Slow Roasted Tomato Basil Spaghetti

I’ve always wanted to be in an infomercial. In fact, I’ve always wanted to host an infomercial. I’d like to be one of those women with the mousy hair and button down shirts that follows the ‘chef’ around as he whips up creations with his latest gadget, exclaiming, ‘Oooh! My kids would go crazy for those peanut butter flapjacks!’ or, ‘This is the BEST ham-and- mushroom-soup casserole I have EVER tasted!’ I’d even settle for being one of the members of the audience that enthusiastically nods on cue or murmurs to my neighbour in commiseration about how hard it is to get the omelet out of the pan.

The energy level of the infomercial has always amazed me. How can they possibly muster that level of fake excitement over a sandwich maker or a food dehydrator? Have they ever walked outside? Seen a thunderstorm? Had a baby? There are plenty of things in life that require that level of excitement, but a panini press isn’t one of them.

The one kitchen tool that I would happily get that enthusiastic about, though, is the oven. ‘Well, yes,’ you say, ‘I’m sure people were excited about it…200 years ago.’ But see, my love affair with the oven is fairly recent. Up until a few years ago, I cooked everything on the stove. For some reason, the oven intimidated me – I liked things I could stir and watch constantly, like a curry or a soup or a scrambled egg.

Then I discovered roasting and my whole life changed. This is the part of the infomercial where I would get up from the audience, grab the mic and say, “Hi, I’m Maureen, a dental hygienist from Ohio, and I’ve got to say, Ron, your invention of the oven has changed my life! Just a half hour in the oven, and my vegetables are bursting with flavour! My fruits are caramelized and golden! Now my husband loves my cooking!”

And it’s true. It all began by throwing some sad-looking February tomatoes in the oven. I wasn’t expecting much, but I didn’t have anything else in the pantry, so what the hell, right? Chop up some tomatoes, a squirt of olive oil, a pool of balsamic, some salt and pepper. Whatever.

Oh, my.

I can confidently say that those were the best tomatoes I have ever had. Meltingly spicy and sweet at the same time, velvety smooth and swimming in their own sauce. All I had to do was ladle them over pasta and sprinkle some basil and some goat cheese on top. They formed a lovely rose sauce with the cheese, and with a glass of Pinot, they were the perfect escape from a February day. Oven, you have won me over.

Now I make that recipe a few times a month, winter or summer. It is the easiest recipe I have, but somehow it always ends up elegant and absolutely bursting with flavour. This will become your go-to recipe for the summer, or your money back (shipping and handling not included.)

Slow Roasted Tomato Basil Spaghetti

Adapted from this recipe.

Note: This recipe is endlessly forgiving. Throw in cumin powder instead of the coriander powder, swap in coriander leaves for the basil; it will still taste delicious.

Ingredients

• 12 oz (340 g) spaghetti
• 1/4 cup minced fresh basil, approx
• 1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
• 4 -5 medium tomatoes (still on the vine), cut into 1” chunks (I cut them in half, and then each half into quarters) (about 1 lb/500 g)
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1-2 tsp dried coriander powder (I like mine more heavily spiced)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 large pinch hot pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 325°F.

In 13- x 9-inch metal cake pan or roasting pan, toss together tomatoes, garlic, oil, vinegar, coriander powder, salt and hot pepper flakes. Roast in oven until tomatoes have collapsed and have released their juice, about 30 – 40 minutes. Make sure to take them out every 10 minutes or so and give them a good stir so the juices don’t burn.

When tomatoes are almost done, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but firm, 8 to 10 minutes.

Drain spaghetti. Add the tomatoes to the pot and mix it up. Plate and sprinkle generously with goat cheese and basil.

Serves 4 (though A. and I usually seem to gobble it up greedily in one sitting.)

