Yes, you can have your beans and chocolate, too!

One of the guys I work for is a professor in integrative medicine here at the U of A, and naturally he's into healthy eating, so for his birthday he requested I bake him something with agave nectar. Agave isn't just for mezcal and tequila anymore. It's a trendy natural sweetener that tastes lighter and sweeter than honey, and unlike white sugar, it's not refined. But remember, to the body, sugar is sugar - it all breaks down to glucose in the end. Agave nectar and honey do not equate diet food!

Anyhow, Heidi Swanson from 101 Cookbooks always features baking recipes that rely less on refined flours and sugars, so I turned to her blog to find a tasty birthday treat. What piqued my interest? Of course, the black bean brownies!

These brownies are pretty awesome. They feature no flour at all, relying on 2 cups of black beans to build the base of the brownies. I'd made cookies before that included white bean puree, but that was in addition to flour, not replacing it. So these brownies are suitable for someone with a gluten intolerance.

The sweetener comes from agave nectar. The recipe calls for unsweetened chocolate, but I only had bittersweet, so I cut the sugar back to 1/3 of the original recipe. It was probably too much, but I love black beans and didn't mind if they got to *shine* a little more.

There are still four eggs and two sticks of butter in this recipe - so they are by no means low fat - but at least the fat and sugar are tempered by the fiber from the beans.

Another note: I used instant espresso flour instead of instant coffee, which is stronger, so the coffee flavor was a little overwhelming at first, but by the third or fourth bite I didn't mind... These brownies are more like fudge or a flourless chocolate cake in consistenty, but quite delicious!! You should try them.

Amazing Black Bean Brownies (reprinted from Baking With Agave Nectar by Ania Catalano)

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups soft-cooked black beans, drained well (hs: canned is fine)
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¼ cup (granulated) natural coffee substitute (or instant coffee, for gluten-sensitive)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
4 large eggs
1½ cups light agave nectar

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line an 11- by 18-inch (rimmed) baking pan with parchment paper and lightly oil with canola oil spray.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes on high. Stir with a spoon to melt the chocolate completely. Place the beans, 1/2 cup of the walnuts, the vanilla extract, and a couple of spoonfuls of the melted chocolate mixture into the bowl of a food processor. Blend about 2 minutes, or until smooth. The batter should be thick and the beans smooth. Set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the remaining 1/2 cup walnuts, remaining melted chocolate mixture, coffee substitute, and salt. Mix well and set aside.

In a separate bowl, with an electric mixer beat the eggs until light and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the agave nectar and beat well. Set aside.

Add the bean/chocolate mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture. Stir until blended well.

Add the egg mixture, reserving about 1/2 cup. Mix well. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1/2 cup egg mixture until light and fluffy. Drizzle over the brownie batter. Use a wooden toothpick to pull the egg mixture through the batter, creating a marbled effect. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the brownies are set. Let cool in the pan completely before cutting into squares. (They will be soft until refrigerated.)

Makes 45 (2-inch) brownies.

Farmer's Market Finds

You can tell the seasons are changing when you get your first watermelon at the market! New on the scene is summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and melons. Yum!

Pizza and Purslane

This spring (now summer) has been quite the whirlwind! I have been cooking, but have all but abandoned recipes for the most part. Lately our dinners have been "experiments" based on things I've cooked in the past, and it's all been going quite well. I am wasting less food this way because I'm using up what's in my fridge instead of what I bought for a specific recipe (and forgot about).

We eat a LOT of greens. I chop up kale, chard, collards or tot soi and add them into whatever else I'm cooking. I volunteer at the farmer's market selling vegetables for the Food Bank, so each week I come home with whatever greens are in season. Sadly, it's getting too hot for most of my favorites, but a few native "weeds" are coming onto the scene that apparently thrive in 100 degree heat (not me!).

My favorite so far is purslane. People just go wild for this stuff at the market. It really does grow like a weed in Tucson, but it's actually a succulent. It has oval-shaped waxy green leaves with pinkish-red edges and has a somewhat sharp, astringent bite to it (but nothing like arugala). The coolest part is that it has more omega 3 fatty acids (the ones found in fish) than any other vegetable. And at $1 lb, it's much cheaper than salmon!

