Quick Tip: How to Make Buttermilk

The addition of buttermilk in baking contributes to leavening and flavour. But who wants to buy a full container of the stuff when your recipe only calls for a cup?

To make your own buttermilk substitute, take 1 tbsp. of plain vinegar and add enough milk to bring you to a cup. Let it sit for ten minutes or so, and it will start to curdle.

Make sure your recipe calls for baking soda, as well, which is required to achieve the leavening effect.

The Sweet Potato

The sweet potato, often incorrectly referred to as the yam, is a nutritional super food. Not only is it fat free, one cup of sweet potato contains 65 percent of our daily vitamin C requirements. That same single-cup serving provides 26 percent of our required daily fibre, and has more beta carotene than carrots, so suck on that, Bugs Bunny.

This starchy tuber also contains vitamins A, B6, riboflavin, thiamine and niacin, not to mention a whole slew of minerals, including copper, calcium, iron, phosphorous, potassium, sodium, zinc, selenium and manganese.

All that nutritional goodness probably explains why it’s such a popular baby food, but we can’t discount how great it tastes. Babies don’t lie.

The orange-fleshed sweet potato is the most common variety, but there are also yellow- and white-fleshed ones, which tend to be more firm when cooked. These firmer types were considered the crème de la crème by fancy types at one time, but are more difficult to find, unless you’re in the deep South.

Sweet potatoes can be baked, boiled, broiled, fried, microwaved, canned or frozen. My kids like baked sweet potato fries tossed in a little oil, salt and paprika, but beware, they don’t crisp up like their russet cousins. Their flavour, however, is awes-mazing, as my kids would say.

If you really want to bring out their sweetness, bake them slowly at a low temperature. To minimize the sweetness, heat them through quickly by microwaving, boiling or steaming.

Select firm, unbruised potatoes, and store them in a cool, dry location – ideally between 55 and 60 F. Do not refrigerate, which will cause a hard core that can't be corrected through cooking. They won't keep as long as regular potatoes.

Cherry Muffins

If you like cherries, try these babies. They're moist and flavourful with just a hint of tart.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. each of baking soda and baking powder
1/2 tsp. each of salt and cinnamon
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup full-fat cherry yogurt (I like Liberte)
2/3 cup sun-dried cherries


Step 1
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

Step 2
Blend thoroughly the butter, sugar, egg, vanilla and yogurt in a separate bowl.

Step 3
Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Fold in the sun-dried cherries.

Step 4
Line a muffin tin with paper liners. Divide the batter into 12 portions. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops spring back up when touched.

Brussels Sprouts, Friend or Foe?

Well...that depends on how you cook 'em.

Brussels sprouts belong to the cabbage family, and tend to get a bad rap. It's probably the smell, which is not unlike a teenager's feet after hours of basketball in wool socks. But if you use fresh sprouts and don’t overcook them, they’re like little balls of goodness.

First off, try to buy the freshest Brussels sprouts you can find. Avoid the large ones, as they tend to have the strongest flavour. Instead, opt for sprouts with a one- to one-and-a-half-inch diameter. Use them within a couple of days of their purchase.

Select firm, tender heads free of insects—okay, I guess that last bit should go without saying. Pick ones with stems that look freshly cut.

These hardy little cousins of the cabbage are actually high in protein, albeit an incomplete protein, lacking the full spectrum of amino acids. Serve them with some whole grains, and voila, there’s your complete protein.

Now for the cooking part: don’t, I repeat, don’t overcook them, or you’ll be left with the bloated, bitter, mushy mess of your nightmares, and that sulphery smell to boot.

Once they start losing their bright green hue, you’ve cooked them too long. They also lose a lot of their nutritional value at this point, so serve them bright green and beautiful.

If you’re cooking them whole, cut an X in the bottom of the stem for even cooking.

Personally, I like to “disassemble” the sprouts and sauté the leaves. I'm not a huge fan of the consistency of whole sprouts. Simply cut off the edge of the stem and peel away the leaves. Then sauté them in oil or butter with some garlic, salt and pepper, and you’re good to go.

In Keys to Good Cooking, food scientist Harold McGee suggests cutting the sprouts in half or pulling them apart and boiling them to rid them of their bitter flavour. The boiling leaches out the bitter compounds (and some of their nutritional value).

