the little orange that could.

something happens this time of year in the produce department that makes my heart skip a beat. a very special little orange makes an appearance. and, for a brief moment in time, i find myself in citrus heaven. welcome, back, satsuma, i have missed you.

what is a satsuma? you may also see it labeled simply as a mandarin or as a stem & leaf mandarin. it all depends on where you are shopping. well, a satsuma is a mandarin orange. and it usually still has a little bit of stem and quite possibly a leaf attached. they are smaller than navel oranges, but usually are larger than clementines. like the clementine, they are easy to peel. incredibly easy to peel. and the sections are plump, super sweet, and not pithy. i find them to be sweeter and juicier than clementines, not to mention slightly more satisfying. they are a beautful fruit, too, with bright orange skin. it's not just turkey and cranberries and squash and pumpkin pie right now, there is a thriving citrus season upon us, and it's not a bad thing with the concurrent arrival of cold and flu season to introduce more vitamin c into our lives. this is the high point of the satsuma season, pretty soon they will be gone from grocery stores and markets, a mere sweet memory. but, for now, they are here and they are delicious and i am a happy bird, full to the brim with vitamin c.

yam = yum.

okay, okay, it's time to get back to the sweet potato drawing board with red diane yams.

it's chilly. it's rainy. thanksgiving is thursday. what better time to get my festive on and play with sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, and cranberries? right? well, lucky for me, i'm smack dab in the middle of testing all the sweet potatoes i can get my hands on. so satsuma-imo, golden sweet, and beauregard down, it's on to good old diane. the red diane yam is a hybrid between the garnet and the beauregard yams. again, all of these are sweet potatoes and not yams at all. the diane is red on the outside with bright orange flesh on the inside. meaning she's high in beta-carotene and good for the eyes. even if looking at her she's not so good on the eyes. oh, the poor ugly sweet potato. thank god she is so gosh darn tasty, birds and tigers agree on this. through salty miso to tangy sweet cranberry, the sweet potato is doing us right.

cranberry orange garlic sweet potato and brussel sprout delight

1 cup rice (wild & brown mix)

garlic, 5 cloves

1 medium orange

cranberries, 1 bag

1 large red diane yam, peeled & cut into rounds

10 brussel sprouts, cut in half

2 cinnamon sticks

sea salt, to taste

in one pot, add rice, 2 cups water & 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic. cover. bring to boil. reduce heat & simmer, according to directions on rice (~40 minutes). once simmering for about 10 minutes, add 1 cinnamon stick.

in another pot, when rice is about halfway done, add 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped, sweet potatoes & brussel sprouts. add about an inch of water & 1 cinnamon stick. cover. bring to boil and reduce to simmer for about 10 minutes.

squeeze the juice of half an orange over sweet potatoes & brussel sprouts. add cranberries. place orange on top. cover and continue to simmer, until cranberries are soft and all vegetables are cooked through and tender.

combine vegetables with rice. squeeze remaining orange over mixture, season with salt, and enjoy.

hummus without chickpeas isn't really hummus, is it? but it's my favarite.

momentary pause on the root-toot-tuber seasonal express. this is, after all, california. and it turns out that the baja region of california and mexico have a pretty sweet heirloom vegetable season come november. do you know how hard it is to walk past a crate full of perfectly pretty pesticide free heirloom peppers? it is impossible. you'd have to be heartless & soulless & pretty darn near blind to do something that foolish. especially when these guys were grown in-state and are only $1.29/lb. come on, i had no choice but to step away from the sweet potato bins and pick some up. so then i decided the little baby rainbow carrot nuggets could not be left alone either. so cute, so fresh, also so cheap. i turned and caught sight of the mini kirby cucumbers and all of a sudden my theme became crystal clear. ladies and gentlemen, we have an adorable crudite on our hands.

now a crudite needs to be dipped. and so i had the inspiration to make hummus. then i had the inspiration to make hummus but without chickpeas. any bean, after all, can be mashed and blended. and so i grabbed a can of fava beans, which as a soaked and cooked bean, more closely resemble the shape and texture of a chickpea than say pinto or kidney or black beans do. here we go again with misnomers, technically fava beans are peas and not beans at all. but because they produce a "bean" inside their shell and fix nitrogen in the soil, we lump them in with legumes, instead of more accurately labeling them as vetches. whatever we call them, fava beans are one of the most ancient foods we have and are also very, very healthy. fava beans are a good source of fiber, vitamin a (skin, vision, growth, bone development), potassium (blood pressure and heart function), phosphorus (bones, teeth, helps the body utilize vitamins), the amino acid known as l-dopa, or dopamine (works as a neurotransmitter in the brain ), and thiamine (nerve function).

fava bean spread

1 can fava beans, drain & reserve a little bit of the liquid

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 lemon

1 tbs sea salt

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp turmeric

add fava beans, garlic & a little bit of the liquid from the beans in a blender. blend on "puree" until the mixture starts to become smooth.

add the juice of a lemon, salt, paprika and turmeric.

blend until it's the consistency you desire.

enjoy.

yes, it is that ridiculously easy.

