Loving Okra

I am not quite sure when I first had okra, I would think it was probably in an Indian restaurant, but I cannot say for sure. Once when I was in Key West, it was on the menu, I could not really read the specials of the day, and when I asked my waitress what the okra special was, she told me if I did not know what it was I would not like it. Well the lawyer in me was not happy with that response, I had to know what the writing was saying. When she told me okra, I was delighted, never mind I had no idea how it was going to be served, I knew I liked it and was going to have it. I cannot quite say why I like it, I think it is because of the little pods inside. I love calamari and caviar, I think because of the way it feels on my tongue. The same can be said for okra. Unfortunately for this green vegetable, it has made its way onto some Ten Most Hated Food Lists. Okra is an all or nothing recipe, you either love it or hate I guess.

This little green pod, is a rather exotic vegetable, with its origins thought to have been from Ethiopia and Northern Africa. In ancient Egypt, okra would grow wild along the banks of the Nile. From here it made its way to India and the eastern Mediterranean. In the United States it is often found in Creole, Cajun and Southern cooking. Around the world it is known by a variety of names, Kopi, in the Arab world, Bhindi in Southern Asia, Bendi in Malaysia, Bamieh in the Middle East, Quimgombo in Africa and Gumbo in the Southern US.

Containing only 25 calories per serving, okra delivers a powerful combination of vitamin B6, fiber, Calcium and folic acid. During the civil war blockades, it was dried out and ground, and used as a substitute for coffee.

What I like best about okra, are the different ways you can cook it. This is one vegetable that can be baked, fried or steamed. Usually I just steam it. Given that it shows up in Greek, Turkish, Indian, Creole and Creole cooking the cooking possibilities are endless. At my Indian restaurant it is cooked dry with curry.

Okra, Middle Eastern Style I love the combination of tomatoes and okra

Ingredients
2 pounds okra ( I chop off the ends)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion chopped
2 garlic cloves chopped
1/2 Tbsp coriander
1 cup tomato paste
2 cups water

Place oil and onion in saucepan and saute for 3-4 minutes until soft. Add the remain ingredients. Bring to boil over high heat. turn to low and cook for about 25 minutes, or until okra is tender. Instead of the tomato paste and water you can also used diced tomatoes with their juices.

This is great on its own, or you can serve on a rice pilaf or over bulgar.

OBAMA TAIL: Obama goes to Ottawa

(photo courtesy of Jim Watson/Getty)

Earlier in the week Anali, from Anali's First Amendment was a guest writer on this blog and wrote a fantastic piece about Obama and all things food. Obama will probably go down in history as the president who had the most inspiration on food. This past week, he had his first foreign trip, to Ottawa Canada and sure enough a local Ottawa delicacy was adapted for Obama's visit.

Ottawa, the home to Canada's capital can be bitter cold in the winter. Think Moscow cold. Just to make the point, on the day that Obama arrived, the nation's capital was under grey clouds with snow flurries whipping about. Having spent my first 25 winters in Ottawa, this is a typical winter day. After finishing off his official business Obama headed over to the historic -Ottawa Byward Market. In the summer time, the market is bustling with farmers selling their fresh produce. Other shops are filled with cheeses from France, pate, fresh seafood and olives from Italy.

Before entering the market, the motorcade stopped by a beavertail stall. Beavertail, No, Obama was not on the look out for a hat with a beavertail. Beavertails are a legendary treat in Ottawa, or as my husband would say, a distraction to the bitter cold. They are a flat dough that has been stretched into the shape of a beavertail and deep fried. They are traditionally topped off with cinnamon and sugar. To welcome Obama to Ottawa, stallowner, Hooker created an ObamaTail, topped off with a chocolate O. I hope the chocolate was Nutella. Once again, our beloved president has had a food named for him, ObamaTails. Obama. Apparently Obama, felt at home in Ottawa, while Chicago does not have beavertails, the Obama noticed that the weather is pretty much the same. Obama was thoughtful enough to pick up some maple syrup cookies for his daughters. Malia and Sasha, I have stopped by this bakery shop many times for a pastry and tea, your dad is bringing you home some great desserts. Yes we CANada!!!












