Throat-Comfort Tea

While culling through a pile of paper scraps during a sorting frenzy today, I can across my recipe for a tea that I share with scratch-throated friends. If you're experiencing a sore throat, give this a try. I hope it's healing and comforting, speeding your recovery. Be well!

Ingredients:

1. Ginger, coarsely chopped*
   
2. Zest of 1 Lemon
   
3. 3 tablespoons of fresh-squeezed Lemon Juice
   
4. 1/4 cup of fresh Mint Leaves, chopped
5. 2-3 teaspoons of Honey
6. 1 teaspoon Echinacea - Goldenseal Extract

Directions:

• *Coarsely chop a four to six-inch slice of fresh ginger, depending on how strong you want the flavor of ginger.
  
• In a sauce pan, combine the chopped ginger, lemon zest and chopped mint with 6 cups of water. Cover and bring to a boil.
• Reduce heat and simmer for 20-30 minutes, with lid slightly ajar, until the tea has reduced to about 5 cups.
  
• Pour the tea through a fine strainer over a heat-proof bowl.
  
• Pour the tea from the bowl back into the sauce pan, add the fresh lemon juice and honey to taste.
• Simmer for 2 minutes. Place 1/4 teaspoon of the echinacea-goldenseal extract into each cup of tea. Pour tea and serve.
  

My All-Time Favorite Minestrone Soup

Yesterday, my girlfriend Loma mentioned that she wanted to get back in the kitchen and cook up some healthy meals following the holidays. Sounds good to me! The topic of homemade soups came up and I offered to share my all-time family favorite minestrone soup recipe with her. I started making homemade minestrone back in 1978 using the recipe on page 109 in the Spices of the World Cookbook by McCormick. I hope you are fortunate enough to find a copy of this out-of-print cookbook. I guarantee you’ll be glad you have it on your culinary book shelf!

Photo from "Everything Minestrone Soup"

Ingredients:

1 cup dried marrow beans or garbanzo beans or lima beans

7 cups water

1/cup chopped instant onion

1 tablespoon Parsley Flakes

3 tablespoons Celery Flakes

1/8 teaspoon Instant Minced Garlic

2 tablespoons Bell Pepper Flakes

¼ cup olive oil

¼ teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper

½ pound fresh spinach

2 teaspoons Beef Flavor Base, or vegetable base

1/8 teaspoon Rubbed Sage

¼ teaspoon Italian Seasoning, or make your own blend

1 teaspoon Ground Thyme

2 teaspoons Salt

¼ teaspoon Course Ground Pepper

1 cup diced potatoes

2 cups tomatoes

1 cup chopped cabbage

1 small zucchini, thinly sliced

1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni

Grated Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

1. Soak beans overnight in water to cover. Drain.
2. Add the 7 cups of water. Cover and simmer for 3 hours or until tender.
3. Sauté the onions, garlic, parsley, celery and pepper flakes in oil until well-coated and hot, but don’t allow them to brown.
4. Add mixture to the beans with the remaining seasonings, fresh vegetables and uncooked macaroni.
5. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes or longer.
6. If the soup is too thick for your liking, add water to thin to the consistency you prefer.
7. Top the minestrone soup with grated Parmesan cheese.

Makes about 3 quarts.

Notes:

• This cookbook was designed to promote the sales of McCormick spices, so if you decide to use all fresh ingredients including the beans, onions and herbs, as I typically do, you will want to decrease the amount of water.
• To make this a gluten-free soup, simple add gluten-free macaroni (quinoa or brown rice).
  
• If you want to learn more about minestrone and try other variations, click here.

Christmas Eve Mediterranean Feast

Preparation for our Christmas Eve Mediterranean feast began several days in advance with culling though our cookbooks, selecting recipes, making a shopping list and checking it twice, deciding where to shop for best values for which items, doing the shopping, putting away the groceries, and cooking up what we could the day before. All in all, it was an enjoyable process with my husband just as enthusiastic and willing to do whatever it took to help me shop and cook.

Although dinner was intended to feed four adults and a child - the two of us, our daughter and son-in-law, our two year old granddaughter, with the addition of our week-old grandson - ...

Baby Leif fast asleep in Nana's arms.

...we made so much food, we had leftovers for all of us for three more meals, including Christmas day!

