Hold Onto Your Heat
May 25, 2010 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Hold Onto Your Heat
Quicktip
by Kate Hehyoe
Hold Onto Your Heat: Want to keep a cooked dish warm until serving? Use your microwave oven as a warming oven but don’t fire it up. A microwave oven’s insulation is good enough to retain heat for quite a while. If your dinner is finished in stages, put the ready dishes in the microwave and close the door; just don’t turn it on, especially with metal cookware in it.
Find more tips to shrink your cookprint in Kate Heyhoe’s book Cooking Green
Gruyere-Toasted French Bread
May 25, 2010 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Gruyere-Toasted French Bread
Quicktip
by Kate Hehyoe
Broiler Quickies: Gruyere-Toasted French Bread
Another Recipe to Cook While the Broiler’s Hot
Pop this goosed-up version of a cheese melt under a hot broiler, right after you’ve broiled a main dish. Slice a loaf of French bread in half lengthwise. Slice each length into pieces, about 3 inches long. Drizzle or brush 2 tablespoons walnut oil on the cut surfaces. Combine 4 ounces shredded Gruyere cheese, 1 tablespoon mayonnaise, 2 teaspoons coarse-ground mustard, and 1/8 teaspoon white pepper. Distribute on the bread. Broil until cheese bubbles and serve hot. (Serves 4)
Find more tips to shrink your cookprint in Kate Heyhoe’s book Cooking Green
Barley-Brie Risotto
March 9, 2010 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Barley-Brie Risotto
New Grain Cooking: Barley-Brie Risotto
By Kate Heyhoe
A One-Pot, Fast and Fabulous Meal
This is one of my favorite pressure cooker recipes, and was intended to be part of Cooking Green, but we ran out of space. So I’m sharing it now. It’s a good example of the types of recipes found in the book.
This is an economical, one-pot dish, but my family loves it simply for the way it tastes: rich with creamy Brie cheese and cozy with toothy bites of barley. As a bonus, it meets all my requirements for being green: it’s meat-free, use ingredients you can buy in bulk to reduce packaging waste, and requires little cooking fuel.
For the cook, it’s a model of carefree cooking, needing only 12 minutes of active prep. And if you keep a wedge of Brie in the fridge, most of the remaining ingredients are staples or pantry-ready, so you can whip up an easy, no-brainer dinner without planning or stress. There’s almost no chopping involved, so it’s almost as fast as waiting for take-out (and perhaps more nutritious and delicious). Try it. I think you’ll like it, as a meat-free main course, side dish, or lunch.
Barley-Brie Risotto
A New Green Basics Recipe
Serves 4 as a side; 2 as a main
Green Meter:
- Green Goodness: Pressure cooker saves fuel and time. Meat-free entree or side
- Prep/Cooking Times: 12 minutes prep +30 minutes unattended
- Prime Season: All year
- Conveniences: One-pot meal, little chopping, mostly pantry ingredients
Shrink your cookprint with this meat-free main course, which my husband even prefers to traditional risotto. Toothsome, tasty barley cooks in half the usual time with a pressure cooker, and stands in for rice in this robust risotto-style dish. Brie adds a cheesy spin different from the usual Parmesan (but feel free to gild the lily with Parmesan on the side, if you like). Unless the rind is hard or tough, I leave the rind on the brie; it falls apart with heat, but you may remove it if you prefer. Domestic Brie works fine in this recipe, or experiment with other types of cheeses made close to home.
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 cup pearl barley
- 1/2 onion, finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2-1/2 cups vegetable broth
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce (or tamari)
- 2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, minced (optional)
- 1/4 pound Brie, in small chunks
- Freshly ground black pepper
1. In a pressure cooker, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Stir in the barley. Cook 3-4 minutes, shaking the pan or stirring occasionally, until toasted. Stir in the onion and garlic. Cook until the onion softens, about 2 minutes. Slowly pour in the broth and soy sauce (they’ll splatter at first) and add the rosemary, if using.
