They have a nice snap and a sweet taste and make a wonderful addition to Chinese food, curries, and other vegetable combinations. Best of all, as far as peas go, they are reasonably low in carbohydrates. I most associate snow peas with Chinese food, but they can be used in any way you would use other peas. Experiment with them.
Although the snow pea originated in the Mediterranean region and were a popular variety of pea in the 19th century, they migrated to China where they quickly became the preferred pea and a key ingredient in Oriental cuisine. They thrive in a cool climate and should be picked five to seven days after flowering when they are at their peak flavor.
The French call the snow pea the mange-tout, meaning “eat it all” as it is one of only two pea varieties that you can eat the pod. The other pea with an edible pod is the sugar snap pea, although the snow pea has the more delicate pod. Easily recognized, snow peas have pale green pods that hold the small, flattened peas and are about two to three inches in length.
You can buy snow peas either fresh or frozen year round. Add them to stews in the winter or to salads in the summer. Delicious either way.
Nutrition information for 1 cup (98 g)
Calories: 41 Fat: 0 Net Carbs: 4 Protein: 3
Recipes:
Here’s a couple of recipes from Skinny Girl Bistro that feature snowpeas.
Back quite a few years ago, PK and I put on a Scandinavian feast for the local SCA group. For the uninitiated, that’s the Society for Creative Anachronisms, a medieval recreation group. We tried to find recipes that would go back to the Middle Ages for the feast and it included many interesting and diverse foods from Scandinavia. One of the dishes we made was Lanttulaatikko, which is a rutabaga baked casserole from Finland. It was the first time I used rutabagas and I was pleasantly surprised by their taste. I have only used them rarely since then and now find myself wondering why? They are fairly low carb, although most of the carbs are sugar, and can be used in much the same way as a potato, so I plan to enjoy them more often in my cooking.
Rutabagas have a bit of a confused history, largely because of a mix of names used for them. They are only called rutabagas in the United States and possibly, Canada. Most of the rest of the world calls them swedes, reflecting back to their abundance in Sweden. The name itself is of Swedish origin, coming from rotabagge, meaning “round root”.
Other names for them are Swedish turnips and Russian turnips. In Ireland, they are the “neeps” in “tatties and neeps”, confusing matters further. I mentioned turnips to a friend who had lived in Ireland and she thought I was referring to a rutabaga. While they are believed to be a hybrid between a turnip and a wild cabbage, they have developed a different look and a different taste from a turnip. The vegetable is larger than a turnip with a purple to tan colored skin and the flesh is an orange color with a nutty, sweet taste when roasted. Turnips are white with a bit of purple on them, although some are all white and the flesh part is white and has a slight peppery taste. I’m sure that clears things right up.
Various root vegetables from the top left: turnip, rutabaga, daikon radish and the green one at the bottom is kohlrabi.
Rutabagas are a cold weather crop, like turnips, kohlrabi and others from the turnip family. They are primarily grown in the northern United States, Canada, Europe, and Great Britain.
Uses
Rutabagas can be cooked almost any way you cook a potato — roasted, sautéed, baked, fried, boiled, mashed and added to soups and stews. They can be shredded and added raw to salads. They make great French fries.
Fun Facts about the rutabaga
In 2011, the rutabaga entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest vegetable when a gardener in the U.K. grew one that weighed 85.5 pounds! That is a big rutabaga!
People in the British Isles used to carve turnips and their larger cousins, the rutabaga into their equivalent of the pumpkin on Halloween. Called ‘tumshie heads” the children would carry them to ward off evil spirits. They have now been replaced for the most part with pumpkins.
The annual Rutabaga Curling Championship takes place annually at the Ithaca, New York, Farmers’ Market on the last day of the market season. They literally hurl or curl the rutabagas across the wooden floor.
Nutrition Information per 1 cup of cubed rutabaga (170 grams)
Calories: 66 Fat: 0 g Net Carbs: 12 g Protein: 2 g
Recipes
Here’s a couple of recipes from the Skinny Girl site that use rutabagas:
I originally found this recipe in the Betty Crocker International Cookbook and have only made a couple of changes to it to convert it to low carb.
