This is a very moist, gluten-free single-layer cake topped with sautéed orange slices. A mix of oranges, such as blood orange, mandarin, and Cara Cara, slightly overlapping atop the cake, creates a beautiful presentation. Tip: Zest the oranges you’ll sauté for the topping and use the zest in the batter.
Ingredients
For the batter:
2 cups almond flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea or kosher salt
1 tablespoon orange zest
1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the pan
3 extra large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
For the sautéed oranges:
2 to 3 oranges
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla or 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
Directions
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9-inch round cake pan with parchment paper. Brush the paper and the sides of the pan with olive oil.
Step 2
In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients with the orange zest. Add in the rest of the ingredients and fold with a large spatula to combine. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and shake gently to level. Bake for 30 minutes or until the tip of a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then unmold the cake onto the rack and carefully peel off the parchment paper. Let it cool completely and transfer to a serving platter or cake plate.
Step 3
While the cake is cooling, make the oranges: Slice the oranges as thinly as
possible; if you like the slight bitterness of orange peel, leave the peels on; if you want a sweeter finish, peel the oranges before slicing. Heat a wide frying or
sauté pan over medium heat. When hot, add the olive oil and butter. When the
butter is fully melted, add the orange slices in one layer. Sauté over medium heat for 2 minutes, flip and sauté for another 2 minutes. Sprinkle on the granulated sugar and flip again. Add the vanilla or Grand Marnier and let the syrup boil down until it’s very thick, about 2 minutes, watching carefully so that it doesn’t burn. Use tongs to arrange the orange slices over the cake and then drizzle on the pan syrup (if the syrup has thinned a bit, return it to the stovetop for 2 minutes to thicken).
My Merry Band of Tasters and I were treated to this recipe at the Di Mercurio family’s farm in Italy after an olive harvest, and master miller Duccio Morozzo and I liked it so much we decided to recreate it back in his Roman kitchen.
Ingredients
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1/2 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
1/2 small eggplant, stemmed, peeled, and diced
1/2 small zucchini, stemmed and diced
1 small red onion, peeled and diced
Coarse sea salt
8 ounces dry rigatoni
3 cups tomato purée or crushed tomatoes
Parmigiano-Reggiano for serving
Crushed red pepper flakes for serving
Basil leaves for garnish
Directions
Step 1
Pour the 1/4 cup of olive oil into a cold saucepan. Add the bell pepper, eggplant, zucchini, onion, and a pinch or two of salt. Sauté the vegetables until they’re soft and cooked through, 10 to 12 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta, and cook until al dente according to the package directions.
Step 2
Stir the tomato purée into the vegetables and simmer over medium-low heat for 5 minutes.
Step 3
Purée the sauce with a stick blender until it’s fairly smooth. Season with additional salt, if desired. Drain the rigatoni and add to the sauce. Gently stir to combine. Transfer to a warmed shallow bowl and serve with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, red pepper flakes, and extra olive oil for drizzling. Garnish with basil as desired.
Garden Pasta alla Hermes Recipe, Spotlight on Gluten-Free Pasta, Benefits of Green Foods and Canned Tomatoes, Plus Boosting Your Brain
The tomato purée we used in this recipe is called passata and you can find it at larger supermarkets or online. In a pinch, you can use high-quality canned crushed tomatoes like the San Marzano variety. If you have a bounty of fresh tomatoes from your garden or farmers’ market, as a variation chop them and add to the pan along with the other vegetables, omitting the jarred sauce. I love it in all these ways!
My Merry Band of Tasters and I were treated to this recipe at the Di Mercurio family’s farm in Italy after an olive harvest, and master miller Duccio Morozzo and I liked it so much we decided to recreate it back in his Roman kitchen.