2. Lock the lid in place. Cook over high heat and bring the cooker to full pressure. Reduce the heat to medium-low, or adjust as needed to maintain even pressure. Cook 18 minutes, remove the pan from the heat. Let the pressure drop naturally. The barley should be tender but pleasantly chewy; if not done, add more broth or water and cook a few minutes without pressure, stirring occasionally. (If not serving right away, cover the pot. Reheat before adding the Brie, thinning with more stock if the mixture seems dry.)
3. Stir the Brie into the hot barley until melted and absorbed. Serve with a generous grinding of pepper.
Double Up Roasting
September 20, 2009 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Double Up Roasting
Quicktip
by Kate Hehyoe
Double Up: Roasting two chickens uses about the same amount of energy as one. So roast two at the same time, enjoy one for dinner and save the other for sandwiches, tacos, or simply another meal. Freeze the meat for chicken salad.
Do the same with turkeys at Thanksgiving; after all, aren’t the leftovers the best part of the Thanksgiving dinner?
Find more tips to shrink your cookprint in Kate Heyhoe’s book Cooking Green
Big Green Companion
July 21, 2009 by Kate Heyhoe · 1 Comment
by Kate Heyhoe
Yippee! My book Cooking Green has gone back for a second printing—which in this era of ailing publishing is a major event. Reviewers have praised the book for its solid, well-researched content presented in a very absorbable, thought-provoking fashion (not fluffy or green-lite, but not dry or taxing either). It also won the 2009 Green Book Award for cookbooks. Discover more about Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen, and how to shrink your own cookprint.
Which brings me to another book that often appeared with mine, as part of several Earth Day book reviews: Big Green Cookbook. Both this book and Cooking Green have the same goal: greener cooking by using fewer resources and reducing emissions. Both books tackle the subject matter well, as reviewers have said, and deserve a hot spot in the new green kitchen. But the authors take markedly different approaches.
In Big Green Cookbook, Jackie Newgent, a registered dietitian, presents a great collection of 200 recipes, each with a nutritional profile. A 37-page introduction highlights the basics of practical green cooking. Her other green tips are solid, short and snappy, scattered throughout the book as sidebars or brief textboxes. My book, Cooking Green, presents 50 green-model recipes but devotes 160 pages to understanding the hows and whys of cooking and greener strategies, and the impact, presented chapter by chapter in a logical sequence.
Cooking Green and Big Green Cookbook are really more complementary than competitive. By this I mean each book is different from the other in a good way, and each one has much to offer without duplicating the other. Taken together, the sum of the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts.
If you’re truly interested in shrinking your cookprint and shifting into a greener lifestyle, these two books will get you quickly on your way. Big Green Cookbook lives up to its promise: it’s plump with recipes, and readers can get greener tip by tip, rather than topic by topic. Cooking Green takes a more comprehensive approach: it gives you the tools you need to understand how to cook, shop, and live greener—even beyond the kitchen—so you can make your own decisions every day, in any circumstance.
As I often say, going greener is all about making choices, and in this case (and even though I could be biased), the choice on these two books should be “yes” and “yes.”
- Big Green Cookbook:
Hundreds of Planet-Pleasing Recipes and Tips for a Luscious, Low-Carbon Lifestyle - by Jackie Newgent
- Wiley 2009
- Paperback; 400 pages
- ISBN: 978-0-470-40449-2
Reviews, Interviews and More
July 7, 2009 by New Green · Comments Off on Reviews, Interviews and More
Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way
Fox News, April 21, 2009
Video of Kate’s interview
on Fox News in Austin Texas
Buy Cooking Green
Kate on The Splendid Table
Listen to Kate Heyhoe’s Interview with Lynne Rossetto Kasper on NPR’s The Spendid Table, August 1, 2009.
The Spendid Table: Complete August 1 radio show listing
Recent Reviews
“…when it comes to the green kitchen Kate Heyhoe is really the Green Goddess. A dynamic combination of Michael Pollan, Alton Brown, and Wonder Woman all rolled into one. After finishing this book you will definitely be convinced that you can help save the planet while preparing dinner every night.” —Heather Jones, ProjectFoodie.Com, July 9, 2009.
