Veggie Clean Up Quinoa

With most pasta and couscous off limits, the “starch” role in my life has been pretty vacant until now. This quinoa is tart but savory and you’ll want to eat it by the tub full. The best part is that you can work with whatever’s in your veggie bin.

1 cup gluten-free quinoa (I love the TJ’s brand)

2 cups vegetable stock

2 cups of diced veggies (I used a half cup of cauliflower, 1 carrot, 1 celery rib, ¼ of a medium red onion, 2 garlic cloves, and some parsley)

White cooking wine

Salt and pepper flake

Extra virgin coconut oil

Bring vegetable stock and quinoa to a boil in together in a quart-sized pan then reduce to low heat and simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes or until the grain looks translucent. In a large skillet, soften veggies. (I softened in the same as I cooked the chicken. If you’re doing this, loosen up those tasty marinade bits with just enough cooking wine to coat the pan.) Salt and pepper to taste. Once quinoa is cooked add the grain to the large pan with veggies and incorporate. Turn off the heat and snip parsley with a pair of scissors over the top of the quinoa. Stir in and serve. 

The Unbeatable Chicken Salad

Back when I was a waitress at a family Italian restaurant I was constantly bombarded by misordered pizzas and hot bread sticks. I’m not going to lie, there are few things better in life than garlic butter smothered pizza dough fresh from the oven. They’re hard to turn down especially when they’re free. But they’re hard on the figure and it’s a bit difficult to welcome in new customers when you have vampire breath.

Let’s face it. Breadsticks have their limits. And while they can be phenomenal at the right time, when eaten in large quantities, they lose their buttery appeal. This is where I learned to appreciate chicken salad.

I remember a solid week when I had chicken salad every day for my lunch break at Taste of Tuscany and I’ll let you in on a secret, I never got tired of it even once. A good chicken salad is geyser in the desert. A plate of cold crisp mesclun leaves topped with a warm, but perfectly cooked chicken breast. A blanket of Italian dressing wraps in the salty, yet vinegary toppings. It’s always a good idea and it’s always refreshing. Truly there is nothing better.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been craving pizza (and all things carb-loaded, for that matter) and I’ve had a lot of moments of weakness. However crafting this chicken salad brought me back to the good Elimination Diet life. Summoning inspiration from one of my favorite people, I chose to adapt a recipe that he published in the April issue of Bon Appétit Magazine. I opted to subout tuna for free-range chicken because it’s a little sturdier. I also amped up with amount of greens and the zing in the dressing so it felt more like a salad as opposed to an antipasto. In the future I would double the vinaigrette recipe so I could have it on hand all the time.

 White Bean Chicken Salad with Parsley Vinaigrette adapted from the April 2012 issue of Bon Appétit

2 cups (packed) flat-leaf parsley (leaves and stems)
¼ cup olive oil
2 lemons, juiced (reserved the zest of one)
1 tablespoon water
3 garlic cloves, crushed
Kosher salt and red pepper flake

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 15-ounce can cannellini (white kidney) beans, rinsed, drained
3 celery stalks, sliced on an a diagonal
1 medium head of radicchio, torn up
1 bag of mesclun mix
Extra virgin coconut oil

Combine parsley, oil, lemon juice (only 1 ½ lemons), water, and garlic in a food processor until well incorporated. It should look like a thick puree. Salt and pepper to taste.

Place 1/3 of the vinaigrette in a container or plastic bag with two boneless skinless chicken breasts. Add the juice of the remaining lemon half and the zest. Shake and let marinate for two hours.

Place 1/3 of the vinaigrette in container or plastic bag with beans and sliced celery. Let marinate for two hours.

Tear up radicchio and mix in with the mesclun mix. Set aside. Heat a large skillet and coat with coconut oil. Add chicken and the marinade to the hot pan. Cook on high for one minute. Flip over and cook covered on low for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and allow at least five minutes to rest.

Serve with a generous helping of bean mixture and chicken on top of the mesclun mix. Drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette.

I served with a little quinoa on the side. Recipe to follow.

Kale and Sausage Pasta

Kale is definitely one of those trendy vegetables of the moment. I’ve seen this sturdy green stuff in smoothies, on top of macaroni and cheese, and dehydrated into chips, but I’d never given it any thought until my intern friend Peggy told me she makes a kale smoothie every morning for breakfast. Now Peggy’s a pretty sensible girl. She eats well, but she doesn’t follow all those crazy health kicks. She makes cookies with Rice Krispies and rolls drumsticks in evaporated milk and corn flakes. So what I’m getting at is we are cut from the same cookie dough and I trust her food sense.

Kale is super good for you. Think of the structure of this plant and you get a pretty good idea of what it can do for your body. Kale has big, thick ribs like a collard green and its leaves are curly and sturdy. Similarly, it helps promote strong bones and eyes. Because it’s a cousin to the cabbage, it’s a good source of folate, which often gets depleted from our RA medications. It’s also packed with antioxidants, which reduce inflammation. While it’s resilient to most cooking processes, you can best access it’s nutrients in raw form. Heating doesn’t render it useless, but some of its nutrients like vitamin C and the B-complex are water-soluable and can be lessen in cooked form (borrowed from Livestrong. So to get the most out of your kale, eat it as raw as you can take it.