~ Our Mediterranean Menu ~

• Vegetarian Lentil Soup - Arabia - TLOB*, pg. 19
  
• "Start the Party" Hummus & Pita Bread - Arabia - TLOB*, pg 125
  
• Orange, Red Onion, Black Olive Salad (Munkaczina) - Arabia -
  
• Subsistence Tabbouleh - Arabia - TLOB*, pg. 143, also see quinoa tabouleh, gluten-free
  
• Dolmathes - Greece - GCIAAK*, pg. 122, also see stuffed grape leaves - vegetarian dolmades
  
• Garlic Green Beans with Mizithra Cheese - Greece - PA*, pg. 89 (with asparagus)
  
• Special Rice with Cinnamon - Arabia - TLOB*, pg. 29
  
• Mo Kadeem's Roasted Fish in Tahini Sauce - Arabia, TLOB*, pg.315
  
• Mrs. Manarelli's Civilized Panna Cotta - Italy, TLOB*, pg. 86
  

Cookbooks:

1. *TLOB - The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber (a culinary memoir)
   
2. *GCIAAK - Greek Cooking in an American Kitchen (1983) by St. Demetrios Church Cookbook Committee
   
3. *PA - Papas' Art of Traditional Greek Cooking by George and Chrisoula Papas
   

cinnamon rice, quinoa tabouleh and munkaczina with feta cheese

vegetarian dolmades in tomato sauce, roasted red snapper in tahini sauce with roasted pinenuts, garlic green beans with mizithra cheese

vegetarian lentil soup with cumin, green beans with
olive oil, roasted garlic and mizithra cheese, pita bread,
roasted fish and dolmades

panna cotta with chocolate sauce

Ingredients:

2 cups heavy cream, less 2 tablespoons to dissolve in gelatin
1/4 cup sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons gelatin (1/2 packet)
4 to 8 tablespoons of chocolate sauce, fruit puree or sweetened fruit

Directions:

1. Heat two cups (less two tablespoons) of the heavy cream and sugar in a sauce pan.
2. Simmer for 15 minutes.
3. In a very small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the remaining two tablespoons of cream.
4. Remove the simmered cream from the stove and add the gelatin-cream mixture.
5. Stir to dissolve.
6. Pour 1/2 cup of the hot cream liquid into 4 lightly-oiled metal molds or ramekins*.
7. Refrigerator for 4 to 6 hours until set.
8. Serve chilled or at room temperature.
   
9. Dip the molds in hot water and run the edge of a knife around the molds to loosen.
10. Invert molds onto serving plates and drizzle your choice of sauce over top.
11. *Option: Serve panna cotta in ramekins without removing and serve with sauce.
    

Serves 4

Gluten-Free Apple Oat Muffins

Something's been missing the past few years, but what is it... Muffins!

Yes, muffins; I haven't allowed myself to indulge in muffins since going gluten free. So, I went in search of a gluten-free muffin recipe. The criteria? It had to be quick, easy, moist and flavorful, and that I had all of the ingredients in my pantry and refrigerator. Voila! Love the Internet. I came across this recipe, contributed by Terri Gruss, MS on About.com, adapted from "Apple Oat-Bran Muffins" recipe in The Good Carb Cookbook by Sandra Woodruff, M.S., R.D.

This recipe is indeed quick, easy, and yields moist and flavorful muffins! And sweet, but not too sweet. Just right. I used Bob's Red Mill gluten-free steel cut oats. Grinding them in my Vita-Mix to a fine flour.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups freshly ground certified gluten-free, rolled oats
• 2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup plain, gluten-free yogurt
• 1/2 cup good quality 100% apple juice
• 2 lightly beaten large eggs plus one egg white
• 4 tablespoons light olive oil or canola oil (I used peanut oil)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup shredded, unpeeled apple (equivalent of one large apple)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I used pecans)
• 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon to sprinkle on muffins (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°

1. Use a blender or coffee grinder to process the gluten-free oats into flour. Grind in batches if using a small coffee grinder.
2. Combine the oat flour, baking powder, baking soda, brown sugar and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Whisk to blend.
3. In a smaller bowl, lightly beat eggs. Whisk in the yogurt, apple juice, oil and vanilla. Slowly pour this wet mixture into the bowl with dry ingredients. Stir with a fork to thoroughly blend.
4. Fold in the shredded apple (I used a hand-held cheese grater) and nuts. Stir until blended. Avoid overmixing.
5. Line muffin pan with paper liners, or lightly grease pan and fill each muffin cup 3/4 full.
6. Bake for 16-18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of muffin comes out clean (in my oven the muffins baked for 18 minutes).
7. While hot, sprinkle muffins with cinnamon sugar mixture and allow muffins to cool for about 10-15 minutes before serving, if you can.

Enjoy!

