Tofu and Carrot Sautee

I have never been a huge fan of tofu. In fact, I have always thought it was quite disgusting. Josh likes it, and because it is a source of protein, I prep it sometimes to include in dishes simply for its protein content. The other day, however, I made a discovery: small pieces of tofu fried up in oil in a non-stick teflon pan is quite lovely. So lovely, in fact, that Josh and I ended up eating the first batch I made as a simple appetizer! The difference was the pan, which I just bought recently in my efforts to cook the perfect Julia Child's omelette. The non-stick pan allows for a more crispy, browned top, something I've never been able to achieve by frying the tofu in my cast iron pans, the only kinds of pans I owned until just recently. So, with salt and some cumin, the result of tofu cooked in the non-stick pan is a slightly crispy, lovely nugget of flavor. As an appetizer served with toothpicks or in this dish, it's great!

1. Half a block of firm tofu, cut into small cubes
2. 1 large clove of garlic, minced
3. About 2 tsp fresh minced ginger
4. Half an onion, cut into small pieces
5. 5 or 6 small carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces
6. Half a can of black beans, drained
7. Rice

Sautee the cubed tofu in a tablespoon or so of olive oil, sprinkling with salt and cumin to taste as you go. Use a wooden spoon to stir occassionally and shake the pan so that all sides of the tofu (or at least a few of them) turn a golden brown. Remove to a bowl, add a bit more oil to the pan and sautee the garlic and onion until translucent. Add the carrots and cook only until just tender. Add the black beans and cook until hot.

Serve over rice for a delicious, healthy meal!

Ginger broth

My stomach was feeling a little queazy the other day, and since I didn't have any gingerale in the house, I thought I'd try making a little ginger broth to calm the system a bit. There's nothing more simple or economical than this: all you need are a few scraps from an onion, some garlic and ginger that you might be using for something else that you are cooking up. In the pot, you see that it doesn't take much to start, but the yield is pretty high.

Place the scraps into a pot about this size and fill about 3/4 full with cold water and a generous amount of salt, about what you see in my hand below. Bring to a boil than reduce to simmer for at least an hour, if not more. Strain, cool and drink or spoon up like any other soup. Enjoy!

Mango Banana Batido

Drinking cold juices or water with heaps of ice cubes has never been my thing. And I've never been a big fan of smoothies either because, even though I like the idea of drinking fruit (uh... yum!), I just can't deal with the ice factor... it just plain old hurts my head! The batido, which Josh and I discovered in Costa Rica, is the answer I've been looking for all these years: healthy, refreshing, just slightly sweet and only as cold as the temperature of the rice milk used to make it. The best ones I tried came from the mom and pop type sodas (restaurant) simply because, unlike the american or european versions we tried, they weren't packed with crushed ice. The recipe I give below uses agave syrup instead of sugar, which is what the waitress at La Amistad Soda in Monteverde told us she uses, and rice milk instead of cow's milk. You can also use water instead of milk for a lighter drink, and you should feel free to expirament with different fruit and fruit combinations.

For two generous, pint-sized servings, place the following in a blender:

• 2 ripe mangos, peeled, pitted and cut
• 1 banana, peeled

Next, pour in just enough rice milk (or milk or water) to cover the fruit and add in a few squirts of agave syrup (or a teaspoon or so of sugar, or to taste). Blend on high until smooth. Adjust more liquid if necessary as well as sweetener if you prefer sweeter drinks.

Try a blackberry batido as well:

• About 3/4 cup frozen blackberries
• 1 banana, peeled

Place the berries in the blender with enough water and blend. Strain and return to blender. Add the banana and sweetener and serve cold.

Casado con vegetales (comida tipica)

Casado is a plate full of food guaranteed to satisfy all your tastebuds, salty and sugary alike. At the base of every casado is the salty black beans and rice as well as a small cold salad, and the sugary fried plantain. To this, you may add a variety of cooked vegetables or a choice of meat. The casado you see in the picture below is my rendition of the one Josh and I kept going back to in Santa Teresa, in Costa Rica, which replaced the plaintain with fried yucca plant (see the recipe I give for this as it needs to be prepped the night before). The 10 students who participate in Josh and my food club, three of whom you can see below serving themselves and getting ready to dive in, can attest to the fact that it's delicious, healthy and very simple to make!

Take any vegetable (We used cauliflour, broccoli and carrot here) and prep them for roasting with salt, pepper and olive oil (my favorite), sauteeing or boiling. While the vegetables are cooking, prep the rice and beans, and the salad.

For the rice, mince a clove of garlic, half a small hot pepper and 1 or 2 scallions. Sautee these things in olive oil, add the rice (basmati is best) and stir to cover with oil. Add salt and the required amount of water and bring to boil then simmer for 20 minutes.

For the beans, sautee some chopped onion in olive oil until translucent. Add canned beans with their liquid, salt, pepper and cumin (optional - the Ticos didn't use spices as far as I could tell, but I love cumin too much to pass it up), and simmer.

