Green Kitchen: The Cheap Healthy Guide to Canned Tuna for the Planet and Your Mouth (or Something)

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Eating delicious meat cheaply and environmentally is not easy. Grass-fed beef often starts at $7 or $8 a pound in New York City, and shows up twice or three times that at the farmers market. Fresh and frozen fish see the same price points, as do pork and lamb.Chicken is cheaper but chicken gets boring.

Which brings us to my recent love affair with canned tuna.

It is full of protein, super-cheap, easy to prepare, and does not send my fish-allergic boyfriend into fits with its cooking fumes. But while my local Whole Foods handily grades its butchered meat and fresh fish, cans of tuna are harder to suss out.

Well, harder to suss out unless you’re at a computer. The Environmental Defense Fund has a handy ranking of seafood choices based on eco-friendliness, and canned tuna is included. (The fish’s page also includes health concerns for adults and children, related to tuna’s mercury content.)

Canned tuna tends to come in two varieties – Albacore, or white, and “light,” which can be one (or several) of several tuna varieties. When it comes to what’s good for the planet, US or Canadian Albacore is tops, with general canned white and canned light both scoring the “eco-ok” middle rating.

In terms of mercury content, Albacore’s is higher, and so should be consumed less frequently, especially by kids. (The EDF recommends children under 6 eat it no more than once a month, and sets the limit for kids 6-12 at twice a month. Adults can handle it more often more safely.) Canned light (as long as the label doesn’t include Yellowfin tuna, which has about the same mercury as Albacore) is okay for younger kids about three times a month, and once a week or so for older children.

(The EDF page on mercury in canned tuna recommends canned salmon as a healthier option – "not only because the fish are low in contaminants and high in heart-healthy omega-3s, but also because they are sustainably caught” – but I haven’t fallen in love with that taste yet.)

I was relieved to learn – admitted months after getting back into the tuna habit – that this convenient can really isn’t such a bad option. (I’m not feeding any babies nor planning on gestating one any time soon.)

There is, of course, also the issue of taste.

I’d been buying store-brand canned tuna from Whole Foods, mostly out of a mostly-blind-faith sense that their fish would be more sustainability-minded than the StarKist or whatever I could get at my local supermarket, and for $1.39 a can (versus 99 cents or so), it wasn’t too bad a price. (According to Whole Foods’ website, both of their tuna varieties are caught responsibly, and are relatively low in mercury.)

But then I started worrying that I was a snob. And chunk light tuna was on sale for 75 cents a can at the supermarket. I bought two.

I kinda wish I’d saved that second seventy-five cents.

Whereas my fancy-pants Whole Foods tuna shows its extra 64 cents in nice chunks of recognizable fish flesh and easily drained water, the cheapo can started to splurt out fish puree as soon as I tried to drain it mid-can-opening. Inside that (five-ounce, rather than WF’s six) can I found fishy mush. It tasted okay, though the texture was alarming, and why does a can of tuna need vegetable broth in the ingredients? I will be sticking to my ever-so-slightly pricier chunk tuna from now on, thank you. And enjoying it (not too many times in a week) guilt-free.

Although I’m a big fan of standard tuna salad (with, sorry Kris, mayo, and plenty of diced celery), I’m always looking for ways to do it different, and with more vegetables. This recipe from TheKitchn scores on both counts – shredded raw cabbage adds a great crispness, and fresh herbs makes everything springy. I changed the original up a bit, first of all using one can of tuna for one big, healthy, satisfying serving, and second choosing dill over chives. (It was what I had on hand, it is delicious, and it goes well with the yogurt that subs in for some mayo. Kris, you’re welcome.)

I’ll probably slow down my tuna habit a bit now for mercury concerns, but when I do go for it, this is a super-easy and healthy way to appreciate – and eat – that beloved chicken of the sea. Especially when I’m a little sick of land-chicken.

~~~

If this looks good, you'll love:

• Herbed Tuna in Tomatoes
• Tuna and White Bean Wraps
• White Bean and Roasted Red Pepper Wraps with Spinach

~~~

Crisp Cabbage and Tuna Salad
Serves 1
Adapted from TheKitchn.