  

Notes on changes/substitutions:

• If you don’t have a cake pan or a roasting pan, you can use a rimmed cookie sheet – just make sure you stir the tomatoes around frequently as the sauce will burn more easily in a shallow pan.
• The longer you roast the tomatoes at a lower heat, the more luscious they will become. If I have nothing to do on lazy Sunday, I will set the oven at 200 and let it go for four hours. The tomatoes transform into syrupy caramelized manna and the house will smell like a Tuscan restaurant. Sometimes I even preheat the oven to 350, turn it off and leave the tomatoes inside as I run errands – that way I can come home to the perfect dinner.
• If your baby, like mine, loves flavour, give these tomatoes a whirl in the blender and they make the perfect baby food (just leave out the red pepper flakes.)

Mastering the Art of an Interesting Life

On a recent trip to a little bookstore, I happened across Julia Child’s My Life in France. I picked it up, rifled through it, and decided to take it home and give it a try.

People, I am in love with this book.

I knew the basics about JC before I started the book – I’d seen the movie (who hasn’t?), but that was about it. I’d never watched her TV show, much less picked up her books (Mastering The Art of French Cooking seemed so intimidating to me; my shelf is full of books with names like Easy Healthy Family Meals. Pedestrian, perhaps, but certainly doable.)

If only I’d known what I was missing all this time. Julia Child (with her great-nephew Alex Prud'homme) covers the years she and her husband Paul lived in Europe and her introduction to the world of cooking. What I love most about it is that it is not an Under The Tuscan Sun Tra-la-la-I-live-in-a-romantic-country-and-have-only-the-most-trivial-of-worries type book.  This book is a about a giant (6’ 2”!) woman from Pasadena, California and her smaller, balding, dapper diplomat husband who move to France, despite strenuous objections from her Conservative family. She knows not a word of the language. She has no idea what she wants to do in life. She sticks out like a sore thumb. They live in an archaic apartment with no heat and Paul’s job is a maze of bureaucracy. Still, she discovers cooking, saves up her money to eat at the best restaurants, goes out of her way to make French friends, and leads the most interesting, fulfilling, amazing life.

Early on in the book she says matter-of-factly, “[My father] had assumed I would marry a Republican banker and settle in Pasadena to live a conventional life. But if I'd done that I'd probably have turned into an alcoholic, as a number of my friends had.” Now, that is extreme, but how many of us have struggled with living the comfortable life vs. what we really wanted to do? She knows her own mind and doesn’t entertain the easy road option for a minute. She doesn’t sit there and say, ‘Yes, but my family wants me to stay in the US, I don’t know anything about cooking, it will be hard, we will have no money, blah blah blah.” She just jumps right in, and despite the discomforts, she leads a life a million times richer than she would have in America, because she chooses to. She could have just as easily gone to Paris and said, “This sucks. I have no French friends. I don’t know what to do with my life. I am wearing 5 coats and huddled around a tiny space heater. Back to America for me.” But she didn’t. She went out of her way to create her new life, as hard as it was. She approached people and charmed them. She wore all those coats and sweaters and mufflers in her own living room and put up with it. She tried cooking and dealt with all sorts of conflicts from the Cordon Bleu. She lived her life on her terms, even though it was hard. If she hadn’t, how many of us would have read a book or watched a movie about an alcoholic wife living in the California suburbs? Reading this book makes me more convinced to follow my own path.

Child fully follows her passion. Hers is not about the idealistic world of Pinterest quotes on following your passion, but the real thing. She exemplifies the hardships, the multiple rewrites, the rejections, the broken relationships, and, ultimately, the fulfilled life that can come from living your passion.

Though I am still likely never going to make a sole meuniere or paté en croûte, I admire the guts, grace and chutzpah of Julia Child and will aim to be a little bit more like her every day. What she’s taught me is simple: life shouldn’t be easy; it should be interesting. Follow what you love and though it will be hard, you will live an interesting and fulfilled life.

Supermarket Snack Hacks – Plain Yogurt

Fresh cherries in coffee-chocolate flavoured yogurt. See? I told you yogurt wasn't boring.

