Creamy Parmesan Orzo

In our younger days, Rachel and I spent many a cocktail-addled evening making lists of famous people:

• Dudes We’d Make Out With (#1: George Clooney)
• Ladies I’d Switch Teams For (#1: Catherine Zeta-Jones)
• Old People Who Remain Vaguely Attractive (#1: Harrison Ford), and of course
• Famous Women We’d Like to Be Friends With.

Up until Saturday, Kate Winslet ruled that final compendium, with Ann Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Mary J. Blige, and Tina Fey filling out the top five.

Then, Saturday night, Tina Fey leapt to the #1 slot. And here’s why:



I watched it 267 times yesterday, and am already pushing 1500 views today. At some point, I’m going to have to feign work, but until then, I’ll content myself with repeating “I can see Russia from my house” over and over again until my head explodes.

Beyond being dang funny, there are two reasons this could be the best sketch SNL's put up since Peyton Manning's United Way commercial:

1. Political affiliation means little here. Between “cankles” and “I don’t know what that is,” Palin and Clinton are skewered with equal deftness and cleverness.

2. That sketch wouldn’t have made SNL ten years ago. For one, there were no super-prominent female politicians to satire. And? For the first time ever on the show (with apologies to Gilda Radner and Cheri Oteri), the ladies have taken center stage. Amy Poehler is SNL’s biggest name since Will Ferrell (or Tina), and Kristen Wiig looks like her heir apparent. It’s enough to make a girl tear up.

With that, let’s move on to the food. (And not the impending collapse of our entire financial system. Good times.)

Cooking Light’s Creamy Parmesan Orzo is a solid side dish - a classier, more adult version of macaroni and cheese. To make it, you boil a cup of pasta until the water’s been almost completely absorbed, kind of like risotto. Then, parmesan, salt, and pepper are added to create a delicate, cheesy sauce. Last night, I served it with spinach and Eggplant With Miso Sauce, though it could be paired easily with any lean meat.

Be warned, though: the flavor here will not smack you upside the head with its outrageousness. CL asks for fresh basil and pine nuts, which I take out for economy. If you want more of a punch, feel free to add them back in, along with a little hot sauce for kicks.

Oh, and one more thing: my wine cost a little over $10. If I had bought it at Trader Joe’s, it would have gone for half that, taking almost a full dollar off the price of the dish. (Uh, we did finish the wine, though. So nothing went to waste. Woo-hoo!)

Creamy Parmesan Orzo
Makes 4 servings at 2/3rd cup each
Adapted from Cooking Light.

1 tablespoon butter
1 cup orzo (about 6oz)
¾ cup fat-free broth
½ cup white wine
¼ cup grated parmesan
1-1/4 cups water
1/3 t salt
¼ t black pepper

Optional:
2 T fresh basil
4 t toasted pine nuts

1) In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Cook orzo in it for 3 minutes.

2) Add white wine, water, and broth, and bring to a boil. Drop heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes (until most of the liquid is gone).

3) Kill heat and remove pan from burner. Add parmesan, basil, salt, and pepper. Stir thoroughly. Top with pine nuts if you're in the mood. Serve at once.

Approximate Calories, Fat, and Price Per Serving
232 calories, 5.6 g fat, $0.80

Calculations
1 tablespoon butter: 102 calories, 11.5 g fat, $0.06
1 cup orzo: 609 calories, 3 g fat, $0.52
¾ cup fat-free broth: 11 calories, 0.8 g fat, $0.22
½ cup white wine: 97 calories, 0 g fat, $1.70
¼ cup grated parmesan: 108 calories, 7.2 g fat, $0.67
1-1/4 cups water: 0 calories, 0 fat, $0.00
1/3 t salt: negligible calories and fat, $0.01
¼ t black pepper: negligible calories and fat, $0.01
TOTAL: 927 calories, 22.5 g fat, $3.19
PER SERVING (TOTAL/4): 232 calories, 5.6 g fat, $0.80

Light Banana Bread: I Think I Got It

Cooking Light Magazine has been a consistent, usually reliable resource for the recipes on this site. With a few flagrant exceptions, their dishes have ranged from edible to outstanding – especially the desserts, the flavors of which are oases of indulgence in the arid, dusty landscape of my (many) diet(s).

