Buongiorno from a reflective flight home from Italy, where I'm excited to share newfound knowledge and ideas to help in your future Italian cooking or eating endeavors! I made sure to take extra notes on everything I learned and tasted so that this could be one mega-post packed with flavor. (You're welcome!) In the left column you can view what I have learned from traveling to Italy, the Bel Paese (beautiful country) with an endless supply of pizza, pasta, and gelato. On the right are suggestions should you ever travel to Italy, or of how to eat and/or cook authentically Italian. I hope you enjoy learning about food from a foreign country, and are excited to bring a little slice (see what I did there?) of Italy home with you without having to actually travel there : )
1 Comment
Whether we realize it or not, there really is a separate category for summer food. In the summer we barbecue, cook with summer produce, and lay off the microwave since the weather is nice enough to grill everything. However, the summer food that Americans are into changes year to year, and after doing some research I have determined the top 6 trends that will be seen throughout the summer of 2018. Therefore, by following this advice your next outdoor gathering will have food that is on trend, and popular with your guests. So, get to your grill and start cooking, we've got some trends to uncover! 6. Savory Crepes Originally from France, crepes have become increasingly more popular, not only as a dessert, but as a main dish. Although maybe not as explored, savory crepes can be a perfect summer guilty pleasure. Roll up vegetables, cheeses, spices, and maybe even meats in these flat pancakes. A good substitute for tortillas, crepes are also low in saturated fat, sugar, and cholesterol. Also, we all want to spend as much time outside biking, swimming, or running as possible in summer, and the high amount of carbs in crepes is sure to provide an energy boost without a sugar crash afterwards! Be sure to check out some of the favorites that I have discovered: shrimp and crab, smoked salmon and cream cheese, or eggs with mushrooms and spinach. To view more ideas, visit here. 5. Unlikely Gazpachos What is a gazpacho? Well, it is a chilled Spanish soup that is popular during the summertime. While it is traditionally made of tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, olive oil, water, and spices, people are getting creative with altering the ingredients. For instance, as can be seen from the picture on the right watermelon cucumber gazpacho (recipe here) is a savory-sweet spin off on the traditional version. Other unique gazpachos include cantaloupe, strawberry-tomato, minty pea, and more. Personally, I'm compelled to try the minty pea one especially. So, if you want to be more risky and fun with your cooking, I strongly suggest whipping up an unlikely gazpacho! 4. Quinoa Salad Don't be afraid to try quinoa, a healthier rice substitute! While it may taste a little bland (but rice does, too) adding ingredients to it to make a quinoa salad is a healthy dish that is bursting with flavor. Quinoa is fiber-rich, high in protein, can improve blood sugar, and is gluten free which makes it accessible to guests with gluten intolerance, a huge plus! Quinoa salad can include any ingredients, but as an example my mom makes a quinoa salad with quinoa (obviously), pine nuts, dried roasted tomato, feta cheese, and basil. This recipe is fresh, the ingredients are easy to find, and is very popular within my family. In conclusion, quinoa salad has a lot of flexibility and can be consumed by almost any guest, making it a perfect side to a summer meal! 3. Fruit and Vegetable Breads For the past few years creativity with these is becoming more and more popular. Whether it's zucchini or blueberry chocolate chip, almond cranberry, or even triple-spiced pear bread, it seems that more people are finding ways to spruce up and sweeten loaves of bread. This is the perfect dessert for guests who want to eat a little healthier and pair carbs with vitamins and/or potassium. Plus, like the quinoa salad, there's a lot of flexibility, and many ways to change the ingredients to make this dish your own! 2. Homemade Popsicles Whether they're popsicles made of natural fruit juice, frozen yogurt, or greek yogurt, there are many different kinds of healthy popsicles that are easy to make right at home! These cool treats are perfect for the hot days of summer, and are refreshingly delicious. Also, to make them even sweeter and create texture variety you can put slices of fruit inside. In fact, homemade popsicles further adds to the theme of the fact that many of the summer dishes that are trending allow for unlimited creativity in order to make a gathering truly yours. 1. Baked Vegetables It seems to be that topping vegetables with cheese, spices, and sometimes even more vegetables will be popular this season! My favorite base vegetables to do this with are portabella mushrooms and tomatoes, and the best cheeses are parmesan, gouda, and ricotta. This is a great side dish for any cookout because it includes vegetables and protein, plus the savory cheese may mask the less likeable (in the minds of younger guests) flavor of the veggies. Also, these go great as a burger substitute or in between sandwiches! There are numerous types of cake, and at least one of them can be found at almost any social gathering. Anyone who wants to be a baker at any level practically needs to know a lot about cake, but let's face it, who has the time to become experienced by experimenting for hours on end? Right. So, to help with that, in this lengthy post I have included everything that I have discovered on anything relating to cake. Building from the cake itself to the decorative finishing touches, these suggestions are the most basic and then some of the more advanced absolutely need-to-knows about cake. Enjoy exploring!
