My friend Gladys, who grew up in Panama, brought this salad to our book club meeting. It was such a hit that we asked her to make it again. Today I finally convinced her to share the recipe! She reminded me that today is the Super Bowl, and this is a great party recipe.
Spicy and colorful, it’s full of black beans, avocados and fresh vegetables. Avocados are in season. Just in case you forgot, here’s how you can tell if yours are ripe enough.

Gladys shared one last tip: “Don’t forget to serve the salad with the avocado pit in the center. It keeps the avocado green.” I’m not sure she’s right about that, but it’s a great conversation starter.

You may also enjoy:
Easy Summer Salads
Creamy Avocado Salad
Five Basic Recipes for the Food Processor

I like to write practical advice. But sometimes, aesthetics matter. My mother made a special pint of ensuring that the colors and textures of teach meal were harmonious. She also had all kinds of little tricks to lay out the food attractively. While I am much more laid back, I still use her tricks when guests come. You’ll rarely catch me serving food out of the storage container or package, even thought it means washing an extra bowl.

Let’s start with serving pieces. Since these are a popular hostess gift, you probably have a few. If not, keep your eye out in bazaars, garage sales and even grocery stores, which usually have a few pieces marked down. Look for a few matching finger bowls, or a platter with several small compartments. Then you can place salads or raw vegetables, sauces or olives in each of the bowls or compartments.

Choose the right size bowl for the amount or it will look skimpy. With small bowls you can offer a variety with less space, and fill as needed. If you are serving a crowd offer more than one bowl of each item. Also, place the food neatly into the bowl and mold it into shape if you can. Leaving scraps on the upper edges of the bowl is unattractive.

Garnishes

Decorate your food with a contrasting color, flavor or texture. Always use fresh and colorful ingredients or you will defeat the purpose. Avoid decorating with fish, meat or cheese as they will shorten the life of the garnished food.

Line your food with vegetables. For instance, place a few lettuce leaves on a plate and add cottage cheese, egg salad or tuna salad. Or cut off the top of a pepper and fill it with chumus. Other example are a scooped out loaf of bread for soup, or a watermelon rind for fruit salad.

Here are some items I often use for garnishing food, along with examples. But don’t be limited—use your imagination.

• Olives. Example: Tuna salad
• Pickle slices. Example: Potato salad.
• Nuts or seeds. Example: Paté.
• Ground spices.  Example: Paprika on egg salad or cream cheese.
• Grated or thinly sliced fresh vegetables. Example: Radish for a soup garnish. Also try carrots, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, or kohlrabi.
• Olive oil. Example: Make a well in your chumus and pour in a teaspoon or two.
• Herbs.  Example: Chop and add to soup just before serving. Or use mint leaves for cooked fruit.
• Lemon or orange slices. Example: Tuna salad or a pitcher of water.

It’s a good idea to keep jars of olives, pickles, and chickpeas on hand in your pantry for unexpected company, along with seeds and nuts in the freezer. And I generally have carrots or citrus fruit available, since they keep fairly well. You can use them as garnishes, or serve them in a small bowl or plate alongside your cooked food.

If you want something a little extra you can try reader Miriam’s tip for making rose buds out of radishes: Cut off the point, make a few half cuts, like a hexagon, and put it in cold water (maybe with salt) to open up.

What are your favorite tips for serving food attractively?

You may also enjoy:

Tips to Stretch Food for  Unexpected Company

Refreshment Help for Hosts

Tips for Choosing Fruits and Vegetables

image: gamene

Since starting this blog I’ve enjoyed interviewing a wide range of home cooks about their family memories and everyday cooking. Today I’d like to welcome food writer Katherine Martinelli.

Welcome to new readers who arrived from Grist.org’s excellent post by Jane Mountain on 5 Foods You’ll Never Have to Buy Again. 

Have you ever tried cooking with whole-wheat flour, only to find the results didn’t turn out as well as you hoped? Cooking with whole wheat requires some adjustments in planning and expectations.