Read the full review.
“Best of all, it’s so well-written and informative that I can say confidently that it’s one of the few environmental book I’ve ever read that’s actually fun to read.
“Cooking Green’s key gift to readers, however, is its surplus of creative and counterintuitive thinking—and its absolute lack of junk science.
“Cooking Green is the kind of book you’ll want sitting on your shelf as a reliable resource for decades of intelligent kitchen decision-making, and it’s selling at a very reasonable $9.99 at Amazon. Use it to shrink your own carbon cookprint! —Daniel Koontz, Casual Kitchen, July 22, 2009.
Read the full review.
“Ever thought about the ‘cookprint’ of your kitchen’s pots and pans? What about the oven and microwave? A new book gives you the answers.”
Read Kate Heyhoe’s Interview with Leah Koenig on Mother Nature Network, July 15, 2009.
Washington Post, A Mighty Appetite, April 22, 2009
Earth Day Food for Thought: Shrinking Your ‘Cookprint’
by Kim O’Donnel
Excerpt:
Cookbook author Kate Heyhoe would like you to put down that organic avocado and chew on this morsel for a moment:
When it comes to being green, what you eat is not enough; how you cook it and what you cook with are equally essential to the green equation.
On the first page of her new book, “Cooking Green,” Heyhoe tells us right up that “appliances account for 30 percent of our household energy use, and the biggest guzzlers are in the kitchen.” (She refers to the oven as the “Humvee of the kitchen.”)
As we talk about reducing our carbon footprint on this Earth Day—and going forward—Heyhoe, who’s based in Austin, Tex., would like us to consider shrinking our “cookprint” as well – the energy it takes to prepare food every day. In the interview notes below, she explain what the heck that newfangled word means and how the electric kettle can be your new best friend.
Read the full interview at Shrinking Your ‘Cookprint’.
Consumer Reports 05/15/09
Buzzword: Cookprint
by Daniel DiClerico
What it means.
Cookprint takes the carbon footprint—the amount of greenhouse gas each of us generates through our daily activities—and plants it firmly in the kitchen.
Food writer Kate Heyhoe cooked up cookprint, defined as the energy needed to prepare the food you eat. That energy use encompasses the appliances and techniques used to prepare and store food, though the management of leftovers and food waste also factors in—you lower your cookprint by composting rather than tossing scraps into the trash. Low-cookprint meals should also be heavy on plant-based and locally grown, sustainable foods.
Why the buzz? A few new cookbooks—including Heyhoe’s Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen—the New Green Basics Way; Big Green Cookbook: Hundreds of Planet-Pleasing Recipes and Tips for a Luscious, Low-Carbon Lifestyle, by Jackie Newgent; and Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating, by Mark Bittman—have stirred up interest in eco-conscious cooking.
Besides food enthusiasts, appliance manufacturers are in on the cookprint movement, though it’s worth noting that cooking appliances as a category account for just 3 percent of a home’s energy consumption, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Whirlpool says that for its induction appliances, “90% of the energy [is] expended into useful heat to reduce utility costs. (With gas ranges up to 60% of the heat is normally wasted through indirect gas combustion.)”
Read more at ConsumerReports.org
2009 Green Book Festival Names Winners
LOS ANGELES (April 20, 2009) _ The 2009 Green Book Festival has named “Cooking Green” by Kate Heyhoe the top winner in the Cookbooks category.
Denver Post, April 22, 2009
Green day: Five ways to shrink your “cookprint”
By Tucker Shaw, Food Editor
Excerpt:
We’ve all heard about the toxic emissions spewing from our gas-guzzling automobiles. But according to Kate Heyhoe, author of the new book “Cooking Green”, the average single-family home accounts for twice as much greenhouse gas per year as the average sedan. And the kitchen is a hot zone.
There are hosts of products out there to help you turn your kitchen into an eco-friendly entity: Super-insulated refrigerators, induction cooktops, in-home composters, organic cleaning products.