(i mean, of course, if you wanted to take on the challenge, you could start with fresh fava beans, shell them, blanch them, skin them and then mash them. it would be more labor intensive and would give you an end product that would have a green color, like the fresh fava bean. it would be pretty. and it would no doubt be delicious. but sometimes birds get busy and the quick way is good enough. i'm just fine with my super quick can bean cheat.)

you can serve it right away. or you can let it chill and settle for a little while. you can serve it with fresh veggies as a dip for crudite. you can serve it with crackers or bread. you could layer it into a taco or burrito. it would go very well in a lot of middle eastern cuisine, i mean it would be great spread on kibby. i hope to incorporate it into a stuffed cabbage roll recipe at some point. it's pretty versatile. and, most importantly, it's easy peasy cheap and breezy. and the tiger likes it.

one potato, sweet potato, miso soup and more.

japanese sweet potato conquered, time to keep on keepin on the sweet potato trail...next stop golden sweet and beauregard yams. well, here we go again, both of these vegetables are called "yams" but are actually sweet potatoes. technically all "yams" grown in the united states are sweet potatoes. and yet we call them yams. because we can do whatever we want, right? this is america. freedom of speech. i'd rather just call a spade a spade, you know? but this yam misnomer tradition is far older and widespread than me, so i'm going to have to suck it up at some point and just accept that although i may buy and cook a lot of yams, i have still never actually bought or cooked a yam.

okay, let's be honest, i'm a bird on a budget trying to be green. reduce, reuse, recycle, my friends. a great place to do this is in the kitchen. so i decided my next adventure in yamville needed to make use of the large amount of leftover scallion and miso that i had from my first adventure in the land of sweet potato. so i decided to make a variation on a miso soup. i chose two very different types of sweet potato: the golden sweet and the beauregard. the golden sweet has light skin and light flesh. the beauregard has dark copper skin and bright orange flesh. the golden sweet yam is much milder and much starchier, acting & tasting a little bit like a potato and a turnip, while the beauregard is much sweeter, like a very sweet carrot. they worked in nice conjunction together in a soup. and again, paired well with the mild white miso.

sweet potato seaweed miso soup with rice

garlic (we used no less than 6 cloves in 1 pot of soup, but we also have a slight garlic addiction here, quantity is up to you), chopped finely

a handful of kombu seaweed (dried)

1/4 cup thai jasmine rice

1/2 cup hijiki seaweed (dried)

1 golden sweet yam, peeled & diced

1 beauregard yam, peeled & diced

1 small crown of broccoli, chopped

1 small head of choy sum, chopped

4 scallions, chopped

sea salt

1/2-3/4 cup white miso (again, depends on your taste. add 1/2 cup to start, add more if flavor isn't strong enough for you)

fill a large pot with 4 cups (or so) of water. add garlic & kombu seaweed. bring to a boil.

add rice. cover & simmer.

after 5 minutes, add sweet potatoes & hijiki.

when sweet potatoes are almost done, add the broccoli & choy sum. allow to simmer another 5 minutes or so.

add scallions, season with sea salt. simmer for a minute or two.

add miso, 1 tablespoon at a time, let it dissolve. allow this soup to simmer for just a couple of minutes.*

remove from heat.

enjoy.

*the key to miso soup is not allowing the miso to boil, hence adding it last, it will destroy the flavor and compromises the nutritional value and healing properties of the miso.

even your mama says you're ugly.

well, they sure as heck aren't pretty to look at on their own, but the sweet potato, full of vitamins a, c & b6, packs a delicious punch of good old fashioned nutrition, giving it an inner beauty. and it's what's on the inside that matters after all, isn't it? at least that's what everyone always tells me. wait...they mean it, right? it's not like they're just saying that to make me feel better about something else, are they? ??

ah, the sweet potato. which is different than a yam. which is not actually what we think is a yam. yams as we think of them are just varieties of the sweet potato. which have nothing to do with potatoes. yes, they are all indeed root vegetables, tubers, but these tubers, though they look mighty darn similar, originate from different botanical families. confused? why wouldn't you be. but, alas, "what's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - right, juliet? well, i intend to find out. or try to find out. or just eat a lot of sweet potatoes. i mean yams. i mean sweet potatoes. i mean, well, i don't know what i mean. but it's root and tuber time of year and root-toot-tuber season seems like as good a time as any to dive headfirst into learning about these sweet ugly guys.

so there are something like 400 varieties of sweet potatoes out there. and sweet potatoes are not necessarily sweet, nor are they potatoes. the true sweet potato actually has a flavor closer to a chestnut, with white flesh, not the orange flesh we think of. the satsuma-imo version of these is quite popular in japan. and so in my investigation into the sweet potato and yam world, this is where i shall begin, and tonight i dove right in with the japanese sweet potato, a variety i had never tried before. the tiger and i both enjoyed it. like my research promised, it did have a chestnut-ty flavor to it, not the sweet, carrot-ty flavor that garnet yams, for instance, have. it was really super scrumptious and delicious with a salty, tangy miso-based spread, a surprisingly mostly savory and just a little bit sweet take on the tuber of a thousand names and mistake monikers.


miso garlic scallion japanese sweet potato
preheat oven to 400 degrees
wash & scrub a japanese sweet potato (pictured above, purple skin with white flesh)
prick sweet potato with a fork & roast in oven (about 1 hour or until soft)

miso garlic scallion spread:
3 tbs white miso
2 cloves garlic minced
1 green scallion chopped finally
in small bowl or ramekin, mash the miso, garlic and scallions until well mixed into a paste

remove sweet potato from oven
slice down the middle
spread the miso paste on the potato
fold the potato halves back together to allow the paste to melt into the flesh a little bit
enjoy.