Apple Chips

When your parents go to a farming community known for its apple orchards, and they get awed and excited by wall-to-wall apples, the results might sometimes be overwhelming. In my case, the situation is alarming.

My parents returned from Apple Hill in Northern California with two cases (approximately 18 lbs) of apples mixed between Fuji and Granny Smith varieties. I've had two apples every day for the last 2 weeks, and I'm really getting sick of them. Meanwhile, I am bringing home persimmons from friends that want me to make them into persimmon chips for a healthy snack, so I decided last night to try making chips from a few of the apples I've got.
I use usually the mandoline attachment for my food processor to slice the apples horizontally. But you can also purchase a small mandoline slicer for cheap.

Here's my Cuisinart food processor, with the regular blade removed and the mandoline slicer blade attached.

The horizontal cross section of the apple makes a cute little star shape where the seeds would be, and the slicer can slice directly through the seeds, so you only need to shake off any seeds and bake the slices for a couple hours. These apple chips are a great treat for little kids because of the rewarding little star in the center. :-) One small apple makes approximately 15 chips.

Soon I'll post another nice snack with baked apples (and an elegant appetizer with white wine or sparkling cider) involves roasting them with honey, cheese and fresh sprig of spice.

So here's the recipe for apple chips

Ingredients:

• 4 small granny smith or fuji apples

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees, or 200 degrees on convection if your oven is capable.
2. Thinly slice off the top and bottom of the apple, and peel the skin off with a potato peeler.
3. Using a mandolin or food processor attachment, slice the apples into thin 1/16 inch thickness (you can use a knife for this process, but for me it takes some time, and I have trouble getting my slices a uniform thickness, so I prefer to use the machine)
4. Place them on trays with holes for adequate ventilation, my version looks like flimsy aluminum chicken wire, but it works. Dry them in the oven for around 1 hour and 45 minutes, rotating the trays after the first 45-60 minutes of drying so they all cook evenly(if you use a convection setting on the oven, rotating is unnecessary).

You can buy grilling trays/pans for drying food or making chips in the oven here (I waited until spring for grillling season and found some at the dollar store).

Nutrition facts for a serving size of around 12 chips:
60 calories, 15gm net carbs, 4gm fiber, 0g fat, 0g protein (1 diabetic carbohydrate exchange, 0 fat and 0 protein exchanges)

Hosting Vegans: Roasted Kale and Lentils

Preparing dishes fit for a friend with preferences for vegan cuisine can be tricky-- no products from animals of any kind, oftentimes we forget about butter, chicken stock, and also milk and eggs. Literally, from start to finish, and regardless of the method of cooking, we are real carnivores! (And honestly, I like it!) But being so accustomed to cooking with animal products, it becomes a lot of fun and educational for me to make a completely vegan meal.

My vegan arsenal of ingredients couldn't get more colorful!

So the question becomes how to serve a hearty, soothing dish for the fall weather without adding all these hidden enhancements? Well let me show you and you'll see: I will fill your stomach with hearty legumes, satisfy your senses with an amalgam of complimentary spices, and hopefully make you love me with a little extra lemon!

Kale and Lentils cooked with Moroccan Preserved Lemons

Ingredients:

• 1c brown lentils, rinsed
• 2c vegetable stock
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2c kale, finely chopped
• sea salt
• 1/4 tsp sumac
• 1 tsp fresh winter savory leaves
• 1 tsp Seven Spice
• 2 TB tomato paste
• 1 tsp chile paste
• rind from 1/4 preserved lemon

Directions:

1. Boil lentils for 20 minutes in a vegetable stock on medium heat
2. Meanwhile, in a frying pan over medium heat cook the onions, stirring frequently for about 15 minutes or until browned. Add garlic, and continue to cook, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes more.
3. Add kale, spices, rind from 1/4 preserved lemon, and sea salt.
4. Reduce heat to low, cover frying pan and let kale cook until softened and wilted (about 7 minutes more).
5. When lentils are cooked , drain any excess water, and mix the lentils with the onions and kale. You'll know they are cooked when you can easily squash one when you pinch it between 2 fingers).
6. Garnish with fresh lemon wedges and mint to serve.