In order to be a good chef, you need to be able to cook well with more common ingredients. In order to be a great chef, you need to be able to cook well with unexpectedly tasty flavor combinations. Rather than combining like flavors, it is much more interesting to cook something up that is sweet and salty, sweet and bitter, nutty and salty, et cetera. Throughout past experiences I have gathered what I believe to be some surprisingly delicious combinations, foods that are so different you would not expect them to work well together, but actually do, and have listed them below. I highly suggest keeping the list in mind next time you cook for a group of people. They would be happy if presented with expectedly good food, but would be impressed if you made good food that they did not expect to taste good. While you may prefer to explore your own uniquely creative flavor combinations outside of this list, either way, doing so will take your cooking to the next level. So, be a little more risky with your cooking, and you will be on your way to becoming a more adventurous chef. (Note: numbers 1 and 2 inspired by what I sampled at the IFT dinner, see more here)
Although not used often enough, salad toppers are a great way to mix up a salad that may only consist of fruits, veggies, and protein. Because they are usually an afterthought in salads, to take a salad to the next level and really make it stand out flavorful toppers that add texture are an absolute necessity. Below are some recommendations and reviews of my favorite salad toppers to incorporate. Social media is seeing a major trend in desserts right now, and the special feature has nothing to do with the taste itself. Surprisingly, now we can perceive from the media that people are deciding to focus more on the visual element. Some people are actually using food as a media to create artwork, which has been most likely making your Instagram feed very satisfying to scroll through:) Below are pictures of some of the top desserts I discovered that truly look too pretty to eat. Everyone knows what blenders, pans, and cookie sheets are and what they are used for, but some companies have gotten pretty creative with products they provide to manipulate ingredients in weird ways. Between apple corers, selfie spoons, and carrot sharpeners, some pretty wacky things have been created, some being genius and others being close to useless. Below are, in my opinion, the top 8 most unique food inventions that almost no one has heard of before. 8. Keyboard Waffle Iron Apparently, with this you can have your waffle and type with it to! Although it may seem ridiculous and impractical, I think this is actually a good idea. In my opinion, the best part of waffles is being able to pour the exact right amount of maple syrup in every hole, and the differently sized holes in this waffle can allow someone to experience with their favorite ingredients to waffle ratio. 7. Oven Pull I wish I had known about this so much sooner! Everyone knows pulling hot trays or bowls out of the oven is more of a pain than it should be, those mitts that are supposed to protect your hands can be slippery, and personally I have dropped many things wearing those. This is truly a dish-saver and a time saver, I know for sure I'm buying one of these next time I go to the store! 6. The "Roll N Pour" Have you ever wished you could have avoided spilling that juice, from your hands slipping when tipping some into your cup? Well, the "Roll N Pour" helps avoid that! The fact that it gets rid of the sharp edge you have to balance when tipping a container makes it more spill-proof. Clumsy people like me, we finally have something that will limit our seemingly limitless spilling abilities! 5. The Dipr When you were younger, how often did you drop your cookie in your milk as you were dunking it? Probably almost never, but kids are clumsy, and this product is for those with slippery fingers. The thing is though, dunking cookies in milk isn't really that hard, but better be safe than sorry I guess. 4. Spaghetti-Twirling Fork Honestly? This looks a lot more time-consuming and confusing to figure out than twirling the pasta yourself. I mean, twirling pasta isn't difficult, you just stick your fork into the pasta and turn it! Although, my pasta- eating method of choice is shoving fistfuls into my mouth (well, it probably was when I was three, but it isn't considered very polite when you're older, unfortunately, as I'm sure we'd all love to do this :( 3. Carrot Sharpener Unless you plan on using your carrots as weapons, this gadget probably has zero practical use. Do you ever feel the need to sharpen your carrots? Yeah... neither do I, but it's probably entertaining, and I'm always up for playing with my food as often as eating it. 2. Selfie Spoon Imagine this- you're eating your cereal and you suddenly want to snap a selfie of you eating it. Can you see yourself doing this? Probably not, but this invention certainly must be fun to play with! It brings multitasking to a level we may never have thought it could ever reach, but hey, it looks interesting. 