfortunately, we can't - or more likely, shouldn't - live on sugary apple treats alone.

After pecks of apples have been picked, and baked and pressed, what can you make that's a bit more health-conscious? Beside the obvious - eating the apple as nature intended - here's a recipe that fits the bill and celebrates all things fall. Make as is for a delicious side dish or try one of the alternatives below to make it a meal.

See the Knife Skills Series - #2 Apples video to learn some techniques for using apples and to see how I chopped the apple for this recipe.

Knife Skills Series - #2 Apples

Fall Quinoa Apple Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Quinoa:
1-1/2 cups quinoa, uncooked

2-1/2 cups water

Lemon Vinaigrette:
2 medium lemons
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Other salad ingredients:
1 Granny Smith Apple, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (do not peel)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup roasted walnuts, chopped
(see Fig post to learn how to roast nuts)
3/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley (about 1/2 bunch)
1/4 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:
1. Bring water to boil in covered pot.

2. Meanwhile, rinse quinoa thoroughly with water by placing in a bowl of water, swishing around and draining with a strainer. Repeat the rinsing process. Shake as much of the water out of the quinoa (now in the strainer) on the final rinse.

3. Stir quinoa into boiling water and turn temperature down to medium-low. Cover pot again. Set timer for 12 minutes. Quinoa is done when the grain is nearly translucent or only a tiny white dot remains in the center.

4. Remove from heat and transfer quinoa to a medium-large mixing bowl. Let sit out until nearly room temperature or speed up cooling by placing the mixing bowl into the freezer. Stir occasionally until it reaches nearly room temperature (~15 minutes).

5. While quinoa is cooling, prepare remainder of the ingredients. Zest one of the lemons using either method shown below.

6. Then juice the lemons over the chopped apples in a small bowl. Do this over a strainer to catch seeds. Toss apples to coat with juice to prevent browning.

7. Holding apples back with your hand, drain lemon juice into a small jar or whatever container you plan to make vinaigrette in. I use a small canning jar so that I can shake the dressing to mix the oil and lemon juice before serving.

Lemon Vinaigrette - made in a canning jar.

8. Vinaigrette: To the lemon juice (about 1/4 cup), add olive oil, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Close lid tightly and shake to combine well immediately before each use. Alternatively, you can stir with a spoon but this doesn't work quite as well.

9. Add apples, walnuts, cranberries, parsley, lemon zest and 1/4 teaspoon salt to the mixing bowl of quinoa. After shaking vinaigrette to combine, measure out 1/4 cup of the dressing and drizzle over the quinoa mixture. Season with more pepper, if desired.  Stir to combine all ingredients.

Serves 6

Finished Fall Quinoa Apple Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Finished Fall Quinoa Apple Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

Alternatives:
1. Make it a meal! Slice and cook vegetarian chicken breast substitute or 2-3 small-medium chicken breasts (see picture) and stir into quinoa salad. Use the extra lemon vinaigrette to dress salad greens. Serve quinoa salad over the salad greens.

I used 3 Gardein (vegetarian) "chicken" breasts in this picture:

Making it a Meal - add vegetarian or regular chicken breast, cutting into strips and browned.

Fall Quinoa Apple Salad with Gardein "Chicken"

Fall Quinoa Apple Salad with Gardein "Chicken" and Salad Greens tossed in remaining Lemon Vinaigrette

2. Substitute almonds, pistachios, cashews or pinenuts for walnuts.

3. Add other fall fruit like pomegranate arils or figs.  You can also substitute pears or another other crisp apple for the Granny Smith apples.

4. Make just the vinaigrette for use on any salad, or marinade for vegetables, fish or chicken.



Zesting Lemons 2 Ways

1. With a knife.

Take a paring knife and peel off only the outer, bright yellow, portion of the peel of a lemon (or any citrus fruit). Once you've peeled the lemon, then use a chef's knife to either chop very finely or slice into paper-thin strips.

2. With a microplane.

The tool in this picture looks like a wood rasp with a handle - that's because it is. In the cooking world, this is called a microplane. To get the fine zest pictured at 6 o'clock here, hold the lemon in one hand, microplane in the other, and either grate the microplane on the lemon or vise versa. This will remove only the very outer, flavorful portion of the lemon peel without any of the bitter, with pith.

Knife Skills Series - #2 Apples

Purely for ease of finding, here is the video for:

 Knife Skills Series - #2 Apples.

This video shows how to peel, core, slice, and dice apples.

For full post, check out All Those Apples! which contains a recipe for Fall Quinoa Apple Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette.

Knife Skills Series - #1 Bell Peppers

Just can't get enough of chefs chopping at lightening speed on TV? Time for you to take a stab at it!

Unless you dedicate hours a day (for years) to chopping, you probably won't match the speed of the TV chefs, but you can drastically improve the safety of chopping at home and speed up your dinner preparation. Just make sure to start with a sharp knife!

In the Knife Skills series of videos, I'll walk you through how to slice, dice and chop a variety of types of produce. Along the way, I'll throw in tricks of the trade that make it possible for chefs to chop the way they do. Throughout, I'll go slowly so that you can see what is happening. To get faster, just practice, practice, practice. That's it!

