Liz On Food

Braised Carrots with Ginger and Honey

The balance of ginger and honey bring out the best in carrots. This easy dish is the perfect complement to chicken or pork. And check out the vitamin A content!

Serves: 6

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

8 medium carrots
1/2 t ginger
1 T honey
3/4 c water
1 T butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel carrots and slice into quarters length-wise; cut quarters to 2-inch pieces. In a small bowl, mix ginger, honey and water. Place carrots in a saute pan, pour in liquid mixture. Cover with lid and simmer on low heat until carrots are slightly tender. Remove lid and add butter. Simmer without lid until liquid is reduced and carrots are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Per-serving Nutritional Profile:
    Calories, 60
    Fat, 2 g
        Saturated Fat, 1 g
    Cholesterol, 5 mg
    Carbs, 11 g
        Dietary Fiber, 2 g
    Protein, 1 g
    Sodium, 150  mg
    Vitamin A, 270% Daily Value
    Vitamin C, 8% Daily Value
    Calcium, 2% Daily Value
    Iron, 2% Daily Value

Decadence in Small Portions

In the pursuit of health and happiness, I can always make a little room for decadence. When I'm feeling indulgent, I often bake. With a house full of active teenagers and their friends, whatever I create is sure to last less than 24 hours. Thus, I have little opportunity to even consider overindulging.

 Today, I pulled out a classic bar cookie recipe has been in my recipe card index for over 25 years: Pecan Coconut Slices. I've had the recipe for so long I don't remember the original source. Out of curiosity, I compared the recipe in my card file to one in the current Joy of Cooking. What I found hearkens to the results of Brian Wansink's research reviewing the caloric content of similar recipes in different editions of the famous cookbook. The proportion and amount of ingredients differ slightly, but the difference in yield is remarkable. And it has to do with choice of pans and size of cookies. I spread the dough and topping thinly in a jelly roll (11"x17") baking pan to yield 54 dainty morsels with 90 calories a piece, whereas JOC suggests using a 9"x9" pan with a yield of 12 whopper cookies containing 400 calories each. Sometimes, it's all about portion.

Pecan Coconut Slices

This class bar cookie recipe has been in my recipe card index for over 25 years, and it's still one of my favorites. The proportion of ingredients are different from the Joy of Cooking (JOC) version, as is the yield. This recipe below calls for more butter in the shortcake and more sugar in the topping than does JOC's. I spread the cookies thinner in a jelly roll (11"x17") baking pan, whereas JOC suggests using a 9"x9" pan with a yield of 12 cookies! That would be quite a cookie at 405 calories per serving. Sometimes, it's all about portion. My thinner version creates 54 cookies with 90 calories each.

Yield: 54 bar cookies

Preparation Time: 1 hour

1 c flaked coconut (part of topping)

Preheat oven to 325^o F. Spread coconut on 11"x17" baking sheet and bake 10 minutes, turning occasionally, until golden brown. Remove from oven and set aside.

Shortcake

1/2 c butter (1 stick), softened (If you use salted, do not add any additional salt to the recipe.)
1/4 c white sugar
1 egg
1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2 c flour

Turn up oven to 350^o F. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. add egg and vanilla; beat. Fold in flour. Press dough into 11"x17" baking sheet. Bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven; set aside.

Pecan Coconut Topping

2 beaten eggs
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar
2 T flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 c chopped pecans
(Plus toasted coconut from first step.)

Beat eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add sugar and mix. Add dry ingredients, mix on low until just blended. Fold in toasted coconut and pecans. Spread over baked shortcake. Bake 15 minutes. Let cool; make nine cuts crosswise and six cuts lengthwise to make bars.