You can eat purslane raw in a salad, stem and all, but tonight I picked the leaves off and sauted them with some beet greens, olive oil and a bit of salt. A little bit of lemon juice would have been nice but I didn't have any. I don't think purslane is available outside of the Southwest, but if you ever get the chance to try it you should (or just come to my house for dinner!).

And in other news... yesterday I bought myself a birthday present: the 11-cup Cuisinart Pro food processor. Oh what a beautiful machine! I got it 50% off at Macy's so I just couldn't say no. I have one of those blender/food processor combos, but the processor bowl is tiny and I can pretty much only make pesto in it. Also, I bought it refurbished off Overstock back in 2004 and whenever I turn it on it makes a terrible noise and the motor smells like it's burning. Not the best machine!

The new food processor, however, is AMAZING! I was hesitant to spend all that money, but now I know that it will be worth it. It came with the regular chopping blade, a dough blade (the BIG reason I bought it), a shredding blade and two thicknesses of slicing blade. Oh my goodness I AM IN LOVE!! Yesterday I made salsa, and then made a salad of tabouli consistency by mincing up some kale, beet greens and carrots, then sauteeing those in olive oil and adding some curry powder.

Tonight we made pizza. I usually make pizza dough with my Cuisinart stand mixer, but you have to let the dough knead for 8 minutes, and the mixer tries to shimmy off the counter because it's moving so much. Anyways, this post it too long with too many boring details already, but the pizza dough in the food processor was incredibly easy, took about 2 minutes, and I didn't have to let it rise. The crust would have had a better texture if I did though, and if I hadn't left my pizza stone in my Brooklyn oven (what was I thinking?!) the bottom would have crisped much better. Not my prettiest pizza, but got it on the table in less than an hour, which was pretty impressive I think. That's almost how long it takes to get a pizza delivered these days! This picture makes the poor pizza look much uglier than it tasted. Andy at the green pepper half, and I opted for the tomatoes.

Deep Fried PB&J

Today we went to the Arizona Animal Fair, a local Tucson event catering mostly to dogs and their owners, but we also saw fancy cats on leashes, freaked-out llamas making weird noises, miniature horses, and this sign for deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I thought this deep-frying obsession was a Southern phenomenon, but apparently the North Carolina State Fair is not the only place for deep fried goodies. I do love a good PB&J sandwich, but considering I've eaten three this week, I went for a healthy hummus wrap (snoooze).

My friend, however, took the bait, not to be deterred by the possibility of sudden coronary embolism resulting from ingestion of deep friend peanut butter sandwich. He asked that his identity be withheld so his wife doesn't find out that he's a deep fried food junkie.

He let me have a bite, and I must admit it was pretty tasty! A little too oozy with oil for me, but I think they used strawberry jelly, not grape, which was a nice touch. I don't know about you, but I think grape jelly is pretty lame.

This is not an every day indulgence, folks, and caution should be exercised at all times when eating deep fried foods that were perfectly delicious and edible before a trip to the fry daddy.

Andy went for the tried and true fair favorite, ribbon fries. Restaurants serve these a lot as a fry/chip hybrid, but I'm usually underwhelmed because they come overcooked in old oil. But these were perfectly cooked: crisp edges and tender middles, and none of that yucky dark brown color. Perfect addition to my hummus sandwich!

What is the weirdest deep fried food you've eaten?

Tasty Nutrition Tidbits & Fatty Grilled Cheese

I have been doing a lot of cooking lately, and have even been taking pictures with the high hopes of actually writing about what I'm cooking again, but clearly that hasn't happened! So instead I thought I'd tell you about some of the things I've been learning in the nutrition course I am taking this semester. Considering I'm supposed to be studying for my first exam on Wednesday, this should be a great way to procrastinate!

So here are just a few random things that have struck me in class:

1) Did you know that when you cook fresh fruits and vegetables, you are potentially destroying some (if not a good portion) of the vitamins and minerals in them? Vitamins are especially susceptible to being destroyed by heat. Minerals aren't destroyed, but can be leached out in the cooking process. So just think about the green water leftover from cooking spinach and broccoli. Have I been pouring the good stuff down the drain all this time? Apparently so. (sigh)

How should we be cooking veggies then? The answer is to cook them quickly, with as little heat as possible. Steaming and stir frying are preferable to boiling or baking, but apparently the in the microwave with just a little water is the best way to retain nutrients. Basically, think about the piece of broccoli that has been boiled to a greenish-gray mush, versus the crisp green broccoli that's only been steamed a few minutes.