(photo is courtesy of ABC News Blog)

Here is a link to recipe I found on the web should you want to enjoy your own ObamaTail. Beavertails are one of those great foods that can be topped off with anything.

President’s Day – An Obama Food Roundup

Happy President's Day-Yes we Can and Yes We Do!!!have a reason to celebrate. President Obama is in the White House.
About two weeks ago I had Chocolate & Croissants listed on the Foodie Blog Roll. The listing redirected some new traffic to the site and some wonderful comments. Having visited everyone's website who left comments and scrolled through their posts, I came across a post on Anali's First Amendment about 14 Things she loves. Number 3 was that people were still posting to Yes We Cake. Given that today is President's Day, I thought it would be fantastic to have a first amendment guest to pay tribute to Obama and his food inspiration. Anali did not receive a lot of notice for her great contribution-given the time constraints I am impressed and thankful for her post. I hope all of you enjoy her guest blog as much as I have.


Hello there everyone! My name is Lisa aka “Anali” and I’m usually blogging over at Anali’s First Amendment. Hopefully, you’ll stop by sometime. Today, I’m doing a special President’s Day Guest Post here at Chocolate & Croissants.

A few days ago, I was looking at new blogs on The Foodie Blogroll and saw one called Chocolate & Croissants. Well, who can resist a name like that? Not moi. So, I clicked my way over and found the blog to be just as pretty and delicious as it sounds. I left a comment and soon after received an email from Esme.

Well, it turns out that we’re both attorneys who also blog about food. I love it when that happens! Esme was interested in my blog post linking to Obamacakes and asked if I’d like to do a guest post for President’s Day. I jumped at the opportunity! I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. What a great way to celebrate President’s Day and President Obama. A roundup of all things Obama and food! Let’s take a look shall we? He has inspired the palate of America like no other president than I can think of.

The blog Sky Full of Bacon even posed the question, “[H]ave we elected our first foodie president?”

Back in 2001, Obama appeared on a food television show called Check, Please! and talked about some of the food that he loves.

A new blog called Obama Foodorama has the tagline, - “A Daily Diary of The Obama Foodscape, One Bipartisan Byte At A Time[.]” This is a really interesting blog with posts about all things Obama and food.

The blog, which was Esme’s inspiration for my post, is called Yes We Cake. Since this past October, Melissa at Cake Hero has been compiling pictures of Obamacakes, which are cakes or other confections with pictures of Barack Obama on them. People are still sending in their photos! I submitted a cake myself from Thanksgiving.

While Obama certainly does inspire our sweet sides, lets not forget the savory. Pim was inspired to make chicken soup after the election. Her post inspired me to try my own chicken soup for the Inauguration.

Like me, this blogger found that she couldn’t stop blending politics and food. I loved this post Cupcakes For Change, where you see “politics and cupcakes colliding.”

I did some baking in honor of Obama myself with a recipe for Obama Celebration Cake. Remember the Pennsylvania Primary? I made Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins.

After the Obama’s primary win in Vermont, Slate was inspired to run a contest to name an ice cream. Yes Pecan!

I even found an Obama Food Profile, which states that as a teenager, he scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.

And someone is even trying to cash in on the Obama Food connection by selling the domain name obamafood.com. Well, I could go on and on with this post, but this tasty ride must end, so I’ll leave you with a couple of things. This Cinnamon Apple Spongecake Inauguration Recipe and the giant and masterful Obama cupcake portraits by Zilly Rosen.

Esme, thank you for letting me hang out on your blog for this wonderful President’s Day. And I wish all of you an Obamalicious President’s Day! And last, but not least, Happy President’s Day President Obama!

