An Old Family Recipe for Cioppino

Though the word Ciopinno and the dish that is popular in the US definitely was popularized near the San Francisco area of California, the roots of the dish and name are from Italy. Records of when this dish appeared vary from the Gold Rush days to 1930 says food historian Jean Anderson.

The Italian flair of this tomato based seafood stew using the daily catch comes from the fisherman from Genoa that immigrated to the US and settled in the Bay area of California. A fisherman's stew most likely originated on the boat because in pre 20th century fishing boats didn't have refrigeration, so they were limited to some canned foods (like tomatoes), vegetables, bread, wine and the catch of the day to make their dinner.

Cioppino Feed Italiano

My dad married into an italian family and shared this version with me.  Over the years I've added a few extra ingredients to "heat" it up a little since I generally serve it in the cold winter months. 




Ingredients

• 1/2 - 3/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 5-6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 bunch fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 (14.5 ounce) cans stewed tomatoes
• 1 lb. white fish, snapper or cod
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• Pinch of cayenne
• Pinch of salt and pepper
• 2 Red Jalapeno chilis, chopped
• 1 cup water
• 1 1/2 cups white wine
• 1 1/2 pounds large shrimp - peeled and deveined
• 1 1/2 pounds bay scallops
• 18 small clams
• 18 mussels, cleaned and debearded
• 1 crab, cracked and cleaned
• 1 1/2 pounds cod fillets, cubed

Directions

1. Over medium-low heat olive oil in a large stockpot, add onions, garlic and parsley. Cook slowly, stirring occasionally until onions are soft.
2. Add tomatoes to the pot (break them into chunks as you add them). Add chicken broth, fish fillet, bay leaves, basil, thyme, oregano, chili, cayenne, salt, pepper, water and wine. Mix well. Cover and simmer on very low heat for 2 hours.
3. Chill sauce quickly to deepen flavors for up to 2 days (minimum overnight) in refrigerator. 
4. Reheat sauce slowly the day you plan to serve.              
5. Stir in the shrimp, scallops, clams, mussels and crabmeat. Bring to boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer 5 to 7 minutes until clams open. Ladle soup into bowls and serve with warm, crusty bread.

            

Wine Recommendation:

A new discovery thanks to the owners of Pasta Pomodoro in Vallejo:

LangeTwins Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc

                           

From The Garden To Your Table - Sunchokes

 

Sunchokes can grow up to 6 ft tall

Sunchoke Bulb

My friends at Loma Vista Farm shared some Sunchoke bulbs with me this year.  I put them in the front driveway bed just to see how they would do and to contain them.  They self-propagate easily and will take over whatever area you give them in a couple of seasons.Sunchokes are an easy plant to grow, giving your garden a tall, sunflower like display in the early fall.  They also produce a tasty bulb that is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Thiamin, Phosphorus and Potassium, and a very good source of Iron.

Jerusalem artichokes were first cultivated by the Native Americans long before the arrival of the Europeans; this extensive cultivation obscures the exact native range of the species.^[1] The French explorer Samuel de Champlain found domestically grown plants at Cape Cod in 1605. The Jerusalem artichoke was titled 'best soup vegetable' in the 2002 Nice festival for the heritage of the French cuisine.

Wondering what to do with your excess jerusalem artichokes? Try pickling them.  The key here is to use small pieces, like 1/2 inch or smaller. If you try to pickle them larger the middle of them will be soft and icky, not crunchy.
Makes 3 quarts

• 2-3 pounds sunchokes (choose small ones if possible)
• Juice of 2-3 lemons
• 4 cups water
• 1/3 cup kosher or pickling salt
• 3 tablespoons turmeric
• 4 cups cider vinegar
• 1 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1-2 cups sugar (depending on how sweet you want them)
• 2 tablespoons mustard seed
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 tablespoon chile flakes or 1 dried chile per quart
• 1 clove per quart
• 1 bay leaf per quart