Nutrition Facts for 1 cup of this dish:
260 total calories, 28gm total carbohydrate, 10gm fiber, 16gm protein, 2gm fat
(2 Carbohydrate (1 NET carb), 0.5 Fat, and 2 protein exchanges)

Savoring the end of summer- Apricot Sorbet

When having a home with many trees and a handy gardener, I often find a surplus of fruits and vegetables that need to be consumed quickly or given away. In this case, our neighbor had been out of town and given us authority to harvest and distribute apricots from his tree.

I am always finding new things to create with my surplus that are fun and healthy. I'm getting tired of desserts, I want to stay healthy and reduce my carbohydrate intake, and I don't really find a challenge in making desserts like puddings, custards, pies, cakes and cookies anymore; plus, I have way more fruits than can fit into a cake.

So the results involve me trying to rearrange and enhance the properties of the fruit, meanwhile concentrating on withstanding the temptation to overpower the essence and beauty of my fresh organically obtained fruits by adding creams and batters. This focus seems so daunting for me, and it would be so much easier to make an apricot pie than think of more creative things to do!  So to help me think out of the box, I've resulted in making spiced poached pears from the pear tree, persimmon chips and souffle from my coworker's persimmons, roasted apples with cheese and rosemary, and a slurry of a few other different desserts for fall.

I think one of the easiest options is to simply puree my fruit and grab my cheap little ice cream maker that I treasure so dearly. Combining flavors can be a trick, but with fruits, rose and orange essence, vanilla, and ground spices can transform and enhance the flavor of nearly any fruit!

What I'm showing here is a Apricot-Vanilla Sorbet, accompanied with a vanilla custard ice cream and fresh strawberries. I find that apricots and vanilla enhance each others' qualities of tart and semi-sweet, and the mild tartness of the strawberries combined with the warmness of the vanilla custard provide a contrast of tastes that help the brain isolate the individual and unique flavors in the custard for an awesome dessert experience.

Apricot Sorbet and Vanilla Custard Ice Cream with fresh Strawberries

Apricot Sorbet
Ingredients:

• 4 cups frozen apricots, slightly thawed
• 2/3 cup simple syrup recipe (here)
• 2 tb ground gum mastic (also known as gum arabic)
• Purée apricots with simple syrup until the mixture is smooth and no apricot pieces remain.
• 1/8 tsp seeds of a vanilla bean (cut the bean in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds out with a spoon)
• Add the gum arabic powder and mix until combined.

Put this mixture in your ice cream maker and turn it on. Since the apricots were partially frozen, the mixture shouldn't take more than 20 minutes to freeze in the machine. If you are not using frozen apricots, refrigerate your puree for 4 hours before putting it in your machine. It will require around an hour of churning if you use refrigerated apricot puree.

Serve this little scoop of summer with strawberries. To warm up this summery fruit flavor, I paired it with a homemade custard-based vanilla bean ice cream.

Nutrition Facts for 1/2c apricot sorbet:

Calories: 90, total carbohydrates: 17g, total fiber 2g, total fat: 0g, total protein 0g.

Poached D'Anjou Pears with Spice Glaze

A quick dessert that I often fall back on uses simply pears and whole spices that I usually have on hand and rarely use. The preparation takes around 10 minutes to cut the pears, cooking requires around 20 minutes of simply ignoring it, and to serve, arrange these on a platter and garnish. Instead of using D'Anjou pears, you can use a smaller, skinnier, more brown-skinned pear called the Bosc pear. I like to use the bosc pear because of its darker color and better contrast for a fancier dessert presentation. But in a more laid-back setting, D'Anjou pears are great, and also easy to find!

