Wizard Recipes

How did the people eating the traditional Mediterranean diet pack so many vegetables into their daily meals? Easily and deliciously. In the Mediterranean, vegetable consumption is not just a matter of eating any vegetable at any time, in whatever state is most convenient. Vegetable selection is a matter of pride, vegetable preparation an art, and vegetable consumption a pure pleasure. Most essentially, in the Mediterranean, vegetables are chosen according to what is in season.

Outdoor produce markets throughout the Mediterranean offer the season’s best, freshest, most vibrant vegetables. Your local grocer, farmer’s market, or produce stand is also likely to feature the freshest locally grown produce. Even if the vegetables in season in your area aren’t those in season in the Mediterranean, eating the freshest seasonal produce is still eating in the Mediterranean way.

Seek out the best sources for vegetables in your area, and you may discover that vegetables taste much better than you think. Here are a few more Mediterranean-inspired tips for adding vegetables to your day. You’ll wonder how you ever ate without them!

• Looking for a fast-food lunch? A wedge of hearty wheat bread, a small chunk of feta or other cheese, a few slices of ripe tomato, a handful of leafy greens drizzled with olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, and a ripe peach or other seasonal fruit for dessert take less time to prepare than going through the drive-through. Bring your Mediterranean lunch to work with you and everyone will wonder what upscale deli supplied your meal.
• The next time you make spaghetti, stir a shredded carrot and a finely chopped green or red pepper, a few mushrooms, or a handful of chopped spinach into the sauce. Vegetable additions add color, flavor, and nutritional power to your pasta dinner.
• Instead of grilling burgers, grill vegetables, Mediterranean style. Slice onions, peppers, zucchini, portabella mushroom caps, eggplant, and tomatoes into thick slices, drizzle with olive oil, and grill. If you want to add a Middle Eastern flair, skewer the vegetables into shish kebabs. A chunk or two of chicken or lamb among the vegetables would be authentic and would add an extra dash of protein. Serve with lemon wedges.
• Drizzle those plain vegetables with a little olive oil and a sprinkling of fresh grated cheese, or garnish with a splash of tomato sauce or a few sun-dried tomatoes. Tomato sauce also adds culinary interest to broiled fish.
• If you can relate to former U.S. President George H. W. Bush when it comes to broccoli (his aversion to this beautiful vegetable was well known), maybe you just haven’t had it cooked really well. Try steaming broccoli just until it is very bright green and tender. Toss with a little olive oil, sea salt, minced garlic, and a few flakes of red pepper. Serve and eat immediately. Perfectly cooked broccoli is a joy. Overcooked or old broccoli is enough to make anyone dislike the stuff.

• Leafy green salads are an important part of many Mediterranean meals. Get in the habit of including a bowl of leafy greens with olive oil and a little lemon juice or vinegar with at least one meal every day. A few extra chopped vegetables and a little grated cheese will make your greens even more interesting and nutrient-rich. (Just remember to forgo the creamy dressing in favor of a dressing with an olive oil base.)

Do you think you don’t have enough time to chop up a salad? Take advantage of food industry technology and splurge on ready-to-eat bagged veggies and greens. Selections are plentiful, many types are organic, and they come prewashed. What could be quicker?

• Eat pizza in the Mediterranean style. Unlike American pizzas, Mediterranean pizzas are typically thin, light concoctions with just a few toppings. Fresh tomato sauce and one or two featured vegetables (mushrooms, garlic slices, onion, zucchini, broccoli, peppers) and a very light sprinkling of mozzarella or Parmesan cheese on a fresh-baked (or store-bought, if you are pressed for time) whole-grain crust makes a perfect light dinner.

Many Mediterranean pizzas don’t even include cheese. In the mood for something more substantial? The more veggies, the better! Add roasted eggplant, mushrooms, red peppers (better than green if you want that lycopene punch)-you name it! See how much your pizza can hold. Load up and enjoy!

• Are you or your kids getting bored with peanut butter sandwiches? Add chopped or shredded carrots for a surprising, refreshing, flavorful crunch.
• Pumpkin is an American vegetable, but its nutritional value is Mediterranean in spirit! Stir canned pumpkin into hot oatmeal for breakfast with a little cinnamon and brown sugar. Add a generous spoonful to applesauce for a light dessert, or stir some into vanilla yogurt for an added zing.
• Microwave a sweet potato or yam until soft for a quick, carotenoid- and fiber-rich snack, or try baked sweet potato fries or yam chips, brushed lightly with olive oil and baked at 400 degrees until lightly browned and fork-tender, about twenty minutes, or longer if you’ve got a large pan full.

The one thing you can do to make your diet more “Mediterranean” is to begin eating more fresh vegetables today. Whether or not they were traditionally grown and consumed in the Mediterranean, the very concept of eating the vegetables grown on the land around you captures the essence of the traditional Mediterranean diet. Vegetables add beauty to your plate, excitement to your palate, and a host of vital substances to your body.

Dried tomatoes, also called sun-dried tomatoes, were possibly the most trendy vegetable on the American markets in the 1980s and they still somehow survived into the 1990s though they lost their tarnish. I also think that they are the most overrated vegetable. Their appeal is their appearance.

Dried tomatoes dress up a plate or a dish with their pleasing shape, texture and color. It is the flavor that is somewhat overrated and often does not come up to expectations.

The idea of drying tomatoes to preserve the m is not a new one. This alternative to canning is easy, but it requires warm sunny weather during and after the tomato harvesting season. Any rain or periods of cloudy, cool weather, and the sun-dried tomatoes turn mold-covered and semi-dried. This means that climate limits making truly sun-dried tomatoes to very few tomato-growing areas in the world: the Mediterranean regions of Italy and France and California.

