Graphic: created from my photos, Stemlit Growers, Cook Almost Anything, Second Breakfast

The other day, I had a great salad that blurred the boundaries between savory and sweet. It was for lunch, but it could fare equally well for breakfast. Upon a bed of baby spinach, there was crunchy candied walnuts, soft cheese, strawberries, blueberries and the real topper: granola.

A couple restaurants in New York, like Ceci-Cela, pair strawberries with spinach salad. It’s a natural progression of strawberries and balsamic vinegar. If it sounds weird, don’t think of it as strawberries and vinegar. Just think of it as strawberries and acid, like lemon juice. Acid brightens flavors, and balsamic vinegar adds another layer of richness.

The granola was ingenious, standing in for standard croutons. I want to give credit where it’s due, but I have no idea who catered the leftover salad that I stole ate. So, whoever ordered the 2nd floor Court TV lunch on July 25, please step forward!

Breakfast Salad

Serves 4
Adapted from an unknown catering company

If you’re supposed to eat breakfast like a king and dinner like a pauper, here’s an easy way to get your greens at the start of the day. You can make your own vinaigrette, buy Olde Cape Cod’s excellent raspberry dressing or just toss the salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil to taste.

Ingredients:

8 cups baby spinach
1/2 cup strawberry vinaigrette
1 cup sliced hulled strawberries
1/4 cup blueberries
1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese (4 ounces)
1/4 cup candied walnuts
1/2 cup granola clusters

Lazy directions: Toss all ingredients together and eat.

Meticulous directions: In a large bowl, toss the spinach, strawberries and blueberries with the salad dressing. Top each salad with the cheese, walnuts and granola.

Squash season is here, and what better way to start off the day than zucchini pancakes? There’s plenty of savory versions a la potato cakes or mock crab cakes. Mine are traditional flapjacks that go with maple syrup. Vegetables actually make pretty good “dessert,” kind of like carrot cake. Try these sweet zucchini pancakes that can easily be veganized.

Photo: Robyn Lee/Serious Eats

As a dessert lover, I get hankerings for cookies a lot. The only thing is, I don’t want to bake a batch and finish them all by myself (which happened when I recently ate my friend’s homemade birthday present). The other option is going store bought. In New York, that means getting something affordable but disturbingly unnatural from Au Bon Pain, Pepperidge Farm and Entenmann’s. Or, spending $2 to $3 for a cupcake at Magnolia, Buttercup and all those other retro bakeries. But seriously, a cupcake for $3? They’re not that good…

Enter the Treats Truck, a bakery on wheels! They started dispensing fresh goodies from their environmentally friendly truck, Sugar, this June. A portion of their proceeds also goes to charity.

The early reviews on the Midtown Lunch blog sounded suspicious:

“It’s true, the peanut butter cookie is not very good. Sure, it looks tasty and delicious but it’s actually POISON! So, um, don’t buy any ok? Thanks.”

“I can confirm that the PB sandwich cookie is just awful. And the standard chocolate chip cookie and the sugar dots were also quite heinous. I hated every luscious, highly caloric bite.”

Hmm, it was worth an investigation. An undercover reporter at Court TV brought back the bounty to our office. Read the blog for the verdict and a blurb about yours truly. (Full disclosure: one of the bakers is a fan of Court TV, but I’ve never met her.)


Photo: Susie Felber/Court TV

If you’re too lazy to click there, here’s my thoughts. What I like about the Treats Truck is they don’t pretend to be something they’re not. If I were to describe them in one word, it would be honest. “Not too fancy, always delicious!” proclaims their slogan. Their $1 cookies aren’t gourmet, but they’re satisfying. There’s none of that $3 “Oreo” madness (for one cookie!), like at Bouchon Bakery. Their peanut butter cookies actually taste like peanut butter, and their other goods are buttery and tender. I don’t know how their “competitors” manage to make cakey, shockingly sweet or biscuit-like cookies.

It’s worth a stroll to make a purchase or try one of their many free samples. Their staff is super nice. Check their web site or call for their locations. Since there’s only one truck, it can be difficult to pin them down. Twice, their site said they’d be near my work, but they weren’t. 🙁 Now I programmed their number into my cell phone for the latest updates. Hopefully they’ll develop a regular schedule.

Treats Truck
212-691-5226

It’s that time of year again: the Fancy Food Show! From July 8-10, more than 5,700 booths from 73 countries and regions populated New York. Established and fledgling companies hobnobbed with food service professionals and the media, hoping that their product would be distributed to the masses. It’s a preview of what’s to come to the supermarket shelves.

