Sugar Plums and Other Sweet Holiday Treats

sugarplums

Another recent Traditional Community Kitchen meetup I attended recently focused on healthy holiday treats – sweet things that contain unrefined, natural sweeteners, with flavors appropriate for the season. This event was seriously calling my name when I first saw it, as I have a major sweet tooth and have struggled with sugar for a long time (my struggles continue, but I’m working on it).

One way I deal with my bully of a sweet tooth is to still eat sweet treats but eat those made with natural sweeteners. That means maple syrup, honey, sucanat, and coconut sugar. I don’t eat much stevia, but I do like it in some cases. I also love to eat refrigerated medjool dates – keeping them in the fridge solidifies them a bit and gives them the texture similar to chewy caramel. It’s become a favorite treat of mine over the years.

By the way, dates are also great stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and baked until the meat crisps up. Sweet, tangy, and smokey all in one little snack – perfect!

Anyway, my love of dates leads me to my new love of sugar plums. Yes, sugar plums – the treat of the same name from A Visit From St. Nicholas (The children were nestled all snug in their beds/While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads.). One of the main ingredients of sugar plums is dates, and I think that’s why I like them so much.

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Fresh Pea Salad

in the bowl

Last week I was fortunate enough to have shelling peas in my CSA share. Usually we get sugar snaps or snow peas in a season, but hadn’t gotten shelling peas before.  I really wanted to find a recipe that highlighted the fresh pea flavor.

peas peas peas

It was also hot last week, so I wanted to find something that involved minimal cooking.

I found this pea salad recipe on the 101 Cookbooks site, which is a great source of recipes with a true vegetable focus.  Heidi Swanson, the site owner, is from the SF Bay Area, so a lot of her recipes remind me of home. Anyway, I found the date-mint combination in the dressing to be quite intriguing, and since I have access to amazing medjool dates here in town, that was a no-brainer to make it.  The mint is refreshing, and I love how the lemon and chile give it a pleasant kick.

date mint lemon spicy dressing

Beware, though – aside from the pepitas, this recipe has virtually no protein, nor is there much fat in it.  Perhaps a little olive oil could be added, but I think even that might weigh things down.  So, this dish is best paired with something containing plenty of good fat, like pastured eggs, a selection of raw cheeses, or perhaps even a grass-fed burger!

pepitas and peas

It is a delicious salad.  So refreshing and a wonderful combination of flavors.  It also allowed me to use up some of my lettuce, always a challenge for a CSA member this time of year.

salad put together

This salad makes a lot, and I ate it for three days, almost finishing it off.  It’s a wonderful salad to share with friends and loved ones.

Fresh Pea Salad
From 101 Cookbooks

I used a hand blender and it worked great! As you add more water to the dressing, it definitely gets easier to grind up.

1 cup fresh mint leaves (just leaves, no stems)
2 dried dates, pitted
1/2 of a small serrano chile, stem removed (half a jalapeño also works)
a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and zest from that lemon

1 1/2 cups fresh peas
1 small head of romaine lettuce, cut into shreds
1/2 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
fine grain sea salt

To make the mint-date dressing, puree the mint, dates, chiles and lemon juice and zest using a food processor or hand blender. Blend until uniform in texture. Thin it out by adding a tablespoon of water at a time until it is a consistency that you can drizzle. Taste and adjust for lemon and spiciness.

When you go to cook the peas, the key is not overcooking them. Fill a big bowl with ice water and set aside. Add some salt (as you would pasta water) and the peas. Bring six cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. You are just going to boil the peas for a very short time. Don’t leave the stove. Somewhere between ten and twenty seconds.You want them just barely tender, so they still pop in your – mouth. Quickly drain and dunk the peas in the bowl of ice water.

Just before serving gently toss the peas, lettuce, and pumpkin seeds with about half of the dressing and a couple pinches of salt. Taste and add more dressing if you like. Finish with a pinch or two of your favorite finishing salt (I like fleur de sel).

Serves 2 – 4

Recent Inspiration

Sunflowers

I’ve come across a number of writings and videos that have inspired me recently, so I am going to share them with you!

First, I’ve been inspired to get back into sourdough bread baking, thanks to  Katy’s recent post at Thought For Food, Sourdough: pages two, three, and four.  She references Clotilde’s post, Sourdough Baguettes, which I’ll also be taking a look at.

Leda Meredith over at Leda’s Urban Homestead shares a recipe for lacto-fermented garlic. I hadn’t thought of using lacto fermentation on garlic!  This is definitely something I’m going to try.

Last week I mentioned how much I enjoy dates, and I recently came across an intriguing date and rice pudding recipe over on My Feasts.  It sounds delicious!  I think I will adjust the small amount of sugar to either maple syrup or sucanat/rapadura.

I’ve been really impressed with the videos from food.curated. They are informative while being entertaining, in all the right ways. Here are a couple that I’ve really liked:

Shit-Talking & Sausage Making: Just Another Day at The Meat Hook from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

SCRATCHbread: A Brooklyn Chef Creates Food from Scratch to Start A Movement from SkeeterNYC on Vimeo.

I’ve also been watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, which has a lot of food for thought in it.

What has inspired you lately?

Extravagant Stuffed Dates

cooked dates

So, as part of changing my eating habits, I’ve cut out a lot of refined sugar.  I have a huge – like, Godzilla huge – sweet tooth, so it’s a challenge.  However, my health and general feelings of well-being are greatly improved without all that sugar.

Still, I have had to find ways to cope with the sometimes overwhelming sugar cravings!

One way I do that is by eating dates – medjool dates, to be exact.  I live in an area that has a sizable Arab population, and dates fit prominently in their food culture, so they’re easy to find.  You can even find fresh dates at certain times of the year, usually around Ramadan.  I have a source for incredible medjool dates, just a few blocks from my house.  They are huge, sweet, and have a fantastic caramel-like texture, sort of chewy (especially if you put them in the refrigerator for a little while).  I just love them.  And they satisfy my sweet tooth.

These mondo dates are excellent for stuffing.  It’s easy to extract the pit, and the hollow inside holds a good portion of whatever you want to put in it.  I like to use a fresh cheese – either chevre or a fresh cow’s milk cheese – but bleu cheese could also be delicious.

In addition to stuffing the dates, I like to wrap them in prosciutto di parma.  Natural bacon would also be good.  Then I heat them up.  Simply fantastic – sweet, salty, and smoky all at the same time.  I must thank my friend Laura for teaching me how to prepare these.

They’re also rather filling, I find.  They’d be great paired up with a simple green salad and glass of red wine.

stuffed date collage

Prosciutto Wrapped Stuffed Dates

If you can find proscuitto that is made from free range pigs, and not cured with nitrites but only with sea salt (as is necessary for some PDO/Protected Designation of Origin hams), that would be ideal.  You could also wrap the dates in natural bacon as well.  If you use bacon, only use half slices, and also use a well-soaked toothpick to hold it all together.

12 medjool dates
4 oz chevre or other fresh cheese
12 slices of prosciutto

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Take your dates and pit them by slicing into the date lengthwise, then spreading open the date and removing the pit.  They will look sort of butterflied at this point.

Stuff the dates with 1/2 tsp or so of cheese.  Make sure the cheese is all the way in the cavity of the date.  Close the halves of the date (some of the cheese may peek out a bit).

Roll up each date in a slice of prosciutto.  Set the dates in a baking pan – one with edges, so that any fat won’t spill out and into your oven – and bake them until the meat crisps, about 20 minutes.

Serves 6 an appetizer, 2 as a meal.