This stuffed kale recipe is best served aside guacamole or a fat-based dressing for the final touch.

If you are anything like me, you love your salads rich and balanced in texture and flavor. When assembling a salad, I usually follow the Buddha-Bowl (and its relatively loose) guidelines: greens plus vegetable scraps plus grain plus avocado. However, even that absolutely satisfying meal can cease being a sight for sore (and hungry) eyes. That’s why, my new favorite way to enjoy salads is by wrapping greens around the would-be add-ins like in this stuff kale recipe. So good. Enjoy!

Bulgur Rice Stuffed Kale Leaves

Serves about 15

Ingredients

• ½ cup bulgur rice (or any rice)
• 4 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon olive oil
• ½ cup finely chopped onion
• ¼ cup finely chopped red bell pepper
• 1 scallion, chopped
• 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 small tomato, shredded
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1/2 teaspoon + few dashes sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon + few dashes dried dill
• 10-15 leaves of lacinato kale (about 1-2 bunches)
• 1 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/4 cucumber, shredded

Directions

Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, onion, and red pepper to a pot brought to medium-high heat. Cook and stir for a few minutes before adding 1 tablespoon of tomato paste. Continue to stir and cook for another minute. Add the bulgur and cook for another minute. Next, pour in 1 cup of water and stir until evenly combined. Bring the mixture to a boil before reducing heat to a simmer. Season with salt, pepper, and paprika. Put a lid on the pot and let simmer for 10-15 minutes or until the water has been absorbed and the rice cooked. Set aside to cool and pop into the fridge.

While the bulgur cooks, in a separate large pot filled 3/4 the way with water, bring to a soft boil. Add the lacinto kale stalks and sun-dried tomatoes. Simmer for 15 minutes. Both the kale and sun-dried tomatoes will soften. Remove from heat and drain. Rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process.

With the bulgur mixture now cooled, fold in the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of tomato paste, lemon juice, chopped scallions, 1 chopped garlic clove, dill, oregano, basil, and grated tomato. (I add them at this stage because I want their flavors to remain fragrant and alive, not cooked to death.) Chop the sun-dried tomatoes that were boiled with the kale and add them to the bulgur. Mix the bulgur mixture until all is evenly combine. Taste for spices and add more salt if necessary.

To assemble, lay out each kale leaf vertically. Take 1-2 tablespoons of the bulgur mixture and place it on the bottom end of the long kale leaf. Roll the leaf over the mixture and unto itself once. Fold sides inward, and then continue to roll the leaf until it reaches its end. Continue with the remaining leaves.

Serve alongside your favorite salad dressing or guacamole. Enjoy!

Related on EcoSalon

Millet, Buckwheat and Other Healthy Grains to Try ASAP

10 Essential Items for a Vegan Pantry

Sunday Recipe: Kale and Hazelnut Quinoa Cakes

Photo Credit: GlowKitchen

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There’s much ado about heirloom crops, which promote genetic diversity. Acclaimed chef and author Hugh Acheson wants you to eat them- and rice grits, in particular- because they’re about more than just mere sustenance.

To be honest, before last June, the only thing I knew about Hugh Acheson, chef/partner of Athens, Georgia’s, Five and Ten, and The National, and Atlanta’s Empire State South, is that he has one hell of a unibrow (well-documented), and that his intensity as a part-time judge on “Top Chef” freaked me out. Yet, while attending the 31st annual FOOD & WINE Classic in Aspen this past summer, I was intrigued by a cooking demo Acheson was offering, called “Great Southern Grains.” The focus of the seminar was on the “rice economy and Southern resurgence of a cultural interest in heritage grains [his term for heirloom].” In a nutshell, we were learning about rice grits, and their role in what Acheson calls New Southern cuisine.