Cottage Cheese Pancakes for my Valentine

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY to all. Hopefully you have someone nice in your life that you enjoy doing something special for and they will reciprocate for you. We are the semi-Valentine Day celebrators in our household. For us, it is a fun evening to cook a nice meal and for my husband he gets to sample something new. We have been together over a decade and only once did we go out for dinner. BIG MISTAKE!!!! Sitting in a restaurant with other couples, staring lovingly into each other's eyes as the server asks if this is a special night, while you all order off the same pre-set menu has no appeal for me. That year we had an excuse for it-at the time we were dating, I had had surgery about 2 weeks prior and was still having mobility issues, my husband insisted on taking me out for dinner. He did not want me spending my energy making him dinner. But never again.
Earlier in the week, we decided we were going to go out to dinner in LA. IKES-it is V. Day, I refuse to go out to a restaurant tonight. To remedy the situation we decided we would take out his mum with us, so it would not be as silly. As much as I will not sit down for a pre-set overpriced Valentine's Day dinner, I will eat and want the See's Valentine Day heart chocolate. I have not cracked them open yet, however I did receive bags of milk chocolate and a gift certificate to See's. I do have some traditional notions.
Knowing that I would not be making dinner tonight, I decided to make Valentine Day Pancakes. My husband loves pancakes, he actually loves all breakfast food. Pancakes are a great food to make, you can adapt the recipe to anyone's tastes. I had seen some recipes on other blogs for ricotta pancakes and decided to adapt the recipes. Instead of ricotta, I used cottage cheese. I am the queen of cottage cheese and love it with everything. Pasta Sauce and cottage cheese is one of my favourites. I am quite surprised that I had never thought of putting cottage cheese inside the pancakes before. Often times for extra protein I will top of my pancakes with cottage cheese and maple syrup. Diet wise, I am sure this is rather counter productive, however taste wise, real maple syrup all the time is my motto.

COTTAGE CHEESE FILLED PANCAKES

1/2-1 cup cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 cup plus two tablespoons all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup raspberries or other berries
1/4 cup toasted chopped pecans

toast the pecans in pan and set aside.
Sift together flour and baking powder.
In a bowl combine, flour and baking powder and egg. Add the cottage cheese along with vanilla extract and cinnamon, mix to blend them. Add the berries and pecans. Raspberries will break up as you mix them. I like my pancakes thick-if they are too thick, you can add some milk. The first batch I made was without milk, and then I added some milk to make the dilute the batter.

Heat the pan or griddle and cook the pancakes. Cook the pancakes on medium-low heat. You can tell the pancakes are ready to flip when the batter starts to bubble.

Top off with maple syrup. Real maple syrup always tastes best.

Spreading the Joys of Nutella

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times carried a story about Nutella in the food section. There were some facts about Nutella that I thought you may want to know about. The author of the story makes it clear that "Nutella isn't just junk food with a European pedigree" I like that.
Nutella has it's own Facebook page-which I am proud to tell you ranks up there in popularity with Barack Obama-our beloved president has the most popular page, followed by Coca Cola and Nutella.
The article makes reference to Sara Rosso and Michelle Fabio designating February 5th as World Nutella Day. Congratulations for making it into the Los Angeles Times.
Nutella was originally invented by Pietro Ferreo in Alba, Italy in 1946. Last March Ferreo's son Michele became the riches man in Italy overtaking Silvio Berlusconi, with a personal wealth of $11 billion. Wow!!! We could solve the US deficit by selling crates of Nutella.

The author, Amy Scattergood has come up with her own recipe for making homemade nutella. Her recipe is below.