2 to 3 medium Rutabagas, peeled and diced (about 6 cups)
2 Tablespoons Butter, divided
1/2 cup Cream
1/4 cup Water
1/2 cup Low Carb Breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
2 Eggs, slightly beaten
2 tablespoons Sugar-Free Pancake Syrup
Cooking spray
Cover rutabaga cubes in water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until fork tender. This is about 20 to 30 minutes. Drain and put in your food processor to puree or use a hand masher. Set aside to cool a little.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F.) Spray a casserole dish with cooking spray.
Mix together two tablespoons of the butter, cream, syrup, salt, nutmeg, breadcrumbs and eggs until well mixed, then add to the mashed rutabagas. Pour into the prepared casserole dish. Dot the rest of the butter over the top.
Bake for 45 minutes or until the top is lightly browned.
Makes 8 servings
Nutirion Info per serving:
Calories: 146.1 Fat: 11.3g Net Carbs: 6.4 g Protein: 3.2 g
The only quince I knew when I was growing up was my Great Uncle Quince and I always thought it an unusual name. For many years, I had no idea it was also a fruit. I didn’t actually try that fruit until about two years ago when I found some at one of the local grocery stores. Although they look like an apple, they are not and you don’t eat them raw. They must be cooked. Once cooked, they taste similar to an apple and they pair very well with apples and pears. Even though they are related, the quince is the only one in its genus, which is Cydonia, although it is part of the Rosaceae family, along with apples and pears. So, related but not… does this make them like an in-law?
Like many fruits and vegetables, the quince has a long history that goes back to ancient Asia, Turkey, Iran and pretty much the rest of the Mediterranean. Although it likes the rocky slopes and woodland marshes of southwest Asia, do not confuse it with the Chinese Quince. The Akkadians called it supurgillu. The modern name came from 14th century France as a plural form of quoyn. The Greeks called it kydonion melon or kydonian apple.
It is possible that quince may have been cultivated before apples and it may be that many references translated to apple may actually have been quince. Customs surround the quince. Ancient Greeks used it a ritual offering at weddings because it had come from the Levant with Aphrodite and was sacred to her. The Greek bride would nibble on quince to perfume her breath prior to entering her bridal chamber. Paris awarded Aphrodite a quince and it was for a golden quince that Atalanta paused in her race. The Roman Apicius cookbook had recipes for stewing quince with honey and even combining them with leeks.
In the past, quince was once a staple in kitchens world-wide but now it is a novel fruit and is not seen too often. I can find it in the fall at one grocery store in Reno. There is a pineapple quince variety that grows in California, but the majority of them are imported from South America. Although interest has diminished in North America, it is still popular in many Latin American countries.
Uses
How is is used in different cultures? In many ways. In Moroccan, Persian, Romanian and Balkan cuisine, it is used as a confection. Quince can be added to meaty stews and in much the same way as apples or pears. Called melimelum by the Romans, the Greek name means “honey apple” because the fruit was preserved in honey for jam. The Portuguese called it marmelo, a name that combines melimelum and marmelado, which was a favorite confection. The British used it in tarts and pies.
With a high pectin content, quince is easy to turn into marmalade, conserves, jams or jelly. They can be poached, stewed, baked and pretty much treated as a cooked apple. You just can’t eat them raw. They should be cored and peeled before use. An easy way to peel them is to par boil them for about three minutes, then the skin slides right off.
Nutrition information for 1 fruit, peeled and cored
Calories: 52 Fat: 0.1 g Net Carbs: 9.7 g Protein: 0.4 g
Quince Apple Jam
Scone with Quince-Apple Jam. Photo by R. Averett
Adapted for low carb by Rene Averett
Easy to make and will only store a few weeks. Quince may be found in the fall and there are places where you can order it online. If you make more than you can eat in two or three weeks, freeze part of the batch in a freezer bag and store for several months.