I’m a fool for grains; I’ve never met a variety I dislike, be it farro, millet, barley, or buckwheat groats. And now that I’ve seen Acheson as a presenter, I stand corrected, as the James Beard-award-winning Acheson, also a former Food & Wine “Best New Chef,” is my new hero. His vast knowledge about food, including the sociological and anthropological aspects, as well as his intelligence, foresight, and self-deprecating humor (you should hear him talk about his eyebrow), made me completely rethink my baseless former opinion. Do I sound like I have a crush? I do, in that it’s rare to find a chef who is so articulate and down-to-earth.

Image: Galdones Photography

Acheson, a Canadian, moved to the Deep South nearly two decades ago; his fascination with Southern culture has made him a bona-fide expert on the region’s food history. Before the Civil War, the rice economy of states like North Carolina and Georgia were based upon slave labor; it was these African slaves who fully developed the rice culture of the region (As Acheson rightly points out, “Southern food was not created by Southerners; it was created by slaves and slave traders.”). After the war, labor-intensive rice cultivation moved to states like Texas and Arkansas, where it was easier to flood and drain fields.

Rice grits are an heirloom rice with small, “broken” grains; Acheson prepares them in the manner of risotto, adding liquid in small quantities for the grains to absorb. The result is a delicate, creamy dish that takes well to all manner of cooked vegetables or meats, or can be used in desserts, or a breakfast food as you would regular grits or polenta. The rice grits espoused by the chef are a variety called Carolina Gold rice, which is regaining its popularity and being cultivated by regional family farms thanks to the persistence of chefs like Acheson, who don’t want to see a monoculture destroy the historical or agricultural legacy of the South. Acheson and fellow Southern chefs like Sean Brock of Charleston’s Husk have been instrumental in helping to revive and make relevant family farms, as the demand for specialty produce, meat, and poultry grows.

“Rice grits are one of the defining grains of the New South, to me; I have very strong opinions about Southern food for a Canadian,” jokes Acheson. “It’s not greasy buckets of fried chicken; that’s only been the fast food culture of the last 50 years. If we make fresh, wholesome food available to our kids, that culture of heritage foods, home cooking, will be there for the next generation. If we don’t, we’ll continue to poison the well as we have been for the last few generations.”

Image: Adrianne Behning Photography

As Acheson pointed out, the “New South” is one largely comprised of new ethnic groups, most notably Koreans and other Asian immigrants. For his demo, he prepared a dish that he feels is representative of this new food culture: Rice grits with kimchi and pork belly, and quick-pickled scallion and radish (see recipe below). The dish is garnished with local roasted peanuts, in a nod to both Southern and Asian influences. When it comes to sourcing ingredients, says Acheson, “I’m not a zealot, but I feel that “farm-to-table has become too much of a marketing term. I prefer to say I cook from my community. It’s just what we do.”

Try Acheson’s comforting fall recipe for rice (grit) pudding with butternut squash and sweet milk tea.

Save the date! The 2014 FOOD & WINE Classic in Aspen will be held June 20-22.

Top image: robholland

Related articles on EcoSalon:

Rice, Rice Baby: 7 Ways to Prepare the World’s Most Popular Grain

Turn Your Backyard into a Mini-Food Farm

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Something’s fishy about sushi.

Many people regard sushi as light fare – individual bites of effortless, diet-friendly goodness. However, the Japanese delight bears some danger zones that you should consider before making sushi a regular occasion.

Just like a salad, sushi can easily turn fattening if the add-ins begin to overwhelm the point of it all. One tuna roll has some 200 calories, but if you opt for the shrimp tempura roll, we’re talking upwards of 500 calories and 20 grams of fat. Many of us don’t even stop at one roll, either, so while each bite may feel light, the calories are adding up.

Other sneaky offenders include soy sauce, rice, and raw fish. Soy sauce may be low in calories, but it makes up for it with its high sodium content – one tablespoon of regular soy sauce contains up to 900 milligrams! White rice alone is adding both empty starches and extra calories to your diet while raw fish is putting you at risk of foodborne diseases by way of bacteria, viruses, parasites and mercury.

