Memories of sunshine - Strawberry Mojito Cookies

 

Every summer I think about the previous winter and its shivering and bundled layers and it seems like an odd novelty. Boots?  Hats and mittens?  Silliness.  And that's because I forget just how cold 20 degrees Fahrenheit can be... or 10... or zero.  From inside a sundress, it seems impossible to think of 2 pairs of socks.  But nonetheless here we are, peeking our heads out of our wool and triple-insulated down igloos at each other on the streets with watery, wind-struck eyes.  And now it seems impossible to think of seeing people with bare toes on the sidewalks.  The sign at the old diner boasting about "air conditioned" seating sounds odd, like maybe in 1956 they needed that sort of thing, but certainly not these days.  Buried under a crust of Chicago snow, summer seems like decades ago right now.

Which is why I needed to make these cookies.  Not simply because having an excuse to turn the oven on in my drafty kitchen, but because they're Mojito-inspired.  And Mojitos are the sort of thing you drink when you're outside in weather that doesn't require you have some purpose to be outside, other than to "enjoy" it. 

So to keep alive the notion of sunshine on bare skin, and kind breezes... even sunburns and humidity-frizz-hair, I had to make these.  To remind me that the boots will go back in the closet for the next half of the year, when I'll stumble across them while searching for a rogue sandal and they will seem alien to that version of me: a relic, and I'll marvel at how precious they seemed just a few months before.

Recipe: Goodbye Winter Strawberry Mojito Cookies

For the cookies...
1/2 pound unsalted butter (softened)
2 1/3 cups AP flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg (room-temperature is best)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Zest of 1 lime
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt

For the glaze...
1 pint fresh strawberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup white rum
1/2 cup water
Small handful fresh mint leaves, minced fine

What to do with it all...
Cookies: Beat together butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy.  Add all other ingredients except flour and beat until well combined.  Reduce mixer to low and add flour slowly until well combined.  Divide dough in half and wrap and put into fridge to chill for 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Remove one half and place on a well-floured rolling surface.  Roll out to 1/4 inch thickness.  Cut out cookies with about a 3-inch cutter (or use a tin can!) and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat 1 inch apart.  Bake on mid or upper rack for 6 - 8 minutes or until golden.  Repeat with second half of dough.  Set aside cookies to cool.

Glaze: In a medium saucepan, heat all ingredients except mint on medium, stirring occasionally until strawberries are soft and giving off color into liquid.  If there is too little liquid, just add a little more water.  Puree mixture with emulsion blender or standard blender and return to saucepan.  Simmer until thick.  Allow to cool slightly, then stir in your minced mint.  Add a tea spoon's worth of glaze to each cookie and spread until shiny and lovely.

Finish with powdered sugar if desired.

Hello Spring.  Oh how I missed you.

Midweek Meals: Healthy, Quick Mediterranean Vegetable Saute

Vegetables are amazing.  In looking up nutritional content for the ingredients for a midweek meal, I learned some very nifty things about what I was eating...

Eggplant - Is a fabulous "diet" veggie.  It's low in fat and calories, high in thyroid-supporting manganese and a good source of fiber.  Another interesting thing about eggplant?  It has more nicotine than any other edible plant!  Though you'd have to eat a bushel of eggplant before you reached the concentration of nicotine found in just one cigarette, so it's probably not the best idea to light one up, sorry.

Cauliflower - Considered a "nutritionally dense" food, cauliflower is a happy place to find vitamin C and a host of phytochemicals to fight cancer.  There are also studies that show it may work as a estrogen regulator (due to indole-3-carbinol) and glucosinolates that could help your liver detoxify.  Happy news for pub crawlers!

Chickpeas (garbanzos) - A nice low-fat source of protien and fiber.  Tossing a can of these precooked babies into your veggies gives your 29% of your protien in every serving.


Green (or French) beans - Great for your bones as they contain 25% of your vitamin K in each serving (helps fight osteoperosis), and a good amount of calcium.  Many sources believe that green food sources of calcium are betterfor the body then dairy sources, too, by the way!  I know my favorite clinical professor way back when I was in school as a bodywork therapist always paraded that theory.

In 2010 I'm making efforts to revive an old way of eating that worked really well for me, but I just got away from.  On the weekdays, I would focus on vegetarian and seafood meals only and enjoy meat only on the weekends.  I always felt like I had great energy when I followed this with care.  The problem came in when I was too busy to make proper meals and ended up eating potato chip dinners.  Bad, bad!  That's where having some nice pre-planned recipes that I love come in handy.  For me, it's motivational to know why the foods I'm preparing are good for me, too, so I've been doing my research!

Essentially, these recipes are going into a sort of food journal for me to improve my eating habits.  In doing so, I figured why not share them with all of you, too?  I'm planning to add some recipes that are based on fun healthy foods lists (if such a thing can be called fun?) such as the recent New York Times article on The 11 Best Foods You Aren't Eating (thanks to Cheryl for printing that out for me!).

So what do you think?  Would you like to see more recipes like this one?  What are some of your favorite healthy foods to include in weekday meals? 

Recipe: Healthy Quick Medditerrean Vegetable Sautè

What you need...

1 can chickpeas
3 cups chopped eggplant
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 pound whole fresh green beans
3 cups chopped cauliflower florets
2/3 cup chopped yellow onion
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon dry dill (or small bunch of chopped fresh)
1 tablespoon dry oregano (or small bunch chopped fresh)
1 tablespoon dry mint (or small bunch chopped fresh)
1 1/2 teaspoons allspice
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 lemon, juiced and zested
1 cup vegetable stock or water
Olive oil for sauteing
Salt and pepper to taste

What to do with it all...