1. Cut sunchokes into 1/2 inch pieces and put any cut pieces into a bowl of water with the lemon juice in it — they will discolor otherwise.
2. When you have them all cut, mix the 4 cups water, 1 tablespoon of the turmeric and the 1/3 cup salt. This is your brine. Brine the sunchokes for a day.
3. To make the pickling liquid, mix the vinegar, sugar, 1 cup water, the rest of the turneric, mustard seed, dry mustard, chiles, cloves and bay leaves (basically everything else) and bring to a boil. Stir well and let it cool to room temperature.
4. Get your hot water bath ready if you plan to can these. Skip this if you plan on keeping the pickles in the fridge.
5. Fish out a chile, clove and bay leaf and put one in each jar.
6. Rinse the sunchokes well, then pack into jars. Cover with the cooled vinegar mixture. Make sure to leave at least 1/4 inch of headspace if you are canning.
7. Process in a hot water bath for 10-15 minutes.
8. Wait at least a week before eating.

The Champion of Breakfast - PROTEIN

While all calories provide us with energy, protein packs a powerful punch - providing us with the satiety to help hold us over until our next meal. In fact, one small study found a protein rich breakfast may help stave off hunger pains and cravings longer than one packed with carbohydrates alone. This is why I encourage clients to enjoy walnuts or yogurt on their oatmeal instead of brown sugar and dried fruit and the same would go for a hearty meat or soy protein based pasta sauce in place of a tomato sauce alone.

The recommended amount of protein is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight or 0.4 grams protein per pound of body weight. This is 60 grams of protein per day if you weigh 150 pounds. Perhaps an easier way to view the calculation is to divide your weight in pounds in half and subtract 10. Most of us fall somewhere within the range of 45-60 grams per day. I recommend 10 and 15 grams per meal.

Rather than tallying up grams of protein, it is easier for some people to consider the actual ounces of protein foods served. The average adult only needs about 6 oz of meat or protein equivalent daily. We only need 1-2 ounces of protein at each meal, leaving room for one or two protein-rich snacks.

Protein Equivalent translates into:

1 oz of meat, poultry, or seafood

OR

1 egg

OR

½ oz of nuts or seeds,

OR

1 Tbsp nut butter

OR

¼ cup tofu

OR

2 Tbsp hummus

OR

¼ cup beans.

When you wake up in the morning, rested or not, your metabolism is running at the lowest gear of the day. The second you eat something, your body cranks into gear and metabolically starts working at a higher rate. Not sure what to eat? Try these six protein-packed breakfasts.

 

For my vegetarian readers this sweet potato & quinoa recipe is high in protein, low in fat, and high in spicy and sweet flavor! Whole grain quinoa cooks quicker than most grains and is an excellent source of protein for vegetarians with about 11 grams of protein per cup of cooked quinoa. Cook it up the night before and you'll have a quick, tasty breakfast reaady to go!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup quinoa, uncooked
• 2 cups vegetable broth or water
• 1 sweet potato, baked and diced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Simmer the quinoa in the vegetable broth about 10 to 15 minutes, or until water is gone and quinoa is light and fluffy when stirred. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

Toss together the quinoa, sweet potato and bell pepper in a large bowl.

In a separate small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil and cayenne pepper. Gently toss this dressing with the quinoa. Season with a generous amount of salt and pepper.

So You Say You Can't Cook?

I hear this from quite a few of my clients, "My cooking attempts begin and end with boiling water or pushing start on the microwave. I just don't have time to cook!" 

If the best you can do is boil water....well then you, too, can cook!  I was inspired to write about this method of cooking after using my new Paula Dean copper bottomed double boiler.  My honey gave it to me for Christmas since I do all of the cooking in the house.  Perhaps that may change this New Year.......

Who says you have to do all the cooking? There are many ways to share the work of preparing dinner. Get the family together, and have each person prepare part or all of a recipe. Small children can help with some parts of the meal, like washing and tearing lettuce or setting the table. You can also have older kids take one night of the week to prepare something they want to eat. Not only does it take the work off you, but it also teaches them a skill they’ll use the rest of their lives.