Here’s the thing, though: CL’s portion sizes? Can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. In order to make a dish seem lighter, they’ll often increase the number of cake wedges, lemon bars, and cobbler scoops one can pull from a standard-issue baking pan. In other words, instead of eight medium-sized, 333-calorie slices of pumpkin pie, you get 12 tiny, 222-calorie slices. It’s kind of cheating.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand part of healthy eating is portion control. We (especially us Americans) have to learn to identify human-appropriate slabs of food, as opposed to those large enough to feed a sperm whale. But still - it’s unreasonable to ask for 16 individual brownies out of an 8x8 dish. Dieters won’t be pleased, and non-dieters will burn you for sacrilege.

Take Mom’s Banana Bread f’r instance. According to 132 reviewers, there’s no arguing with the taste. They claim it’s moist, banana-y, and delicious, and even better with spices and walnuts. Here’s the catch, though: CL tells us to cut a 9-inch loaf into 20 pieces. Sure, the calories will be reduced, but each slice will be less than 1/2-inch thick - barely enough to keep it from falling apart.

Still, the reviews for the MBB are so glowing, I wanted to see if I could lighten it further without sacrificing the flavor. And you know what? I think I got it. With these revisions, each loaf can be cut into 12 pieces at 164 calories and 2.7 grams of fat each (or, for you WW folks out there, 3 points). And? AND? It will still taste like normal, unaltered banana bread. Whee!

Ultimately, I dig Cooking Light and won’t stop frequenting the website, but’d love to see them address the portion issue. It’d attract more viewers, I think, or at least be less frustrating for their current ones. Readers? Opinions?

P.S. Here’re the changes, just in case you wanna compare. To bring down the calorie count, I:

• reduced the sugar from 1 cup to 2/3rds of a cup, saving about 260 calories.
• reduced the butter from ¼ cup to 2-1/2 tablespoons, saving about 150 calories and 17 grams of fat
• reduced the sour cream by a tablespoon, and switched it from low-fat to non-fat, saving 45 calories and 6 grams of fat
• reduced the skim milk by a tablespoon, saving … okay, only about 8 calories.
• added cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of vanilla extract.

Banana Bread
Makes 12 servings
Adapted from Cooking Light.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
2/3 cup sugar
2-1/2 T butter, softened
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 4 bananas)
3 T skim milk
3 T fat-free sour cream or vanilla yogurt
2 large egg whites
½ t vanilla extract
Cooking spray

1) Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat loaf pan with cooking spray.

2) In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Set aside.

3) In a different large mixing bowl OR stand mixer bowl, combine sugar and butter. "Beat at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended." Stop beater. Add banana, milk, sour cream, and egg whites. Resume beating until well combined.

4) Pour flour mixture into banana mixture and beat until everything is well-blended.

5) Pour batter into loaf pan. Bake 60 or 70 minutes, or until loaf passes the toothpick test. (Insert a toothpick in the middle of the bread. If it comes out clean, you're golden.) Remove from oven. Let sit for 10 minutes on a wire rack. Pry bread from pan and let it cool totally on that same wire rack. For best flavor, wrap in tin foil and let sit overnight.

Approximate Calories, Fat, and Price Per Serving
164 calories, 2.7 g fat, $0.17

Calculations
2/3 cup sugar: 515 calories, 0 g fat, $0.21
2-1/2 T butter, softened: 255 calories, 28.8 g fat, $0.15
1 2/3 cups mashed ripe banana (about 4 bananas): 200 calories, 0.7 g fat, $0.96
3 T skim milk: 18 calories, 0.2 g fat, $0.05
3 T fat-free sour cream or vanilla yogurt: 31 calories, 0 g fat, $0.14
2 large egg whites: 34 calories, 0.1 g fat, $0.22
½ t vanilla extract: 1 calorie, 0 g fat, $0.06
2 cups all-purpose flour: 910 calories, 2.5 g fat, $0.18
1 teaspoon baking soda: negligible calories and fat, $0.01
1/2 teaspoon salt: negligible calories and fat, $0.01
½ teaspoon cinnamon: 3 calories, 0 g fat, $0.02
¼ teaspoon nutmeg: 3 calories, 0.2 g fat, $0.01
TOTAL: 1970 calories, 32.5 g fat, $2.02
PER SERVING (TOTAL/12): 164 calories, 2.7 g fat, $0.17

Veggie Might: Pan-American Grits with Quinoa - God Bless the Americas

Penned by the effervescent Leigh, Veggie Might is a weekly Thursday column about the wide world of Vegetarianism.