Peggy is crazy about kale, so I thought I would give it a try. After seeing a recipe for kale smoothies in Bon Appétit, I picked up a big bag at Trader Joe’s. I was little disappointed by the result. Granted I put this all together in my mini Cuisinart food processor, but the kale didn’t break down as much as I had hoped. While it was liquidy, I felt compelled to chew it. It was good though. There is plenty of kale left and I am committed to perfecting my kale smoothie technique. (More on that for another post.)

Which brings me to this post. My tasty smoothie used a mere two cups of my kale and I have practically a pillow’s worth remaining. I’ve been craving pasta like no other so I thought I would find some kind of pasta-kale concoction for my dinner tonight. Here is what I found and here’s how I adapted it for the elimination diet.

Kale and Sausage Pasta adapted from Oranges and Avocados



½ red onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 carrot, chopped
Extra virgin coconut oil
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt, ground black pepper, red pepper flake
2 links of fresh Italian sausage, casing removed
3 large handfuls of kale
¼ cups white cooking wine
½ cup vegetable stock
12 oz. of Brown Rice Fusilli Pasta (I used Trader Joe’s)

Sweat the onions, garlic, and carrots in a large pan with salt and pepper and a little coconut oil. When the onions look translucent, crumble the fresh sausage into small chunks with your fingers and add to the pan for browning. Fill a one-quart pan with salted water (for pasta) and bring to boil. After about five minutes, or when the sausage looks golden brown, add cooking wine to the pan and pile the kale on top. Add salt, pepper flake, and vegetable stock and cover. Add pasta to the boiling water and cook for the recommended time or until the noodles have a little bit of a bite to them. Reserve a little pasta water. Stir up the kale in the other pan until it looks wilted but not mushy. Once the pasta is cooked, incorporate the noodles and the pasta water into the sausage and kale mixture and cover with the juices. Serve with more red pepper flake and dried basil.

Normally I would cover this sort of dish in grated parmesan cheese, but this dish has so much wonderful texture from the kale that I didn’t miss it. Also in mine I used a combination of sweet and hot sausage so there would be a little additional flavor. This was my first time using a brown rice pasta, and it didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t gummy and it held together really well even after being squished around with the other ingredients. If you’re worried about sticking, add a little olive oil and toss it around after you strain the pasta.

Interesting Read

Deepest apologies for my massive hiatus. Midterms and my week trip back home still have me barely staying above water. Full disclosure, I haven't been eating well and I've been pretty stressed out so my RA is mighty crazy right now. Though I feel terrible all the time, it's been an interesting learning experience to see what makes me feel better fast. I'm doing a bit of a cleanse this week and some reading which will no doubt lead to some interesting stories and recipes to share soon. I promise new stuff will be up the next week.

While you chew the time over, I found this really fun article in the April issue of Bon Appetit this morning. According to the article, New York chef Seamus Mullen has rheumatoid arthritis and he's quite fond of using parsley to help soothe his aches and pains. His new cookbook Hero Food seems to fit pretty well with our mission here at RA Eats — tasty food that makes us feel better. I can't wait to get my hands on those recipes and start trying them out.

Tuesday Night Dinners

During the week my food schedule gets a little crazy. I’m a full time student and I intern 16 hours a week, which means I pick classes that are long, meet once a week (if I’m lucky), and interfere with my work schedule as little as possible. That leaves me with a lot of seminar classes at night, which range from three to four hours apiece. By the time I get home (at either 9 or 10:15 p.m.) I want to watch Downton Abbey and fall asleep. Cooking is the last thing on my mind.

By some stroke of luck, on Tuesday I have just one hour-and-fifteen minute class in the middle of the day. No late classes. No internship. I like to think of it as my food day. During my class (titled “Food and Identity” coincidently) I think of what I want to cook that night for my boyfriend and I, and immediately following class I hit the grocery store. (If I get in at TJ’s at two, I can get out in a half hour.) I use this time to make things I won’t normally think of during the week. Roast chickens, briskets, desserts. Things that take time and should be enjoyed.

My boyfriend and I started doing these dinners in September as a way to see one another during the week. He used to go to work at 7 pm and we both had some extra time after class. It began with simple stuff (pasta and rice dishes), but as I found more time and my curiosity for food grew, our meals got more elaborate. It’s super domestic, I know, but it’s the only real opportunity I have to make a meal or follow a recipe. When I’m making dinner for one, I’ll brown up a chicken breast or put together a salad. Not necessarily the stuff you salivate over. But these Tuesday dinners let me try recipes that I oogle over in magazines or cookbooks. Add some diversity into my diet. And, let’s be honest, making pretty food is fun.

