El Coqui Restaurant

Finally! El Coqui restaurant is open in Tucson! We've been waiting and watching for the opening for well over 6 months now and just today we found out they opened on January 16th. We scrapped plans to find a Mexican all-you-can-eat Sunday lunch buffet in favor of testing out the tastes of Puerto Rico. The restaurant is located on the northwest corner of Craycroft and 22nd in a somewhat barren strip mall.

Driving past every few weeks, we were surprised at the location since there were very few cars at any of the other shops and most of the mall is closed up. However, today, there were at least twenty cars in the lot and lots of people inside the restaurant even though it was 2:30 in the afternoon.

We were seated right away and given pan ajo (garlic bread) as we pondered the menu. Quite frankly, there wasn't a tremendous amount of vegetarian food available, but there was more than one choice, so YIPEE, I can go back again! We ordered a Surullo de Maiz con queso (corn "fritter" with cheese) for me and an Alcapurria rellleno con carne (plaintain "fritter" filled with beef) for David. I use the word "fritter" loosely since the fritters of my childhood usually involve a looser batter. These were more rolled, but very delicious. Mine tasted like a lightly fried corn cake with melted cheese in the middle. You know me and cheese! YUM!

For our entrees, we both ordered mofongo, a savory mix of cooked plantains, garlic and olive oil that is shaped and either baked or fried. The plantains were roughly chopped which is different than the way David and I make them and the way I've had them in PR, but they were just as tasty. Mine came with lightly fried onions around the mofongo and David ordered his with chicharron de pollo (fried chicken pieces). His chicken pieces came al ajillo (with garlic sauce) which was sweet and tender.

While we were munching, one of the staff offered us a bottle of vinegar/pepper/ garlic sauce that he said his mother made every day. It was the perfect accompaniment for the mofongo. It had a pleasant taste of peppers, but not really any hotness that David or I could tell.

The atmosphere was quite nice, except that it's got that modern restaurant feel where everything is overwhelmingly loud because there's not one sound-absorbing thing in the place - no curtains, no rugs, nada. I suppose lots of noise makes a place chic. The staff were warm, welcoming and almost too attentive. Hector, our waiter, must have checked with us 8 times on how everything was, but I'd rather that than being ignored.

For dessert, we shared a Tembleque or coconut pudding. It was smooth, buttery and just a little bit sweet. And then David told me it's made almost completely of coconut fat. Doesn't matter... we finished it anyway :-)

In all, I give El Coqui a very high recommendation if you want good traditional PR food, attentive staff, and cute little coquis on your tableware.

And for those of you who aren't able to make it to Tucson, here's David's favorite bean recipe. Don't let the list of ingredients scare you off. Most of it is spices which can be adjusted to meet what you have in the pantry. Sofrito is a mix of chopped onions, sweet red peppers, garlic, and cilantro. You can substitute the ingredients chopped separately if you don't have sofrito handy.

1 lb beans, canned (pinto beans, pigeon peas, kidney beans, or even navy beans work well)
3 tbs sofrito
¼ cup annatto oil (can be replaced with olive oil)
½ roasted red pepper (not hot)
½ can tomato paste or crushed tomatoes
12-16 stuffed olives (green Spanish olives would be best, but kalamata are good, too)
½ cup chopped onion
3 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1-½ cups vegetable broth (can be chicken if desired)
3 bay leaves
2Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Spices:
2 tsp crushed dried oregano
2 tsp crushed rosemary
2 tsp Spanish paprika (sometimes sold as smoked paprika)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground thyme
 

If using canned beans:
Clean and rinse the beans in a colander under running water until the water runs clear.

Put the oil in a 2 qt sauce pan and heat up on medium until a drop of sofrito sizzles in it, fry and stir in the sofrito, onions, red pepper, and olives; after 2 minutes add the tomato paste, the spices garlic and bay leaves, but NOT the fresh cilantro. Stir continuously for 1 minute. Add the drained beans and the vegetable broth to the pot. If the beans are not covered in liquid, you can put a little bit of water. bring everything to a boil, then turn down the heat and cook for 45 minutes to an hour. Stir and add a little water if it’s too dry (please be careful adding water as the beans are supposed to be a little dry, too much water will make them mushed). About 5  minutes before you serve them, add the additional cilantro. Take out the bay leaves and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over white rice and enjoy!

Raw breakfast ideas

I'm finding that breakfast is the hardest part of my raw food day. After years of eating eggs & cheese, butter beans & cheese, grilled cheese, macaroni & cheese...well, you get the picture, it was really hard to kick cheese out of my morning. I never realized how much cheese I ate in the morning. I mean, I knew I ate a lot of cheese, but at breakfast?

