Tsimmes
I’ve never been a big fan of Tsimmes. The carrots often seem completely extraneous. However, a friend of my mom’s brought this dish to a potluck and both my mom and my sister really enjoyed it. So my sister suggested making it for Thanksgiving. The recipes originally comes from a series called The Chosen Cookbook Series: More Best Recipes from Jewish Cookbooks. The title of the volume is Jewish Cooking Made Slim, The original recipe was published in Sharing our Best Canton Chapter of Hadassah, Canton, Ohio.
- 2 pounds sweet potatoes
- 3 large carrots
- 6 ounces pitted prunes (or 6 oz. dried fruit bits)
- 1 can (20 oz.) pineapple chunks in their own juice
- 5 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Preheat oven to 300 F. Oil a 2 quart covered baking dish.
Peel carrots and sweet potatoes and slice into 1/2 inch pieces. Bring 1 cup water to a boil and cook carrots fro 15 minutes. then add sweet potatoes and cotinue boiling for 10 minutes or until vegetables are barely tender. Drain vegetables, reserving liquid. Arrange carrots and sweet potatoes in baking dish.
Drain pineapple, reserving liquid. Add reserved vegetable cooking liquid to pineapple juice, to equal 1 1/2 cups. Cook prunes or dried fruit bits in this liquid, simmering 20 minutes for prunes or 10 minutes for dried fruit bits. Then add pineapple chunks and brown sugar. Dissolve cornstarch in lemon juice and add to fruit, stirring until fruit looks glazed.
Spoon fruit over carrots and sweet potatoes. COver and bake at 300 for about 1 hour, basting occasionally, if possible. Serve hot.
Serves 10.
My Notes:
My sister doubled the prunes because she said they’re the best part, and it wasn’t too many. I forgot to add the cornstarch, but I reduced the liquid so much it wasn’t all that soupy. The carrots took longer to bake than one hour. Overall this is a simple dish but I think people enjoyed it as a side for Thanksgiving. It has a lot of sugar in it but doesn’t actually taste that sweet.
Raw Vegan Chocolate Cherry Ice Cream
This recipe came to me from the Goneraw website, via an acquaintance who eats 90% raw. She claimed it tastes like “real ice cream.” I didn’t care that much if it tasted like ice cream or not, but it sounded tasty so I thought I’d give it a go.
Ingredients
- 1 frozen banana, chopped
- ½ cup frozen cherries
- 1 tablespoon raw almond butter
- ½ tablespoon agave nectar
- 1 dash sea salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon cacao nibs (optional: add 1 teaspoon cocoa powder)
Preparation
- Process all ingredients except cacao nibs in food processor until combined into a smooth consistency, similar to soft-serve ice cream. Add nibs and pulse to incorporate. Either enjoy right away or allow to set in freezer until firm.
Note from the creator (not me):
This is just a method, so feel free to experiment with a variety of different flavors. I also make a strawberry version by swapping out the cherries for strawberries, the almond butter for cashew butter, and leaving out the cocoa powder(/cacao nibs). The other night I made a cinnamon peach flavor topped with raw almond slices, and I’ve also been known to make a “banilla” (banana vanilla) flavor. The options are limitless.
My Notes:
I finally got some frozen cherries ($9 for a bag, ouch!). The first thing I tasted was banana, no doubt about it. The second thing I tasted was “sweeeet!”. I don’t know why the recipe calls for the added agave nectar~my cherries and banana were super sweet. I did let my bananas get almost black before I froze them, which might explain their sugar load. Also, I think I accidentally used just 1/2 Tbs. of nut butter instead of a full Tbs., and macadamia/cashew instead of almond. Could that have made it super sweet?
The texture reminded me of melted sorbet, i.e. what sorbet is like when you walk home with it in your back pack from the Trader Joe’s that’s 2.5 miles from your house, on a summer day: cold but a little soupy, and not at all icy.
The flavor reminds me of this banana acai sorbet I used to get at Trader Joe’s which was fabulous (it’s much better than the sorbet brand they carry at whole foods in my opinion~better flavor and much less icy). The acai adds a little more chocolate flavor than the cocoa nibs though. If I make it again I’ll add the cocoa powder I think.
The amount of vanilla seemed high but I didn’t even notice it in the final product.
The cocoa nibs didn’t do anything for me (except give me 5mg of iron). They were just these crunchy tasteless bits that got in the way of me inhaling it instantly. On second thought, maybe that’s a good thing? Also, I couldn’t taste the cherries, which surprised me. I could definitely see them in the bright red color, but if I hadn’t known I put them in I’m not sure I would have been able to guess what fruit gave it its red hue.
P.S. Just licked the food processor~the melted stuff in the bottom of the bowl tasted less sweet, more alcoholic, more salty. I could *definitely* taste the vanilla and it was fab. I think that’s what it was supposed to taste like?
Okay, next time less ripe bananas, fold after processing, let sit for nibs to soften. Got it.
Update:
I made it again. Two nights in a row. This time I:
… made sure to use the full Tbs. of nut butter (macadamia/cashew again)
… used a little extra vanilla
… measured my salt using my “pinch” measuring spoon
… added my cocoa nibs during the blending process
… measured my cherries by weight (turns out 1/2 cup is actually much less than 1/2 cup according to the grams on the package)
… used slightly less banana, maybe equivalent to a small banana this time
… left out the agave nectar
With all that I liked it a lot better. The banana taste faded more (although banana haters note that it was still detectable), and it was less syrupy sweet. I even got a bit of chocolate flavor a few times. I gave Derek a bite without telling his what it was and he was repulsed, said it tasted horrible. I didn’t really expect him to like it but neither did I expect such a strong negative reaction.