Mama Siran's Date and Hazelnut Spread

I began my day with a delicious serving of natural goodness and sweetness. With a butter knife, I easily and liberally troweled Mama Siran's Date and Hazelnut Spread on a toasted half of a UDI's gluten-free bagel. Mama Siran's Spread has a creamy, smooth consistency like the thick, homemade apple butter I enjoyed as a young girl. Both dates and hazelnuts are loaded with nutrients and health benefits.

I look forward to serving Mama Siran's Spread during the holidays as an appetizer atop cream cheese on thin slices of a gluten-free baguette.

Soulikhan also sells both of Mama Siran's date products, date-hazelnut and date-apricot, as pastes. A 2 tablespoon serving has 120 calories.

Home-Baked Pizza with UDI'S Gluten-Free Crust

Yesterday was a busy day out and about with our granddaughter. We even fit in a late afternoon movie. By the time we were heading home, our thoughts were to either eat out or eat simple. Hungry, yet opting for the latter, we made a quick stop at the grocery store for toppings to go on the 9-inch UDI'S gluten-free pizza crusts we had in our freezer back home. We hadn't tried UDI'S pizza crust yet, so this was the perfect opportunity to load those crusts up with savory items and sink our teeth into them.


We weren't disappointed; the pizza was easy to cut with a pizza wheel and tasted great! The crust was crisp on the outside, yet chewy and flexible so we could pick up individual slices loaded with sauce, cheeses, fresh veggies and tomatoes, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and olives... bending, and folding to wrap our mouths around them to take big bites!

The directions are to cook the pizza at 375-degrees for 5-7 minutes, if defrosted. Our crusts were frozen, so I let them cook for 10 minutes. I could have left the pizza in the oven for another minute or so, but I opted to microwave for 30-seconds on high instead. I said I was hungry! So, depending on the type of oven you have and how well it heats, the temperature of the crust, as well as how much you load up your crust, you will want to experiment on the time so your pizza is thoroughly cooked through from the crusty bottom to the juicy top.

Not only is UDI"S pizza crust gluten-free, it also dairy, soy and nut free. Each packages comes with two 9-inch uncooked crusts. The main ingredients are: tapioca, potato and corn starches, brown rice flour, canola or sunflower oil, evaporated cane juice xanthan gum, salt and yeast.

Note: I already have a couple posts about homemade gluten-free pizza and recently posted about trying gluten-free take-out pizza from Papa's Pizza. Next, I'll try making gluten-free pizza crust dough from a variety of dry mixes.

Gluten-Free Gravlax with Sour Cream Mustard Sauce

Gravlax is a Scandinavian entree or appetizer made with raw salmon that has been cured in salt, sugar, dill, and in this recipe potato vodka. Gravlax is served on thinly-sliced bread with a dollop of mustard sauce.

I served 2-1/2 pounds of Gravlax to family and friends at my daughter's baby shower this past November. It was so delicious, I plan to make it again for the holidays. You may still have time to make it for your Christmas party later this week, but you do need 48 hours for the salmon to cure before serving. And you'll need a sharp knife!

Ingredients for the Salmon (per half pound):

1/2 pound fresh, boneless salmon fillet
2 tablespoons potato vodka
1 round teaspoon coarse salt
1 round teaspoon sugar
Fresh dill weed to cover

Ingredients for the Sour Cream Sauce:

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard
Pinch of salt
Minced dill weed (optional, to taste)

Directions:

1. If the salmon has skin, place it skin-side down in a glass or enamel baking pan.
2. Pour the vodka over the fleshy side, then sprinkle the salt and sugar evenly to coat.
3. Completely cover the salmon with sprigs of fresh dill weed.
4. Cover the salmon with a sheet of plastic wrap and place a heavy object on top to weigh it down while is cures in the brine. I set a smaller glass baking pan in side the larger glass pan and placed a water-filled tea kettle on top for weight.
5. Put the salmon in the refrigerator for 48 hours to cure in the brine.
6. Meanwhile, go ahead and make the sour cream mustard sauce. Mix together the sour cream, mustard, salt and minced dill (optional). Season to taste and chill.
7. After 48 hours has past, scrape all the dill and any remaining crust of sugar and salt off the top of the salmon fillet.
8. Place the salmon on a cutting board, and with a very sharp knife, make thin, diagonal slices the length of the fillet, making sure to slice clean through each segment.
   
9. Carefully transition the sliced fillet to a serving platter, and garnish with fresh dill weed, cover with plastic wrap, and chill until ready to serve or transport to your party. Don't forget to take the sauce and bread and appropriate serving utensils!
   
10. Set the Gravlax platter on the table along with the bowl of the Sour Cream Mustard Sauce (with small spoon) and a basket of thinly sliced bread or crackers.

Note: Increase ingredients according to how many pounds you wish to serve.
Enjoy!