We'll start with bell peppers. Why? Because that's what I was chopping for breakfast at a time when I had a willing videographer. It's all in continuing with the spirit of fitting healthy things into your day where you can. Anything that takes a lot of planning is unlikely to happen in most kitchens, right?

Knife Skills - Chopping Bell Peppers

The techniques in this video work for all bell peppers, banana peppers, gypsy peppers, California peppers, poblano pepper or any large, relatively rounded pepper that is MILD. For tips on dealing with smaller, SPICIER peppers, check out the video Jalapeño - How to remove seeds and finely chop at the end of the post Summer - The season for salsa .


Finally, no post would be complete without some nutrition facts!

Did you know that 1 serving of red bell pepper (1 cup chopped) has all of the vitamin A you need in a day, 300% of the vitamin C, 3g of fiber, 10% of your daily potassium needs, vitamin B6, folate and a smattering of minerals - all with 0 fat and only 40 calories?! Bonus - plant foods have no cholesterol and negligible sodium.

Photo credit: http://marycrimmins.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/bell-peppers.jpg

Figs - they're not just for Newtons anymore

First thing, first - what are these? 

If you said "figs" then you're foodier than most - or you grew up somewhere very different than me! We just moved, and my husband's reaction when I told him we have a fig tree in the yard pretty much sums up what I thought about figs most of my life. "Oh, can we make Newton's out of them?" I went into a spiel about the blasphemy of this for awhile - before remembering my roots. I decided it made more sense to show than tell. Mission: win him over from the Newton category with lots of homemade figgy goodness. 

There was roasted fig salad with balsamic vinaigrette, pickled red onions and spring greens, then fresh fig ice cream with cinnamon roasted almonds and fig-maple syrup swirls, but our hands' down favorite was the whole wheat focaccia with grilled shallots, roasted walnuts and fresh rosemary. See below for pictures and step-by-step instructions for making your own! Warning - share or you WILL over-eat! This is one of the best things I've tasted in a long time.

Whole Wheat Fig Focaccia with Grilled Shallots, Roasted Walnuts and Fresh Rosemary

While figs are delicious roasted, baked, dried and stewed into lots of things, it's a one-of-a-kind experience to eat fresh figs right off the tree. The time for eating them fresh is very short, so you have to know what to look for if you're buying them at a grocery store or picking them. A quick, informal poll of people I spoke with over the past few days showed that no one knows when a fig is ready to eat. Here's an explanation in pictures:

1. Is it a fig tree? This one's simple - look for these distinctive leaves (think: the first "clothes" Adam & Eve wore). Hopefully, yours won't have a photobombing dog in the background...

2. These are the least ripe figs, just as the fruit appears on the tree.

3. Just starting to get a bit of color. Nowhere close to ripe. Of course, these are black mission figs which are purple when ripe. Other types of figs are light green, brown or red when ripe (tricky, I know). Here's where looking at the stem comes in handy. Here, the stem of the unripe fig is holding the fruit nearly straight out from the branch.

4. Lots more color, but the fruit is still sticking nearly straight out from the branch.

5. Here we have it! Ripe fig! See how it now appears heavy and looks like it's drooping from the stem. This works whether your fig is purple or green when ripe. It helps to try pressing gently on the figs with your thumb and forefinger at different stages of ripeness. You'll quickly be able to tell that the unripe figs are firmer than the ripe ones.

6. This one is getting a bit past ripe and will rot soon.  It's just about to fall off the tree. 

A secret to picking the PERFECT fig to eat right now is to look at the bottom (opposite the stem end). This one is just ripe but in a day will look like the one below - so sweet that a sappy juice is literally dripping from it. If you'r purchasing from the grocery store, look for ones like the one above that have a bit of give when pressed between thumb and forefinger but are not, soft, mushy or moldy. The following day or two, they'll likely to get a bit sappy like the one below. If this happens, they must be eaten that day. Sometimes they only get the slightest bit sappy, but they're just as good! If you have a very warm kitchen, store them in a single layer in the crisper drawer on a towel or in an egg carton. I store them at room temperature (about 70 degrees) and eat within 1-2 days. What if you accidentally get underripe figs? Unless they're on the cusp of full ripeness, they don't ripen well once picked. That's OK - just cook them via grilling, caramelizing, making syrup or jam out of them and they'll still be delicious!

Eat RIGHT NOW - it will not last until tomorrow. (Again, photobombed...)

Examples of other types of ripe figs. Over 750 types grow in the Middle East and Mediterranean were figs originated!  The method described in the post for picking ripe figs works for all figs, with the exception of looking at the color.