(Part two of a two-part series about the greatest American food: corn.)

When I was 11, our backyard butted up against a cornfield. On the other side of the cornfield was a golf course and, if you took a right about halfway across, you'd be on your way to the pig farm. Swank, right?

My small central Ohio hometown was surrounded on all sides by corn, soybeans, and more corn. We ate a lot of corn. There were farm stands everywhere and no shortage of the sweet stuff from about July through September.

Corn makes me wax romantic like the shrimp guy in that ridiculous, overly manipulative movie from the early 90s, the title of which I will not speak (but which features, as a taxi driver, a dude I crushed on at my first summer stock job): corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn pudding, corn bread, corn muffins, corn casserole, johnny cakes, hominy, popcorn...

But grits never made my list. Grits were gross. A year after we moved into that house by the cornfield, we moved again: this time to North Carolina, where my dad is from. I'd been there before to visit my grandparents, and I liked it enough, but it wasn't home.

We didn't just move when I was 12 and in 7th grade; we moved over Thanksgiving weekend in the middle of the school year. Note to parents everywhere: that's just mean. I hated everything about this new and very stupid place.

I hated the way They talked (What kina coke you want? translation: What kind of pop (soda) do you want?), the way They dressed (the kids dressed like teenagers, not like kids), and what They ate (grits are NOT like cream of wheat or hominy no matter what my mom says).

Finally, one day, after eight or so years, it clicked. Grits are corn, and I love corn. Corn is Ohio, and I love Ohio. And this North Carolina place is not so bad either. My dad is pretty great, and he's from here. In a late-night diner with a bunch of other NC transplants, I finally gave grits another chance. And the grits had a ton of cheese on them. And I may or may not have been a little worse for beer.

Before I knew my recent Jersey corn purchase was a semi-bust, I saved two ears to make some kind of corn dish. I was thinking corn pudding, but I couldn't find a recipe that I liked. Scouring my cookbooks, I found a recipe in Moosewood New Classics that combines fresh corn and grits, and another great (South) American grain: quinoa. And cheese. Sold.

Quinoa is "the gold of the Incas," and was as vital to their culture as corn was to North America's. Quinoa is truly a wonder grain: it is gluten free, easily digestible, and contains all nine amino acids making it a complete protein; all that and it has a delicious, nutty flavor that goes great with any dish in which you would use rice or cous cous.

Gaining popularity over the last couple of years, quinoa is a grain (okay, technically a seed) I never let run out in my pantry. I fix quinoa like I fix, well, grits. It's a breakfast staple, a rice substitute, and everyday go-to grain. It cooks up faster than rice, and, because it's more nutritionally complex, it's heartier.

Once again I have a recipe variation due to a misreading of the recipe. Here’s the sitch: My countertop is 1 ft wide x 2 ft deep and handily exists between the sink and stove. There is nowhere for a cookbook to live except on the table behind me. I read; I turn around; and what I remember is put into action.

Basically, I just cooked things out of order, caramelizing the corn in the process, and oh my stars, it turned out so good. The only thing I would change would be to make the cilantro a main herb instead of a garnish. It's such a compatible flavor, I wanted more. But still, so, so, good.

This pot of gold is a dish I will make again and again. It would be good for breakfast with eggs or supper as a main with sautéed greens on the side. Or just straight out of the pot with the wooden spoon. Viva el corn! Viva la quinoa! Viva la Americas!

Pan-American Grits with Quinoa
Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics by The Moosewood Collective
Serves about 8

4 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup grits (regular or quick)
1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup chopped onions canola cooking spray (Note: Original recipe calls for 2 tbsp olive oil for sautéing.)
1 cup diced red (or green) bell pepper
1 tsp ground cumin (Note: I used 2 tsp cumin.)
1 tsp ground coriander (Note: I used 2 tsp coriander.)
1 cup fresh (or frozen or canned) corn kernels
1/2 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese (Note: Original recipe calls for 1 cup Cheddar cheese.)

chopped fresh cilantro (and/or scallions)
hot pepper sauce

1) Add water and salt to a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil.