One of my favorite methods of cooking that is so easy and healthy is STEAMING.  Steaming is a method of cooking using steam. Steaming is considered a healthy cooking technique and capable of cooking almost all kinds of food. 

Overcooking or burning food is easily avoided when steaming it. Health conscious individuals may prefer steaming to other methods which require cooking oil, resulting in lower fat content. Steaming also results in a more nutritious food than boiling because fewer nutrients are leached away into the water, which is usually discarded. A 2007 USDA comparison between steaming and boiling vegetables shows the most affected nutrients are folic acid and vitamin C. When compared to raw consumption, steaming reduces folic acid by 15%, and boiling reduces it by 35%. Steaming reduces vitamin C by 15%, and boiling reduces it by 25%. Phenolic compounds with antioxidant properties have been found to retain significantly better through steaming than through boiling or microwaving.^[1] Most other nutrients are reduced by a similar amount by both methods of cooking.^[2]

We know there are times when you get home and the last thing you want to do is cook dinner. With a little planning, you can have meals all ready to be cooked. There are a number of great recipes you can partially prepare ahead of time and finish another day. Many recipe books and websites even label those meals as “Make Ahead.” Also, look for recipes you can double or triple and freeze the leftovers for another day.

Steaming is a great way to re-heat a meal instead of the microwave.  Give it a try, the flavors and colors will be sure to please the whole family!

Wild Nettle Soup

A GREAT recipe from our friend over at Forage SF

Nettle Is Great…Wild Nettle Soup Recipe

Recipes

Nettle is great. Its all around, good for you, plus there’s the element of danger when you’re harvesting. It’s like collecting sea urchins. Will it get you? Are those gloves really thick enough to ward off those spiny stems? A question Ive been forced to answer in the negative far too many times. For those of you that like a bit of danger with your foraging, but aren’t quite up for wild mushroom collecting or boar hunting, the nettle is a good bet.
There are two kinds of nettle that grow in our area (that area being Northern CA).Urtica diocea, which is also known as river nettle, and Urtica urens, which I call farm nettle, its more often cultivated, and much less intense, cousin. River nettle is what grows most often in the wild, so that’s what I end up using most of the time. You find it often growing in stream beds and in other moist nutrient rich environments. “Farm Nettle” can also be found wild, although much less often, in what are referred to as “disturbed places”. Areas where the earth has just been upset for some reason (hint: there’s some in Golden Gate park if you know where to look).
River nettle (diocea) is much more intense than in both sting and flavor. Whereas farm (urens) will give you a bit of a prick to let you know its nettle, river nettle will bite you, a searing pain that, instead of going away after several hours of throbbing, actually seems to turn into a general numbness/tingle for as much as 48 hours (hint: use vinegar to get rid of the sting, or if you’re near a marsh, the goo from the base of cattails works too). If you’re using it in soup, river nettles are really the best. The intensity comes through in the soup in all the best ways.
With that said, lets get on with it. Go collect some! I wont tell you my spots, but I will tell you that they like to grow in moist, nutrient rich soils. Try to harvest them before the plant has gone to seed. As in all plants, you want to collect them when they’re putting the most amount of energy into the part you want to eat…perhaps confusing, but a good principle. When plants are flowering, eat the flower, when they’re shooting up out of the ground in spring, eat the shoot, when they’ve gone to seed, eat the seed (although I havnt heard of people eating nettle seed, I don’t see why not). Enough talk, on to the recipe.
This soup is a real standby for The Wild Kitchen (my underground restaurant). People love it, so it keeps coming back from month to month while nettle is in season.
You’ll need:
Food:
-1 lb nettle (collect it, or you can often find it at farmers markets in season)
-1 lb russet potatoes
-1 lb leek
-6 Cups chicken stock
-2 Tbsp butter
-Salt/pepper to taste
-Small tub crème fraiche
Equipment:
-Heavy gloves (seriously. If you’re using the thin latex kind, so popular in restaurant kitchens and the nether regions of the airport security line, wear double, or even triple. A good thick pair of dishwashing gloves works perfectly)
-Heavy bottomed soup pot
-Stand up or hand (immersion) blender
-Wooden spoon
-Scissors
-mixing bowl
1.First, you’ve got to deal with the nettle. Put a pot of salted water on to boil. With your gloves on, use scissors to cut the leaves from the woody stem, discarding any brown leaves. Wash under cold water. Get a mixing bowl, and fill it with iced and salted water. Throw nettle into boiling water for 5 minutes, drain, then immediately place in ice water. This is called blanching and shocking. The boil gets rid of the nettle sting, and the ice water helps it retain its vibrant green color. Once they’re cold, squeeze water out of nettles, and reserve.
2. Cut off the white section of the leeks, slice them lengthwise, and wash very well. Tons of dirt likes to get stuck in leeks, and it’s the last thing you want in your soup. After they’re clean, chop them and reserve.
3. Dice potatoes.
4. Melt butter in pot over medium heat, making sure not to let it burn. When it begins to bubble, throw in the leeks, cook 5 minutes (if they start to brown, turn down the flame, you want them to sweat). Add potatoes, cook 5 minutes. Add nettle, cook 5 minutes.
5. Pour in chicken stock, mix, turn up heat until it comes to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.
6. Allow to simmer 20-30 minutes, until potatoes are tender. Turn off heat and either blend with you immersion blender, or if using a stand-up, blend in batches with a ventilated blender (take that little plastic thing out of the middle of the lid), and a towel on top. With the danger sounding too much like you dad, BE CAREFUL!. Hot soup on the face is not fun.
7. When its blended, add two spoonsfulls of crème fraiche, mix. Serve hot with a drizzle of crème fraiche on top. This soup will taste quite “green”. Crème fraiche will balance it to your liking.
8. Enjoy! And regal your friends with your daring tales of nettle foraging, they’ll be impressed.

