It had to come up sooner or later, someone was going to ask about “fat free vegan” options for something at home. Something that wasn’t just an undressed salad or crispy rice cake. Thankfully, at least this time, they didn’t throw in “gluten free” or I might have just given it all up as a bad day. Combine that with just having worked my way through a couple of books on the subject and I was ready to tackle something new in the kitchen.

I don’t know that I need to get into the pros and cons of either a vegan lifestyle or an ostensibly fat free one. There’s plenty of source material out there that comes down on either side of the questions, and I think I can safely leave it in your hands to make your own decisions about what works for you. Want to go the other direction and head to a carb-free, meat heavy diet, you’re good to go from my perspective – whatever works for you.

I would say that I find the combo a bit restrictive. It’s not that one can’t come up with some great food to eat, and hopefully today’s recipe will give you a good example. It’s more that there’s so many ingredients out there that a diet like this leaves out – it’s one that I could never commit to without some overriding reason. But, as a change up for meals once or twice a week, it’s certainly a good balancer to whatever else I might be ingesting.

So what does a fat free vegan diet leave out? Beyond the obvious “no meat or dairy products”, including eggs, and, for most vegans, honey as well, the fat free restriction eschews chocolate, nuts, avocados, and all plant-based oils and fats – which, by the way, includes leaving out a large number of soy products unless they’re low fat versions. It’s not truly fat free, many vegetables and grains contain some level of fat naturally, but it’s a “no added fat” and no members of the plant kingdom that contain excessive amounts. Most folk who adhere to the diet are doing it for cardiovascular reasons, and so often, there’s a no added salt restriction.

So what that means is getting creative with vegetable purees, juices, herbs and spices for flavorings, generally some form of legume for those creamy mouthfeel sorts of experiences. And, that’s what we’re going to do today – a healthy, vegetable based wrap that makes for a satisfying lunch or lighter dinner. And, away we go.

First, the wrap – a whole wheat tortilla. You’d be surprised how easy these are to make – a simple 1:1 weight ratio between finely ground whole wheat flour and water – we get six decent sized tortillas out of:

175 grams whole wheat flour
175 ml/grams water
½ teaspoon salt (optional)
½ teaspoon smoked paprika

Mix well with a whisk to break up any lumps and let sit for about ten minutes to hydrate the flour. Heat a heavy skillet over medium heat. Divide the dough in six equal portions (or, 4 or 8, depending on how big you want them) and roll out to about a 20 cm circle. Lay them one at a time in the hot skillet – no oil needed. Cook until it’s lightly browned on the underside and then flip it over and cook the second side to the same. It should still be quite flexible. Repeat with each remaining tortilla.

For the filling:

¼ of a small red cabbage
¼ of a small white cabbage
2 green onions
1 medium carrot
4 asparagus
4-5 stems of cilantro
1 can white beans

1 can chickpeas
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
½ teaspoon cumin
1 small chili
2 cloves garlic
1 small carrot
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted (optional, they add some fat)
water as needed

Slice the cabbage into thin shreds. Chop the green onion, asparagus and parsley. Grate the carrot. Open the can of beans. Toss them all together in a bowl.

Open the can of chickpeas – essentially we’re making a no fat added hummus. Pour the can into the blender and add the other ingredients. Blend at high speed, only add water as needed to get a smooth puree. Mix the puree with the vegetables and pile into the tortilla wraps. Roll up (if you want to make it pretty, stick a toothpick in it to hold it all together). Eat. Feel free, by the way, to mix up the vegetables with others, to use a different herb or a mix of them, and adjust the spiciness of the dressing with more or less of the chili and garlic.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

When the same question pops up in your life several times in one week, with no particular impetus, the universe is trying to tell you something. Or, it’s just a coincidence. Pretty much the same thing. But it does get you thinking, or me thinking. So when three different people this week asked me “How do you prepare an artichoke?” it became a part of my daily thoughts. Fit in somewhere around waiting six days for the local cable conglomerate to get around to fixing service here in the ‘hood.

It’s one of those things I learned to do in cooking school a long time… more than a generation, ago. Maybe two. And it became something that I simply do, without thinking about it. But I get it, I mean, who thinks about preparing an artichoke? They’re pretty, but they’re daunting. It’s probably why my mother never did anything with them but snip off the tips of the “leaves” and then steam the heck out of them so that we could pluck them and scrape off the juicy “meat” at the bottom. I never had an artichoke any other way until I was out in the world, working in the restaurant industry.

So first off, just what is an artichoke? We’ve all seen them. Right now they’re in season here in BA and piled high in every verdulería. A month ago my neighborhood stand was selling them for 7 pesos apiece. This morning they were offering them up 4 for 10. Look at them closely – they look like a sort of scaly greenish pinecone or maybe something out of Avatar. What they are is a flower. A thistle flower. Actually, an immature flower surrounded by protective leaves. Now, as to what artichokes think they need protection from, I have no idea. But they’re protected.