The first thing to keep in mind is that whole-wheat grains contain oil, which can get rancid. So check the date on the package, and always store all whole grains in the refrigerator or freezer. By the way, this is why whole grains are sometimes more expensive. You might think that whole grains should be cheaper, because they don’t need as much processing. But in fact, refined (white) flours became popular because they could be shipped long distances and stored at length without refrigeration. This lowered their cost as well.

Some complaints about whole grain flours, for instance bitterness, may result from improper storage. If you store whole-wheat flour in the freezer it should last a good few months.

I’ve compiled a few more tips for switching to baking with whole wheat:

1. Change your expectations. The texture will be different and there’s no way around that. I now find baked goods from bleached white flour to be pasty. Keep in mind that whole-wheat baked goods crumble more easily, too.
2. Start gradually. Many products fall in between the extremes of bleached, refined white flour and 100% stone-ground whole wheat. Examples include white whole wheat and 70% or 90% whole wheat, which is unrefined but has a percentage of the toughest fibers removed. Flours also vary in texture–whole-wheat flours ground finely yield results closer to white flour. You can also mix white and whole wheat–start with 30 or 40 % whole wheat and gradually increase as you get used to the change.
3. Start with the right recipes. Whole wheat bread, fruit muffins, or banana bread will go over better than whole-wheat angel-food cake. You can also use whole-wheat flour for thickening patties or casseroles without a noticeable difference in texture.
4. Pastries. I use 90% whole-wheat flour for pastries and yeast doughs. They can be rolled out, but not as thinly as with white flour.
5. Sifting. One reader said that sifting makes her whole-wheat challah lighter. My mother always insisted on sifting flour, and we sifted ingredients for her home-made baking mix no less than three times! I”m not sure that sifting helps keep the dough lighter, and many cooks skip it. Other reasons for sifting flour include removing insects and ensuring uniform measurement. But weighing the flour is a more accurate method for delicate recipes. Since I rarely make delicate cakes this isn’t such an issue for me—for bread I guess based on the texture. Humidity also affects recipes, making recipes less important.
6. Add extra water to the recipe. This is tied into the weight of the flour—flours vary in their weight per cup, and heavier flours require more liquid—but the whole grains seem to absorb more liquid and suffer more from dryness. Whole-grain bread doughs should remain sticky.
7. Add extra sweetener. I’m no fan of sugar, but if you or your family expects a certain amount of sweetness in their baked goods you will need to increase the amount in the recipe.
8. Start with a sponge. For breads, I calculate about 700 cc. (24 oz.) of water for a kilogram of flour (454 grams). For the sponge, I add about 700 g. of the flour to all of the liquid, along with the yeast or sourdough starter. For more information, see my recipe for Challah Bread Using Sponge Method.

Have you ever baked with whole wheat flour? Please share your successes and challenges in the comments!

Thanks to Cooking Manager Facebook Page members  for their contributions.

You may also enjoy:

Going Brown: The Challenge of Eating More Whole Grains

How I Cut My Baking Time in Half

Extreme Frugality: Twenty Memories of My Mother

image: little blue hen

 There’s nothing I love more, dear readers, than finding out a kitchen task can be skipped.

And my favorite chore to skip is peeling vegetables. At least for now.

The only vegetables my peeler has seen in recent months are carrots and the odd potato.

(I know I could skip peeling carrots, but I don’t like the taste of carrot peels. Fortunately, my kids do the peeling. )

Peeling raw vegetables means throwing out a large percentage of your food, since the vegetable comes off with the peel. Try weighing a pound of potatoes before and after peeling. Un-peeling saves time and money. What could be wrong with that?

Winter squash and pumpkin. I got excited to learn that those tough peels on winter squash, the ones you need to wrestle with your chopping knife, are edible. This includes peel from butternut, acorn, and pumpkin squashes. All you need to do is cook the squash long enough to get soft. And you get an added bonus–the peel helps pieces stay in one piece.

