This video totally rocks!  Strawberries totally rock!  But it’s the RAW PIE that I demo on this episode that is so insanely good I cannot believe and neither will you!  MAKE IT!  And remember that it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to only go organic with yer berries!

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Strawberries

We are celebrating the letter “S” and our special guest today is the queen of the berries , the STRAWBERRY!  I had to do strawberries because they are so beloved, so delicious and oh so dangerous!

That’s right, these tender little creatures are on the list of the top twelve MUST EAT ORGANIC fruits!  Seriously, this is one of the worst crops when it comes to pesticides and chemical fertilizer, so do yourself a solid and pay the extra cash for the OG berries!

Should I bother telling you about how good these babies are for you?  I mean, all we really care about is their incredible bright flavor, right?  But they rock!  Loads and loads of vitamins and minerals C, A, Potasium, Calcium, Antioxidants, Folate, Fiber, they lower blood pressure…and dang they’re delish!

Buy your berries at the farmer’s market; you’ll be able to find different varieties of strawberries and they’ll be sun ripened!  Farm fresh strawberries have intense flavor and sweetness.  Speaking of fresh, strawberries are a summer crop.  A lot of the berries you see for sale in the cooler months are imports or hot-house grown.  In warmer parts of the world, like Southern California, there are farmers cranking out strawberries year-round…but they always taste best in the summer.  There’s no comparison really, a summer-fresh berry just explodes with flavor.

Real quick…you ever had strawberries in balsamic vinegar?  So good!  Take about a pint of strawberries and toss them with about three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, and add the zest of a half a lemon or about a half teaspoon of fresh ginger and sugar or honey to taste.  Eat it alone or on a yellow cake or ice cream!  Beautiful.

We’re taking a trip down the raw road for our main course.  A dessert that you can eat any time of day—even for breakfast!  In fact, this is a killer breakfast.  It’s a RAW STRAWBERRY PIE!!!  The first time I had a raw pie was at the Coconut Grove Farmer’s Market down in Miami, Florida.  There’s this crazy raw foodist there named Glaser Organic Farms who makes some seriously incredible food.  You wouldn’t believe how good his food is.  But it’s the pies that set him apart.  My humble raw pie is in homage to his mastery.  It’s actually quite easy to make and incredibly tasty!

Enough said.  You love strawberries, everyone does.  They’re bright, fun, good for you and delicious.  Plus, they need no preparation—the best way to enjoy them is plain, all by themselves…but do share with a loved one.  Strawberries are a good reminder of how wonderful it is to be alive.  Let’s keep it that way, please GO ORGANIC!  OK?  OK.

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Raw Strawberry Pie

RAW STRAWBERRY PIE

Man, oh man, oh man, OH MAN!  This is amazing.  When I make this for people they go nuts and beg me for the recipe.  And when I remind them it makes a great breakfast they do crazy things like name their kids after me.

For one, nine-inch pie crust:

1/2 C raw almonds
1/4 C raw sunflower seeds
1/4 C raw sesame seeds
1/4 C raw pecans
1/4 C raw, dried coconut  (you can use fresh coconut too)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 C golden raisins
1 C dates, pitted
3 to 4 TBS rice milk

Strawberry-Banana Filling

3 C strawberries, sliced
2 TBS psyllium seed husk
2 TBS agave syrup
2-3 bananas, sliced
1 C strawberries, halved for garnish

First up, make that crust.  This is very simple to do, but you will need a food processor or blender.  You can use just about any combo of seeds and nuts you like…just make sure you’ve got 1.5 cups total.  Grind those babies together until you have them pretty well broken down into a slightly chunky sandy crumb.  Add the raisins and grind again.  Add the dates and grind some more.  Add the rice (or soy or hemp or almond) milk and pulse till it just comes together.  The dough should be sticky, a little moist and super yummy!

Press the dough into an ungreased pie plate and mold it out evenly with your fingers.  And get ready to work on that filling.