1 5- or 6-can of tuna, drained (calculations reflect Whole Foods Tongol tuna)
1/4 a medium head of cabbage, cored chopped finely (about two cups)
1 ½ T mayonnaise (you could use reduced-fat to save calories, but don’t lie, it tastes awful)
2 T Greek yogurt (I used 2% fat)
1/3-1/4 c chopped dill
salt and ground pepper to taste (this works well with a lot of pepper)

1) Combine everything in a bowl.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
335 calories, 17.1g fat, 4.5g fiber, 32.9g protein, $2.04

Calculations
1 6-ounce can of tuna: 120 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 28g protein, $1.39
1/4 medium cabbage: 44 calories, 0g fat, 4.4g fiber, 2.3g protein, $0.25
1 1/2 T mayonnaise: 150 calories, 16.5g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.10
2 T 2% fat Greek yogurt: 19 calories, 0.6g fat, 0g fiber, 2.5g protein, $0.20
1/4 c dill: 2 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.08
Salt and pepper: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.02
TOTAL: 335 calories, 17.1g fat, 4.5g fiber, 32.9g protein, $2.04
PER SERVING: 335 calories, 17.1g fat, 4.5g fiber, 32.9g protein, $2.04

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Green Kitchen: Use-Up-Your-Herbs Cilantro Pesto

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Give me your tired, your poor, your wilted herbage straining for the trash can, the rotting refuse of your crisper drawer. Send these, the yellowing, long-forgotten to me, I will make them into awesome pesto!

That’s what your food processor is saying right now, if it were also the statue of liberty.

Talk about eating and cooking in environmentally friendly ways often comes back to the same ideas – eat local, eat unprocessed, eat happy meat. These are awesome ideas – they connect your kitchen to lovely, independent farms, shortening the distance from the soil to your fridge – but they are also sometimes difficult ideas.

Not everyone has access to greenmarkets. Not everyone has the education or skills to choose or prepare unprocessed foods. Not everyone can afford local, free-range, grass-fed, ethically raised meat. It’s sadly easy to sigh in resignation when we can’t manage those good choices and lose sight of a good choice every single one of us can make.

Do not waste food.

You know what makes a box of Dunkaroos an even less worthwhile investment of raw materials, industrial production, and your dollars? Not eating them! Want to completely negate any power for good contained in that conventionally grown midwinter Peruvian tomato? Throw it out! Wasting food is the surest way to guarantee that its environmental impact is all for naught. It’s also a surefire way to waste your money, too.

Living in a largely Dominican neighborhood means a lot of nice things for me, culinarily, not the least of which is the prevalence of cheap cilantro in the supermarket. It is not local, it is not seasonal, but it is 99 cents a bunch, and tempting to pick up to throw on sautés and in omelets and such.

But let’s be honest – more times than not, that 99-cent bunch of delicious, delicious cilantro sits in my crisper drawer until it is yellow and wilted, and it ends up not in my mouth but in my compost.

This time, I resolved to do it differently. Not to remember to use any of the cilantro for its intended purpose, of course, but to salvage it once it had gone forsaken.

A while back I’d seen a recipe online for cilantro pesto that specifically addressed this forsaken cilantro issue. No surprise, my interest was piqued. What’s that, you say? Pesto can be made with nasty, wilted cilantro? And does not require billion-dollars-a-pound pine nuts? Please, go on!

And go on this recipe did! Cilantro + oil + nuts = pesto! My cilantro wasn’t so much wilted as yellowing (with, okay, a couple of rotten leaves), but I overcame my squeamishness, pulled out the gross stuff, and was left with about two cups worth of usable greenery. “Usable” not really as it was, but hopefully the alchemy of pestoization (yes, that’s a proper use of the Italian root word) would be enough.

And so, dear reader, it was.

~~~

If this looks good, you'll surely adore:

• 156 Cheap, Healthy Recipes for Ten Common Leftover Herbs
• Gingered Carrot Soup with Lime and Cilantro
• Pesto

~~~

Cilantro Pesto
inspired by The Lazy Localvore.
makes about 6 one-tablespoon servings
(quantities are flexible for two reasons – one, so you can suit the recipe to your taste; two, because who knows how much of your languishing cilantro will be salvageable.)