As I promised in this post, I am back with a list of ideas on how to add some snazz to your plain yogurt.  Since most flavoured yogurts include sugar and fillers, a much better option is to buy plain yogurt that you doctor up yourself. It may may seem as dull as mud, but the trick is to think of it as a blank canvas. Because of its creamy texture and mild flavour, plain yogurt is the ultimate versatile ingredient. With a few easy switch-ups, there are a ton of possibilities! I’ll present a few of my favourites in the coming days – hopefully some of them will be new to you. I'll start with some sweet options:

Yogurt + baby food

Say what?!? You heard me, baby food. If you want your fruit-on-the-bottom fix, this is the way to do it. Baby fruit purees are essentially the same as the fruit in the fruit-flavoured yogurt but without all the pseudo-sugars and yucky additives. Keep some in the fridge and you can mix it in with your yogurt in a snap. As with many flavoured products, stick to the basic flavours - the more exotic ones (pomegranate, mango, lychee) are usually mostly apple or banana anyway. 

Yogurt + fruit puree

If the thought of taking baby food to the office is mortifying, try fruit purees, which are usually beside the puddings in the supermarket. The ones with no sugar added are a perfect complement to yogurt.

Yogurt + jam
Another great mix-in is plain old fruit jam, which is basically the fruit on the bottom without the additives. Deee-licious, people. Just watch how much of that jam you spoon in as it is very high in sugar (a teaspoon is usually enough.) Also, choose a jam that lists fruit first in the list of ingredients (you'd be surprised how many have more sugar than fruit!)

Yogurt + frozen fruit
My favourite way to jazz up plain yogurt for work is to pop in some frozen fruit before I leave in the morning. By the time I am ready for my snack, the fruit has thawed, leaving all the delicious juices to meld with the yogurt and make it really tasty. You can do this the night before and keep the yogurt in the fridge for a really flavourful snack, or even do 5 of them assembly-line style on Sunday night for the week ahead - it takes 5 minutes, tops. I always buy the pre-chopped frozen fruit to make things as simple as possible, and if I'm feeling ambitious, I'll top with nuts, honey, vanilla...whatever I have handy. Instant parfait. 

Yogurt + coffee (+ chocolate...)
There's lots of different options if you are among the fruit-averse. Pour some of your morning coffee into your yogurt, or mix some instant coffee with water and a touch of sugar and add it in. If you're feeling adventurous, add some cocoa powder or even some dark chocolate chips - it's a creamy, indulgent snack with zero guilt.

Yogurt + chai spices
I love me a cup of Indian tea, and I like to add chai spices to everything. Add some cinnamon, a touch of nutmeg (not too much - it's strong!),  some ground cardamom, and some honey to your yogurt for a refreshing summer take on chai.

Yogurt + mango
When I was pregnant, I was craving mango lassis (Indian milkshakes) almost every five minutes - I'm surprised Baby M. wasn't born yellow. I still make them every once in a while - they are refreshing, icy and absolutely delicious. Just whiz some yogourt, honey, ice, mango, milk and a pinch of salt in the blender. If you are using canned mango, skip the honey as it often has added sugar. 

Now, tell me that each of these options doesn't sound infinitely better than your plain old strawberry fruit-on-the-bottom! And the best part is, you can come up with millions more creative ideas that are just as delicious. What are your favourites?

Quick Tip - Create a List of Endangered Foods

The other day A. was looking through the fridge and, predictably, stumbled upon some green vegetative matter hidden behind the tomato paste and adobo chilies.

"What is this?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I replied. "But it might have been kale. Or it might have been the single organism that all life originated from 4 billion years ago."

"Can't you just buy what you need, when you need it?" he cried, exasperated. "Must you buy half the grocery store, only to let it rot away in the fridge?"

He had a point. I get seduced by the asparagus that is finally in season, or the sweet potatoes that remind me of that recipe I want to try, or the cremini mushrooms I’m sure I’ll use a thousand times over. Then all that wonderful produce dies a slow death in the crisper.

So this time, I thought I would try something different. I made up a List of Endangered Foods, and marked down anything in my fridge that was in danger of going extinct. Whenever I make a meal or a snack, I have to look at that list and use at least one ingredient from it.

So far, it’s working remarkably well. Having that list on the fridge means those foods are top of mind, not pushed behind the box of baking soda and forgotten. Also, it makes me come up with new and creative combinations in a quest to use up as many of the endangered foods as I can (see Exhibit A above – leftover brown rice, shrimp from last night’s dinner, garlic-sauteed spinach from breakfast, and slightly over-roasted pureed sweet potato that Baby M. refused to eat.)