There are several kinds of artichokes out there, either green or purple or a mix. All of them originated in Sicily, and from there, spread to wherever Sicilians and then later, Italians spread. The large green ones we see here are either the Camus de Bretagne or the Blanca de Tudela variety – I doubt I could tell the difference side by side, the biggest difference is simply size – unless you want to get into DNA testing. Argentina and Chile combined produce about 36% of the world’s artichokes. Who knew?

So, let’s get to it. I’ve provided a sort of step-by-step photo guide to see what the vegetable should look like after each process. Hopefully that’ll help.

1) set your artichoke on a cutting board. 2) using a large, sharp knife, cut across it about 2 cm from the base of the flower. 3) Turn it around and using a vegetable peeler, peel the stem down to the light green inner part (which is edible too). 4) Back to that big knife, place the cut side of the artichoke down on the board and just cut around on an angle, taking off the leaves and exposing the outer edge of the heart. 5) With a small knife, basically scrape out the seam between the stem and the heart that you can’t quite get to with either peeler or the big knife. 6) Get a spoon and stick in alongside the hairy “choke” in the center and then work it around in a circle to scoop out the choke. 7) Use the spoon to scrape out any remaining hairs, so to speak. 8) For this recipe, cut it in half lengthwise – though this will depend on what you’re going to make with them – and, stick them in a bowl of water with some lemon juice or vinegar to prevent them from turning brown in the air.

Artichokes “in Escabeche”

8 artichokes (1 little over a kilo)
1 lemon, cut in half and squeezed into a large bowl of water
240 ml extra virgin olive oil
1 bay leaf
3 large cloves garlic, peeled
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon good quality sherry or fruit vinegar and more for drizzling
Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling

Prepare the eight artichokes as above and put in the bowl with the lemon water.

In a skillet, heat the olive oil over medium to medium-high heat until nearly smoking, about 10 minutes of preheating, then cook the artichoke hearts with the bay leaf until golden brown on the outside and until a skewer or knife tip glides to the center of the artichoke heart without too much resistance, about 5 to 6 minutes. Remove from the oil with tongs or a slotted spoon and transfer to a shallow serving platter or bowl.

Meanwhile, pound the garlic with the salt in a mortar. Stir 3 tablespoons of the oil you cooked the artichokes in into the garlic, ½ tablespoon at the time. Now, stir in the vinegar ½ teaspoon at a time until the garlic is a creamy looking sauce. Spoon small amounts of this mixture over the artichokes. Drizzle the artichokes with olive oil and a splash of vinegar and set aside to cool and absorb flavors before serving. Season with salt and pepper if necessary.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

You all know what corn is, right? Raise your hands if you do. Good, most of you anyway. Corn, or, more properly in most parts of the world, some variation on maize (the word derives from the native Taíno language where it is simply maiz, directly adopted into Spanish), is the most widely grown crop in the Americas, despite attempts to change that over to soy.

What you may not know is that it’s a hybrid plant. You go back a couple of thousand years and you find two entirely different plants that at some point either naturally or through human manipulation, were crossbred to produce some variety or another of maize. And there are some varieties – at least a couple of hundred different ones – there are more than a hundred just of what we think of as yellow (or white) sweet-corn. That doesn’t begin to get into the variations on colors that are available, the types with very large kernels common in the Andes, or the sorts used for making popcorn.

And, there are more recipes for what you can do with these golden ears of goodness than I’d care to count. On or off the cob, pureed, mashed, whole, boiled, steamed, fried, grilled, the list goes on and on. So I won’t.

Back when I was growing up in the 60s in the Midwest of the U.S. there was a sudden interest in “Mexican food”. We’re not talking about anything that anyone in Mexico would have recognized as Mexican cooking, but there was just this sudden appearance of dishes in all the ladies’ cooking and home magazines that included the just as suddenly available chili powders and other ingredients purported to make things… Mexican. Somewhere around that time the earliest versions of what came to be called Cal-Mex cooking, a sort of fusion of southern California ingredients and sensibilities with ideas and flavors supposed to be from Mexico. Some folks called it, early on, Mexicali instead, but that never really caught on, with the exception of one dish that took North American home economics kitchens by storm… Mexicali Corn.

As to just what the dish is, or was, seemed to vary with the magazine it was presented in. And with time, the ingredients have changed from those early years to much more elaborate, and, fresher ones. I’m pretty sure that when my mother prepared it (or, more likely, bought in lovely plastic bags of pre-mixed and frozen from either Birdseye or Green Giant), it contained corn, green and red bell pepper, maybe some onion, and a dash of the ever so exotic at the time, “chili powder”.

The thing is, the stuff is good. It’s really good. Especially if prepared right, with lovely fresh ingredients and spices. And that’s just what we’re going to do here. We tend to serve it alongside everything from grilled or sauteed chicken breasts to fish to whole, rice-stuffed calamari. Have fun with it!