2-3 cups cilantro leaves (& little stems)
1-2 T olive oil
1/8-1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds (or other nut)
1/8-1/4 t salt
dash of garlic powder

Put cilantro, almonds, salt, and garlic powder into bowl of food processor. Process, streaming in olive oil as you go. Pulse until it is a thick paste, with nuts chopped finely but not pulverized. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
60 calories, 5.7g fat, 0.7g fiber, 1.1g protein, $0.22

Calculations
3 cups cilantro leaves: 18 calories, 0g fat, 1g fiber, 1g protein, $0.99
1.5 T olive oil: 189 calories, 21g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.12
1/4 c slivered blanched almonds: 155 calories, 13.3g fat, 3.3g fiber, 5.7g protein, $0.15
1/4 t salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
dash garlic powder: negligible calories, fat, fiber, and protein, $0.02
TOTAL: 362 calories, 34.3g fat, 4.3g fiber, 6.7g protein, $1.29
PER SERVING (TOTAL/6): 60 calories, 5.7g fat, 0.7g fiber, 1.1g protein, $0.22

Read More →

Green Kitchen: The Cheap Healthy Good Guide to CSAs

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

One of my favorite things about shopping at a farmers market – if talking about this with snow in the forecast and sprouting onions lingering in the greenmarket bins – is the adventure of it. Yes, I sound bananas, but hear me out. I don't shop at the farmers market with an unlimited budget. So every week – in season, I mean, and can it please hurry up in coming – I buy what's cheap. That's often not one of the three vegetables I learned to cook growing up. So I buy things and learn how to cook them. And there are some crazy things at the farmers market. (Love you, three-foot-long green beans!)

From Erin.kkr

So I guess it makes sense that the main appeal of a CSA to me is the challenge. A box of mystery vegetables every week? Bring it on!

But there are plenty of other reasons to take your relationship with local vegetables to the next level, and maybe some reasons not to. But before we get to that...

What Is a CSA?

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. When you join a CSA, you purchase a “share” of a farm's output. You pay up front for the season, usually June to October or so, and then every week of the season you pick up a boxful of vegetables. Whatever's fresh and bountiful that week? That's what you take home.

CSAs are generally just vegetables, but some include fruit. Others allow you to add on a fruit, dairy, egg, or even honey share.

Why Join a CSA?

Lots of reasons!

Oh, you want to know what they are? I'll throw it over to Just Food, an awesome NYC organization that works to connect city residents to local farms.

Buy Local
Your support helps small local farms stay afloat.
Connect with the food you eat by meeting your farmers and exploring the farms.

Eat Well
Buy the freshest food for your family.
Explore new foods and learn to cook with them.
Find out that beet greens aren’t just good for you, they’re tasty too!

Be Healthy
Eat more fresh vegetables and fruit.
Share healthy eating habits with your kids. Expose them early to a variety of regional produce.

Protect the Environment
Support farmers who take care of their land by growing food in ways that take care of the soil.
Cut down on the number of miles your food travels from the farm to your plate.

Thanks, Just Food! But then, on the other hand...

Why Might a CSA Not Be Your Best Choice?

CSAs aren't for everyone. First of all, they include some financial risk. You don't pay per pound of produce, but rather invest in the farm at the beginning of the season. If the farm has an awesome summer, you get an overflowing crisper drawer. But if weather doesn't go right, or pests are a problem, you share the burden of the farm's meager year.

From Bill.Roehl

What if, one week, you come home with a CSA box with four bunches of kale and an onion. Can you work with that? CSAs are awesome for adventurous cooks. Maybe not so much for families with picky eaters? Spring brings piles and piles of lettuce; a week in fall may yield nothing but potatoes. You can supplement your haul with greenmarket (or supermarket) buys, but that can get pricey. If trying out new (or strange) vegetables won't be fun, or at least pleasant, you might want to stick to keeping your own shopping list.

Do you have friends or neighbors who might be willing to take excess veggies off your hands? Cause you might end up with a lot of kale.

How to Find a CSA

Okay, you've weighed the pros and cons, and you're up for a summer adventure. You want to get to know your farmer. You're ready to take on a small share of his or her financial risk. Now what?

Head over to Local Harvest and do a search by zip code or state. Read about the options in your area. Compare prices, pick-up times, requirements for helping at distribution or (and I will be jealous) on the farm. Some CSAs will even tell you what was in last year's shares. Past performance is no guarantee of future etc etc, but here's 2010 for my nearby Inwood CSA. (Blast them and their Thursday afternoon distribution!)