What methods do you have to make sure all the food in your fridge gets eaten? Or do you let it all eventually go to that big compost heap in the sky?

P.S - There are some exciting new developments here at The Wholesome Hedonist! You can now subscribe for email updates of the site or follow me on Pinterest or Twitter by clicking on the links on the sidebar. I'll report interesting food articles, yummy looking recipes, and the occasional update on the fascinating life of a mom on maternity leave.

P.P.S - I will be on a much-anticipated vacation for all of next week so it will be kind of quiet around here. But I promise to be back with tons of news, recipes and fun stuff to share. Meanwhile, let's all join our heads in prayer for a calm and uneventful four-hour flight in a crowded airplane with a 10 month old. And we might as well pray for the other passengers, too.

Top 5 Hidden Gems at the Grocery Store

Pear - Pumpkin Spice Smoothie: using one of my favourite versatile ingredients.

I would sum up my cooking philosophy this way: minimal effort for maximum taste. I like my recipes to be simple, natural, tasty, and preferably made in one pot. So when I go to the grocery store, I am always on the lookout for ingredients that can help me in this endeavor. But I’ve learned to stay away from the quick convenience foods in the frozen and prepared foods section – they usually overpromise on convenience and underdeliver on taste. Instead, I head to the nether regions of the grocery store, where the humble warriors of dinner preside. While they don’t have the fancy claims or flashy packaging of the newest convenience products, they are often just as easy to use and much better for you. Here are 5 of my favourites:

1.   Black beans

Oh, the lowly black bean. It’s not going to win any popularity contests, being small, mild flavoured and kind of boring, really. But it’s the Clark Kent of beans – boring on the outside, but Superbean on the inside! It’s full of fibre and protein (15g of each per cup!), which means it will keep you full for a long time, reduce blood cholesterol, keep your blood sugar stable and your digestive system humming along. Not to mention, it’s chock full of the minerals magnesium, phosphorus and manganese, and the B vitamins.

 And because it’s tiny and mild flavoured, it can be added to almost anything. I buy the canned kind, rinse them, and then keep them in my fridge. I thrown them into salads and soups, mix them with brown rice and put a poached egg on top for a quick lunch, or just mash them with an avocado, some salt and a lime for a quick snack. Or I mash them into Baby M’s food for some protein. And on top of being nutritious and convenient, they are cheap! They should have some sort of superhero crest on the label.

2.   Canned Pumpkin

Canned pumpkin shouldn’t be the uncle you only see at Thanksgiving – it should drop in for tea on a weekly basis. Pumpkin is a crazy superfood – it provides more than 200% of your Vitamin A needs per cup, is a source of fibre, contains antioxidants and has more potassium than a banana. Buy pure canned pumpkin (make sure there is no sugar or additives) and you can use it for a quick nutrient boost at breakfast, snacktime or even dessert. Throw a little in your smoothie  (I love it with yogurt, pears and cinnamon.) Mix some into your oatmeal in the morning along with some pumpkin pie spice. You can even add it to brown rice and make your own Pumpkin Rice pudding. And the best part? No peeling or chopping needed!

I freeze portions in ice cube trays and just nuke what I need. Again – great instant baby food.

3.   Grainy mustard

My condiment of choice used to be ketchup. I’d pull up in front of the TV, plate of chicken fingers and fries in hand, and put the bottle of ketchup right beside me. Then I’d squeeze a nice, generous dollop of the stuff onto my plate, and refill it least three times.

Then I turned the bottle around and realized that the first ingredient was sugar, not tomatoes. Oops.

I still like ketchup with my chicken fingers occasionally, but I turn to grainy mustard for most other things. It’s much lower in calories and tastes delicious. It’s great with a turkey burger, in a vinaigrette, or on top of fish or chicken. It also tastes great in tuna salad (and as a bonus, it replaces the mayo!)