These are all good ideas — if you have the money to spend on them.
But it doesn’t have to cost you much time or effort — or any money at all — to reduce your cooking footprint (or as Heyhoe calls it, your “cookprint”) and your utility bill.
All it really takes is a little common sense and a touch of elbow grease.
Here are five cheap, easy ways to make your kitchen greener and save cash…
Read Five ways to shrink your “cookprint”
The Providence Journal, April 22, 2009
Eco-smart tips and recipes help reduce your ‘cookprint’
By Gail Ciampa, Food Editor
Excerpt:
Cooking Green: Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen the New Green Basics Way (Lifelong Books, $17.95) by Kate Heyhoe is almost two books in one. The first half is devoted to explaining why you need to make a green commitment
Kate’s Wakame Salad
May 24, 2009 by Kate Heyhoe · 1 Comment
Why Wakame? Why Not!
By Kate Heyhoe
Wakame salad has become the darling of sushi bars and take-out cases. It’s slightly spicy, with a sweet-tart balance, and a toothsome chewiness that belies its origins as a sea vegetable—especially one that has been dried, reconstituted, prepared as a salad, and shipped frozen. Once thawed, prepared wakame salad sells for several dollars a pound. But you can make your own wakame salad in minutes at a fraction of the cost, and serve it now or freeze it for later enjoyment. It keeps beautifully.
Look for dried wakame, which is also used in soups, in Japanese, Korean or specialty markets, including health food stores. Regular wakame comes in long strips, but fueru wakame is already cut into bite-size pieces, which can be chopped after rehydrating into smaller bits or used as is. If you spot dried agar agar strands, add some to the salad for more texture and taste (rehydrate in water and squeeze dry.)
Why wakame? Like other sea vegetables, it’s a nutritious and mineral-rich, sustainable superfood with a low-impact cookprint. It’s especially rich in protein, calcium, iodine, magnesium, iron and folate. And you may be surprised at just how delicious it can be. If you’re a fan of the wakame salad served at sushi bars, try making your own with this basic recipe below. You can season to taste, and it costs less than half of what you’d pay for prepared versions. Plus, a package of dried wakame is shelf-stable and makes several servings, so it’s an excellent pantry item for when you’ve run out of lettuce or fresh salad fixings.
Kate’s Wakame Salad
Serves 4
While the wakame rehydrates, mix the dressing in the bottom of a serving bowl. Then simply add the slivered wakame, toss and serve at room temperature or chilled. The salad will be darker than commercially made varieties, which use preservatives to retain the bright green hue.
- 1 ounce dried wakame seaweed
- Dressing:
- 1/4 cup rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons grapeseeed, canola or neutral flavored oil
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- Red pepper flakes to taste
- 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
Rinse the wakame, place in a bowl, and cover with water. Soak until soft, about 5 minutes. Squeeze dry and trim away the spines if the pieces are whole. Slice or chop into thin strips, and toss in a bowl with the dressing. Serve now, or cover and chill until ready to serve. The salad will keep refrigerated 3 days, or may be frozen and thawed in the refrigerator.
Copyright ©2009 Kate Heyhoe, NewGreenBasics.com
Author Interview
Kate Heyhoe answers questions about her new book…
Cooking Green
Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen
the New Green Basics Way
What do you mean by “shrink your cookprint”?
Your “cookprint” measures the entire environmental impact you make on the planet when you cook or eat—whether you cook the meal or someone else prepares it for you. In other words, your “cookprint” is the entire chain of resources used to prepare meals, and the waste produced in the process. So essentially, Cooking Green is a lifestyle manual for shrinking your “cookprint.”
The cookprint starts with food, in your garden or at the farm; it travels to your kitchen (or a restaurant kitchen) and takes residence in the fridge, freezer or pantry. The cookprint also includes the food’s packaging, transportation and refrigeration demands along the way. Then, the cookprint grows larger every time heat or fuel is added, from a cooktop, oven, or small appliance. Discarded resources, whether they’re organic produce trimmings, plastic packaging, or water down the drain, further color the cookprint. As do the implements you cook with and the way you store leftovers. Understanding your cookprint helps put the cook squarely in charge of just how big, or how green, that cookprint will be—in ways that include yet extend beyond buying organic or local, or eating meat or not.
