Grilled Cauliflower Fajitas, Spotlight on Ancho Chiles, How to Create Grill Marks, Outdoor Cooking Safety and Health Benefits of Swimming

I love to mix up my grill menu, and this week’s recipe is a winner—even if you’re not a vegetarian. Cauliflower is a wonderful vehicle for classic fajita flavors—poblano and ancho chiles, merquén and cumin, and plenty of fresh herbs. Cutting the head into small florets rather than steaks means the filling is ready to go as soon as it comes off the grill—no need to slice hot food.

Grilled Cauliflower Fajitas

• Grilled Cauliflower Fajitas

  One of the best things about fajitas is that you can stuff them with anything that suits your fancy. If dairy’s not a concern, shredded cheese is a winner, and so is a dollop of sour cream. If you want to double up on the veggies, add some shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and more onions and peppers. Half the fun is letting everyone put together the combo of ingredients they like best. This recipe was adapted from a dish served at El Toro Blanco, a wonderful Mexican restaurant in New York City.

  With over 6 percent of Americans identifying as vegan and millions more describing themselves as “vegetarianinclined,” a meatless main course option belongs in your recipe repertoire.

  Ingredients

  • 1 head cauliflower, green leaves and stem removed
  • 1 orange or red bell pepper, stemmed, seeds and veins removed
  • 1 poblano pepper, stemmed, seeds and veins removed
  • 1 white onion, sliced
  • 1 tablespoon ancho chile powder
  • 1 tablespoon merquén or pimentón (Spanish smoked paprika)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
  • 1/2 cup fresh herbs, such as cilantro, parsley, and basil, stemmed and chopped
  • 8 corn tortillas
  • 1 cup salsa or pico de gallo
  • Lime wedges

  Directions

  Step 1

  Cut the cauliflower into florets and slice the red and poblano peppers into long strips. Place the cauliflower, peppers, and onions in a large bowl. Whisk together the ancho powder, merquén or pimentón, cumin, salt, and olive oil and add to the vegetables, tossing until they’re thoroughly coated. Transfer to a grill basket.

  Step 2

  Preheat your grill to medium-high, and then grill the cauliflower mixture until slightly charred and tender-crisp, about 10 minutes. Remove from the grill, transfer to a platter, and sprinkle with the pine nuts and herbs. While the grill is still hot, warm the tortillas. To serve, let each person fill two tortillas with equal amounts of the cauliflower mixture and top with salsa or pico de gallo and a squeeze of lime.
  

  Serves 4 — Recipe adapted from El Toro Blanco, New York, NY

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Ancho Chiles: Sweet and Smoky

While hot peppers are related to each other, poblano and ancho chiles are closer than most. Poblanos are large, mild, green chiles that originated in Puebla, Mexico. Anchos are simply poblanos that have been ripened and dried. They’re named for their shape—“ancho” chile literally means wide chile in Spanish. Still relatively mild and fruity, ancho chiles take on a smoky taste that adds another layer of flavor to recipes. You can use them whole, often after reconstituting with a soak in water—once softened, purée them for a great sauce base. Or you can remove the stems and seeds and grind them to a fine powder—add some extra virgin olive oil and you have the start of a great marinade. Use a sprinkle instead of black pepper to season scrambled eggs or sautéed snap peas.

Healthy Kitchen Nugget

How to Create Grill Marks

Here’s a simple trick to getting appealing crosshatches on grilled foods—from burgers to bruschetta to cauliflower “steaks.” Place the food directly on the grill and let it sear until it lifts up on its own, usually in a few minutes—less for bread, more for raw meat. Give the food a quarter turn (think of the hands on a clock moving from 12 to 3). Sear that side again for a few minutes. Then flip the food and repeat the steps for grill marks on the other side.

For Your Best Health

Outdoor Cooking Safety

Cooking and eating outdoors are two of the pleasures of warm months, but be sure to take your safe cooking practices with you when you go outside.

Keep raw food away from cooked food, just as you would in the kitchen. You might set up separate stations on your patio. If you bring burger patties to your grill on a platter, wash the platter in hot, soapy water before you use it to hold the cooked burgers.

Want to use marinade as a sauce? Divide the mixture as soon as you make it—use half to marinate food, and save the other half separately to pass later with the cooked dish. Always marinate foods in the fridge—keep them there until you’re ready to grill. Have disposable wipes handy to clean up spills.

Because bacteria multiply faster at temperatures between 40°F and 140°F, keep hot food hot at or above 140°F, and cold food cold at or below 40°F. It’s not safe to keep cold or hot food out for more than two hours, or more than one hour if the outdoor temperature is above 90°F. If you’re having a party that will go for a long time, bring out and/or cook small, fresh batches of food over the course of your event rather than all out at once. One easy trick is to keep your serving dishes on a bed of ice in a cooler or shady area. Drain off water and add more ice as it melts. Use an instant read thermometer to take the guesswork out of cooking times and help eliminate any bacteria. Hamburgers should register at 160°F and chicken at 165°F. Steak, pork, and other red meats are safe when cooked to 145°F.

Fitness Flash

Everyone Into the Pool!

Hands down, swimming is the one aerobic exercise that doesn’t feel like work. (No, floating around on a noodle doesn’t count.) The water cushions your body, so it’s a gentle workout—great if you have joint issues. Swimming taps every muscle, yet it’s forgiving if you don’t have the form of Michael Phelps. And it can ease stress and give you a mental boost even greater than a runner’s high. If it’s been some time since you swam vigorously, a refresher course on the various strokes will quickly get you “in the swim.” To find out more, check out the website of U.S. Masters Swimming—if you don’t have access to your own or a community pool, use its tool to find a swim club near you to get started.