This week our Tuesday night dinner got moved to the streets. Didrik asked if I wanted to go to a last minute play at his old acting studio and eagerly accepted. (I love those things!) My dinner plans for the evening seemed pretty portable so I packed it up in my favorite Rubbermaids and we ate in the Madison Square Park (under the Shack Shack heating lamps) after the show. As promised, I’ve tackled cabbage.

Sauteed Cod on Snow Peas and Cabbage with Miso Sesame Vinaigrette adapted from the July 2002 issue of Gourmet



For vinaigrette
2 tablespoons white vinegar
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons miso paste
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons grated ginger
2 tablespoons sesame oil
4 teaspoons sesame seeds

For cabbage
2 tablespoons extra virgin coconut oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped (or garlic paste if you have it)
12 oz. (or ¾ of a bag) coleslaw mix (I used cabbage and carrot)
1/4 lb snow peas, very thinly sliced lengthwise
2 tablespoons sesame oil

For fish
2 tablespoons extra virgin coconut oil
4 (5-oz) pieces cod fillet (3/4 to 1 inch thick)

Preparation
Grate a large lump of fresh ginger on a microplane. Place in a small bowl or glass measuring cup and add miso paste, sugar, and sesame seeds. Mix with a fork until well incorporated. Then add vinegar, water, and sesame oil. Mix until smooth.

In a large pan heat coconut oil over moderately high heat. Add garlic, then throw coleslaw mix and snow peas on top. Add cabbages and snow peas and a little salt. Sauté until cabbages are a little brown on the edges. While the cabbage is cooking, heat coconut oil in a large pan, then cook the cod. (About 4 minutes on the first side and 2 minutes on the other side). Add a little salt, pepper, and pepper flake. The fish should be a flaky and a little golden brown when it’s done.

I plated the cabbage on a bed of short grain brown rice and placed the fish on top with a little dressing. Didrik end up mixing it all together with some extra sauce, sort of like a fried rice. The flavors really mix well together.

Apple Crisp with Quinoa

Day one of the Elimination Diet. This morning was rough. I haven’t swapped out my bread yet, so I didn’t make my useful boiled egg, toast, and arugula (more on that later). I took a tip from one of my bosses and made a yummy quinoa, steel cut oat cereal this morning instead. Soupy oatmeal is my favorite, so I prepared mine with a good helping of soy milk and honey. I made a huge pot, which means I’ll have lots more for the week.

My boyfriend (being a dear) invited me over for dinner. We have an unspoken argeement that whoever doesn’t cook dinner brings over dessert and washes dishes. Because he had taken on the main dish for the evening, that left me with the sweet stuff. In the past, we’d done baked goods. Cupcakes, mini cheesecakes, pies. Basically all things that were now off limits. As I said earlier post, I’m not about crazy substitutes. I really don’t want to drop a ton of money on ingredients that will probably go bad before I can ever use them all.

Using what I had on hand, I tweaked this tasty recipe from Harris Whole Health. Instead of the grain flours, I used some of my oatmeal combo from this morning. The cooked grains mixed with the brown sugar were just as crunchy as a flour crumble but way more earthy. It was so good, that when my boyfriend’s roommates came home and finished up the leftovers straight out of the pan.



Apple Crisp adapted from Harris Whole Health

Topping:
1 cup cooked steel cut oats
½ cup cooked quinoa
½ cup chopped nuts (I used slivered almonds and pecans)
1/2 tsp salt
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup walnut oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
dash of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg

Extra brown sugar and cinnamon for very top

Filling:
4 large Granny Smith apples
1 cup (8 oz.) frozen berry medley (I like Trader Joe's Very Cherry Berry Blend)
½ cup sugar
zest of a lemon
1 ½ tablespoons corn starch
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 8X8 pan with oil.
Peel and core apples. Cut into thick slices. Mix all filling ingredients together and add to pan. In another bowl, combine the topping ingredients and sprinkle over the fruit. Bake for 20 minutes until bubbling. Switch to broil and cook for another another 15 minutes until golden brown.

*** Next time I’ll make this with a big scoop of good soy or coconut ice cream.

Conquering Cabbage

My first order of business is to find a cabbage that I deem edible. My earliest memories of cabbage involve my mother serving it on St. Patrick’s Day (every year growing up) along side corned beef and boiled potatoes. It wasn’t a terrible dish, just really blah. My second cabbage memory is really bad coleslaw that came with my tuna sandwich at a cheap diner in Oregon. I remember it vividly. Vinegary and mayonaisey. Not my favorite flavors.

My naturopath said cabbage is really good for supporting liver health. Cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, brussel sprouts, and dark leafy greens are packed with folate (which my medicine depletes), Vitamin C, and phytochemicals (which help fight disease and support healthy immune function).

I look forward to making this recipe: Sauteed Cod on Snow Peas and Cabbage with Miso Sesame Vinaigrette from the July 2002 issue of Gourmet. I crave miso soup all the time and I'm betting it will be a deliciously salty spin on the cabbage. Also, the cod will have some omega-3s, which the body primarily gets from seafood. This is be an excellent dinner for a post-President's Day travels. Mmmm I can hardly wait.