The natural food products were greatly improved. Last year, there were pseudo whole-grain products and stuff that tasted like medicine. This time around, there was lots of flax, peanuts in all forms (salt-blistered cocktail nuts and natural peanut butters), whole-grain crisps, creative oils, fruit-sweetened sodas and even gluten-free experimentation.

As for non-healthy foods, there were gourmet potato chips and sweet/salty/savory confections. I had some good peanut brittle with seafood seasoning. Long a practice in France, there were also several salted caramels. I think U.S. candy is actually pretty salty to hide the flaws. These candies, however, used salt deliberately and carefully.

On the chocolate front, there was a continuation of single-origin chocolates and cacao nibs. Nothing ground breaking, but there was fine tuning. I felt bad for chocolate giant Ghirardelli, who was proudly handing out 73% chocolate. Cacao percentage is so 2005; artisan makers are focusing on cacao quality rather than quantity.

I enjoyed going a second year in a row, because I developed a better strategy: eat a light meal beforehand (there’s enough food in the Javits Center to feed a village, but all that random stuff churning around in your stomach doesn’t feel good) and go to the Focused Exhibits first. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the random food booths. Also, it was nice seeing the fruits of last year’s show. Whole Foods now carries Skotidakis Greek yogurt and 34 Degrees fruit pastes, two of my favorites from last year.

Let’s get on to my personal Best in Show, shall we? I had a hard time paring down my favorites, hence the super-specific categories. First, the chocolate.

Best Chocolate Bar – two-way tie

Amano – At 4,441 feet above sea level in Orem, Utah, Art Pollard is one of the few remaining independent American chocolate makers (Hershey’s bought out Scharffen Berger and Dagoba a couple years ago). He doesn’t use emulsifiers like soy lecithin, which create smoothness but can interfere with flavor. He also swears by the mountaintop setting, saying it allows him to process the chocolate at a lower temperature and preserve more flavors. He only makes 70% chocolate, but they taste radically different because of the origin. The Ocumare from Venezuela tastes like berries, apricots and plums, while the Madagascar tastes like oranges. He also has a limited edition Cuyagua.

Domori from Italy also doesn’t use emulsifiers, and it’s a wonder how they get their chocolate so smooth and thick. Two of their 70% Venezuelan chocolates are also very different. (Which is why the percentage gives you limited information. Purists swear by the country of origin, and super-purists insist of single plantations.) The Rio Caribe Superior has notes of plum, apricot, peppercorns, coffee, milk, and sugar. If you think that’s a mouthful to say, wait till you taste it! The Caranero Superior, also from Venezuela, tastes like mocha, nut, raisins and dirt.

Best Fair Trade and Organic Chocolate

Theo – Okay, so they don’t have competition because they’re the first roaster of Fair Trade Certifiedâ„¢ cocoa beans and the only roaster of organic cocoa beans in the U.S., but they’re darn good. My favorite is the nib brittle, which has nuanced chocolate bits encased in hard candy. Going along the salty-sweet trend, their Bread & Chocolate bar has toasted bread crumbs (it’s not so weird; they’re crunchy like nuts) and salt. I wanted to like this bar, but I found it too salty. They also have several single-origin chocolate bars and tasty truffles. The bars are a bit hard though.

Best Truffles

Garrison Confections – Chocolatier Andrew Shotts was the executive pastry chef at the Russian Tea Room and helped formulated Guittard’s high-end couverture, E. Guittard. In 2001, he started his own chocolate company with seasonal truffles. His coffee truffle sang in my mouth.

Best Healthy Chocolate

Vere – This New York company only uses Ecuadorian cacao, which is naturally sweet. As such, Vere adds just a little sugar and some fiber to their chocolate. My favorite is the chocolate coconut cluster, and I don’t even like coconut that much. It’s wonderfully crunchy and paper thin. Although their chocolate is delicious, I wouldn’t shell out $2.50 for a truffle. No worries though, you can get generous free samples every Friday from 12:00-6:00 at their factory (12 W 27 St. between 6 Ave. and Broadway).

Most Creative Use of Chocolate

Rabitos Fig Bon Bon – Imagine a truffle encased in a bulging dried fig and then covered in chocolate. Genius! These figs are Pajaritos, which only grow in the southern Spanish region of Extremadura.