Sometimes I get myself confused with the type of pear to use in cooking, but of the more common types, the Bosc and the d'Anjou pears are easier to cook. Here is a fabulous article describing some of the more common types of pears and their uses.

Poached D'Anjou Pears with Spice Glaze
Serves 8 (where one serving is 1/2 pear)

Ingredients:

• 1/2c sugar
• 4c water
• 4 pieces Star anise
• 1 TB peppercorns
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise, opened, with seeds scraped out
• vanilla bean seeds (approx 1/2tsp)
• 2 TB fresh ginger root, sliced thinly
• 1 tsp whole cloves
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 1/2c honey
• 1 tsp whole green cardamom pods
• 4 d'anjou pears
• 1 TB corn starch
• Vanilla ice cream, or berry sorbet, and ground nutmeg for garnish

Directions

1. Wash and slice pears in half vertically down the length of the stem.  
2. Using a melon baller, grapefruit spoon or shrimp fork, scoop out seeds.

1. Mix water, sugar and spices together in a 8qt pot. Cook over medium-high heat until boiling.
2. Once the water begins to boil, add the pear halves. Cover the pot and let simmer for 3 minutes.
3. Gently scoop the pears out of the boiling water. Place them on a serving tray, cut-side up.
4. For your spiced glaze, reduce heat to medium and continue simmering.  Remove 1/2c of the boiling sauce and cool to the touch by placing it in a freezer for 5 minutes. 
5. Add the cornstarch to this reserved spice mixture, and mix well until no cornstarch lumps remain. 
6. Add this to your simmering spice sauce, and stir constantly until mixture thickens, about 5 minutes.
7. Garnish pears by placing a teaspoonful of goat cheese in each pear and topping it with first the hot spice sauce and then some freshly ground nutmeg.

Nutrition Facts for one half pear with 1 TB glaze:
89 total calories, 22 gm total carbohydrate, 2gm fiber, 0 gm protein, 1gm fat
(1 Carbohydrate (1 NET carb), 0 Fat, and 0 protein exchanges)

Moroccan Preserved Lemons

A wonderful use of a lemon surplus is to preserve them with salt and spices. This is commonly done in Morocco, and lemons are usually preserved until winter time when their use in flavoring food continues when lemon season does not.

Our Orange-X juicer. It has a long arm that crashes down over the lemons. Great if you have bucketfuls of citrus  to squeeze!

First slice the top and bottom off the lemon, then cut a cross into the lemon vertically, being careful to not go completely through the bottom of the lemon. Stuff the cross with rock salt.

This recipe is amazingly easy, the lemons being preserved in just salt and their own juices. The beauty of preserved lemons is their acidity is reduced with preservation, and the lemony flavor is amazingly strong. They also add a bit of salt to cooked food, minimizing your need to add salt in cooking, and preserved lemons can be cooked without becoming bitter (fresh lemons are much more bitter when cooked).

Push your salt-stuffed lemons into a jar, packing them tightly. Don't be afraid if you squeeze out some juice. After each layer of lemons, add a layer of whole spices. When you can no longer add more lemons, add the lemon juice until it completely covers the tops of the lemons. Then add a final layer of rock salt, cover, shake, and store it in a cool, dark place, caring for your lemons as directed in the recipe below.


To use your lemons after they had been preserved, simply wash off the excess salt, and take out the seeds. You can use the lemons in stews, also using the sliced rind in salads or even drinks.

I'll provide you with recipes for chicken, and lamb and salad using these preserved lemons.
So try these, you'll love them!