The one problem I have with this recipe is for the same number of calories I could eat:
… a whole banana
… a half cup of cherries
… a whole Tablespoon of nut butter
… a raw cacao bean
Okay, that sounds silly, right, but somehow I think if I ate all those things separately it would feel like so much more food than the blended up ice cream concoction which (even if you eat the whole recipe’s worth) seems like a measly cup of dessert. Granted, the individual items wouldn’t be nearly so tasty, but I think they would be much more filling. I think I could easily eat 6 servings of this stuff, but I doubt I would want to eat 3 bananas, 1.5 cups of cherries, and 3 Tablespoons of nut butter. In any case, here are the nutritional stats for 1/2 cup, which is half the recipe. The breakdown (with macadamia/cashew butter) is 62% carbs, 10% protein, 28% fat, 7% saturated fat.
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Serving Size: 1/2 cup
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| Amount Per Serving | |||||
| Calories | 148 | ||||
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| Total Fat | 5.4g | ||||
| Saturated Fat | 1.1g | ||||
| Cholesterol | 0mg | ||||
| Sodium | 74mg | ||||
| Carbohydrate | 22.2g | ||||
| Dietary Fiber | 2.7g | ||||
| Sugars | 12.4g | ||||
| Protein | 2.2g | ||||
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Lately I’ve been having trouble getting the ice cream to blend in my food processor, and I think it’s because I’ve been using my mini food processor bowl instead of the larger one. The first two times I made it I used the full size bowl and it worked much better. With the little bowl it seems that everything gets stuck and I have to add quite a bit of water to get it going, even though once it’s blended it fits fine in the mini bowl.
Update Dec 24:
This has become my goto recipe when I want something sweet and refreshing, but have no frozen desserts in the house. I find that the most important issues are:
- use enough banana to make it sweet, but not enough that it tastes super banana-y (and leave out the agave nectar to avoid it being syrupy sweet)
- get your cocoa nibs blended well, and let them sit in the ice cream long enough to soften them
- use a mild enough nut butter that it adds creaminess without overwhelming the flavor
- you really need to be able to taste the salt and vanilla, since otherwise it’s a bit bland. Unfortunately, I can only taste them about half the time, even when I use a little extra. I’m thinking it might work better to fold them in by hand at the end rather than adding them to the food processor with the other ingredients, but I haven’t tried this yet.
Also, if anyone wants it, here is the info for the raw cocoa beans. I assume cocoa nibs are pretty similar by weight.
Serving Size: 1 ounce
Amount Per Serving
Calories 171
Total Fat 13g
Saturated Fat 8g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 15mg
Carbohydrate 8g
Dietary Fiber 6g
Sugars 0g
Protein 4g
Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 21%
Calcium 0% Iron 314%
Check out that iron. Wowza!
White bean rosemary spread
I had a white bean rosemary spread on crostini at a restaurant recently, and really enjoyed it. I looked in my cookbooks for a recipe, but couldn’t find one. I figured I’d just wing it–how hard could it be?
- 1 can cannellini beans
- 2 tsp. minced garlic
- 1 Tbs. lemon juice
- 2 Tbs. coarsely chopped rosemary
- 2 Tbs. olive oil
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- black pepper, freshly ground
- 2 Tbs. chopped onion
Combine all ingredients in food processor and blend until smooth.
My Notes: This is approximately what I did–I didn’t measure that carefully. It had a good texture, not too thin or runny, and it tasted good, but the rosemary flavor wasn’t as strong as I would have liked. I bet it’s going to be really strong tomorrow though, after a day of sitting in the fridge, and I’m going to regret putting in so much rosemary. The final product is surprisingly similar to hummus, despite the lack of chickpeas and tahini. I enjoyed it on my Lebanese flat bread.
In Cook’s Illustrated Best Light Recipe they say they tried a number of different beans for a simple bean puree preparation. They claimed that frozen limas produced a puree with off flavors and a chalky texture; edamame puree was bland and gritty; black eyed pea puree had a muddy flavor and was even more gritty; chickpeas tasted thin and tinny; navy beans had a stale, canned aste; great Northern beans had good flavor but weren’t as creamy as they wanted. In the end, they said they preferred Cannelini beans over all others, since they easily break down into a silky, rich puree. I hadn’t read this when I chose cannellini beans for this recipe. They’re just what I happened to have around. If I ever try one of these other beans instead I’ll be sure to come back and write a comparison. Also, in their comparison of different brands of canned white beans they preferred Progresso over the others they tried.
I compared the cook’s illustrated light recipe for white bean puree with rosemary to my improvised recipe. They add 1/3 cup of water to their beans, and use only 1 1/3 tsp. of olive oil, 1 1/3 tsp. garlic, and 1/3 tsp. of rosemary per 1 can of beans! Clearly their recipe would be much more mild than my version. Their recipe does not use any lemon juice or onion either, although it does call for a bit of pepper flakes. The technique is also different. They have you puree the beans with the water, the saute the garlic and red pepper flakes in oil briefly, then add the bean puree and cook for about 10 minutes, then drizzle a bit of oil over the top to finish it off. I’m curious how much of a difference cooking the puree makes. I know that in my recipe I felt the raw garlic was a bit sharp tasting, and cooking would mellow it. But other than that I’m not sure what it accomplishes. Perhaps it allows their puree to be flavorful even with such small amounts of all the seasonings.