Readers, are any of you CSA members? Do you love teaming up with a farmer, or do you get overwhelmed with corn (or lack thereof)?

(If anyone joins a CSA this summer, just let me know if you have more kale than you can use.)

~~~

If you liked this article, you'll really dig:

• Ask the Internet: CSA Reviews, Ideas, and Experiences?
• Roommate Living: Your Food, Kitchen, and Sanity
• Why Eat Local?

Read More →

Green Kitchen: Chopped Liver

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

As you may have read in this recent edition of Ask the Internet, I recently concluded thirteen years of vegetarianism. (The short version is that, back when I was fifteen, I tried going veg just to see if I could, and stuck with it largely out of stubbornness/determination. I later – like Queen Elizabeth & the Church of England – added some principles, but my belief that eating animals isn't wrong, but making them suffer is, is still compatible with conscientious meat eating. Also, I don't eat a lot of grains, so I was really, really bored.)

And lo, adding an entire food supergroup back into one’s options is fun! And tasty. It’s been a long time – I guess since I fell in love with farmers markets and cooking itself three or four years ago – since I’ve had such exciting culinary adventures. I roasted a whole chicken! I made stock from its carcass! I am developing an addiction to hamburgers! Etc.

I’m also reconnecting with a lot of foods from my (distant, almost-half-a-lifetime-ago) past. Rotisserie chicken is one of a very few meat-foods that never stopped making my vegetarian mouth water, and sure enough, it is amaaaaaaazing. I would take it over bacon any day.

This chopped liver comes out of both of those impulses – the adventures and the amazing foods from way back when. (Oh, and my new friendship with the small butcher’s shop half a block from my apartment.) Who am I to be afraid of some organs, I who have ventured into the unknown recesses of greenmarket farm stands, I who have taken home the ugly, strange, and cheap vegetables of every season? Also, dude, organs are CHEAP.

I bought my pound of chicken livers from Bob and Julio down the street from me – they sell organic chickens (among many other things, like homemade lasagna), and I guess not everyone wants every part of the bird? Which is bananas, because these things are tasty and super good for you – howsabout some vitamin A, a bunch of B vitamins, folic acid, iron, copper, and CoQ10, which helps your heart do its thing, along with plenty of protein?

And then there is the flashback factor. Specifically, flashbacks to my Grandma Martha’s studio apartment on Long Island, hanging out before a holiday dinner, tiny Jaime with her tiny cousins and sister in tiny party dresses, scooping rich chopped liver onto crackers or, given the season, little matzah squares. Were we too young and carefree to know that livers might be squicky? Or would we not even entertain that thought because the stuff was so darn good?

This recipe comes not from a Jewish Grandma but from my friend’s decidedly non-Jewish own mother, a lovelier and WASPier lady you never shall meet. But somewhere in the mists of history her great-greats and mine lived in adjacent cottages in a Polish village, and as far as I can tell across the gulf of, like, twenty years, this chopped liver recipe yields a product identical in taste to Grandma’s.

(That means it’s delicious.)

~~~

If this seems neato, you will also appreciate:

• Guacamole-Bean Dip Mashup
• Sweet Potato Kugel
• White Bean Dip

~~~

Chopped Liver
(makes 16 2-Tbsp servings)

1 lb chicken livers (thawed if they came frozen)
3 Tbs butter
½ onion, chopped (1/2 to ¾ cup)
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp mayonnaise (sorry Kris!)
Juice of half a lemon (or to taste)

1. Melt the butter in a sauté man over medium-high heat. Add onions and a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, and sauté until onions start to soften.

2. Add chicken livers and sauté until they are cooked through (no pink), about 10-15 minutes.

3. Pour/scrape all of that into a food processor. Add mayonnaise. Pulse until it’s the consistency you like – the worst that’ll happen if you overdo it is you’ll get a classy-as-heck mousse – adding a few squeezes of lemon juice to taste.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
82.6 calories, 5.4g fat, 0.1g fiber, 7g protein, $0.23

Calculations
1 lb chicken livers: 758 calories, 29.5g fat, 0g fiber, 111g protein, $2.50
3 Tbs butter: 305 calories, 34.6g fat, 0g fiber, 0.4g protein, $0.48
½ onion: 48 calories, 0.1g fat, 2g fiber, 1.3g protein, $0.30
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce: 3 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.05
2 Tbsp mayonnaise: 200 calories, 22g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.20
Juice of half a lemon: 8 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.13
TOTAL: 1322 calories, 86.2g fat, 2.1g fiber, 112.8g protein, $3.66
PER SERVING (TOTAL/16): 82.6 calories, 5.4g fat, 0.1g fiber, 7g protein, $0.23

Read More →

Green Kitchen: Five Delicious Ways To Eat Broccoli Stalks

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Okay, so, for how long am I allowed to open my column with some reference to my continuing, undiminished excitement to have a working oven? Because I'm still grateful and a little surprised every time I hear that tick-tick-tick-whoosh of the flame igniting, and I may never lose my renewed appreciation for oven cooking. Mainly the part where I put something in the oven and, as I never could with a pan on a hot plate, walk away. 45 minutes later I have food, and that is glorious.

From El_Matador

More times than not, what I'm pulling out of the oven is a sheet of roasted broccoli. I might be addicted. Broccoli's not the cheapest vegetable around – I can eat three or four dollars worth in one sitting – but the recipe is super easy and delicious, and since when is eating a pound of dark green vegetables a bad thing?

The only problem is all the stalks left behind. They're good enough sliced into discs and roasted along with the florets, but they're not amazing that way, and I'd rather devote baking sheet space to more delectable florets. And so all too often the broccoli stems end up with my eggshells and banana peels, going to compost.

Compost is a very silly – and wasteful, and lazy – fate for perfectly good, edible, healthy vegetable parts. Of course, “edible” isn't exactly high praise, or high incentive for the expenditure of kitchen effort, especially when the couch is so comfy. So here – for you and for me – are five recipes and ideas to keep our broccoli stalks out of the trash, and in our happy mouths and bellies. (They're happy because of the broccoli stalks.

1) Fridge pickles. You can make your own pickling brine, or go even more frugal and reuse the brine from a jar of tasty store-bought pickles. Once in a while I splurge on a jar of Rick's Picks, a delicious NYC brand. (Pickling is very chic among Brooklyn hipsters.) When the pickles are gone there is still plenty of goodness left behind in the brine. Peel your broccoli stalks and slice into spears. Pour the brine into a saucepan and bring to a boil, and wash out the pickle jar. Put the broccoli stalks in the jar, then pour in the brine. (Add some white vinegar and water if there's not enough liquid.) Screw on the lid, and pop that jar in the fridge. After two or three days: pickles!

From Cookthink

2) Crudite. Peel and slice into spears and use along with carrots, peppers, and any other raw veggies you like to dip into hummus, dressing, or your spread of choice. You get all the broccoli flavor without the awkward mouthful (and teeth full) of floret.