Moroccan Preserved Lemons
Ingredients:

• 2  1-Quart canning jars with lids
• 1c kosher salt
• 16-18 organic eureka lemons, scrubbed clean
• 2 tsp whole cloves
• 2 tsp black peppercorns
• 2 tsp coriander seeds
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 4 bay leaves
• 1c lemon juice

Directions:

1. To prepare your canning jars, first wash them in hot, soapy water. You may boil them or use a high-temperature dishwasher to ensure their cleanliness. Any time you are preparing jars to preserve things in, you must clean the lids and jars as above. This will make sure there is no bacteria in the jars before they are filled and sealed.
2. Next, add 3 TBSP salt to your jars.
3. First slice off the top and bottom tips of your lemons. 
4. Cut a cross in each lemon, making sure your cuts do not go completely through and the bottom of your lemon is still intact.
5. Stuff the insides of your lemon generously with salt.
6. Place the lemons in the jar, and press each layer down, squeezing juice out of them and packing them tightly. 
7. Sprinkle the spices over each layer of lemons. Once the jar is filled with lemons, add more lemon juice, enough to completely cover the lemons.
8. Add 4 tablespoons more salt to the tops of the jars, seal them well, and shake to mix. (Due to the salt, the tops of most canning jars will rust. To prevent this, I put a thin sheet of paraffin or plastic wrap over the mouth of the jar, then put the lid over this to fully seal.)
9. Store your preserved lemons in a cool, dark place. 
10. Make sure to flip the jars of lemons upside down every 2 days for 1 week. Then continue to store them in the refrigerator until use, also turning every 2 days for 2 more weeks. After 3 weeks of waiting and turning, your lemons are now ready to use!

Simple Summer salad

This summer has been lovely for my family's garden, providing us with some very large quantities of tomatoes, cucumbers.  Our trees are also dropping to the ground with lemons, so wherever possible, I'll add a lemon or two.
Our family grows these crops year after year without hesitation and I feel that they are some of the most important and common ingredients in Lebanese cuisine.
Plus, its hot here and I don't want to cook much... So I'll do very little, make my beautiful vegetables do the hard work of tasting delicious, light, juicy and refreshing, and I'll rest until its dinner time. :-)

Tomato and Herb Salad
Serves 4
Ingredients:

• 4 large tomatoes, chopped to large pieces
• 10-15 leaves of mint, sliced into thin strips (about 1/2 cup)
• 4 cucumbers, lightly peeled
• 1 clove of garlic, finely minced
• Juice from 1 lemon
• 1 TB olive oil

Directions:
Slice the peeled cucumbers into thin rounds and place them in the salad bowl.
Add to these the to the chopped tomatoes with the garlic, lemon and oil.
Chop the mint and add it just before serving to prevent the mint from discoloring.


Nutrition facts for 1 cup of tomato/cucumber salad:
45 total calories, 4gm total carbohydrate, 3 gm fiber, 0 protein, 1 gm fat
(0.25 Carbohydrate (0 NET carb), 0 Fat, and 0 protein exchanges)

A Most Decorated Salad

Tabbouleh is a parsley and tomato salad popular during the summer months. It requires extra time and effort to chop the variety of ingredients, so it is usually done when there is extra time to spare. Tabbouleh differs from kitchen to kitchen, with many people adding their own touches, like allspice instead of seven spice, or additional vegetables such as radishes lettuce or cucumber, or simply different ratios of ingredients, most commonly, more bulghur (cracked wheat).

My tabbouleh I prefer unaltered, moist with vegetables and tomatoes, and plenty of lemon.
This dish is filled with plenty of antioxidants, vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium, monounsaturated fats, and fiber.

Tabbouleh
Makes enough for 6 people
Ingredients

• 1 cup water 
• 1/2 cup bulghur (cracked wheat), fine or medium ground
• 1/2 medium onion, chopped fine 
• 3 stalks fine green onion, chopped fine
• 2 bunches fresh parsley, chopped with stems removed (approx 3 cups)
• 10 fresh mint leaves, chopped (approx 1/2 cup)
• 3 medium tomatoes, diced fine
• Juice from 1 lemon (approx 1/4 cup)
• 2 TB olive oil
• 1/2 tsp seven spices
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions

1. start by rinsing the burghul, and soaking it in water for about 30 minutes.
2. While the burghul is being soaked, chop the vegetables and combine them together in a salad bowl, chopping the tomatoes last. 
3. Fold the burghul gently into the vegetables to prevent the tomatoes from being smashed.
4. Garnish with diced tomatoes and sumac or sliced radishes and paprika and serve!