HOMEMADE NUTELLA

2 cups raw hazelnuts
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons hazelnut oil

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts evenly over a cookie sheet and roast until they darken and become aromatic, about 10 minutes. Transfer the hazelnuts to a damp towel and rub to remove the skins.
In a food processor, grind the hazelnuts to a smooth butter, scraping the sides as needed so the process evenly, about 5 minutes.
Add the cocoa, sugar, vanilla, salt and oil to the processor and continue to process until well blended about 1 minute. The finished spread should have the consistency of creamy peanut butter, if it is too dry , process in a little extra hazelnut oil until the desired consistency is achieved.
Remove to a container, cover and refrigerate until needed. allow the spread to come to room temperature before using, as it thickens considerably when refrigerated. It will keep for about a week.

Foodie Blog Roll, Chocolate and more

Last week Foodie Blog Roll added Chocolate & Croissants to their blog roll. For those who are not familiar with the Food Blog Roll, it is a blog with blogs-they just had their 3,000 blog added. This is a great place to view other blogs, participate in forums and even have a chance to win something food related.
Since being accepted I have had all sorts of wonderful traffic and comments left behind. As someone who enjoyed having pen pals from around the world when I was a child this is rather fun and exciting. I have checked out everyone's blog and discovered some great new blogs, and learned a few facts about people. Everyone loves food and eating it-we may have different tastes in what we eat however it all looks great and inviting. If you could group food bloggers, there seems to be a few consistent themes, eating, cooking, reading and photography. There are lots of ex-pats living in different places and trying out something new. I envy you all-especially those in Paris or close by to it. I should have crossed the Atlantic, but love my new home on the beach ...and sadly but truly for us lawyers we are are not too sure we enjoy the practice of law. Some of us food bloggers have special interests, food policy, spices, vegetarian-the great aspect is it introduces us to something new. I feel that I have discovered some new friends with different interests from all sorts of the world's corners.
To everyone who has stopped by and had a peak, left a comment, wished me well and has been courageous to step out and try something new. Thank you many times over. It would be fun to have a potluck dinner with all of us together.



Here is my present back to you, some photos, as I love photography (it has been hard to tell that I love photography-I am finding food photography very challenging) , two beautiful bouquets one of flowers (from a Parisian street florist) of flowers and a chocolate bouquet (from the flower district in Hong Kong). Who would not love to receive a chocolate bouquet?

Zucchini Basil Gratin

This past weekend I was in the mood for an omelette. An omlette that would be alive and kicking fresh lemon thyme.
Out to the herb garden I went. This was a project from last summer. Garden is probably a rather large exaggeration. We do not have gardens in Southern California-our lots are too small-they have been subdivided many times for new homes. It is a pot with herbs-but hey it works. My herb pot was looking rather dismal after a few months of neglect and I was not quite sure what to do with it.
Out came my copy of The Herbal Kitchen and like a faithful friend it had great advice on herbs. I needed a new suggestion for the omlette. For anyone who likes cooking with fresh herbs, the book has great advice on growing herbs, when to pick them and how to store them and all sorts of great recipes. After figuring out who to bring my herb pot back to life, the urge for an omelette had metamorphed into a desire for Zucchini Basil Gratin.
Whether you are growing your own basil or buy it fresh here are some great tips on basil-do not store it below 45 degrees farenheit, if you have just purchased or harvested basil, lace in in a pitcher of water like a bouquet and keep it on the counter where it will keep for a day or so. If you are fortunate to have a temperature controlled storage area-put in in a freezer bag and pop it in there.
When planting basil, give it plenty of water and fertilizer. To keep the plant producing all summer long, it is important to keep it from flowering.




ZUCCHINI BASIL GRATIN
6 servings


Ingredients:

3 medium zucchini
2 teaspoons kosher salt (I did not add salt)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup chopped basil
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmiginao-Reggiano
1/4 cup dry breadcrumbs

Shred the zucchini and place it in a large colander, mix in salt with your hands and let it sit and drain for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Spread 1/2 tablespoon of the oil inside the 10 inch round gratin dish. sprinkle bottom with 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs.