So now I'm kind of floundering around for something to eat. I've always been hungry right away in the morning, so starting out with a smoothie keeps me going for about half an hour before I'm hungry again. Late in the summer, I hit upon the idea of "nutmeal" which is a combination of nuts & seeds (almonds, sunflower, walnuts), fruits (think an apple or pear), some spice (cinnamon and/or ginger), and a little water ground up in the food processor until it has an oatmeal-like consistency. The more you whirl it, the more like cooked oatmeal it becomes. This is great stuff!It's lighter and fresher tasting than oatmeal and, even if my diabetes were cured tomorrow, I don't think I could go back to that thick heavy oatmeal taste again.

While the nutmeal is great, it does take time in the morning to prepare, especially when I started to want it warm. Plus, with the cold mornings, I find I just want to stay in bed longer. I was finding myself heading out the door with a baggie of nuts and dried fruit everyday. It took me forever to eat them, plus I missed my nutmeal, so I tried dehydrating it into "crackers." Last week, I made apple, almond, flax seed and cinnamon crackers. They tasted really yummy - light, fresh and really filling without having to chew and chew and chew.

Today I got more inventive with the recipes and created Carribean breakfast crackers. Here's what I used (note: it's not much of a recipe due to the variant nature of the liquid inside the young coconuts. You'll have to add more or less coconut water to get the right consistancy for spreading):

Carribean breakfast crackers
meat from 2 young coconuts
1 ripe banana
1 c. raw almoonds
2 t. ground or fresh ginger
juice of 1 key lime

Process in the food processor until it's very finely ground and mushy. Add a little coconut water if the mixture is too think to process properly.

Pour into a bowl and add enough ground flax seed meal to make it thick enough to spread (oatmeal consistency). Then add 1 c of goji berries (soaked) or raisins (soaked). Spread the mixture onto trays and make marks for 12-15 squares. Dehydrate at 145 degrees for 2-3 hours and then turn them over and turn the temp. down to 115 degrees until crisp.

I haven't tasted these yet, but they smell soooo good!

I used the rest of the coconut water to made the Chai Spice wafers from the Rainbow Green cookbook I got a while back. They've got almonds, sesame seeds, Chai spice, and vanilla in them as well. I'm thinking I can make a little walnut butter to spread on them this week. can wait for breakfast!

Happy 2010

Happy to report that the first bird of 2010 is a male Anna's Hummingbird at our feeder!

One of my resolutions again this year is to do more birding, but I'd also like to get back to posting to this blog more often. Wishing every reader a happy, healthy, and birdy New Year!

Hard winter tomatoes

Even though it's still 90 degrees every day here in Tucson, the signs of the rapidly receding fall are everywhere. The days are getting shorter, the nights colder and we've started to get more greens and squash from the CSA. Another sign is the diminishing quality of the tomatoes we're getting. A few months ago, the tomatoes were so awesome, I could hardly wait to get them home, toast some whole-wheat bread, slather it with butter, fat slices of tomato, salt and pepper.

Now the tomatoes are smaller, hard, and very green when we get them, and they don't ripen to much, so I've been looking for a way to use up the pile I've accumulated in the past several weeks. When I picked up some dried apricots at the store this weekend, I remembered this wonderful chutney adapted from my much beloved (and by now raggy) Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant cookbook. It's great for those yucky hard yellow-orange tomatoes that are available at this time of year. Use it on rice, beans, curries, and tofu.

Tomato-Apricot Chutney
1 T. garlic, minced
2 tsp. ground dry ginger
3/4 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. gram marsala
1 T. butter or ghee

In a heavy saucepan, saute the garlic and spices in the butter for 1 minute.

Add:
3 c. chopped, firm red or green tomatoes
1/2 c. chopped, dried apricots
1/2 c. raisins
1 T honey or agave syrup
2 T. apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt

Cook for 30 minutes until the fruit is soft and the chutney is thick. You may need to add a little more sweetener or vinegar depending on your taste. Will last for several weeks in a covered jar in the refrigerator.

More than just marinara - the spaghetti squash dilemma

Someone asked my this week about what to do with spaghetti squash, specifically what to do other than put spaghetti sauce on it. Hmmmm.... good question! It's winter squash season and we got our first spaghetti squash of the year at the CSA last week. I was checking out their website and found this great recipe for spaghetti squash salad flavored with orange juice and parsley. Sounds pretty good. I might substitute cilantro for the parsley seeing as I love cilantro.