3) Slaw. Use a mandoline, grater, food processor with a grater wheel, or careful hands and a sharp knife to shred broccoli stems. Add some shredded carrot and mix with your favorite cole slaw dressing.

4) Stir fry. I think part of the reason I love roasting broccoli is that I can never get stir fried broccoli quite right – it's always either underdone or mushy, never as delicious as at a Chinese restaurant or my mom's house. (Mom! What is your secret!) But broccoli stalks – being flatter and more uniform than florets – are a cinch. They make a delicious stir-fry with Chinese flavors – soy sauce, garlic, and five-spice powder are a favorite combination of mine – and cook to a delicious combination of golden exteriors with creamy insides.

5. Soup. Once your favorite cream of broccoli soup (vegan or dairy) is pureed, no one will know if it started as tiny trees or trunks. Ditto chopped up in a quiche or casserole.

That's what I've got so far. (I've also heard that some cats love broccoli, and so also broccoli stalks, but unfortunately my creature isn't inclined to any such adorable predilections.) Do you use – and enjoy – your broccoli stalks? Are there any other often discarded parts of vegetables (or animals) you've got a great use for?

Read More →

Green Kitchen: Roasted Sunchokes and Broccoli

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Ever since The Glorious Return of Gas to My Oven, I have been making good use of my fully functional kitchen. I've been boiling water on the stovetop for tea, marvelling at how quickly the kettle whistles. I've roasted a chicken (you know, what with eating meat again). I've baked two versions of Chickpea Cake and even broiled salmon when my fish-allergic boyfriend was out of the house. But my favorite thing to do, the thing I missed most in my oven's time off, is to roast broccoli.

I am a full believer in the power of oil, salt, and high heat to transform almost any vegetable into a delicacy. Sauteed Brussels sprouts, roasted root vegetables or cauliflower, even oven-roasted kale – these methods all move their produce from tasty enough healthy choices to mouth-watering heaven, as if heaven is a thing you eat. And broccoli perhaps benefits from this treatment best.

This is a variation on Ina Garten's recipe, which I learned by way of The Amateur Gourmet (where it is called, accurately, The Best Broccoli of Your Life). It is rich and hearty, a little sweet from caramelized edges, good and salty from... salt. It's also super easy – you toss broccoli with salt and oil and throw it in the oven. Set it and forget it, basically. And then, after all that zero hard work, you get something amazingly, addictively delicious that is also, lest we forget, broccoli.

This weekend I took my dear broccoli to a new level, by way of a little greenmarket desperation curiosity. While strolling through with my friend J. for eggs, onions, and heavy cream (my new obsession) – the only good things to find in a February farmers market – I saw something intriguing between the onions and ten kinds of potatoes: Jerusalem Artichokes. They are neither Israeli nor artichokes, but rather knobby little roots that I conveniently – thank you for writing seasonal recipes, fellow foodbloggers – had read about just a few days before. (You can swing by that very Mark's Daily Apple post for more history of the sunchoke, and a couple more recipe ideas.)

Let's see. Roasted sunchokes, roasted broccoli. Creamy and nutty, toothsome and savory. Roasted, roasted. In my fridge, in my fridge. It obviously took a great feat of culinary inspiration and general genius for this combination to be conceived. (Thanks for sending me to college, mom!)

Note: Make sure to dry your broccoli and sunchokes THOROUGHLY. I'd even recommend not washing the broccoli. It's going to be in a hot oven for a long time – anything bad on there's gonna get killed, and anything that doesn't get killed in the oven is some sort of superpowerful freak germ that was going to get you anyway.