2) Whisking constantly, slowly add grits to water.

3) As soon as saucepan comes back up to a boil, add quinoa. Stir.

4) Drop heat to low. Cover. Cook/simmer around 25 minutes, stirring frequently.

5) Kill heat. Remove saucepan from burner. Let it sit (still covered) for 5 minutes or so. Stir in a little hot water if it’s too thick.

While the grits are cooking...

6) In the cast iron skillet I know you can’t live without, spray with canola cooking spray and sauté onions for 3 to 4 minutes.

7) Here’s where I veered from the directions in the book—like last week, because I misread—but it worked out so well. Add the spices and cook for 1 minute to roast them. [MC says to add peppers, cook for a couple minutes, then add spices, cook for 1 minute, then add corn.]

8) Add peppers and corn, and sauté for 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender. The corn is going to caramelize and be so freaking delicious.

When grits/quinoa is ready...

9) Mix sautéed veggies and cheese into grains and top with chopped cilantro and/or scallions. Serve with hot sauce and try not to freak out at how good it is. Or go ahead and freak out. Who am I to tell you how to express your emotions?

Approximate Calories, Fat, and Price per Serving
160.4 calories, 3.8g fat, $0.79

Calculations
1/2 tsp salt: negligible calories and fat, $0.02
3/4 cup grits: 434 calories, 1.5g fat, $0.49
1/2 cup quinoa: 313 calories, 5g fat, $0.69
1 cup chopped onions: 40 calories, .2g fat, $.50
cooking spray: 6 calories, 0 fat, $.02
1 cup red bell pepper: 51 calories, 0g fat, $1.67
1 tsp ground cumin: negligible calories and fat, $0.02
1 tsp ground coriander: negligible calories and fat, $0.02
1 cup fresh (or frozen or canned) corn kernels: 177 calories, 2g fat, $0.75
1/2 cup grated Monterey Jack cheese: 262 calories, 22g fat, $1.90
chopped fresh cilantro (and/or scallions): negligible calories and fat, $0.02
hot pepper sauce: negligible calories and fat, $0.02
TOTALS: 1,283 calories, 30.7g fat, $6.30
PER SERVING: 160.4 calories, 3.8g fat, $0.79

CHG Favorites of the Week

Food Blog of the Week
One Dollar Diet Project
Definitely check this one out. Christopher and Kerri are two American social justice teachers attempting to survive on $1 worth of food per day (each), for an entire month. Since billions (not millions) around the world live on less, you’d think it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Think again. Today is Day 10, and Christopher has already dropped seven pounds. (Thanks to Epi-Log for the link.)

Food Comedy of the Week
“Corn Chowder” from Human Giant
Many, many years ago, in the back room of a darkened Chelsea theater in New York City, I got to watch the men of this sketch (minus Aziz Ansari) perform in an improv group called Respecto Montalban. Without exaggeration, it was the 20 funniest minutes I’ve ever seen live. I wouldn’t shut up about it for weeks. Now, they have their own gig on MTV, and the big guy (Rob Riggle) is a regular on The Daily Show. There is justice in this world. (Rated PG-13 for language.)



Food Find of the Week
Pop vs. Soda map
Forget ethanol, Iraq, and what kind of animal you'd rather put lipstick on. There is no argument more hostile in this great nation than “soda” vs. “pop." In this meticulous map, we see where, geographically speaking, the sides stand. (Thanks to my friend Dan for the link.)

Food Organization of the Week
ONE Campaign/Encinitas Community Resource Center
The folks attempting the aforementioned One Dollar Diet Project aren’t doing it for kicks (hopefully). Oh, no – any money they raise goes directly back to their communities, both local and global. If you dig Kerri and Christopher’s efforts, check out their sponsored charities.

Food Quote of the Week
“I have no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it. I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons.” - Emerson

Food Video of the Week
The Vegetable Orchestra
Okay, this is ten kinds of neat before you even get to the carrot clarinet. (Clarrotnet?) After that, it’s merely incredible. In their words: “Worldwide one of a kind, the Vegetable Orchestra performs on instruments made of fresh vegetables. The utilization of various ever refined vegetable instruments creates a musically and aesthetically unique sound universe.”



Totally Unrelated, Extra-Special Bonus of the Week
The opening to Woody Allen’s Manhattan
In memory.