Per-serving Nutritional Profile:
    Calories, 90
    Fat, 5 g
        Saturated Fat, 2.5 g
    Cholesterol, 15 mg
    Carbs, 10 g
        Dietary Fiber, 1 g
    Protein, 1 g
    Sodium, 30  mg
    Vitamin A, 2% Daily Value
    Vitamin C, 0% Daily Value
    Calcium, 2% Daily Value
    Iron, 2% Daily Value

Sake on a Rainy Day in Boulder

A time-honored tradition in Boulder, Colo., is the Boulder Creek Festival, held annually on Memorial Day Weekend since the late 1980s. And it wouldn't be the Boulder Creek Festival without a dousing from Mother Nature, which happened right on cue Sunday afternoon as my husband and I perused paintings and handcrafted jewelry shortly after arriving. Our original intent was to enjoy local food fare while taking in some music and art. Moving out of the arts and crafts tent, I popped open my trusty compact umbrella, which we immediately learned doesn't cover two grown people. Squeezed under our meager covering, we walked in lockstep over the bridge toward the food section. But due to the fest layout, we had to first travel through the metaphysical booth aisles, where we were promised the opportunities to get to know Jesus better through science and to learn our future fate through pulse reading. The dentist promising whiter teeth in just 7 days was pushing a broom in a failed attempt to thwart rainwater from flooding his booth. Our enthusiasm for the Boulder Creek Festival was by then completely dampened.

Backs, shoulders and feet soaked, we headed toward the refuge of Pearl Street shops, watching the fast-moving Boulder Creek filled to its banks. Destination Boulder Book Store where I picked up two new books I'm looking forward to reading: Colorado State University animal behaviorist Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human and How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham, Harvard University professor of biological anthropology. (Hmm, I just noticed common thread: Perhaps, I was feeling particularly inhuman at that moment in the bookstore, drenched and cold.)

Having missed the opportunity for Creek Festival noshing, we considered our options and chose Hapa Sushi, a Colorado franchise with a restaurant two doors east of the bookstore. Seated at the front window watching the deluge, we were warmed by miso soup and sake (rice wine) topped off with nigiri sushi (smoked salmon, yellowtail, yellowfin tuna and mackerel). Hapa Sushi boasts the largest collection of sake in Colorado and serves it cold, in chilled glasses. In Japan, sake is served warm, cold or at room temperature, depending on the season and quality of sake. Higher grade sakes are usually served chilled to bring out the flavor and aroma, which is masked when heated. Taking a recommendation from the waitstaff, I chose Onikoroshi, which was described on the Sake list as silky. Indeed, it was. "Onikoroshi," in Japanese, means demon or goblin killer. Specific to beverages, Onikoroshi originally described a sake so bad it could kill a demon. But its meaning morphed over time to the opposite, so that now Onikoroshi is the namesake for a sake so good it could kill a demon. It's similar to an American hipster saying, "That's so  bad, man," to describe something really good. We found Onikoroshi sake to be the perfect libation for waiting out a wicked Boulder thunderstorm.

Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've honed this familiar recipe over the years using a variety of sources, taking into account high altitude (about 5,500 ft above sea level). I've found that in high-altitude baking, most chocolate chip recipes found on packaging and in cookbooks invariably result in over-rising and ultimately, over-flat, over-crisp cookies. I've compensated by reducing leavening agents and increasing flour and oven temperature. I usually under-bake slightly for soft, chewy cookies. Trying to get kids to drink more milk? Serve these cookies, and the milk will go right down!

Yield: 3 dozen cookies

Preparation Time: 45 minutes

1 c butter (2 sticks), softened (If you use salted, do not add any additional salt to the recipe.)
3/4 c white sugar
3/4 c brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
2 1/3 c flour
3/4 t baking soda
2 c (12 oz) semi-sweet or dark chocolate baking chips
1 c chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 385^o F. With a mixer or by hand, beat together butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla, mix. Add dry ingredients, mix on low until just blended. Do not over-mix (minimum amount of mixing at this stage keeps cookies tender). Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Use tablespoon to drop dough onto cookie sheets – 12 per sheet. Bake for 9-10 minutes for soft, chewy cookies; bake 10-12 minutes for more crisp cookies.

Per-serving Nutritional Profile:
    Calories, 170
    Fat, 9 g
        Saturated Fat, 4 g
    Cholesterol, 20 mg
    Carbs, 22 g
        Dietary Fiber, 1 g
    Protein, 2 g
    Sodium, 20  mg
    Vitamin A, 2% Daily Value
    Vitamin C, 0% Daily Value
    Calcium, 2% Daily Value
    Iron, 6% Daily Value