~~~

If this looks nice, you'll surely appreciate:

• Broccoli-Cheddar Soup
• Broccoli Quiche
• Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers

~~~

Roasted Sunchokes and Broccoli
Serves 4
Adapted from Ina Garten/The Amateur Gourmet and Mark's Daily Apple.

1 ½ lb broccoli (about 5 cups of florets)
1 lb sunchokes (about 4 cups sliced)
2 T olive oil, divided
salt to taste

1) Preheat oven to 400. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

2) Chop broccoli into florets. (Put the stems aside for another use.) Toss in a large bowl with 1 T oil and a sprinkle of salt. Spread in a single layer on one baking sheet. Sprinkle with a little more salt if you like.

3) Slice or quarter sunchoked into relatively uniformly sized chunks, a little less than an inch thick. Toss in your large bowl with the remaining 1 T of oil and a sprinkle of salt. Spread on a single layer on the other baking sheet, ideally with each piece lying flat on a cut side (for optimal browning).

4) Cook broccoli and sunchokes for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown (or a little darker). Half-way through, swap them between the top and bottom racks, and stir/move around the veggies, adding salt if desired.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Cost Per Serving:
211 calories, 7.5g fat, 5.4g fiber, 6.2g protein, $1.41

Calculations:
5 cups broccoli: 155 calories, 1.7g fat, 11.8g fiber, 12.8g protein, $3.00
4 cups sunchokes: 438 calories, 0.1g fat, 9.6g fiber, 12g protein, $2.50
2 T olive oil: 252 calories, 28g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.12
1 t salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.02
TOTALS: 845 calories, 29.7g fat, 21.4g fiber, 24.8g protein, $5.64
PER SERVING (TOTALS/4): 211 calories, 7.5g fat, 5.4g fiber, 6.2g protein, $1.41

Read More →

Green Kitchen: Roasted Leek and Mushroom Salad

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

In the three-and-a-half months my kitchen has been without gas, I’ve gotten creative. I’ve learned the moods of an electric cooktop. I’ve almost set my toaster oven on fire with parchment paper. I’ve microwaved a lot of tea. It’s been an adventure but I can’t say it’s been good, or easy, or fun.

So when my boyfriend, working from home on Friday to let the utility guys into the apartment (and make sure the cat ever came out from under the bed), texted me that we had gas, I was EXCITED! All-caps EXCITED, here. Cookies! Cake! Roasted broccoli! I did not pass many waking hours this weekend without the oven running. (As the temperature’s been hovering around six degrees farenheit today, I don’t feel very bad about that.)

I’ve resigned myself to a nonlocal winter, weighing good Whole Foods produce against its price, against the kinda dodgy broccoli I can get from the supermarket near me. (After nearly four months without roasted broccoli, I’m a little obsessed right now.) But even though it’s, did I mention, six degrees farenheit out, my farmers market is year-round, and not entirely produce-free!

In a month or two it will really be just jam, bison jerky, and onions, but a last few vegetables are still hanging around. The leeks I brought home were maybe a little soft, but once they’re roasted and carmelized and golden, are you drooling yet?

This meal came together by a bit of kismet, and a bit of what-I-had-around. When I was in Whole Foods with my friend J, I think it was as I was bagging these mushrooms that I complained about winter meal planning – in the summer I buy whatever’s cheap and pretty and in-season and build my meals around that. The rest of the year, when seasonal eating shuts down and I hit the supermarket produce aisles, it’s almost like there’s too much choice – everything’s there, everything’s an option. I bought the greenmarket leeks because they’ll probably be gone soon; I bought supermarket mushrooms because, I dunno, because it’s cold? Whatever, it worked out.

I decided to roast the leeks and mushrooms together, and the oniony and rich carmelized flavors do go well together, but it was all a bit savory and heavy. I looked around my fridge and kitchen, brightened things up with some tangy goat cheese and a crisp apple, and voila! It all felt fancy and chic, despite the fact that I ate it from a chipped bowl, in pajamas, on the couch, in front of the TV.

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If this looks tasty, you'll love:

• Mashed Potatoes with Leeks and Sour Cream
• Potato Leek Soup with Kale
• Swiss Chard with Mushrooms

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Roasted Leek and Mushroom Salad
Serves 3-4

1 bunch leeks (5-6 large, 8-10 small)
1 package crimini/baby bella mushrooms
1 Tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 oz goat cheese (herbed or plain)
1 medium apple (I like Gala or Empire, nothing mushy or too tart)

1) Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

2) Trim ends and dark green bits from leeks. Cut into about 6” pieces, and then in half lengthwise. Soak in a bowl of cool water to remove any grit or sand. Pat dry.

3) Rinse mushrooms and trim ends. Cut any big ones in half.

4) Spread leeks and mushrooms on baking sheet (covered with aluminum foil, perhaps) in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt (about ¼ tsp) and pepper (a few grinds or shakes). Toss to evenly coat, then make sure leeks are all cut side down.

5) Bake leeks and mushrooms for 20-30 minutes, until mushrooms are done and leeks are tender and caramelized. Toss once halfway through.

6) Core and quarter the apple, then cut into very thin slices. Use a mandoline if you like.

7) Plate leeks and mushrooms. Add crumbled goat cheese, then arrange apple slices on top. Pretend this is Iron Chef: Battle Leeks.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
3 Servings: 278 calories, 11g fat, 5.1g fiber, 10.6g protein, $2.48
4 Servings: 208.3 calories, 8.3g fat, 3.9g fiber, 8g protein, $1.86

Calculations
1 bunch leeks: 271 calories, 1.3g fat, 8g fiber, 6.7g protein, $3.00
1 package crimini mushrooms: 135 calories, 0.5g fat, 3g fiber, 12.5g protein, $2.50
1 Tbs olive oil: 126 calories, 14g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.12
¼ tsp salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
¼ tsp pepper: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
2 oz goat cheese: 206 calories, 16.9g fat, 0g fiber, 12.2g protein, $1.50
1 apple: 95 calories, 0.3g fat, 4.4g fiber, 0.5g protein, $0.30
TOTALS: 833 calories, 33.1g fat, 15.4g fiber, 31.9g protein, $7.44
PER SERVING (TOTALS/3): 278 calories, 11g fat, 5.1g fiber, 10.6g protein, $2.48
PER (smaller) SERVING (TOTALS/4): 208.3 calories, 8.3g fat, 3.9g fiber, 8g protein, $1.86

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