Best Cult Chocolate

Pralus claims to be one of only three chocolate makers in France. I’m not sure what criteria he’s using, since Valrhona, Bernachon, Weiss and Michel Cluizel also make chocolate. No matter, each of his single-origin chocolates taste like a different color of the rainbow. They take a little getting used to, since they have sharp white cheddar and mushroom notes. The Madagascar chocolate-covered cocoa beans have that signature Pralus taste. His chocolate is hard to get in the U.S., so treat yourself if you can find it.

Best Snacking Chocolate

Charles Chocolates from San Francisco makes fun things, like triple-coated chocolate nuts, tea truffles and peanut butter butterflies. They use a combination of Guittard and Cacao Barry chocolate, which are pretty neutral (no high notes of fruit or soil). I like my chocolate stronger, but this chocolate is nice if you don’t want to think too hard.

Coming up in part two: everything else.

Related posts:
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 1
Fancy Food Show 2006 Favorites, part 2

Chocolate is my undoing year round, but ice cream is my undoing during the summer. I love nudging it with my tongue and letting it gracefully melt away. But every so often, a little voice nags me: “You shouldn’t eat so much ice cream because it’s bad…

…for the environment.” I bet you thought I was going to say it was bad for you. True, but did you know that one cup of milk yields 116 pounds of cow manure? Not only is manure trash, but its stinky gases contribute to global warming. It also takes 14 trillion gallons of irrigation water and 22 billion pounds of fertilizer to produce feed for U.S. livestock each year. The amount of energy it takes to produce that fertilizer could provide power to 1 million Americans a year.

Most people realize the tenets of eating humanely raised animals or cutting back on meat. However, the amount of food and water it takes to keep those animals alive could feed thousands, if not millions, of starving people. That’s why I limit dairy and eggs in my diet too.

I like the idea of dairy-free ice cream, but brands like So Delicious, Double Rainbow and Temptation are chalky and hard. You have to eat a lot to feel satisfied, giving you the Snackwell’s effect (remember when people thought it was okay to eat 10 cookies at a time because they were low-fat?). Homemade soy ice cream doesn’t fare much better.

I just about gave up on vegan ice cream, until I picked up Raw, by acclaimed chefs Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein. Raw foodists believe that heating anything above 118 degrees destroys its natural enzymes. The cuisine is full of fresh produce, nuts and sprouts.

It sounds great in theory, but evidently they never heard of lycopene, an antioxidant that tomatoes release only when cooked. Also, shipping coconuts from Thailand year round negates eating locally and in season. Hmm, what polutes the air more: jet fuel for coconuts or fertilizer for cows?

Raw “cooking” is also labor intensive. Sure, you could spend several days sprouting grains and dehydrating “bread,” if that was your only job. Before Roxanne’s restaurant closed in 2004 (they couldn’t keep up with the $10 million in costs), they had one guy devoted to cracking coconuts for the pad thai noodles and ice cream.

Luckily, Raw’s recipe for maple-pecan ice cream is doable. There’s only two ingredients. Hint: I just told you what they were. In typical raw fashion, you soak nuts overnight and combine them with maple syrup. Nuts normally have 75% fat and 25% protein, but once they’re soaked and sprouted, the ratio reverses, according to Klein. In raw food theory, nuts and seeds don’t grow into trees because the enzymes are dormant. You have to soak them for optimal nutrition. That sounds nice, but with that analogy, soaked nuts and seeds should grow into trees inside you.

I have a habit of toasting nuts to bring out their flavors, so I couldn’t resist here. The roasted pecan ice cream had a slightly richer flavor, but it was also a little greasier. Raw nuts work fine here, because the soaking enhances their flavor.

It’s creamy, relatively good for you (with minerals and heart-healthy fats), and you won’t care that it’s vegan! Like the plain frozen yogurt, this ice cream is best eaten the same day it’s made. Even with the addition of vodka (to lower the freezing point), it gets hard the next day, and the nutty bits become more pronounced.

Maple-Pecan Ice Cream
from Raw, by Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein

2 cups raw or toasted pecans, soaked for eight to 10 hours in filtered water
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 1/2 tablespoons vodka (optional)

Drain the pecans, reserving 1 cup of the water. In a high-speed blender, combine the pecans, the 1 cup of water, maple syrup and vodka (if using), and process until smooth. Pass the purée through a fine-mesh sieve, and freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions.