You can also toss the cooked squash with half a cup of orange juice, the same amount of chopped parsley and a little salt or pepper for a warm salad or side dish. Any leftovers can be eaten cold the next day or reheated in the microwave. (Listed on the Spaghetti Squash Ideas page)

 So the other recipe on the CSA webpage is a spaghetti squash lasagna which got me to thinking about the Greek "lasagna" dish pastistio. I first had this dish while married to my first ex-husband. His mother (Ya-ya) made an excellent, if meaty, pastistio. For years, I've substituted veggie burgers for the traditional ground lamb or beef with pretty tasty results, but this weekend I set out to find whether I could recreate this dish using spaghetti squash instead of noodles. It worked! In fact, I think I prefer it with the tiny strands of squash instead of macaroni.

This recipe does take some work, but it's well worth it. We had enough for leftovers and it was even better re-heated! Here's the recipe:

Pastistio

The "noodle" part:
1 medium sized spaghetti squash, halved, seeded, cooked and cooled. Set aside.

The "hambuger" part:
2 cups of ground veggie meat (I used a mixture of Lightlife Gimme Lean sausage and Morningstar Farms Grillers) OR 2 cups cooked lentils OR 1/2 lb. ground meat (traditional is lamb or beef)
1 onion, chopped
2 T. olive oil
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (yes, cinnamon - you'd better put that in!)
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp white pepper
2 cloves garlic, chopped
salt to taste
3 T tomato paste
3 T water

Saute the onion and "meaty stuff" in the olive oil. when it's almost finished, add the oregano, garlic and spices. Cook for 1-2 minutes  more until the spices become aromatic. Then add the tomato paste and water. Mix well. Put aside.

The white sauce part:

1 T butter
1 T olive oil
1 T white flour
3 cups milk
1-1/2 c grated Parmesan cheese

Melt the butter and oil together in a heavy sauce pan. Add the flour and stir until the mixture becomes somewhat lighter in color. Add the milk all at once and stir with a wire whisk until it's creamy and hot. Add 1-1/4 c. of the Parmesan cheese and stir until it's once again creamy. Set aside.

To build it:
Pull the strands out of half the squash and put it i the bottom of a greased 9 x 9 casserole dish. press it down a little so it's flat against the bottom of the dish.

Add the meat mixture over the squash. Spread it evenly.

Pull out the strands from the second half of the squash and put those on top of the "meat" part. gently press everything down a bit with the back of a spoon.

Pour half the white sauce on top. use a table knife to make sure the sauce gets down into the dish. You should be able to add the rest of the white to the top. Sprinkle the top with the remaining Parmesan cheese, a little ground cinnamon, and some ground oregano.

Bake at 400 degrees for 35-45 minutes or utl the top is bubbly and browned. Cool after a half an hour before digging in!

Greater Guacamole!

One of my favorite things to do it to go home at lunch, put on my pj's and make guacamole. I like it because it's quick to throw together, fresh and fast to eat so I can get back to work. Plus it keeps me satisfied all afternoon. Earlier this week, I was hunting around for some lime and there was my Swiss Chard I had gotten from the CSA just looking at me! "Eat me! I'm green," it said so cheerily.  I thought, why not?  So I had my guac and my greens, too! Guess what? I couldn't even taste it! The lime and garlic did a great job of masking it while the chard gave the guac a wonderful vibrant green color. Here's my recipe in case you want to sneak some green stuff into your diet or that of a loved one:

Guacamole

2 avocados, pitted
1 onion
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 clove garlic
1/2 bunch fresh greens (Swiss chard, spinach, etc.)
cayenne pepper to taste
Sea salt to taste

Scoop the meat from the avocado skin.Put this and everything else into a food processor. You could do this all by hand, chopping it, but this is lunch time, right and we have to get back to work! Process it all until it's very smooth and the greens are completely gone.

Then add:

2 tomatoes
1/4 c. fresh cilantro

Pulse this a bit until the tomatoes and the cilantro are chopped to your liking. I do this b/c I don't like pulverized tomatoes or cilantro.

This recipe is great with some simple crackers or  chopped carrots, celery, broccoli, bell peppers or, if you must tortilla chips.

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Here's another great way to enjoy your greens, my own version Vegetable  Hash inspired by Deborah Madison's The Savory Way. I added some veggie sausage and more spices. You can use whatever vegetables are in your refrigerator: carrots, turnips, peas, etc. It's one of David's favorites!

Vegetable Hash

2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1/2” cubes
1-2 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 veggie breakfast “sausage” links (optional)
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/8 teaspoon or less cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground sage
1 large bunch winter greens, washed and chopped
1 small tomato or a small handful of cherry tomatoes, chopped
salt and black pepper to taste

Heat the oil over medium heat in a non-stick frying pan, add the potatoes and cover. Cook the potatoes until they are about halfway cooked through, then add the onions and links, if using, and continue cooking. When the onions are translucent, add the spices and cook for another minute or two. Cover and cook until the potatoes are pretty much cooked through and then add the greens, the tomatoes, and about a tablespoon of water. Cover and cook until the greens are cooked. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir the mixture until everything is thoroughly combined and serve. Serves 2-4 persons.