Ingredients
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1/2 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
1/2 small eggplant, stemmed, peeled, and diced
1/2 small zucchini, stemmed and diced
1 small red onion, peeled and diced
Coarse sea salt
8 ounces dry rigatoni
3 cups tomato purée or crushed tomatoes
Parmigiano-Reggiano for serving
Crushed red pepper flakes for serving
Basil leaves for garnish
Directions
Step 1
Pour the 1/4 cup of olive oil into a cold saucepan. Add the bell pepper, eggplant, zucchini, onion, and a pinch or two of salt. Sauté the vegetables until they’re soft and cooked through, 10 to 12 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta, and cook until al dente according to the package directions.
Step 2
Stir the tomato purée into the vegetables and simmer over medium-low heat for 5 minutes.
Step 3
Purée the sauce with a stick blender until it’s fairly smooth. Season with additional salt, if desired. Drain the rigatoni and add to the sauce. Gently stir to combine. Transfer to a warmed shallow bowl and serve with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, red pepper flakes, and extra olive oil for drizzling. Garnish with basil as desired.
Yields 4 lunch or 2 dinner servings.
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Gluten-Free Pastas Get Creative
You don’t have to be on a gluten-free diet to reap the benefits of vegetable- and legume-based pastas. You’ll not only skip the refined flour, but also get a nutrient boost depending on the type you choose, and some are made from a single ingredient—no fillers or other additives. Yellow pea pasta, introduced last year by Zenb, delivers 17 grams of protein and 11 grams of fiber in a three-ounce serving. Black soy bean pasta from O the Only Bean has 25 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber in just two ounces. There are also pastas made from chickpeas and other lentils, cauliflower, and cassava, a vegetable that has a wheat-like taste.
Healthy Kitchen Nugget
Canned Goodness
Canned tomatoes are one of the most versatile foods to keep in your pantry, and I always have a selection on hand. Tomato purée is great for making smooth sauces, while crushed tomatoes will give your dishes more texture. Whole peeled tomatoes are excellent for slow-cooked sauces, especially meat-based ones. Diced tomatoes are perfect for a fast salsa or when you want to add more texture to a cooked dish—no cutting required and they hold their shape. And, of course, don’t forget tomato paste for adding sweet richness and concentrated taste.
For Your Best Health
Go-To “Green” Foods
A landmark study from University of Michigan researchers, published in the journal Nature Food, has ranked more than 5,800 foods by how much they negatively or positively impact both our health and the environment. The researchers used a new epidemiology-based nutritional index, the Health Nutritional Index, or HENI, which they developed in collaboration with nutritionist Victor Fulgoni III from Nutrition Impact LLC. HENI calculates the net beneficial or detrimental health burden of a serving of food in terms of minutes of healthy life. To create their rankings, they also factored in 15 dietary risk factors and disease burden estimates and nutrition profiles of foods from the What We Eat in America database of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Foods with positive scores add healthy minutes of life, while foods with negative scores are linked to outcomes that can be detrimental to health. As just one example, eating a hot dog could cost you 36 minutes of healthy life, but eating a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes of healthy time alive.
They also classified food choices according to three color zones: green, yellow, and red. Green represents foods we should eat more of and that have low environmental impacts, with nuts, fruits, field-grown vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and environmentally raised seafood topping the list. As many other health studies have found, processed meats top their list of red foods, which also includes many red meats as well as seafood raised and/or harvested using unhealthy practices. In terms of the big picture, they found that substituting 10% of daily calories from red foods with the aforementioned green foods could reduce your dietary carbon footprint by one-third and let you gain 48 minutes of healthy minutes per day.
As with most food decisions, the researchers advise making balanced choices because nutritionally beneficial foods might not always generate the lowest environmental impacts, and vice versa. You can read a summary of the study at Futurity.org.
Fitness Flash
More Brain Boosts
Building on the link between better cognitive function and engaging in mentally stimulating activities, physical exercise, and positive social interactions, researchers have found that one form of social interaction in particular—having someone in your life who you can count on to listen to you when you need to talk—can improve what’s called cognitive resilience. This is a measure of the brain’s ability to function better than it should in view of one’s physical aging. The new study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that people with “listener availability” had higher total cerebral volume, which is associated with greater cognitive resilience.