Is this book just for cooks?
Cooking Green is for any one who eats. President Obama has committed to a green economy, and on every level, being “green” has established itself as a national priority. Adopting greener lifestyles doesn’t have to be tough, and this book focuses on ways to be green without feeling deprived. Chapters highlight which types of foods are lower-impact, and tips address water heaters, garbage disposals, barbecuing, shopping, restaurants and each link in the food chain, so it’s of value to every one who eats, even if you don’t cook.
And if you do cook, you’ll discover that the kitchen is ripe with opportunities for going greener. It’s the place where people can make real choices, and take direct control of their impact—without letting the family feel deprived, hungry, or stressed. In fact, everyone will feel better just knowing they’re helping the planet. With the book’s step-by-step model recipes, they can do it one bite at a time.
What inspired you to write this book?
Buying organic is a great green practice, and as a cook, I knew we could do more to combat climate change. Lots more. The result: A treasury of eating, cooking and shopping habits that are as simple as changing light bulbs, and integrate just as easily into daily life. Collectively, they’re a whole new approach to cooking the basics. They include fuel and water conservation, and the strategies go from farm, to food, to fuel, to fork. They push the concept of “green cooking” into how we cook, including cooking methods and cookware, appliances, and water usage.
What makes this book different from the rest?
Many green living books require such a major commitment to lifestyle change, I think they push mainstreamers away. They provide great advice on green construction and buying composting worms, but often they don’t address common day-to-day tasks, like cooking and eating.
My book connects the gap between buying greener foods and greener ways to cook them. What really sets this book apart from other culinary or green living books is that my message includes, but goes far beyond, organics, composting, and recycling—because it also scrutinizes the physical ways we cook. My book asks (and answers) such questions as:
- Can the way I cook my favorite meatloaf truly make a green difference?
- How can I be more fuel-efficient when it comes to baking, broiling, or doing dishes?
- Why is grilling with hardwood less polluting than using charcoal briquettes?
- Is it really so easy to be greener when I shop, cook, and clean? (Yes, it really is.)
So my book is about every aspect of energy-efficiency—shopping, cooking, eating and cleaning up. In ways not instantly thought of as “green.”
- …Like certain benefits of small appliances (including rice cookers and electic tea kettles, not just toaster ovens or slow cookers)
- …It’s about foregoing the bigger-is-better mentality (do you really need a double-wall oven in your next house? A toaster oven is a better second choice)
- …And making better use of the tools you already now (did you know convection ovens produce 30% less greenhouse gases than conventional ovens? Maybe it’s time to figure out how that convection setting works.)
- …It’s carrying an ice chest with freezer packs in the car so you can do a full day of errands at once, without the food going bad, thus saving on mileage, gasoline, and time.
- …Or neat tricks to keep lettuce and other perishables fresh an extra three days, so you can eat better and shop less frequently.
And it’s realistic: Baking and roasting in winter naturally make more sense, but sometimes a cook just needs to use her oven, no matter what time of year. So this book tackles summer baking with green options that avoid ratcheting up the AC. Eating lower on the food chain is also important, and the book recommends consuming less meat, but it also suggests greener meaty options, like stretching out portions of grass-fed beef, for die-hard committed carnivores.
What’s an “ecovore”?
Our planet’s food resources can shift in abundance amazingly quickly. A fish species that thrived last winter may be in short supply this year, or a plentiful crop (like corn) can inadvertently increase global hunger when it becomes a biofuel. Ongoing drought can limit what’s available and increase the prices we pay. I believe it’s important to be mindful of our food supply even as it changes. Food is impacted by climate, and also by our own actions, which can have both good and unintended consequences. An ecovore watches, reads, and pays attention to global food conditions, and makes choices based on what’s happening now. It’s conscious eating with a “to-the-moment” awareness.