Food for the Wilderness

Last weekend, David and I went with some of our co-workers on a backpacking trip to Fossil Springs Wilderness Areanear Strawberry, Arizona. It was my first backpacking trip in over 3 years and David's first civilian trip ever. We had intended to keep the bags light, but, well, you know how that is. Even with essentials only, it's always heavier than you imagine it's going to be. We took the smallest, lightest tent, a one-burner backpack stove, 2 pans (could have just taken 1), 2 light weight sleeping bags and pads, some warm clothes, one deck of Munchkins, a few multi-purpose bandannas and food and water.

The food is always the heaviest stuff since I hate eating crappy food when I'm starving which is always when I'm in the fresh air and sunshine. Trying to keep my raw food diet as much as possible didn't help either! Here's what our menu looked like:

Day 1
Breakfast in the car: grapes & strawberries and later chips and guacamole (this stuff we ate so it wouldn't go bad in the refrig. - our goal was to eat it ALL before we got to the trailhead, which we did )

Lunch: sandwiches made at home with Provolone cheese, tomatoes, red pepper, onion, cucumber, sprouts, oregano, black olives, and thousand island dressing on long french rolls which we ate immediately upon getting to camp.

Dinner: Fettuccine w/ sun-dried tomatoes, dried onion, fresh garlic, oregano, smoked paprika, basil, pepitas, and Argentinian Parmesan cheese. For dessert, bananas with crushed walnuts, dates, and ginger baked in foil over the campfire.

Day 2
Breakfast: "nutmeal" (ground nuts mixed with dried fruits and some cinnamon and ginger) for me and oatmeal for David, Java Juice, and my Mexican hot chocolate (cocoa, dried milk, cinnamon, instant coffee and cayenne pepper).

Lunch: Pb&j on rolls, LÄRABARS

Dinner: Caribbean red beans and rice, Argentinian Parmesan cheese chunks, soy cerviche* and chips. For dessert: fresh apples with pistachios, dates, and cinnamon baked over the coals (see image above)

Day 3
Breakfast & lunch: same as Day 2 plus as many snacks as we could power down...to lose the weight so we didn't have to carry it the 4 miles up the canyon.


*Soy Ceviche
1/2 c. TVP (textured vegetable protein) - you can find this at most natural food and ethnic food stores
1/2 c. water or tomato juice
1 medium tomato, chopped (or 4 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped)
1 small onion, chopped (or 1 Tbsp. dried chopped onion)
1 clove garlic, minced (or 1 tsp. garlic powder, not garlic salt)
juice of 1/2 lime
1 Tbsp. fresh cilantro (or 1 tsp. dried)

Add the water (or tomato juice) to the tvp and let it sit until the fluid is soaked and the tvp is tender. I'm not exactly sure about the ratio of tvp to water as I usually eyeball it, but I'm erred on the side of less water so that if needed you can add a little more. Just get the tvp tender, but not soaked.

Then add the rest of the ingredients. It's best if you let it sit a little while, but you can also eat it right away with tortilla chips or veggies (celery, cucumber slices, or pepper strips are good).




On our way home, we stopped in Mesa to use our India's Grill coupon that we got a few weeks ago when Restaurant.com was having a 90% off sale. We got $25 gift certificates for $1! The food was excellent! OK, so we were ready to tuck into something hearty after, as David put it "two days of nothing but Pemmican and dirt!" (oh really?). But really, this restaurant is a keeper, especially with the lack of real Indian food in Tucson not counting Saffron, of course).

We started with the soup. I had the spicy tomato and rice while David had the dal which was fabulous! We also had the samosas that came lightly sprinkled with "chat" spice. They were something special! For our entrees, David had the lamb birayani (rice, lamb, raisins, dried apricots, red & green pepper, onions, cashews, and spices while I had my usual paneer tiki makani (homemade cheese cubes in a spicy creamy sauce). The paneer was tender and fresh while the sauce was less tomato-ey than I'm used to, but excellent just the same!

For dessert, we shared a gajar halwa (carrot halva). This was much sweeter than I make mine and after all the other food, it was just too much. The presentation though was beautiful...a lovely mound of ground cooked & sweetened carrots and cashews served with drizzles of chocolate and rosewater sauces. The sauces really intensified the carrot flavor. We left Mesa quite full, happy and eager to return. Anyone up to going this weekend?