4.   Low fat ricotta cheese

When I was a kid, my mom’s diet food of choice was cottage cheese. We had countless tubs of it in our fridge, and let me tell you, it was revolting. Yes, it was high in protein and calcium, but it was salty and lumpy and clammy – definitely not up to my hedonistic standards. Then one day in the grocery store, I decided to take a chance on low-fat ricotta – and my life has never been the same. People, the stuff is delicious. It’s got a creamy texture and doesn’t have the tartness of yogurt, so it’s a great replacement for ice cream or whipped cream in desserts. And it’s just as high in protein and calcium, with lots more Vitamin A. Jackpot!

I often put it on top of roasted pears and drizzled with maple syrup. Or I take it as a mid-afternoon snack to the office, mixed with pink grapefruit and blueberries.  Or even mix it with tomato sauce to make a rosé sauce for my pasta.

Now, the only cottage cheese around me is on my thighs.

5.   Cocoa powder

I’m the kind of person who needs something sweet at the end of a meal, or I don’t feel satiated. While A. can have a couple of bites of pineapple or a clementine and be perfectly fine, my stomach is saying ‘TEA AND COOKIES TEA AND COOKIES TEA AND COOKIES’ in its most insistent voice. In my quest to find something sweet that wasn’t over the top for everyday, I stumbled on cocoa powder. Mixed with milk, a little sugar, some cinnamon and a dash of cayenne pepper, it makes the best hot chocolate around. Plus, it’s natural, which is hard to find in the hot-chocolate section (have you ever looked at the ingredients on packaged hot chocolate mixes? They are mostly sugar and oil, with very little chocolate.) It’s also great mixed in with yogurt or in baked goods. While I am a firm believer in indulging in dark chocolate, a nice cocoa powder saves me from going overboard sometimes.

Those are my top five. How about you? Are there any hidden gems that you go back to over and over again? Let me know in the comments!

Rotini with Beet Walnut Pesto

Friends, I had high hopes this week. In my continuing quest to keep the baby, but lose the weight, I committed to find that perfect healthy baked good. I went to great lengths. Squares, bars, muffins. Whole wheat flour, spelt flour, rice flour. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds.

I am sorry to report that my experiments in baking have gone awry. I am saddened, but not altogether surprised, to admit that no amount of chocolate or peanut butter can hide the presence of chickpeas in a muffin. In fact, the originally delicious peanut butter chocolate muffin ends up tasting like it has been dipped in hummus. Not good.

Fortunately for us all, I have a great recipe to fall back on – one that does not involve chickpeas in any form. It does involve beets. But they are not hidden in a brownie, or whipped into a ganache. They are loud and proud and in your face. And they are delicious.

I was late to the beet love-in. Sure, I read all those locavores and hippies waxing on about heirloom varieties and lush beet greens, but I just didn’t buy it. Beets looked like bloody pulp, and from what I heard, they tasted like soil. I might as well just dig into the chickpea muffin.

But then I got beets in my CSA box a couple of summers ago, and decided to try the roasted beet and goat cheese salads everyone was raving about. Whoo boy. I got on that beet bandwagon real quick.


So when I saw this recipe, I couldn’t resist. Doesn’t it look fancy and dramatic? Something you could serve at a dinner party and say, off-handedly, ‘Oh, this old thing? I picked up the recipe from Chef So-and-So in New York,’ and people would believe you. But the truth is, it’s dead easy. AND you can double batch it and freeze it in single portions in the freezer. AND you can even take some out a few steps early and serve it to baby. (Baby M likes it - but be forewarned - beets are best served to baby when both of you are covered in those toxic materials suits. And maybe put some plastic on the floor. And the walls.)

Adapted from this recipe.