Add basil to the zucchini. Squeeze the zucchini dry by picking up baseball sized handfuls and firmly pressing out the moisture. Loosely pat the zucchini into the gratin dish. Mix the breadcrumbs and cheese sprinkling it over the gratin and bake it for 30-35 minutes until lightly browned.

MY NOTES
I did not add any salt-I eat way too much salt already-I doubled the cheese instead of using breadcrumbs-Why eat empty carbs? Make sure that you really squeeze the liquid out when making the balls as zucchini is quite moist.

Friday night Suppers

Every Christmas I return home to Ottawa, Canada, my birthplace. From the moment I land until I leave all I can think of is sunny California. The weather is cold and the sky is gray and dismal. Even though I grew up here, it seems that every year I discover something new about the city where I spent my first 25 years.

This past Christmas my niece, C. wanted to take me shopping for my Christmas present. She turns 17 this year and thought it would be more fun if we spent an evening together and she bought my present together. Off to Chapter's we went. We spent the evening sipping hot chocolate and browsing through the books. I knew that I would be picking out a cookbook. Given that I was in Canada, I needed to find a book I could not get in the United States (my luggage rule is not to bring into the country what I can get at home). I actually came home with a few cookbooks

Much to my surprise I found an author I had never heard of, Bonnie Stern. Just in time for Christmas she had a new cookbook, Bonnie Stern Friday Night Dinners. In her introduction, Sterns says how "Friday night dinner means different things to different people, but to anyone who is Jewish, it means a special family dinner to celebrate the end of the work week and to welcome Shabbat the day rest. It is a wonderful tradition that everyone can enjoy." This is a great philosophy whatever religion you are how you choose to spend your weekend. In this cookbook, Stern has put together a compilation of recipes to help you enjoy your Friday night dinner.

At my parent's home we would have Sunday night suppers. It was a night when my dad would make a nice meal, we would bring out the good plates and get to have dinner in the dining room. Did I mention that my parents also had all the chairs covered in plastic? That aside, it was a family tradition. To this day I have continued my parents tradition. Dinner hour is important to me. It is the one time during the day when my husband and I sit down together with no distractions. On Sunday night's I enjoy cooking a nice meal. I love picking out a recipe, shopping for the ingredients and cooking the meal. We have a collection of recipes that are our favorites depending on the season. I like the idea of a cookbook that gives you recipes to create your own Friday night dinners.

Open up the cookbook, and find some recipes...

From her section on Italian dinners, here is a favorite recipe of mine. Roasted tomatoes can be enjoyed year round as a side dish or a topping.



ROASTED CHERRY TOMATOES with BASIL

Ingredients:
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves minced garlic
1/4 tsp pepper
6 cups cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup torn fresh basil leaves, divided

1. Combine oil, garlic and pepper in a large bowl. Add tomatoes and about 1 tbsp basil. Mix well. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment.
2. Roast in a preheated 400 F oven for 30 to 45 minutes. Tomatoes should be soft but still old their shape.
3. Toss with remaining 1/4 cup basil.

What I love About Nutella

1. It evokes fond memories of my Dad.
(he bought me a jar of Nutella as he sent me off to law school)

2. You can eat it from the jar.
(with a spoon or a knife)

3. It tastes great cold or hot.
(think crepes or Nutella panini or Apple slices with Nutella)

4. It tastes great savory or sweet.
(Nutella on crackers or Nutella ice cream)

5. The day was created by Michelle at BleedingEspresso and Sara at Ms. Adventures in Italy.
(I have a new friend to exchange book reviews with and envy her life in a small Italian village)

In the spirit of Nutella Day & Valentines Day here is my Nutella Heart.

RECIPE

Ingredients
10 pecans
1 8 oz package cream cheese
1/2 cup Nutella

Crush pecans and roast them, allowing them to cool.
With hand mixer on high blend cream cheese and Nutella together.
Put Nutella and cream cheese mixture into heart shaped mold.

Place in fridge for 1 hour to set in mold.
Top with pecans.


PS This is great on pancakes.