Photo credit:  www.bridgepugliausa.it

Whole Wheat Fig Focaccia with Grilled Shallots, Roasted Walnuts and Fresh Rosemary

Ingredients:

1 ball whole wheat pizza dough

Extra-virgin olive oil, roughly 1/4 cup

3 medium shallots (or 1 small red onion), sliced into 1/4-inch rounds

1/3 cup walnuts, roasted and chopped roughly

1 Tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

10 ripe figs, sliced in half

Salt 

Coarsely ground black pepper

Balsamic vinegar, optional

Directions:

1. Roast the walnuts. This step can be done anytime up to a few days before. I generally roast extra and use them in different dishes or freeze them for use later. Preheat oven to 350F. Spread raw walnuts out on a sheet pan in a single layer. Place in oven for 10 minutes. Test for doneness by picking up a handful in your closed fist and seeing if they continue to heat up quickly, causing you to need to put them back down on the pan. If yes, they're done. If not, return them to the over at 3 minute intervals, testing until done. They're also best if the color deepens a shade but does not get dark brown or black.

Testing walnuts to see if they're finished roasting

2. Remove dough from refrigerator. Remove from package, place into a mixing bowl and coat with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a towel and let rest at room temperature for 1-2 hours. 

3. Preheat oven to 425F.

4. Grill or roast the shallots (or red onions). 

These are shallots.

Shallots - ends cut off and then peeled. Do the same if using a red onion. Then, slice into 1/4-inch thick rounds.

Add 1 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Toss to coat well with the oil.

Lay shallots out in a single layer on a preheated grill. You can use electric, cast iron, outdoor grill - whatever you want. Alternatively, you can just lay them on a sheet pan and roast at 450F for 15-25min, turning over after 10 minutes. 

Make sure to turn over once the first side starts to brown or get grill marks. Whether cooking by grill or a sheet pan in the oven, make sure the shallots get a bit browned or blacked to bring out their sweetness. Remove from grill and set off to the side while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

5. Chop walnuts and rosemary roughly. Slice figs in half the long way.

Clockwise from left, bottom corner: chopped walnuts, sliced figs, chopped rosemary.

6. Coat a 13x9" pan, 1/4 sheet pan or 1/2 sheet pan generously with olive oil. Rub a bit of olive oil on your hands and then remove dough from bowl. Make two fists and lay the dough on top of them. Use your fists to gently stretch out the dough to the size of a 13x9" pan (also known as a 1/4 sheet pan). The pictures below show the dough on a larger, 1/2 sheet, pan because that's what I have in my kitchen. Improvise when you need to! If you're scared of stretching the dough with your hands, put it on a larger sheet pan with low sides (like the one in the pictures below) and roll out with a rolling pin. If the dough keeps trying to snap back to it's original shape, it just needs to rest a bit longer. Cover in the bowl again and return for another attempt in 10 minutes.

7. Lay the shallots on the dough, then top with figs, cut-sides-up. Sprinkle with nuts, rosemary, salt and pepper.

Focaccia topped with all ingredients, ready for the oven.

Gratuitous close up of focaccia ready for the oven.

8. Bake at 425F for 20 minutes or until dough is golden and figs are starting to bubble and drip their juices.

Finished! 

9. Slice and serve as is or drizzle with a bit of balsamic vinegar (highly recommended).

Caught fig fever? If you want to grow your own, they are super hardy and easy to grow in zones 8-10 and, if potted, can be grown in zone 7. See the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map to see what zone you're in. If you live in one of these areas, you can grow fig trees from a cutting of another fig tree. Just cut off branches or small shoots from near the base, plant in dirt and keep watered. The new, small shoots are more likely to take, but even from branches, about 1-2 out of 10 will take - then, they're hard to kill.

Check out the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map link for bigger image

Summer Produce Picks

People often ask what the next superfood will be. As sexy as exotic superfoods from far-off lands are, I think it's important to appreciate the nutritional powerhouses literally overflowing farmer's market and grocery store shelves this time of year. These plentiful foods are also freshest - and cheapest - right now!

Wild blackberries

Heidi Godman, writer for Harvard Health Letter recently interviewed me to get some healthful - and common - summer produce picks. She writes about them in "Must-haves from the produce aisle." Check it out!

photo credit: oliveloafdesign.wordpress.com

Is fresh or frozen produce better for you?

I was recently interviewed by Harvard Men's Health Watch about the health benefits and pitfalls of fresh and frozen produce.

VS.

So which is healthier, you ask?

Read "Fresh or frozen produce? The health benefit is in the mix" to find out!

Photo credits top to bottom: bostonmagazine.com, zazenlife.com, scrubbing.in, nutribulletblog.com.

Changes, Changes

I've gotten a few notes asking when I'll be posting again. Don't worry, the posts are coming - and so are a few changes!

photo credit: www.spydertrap.com

The reasons for the posting hiatus are numerous life changes - getting married, moving across country, changing jobs, studying for the internal medicine board exam and finishing residency! 

Even though residency has finished, the website will retain it's name. Hey, it's catchy (read: I don't have any better ideas), what can I say? 

There are two big changes that will hopefully be rolled out in September and October. 

1) Weekly or biweekly posts

2) Videos will return - now, hopefully, with editing!

Until then, keep an eye out for a couple of posts from past interviews that are going to print over the summer.

Cheers,

Chef Michelle, MD