One year ago, New York frozen yogurt was in a state of emergency. Fake Tasti D-Lite and its clones were in every 10-block radius. The “frozen dessert” chain boasts 100 flavors, but they all taste like soapy whipped air. There’s no excuse, since each serving has as much as 224 calories, instead of the advertised 40. Dude, why don’t you add some cocoa powder (which is virtually fat-free anyway) instead of lactase?

Tasti even replaced the excellent soft-serve at Ben & Jerry’s in Grand Central station. To satisfy my craving, I scoped out at least five delis, which advertised in big letters: “Frozen yogurt.” I always came out disappointed, since their machines were never running.

“Does anyone remember real frozen yogurt?” a Chowhounder lamented on an online message board. I felt the same way. Where was that stuff I ate to celebrate my brother’s birthday and me passing my driver’s license exam?

Early this year an L.A. transplant, Pinkberry, revived real frozen yogurt. It’s so popular out west that people don’t mind paying $68 for a large: $7.50 for the yogurt and the rest in parking tickets (because it’s so crowded). While I’m thankful that Pinkberry changed the culinary landscape, I’m not sure why they got all the credit.

Since the ’70s, Bloomingdale’s Forty Carrots cafe has made much better plain frozen yogurt. Not to be confused with vanilla, it’s refreshingly tart and creamy. “Crapberry” resembles sour ice milk. There’s a difference between tart and sour. Sour is what spoiled food tastes like.

Several bloggers, including 101 Cookbooks, re-created the treat at home with nothing more than plain yogurt and sugar. I used Fage’s 2% Greek yogurt, which is incredibly rich, since the water’s strained out. A 32-ounce tub costs about $4 at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, but it’s not so expensive, considering that you’d need to buy twice as much mediocre yogurt and let it drain for 24 hours to get the same result.

Paired with strawberries, it makes a great berries and cream-type dessert. Add some blueberries too, to get a red, white and blue theme going. Happy fourth!

101 Cookbooks posted the recipe from David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop. The yogurt gets hard after more than two hours in the freezer, but you can try adding 1 1/2 tablespoons of vodka to the mix.

It’s ironic that two ways of preserving food are also synonymous with “difficult.” If you’re in trouble, you’ll say you’re in a pickle or in a jam. Making pickles, however, is easy. My dad can’t boil pasta, but he can make pickled cucumbers and radishes with soy sauce and cilantro. Let vegetables sit in vinegar, salt and/or sugar, and you’ll have a snack to fall back on whenever you’re, er, in a pickle.

Since the summer brings a surplus of watermelon, I used leftover rind that would have gone to the trash. The rind is edible, as long as you peel off the tough skin. By itself, it’s akin to cucumber.

There’s several methods for pickling watermelon rind, some which call for buckets of salt. I chose a vintage Joy of Cooking recipe, because it has sugar instead. The finished product resembles extra crisp, tart apple pie filling. It’s great by itself, but it can also accompany yogurt, ice cream, pancakes, pork chops and hot dogs (finely mince the pickles to make a sweet relish). It’s so good that you might want to buy watermelon just to use up the rind.

Canning and preserving gets a difficult rap because most recipes call for sterilizing the jars and creating a vacuum seal. I use ordinary glass jars and don’t worry about removing the air. The acid, sugar and salt act as natural preservatives, as long as the pickles are left in the refrigerator.

This recipe may be my cheapest one yet. The watermelon rind is essentially free and so is the recipe (I found the book on a giveaway shelf).

Sweet Pickled Watermelon Rind

Adapted from The Joy of Cooking Standard Edition (1973)

Makes about 5 quarts

Rind of 1 large watermelon, about 5 quarts
7 cups sugar
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon

1. Cut the watermelon rind in strips before peeling. Remove the green skin and pink flesh. Dice into one-inch cubes.
2. In a large pot of boiling water, parblanch the rind for about five minutes, or until it can be pierced with a fork. Do not overcook. Drain and set aside in a large bowl.
3. Bring the sugar, vinegar, cloves and cinnamon just to a boil. Pour the syrup over the rind, making sure the rind is covered. Let stand overnight.
4. Strain out the syrup into a large pot and reboil. Pour the syrup over the rind. Let stand overnight as before.
5. On the third day, sterilize several glass jars and lids by boiling them for 15 minutes. Arrange the jars sideways, allowing the water to flow in. Using tongs, remove the jars and lids. Allow to air dry on clean paper or cloth towels.
6. Pack the rind into the jars. Boil the syrup again and pour over the rind till overflowing. Seal and store in the fridge.