“We think of cognitive resilience as a buffer to the effects of brain aging and disease,” said lead researcher Joel Salinas, MD, assistant professor of neurology at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine and a member of the neurology department’s Center for Cognitive Neurology. “This study adds to growing evidence that people can take steps, either for themselves or the people they care about most, to increase the odds they’ll slow down cognitive aging or prevent the development of symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease—something that is all the more important given that we still don’t have a cure for the disease.”
Dr. Salinas added that while Alzheimer’s usually affects older people, the results of this study show those under 65 would benefit from this form of social support. For every unit of decline in brain volume, individuals in their 40s and 50s with low listener availability had a cognitive age that was four years older than those with high listener availability. “These four years can be incredibly precious. Too often we think about how to protect our brain health when we’re much older, after we’ve already lost a lot of time decades before to build and sustain brain-healthy habits,” he explained. “But today, right now, you can ask yourself if you truly have someone available to listen to you in a supportive way, and ask your loved ones the same. Taking that simple action sets the process in motion for you to ultimately have better odds of long-term brain health and the best quality of life you can have.”
Greek Fava Recipe, Spotlight on Legumes and Gluten-Free Legume Pasta, and the Truth About Diet and Exercise
This is the time of year when I’m usually in Italy and Greece, tasting the most amazing, freshly pressed olive oils and working with my growers on creating flavorful and unique blends. There’s nothing quite like spending fall in the heart of the Mediterranean, with its comfortable daytime temps and cool evenings, wonderful for unwinding at a Greek taverna, savoring luscious mezze—their wide array of appetizers—and wine with people who not only love them, too, but are responsible for growing the crops that chefs and vintners depend on.
Mediterranean food is rich, heart-warming, stick-to-your-ribs cuisine. With this week’s recipe, you can bring one of my favorite tastes of Greece to your own table…
In Greece, “fava” is a creamy purée made from the yellow split peas traditionally grown on the island of Santorini. These split peas are not related to fava beans, though both are legumes. Yellow and green split peas are great pantry items, and supermarket brands cost just cents a bag. But if you really want to splurge, for just a few dollars more, you can buy true Greek yellow split peas from Arosis, a purveyor that sources them from small Greek farms. Many online merchants sell a variety of the company’s products.
Greek fava is a wonderful twist on hummus, the better-known legume-based dip. Fava has a silky creaminess for a great mouthfeel. It’s often topped with caramelized onions and capers and served with toasted pita wedges, but I love using cucumber spears and sliced veggies for dipping.
Ingredients
1 cup dry yellow split peas
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock, homemade or low-sodium canned
2 small onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 bay leaf
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus more if desired
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon fresh oregano or flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
Coarse salt
Freshly ground pepper
Paprika (smoked if possible)
Optional: capers, caramelized onions and lemon wedges
Directions
Step 1
Rinse the split peas in cold water to remove any grit and drain. Transfer to a large saucepan and pour in enough stock to cover by at least an inch—start with 2.5 cups. Add half the diced onion, the garlic and the bay leaf. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and skim off any foam that accumulates on top. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the peas reach a thick, porridge-like consistency, 30 to 60 minutes. Stir occasionally and add the final half-cup of broth if all the liquid is absorbed before the peas are tender—don’t let them dry out or scorch on the bottom of the pan.
Step 2
When the peas are done, allow them to cool. Discard the bay leaf. Transfer the peas to a food processor using a slotted spoon and reserving any remaining cooking liquid in case needed. Add 5 tablespoons of the olive oil and the lemon juice and process until smooth. The consistency should be like mashed potatoes. If the mixture is too dry, add any stock that remained in the pan or a couple of tablespoons of water. Add the oregano or parsley and pulse until well distributed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Step 3
Mound the fava in a serving bowl and top with a sprinkle of paprika and the remaining diced onion and tablespoon of olive oil or more to taste. If making ahead, refrigerate and then let it come to room temperature before digging in. Garnish with capers, caramelized onions and lemon wedges as desired.