Take the 3 Cups of sliced strawberries and mix them in a bowl with the psyllium seed husk.  Psyllium seed husk is a type of fiber…it is nasty to think about but it is used in all sorts of “fiber products” for people with tummy troubles.  Catch my drift?  Don’t worry, it’s totally flavorless and good for you…I just don’t like to think about getting old and mixing up thick, viscous fiber drinks.  Anyhoo, we’re using the pysllium because it makes a sticky gel…almost like a gelatin.  It’s a great trick!  Flax seed meal does a similar job but not as good as psyllium seed husk.  Along with the psyllium seed husk you’ll want to mix in the agave syrup (you can substitute honey or maple syrup too).

Cover the bottom of the pie with one layer of the sliced bananas.  Top this with the glazed sliced strawberries and top the whole pie with the decorative, strawberry halves.

Cover the pie and put it in the fridge for at least an hour (three is even better) to let it firm up and set.  You can then start devouring it.  This should last about three to four days in the fridge but you are most likely going to run out of it in a day.  Seriously, this is one of the best tasting treats on the Earth!  ENJOY!!!

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

R is for RICE.  This righteous grain is absolutely delicious and totally worth revisiting.  If you think it’s boring, you are wrong my friend.  Straight up.

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Brown Rice

R is for RICE!  A most righteous grain, a powerful staple and one of the world’s most important foods.  You know it, you love it, it’s rice!  “What’s the big deal?” you say.  “Rice has been around forever.”  Right you are, but it is an exciting time for us to eat rice because there are so many different types readily available to us as well as heaps of fun rice-based products.  It’s like a whole new food group!

When I was growing up we only had long grain, American, white rice in my house.  That was it.  But then one day my mother discovered basmati rice!  Discover isn’t the right word; she’d known about it for a long time but had nowhere to buy it in suburban Florida.  And then suddenly, a gas station in our town run by an Indian family started to sell a handful of Indian groceries including frozen naan, jars of pickles and curry pastes, and sacks of basmati rice.  My mother made a curry and encouraged me to smell the rice and taste it by itself; it was the first time I took notice of rice.  I was impressed by how long and skinny the grains were; they didn’t stick together at all.  There was a subtle nutty flavor going on.  I had the same appreciation for rice when we found jasmine rice at an Asian grocery store and again when I moved to Japan.

For the three years I lived in Japan I ate an amazing amount of rice and never got tired of it.  There’s something so comforting, so delicious, so perfect about rice.  Of course in Japan most of the rice is traditional, short-grained, sticky white rice.  I had to go on a hunt to find brown rice and landed a source at a small farm shop in the country.  I figured that if I was going to eat rice all the time, I’d have to change it up and get some extra nutrition at the same time.  I was thrilled with the brown rice in Japan, it was awesome!

Revisit brown rice!  Many people have a negative, 1972, granola-brown, health food connection with boring ass brown rice.  Things have changed!  You can now get wonderfully delicious, delicate brown rice in just about any variety.  Good brown rice is a bit chewier like al dente pasta.  It’s also got a slightly stronger flavor.  Best of all its got great nutrition.  Perhaps the tastiest brown rice I’ve ever had is from the south of France…seek it out amigos!

Most of the good stuff in rice is in that brown husky skin.  By “polishing” rice and removing the bran layer and the germ you are stripping away most of the nutrients.  Shame!  With white rice there is not a whole lot going on, a little fiber, protein, calcium, phosphorous and iron along with a handful of other vitamins and minerals, but when you let brown rice step up to the plate you can double, even quadruple many of those nutrients.  Brown rice also has vitamins A, C and Calcium.  It’s way better for you.

Another reason why it’s the golden age of rice is due to all the ingenious ways rice is used today.  You can get rice milk, rice ice cream, rice flours, rice pasta, rice paper, rice syrup and don’t forget rice booze!  Mmm, I love sake, especially the naturally fermented junmai daiginjo and unfiltered, milky nigori.

We kept it relatively simple on the show.  I display a bunch of different types of rice and talk about the basic preparation.  For the big cooking demo we change gears and make raw South East Asian spring rolls using rice papers.  Make this dish for a party and you’ll be the most popular chef there!