Nutrition facts: 

Nutrition facts for 1 cup of tabbouleh:
60 total calories, 7gm total carbohydrate, 4 gm fiber, 1oz protein, 1gm fat
(0.5 Carbohydrates (0 NET carbs), 0 Fat, and 0 protein exchanges)

Its a Lemon River!

Lemons!

Now is the time in our Californian suburb where the weather is warming up and the lemons are falling from all the heat. The results? Liquid gold! A fridge full of lemons, a kitchen smelling of lemons, the neighbors and friends responding, 'thanks, but please! no more lemons'. I'm being drowned by my river of lemons!

So many lemons that when I step outside, I slip and make lemon puree! So many lemons that my patio is more yellow than the sunlit Californian sky!

What can I do with so many lemons? Some options are: lemonade, lemon juice ice cubes for winter, lemon bars, lemon meringue, lemon tarts, Moroccan preserved lemons... But what about the rest? My last idea? Lemon sorbet! YUM!

Ice cream, has a thicker, more viscous texture made from higher fat content, allowing the incorporation of more air when it is mixed, and better holding of the air bubbles, making the ice cream softer when frozen and easier to scoop. Sorbet, however, is basically frozen, flavored sugar water. It usually has an icy, less smooth feel. Plus, sugar generally helps the ice cream from freezing solid into ice, so even 1/4 cup of many sorbets can be much more than a diabetic carbohydrate serving depending on the manufacturer. Many manufacturers add thickeners like egg yolks, corn starch, protein powders, gelatin, or pectin. The problem with many of these is their starchiness, also some have allergies to eggs, soy or dairy proteins, and Muslims and Jews cannot have the majority of gelatin due to its sources being mainly from pigs.Other manufacturers add an alcohol-base to the sorbet mixture to increase its freezing temperature (also not religiously appropriate).

To my sorbet, I want to reduce the amount of sugar I add (keeping my family healthy) and make sure the consistency is thick and creamy enough that it won't turn completely to ice upon freezing but will still provide a nice smooth mouth feel. Plus I want to stay away from allergens starches and gelatin.

The variety of lemon I use for desserts is called the Meyer lemon because of its sweeter, less tart flavor. This, along with adding a little distilled orange blossom water and the juice from an orange allows for the addition of less sugar. Then the question arises of what type of sugar? Well, naturally, I'll aim to make a simple syrup to impart a slight thickness to my sorbet and remove the graininess of natural sugar. Not exactly diabetic friendly, but that will depend on portion size as well.

To improve viscosity of the sorbet, I'll gradually incorporate a powdered gum base, so the addition of starches or other thickeners became unnecessary.

LEMON ORANGE SORBET

Ingredients

• Juice from 5 lemons (approx 3/4 cup)
• Juice of 1 large orange
• 1 tsp orange blossom water
• 1/2c water
• 3/4c simple syrup (recipe here)
• 2TB powdered gum mastic (also known as gum arabic or gum acacia)

Directions

1. Place all ingredients in a pot on low heat, and allow mixture to simmer until combined, but not boil.
2. Add to this powdered gum mastic and blend well, until any percieved lumps of gum powder have been dissolved. Remove from the heat and refrigerate until cold, about 2 hours. 
3. Place the cooled sorbet mixture in the ice cream maker bowl and blend for 30 minutes or until thick.

So, I've made another batch with orange-blossom honey instead of simple syrup, and the taste is phenomenal. Albeit not exactly my taste preference, but still imparting a wonderfully natural flavor to the sorbet. The texture of the sorbet is still not perfect: it remains a bit icy and doesn't maintain a ball shape when you freeze it. Regardless of perfect presentation, it tasted delicious!

