RECIPE: Pasta e Fagioli Soup

If you’ve watched enough “Abbott & Costello” reruns, you’ll hear Lou Costello wanting a dish of “pasta fazool.” That’s Neapolitan Italian dialect for pasta e fagioli, correctly pronounced pasta ay fah-JOE-lee. Pasta e fagioli, pasta with beans (typically cannellini beans), is a popular Italian peasant dish. Some Americans call it bean and macaroni soup, but…
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TIP OF THE DAY: Jícama

If you hadn’t read the headline, would you be able to name this vegetable? Botanists might call it Pachyrhizus erosus, but we know it as jícama (HEEK-uh-muh) or alternatively, the Mexican yam or Mexican turnip, although, as it is so often in popular nomenclature, jicama is not related botanically to either the yam or the…
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PRODUCT: Melogold Grapefruit

If you enjoy grapefruit, consider the Melogold. This hybrid of a pummelo and a white grapefruit is hefty and exotic looking: bigger than large grapefruit, with yellowish green pebbly skin and pale yellow flesh. Like pummelos (one of the ancestors of modern grapefruit), Melogolds have a thicker rind than regular grapefruit. The flavor is sweet-tart,…
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RECIPE: Sautéed Bananas

Whenever we’re at a Chinese restaurant, we order fried banana for dessert. Whether plain, with whipped cream or ice cream, it’s a sweet and creamy treat. Eating a serving of it recently, we reflected on what we loved about it. The answer wasn’t the breading or the deep-fat frying or the even the whipped cream.…
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RECIPE: Low Calorie Seafood Chowder

Lower calorie “chowder.” Photo courtesy Swanson.   We just discussed transforming favorite, calorie-packed recipes with lighter cooking techniques. This recipe for a lower calorie seafood “chowder,” from Swanson’s, substitutes vegetable broth and tomato soup for the cream used in many chowders. FOOD 101: Call it what you want, but even with cream, this is not…
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