Mindfulness Meditation - Calm Thyself

I've been practicing mindfullness meditation for a few years now and let me tell you, it has made a huge difference in the way I feel.  As a typical Type A for as long as I can remember, I knew that my body was paying the price for all the rushing around, stressing out about everything under the sun.

Recognizing what all the stress and drama was doing to my health was the first step in making permanent changes.  Meditation was the answer for settling my Monkey Mind down enough to manage all the energetic shifts that were and are taking place in my life and the world as I experience it.  This article from the  Harvard Medical School blog has good information and guidance for those of you that want to give meditation a try.  I highly recommend the practice to all my clients since managing stress is one of our biggest challenges in this day and age.

Give it a try......it may just be The Cure you've been looking for!



Is STRESS Making You Fat?



Cortisol is a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands in response to stress, and research does suggest that there may be a tie between cortisol levels in women and the accumulation of excess weight in the abdominal area. A study at Yale University in 2000 compared stress reactions among women who had a high waist-to-hip ratio (because their fat tended to be in the belly) with those among women with a low waist-to-hip ratio (indicating more fat storage in the hips than the waist).



After years of chronic stress, our adrenal glands — which govern our stress response, help balance a woman’s blood sugar, and regulate many other of our body’s processes — can become imbalanced. Our adrenal glands are fundamental to our health, and when they are out of balance, the body prepares for disaster the best way it knows how — by storing calories. Genetically, some of us are more predisposed to this than others. But the good news is that if we restore the adrenals to their normal, healthy function by improving our nutrition, stubborn pounds often fall away without too much effort, and our energy returns.

Let’s take a closer look at the adrenal glands, then talk about solutions for healing your stress response — and finally getting rid of that stubborn weight. 

Call  (707)812-0546 for a free 30-minute consultation