I didn't learn this in class, but along the same vein, I recently saw a cooking demonstration of winter greens at the farmer's market where the chef used chicken broth to saute instead of oil, and she sauteed the greens (kale, in this case) very briefly over medium high heat. She even waited to add the minced garlic at the end, saying that raw garlic has a lot more health benefits than cooked.

So I decided to try her method, keeping in mind that I wanted to cook the veggies as fast as possible, and try to incorporate the cooking water into my dish. I heated up a tablespoon or two of chicken broth over medium heat, added in some chopped beet greens and swiss chard, tossed them around a little and covered the pan. This helps quickly steam the greens. Right when they had started to soften up, I added some minced garlic and turned off the heat. The greens were just as tasty, if not more so, with a little crunch than cooked to death, my occasional method.

2) If number one wasn't incredibly boring, and you're still here for number two, hooray! Then I get to tell you all about how the stomach is the most overrated part of the digestion system. When you think "digestion," I'm sure you automatically think "stomach" (I do). We eat a lot of things: carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, alcohol (not a nutrient! who would have thought). And do you know that the stomach can only digest protein? It can also absorb aspirin and alcohol, given your stomach is empty. The real workhorse of the digestive system is your liver. Your liver has to deal with everything we put through our body, good and bad, but especially the toxins and the fat. The liver produces most of the biochemicals to aid in digestion, and it produces bile, which helps break down fat. So let's all remember to be nice to our livers this week and try not to overload it with a bunch of toxic food and alchohol. It works hard enough as it is!

3) And the final thing I've learned, is that there is really no hope for people. I hate to be judgemental (but here I go!), but we're in a nutrition course, right? The professor is hammering it in why we shouldn't be eating so much fat. Our class is 2 1/2 hrs long with a break. And even after the professor has stood up there and lectured about fats and empty calories, students who are already overweight to begin with will go on break and get french fries and grilled cheese sandwiches and sodas and bring these back to class and eat them in the front row in front of her. Pretty amazing. Maybe they skipped lunch or won't get to have dinner, but it still baffles me

And thus ends our nutrition lecture. I know you want to go make a grilled cheese now! In case you need a recipe...

Grilled Cheese Sandwich

- 2 slices Cheddar, American or Swiss cheese
- 2 slices white bread
- 2 tablespoons butter

Put the cheese between slices of bread. Heat one tablespoon of butter in a skillet on medium-low heat. When it's melted, add the sandwich. Gently press down with a spatula once or twice while grilling. When one side is golden, add the remaining tablespoon of butter, turn the sandwich over, and brown.

Calories: 432
Total fat: 30 grams
Saturated fat: 18 grams

(Ps. That's almost all your fat for the day!)

The Ravioli Resolution

Happy New Year! Here we are in January yet again, and before I make resolutions for 2009, I wanted to look back at the culinary resolutions I made for 2008: cook black beans from scratch (done!), learn how to make shrimp etoufee (done!), and make ravioli (...not done), the latter which I'd been avoiding out of sheer laziness and fear of the unknown.

But my mother, who is 99% responsible for all the wonderful things in my kitchen (Global knives, Kitchen Aid mixer, desire to cook at all...) sent me the Kitchen Aid pasta attachment for Christmas, and suddenly I was reminded of my ravioli resolution.

The dust finally settled from our delicious Christmas feast* and the kitchen was looking much too clean, so I decided to muck it up again making ravioli before the year ran out and I had nothing to show for my pasta resolve.

Andy and I decided to do the simplest egg pasta filled with ricotta, and I threw in some spinach and leftover herbs to spice it up a little. We followed the recipe out of the Kitchen Aid manual, which definitely didn't provide enough detail for beginner pasta chefs, but we muddled our way through. I'm pretty sure our dough was too dry and we definitely didn't knead it long enough (the recipe said 2 minutes with the dough hook and 1-2 minutes by hand - is that enough?).

Despite our too-dry dough, once we finally managed to cram it through the pasta wheels, it really transformed itself. The mixer attachment actually does the thinning for you, so what you would have to roll by hand you keep feeding through the machine and folding over on itself until the dough becomes elastic and smooth. I'm sure Andy's Italian grandmother would have not approved of our lazy method though!