The real value of rice and the reason why it’s a staple food all over the world is because it is a cheap, tasty and easily digestible source of calories and carbohydrates.  Rice really does energize the world!  No matter what variety of rice you are eating, or what country it was grown in, or what color or shape it is, you are in for some good eats.

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Spring Rolls

RAW SPRING ROLLS

OK, I’m giving away one of my greatest hits here.  I make these and take them to parties, out on picnics, or just for good healthy snacking at home.  They’ve become a bit of a fad food recently but they’ll never go out of style.  How cool is it to eat a salad in your hands like this?  Feel free to stuff these with anything you like, on the show I kept it totally vegetarian but you can add shredded meat or whole shrimps or cubes of tofu.  You can also go the sweet route using fruits and nuts.  It’s all good!

Rice Paper
Cilantro
Daikon sprouts
Bell pepper strips
Thai basil
Enoki mushrooms
Carrots, shredded or julienne
Rice sticks, boiled for 2-3 minutes till al dente

Don’t freak out if this takes a few attempts.  I have NEVER made a perfect roll on the first try and I’ve been doing this for years.  So be prepared to have a handful of failures before you get your groove on.

Get a kettle and boil some water.  Pour a couple of inches into a pie plate or even a skillet—something big enough to hold and submerge your rice paper.  Take one sheet of the stiff rice paper from its package and give it a bath in HOT water for about 20 to 30 seconds…this allows it to soften up and become pliable.  Carefully remove the paper from the bath and gently fan the sheet a few times back and forth to drip excess water off.  Lay it down on a cutting board.

Treat the rice paper like a tortilla and pretend you’re about to roll a small burrito!  Place a small pile of your ingredients just off center, roll it up a little bit to secure the pile, fold and tuck the ends in and finish rolling.  Try and see if you can make a tighter roll once you are comfortable with the basic technique.  There’s no real secret to this, just do it the way that works best for you.  If you want to make a bunch of these and eat them later in the day, I warp them in plastic wrap or put them in an airtight container with a warm, damp towel on top.

You are ready to eat!  Dip these into a ponzu or a wasabi mayo or a more traditional Vietnamese Nuoc Cham.

Nuoc Cham Dipping Sauce

Nuoc Cham is a traditional Vietnamese dipping sauce.  You’ll find a jar of it sitting on the table at any Vietnamese restaurant.  It’s damn tasty!  This is a basic recipe; I usually eyeball it and make it to taste.

2 TBS lime juice
2 TBS fish sauce
1 TBS sugar
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 fresh serrano or bird chili, sliced into tiny rings
1-3 TBS water

Mix the first five ingredients together.  Add the water to taste (or omit).

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

2 parts water
1 part rice

Place the water in a pot and bring it up to a boil, add the rice.  Turn the heat down to low and put a lid on top cracking it open a little to let steam escape.  Simmer for 20 minutes.  The rice will absorb all of the water in the pot.  If you want to create a stickier rice, wash it several times before cooking and stir the pot a few times and voila!

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Q is for QUINOA!  Of course it is.  Lovely, delicious, delicate, easy, nutritious, awesome QUINOA!  I really enjoyed reading up on this grain and have a newfound respect for it.  Check the video, work the recipes, enjoy the Q!

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Quinoa

Not familiar with quinoa?  Well, you are about to be.  I predict that quinoa will soon be everywhere, a world-wide munching phenomenon!  Quinoa is prolific and easy to farm, cheap and delicious and crazy killer good for you.  If you could buy stock in a grain, this is one to bank on.  The more I eat quinoa, the more I love it and you will too.  Give in to this affordable, healthy, easy to cook grain and you’ll be rewarded in multiple ways.

Quinoa is a lot like rice in many ways.  Deceptively simple, but delicious in its own special way.  The preparation is simple and it’s a total bargain.  Versatile and used in many cuisines and applications. But quinoa has its own groove going on with an unusually nutty and somewhat grassy flavor.  It’s also faster to cook than rice and when it comes to nutrition, LOOK OUT!