When eating out, avoid making tuna your go-to roll in order to reduce your risk of mercury exposure. If you can’t separate sushi from tempura, cream cheese, or any other fried or decadent add-ins, look at sushi as a rare indulgence rather than a daily pick-me-up. And if you want to keep things super safe, always order the veggie roll.

To keep the standards high and the mystery at bay, try making your own vegetable sushi. The following recipe is a homemade, frills-free way of doing just that. Packed with veggies, cauliflower rice, and the creaminess of the avocado, you can have your sushi and eat it too!

Homemade Cauliflower Sushi

Makes 6-8 rolls

Ingredients:

• 6-8 nori sheets
• 1 cup shredded cauliflower
• 1 carrot
• 1 cucumber
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 avocado
• 2 scallions
• Nama Shoyu for dipping
• Fresh ginger for a palette cleanse

Directions:

Place the pepper on a stove top on high heat, making sure to turn it occasionally until it is completely blackened. Immediately place into a paper bag, store, and set aside while you prepare the rest of the vegetables.

Julienne the cucumber, carrots and scallions. Slice, core, and remove the avocado meat – slice into thin pieces. All the vegetables should be the same size. When the red pepper has cooled, remove it from the bag and under warm water, use your hands to wipe off the blackened skin. It will come off easily. Remove the pepper’s stem and seeds and julienne it.

In a food processor, process cauliflower florets until rice-like in consistency. This will be the “rice”.

Lay out each nori sheet and on one end, parallel to the dotted lines on the sheet, layer the cauliflower rice, 2 slices each of cucumber, carrot, red pepper and avocado.

Roll tightly, folding the nori unto itself as you go.

Wet the edge with a bit of water to help it stick closed.

Slice into sushi-sized pieces and serve with Nama Shoyu, which is unpasteurized soy sauce, and fresh ginger. Enjoy!

Images: Avlxyz, Aylin Erman

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

The post Nutritional Breakdown: Veggie Sushi (Without a Speck of Rice) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Don’t let leftovers go to waste. 

How many times have you ordered Chinese or Thai food and ended up with more white rice leftovers than you know what to do with? Much of the time that rice just sits in the fridge, forgotten, until you spy it days later and end up tossing it because it’s “too old.” Not this time, people. We’ve got a way to salvage that rice before it heads to the dumpster… turn it into rice pudding! It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s the perfect way to recycle those unappealing leftovers into a sweet treat.

Ingredients:

• Leftover takeout rice (1 cup)
• 1/3 can of sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cups regular milk
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Dash of vanilla (optional)
• Fruit (optional)

Directions:

This post originally appeared in Sierra magazine.

Sierra is the magazine of the Sierra Club. Our motto: Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet. Follow Sierra magazine on Twitter.

Image: rore

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The frappuccino gets a major health revamp.

While it is high in calories, sodium, and cholesterol, it’s really the sugar content that blows one of Starbucks’s beloved beverages out of the water. Starbucks’s Caffe Vanilla Frappuccino Blended Smoothie contains 310 calories per 16-ounce serving, in addition to 3 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 220 milligrams of sodium, and 67 grams of sugar.

Sugar will go straight to your head, give you a short-term high, and then leave you lethargic and glum. It spikes your blood sugar levels, leads to weight gain, is nutritionally empty, contributes to candida, and, to put simply, is actively bad for you. If you are going to consume sugar, get it from something a bit more decadent and lasting than a down-in-a-hot-second drink, regardless of how delicious it may be!

My version of a vanilla Frappuccino smoothie is sugar-free, save for the optional chocolate syrup glaze and whipped cream, using a few drops of zero-calorie, low-glycemic stevia instead. The recipe also goes a step further by replacing cow’s milk with almond milk. Almond milk is a mere 40 calories per 8-ounce serving and avoids the common issues that arise when ingesting dairy, such as hard-to-digest proteins, hormones, depletion of enzymes and vitamins through pasteurization, saturated fat, synthetic chemicals, and a boo-ing cow.