Mexicali Corn

4 ears of fresh corn, still in the husk
1 red onion
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
3-4 cloves of garlic
2 jalapeños
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 small bunch of cilantro
2 limes
2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper

Once again we’re going to either fire up the grill or put a cast iron skillet on the stove top over high heat. Keeping the corn in the husk allows us to grill them until the kernels soften and lightly color, while the husk burns a bit but protects the corn itself. If your corn is already peeled you can cook it the same way, just turn it more often to prevent it from burning. Once you’ve grilled them well on all sides, remove them from the heat, let them cool, strip off the husk, and cut the kernels off the ears. The easiest way to do that is cut the ears in half across, stand the now flat cut surface on your cutting board, and use a good sharp knife to cut down along the cob in four or five cuts, top to bottom.

Chop the onions, peppers, garlic and cilantro. In a frying pan heat up the olive oil. Saute the onions, garlic, peppers and spices with a little salt and pepper until soft. Add the corn that you’ve cut off the cobs. Cook for 2-3 minutes just to blend the flavors. Off the heat, finish by tossing with the chopped cilantro and the grated zest of the two limes. Adjust the seasoning to your tastes with salt and pepper.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.

With spring arriving on our doorstep the verdulerías are in bloom with a riot of color. Beautiful vegetables are piled high and calling out to be used for something, anything. And, it’s time, if you have one, to start thinking about breaking out the parrilla – scrape off all that crusty stuff left from the last barbecue – you know you said you’d get to it another day and then forgot about it. Go look, really.

Of course, not everyone has a grill at home, and for those who don’t, there’s nothing wrong with a stovetop grill, ridged or not, or even a bit hulking frying pan, preferably something heavy like cast iron. Most of the year we can’t quite get ourselves to spend the time firing up the charcoal, it’s a whole lot easier to stick the plancha on top of a couple of burners and crank the flame up underneath.

So now that we’ve got all that out of the way, some heat in the offing, and vegetables that you enjoy piled up on the counter, it’s time to get to work. We’re going to make brochettes, kebabs, skewers, spiedos, pinchos, whatever name it is you like to use. You’re going to need skewers, whether metal (much preferred for this), or wood. If you use the latter, soak them in water for an hour or two before threading the vegetables on them, it will cut down on them burning.

So here’s dinner at our house when we’re in the mood to stick a veg or two on a spike….

Vegetable Brochette

1 large onion
1 green bell pepper
2-3 red frying peppers (ají vinagres)
4-6 mushrooms
1 medium eggplant
1 medium zucchini
2 tomatoes
salt and pepper
olive oil
salsa verde

Basically, cut all the vegetables into wedges or pieces that are 2-3 cm across. Wedges are great where possible, squares, rounds, whatever works for you. And then, poke the skewers through them, mixing up the vegetables so that they look pretty. Sprinkle them with salt and freshly ground pepper, and then drizzle them lightly with olive oil on all sides.

Onto the grill with the skewers – it should be really hot to start with, we’re looking to just get a bit of a sear, or caramelization, on the surface of the vegetables. Turn them after you get a little bit of color, maybe 1-2 minutes, and just do that until all sides have a touch of browning.

At this point, turn the heat to low, or move the skewers to a low heat part of the grill. Take your salsa verde and brush the upper surface of the brochettes, and then turn that to face down. Keep doing that every couple of minutes until the vegetables are cooked through – in total, we’re looking at about 5-6 minutes for the first part of browning, and then maybe 12-15 minutes of cooking over lower heat, regularly brushing on our sauce.

When they’re cooked through and nicely browned, serve them up on a platter alongside some simple rice – whatever your preference is for type. When we can get it, we love to use wild rice or a mix of wild and white.

Salsa Verde (Green Sauce)

This is one of our staples in the kitchen, it’s incredibly simple to make, and pairs well with vegetables, meat, pasta, gnocchi – really, wherever you want an intense herb flavor. Traditionally it’s not a vegetarian sauce, but there’s an easy fix for that.

1 large bunch of mixed fresh herbs (parsley, chives, cilantro, dill – whatever you like)
1 handful of arugula leaves
3-4 anchovies (if you want to keep this vegetarian, use a tablespoonful of miso paste instead)
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoonful of capers
6 green olives, pitted
100 ml good olive oil
salt and pepper

Put everything into a blender or food processor, set to stun, and go for it. When it’s nicely pureed (add more oil if needed to get a smooth puree), adjust the seasoning to your tastes and start using.

A series of recipes and articles that I started writing for the Buenos Aires Herald Sunday supplement, Food & Wine section, at the beginning of 2012. My original proposal to them was to take local favorite dishes and classics and lighten them up for modern day sensibilities. We’re not talking spa or diet recipes, but at the very least, making them healthier in content, particularly salt, fat and portion size. As time went by, that morphed into a recipe column that, while emphasizing food that is relatively “good for you”, wasn’t necessarily focused on local cuisine. At the beginning of 2013 I decided to stop writing for them over some administrative issues, but it was fun while it lasted.