(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate
The best cooks are often wizards with leftovers. Partially opened products in their pantries and refrigerators may be all they need for masterpieces. Bestselling cookbook author Rozanne Gold and four-time winner of the James Beard Award, who for many years was co-owner of New York City's famed Rainbow Room, once told me in an interview that a favorite pastime was challenges with others at her home on Sunday afternoons. They would compete to see who could make the most delightful dish from leftovers and whatever else might be lying around.
I thought of that conversation recently when I concocted a smoothie from bits and pieces in my kitchen. Smoothies have been missing from the leftover literature, but make delicious sense as a catchall. I had decided I needed an alternative to the one filled with unsweetened cocoa powder that had been keeping me up at night or my other favorite that was overfilled with too much bottled orange juice.
For a less sugary choice, I started with a base of a leftover half apple including the skin and the leftover pulp of a half orange that I had in the refrigerator, plus the last few strawberries from their plastic container all dumped into the container of my strong blender along with a half cup of unsweetened soymilk. I then spied some opened packages, cylinders and jars I hadn't used in a while and, due to all I knew of their nutritional prowess, stole a teaspoon of each: ground flaxseeds, chopped pecans, old-fashioned rolled oats, molasses and ground cinnamon. I added a dash of stevia no-calorie natural sweetener and ice cubes, blended until smooth, and enjoyed one of the best smoothies I'd ever had, which had a hint of the flavor and texture of a delicious homemade applesauce.
Soon my nostalgia had me flipping through my kitchen's copy of Gold's classic Recipes 1-2-3: Fabulous Food Using Only Three Ingredients, which had stemmed from her kitchen competitions and was one of the first quick-prep cookbooks that spawned many competitors. I turned the delicious cardamom-infused Turkish iced coffee she featured (and now including my open jar of cardamom) into the addictive morning smoothie below.
Fun fare like the above also proves food preparation can be easy, nutritious, inexpensive, fun - and fast. The creative combinations are delicious proof that everyone has time for creating homemade specialties and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it!
Another benefit: You effortlessly become a better cook, since these are virtually-can't-go-wrong combinations. They can't help but draw "wows" from family members and guests.
ICED TURKISH COFFEE SMOOTHIE
1/4 pound French roast coffee beans
1/2 tablespoon green cardamom pods
Sugar, to taste (optional)
1 & 1/2 cups 2 percent milk, almond milk or soymilk
Ice, as needed
Yields 6 servings.
Grind the coffee beans and cardamom together until very finely ground, almost powdery. Or buy Turkish coffee at a specialty coffee store or Middle Eastern food store. In a medium-sized saucepan, preferably one with a pouring spout, bring 1 quart water to a boil. Add 1/2 cup ground coffee and stir quickly with the handle of a wooden spoon. Lower the heat and let the coffee come to a boil. As the foam starts to form and come to the top of the pot, carefully yank the pot from the heat. Add sugar, if desired, and let cool. Strain coffee through a fine-mesh strainer and refrigerate until cold.
For iced coffee, serve over ice. For each of six smoothies: Pour 1 / 6 of the cold coffee into container of strong blender with 1/4 cup of the milk and ice, blending until desired texture.
-Adapted from
Recipes 1-2-3: Fabulous Food Using Only 3 Ingredients.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: Baker
Claire Ptak, author of
The Violet Bakery Cookbook, suggests not only using broken pieces of dark chocolate in your favorite recipe for chocolate bread pudding, but torn pieces of chocolate croissants (day-old are best) as the base.
Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet(Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