1 Quince
1 Cooking Apple
1 cup sugar substitute (xylitol, like Ideal sugar)
2 cups of water
1 Tbs lemon juice
Peel and grate, or finely chop, the apple and the quince.
Bring the water to a boil and add the grated or chopped fruit. Let them cook, stirring now and then, until they are soft, about 10 minutes. Add the sugar substitute and lemon juice, lower the cook temperature to medium and continue to cook until the sauce thickens to a jam. Let cool, then ladle into a clean jar and store in refrigerator.
Makes about 1 cup of jam. About 16 servings.
Nutrition info per tablespoon of jam (1 serving) Calories:9.7 Fat: 0.0 Net Carbs: 2.6 g Protein: 0.1 g
Photo at top from Wikimedia Commons, used with permission – “Quitte Cydonia oblonga” by Dietrich Krieger – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons –
My mother didn’t cook too often, usually stepping in to make something unusual or different from the standard fare that my grandmother served. Coming from a ranch family, my grandmother focused a lot on basic ranch food, meat and potatoes, chicken and hearty food. Mother liked to bake the unusual breads, the different cultural dishes. One of the things that she did every now and then was to make from-scratch enchilada sauce. I remember her coming home from a trip across the border with a bag filled with dried, very dark chiles. She pour boiling water over these and let them sit until they were soft, then put them through a sieve using a large pestle to mash them forcing out the chile juice and pulp that formed the base for the sauce. I believe that the chiles she used were Pasilla peppers.
When I began looking into the background of these peppers, I found there is a bit of confusion about what exactly a pasilla pepper is. Several sites that sell them and Wikipedia are adamant that pasilla, also called chile negro, are the dried chilaca pepper. This is a long, narrow pepper in the Capsicum annum family. It is very dark, almost a chocolate brown color when dried and I am pretty sure these are the chiles that my mother used for her sauce. Like many chiles, it ranges from mild to a middle of the range hot.
However, it seems the California camp has muddied the culinary waters a bit as grocers and cooks in California call the dried form of the poblano chile a pasilla also. This creates two lines of thinking in regards to what a true pasilla is. A couple of recipes I read even include the ancho chile as pasilla, when an ancho is actually the dried form of the poblano. It’s clear that cooks aren’t certain what pasilla is. The word pasilla, pronounced pa-see-ya, translates to “little raisin”, which more properly describes the dark brown chilaca when it is dried.
Ancho chile from the poblano pepper. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used with permission – “Capsicum annuum ancho dried” by User:Carstor – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons –
Pasilla peppers from the chilaca chile. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, used with permission. “Capsicum annuum pasilla dried” by User:Carstor – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons –
For cooking purposes, any dried chile will work to make enchilada sauce. The different chiles used will alter the taste and hotness of the sauce. Commercial chili powder uses a variety of chiles, such as ancho, jalapeno, New Mexico Hatch and pasilla. The chili powder is also excellent in making Tex-Mex Chili or any other kinds of stew chilies. One famous chef uses chili powder as the base for his enchilada sauce, so it can be a simple process to make homemade sauce or you can start from the dried peppers. One thing is pretty certain, it will be thicker and more flavorful than any canned enchilada sauce you buy.
Nutrition Information per 1 oz (28 grams) of pasilla
Calories: 97 Fat: 4.0 g Net Carbs: 6.0 g Protein: 3.0 g
Keep in mind that once pressed to get the liquid and pulp out, the nutrition value may decrease somewhat, but for calculating the recipe, it’s best to count the number of peppers rather than the finished quantity of sauce to be on the safe side.
Recipes:
So far, I haven’t tried making homemade enchilada sauce, but with Cinco de Mayo just around the corner, I am thinking I will give it a try. At least, I’ll make one beginning with chili powder or possibly one recipe that uses chipotle peppers, which you can buy canned in their sauce. So, I will refer you to a couple of recipes from other sites.