You say this book speaks to short attention spans. What do you mean?
The opening chapters detail the concept of “New Green Basics” and preview the strategies. But overall, chapter-by-chapter reading of this book is optional—it’s meant to be absorbed in snippets, sidebars, and quick hits, ideal for new-media-minds. Flip through it whenever you have time, and you’ll find something handy to absorb. For instance, there are sidebars and tactics presented in lists, tips for water conservation, and a “Green Meter” introduces each recipe with bullet points on the basic green strategies being used, when the dish is most seasonal to make the most of local ingredients, estimated prep and cooking times, and special conveniences for the cook.
What exactly are the “New Green Basics”?
They’re the basic rules of everyday cooking, but updated with the planet in mind. How you cook is as important as what you cook. Without abandoning your favorite recipes, you can bake, roast, broil, grill, and fry in vastly greener ways, saving fossil fuels, reducing greenhouse gases, and shrinking your carbon footprint. Cooking Green (the book) shows you how, and you’ll find more recipes and strategies here at NewGreenBasics.com.
For other interviews with Kate Heyhoe about Cooking Green, check out Celebrity Chef Chat at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online and, in print, It’s Easy Being Green in the April issue of Austin Monthly (Austin, TX).
Buy Cooking Green
Cooking Green:
Reducing Your Carbon Footprint in the Kitchen
the New Green Basics Way
-
Recipes
Thai Style Albacore
April 26, 2009 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Thai Style Albacore
with Lemongrass & Mushrooms
Serves 2-3
- 3 tbsp peanut oil
- 1 lb albacore tuna, loin cut into 1-inch chunks
- Salt & pepper to taste
- 1 stalk lemongrass, minced
- 1 small shallot, chopped
- 2 dried chilies (or to taste)
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 cups shitake mushrooms, sliced
- 2 cups bok choy, shredded
- 1 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
- 2 tsp nam pla (fish sauce)
- 1/2 tsp palm sugar
- 1 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
1. Heat the oil over high heat. Add the tuna and season with salt & pepper. Stir fry the tuna until the chunks are seared on all sides.
Remove to paper towels to drain and set aside.
2. In the same pan (adding oil if necessary) add the lemongrass, shallot and chili peppers. Fry until shallot begins to turn golden.
Add the garlic, shitakes and bok choy. Stir fry 2 minutes. Add the soy sauce, nam pla, palm sugar, cilantro, and the reserved tuna.
Toss together until thoroughly incorporated and hot through.
3. Serve immediately over steamed rice, bean thread noodles or soba noodles.
Recipe courtesy of Chef Eric Jenkins
Troll-Caught Albacore Tuna Recipes
- Grilled Curried Albacore Cakes
- Albacore in Puttanesca Sauce
- Moroccan Tuna Skewers with Zucchini and Oranges
- Thai Style Albacore with Lemongrass and Mushrooms
- Salade Nicoise Sandwiches
Salade Nicoise Sandwiches
April 26, 2009 by Kate Heyhoe · Comments Off on Salade Nicoise Sandwiches
Makes 6 sandwiches
- 3 six-ounce cans of troll-caught albacore, drained
- 2 1-pound soft French or Italian bread loaves
- 3 tablespoons drained capers
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1-1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 6 tablespoons olive paste (olivada) or olive spread
- 2-1/2 ounce packages fresh arugula or watercress
- 2 tomatoes, sliced
- 1 red onion, thinly sliced
1. Combine albacore, capers, mayonnaise and fresh lemon juice in medium bowl, add pepper to taste.
2. Cut each bread loaf crosswise into 3 pieces, then halve each piece lengthwise. Pull out centers of bread pieces, leaving 1/2- inch-thick crusts.
3. Spread olive paste on inside of each bread piece, then line with a generous amount of arugula or watercress.
4. Spread on 1/2 cup of the albacore mixture, top with the sliced tomatoes and onions, and replace the top pieces of bread.