My other favorite un-peeling secret works for the people who don’t like peel. First, roast or cook the vegetable. When it is finished, remove the peel in a thin layer. This method works for beets, turnips, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. I may even try it for carrots. And the part of the vegetable right under the peel is richest in vitamins, most of which hang out right under the peel.

When should you peel? Sometimes the peel is cracked, wrinkled or dirty. If I can’t get off the dirt with scrubbing, or the peel is thick and unappetizing, I peel. Our beets are full of dirt, and cracked around the stems. Sometimes there is more dirt than vegetables. I soak them and scrub them as well as possible. I would look the other way, but I like to use the cooking water from beets in my recipes. You can always strain the cooking water with a cheesecloth to get rid of dirt that doesn’t get scrubbed off. I don’t worry about bacteria on the vegetables, since the heat will kill the germs.

Fortunately many vegetables, like turnips and squash, have smooth skin that is easily scrubbed clean. Some vegetables have wax or other coatings. If you can’t get it off, you may want to peel.

I haven’t peeled cucumbers in a long time as the ones I get here have smooth, thin skin.

Onions and garlic. Mark Bittman says the peel falls away when you start to cut them, as with garlic. Garlic and onion peel are annoying to find in your food. But when roasting there is no need to peel onion and garlic.

Broccoli and cauliflower. Bittman also peels broccoli stalks. I haven’t cooked broccoli in a while, but I do enjoy cauliflower. I cut the stalk into quarters lengthwise, including the peel. I love eating it that way. You can also add the stalks in soup stock.

Peel is pretty. It adds texture and color. And the best thing about un-peeling is that you give your family or guests the option of eating the peel or discarding it.

So what do you peel, and what do you un-peel?

You may also enjoy:

Healthy Last-Minute Dinners

Creamy Parsnip Soup

9 Tips to Help Food Last Longer

Produce Shopping and Storage: 4-Part Series

Last week, I had to run out suddenly to bring my son somewhere right during dinner preparation hour. Fortunately my teens were home to take over. This recipe can be easily halved, but like most recipes with legumes, it improves on the second or third day so don’t be afraid of leftovers.

I first learned about not peeling squash from Lorna Sass’s cookbook, Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure.

If you don’t have a pressure cooker, add an extra half-cup of water and cook for 45 minutes. This works in the slow-cooker as well, cooked on low for 5-7 hours.

Here’s how to do it:

People today have less and less time to entertain. The thought of shopping, cooking  and getting your house ready for a crowd is daunting! And that’s without the clearing up afterward.

Pot luck might be the answer. You, the host, still have to organize the food and do the groundwork, but your guests do most of the cooking. And you get to taste some dishes that you wouldn’t try yourself.

Here are my favorite tips for organizing a pot-luck dinner or party:

1. Make it clear when you invite that this is a pot-luck event. People might resent getting asked for a contribution after they’ve already accepted the invitation.
2. Find out whether any of your guests have special dietary restrictions. It’s okay if they can’t eat every item, though. At least they’ll eat what they bring themselves!
3. Have a flexible menu plan in mind. For example, bread or rolls, appetizer, main course, starch, (or casseroles/quiches), salads, drinks and desserts. Reader Robin‘s potluck group chooses a theme, like Mexican cuisine.
4. Always give choices. People vary in how much time, talent and money they can put into a particular item. Some people might prefer to buy paper goods or drinks instead of cooking. And another friend might make that fancy Chinese dish you’ve been craving.
5. Each dish should provide 6-8 servings. If you have more guests than that, double or triple the number of people you ask to bring each item. Don’t make the mistake of the organizers of an after-dinner synagogue event I recently attended. They asked each couple to bring a fruit platter or a cake so most of the food was barely touched. They should have asked only half of the couples, saving the other half for next time. But as always when entertaining, it’s good to plan for more food than you think you’ll need (within reason!)
6. Prepare space for food on a buffet table. You should have some extra serving plates and utensils on hand. Put out the appetizers first, then the main course and salads, and finally the dessert. Set up drinks on a separate table. Prepare a station for coffee and tea as well.
7. Be in touch with everyone a day or two in advance. It gets really awkward when the person bringing the main course forgets to show up.
8. Taste everything and compliment your guests on their delicious cooking. If it’s not good, do like your mother told you and don’t say anything.
9. Ask people to take their leftovers home. If they offer to leave them with you (assuming you want them), make sure they take home their containers and utensils.
10. Have a garbage bag ready for cleanup. People will usually pitch in and help if you start before they go home.
11. If you have a good time, mention that you should all do this again soon. Hopefully someone else will offer to host!