This recipe for Irma’s Red Enchilada Sauce starts with dried pasillas and dried Ancho or New Mexico chiles. If the pasillas are very crisp, they may already be roasted and you don’t need to roast them a second time.
Here’s a picture-by-picture recipe for Homemade sauce on Instructables using California or Hatch chiles.
And this is theChipotle sauce recipe that is a little simpler.
Coming next month, I will put up a low carb recipe for enchiladas using low carb whole wheat tortillas instead of corn tortillas and homemade enchilada sauce in time for Cinco de Mayo! (That’s the 5th of May celebration for those not familiar with Mexican customs.)
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Top photo of pasillas is from Wiki Commons, used with permission- “Fresh chilaca chilies” by Jonathanischoice – Photographed on my kitchen bench. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons –
I have a mixed relationship with olives. I never cared for the taste of them, so I wasn’t one of the kids who sat nibbling on jumbo olives perched on each of my fingertips. But I liked olives cooked into my food and the flavor that added, so most of the time, I use them in the recipe. Not that I’m adverse to serving jars or platters of the various types of olives at a gathering, but I’m just not likely to be eating them.
Olive oil on the other hand…
No, not that Olive Oyl!… is very useful in cooking just about anything. I have a supply of that in my kitchen at all times. It’s the choice for pesto and salad dressing because it has a clean, fresh taste.
One of the oldest tree species on the planet, the humble olive has been a part of humanity — and animal – diets for thousands of years. Carbon dating has placed olive trees in Spain as far back as 8,000 years ago. Fossilized leaves were found in the volcanic ash on Santorini that go back 37,000 years B.C. Humans have cultivated it for around 5500 years or longer. The trees themselves live a long time with many being hundreds of years old and at least one dating to 2,000 years old. They came from the Mediterranean and Western Asia regions, spreading across the globe from there. It’s likely that the Spanish brought the olive to the Americas where there is no evidence of their existence prior to the 1500’s.
The olive has figured in many cultures. Its leaves symbolized peace and prosperity. It was, after all, the twig that the dove brought back to Noah to show that land, and at least an olive tree, existed after the great flood, so it also had mention in the Bible.
These days, olives are still a big crop in the Mediterranean countries. Spain is the largest producer with about 6 millions tons a year, followed by Italy with 3.6 million tons. Greece, Syria and Turkey are also major producers. Only about 10% of the crop is keep for eating while the rest are crushed to make olive oil. The main producer of olives in the US is California where they are grown on about 27,000 acres in the Central Valley. If you’ve noticed some of my previous blogs, California is a major producer of much of the food I’ve highlighted. This means that the drought conditions the west is currently experiencing will likely impact the farmers and our food chain. Expect higher prices at the market.
Uses for Olives and Olive Oil
From a culinary and low carb standpoint, the olive and its oil has many uses and is an excellent as it is low carb and good for you. It makes a great snack, if you like the taste of olives, and can be purchased with different stuffings in the pit hole, such as garlic or pimento. Or you could put a little cheese in it. Here’s a few ways you can use olives:
You can make a tepenade or spread from olives by chopping them in a food processor with garlic, olive oil, parsley and a little salt to taste. Use as a dip or spread on crackers, or cheese or vegetables.
Add olives to your salad. Chop or slice them or use them whole.
Add them to the appetizer plates for a family dinner. Try two or three varieties for color.
Nutrition information for black jumbo olives – 1 olive
Calories:6.7 Fat: 0.6 g Net Carbs: 0.2 g Protein:0.1 g
Nutrition information for olive oil 1 tablespoon
Calories:119.3 Fat: 1.8 g Net Carbs: 0.0 g Protein: 0.0 g
Recipes
As I mentioned, I like to cook with chopped or sliced olives and I do have a few recipes on Skinny Girl that use olives:
The top photo is from Wiki Commons and is used with permission – “Olives au marche de Toulon p1040238” by David Monniaux – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons –
The photo of Olive Oyl is from OliveOylloves.com, the official Olive Oyl site.