Cutting corners in so many other ways, it’s up to you whether you want to indulge with a topping of whipped cream and chocolate syrup. You can find vegan variations of both in your local health food store.

Enjoy!

Sugar-Free Vegan Vanilla Frappuccino

Ingredients:

• 1 cup coffee cooled
• 1 cup almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, or skim milk.
• 1 banana
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 handfuls of ice
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 4 drops of liquid stevia, or 2 packets of powdered stevia
• Whipped Cream (optional)
• Chocolate Syrup (optional)

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a Vitamix and blend until smooth.

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

Image: Starbucks

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Did ancient peoples live in a Golden Age of stewardship of our planet? From forest clearances to catastrophic soil erosion, it’s clear that past civilizations had the same conflicted relationship with their environment as we do. But when it comes to how they dealt with those crises, is it fair to regard them as technologically backward?

Enter the elegant piece of land management technology called the terrace.

Terraces are a remarkably efficient way of dealing with the problems of erosion and water retention. A bare slope is too steep to hold roots or hold rainfall? Then chop it up into a series of flat surfaces. Terracing keeps soil on hillsides, helps rainwater sink into that soil and ultimately eat at the underlying bedrock (which is how soil is made), and allows roots to take hold. And best of all? All it requires is  a lot of hard work and, ideally, a good supply of stone to bolster the sides. As inventions go, it’s a rock-bottom bargain – and so it’s accessible to everyone, whatever their budget.

It’s also possible to see them as a social empowerment tool, by the poor, for the poor. In places where level terrain is scarce, who gets the flat land? The people with the most money – leaving the peasantry to make do with barren hills and slopes. Since well-maintained terraces can gradually improve the fertility of soil, terracing could be a form of investment for less wealthy farmers hunting for a way to build some capital and status…

Terracing has existed for thousands of years and in many parts of the world it’s still going strong today – even as a source of tourism revenue, as with the incredible Banaue Rice Terraces of the Philippines. They’re environmental management on a sometimes colossal scale…and anyone can have a go (if they’re prepared to sweat for it). Backward? Not if you’re one of the 99%.

Images: Indrik myneur, TheFutureIsUnwritten and bigberto.

The post Ecological Lessons From History: Farming For The 99% appeared first on EcoSalon.

That rice is one heckuva grain.

As the staple food for more than half of the world’s population, rice provides more than one-fifth of total calories consumed by humans. Nutrition-wise, it’s a complex carbohydrate low on calories, cholesterol, fat, and sodium. And because rice can be grown in nearly all climates and environments, it makes an appearance in almost every cuisine.

It follows, then, that dozens of methods for preparing rice have sprung up around the world, depending on the environment, technology, and materials available. Here, some of the most common.

In Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and parts of China, rice is cooked in terra-cotta clay pots either together with or topped with ingredients like Chinese sausage, chicken, and vegetables.

Electric rice cookers were first produced in 1945 by the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation of Japan. Now they can be found in kitchens and dorm rooms around the world.

For those who like their rice sticky, a sticky rice steamer kit from Thailand is just the ingredient. Just add mangos.

Ohsawa pots are earthenware vessels designed for use with a pressure cooker, intended to unleash the full flavor potential of brown rice for people following a macrobiotic diet.

The traditional Spanish paella pan hails from Valencia, with a flat surface for sautéing meats and vegetables before adding in rice.

Cooking rice doesn’t require more than a pot, a fire, and a little bit of water.

And when resources are really limited, you can always rely on the power of the sun, like these students using solar cookers in Hawaii.

Images: Lali Masriera, Chrissy Olson, magical-world, Angelo Amboldi, Like_the_Grand_Canyon, Miheco, Jason Lam, Sam Felder, [J], Deborah Austin, EBKauai

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