Mushrooms: To Wash or Not to Wash

The age-old question of whether or not to wash these earthy, delectable fungi rages on.

In one camp, there's the conviction that they're little sponges that will absorb water, resulting in bloated, less-flavourful mushrooms. These mushroom purists recommend using a soft brush to wipe them clean so as not to mar their perfect flavour.

Not so, says Team Wash 'Em Real Good. Food scientist Harold McGee investigated the controversy with his characteristic thoroughness in his column for the New York Times a few decades ago. He holds that the amount of water absorbed by a quick rinsing is negligible, and certainly won’t affect flavour.

Members of the mushroom-rinsing camp also point out the health benefits of a little water, in particular that the mushrooms will absorb less oil while cooking.

The Mushroom Council recommends using a soft brush to remove any visible dirt or rinse them quickly and pat them dry. Hmm, well that doesn’t really answer that question.

I suppose when it comes down to it, it’s just a matter of personal preference. But if you do choose to rinse, rest assured that you won’t be ruining your dinner -- McGee found in his experiment that the mushrooms soaked up only about a sixteenth of a tsp. of water each. Mushrooms are 80 to 90 percent water anyway, so what’s an extra sixteenth of a tsp.? The key is a quick rinse, not a soaking.

Personally, I like to peel my mushrooms. Some might object on that grounds that the outer layer is full of nutrients that will be lost using this process. And while that's true, it's a loss I'm willing to accept for a clean, manure-free mushroom. In fact, when cooking with portabella mushrooms, I go so far as to scrape off the gills, which tend to produce a bit of a mess anyway.

For portabellas, remove the stem, then scrape the gills with a spoon prior to peeling. Peel back from the underside up towards the top of the mushroom, section by section, using your hands (as opposed to a peeler).

But if the mushrooms are touch to peel, I’ll wipe them down with a damp paper towel.

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

These are my favourite muffins in the universe. They're a beautiful, sweet complement to an afternoon cup of tea, and will bring you piles of compliments. I like to use the Liberte Méditerranée Lemon Yogurt, but beware, it's just as delicious and fattening as ice cream. Also, I prefer wild to cultivated blueberries, because they’re smaller and sweeter, and have more antioxidants to boot.

I'm going to serve these at an upcoming teacher-appreciation event at my kids' school; hopefully they'll earn them some undeserved As.

Enjoy!


Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. each of baking powder and baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 c butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup lemon yogurt
The zest of one small lemon
1 cup wild blueberries


Step 1
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Step 2
Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

Step 3
Mix the sugar, butter, vanilla, eggs, yogurt and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl.

Step 4
Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients until just combined. Toss the blueberries in a bit of flour, then fold them into the batter. The batter will be thick.

Step 5
Place paper liners in your muffin tin. Divide the batter into 12 muffin liners. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until done. You can test doneness by pressing down on your largest muffin: if it’s underdone, it won’t spring back up.

The DL on Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti squash is a fabulous substitute for regular pasta if you’re on a gluten-free or weight-loss diet, or if you’re just looking to be healthy. It’s got a crunchy texture and pleasant flavour, and while I don’t prefer it to pasta, I don’t like it any less. Just the caloric savings alone has me running to the produce aisle oftentimes when I’m making pasta.

• ·         A one-cup serving of spaghetti squash is 42 calories, versus 190 calories for a cup of cooked whole-wheat pasta and 221 for a cup of cooked regular spaghetti.

• ·         Spaghetti squash is an excellent source of vitamin A, and a good source of folate. It’s also got lots of vitamin C and potassium.

• ·         Choose a firm squash with smooth skin and even colour.

• ·         Its spaghetti-like texture comes only after cooking; it looks like all the rest of its counterparts if you cut through it when raw.

• ·         An average 4-lb. squash yields about 5 cups of cooked squash.

• ·         Store it for one month at room temperature, or even longer in a cool dark location (not your refrigerator). For longer storage, the temperature should be between 50 and 60 F.

• To bake, pierce it several times with a fork or knife to allow the steam to escape. Place it in a baking dish in a 350-F oven for about an hour, or until the skin gives easily under pressure. Allow it to cool for 10 minutes or so, then half it and scoop out its seeds and fibers. Use a fork to scrape out the spaghetti-like strands.