Soul Refresh

Local Getaways to Refresh the Spirit

Foodie

Recipes for the Week: Pasta e Fagoli and Green Tea Chia Pudding

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2014-06-16 20.21.15

 

Pasta e Fagoli Using Cranberry Beans:

It’s definitely summer in San Francisco and this means that soup is on the menu on those days that the weather decides to get cloudy. By now you are probably aware of my love for heirloom beans and that I’ve recently joined a CSA that gives us incredible varieties of them and has been encouraging me to cook more often.

When dry, Cranberry beans are a gorgeous shade of red and the shape is quite round. When you soak cranberry beans they double in size and I’ve found it difficult to find a use for them in recipes, because unlike my white beans that are super tasty to eat on their own, the cranberry bean is quite starchy and prone to falling apart.

However, I was determined to do this bean justice and this Pasta e Fagoli recipe was brilliant! It’s hard to describe the emotional satisfaction of finding the perfect place for this beautiful bean to shine. But, I am sure you can imagine it. One of my housemates commented that he would pay $10 for a cup of this soup, that’s how much he liked it.

Italian soups are one of my favorite things to cook. Why? Because the ingredients are simple, yet there are always subtle understandings of the ingredients and the way they play together that get incorporated into the process. For this soup the two lovely secrets are the parmesan rind and the play between the pasta and the beans. The simple addition of a Parmesan rind while the soup is boiling creates a creamy and flavorful broth. What gives the soup it’s signature consistency is in the title. The ajou of the beans and the starchiness of the pasta work together to create a silky broth that takes this soup with simple ingredients to a whole new level.

The other thing I love about this recipe is the parsley. This leaf is so subtle in taste that it’s easy to dismiss, however I am coming to appreciate Parsley it for it’s fresh, verdant ability to brighten such a hearty soup for the summer months.

Let me know if you have a chance to make this soup! If you ever purchase cranberry beans then I believe you have to.

You can find the recipe I used, here: Cranberry Bean Pasta e Fagoli

 

Green Tea Chia Pudding

Chia seeds are funny. Everyone knows them from their heyday as part of everyone’s favorite “chia pet.” I also now know what it was the Mexican restaurants were adding to their agua frescas. What really turned me on to eating chia seeds was the book “Born to Run” – which highlighted them as a “superfood”.

What helps in my love for the Chia seed is that I enjoy a “smooshy” consistency. Not everyone resides in this camp, but if you do love these types of food you may also enjoy mochi, gummy candies and chocolate pudding.

I have a pack of Chia seeds in my cupboard – a last-minute impulse buy from Trader Joe’s and I was delighted when I cam across this recipe from green beauty enthusiast, Sophie Uliano for Green Tea Chia Pudding.

What encouraged me to make this breakfast dish was that I had all of the ingredients: Matcha powder, Chia Seeds yogurt and Agave Syrup. It’s really simple and the caffeine  from Matcha powder is quite delightful and does not create a crash for me.

All you do is soak two tablespoons of chia seeds in water for an hour. Dissolve a teaspoon of matcha powder into the mixture, add a few tablespoons of yoghurt and a dash of agave syrup and wala!

I have to admit, it’s odd to feel full off of chia seeds. But I love this green pudding and feel great having it for breakfast. It’s light, yet filling.

More specific details on this recipe can be found, here: Green Tea Chia Pudding 

 

What are your favorite recipes this week?

The Joy of Using the Full Vegetable: Beet Edition

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The pressure is on from my new box of farm fresh veggies! I must cook them up within a week before it’s time to pick up my new CSA box at the Castro farmers market on Wednesday. It’s summer so it’s nice that many of the greens were fresh lettuces and the box also included strawberries, but there was also the inclusion of everyone’s favorite staple crop – beets.

My mission upon receiving these beets was to finally use the beet greens. There’s a weird psychology that arises when veggies are farm fresh. They are dirty and raw – raw like you just hunted them from the ground. Maybe I’m alone in this squeamishness, but I have to be honest that it took me a while to come to love fresh veggies that had dirt I had to clean off from them and a few bugs here and there that made their way into my kitchen. This was the reason for my initial apprehension in cooking beet greens, they seemed unnatural and experimental to me. They are also huge and take over a shelf on your fridge!

I was doubly intrigued to use the beet greens alongside the beets in a dish to honor the vegetable in all its glory. I landed on this  recipe from the New York Times: “Pappardelle With Beets, Beet Greens and Goat Cheese”.

Cooking the Beets

I turned my oven to 400 degrees, covered my elongated beet roots in olive oil and placed them in a glass cooking dish uncovered because I was out of foil (most recipes say to wrap it in foil). After cooking them for about an hour – I googled “how to know when my beet is done” and it turns out this is a very popular question for rap artists regarding “beats”. I discovered my beet was done when a knife could slice through it easily and I made sure to cook it enough so that the sweetness from roasting had time to set in. I then learned that beets have skins to remove so once they were cooled I began to use a knife to gently scrape off the outer layer (who knew?!). Soon my hands became bright red and the beet cooking adventure was full on!

Cooking the Greens

I followed the New York Times Recipe and first blanched the beets in boiling water for a minute, placed them in a cold bath and then squeezed them out. I separated the greens from the stem and chopped them up separately so they were more uniform. I then followed the recipe and sauteed both the stems and the greens and the beets with garlic. A sauce was later created by adding pasta water and goat cheese to the pan to pick up the flavors and the pasta once cooked is added with a little more pasta sauce resulting in a meal of different bright red shades.

What I Loved Most

From the root, to the stem, to the leaves – each part of the beet offered a different taste that was extremely delicious and varied in texture. The beet greens are now a delicacy in my tongue/mind memory and they did a great job of picking up flavors such as pepper and salt and served as flavor bursts throughout the dish.

Nathan loved the meal. I was excited that we had eaten so many beets in one sitting and knew they were prized for their health benefits. I researched their history and looked up their benefits. Turns out historically they were prized for their greens and it wasn’t until the Romans that the root portion was cultivated and prized as an aphrodisiac. Another article supported this theory mentioning that beets have high levels of “boron” which increases the production of sex hormones in the body. Beets have many more benefits for tonifying the blood and the liver, but sexy Roman talk was the most playful topic for newlywed conversation.

I expect we will receive more beets in our CSA box and I will definitely be more excited and prepared to cook the greens. We are thinking that a nice borscht would be the next experiment we perform on the beets. Perhaps I could make the beet greens a crispy topping for the soup. More research on that later!

If you want to create this recipe I describe you can find it here: “Pappardelle With Beets, Beet Greens and Goat Cheese”.