Italians have produced sun-dried tomatoes for at least a century. In the early 1980s importers introduced them to North American markets and they were accepted instantly, even though the imported products were quite costly. Sun-dried tomatoes made a hit with the nouvelle cuisine chefs of the West Coast who constantly search out innovative new products.

They were particularly popular in the winter when red-colored produce was rare. (Red peppers were still not common and outrageously expensive back then, because they were airfreighted from Holland.)

High price or not, dried tomatoes have a long shelflife and are available when needed. They solve the problem of providing a desirable eye-catching red color on the plate during the colorless winter months. That is why the red pepper has been such a smash hit, too.

Home cooks picked up the idea and sun-dried tomatoes were on their way, helped by a generous dose of intense marketing. It didn’t take long before several California dried fruit producers noticed this very profitable opportunity to compete with the pricey Italian imports.

Since they had both the know-how and equipment to dry fruits, it was but a short step to add tomatoes to their line of dried produce. Dried tomatoes, they discovered, bring in much more revenue than prunes and apricots.

To dry tomatoes in the traditional Italian way by sun is slow and labor intensive. It takes 8 to 10 days under the weakening late summer sun. Leaving the tomatoes exposed that long to insects is somewhat questionable, too.

Italians use their sun-dried tomatoes in pasta sauce, so they are always cooked before eating. Americans, on the other hand, eat their sun-dried tomatoes raw or blanched quickly to reconstitute the moisture content.

Drying does not destroy the bacterial contamination so for export, they add sulfur and salt to eliminate bacteria. The California processors also tried heat treatment to solve the problem.

There are three major ways for American processors to dry tomatoes:

1. Like the Italians do, under the sun for 8 to 10 days, then pasteurize to produce a safe and acceptable product. This process retains the original color and some of the flavor.

2. Dried like other fruits, in hot dehydrating ovens at about 190°F (88°C) with fans to draw the moisture off, a process that takes only a few hours. The process is quick and eliminates the need for sulfur or pasteurization because of the heat that kills microorganisms. But the tomato turns rather dark, losing its attractive color, because the heat partially caramelizes sugar. The heat also alters the flavor a great deal, more than pasteurization does.

3. Dehydrated without heat by blowing fans. In warm weather this process takes about 36

hours and results in a product similar to sun-dried tomatoes with good red color and moderate change in flavor. To kill all larvae, processors freeze the dried tomatoes for two days.

It takes 17 pounds (17 kg) of fresh tomatoes to make 1 pound (1 kg) of dehydrated product after about 95 percent of the moisture evaporates. Processors’ favorite is Roma tomatoes, which have less moisture to begin with, but some small specialty producers use other, more flavorful varieties and sell them for premium prices.

While firm and low in moisture, commercial Romas are not very flavorful tomatoes even when fully ripe. None of the dehydrated tomatoes have anywhere

near the flavor of vine-ripened tomatoes. But they do have their own distinctive flavor and special place in our kitchens.

Due to their high calorie content, these cannot be consumed by themselves, but only along with other products, in small quantities, to take advantage of their qualities only. Fats need carbohydrates in order to be metabolised- metabolising only fats doesn’t lead to glucose, the only energy producing chemical of the organism.

So please do consume:

-         Dried seeds and fruits with cereals and milk

-         Oil of any kind added to fresh or cooked vegetables, in salads or pasta and rice.

Small secrets worth knowing:

-Every kind of vegetable oil is a mix of saturated and poli non saturated fats in diverse proportions. The more saturated an oil is, the more solid it is.

-If you put olive oil in the fridge, you can notice that at the bottom of the bottle this becomes dens due to the mono non saturated fats. Sun flower oil, being poli non saturated, remains liquid in every condition.

- Corn oil is excellent for cooking

-Remember: NONE OF THE VEGETABLE OILS CONTAIN CHOLESTEROL

- All vegetable oils contain the same amount of calories, no matter if they are made of olives, sun flower, nuts, corn, Soybeans

-extra virgin olive oil is the best quality of olive oil you can get.

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A very important vegetable from the same family as garlic. Contains an acid, volatile oil, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, sulphur, potassium, sodium, iron, vitamins A, B, and C, traces of zinc, iodine, silicon, phosphoric acid, and citrate of lime.

Onions are potent antioxidants. Effective as a poultice applied to the chest for colds, congestions and bronchitis, and on the ear for ear infections.

Also as a syrup for coughs and bronchitis. For croup, slice into thin slices and place in a small amount of honey and let it stand for about two hours. Makes a syrup for relief of asthma, colds, sore throat, and bronchitis. For a cold, place a slice in hot water for a few minutes and sip throughout the day.

Benefits:

• hay fever and asthma
• colds and fever
• bronchitis and croup
• lung infection

• heart disease

Perhaps the most significant effect of garlic is on the lipid profile of the blood and  tissues. It lowers cholesterol, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol levels, while increasing the beneficial HDL cholesterol. Onions have the same effect.

The bulb of the plant is a relative of onions and chives. The flavor is very strong use chopped, minced, and powdered to season many dishes.

Researchers at Loma Linda University have found that compounds in garlic activate enzymes in the liverthat destroy aflatoxin, a potent carcinogen produced by mold that can grow on peanuts and grains. Aflatoxins are a leading cause of liver cancer.

Benefits:

• lowers blood pressure
• strengthens heart
• is a natural insect deterrent
• is a potent immune enhancer
• is good for ear, stomach, spleen, and lungs