Another option is for the addition of Agave nectar to the sorbet for a reduced sugar option. Instead of using simple syrup, I added 1/2c agave nectar. The results slightly darker yellow color sorbet (negligible), and no noticeable change in taste. Still the texture was the same: soft and fluffy, bot not a cohesive creamy texture.

 I'll post the third trial aimed at improving texture shortly. One goal is for an ice cream that doesn't crumble during my scooping, another is for the ice cream doesn't freeze solid. To this end, I intend to try one batch with added egg yolk, one with rice or corn starch, and one with the addition of orange-flavored liqueur (such as grand marnier), in addition to coconut milk for added smoothness.  Keep checking back!

Lentil Soup

Lentil soup, otherwise known as Shourbat (soup) Adas (lentils) in Arabic, can make you feel satisfied no matter your quantity of hunger.
Nutritionally balanced even in its simplest form, the basic lentil soup consists of boiled lentils (providing for adequate protein and fibrous starch) mixed with browned onions, salt and pepper.

Some countries make it a tomato-based soup, others boil it with the bones of a chicken to impart flavor, while still some still vary from the basic recipe by adding a variety of vegetables like garlic, carrots, celery or crushed tomatoes. In many places where funds are low and food is scarce, some versions of the soup added rice or bread crumbs to the boiling lentils to increase the thickness of the soup liquid and improve their satiety.  In more affluent places, the creativity with the soup gravitates toward the use of meat in the soup like shredded chicken or red meats.  No matter the variety, the basic nutritional balance of lentil soup will satisfy hunger on a tight budget, and give the body the basic macro nutrients for survival. Plus, because of its well-rounded basic nutrition, it is great at the end of one's fast.

My lentil soup recipe that follows consists of just lentils, caramelized onions, water and spices. Most people like their soup pureed before serving to make the soup a more congruous consistency, but my family prefers theirs whole. As a teen, my dad would reminded me after each disastrous attempt at lentil soup, the secret to a great lentil soup is a to make it sweeter with a lot of caramelized onions.  Note the mound of browned onions in the picture. This one's for my papa.

One of my favorite versions of this soup involves adding crushed tomatoes (seeds and tomato skins removed), as well as cumin and a pinch of mustard powder. After mastering the basic soup recipe, feel free to elaborate with any additions, subtractions or substitutions you desire. Be creative! And let me know your results!

Lentil Soup
Makes 4 servings.

• 1 onion, diced finely, with 1/4 of the onion cut into long thin strings (for garnish)
• 1 TB olive oil for frying
• 2 cups lentils (brown or orange, or a combination of the two)
• 4 cups water (may use low sodium or homemade broth instead)
• 1 tsp salt 
• 1 tsp Seven Spices
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• Juice from 1 lemon (optional)

1. In an 8-quart pot on medium heat, warm the oil and add the onions. Stir them frequently, for about 25 minuets or until browned. 
2. Remove the browned onions from the pot and set aside. Keep any remaining oil in the pot.
3. Put lentils with water, salt and spices in the same 8-quart pot on high heat. When the water starts to boil, reduce the heat to medium, cover the pot, and allow the lentils to simmer for about 30 minutes until a lentil can be squished easily between your fingers. (If you want yours pureed, now is the time to do it-- use an immersion blender or allow the soup to cool 15 minutes before putting it in the smoothie blender)
4. Mix in the diced, caramelized onions, reserving the caramelized onion strings as garnish.
5. Ladle the soup into bowls, placing the caramelized onions on top for garnish, and a lemon wedge if your guest desires added flavor in their soup.

Nutrition facts for 1.5 cups of lentil soup:
202 total calories, 30gm total carbohydrate, 8 gm fiber, 16oz protein, 2gm fat
(2 Carb (1.5 net carb), 0.5 Fat, and 2 protein exchanges)