Rotini With Beet Walnut Pesto

Ingredients:
1 pound red beets with greens, scrubbed
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon olive oil
Coarse salt
1/2 cup toasted walnuts
Bulb of garlic
Red-pepper flakes
12 ounces whole wheat rotini
1/2 cup goat cheese (you can substitute low-fat ricotta if you are counting calories, but the goat cheese does give it an extra edge that I think completes the dish)


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Drizzle beets with oil and season with salt. Wrap tightly in foil.
2. Cut top off garlic and brush with olive oil. Wrap tightly in foil. Trim greens off of beets and set aside. Put both the beets and garlic in the oven and roast until tender, 1 hour. Peel and chop beets once cool.
3. Pulse beets, walnuts in food processor or blender until smooth. Squeeze in half the bulb of roasted garlic and season with salt and red-pepper flakes. Blend until mixed.
4. Cook pasta in salted water according to package directions. Drain, reserving 1 cup water, and return to pot.
5. While pasta is cooking, saute beet greens in one tablespoon olive oil and two cloves of the roasted garlic. Season to taste.
6. Toss with beet mixture, adding pasta water until creamy. Serve with goat cheese, sauteed beet greens, and red-pepper flakes.

Serves 4


Notes:
If serving to baby, take out beet puree before adding in walnuts and red pepper flakes.
You will be left with a little extra roasted garlic. Toss it in soup, or spread it on toast the next day. It’s delicious!

Supermarket Survival Guide: Yogurt Aisle

The yogurt aisle is a minefield of good and bad choices. This is because yogurt has, in food industry-speak, a ‘health halo’ – meaning people perceive it to be healthy. Sometimes it is – and sometimes, not so much.

Don’t get me wrong – plain, low fat yogurt is one of the healthiest choices you can make. It is loaded with calcium, protein (especially greek yogurt) and good bacteria. But there are a lot of not-so-healthy options hidden in there too, with added sugar, sweeteners, and fillers. In fact, a lot of fruit-flavoured yogurts don’t have much fruit in them at all – just fruit juice, sugar and colours. As I walked through the yogurt aisle this afternoon, I was hard-pressed to find one flavoured yogurt that didn’t have some form of sugar, sweetener or corn product as the second or third ingredient. Plus, a lot of them have fillers and binders like carageenan, guar gum, agar and locust bean gum. Some of the yogurts targeted to kids are the worst offenders!

As leading food authority Marion Nestle puts it, “Most yogurts are dessert. Yogurt, it seems, has performed a marketing miracle; it is a fast-selling dairy dessert with the aura of a health food.”

I don’t take quite so negative a view. Sure, yogurt has a health halo that some versions may not deserve; but there are some good picks in there, too. The trick is to read the ingredient list carefully and not get confused by the seemingly endless options.

So what should you look for?

Low fat.

I know some of you hate the consistency of low fat yogurt. But the thicker texture of the new Greek yogurts makes it hard to tell the difference! Try one!

No added sugar (preferably plain yogourt)

As I mentioned above, a lot of yogurts are filled with sugars, sweeteners, fructose - sometimes as the second ingredient! It’s best to get plain yogurt and flavour it up yourself – that way you control the sweetness (and the chemicals!) Also note: don’t be fooled with words like ‘fruit preparation’ on the ingredient list – this is just marketing-speak to make it sound fancier. Often the first ingredient in this so-called fruit preparation is sugar.

Short list of ingredients.

All yogurt really should have in it is skim milk and bacterial culture. If you're looking for a flavoured kind, look for one that has the least additional ingredients possible.

What to watch out for:

Heavily flavoured or fruit-on-the-bottom options. 

These basically have a sugary jam on the bottom and can contain tons of unnecessary sugar, flavours and colours.

High fat content

Exotic flavours like pomegranate or kiwi. 

Because these ingredients are expensive, the yogurt likely doesn’t contain very much of these fruits anyway – it probably has just the juice, or apple or pear with flavouring instead.

Ditto for ‘Dessert’ flavours like Apple Crumble or Lemon Meringue Pie. 

They likely have more sugar/sweetener and filler than actual fruit.

If you are looking for flavoured options, pick the simplest flavour possible - like Honey or Vanilla. They are less likely to have a lot of extra flavours, colours and binders thrown in.

It is best, though, to buy plain yogourt and flavour it up yourself. Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘Grrreat, plain yogurt. A hedonist’s dream.’ Oh, but it is! You just have to get creative. In my next series I’ll show you easy snack hacks to make plain yogurt absolutely delicious.