You can prep any simple salad you want as a side. In the casado seen above, the salad consists of shredded carrot and cabbage with a simple vinagrette (1 part vinegar, two parts olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper).

Near the end of everything being ready, heat a few inches of oil in a deep cast-iron pan or deep fryer for the yucca plant, and cook as instructed in the recipe I give in a previous blog.

Fried yucca plant

While in Costa Rica, Josh and I ate at a number of small mom-and-pop restaurants called sodas. The one in the photo below, called Layunta Soda, which was located directly across the street from Casa Zen where we stayed in Santa Theresa, was our favorite. (It didn't make the cut for the restaurant section in our guide book as "places to eat", but it really should have been!) Rather than serve fried plantain with the comida tipica (otherwise known as casado) as is the tradition, this one served fried yucca plant. After our second meal there, I walked to the grocery store, bought a yucca plant and brought it back to the restaurant. In my best spanish possible, I asked the woman to show me how to prep and cook this long, thick-skinned brown potato-like veggie. She very graciously showed me how, and here is what I learned.

Pick a yucca plant that it fairly fat. The skin is thick, so use a cleaver and a hammer to cut the plant into 3 or 4 inch sections.

Using a small, sharp knife, make a slit down the middle of the plant, the long way. Using the edge of the knife, edge the blade under the skin and start to move the knife along until the whole skin comes off. Once you get this going a bit, the skin very easily detaches itself, usually in one piece.

Cut the pieces into 4 sections, the long way. The pieces will look like triangles with one round edge. Use the knife to cut away the tough, stringy little root that is at the pointed edge of these pieces. You may have to cut it out of one of the pieces, or all four, depending on how big it was. There may also be little knots in the flesh which you should also cut out and throw into the compost bin. Put the pieces in a pot, cover with cold, salted water. Bring to a boil and cook until soft, about 15 minutes. Drain, cool, cover and store in the fridge over night.

When you are ready to eat the yucca plant, heat a generous amount of oil in a deep fryer or a deep pot with a cover. Submerge the pieces of cooked yucca in the hot oil and fry for a few minutes, turning over once in a while. Remove from the oil an place on a plate lined with paper towels to soak up some of the oil. The outside will be crispy and slightly yellowed, while the inside will be soft and white. Salt and pepper generously the tops of the cooked yucca.

Serve with casado con vegetales or as a side with black beans and rice.

Comida tipica

In our recent trip to Costa Rica, we stayed in a couple different hostels with common kitchens which gave us a chance to buy some local, in-season veggies and cook up our own "comida tipica". Nothing more simple than carrots and sweet potatoes and black beans, spiced up with some ginger (which I didn't know was so typical in Costa Rica) and cilantro. The only thing missing here to really make it complete as far as Ticos would be concerned is the rice.

• 1 big fat carrot, peeled and cut into rounds
• 1 big fat sweet potato (it's white here... not sure what kind it is), peeled and cut into rounds
• About 2 tbsp fresh minced ginger
• About 2 tbsp fresh minced garlic
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 1 can of black beans
• A bunch of fresh cilantro, minced

In a cast-iron pan, sautee half the onion, half the garlic and all the ginger in a generous amount of olive oil until translucent. Add the carrots and potato and stir to cover with the oil. Salt and pepper and allow to cook until the carrot and potato are just soft. Add the cilantro at the end and stir to mix, cooking for a few more minutes.

While the veggies are cooking, sautee the rest of the onion and garlic in a small saucepan until translucent. Add the beans along with the liquid. Salt to taste and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or so.

Serve hot with rice for an excellent and inexpensive dinner!

Skinny carrot and bok choy soup

Sometimes I make something and I think: this isn't blog worthy, it's way too simple. But simple is often (very often) quite good, if not quite scrumptious. And thus I present this simple soup whose flavor has only improved since I cut the heat over two hours ago and which, by tomorrow at lunch time, will surely be all the more delicious.

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• About 2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
• 2 large carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
• 1 medium head of bok choy, washed and chopped (stalks and leaves)
• Lots of salt
• Soba noodles, cooked and drained

In a large pot, heat some oil. I used grapeseed oil because I was out of olive oil, and I found it to be better because it was lighter and didn't compete with the ginger and carrots for taste. Sautee the onions, garlic and carrots for about five minutes. Add the stalks of the bok choy and stir to cover with the oil. Cook for a few minutes, and then add about 10 cups or so of cold water. Salt generously and bring to a boil. Drop the heat and simmer until the carrots are just tender. Add the bok choy leaves and allow to simmer for five more minutes or so.

Spoon some soba noodles into a bowl, then ladle the soup over the top. This recipe will make many servings. Store the leftovers and cook more soba noodles for a second or third round as needed. Don't add cooked noodles to soup to sit overnight in the fridge, as they will get mooshy.

Enjoy hot on a cold winter's night, or reheated at noon in the office!