1. Finger Spoons If you thought selfie spoons were bad enough, then these finger spoons seem really useless. I mean, when does anyone say that they're too tired to hold a spoon and wish they could just hold it with their finger? It seems really difficult to have to use your finger to shovel food into your mouth, I feel like the spoon would slide off every time you have to take a bite. But hey, enough criticism, on the bright side they seem really cute and fun to eat with. Final analysis... Practical? Not in a million years. Hilariously entertaining? You bet! Recently, I attended a dinner held by the Chicago Section Institute of Food Technologists (CSIFT) that featured the company Bell Flavors and Fragrances, which talked about recent food trends we can perceive from social media. The event began with a cocktail hour, then was followed by a dinner where college students and members of the food technology community could mingle and make connections. Immediately afterwards, the interactive presentation on flavor trends took place, making the event as a whole 3 hours of endless interesting information and delicious food. According to the presentation by Bell and the booklet those in the audience were gifted to follow along with, there currently are six major food trends that can be gathered from social media; Mediterranean, healthy-ish, longitude and latitude, unexpected, outdoor social, and Chinese. Along with the presentation there were interactive portions, where the guests could sample foods having to do with each topic. I sampled the Za'atar chip, a chip with thyme and other spices after hearing about the Mediterranean trend and the surprisingly good pineapple cilantro lemonade with turmeric came after learning of the healthy-ish one. Also I tried the cassia and Chinese cinnamon gummies to go along with latitude and longitude, miso caramel corn with unexpected, and there was a bacon cheddar spread for outdoor social. No matter what I tasted, one thing was certain- Bell had done their research, and had created unique, high-quality samplers to supplement it. If the presentation wasn't interesting enough, this interactive element really put this section of the event over the top. In conclusion, attending this event was a very unique experience, and one that I highly recommend. If dinners like these aren't your thing, CSIFT holds numerous golf outings, and a few major food conventions throughout the year. Visit their website at www.chicagoift.org/, and if you want to learn more about Bell Flavors and Fragrances visit www.bellff.com/.
Something I recently discovered is how fun making on-the-spot pasta recipes can be. There are so many different variables, such as the type of noodle, toppings, sauces, and spices. There are virtually millions of combinations, and there are very few "wrong answers." If you look to different chefs or recipe books, each has their own take on pasta and what they think will work for them and others. However, many of the recipes seem to "play it safe," and don't explore the unusual flavor combinations that may turn out to be unexpectedly delicious in the end. The other night I was experimenting with what would make a fun, more daring, yet still universally likable pasta recipe. I ended up with a mixture of shredded carrot, zucchini and squash "coins" (cut into small circles, about .5 inch diameter), mushrooms, and tomato sauce with sesame seeds, a bit of basil, and a pinch of salt and pepper on top, all over quinoa shell noodles. Hold on- why did I choose noodles made of quinoa? Well, although it may at some times not seem like it, part of the purpose of this blog was to provide healthy suggestions to incorporate into your everyday life. Actually, quinoa pasta (I used the Banza brand specifically which I highly recommend) is pretty good and not as dry as you might think (although of course having other ingredients to enhance it helps mask the little dryness there), and is high in fiber and very nutritious. Also, for this dish specifically I wanted a bit chewier noodle to contrast the crunchiness of most of the vegetables to achieve some texture variety. How to replicate this dish: fairly simple! 1. Boil the amount of water specified on the box. 2. While the water heats, put the shredded carrots and cut zucchini and squash "coins" in a pan and cook on low-medium heat. Add the mushrooms a few minutes later. 3. Add the pasta into the boiled water. 4. Heat up the tomato sauce. 5. Put it all on a plate, then sprinkle on some salt, pepper, basil, and sesame seeds, or whatever spices or add-ons you'd like to make it your own. (I'm fairly certain this version is vegan, so those who are not vegan and want to "up" the protein a little more should add some parmesan, shrimp, and/or chicken, which are the best with this dish.) |
Jessica A.A high schooler with a love of food. See the My Story page to find out more. Archives
June 2021
Categories |
"Time to eat smart."
Food Blog
Email me at jessica@timetothinkfoodsmart.com to let me know what you think!