Have you ever hosted  a pot-luck meal? Share your experiences in the comments!

You may also enjoy:

9 Tips for Simple Entertaining

Ten Things You Should Know about Freezing for a Crowd

Universal Crustless Quiche (great recipe for bringing to a pot-luck event)

A friend was wondering whether it was bad to eat soy patties for lunch every day. This led to a discussion of ingredient lists on packages and concerns about processed food. You hear it all the time—heck, I say it here all the time: Home-cooked foods beat prepared or convenience foods any day of the week.

But why, my friend wanted to know, are processed foods bad? Can’t we just check the list of ingredients? If there are too many chemicals that we’ve never heard of, we are wary. But maybe if the ingredients listed on a label are all natural, the processing isn’t such a big deal.

Or is it?

My friend pointed out, correctly, that processing is often a good thing:

• Cooking makes foods tasty and easier to digest.
• Processing, like canning or drying, helps foods last longer.
• Processing can eliminate pathogenic bacteria, as when milk is pasteurized.

So a certain amount of processing can work in our favor, although these benefits may also come with lower nutritional value. Still, the real problem is when foods get over-processed.

Here are some things that might affect your convenience food before it gets to your plate:

• Ingredients we don’t want. Manufacturers add emulsifiers and starches for improving texture, preservatives to keep food fresh longer, and flavors, colors, sodium, mono-sodium glutamate, and sugars to make food more palatable to the average consumer.
• Low-quality ingredients. The label is only as specific as the law required by your country. The ingredients might say corn, but does that mean corn starch or cornmeal? Or maybe kernels? They are not equally healthy. Are the ingredients organic? What conditions were they grown in? How old are they?
• Using the least healthy part of the natural product. A classic example is apple juice concentrate, which contains almost pure sugar. Even though it’s natural. You’re getting sugar from a large number of apples, but without the fiber and the anti-oxidants.
• Just because an ingredient is at the end of the list doesn’t mean it’s not going to impact  your health. Some ingredients can cause harm even in small quantities. And the product must contain a minimum amount of an ingredient for it to appear on the label, so you could be eating unpleasant things without realizing. Ask any mother of a child with life-threatening allergies how much she relies on package labels.
• Toxic chemicals might be used in the manufacturing process, like enzymes that make foods softer or remove bitterness. But since they’re not officially ingredients, they won’t appear on the list.
• Packaging.  A few years ago a toxic chemical, BPA, was found in certain plastics. These plastics were (and still are, in some cases), used in baby bottles and canned foods. The BPA leaches into the food, but you’ll never find it listed.
• Vitamin and mineral loss.Water-soluble vitamins are not retained in fruits and vegetable even after minimal processing. Heck, once you slice a tomato it starts to lose Vitamin C.Vitamins, minerals and fiber are removed from whole grains in processing so they will last longer. Almost all processed foods contain white flour, which has a long shelf life. The company might add some of the vitamins and minerals back into the food in another form (think children’s cereals), but your body doesn’t absorb them as well.
• Oils and fats. Since good fats are expensive processed foods contain cheap, unhealthy oils, often in large quantities. Here the label will give you a clue—but you can only decide whether you want to buy the product or not. At home you can choose the type of oil and how much goes in it.
• Heating. Processed foods are usually exposed to high temperatures. High cooking temperatures create AGE’s, or advanced glucation end products. These toxic glucose byproducts are associated with high blood sugar and diabetes. They are found in most heated foods and, in great excess, in commercial infant formulas because cow’s milk must be heated at extreme temperatures to make it edible for babies. Reducing the amounts of processed and grilled foods also reduced the level of AGE’s in the blood.
• Price. You pay for convenience. Even if you can get food for less than it costs you to make at home, you end up with lower quality ingredients, unnecessary additives, and unknown processing methods.
• Environmental Impact. Processing uses precious water and fuel and creates pollution.