Quinoa is one healthy monkey!  Packed, packed, packed with protein and amino acids it is a complete protein and also contains iron, copper, phosphorus, magnesium and fiber.  It’s gluten free too!  Though it may be relatively new to us healthy eaters, quinoa has been farmed for thousands of years and was revered by the Incans in the Andes Mountains.  “The Mother Grain” was the name given to quinoa by the Incans who celebrated it and recognized its incredibly healthy properties.

Some quinoa has a coating of saponins on the outside of the grain and we all know what that means right?  I wasn’t sure either, so I researched this jive and learned that saponins are a mildly toxic, soapy substance with a bitter taste.  You don’t really want to eat it and fear not, you don’t have to.  Most of the quinoa sold at market has already been washed to remove this stuff.  I also hear that some quinoa has been bread to have a low saponin content.  At any rate, I strongly encourage you to rinse your quinoa really well before cooking just in case.  Personally, I’ve never had a problem but it doesn’t hurt to play it safe.

When you cook quinoa a really cool thing happens.  Each little granule sprouts a cute, tiny, curly tail.  Drag your kids into the kitchen and show them this miracle of mother nature.  That tail is actually the germ sprouting through the grain to let you know its tender and ready to eat.

You could use quinoa damn near anywhere and with anything.  Substitute it for rice anytime you like.  Try some stir-fried with garlic.  Stuff some veggies or meat with it.  I make museli at home sometimes and add quinoa to the nuts and grain mix before roasting in the oven—it browns and crisps nicely.  Quinoa makes a mean breakfast—an oatmeal alternative.  I love my sweet quinoa cakes in the morning and the savory ones are a great side dish and a killer lunch with a salad.

Take it from me, take it from the Incas, take it to the bank!  Quinoa is a wonderfully delicious, healthy and fun grain that you should be eating.  Get creative with it, be bold and fearless and have a heaping pile of the Mother Grain soon!

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food

Quinoa Cake w/ Basil, Lemon and Goat Cheese

QUINOA CAKES

I wanted to create a really simple, healthy and tasty way to use up leftover quinoa.  This is a pretty forgiving recipe, so doctor it up any way you like.  I made a sweet and a savory cake.  Simple!

I kept these cakes pretty minimal and plain so we just get that whole quinoa goodness.  A magical thing happens when you mix the beaten egg into the grain…it starts to get very wet and after a few minutes binds pretty well.  But I think a little flour of some sort really helps bind the quinoa…I like using semolina regular flour or, hey, QUINOA FLOUR could be used as well!  Play with this recipe a bit, it is great fun!

1.5 C cooked quinoa
1 jumbo egg, beaten
1/3 Cup Flour (semolina, quinoa, all purpose…whatevs)

OK, that’s the basic ratio.  A “jumbo” egg is a big egg…the biggest one you’ve got.  If you think your eggs are on the small side (like most of the ones I buy at the farmer’s market) you will want to add about half of another egg or cut back on the quinoa a little.  Stir your beaten egg into the quinoa with a fork, fold in the flour and let it sit for about five minutes.  It’ll really start to bind now.  Time to add your flavorings, here are the ingredient lists for both my sweet and savory cakes:

Savory

2 tsp sun dried tomatoes, chopped
1/3 C cheese
1/4 C basil, torn
2 tsp lemon zest
Salt and Pepper to taste

Sweet

1/3 C nuts, chopped
2 TBS brown sugar
1/2 C mixed berries
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Whether you go sweet or savory the method for cooking these babies is the same.

Melt a little butter or heat up some oil in pan (about a teaspoon, just a light coating) on medium to medium-high heat and add a 1/3 C scoop of the batter.  You can tamp it down a bit to form a round cake.  Let this ride for a good 4 minutes before flipping.  If the cake breaks, gently press it back together with you spatula…it’ll be OK.  After another 4 minutes on the second side the cake should be good to go.  You’ll have a nicely seared and browned surface on the top and bottom and a soft-n-warm quinoa good ness on the inside.  Salty or sweet, morning or night, these are a delicious way to eat quinoa!

Featured on the feed from Organic A to Z - connecting the dots to good food