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Grilled Flank Steak with Salsa Verde Recipe, Spotlight on Parsley, Olive Oil and Herb Cubes, The Importance of Sleep and The Four Cs of Fitness

The key to tender flank steak is to cook it to medium-rare, then slice it thinly on a sharp diagonal.

Grilled Flank Steak with Salsa Verde

• Grilled Flank Steak with Salsa Verde

  I love sauces that are simple to make yet complex in flavor, and Spanish-style salsa verde fits the bill. The capers and anchovies meld with the lemon and parsley to make the sauce zesty and salty at the same time. The extra virgin olive oil adds another level of flavor and gives this green sauce a rich mouthfeel. Leftover sauce makes a great veggie dip or a wonderful condiment for almost any sandwich. Enjoy!

  Ingredients

  For the salsa verde:

  • 1 1/2 cups packed, roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
  • 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/4 cup capers, drained
  • 2 anchovy fillets
  • 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
  • 2 medium cloves garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons)
  • Kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper

  For the steak:

  • One 2-pound flank steak
  • More kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

  Directions

  Step 1

  Make the salsa verde: Place the parsley, olive oil, capers, anchovies, vinegar, lemon juice and zest, and garlic in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pulse until the parsley is well chopped, stopping to scrape down sides as necessary. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a small bowl and set aside.

  Step 2

  Set up your grill for indirect grilling and heat to medium-high. Generously season the steak on both sides with salt and pepper. Grill the flank steak for about 3 minutes per side or until done to your liking. Let it rest for 2 minutes before carving thinly against the grain on a sharp diagonal. Serve with the salsa verde.

  Yields 4 to 6 servings.

Healthy Ingredient Spotlight

Parsley: More than a decoration

You might be so used to seeing a piece of parsley adorning your dinner plate at restaurants that you forget it’s a lot more than a decoration. Parsley not only has great flavor (many people do prefer the Italian flat-leaf variety to its curly cousin), it’s also chockfull of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Topping that list are vitamins C and A, followed by volatile oil components (sounds scary but they are actually good for you), and flavonoids with antioxidant properties that help protect cells. Parsley is the star ingredient in a South American favorite, chimichurri sauce, as well as in salsa verde. You can use parsley with (or instead of) basil for a milder pesto and as an enhancement in tomato-based dishes. And that bit of old folklore still holds true: Chew on a sprig of parsley to freshen your breath. Parsley is easy to grow in the garden and usually comes back on its own year after year.

Healthy Kitchen Nugget

Olive Oil and Herb Cubes

Whether you want to preserve herbs you grew yourself or make the most of a bunch you bought at the store or farmers’ market, a terrific option (and future timesaver) is to freeze cubes of olive oil and herbs. You can use a single herb or a mix, depending on the recipes in your repertoire. My quick technique is to rinse, chop, and pat the herbs dry, then process them with just enough olive oil to make a thick purée. Pour the purée into the sections of an ice cube tray, freeze, and transfer the cubes from the tray to a freezer bag. Then label the bag and put it back in the freezer. For a cold sauce, let the cubes defrost for about an hour before using. For a hot dish, pop them right in your pan—you might need to add an extra minute or two to the cooking time.

For Your Best Health

Importance of Sleep

A good reason to get enough sleep: British researchers tracked thousands of people at 50 years of age and found that getting six hours or less of sleep a night was associated with an increased risk for developing dementia later in life, specifically in their late 70s. They didn’t find an exact cause-and-effect relationship, so other factors might be in play, but getting enough sleep (usually considered seven to nine hours a night) is a preventive step everyone can take. The New York Times did a great analysis of the study’s limitations and positive findings if you want to know more.

Not sure how to improve sleep time and sleep quality (which helps you feel more refreshed when you wake up)? Try this advice from the CDC:

• Go to sleep at the same time each night and get up at the same time each morning, weekends included.
   
• Keep your bedroom quiet, dark, relaxing, and at a comfortable temperature—on the cool side is best.
   
• Move all electronic devices—yes, the TV and your cellphone—out of the bedroom.
   
• Stop caffeine and alcohol a few hours before bed.
   
• Exercise during the day to help fall asleep more easily at night—and boost overall health.

Fitness Flash

The Four Cs of Fitness

Having a hard time keeping your head in the game when it comes to participating in sports or simply getting in daily exercise? Try these techniques—“the four Cs”—from the American College of Sports Medicine used by athletes to stay mentally tough:

Cope. Find ways to beat stress. That means learning coping mechanisms to handle stress rather than acting like it doesn’t exist. General stress can keep you from focusing on exercise (or any activity), while stressing specifically over how well you’ll do at a competitive event can weaken your game day performance.

Confidence. Believe in yourself. Most of us focus on our shortcomings or failures, or how far we still have to go. Instead, why not spend all that energy on positive thinking? Use imagery—seeing a picture of yourself succeeding in your mind—to help you gain self-confidence. It works whether you want to run a 2K or just get through a set of weightlifting reps.

Commitment. Devote time to getting better. Yes, when exercise feels hard, it’s so easy to just throw in the towel and devote energy to aspects of your life that are already going well. But exercise is so tied to well-being that it’s important to commit to getting fitter. Make it a priority to go to the gym or walk every day, or to practice a sport to get better at it (imagery can help here, too). And when you’re engaged in fitness activities, don’t let yourself be distracted by other thoughts—give it your all for however long you do it.

Challenge. Embrace the difficult. Elite athletes welcome challenges and see them as opportunities to grow. They thrive on completing difficult fitness routines and defeating formidable opponents. The rewards go deeper than momentary satisfaction: Challenges force you to exert more effort and determination, and that leads to better performance.

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