• Heat (on medium) enough olive oil in a large heavy bottom sautè pan to coat it
• Add your onions and cauliflower florets and allow to sautè for 3 mins or until they get a fragrant
  
• Add eggplant, red pepper and green beans and cook for another 5 - 8 minutes on medium, stirring occassionally
• Add all the rest of your ingredients, toss/stir to combine and cook on medium-low until cauliflower is just fork tender (about 10 mins)
• Serve over rice!

4 Best Whimisical Hors d'oeuvres: Thai Pumpkin Wonton Cups

This is the last in the series of 4 hors d'oeuvres put together for the new decade.  This one may not have eyes, but I think it still qualifies as whimsical.  The colors are oh-so-pretty, and these are fairly simple to make ahead and reheat for guests just before spooning on the fresh onion salsa!

What you need...

For the filling
1 can pumpkin puree
1 cup coconut milk
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar

For the salsa topping
1/2 medium red onion, sliced thinly
1 bunch cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
5 red chilies
1 lime, juiced and zested
Salt and pepper to taste

For the cups
1 package round wonton or dumpling wrappers
Sesame oil for brushing

Special equipment: pastry brush, mini cupcake tin

What to do with it all...
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees
 
Combine your salsa ingredients and set aside 

Brush one side of each wonton wrapper, and then place into a mini cupcake well, oiled side down

Combine all of your filling ingredients and spoon into each wonton (enough to reach the brim of the pan)

Bake for approx 15 mins or until wontons are golden

Remove from oven and spoon a little salsa into each cup

Done!

Thanks for following the whimsical hors d'oeuvres series.  Here's a look at the previous 3!

Olive penguins and mozzarella snowmen

Tomato bisque shots and mini grilled cheese

Olive oil blinis and fried quail eggs (mini pancakes and eggs)

Goes together like Peas + Carrots

I always remembered that line in Forrest Gump.  It stuck in my head without a place to use it from 1994 until recently.  Now I use it when referring to my boyfriend Jason and me (cause we do go together awfully well).  And that, naturally, led me to me to name a blog in honor of us and our corresponding love of food. 

It's named this, too, not just because of the quote, but because of Good Housekeeping magazines from the 1950s.  Leaf thru just one issue and you will see what I mean.  Pages of recipes so hideously inedible looking that it's downright good entertainment and impossible not to be utterly fascinating.  Jellied ham and tuna molds, Vienna sausages in blankets and, of course, the ubiquitous frozen pea and carrot side dishes looking gray and dejected playing the support role to equally blanched-pale haunches of meat. All decorated with garish pimento pinwheels or radish rosettes... which is like putting makeup on a pig and just as perplexing.
It would seem the reason for the all this had something to do with World War II ending. Suddenly rationing was over so meat, eggs and dairy abounded.  A flurry of technological advances had also brought frozen convenience goods into the everyday life.  So here's the 1950's housewife, hypnotized by the bright electric hum of the freezer aisles and glossy rows of packaged butt roasts sunning themselves under the florescents in the newly born Supermarket.  After years of shelling beans and eating boiled potatoes this will apparently make you go wild with food lust and begin constructing hideously mad dishes like Spam 'n' Limas. 

From this....

To this....?

While I'm glad we've since removed the deviled eggs from our eyes as far as food sense, I do sometimes oddly long for the nostalgia of a time I didn't live in.  A time when I could deliver a tower of meat and vegetables encased in gelatin to a dinner table with a straight face.  A proud face, even.  And while I suppress the urge to make some of these unsavory dishes, I am left with the desire to "improve" upon some of the original favorites out of an odd respect to keep them alive.  Dishes that might seem silly now, but were born out of a certain kind of hopeful nation on the other side of WWII.  After all, it was what people ate as they returned from war to the dinner tables, and they were the first meals of the most influential generation of our time: the Baby Boomers.

So why not have peas and carrots?  After, they really do go together so nicely... this version joins the 21st century with the addition of fresh mint, garam masala and orange zest.  By the way, if you don't have a microplane grater, I highly recommend investing in one.  They're not only practical and inexpensive, they're actually rather fun and I find myself creating excuses to "zest" things all the time... which leads to a refrigerator full of bald, slightly embarrassed-looking citrus fruit but some very tasty food.  Go buy now!

Recipe: Peas ♥ Carrots

What to get

8 ounces of fresh or frozen peas (if frozen, keep them this way until they hit the pan)

4 medium-sized diced carrots

1 julienne cut shallot

Small handful of fresh mint leaves - chiffonade

2 diced strips of bacon

Zest of half an orange

A few dashes of garam masala

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

What to do with it all

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat for a few seconds before adding the diced bacon (I actually like to use kitchen shears for this and cut directly over the pan).  Fry bacon until crisp and then remove.  Add carrots to the bacon drippings and sauté for 7 minutes then reduce to low and add shallots with a sprinkling of salt.  Salt removes moisture from vegetables so it's good here because you want to soften the shallots, not sauté them which would add some bitterness in this case.  After about 5 minutes the shallots will be translucent and carrots will have given up some tasty juices.  Turn the heat back to medium and add the rest of the ingredients and return the bacon. Sauté until the peas are cooked but not soggy (about 5 mins). 

Substitutions:

Fresh mint - Fresh tarragon or dry dill.  Dry mint is a no-no as it doesn't retain a fresh taste very well.

Shallot - 1/2 yellow or sweet onion

Bacon - Butter & shaved Parmesan or coconut oil & soy parm (vegans)

Orange zest - a splash of orange juice

Garam masala - ground allspice and cinnamon

Makes 1 to 4 servings depending on your appetite...for me this is one serving...