Once the dough was kneaded and thinned, you keep setting the rollers thinner and thinner until you get the dough to the right thickness you want it. We put it through five different roller settings, the Kitchen Aid recommendation for ravioli, but next time we'll roll it thinner.

To make the ravioli, you take one long skinny sheet of pasta (mine were misshapen) and plop your filling along the sheet with about 3 inches between each dollop. Then you use water to moisten the edges and press another sheet of pasta on top, forming your raviolis. The final step is to cut them apart with a pizza wheel or pastry cutter.



Luckily, all of my creases were tight enough and no raviolis exploded in the water! We topped them with marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese.

mmmmm....


*For Christmas dinner, I made herb-crusted pork loin, penne gratin, sauteed swiss chard, and orange-ginger carrots, and David and Shana brought a tasty apple tart for dessert. And I made rolls, from scratch! It was a superb dinner.

Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake

During a 10-day family vacation to Seattle and Central WA last month, we spent the majority of our time eating or plotting our next opportunity to eat, so that one meal was not finished until the next meal was planned. This is a family tradition, and also the only way to keep up with the voracious pace of my brother’s appetite (he who so unfairly inherited the high metabolism of some distant ancestor).

My fondest meals were the corned beef and cabbage my brother’s fiancé Amy made for St. Patricks day; an enormous meatball sandwich from Salumi, the Seattle cured-meats shop owned by Mario Batali’s father, Armandino; and a five-way pizza cook-off between the siblings and our significant others. Unfortunately, we all suffered pizza fatigue and no one was able to judge a winner.

My sister and I came back to New York with the weight of gluttony around our bellies, so we decided to try a detox diet. It’s not one of those crazy plans where you only drink a concoction of lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper. For 11 days, we avoided wheat, sugars, dairy, processed grains, caffeine and alcohol.

Instead I ate lots of brown rice and quinoa, pounds of vegetables, lots of oranges, and more than a dozen eggs – and I felt pretty great. The diet gave us lots to wish for, and I found myself dreaming of breakfast cereal and chocolate chip cookies.

When the diet ended last week, the reintroduction of cereal and cookies to my diet was actually quite disappointing, because the sugar made me feel really light-headed and out of it. This wasn’t a big surprise to me, but it was the first time I’d truly eliminated all sugars (even honey) and wheat for more than a day, so I never realized how it truly affected my body.

Despite this important lesson, I still can’t resist myself when a food magazine comes along with some decadent recipe that I simply must try, which was the case for Martha Stewart’s Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake in this month’s issue. As you know, I’m obsessed with lemons, especially Meyer lemons, which are thought to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin. They have a beautiful color, a mild flavor, and they are going out of season. So I had to make this coffee cake.

Martha’s version, however, contained way to much butter and sugar for my post-sugar-detox body, so to satisfying my lemon cravings and my need to bake, I adapted a reduced-fat coffee cake recipe I found online to work in the Meyer lemon element from Martha’s recipe.

The results are certainly not diet food, but the cake is light and spongy, and not shockingly sweet. You’ll never know it only has 4 Tbs. of fat, including the butter in the streusel topping!

Low-Fat Meyer Lemon Coffee Cake

For cake:
2 Meyer lemons
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs (or 3 egg whites)
2 Tbs. canola oil
1/2 c. sugar (can be increased to ¾ c. if you like a sweeter cake)
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 1/2 c. reduced fat sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla extract

For topping:
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. flour
1/2 c. rolled oats
2 tablespoons butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 x 13" pan with non stick cooking spray and set aside.

Zest the lemons using a fine Microplane zester, and reserve zest for the cake batter. Cut the lemons into paper-thin slices, removing the ends. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a simmer and add the lemons, simmering for 1 ½ minutes. Drain, and lay lemon slices on a parchment-lined baking sheet to dry (this is the piece from Martha).

Combine the dry ingredients (flour, powder and soda) in a small bowl.

In a larger bowl, and the eggs, canola oil, sugars, sour cream, vanilla extract and reserved lemon zest. Mix well.

Quickly stir the flour mixture into the sour cream mixture, mixing just until thoroughly moistened. Spread the batter into the prepare pan.

Combine all the topping ingredients, using a knife or a pastry cutter to combine the butter.

Cover the batter with one layer of lemon slices, then sprinkle with topping to cover.

Bake about 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.