Quick Kitchen Hack: Once a week I like to make a batch of caramelized onions. Not only are they great on the fava, but they’re also delicious as a condiment or flavor booster on everything from eggs and burgers to steamed vegetables and even toast. Slice three or four large onions and sauté in 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Cook them low and slow—it could take up to an hour—until completely soft and brown, a sign that their natural sugar has been released. Finish with a splash of your favorite balsamic vinegar, pack into a glass jar, and refrigerate.
Yields 6 appetizer servings.
Healthy Ingredient Spotlight
Superstar Legumes
Legumes are superstars among plant-based foods because of their fiber, protein and wealth of other nutrients. Within legumes is the group called pulses. These are specifically plants that have pods, explains USA Pulses, and a pulse itself is the dry edible seed within the pod. Among the most delicious types are whole and split dry yellow and green peas; green, French green, red, black and small brown lentils; and a veritable army of beans, including the well-known kidney beans, great northern beans and black-eyed peas (a bean, not actually a pea!), adzuki beans, the oversized cranberry bean, and, yes, the fava bean. Explore more at pulses.org.
Healthy Kitchen Nugget
To Soak or Not to Soak
Not all legumes need a long soak before they can be used. Simply rinse lentils and dried peas, removing any tiny pebbles you might find. For cooking, a good rule of thumb is to start with 2.5 cups liquid per 1 cup lentils, 2 cups liquid for 1 cup dried peas, and add more as needed during cooking. They’re often tender after a 30-minute simmer.
You can cook beans without soaking first, but they’ll take a lot longer. For chickpeas, use 3 cups water to 1 cup chickpeas, and soak for 8 to 24 hours. For beans, use enough water to cover and soak overnight. Your bowl should allow for the beans to double or triple in size. Drain, rinse with cool water and simmer 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on your recipe.
For a faster no-soak method, USA Pulses recommends a quick boil and rest: Boil 2 cups water and 1 cup beans for 3 minutes, or 3 cups water and 1 cup chickpeas for 2 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and wait 1 hour before proceeding with your recipe.
For Your Best Health
Gluten-Free Legume Pasta
You know that regular pasta is part of the pantheon of refined flour-based products that lack the micronutrients of whole grains. Enriched pasta contains some, but hardly all, of the vitamins and minerals lost when the wheat is refined. But whole-grain pasta isn’t the only alternative, particularly if you want gluten-free or simply fewer carbs. Enter legume-based pasta—black beans, chickpeas and red lentils are taking the starring spots among pasta alternatives from companies like Eden Foods and even pasta king, Barilla. Plus, they have more fiber and more protein than whole-grain pasta, according to a report by UC Berkeley. To keep the goodness going, think vegetable- and olive oil-based sauces rather than butter or cream.
Fitness Flash
The Truth About Diet and Exercise
Whether you’re a casual or serious fitness enthusiast, you know that exercise and diet work together to build a better body. But it turns out that some sports nutrition lore is actually incorrect. At last year’s meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, renowned Newton, Massachusetts-based sports nutritionist Nancy Clark, RD, set the record straight.
You don’t need protein supplements to build muscle. Getting about 110 to 150 grams of real protein a day will do it. To increase muscle size, the answer is strength training.
Think protein if you want a bedtime snack. In fact, a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2018 found that a cup of cottage cheese about an hour before you turn in will help with muscle repair while you sleep.
For vegans, make sure to get enough leucine, the amino acid that triggers muscles to grow. Nonanimal sources include nuts, seeds, soy foods, lentils, beans and other plant proteins. Since a standard serving of most of these plant-based foods doesn’t have as much leucine as a serving of meat, for instance, you might need to have a serving at every meal and for snacks to get the recommended daily intake, Clark advises.