A lot of these concerns also apply to foods we buy in their natural state, to prepare at home. However, it’s much easier to research one ingredient than those from a long list, especially when you can examine the food for yourself. And even if you cook with white flour and soy oil, you still avoid many of the “extras” in convenience foods.

The main concern of a food manufacturer is profit. So it will aim for a product with cheap ingredients, a uniform taste that appeals to many (sugar/salt/msg), and long shelf life (processed foods last longer than fresh, even without the added preservatives).

As for labels, food producers only share whatever makes them look good. Whether the food is healthy or not interests them only as far as their marketing department. It’s naïve to assume that a food is healthy because only healthy ingredients are listed.

You may also enjoy:

Barriers to Home Cooking 

Healthy Last-Minute Dinners

The Best Techniques for Knowing When Food Is Cooked

My mother rarely baked bread, but we always kept some at home. The loaf of choice was rye with or without caraway seeds. It had a doughy feel and it was what I brought to school every day with peanut butter. We got it from the local kosher bakery.

I miss that  bread, as all I can find around here is white bread, pita and whole wheat. So on a whim, I picked up a bag of organic, stone-ground rye flour.

A couple of weeks (months?) passed and the flour remained in the freezer. If I was already going to use rye, I wanted sourdough, so I began to look for recipes. But they all involved making a rye sourdough starter from scratch, and that seemed complicated.

I should have known better. After all, making a sourdough starter takes almost no time at all, just patience and a little maintenance. And on the Cooking Manager Facebook page, readers Jimi (Denmark) and Nina (Germany) gave me great tips, like starting the rye sourdough with some of the wheat sourdough starter I keep on hand in the fridge.

I put a little of the wheat sourdough in a jar, added water and rye flour, and by the next day I was ready to go. I added more water and rye flour.  By the day after that, the dough had risen so much it threatened to overflow the bowl I was using.

I set aside some of this sponge, I guess you would call it, for next time and poured the rest into a bigger bowl and added wheat flour, more rye flour, water, salt and whole oats. Jimi recommends adding a variety of seeds but I decided to keep mine plain. Anyway, I didn’t have most of them around. You can see the complete recipe on his site.

The dough ended up sitting several hours longer than necessary, but it didn’t make the bread tangy like I’ve experienced with wheat sourdough. The only problem was with baking. With wheat sourdough bread or muffins I’ve learned to let the bread get really brown on the outside. Otherwise the inside will be too soft. The crust is still the best part, even when well-done. But when I took out the rye, I found it was still soft in the middle. I put it back in the oven a couple of times until it was done inside as well. The crust didn’t burn, but it was quite thick.

Here’s what Jimi had to say about that:

“Usually I bake them for one hour at 200 degrees centigrade, then remove them from the mold, turn off the heat and allow them to bake/dry another hour in the oven.
Then, let them sit at least until completely cold, wrap them in a cloth overnight allowing them to set.
If you don’t like the crust hard, just put them in a plastic bag, the moisture from the bread will soften the crust..
Keeps for 4-5 days on the counter, up to a couple of weeks in the fridge.”

The bread still came out wonderfully, including the crust, and much better than what I remember from my childhood.

Making Sourdough Starter

To make recipes with sourdough, you’ll need a starter. Fortunately you can make it at home very cheaply. I have written instructions for making your own sourdough starter with wheat, and the process for rye is similar. I’ve also uploaded images of the ripening sourdough at various stages.

 You may also enjoy:

Make Your Own Sourdough Starter at Home

Sourdough Muffins

11 Tips for Painless Kitchen Cleanup