Before you get tangled up in a bowl of zucchini noodles, you should know that gluten-free eaters aren’t the only ones flocking to spiralizers.
These new kitchen gadgets that cut fruits and vegetables into long, thin strands have become popular in the past few years with people who simply want to eat more produce or who are bored with sauteeing half-moon slices of squash and carrots.
For Ali Maffucci’s mom, a Type 1 diabetic in New Jersey, it was about getting her blood sugar levels in check. She had shifted to eating a raw and vegan diet, and when she first made zucchini noodles for her daughter, the youngest Maffucci was floored at how much they tasted like the pasta she grew up eating in her Italian-American home.
“I took her spiralizer that night and made a dinner for my boyfriend,” she says. “He had the same reaction.”
For the next two months, she experimented with this newfangled tool, trying every different kind of produce she could get her hands on. She was cooking cleaner meals with fewer store-bought processed shortcut ingredients. She started shopping more frequently at the farmers market.
By the end of June 2013, the shift in her life was so apparent that she quit her job doing business development in the airline industry. The next day, motivated by the lack of spiralizer information available online, she sat down at a coffee shop and started a food blog dedicated to this newfangled contraption.
Within months, Inspiralized (inspiralized.com) had become an online watering hole for people to gather and share experiences about their own spiralizer cooking, and a book deal soon followed.
The key to catching a publisher’s eye was that Maffucci wasn’t just making noodles. She’d figured out a way to use spiralized vegetables to mimic rice and, inspired by the short-lived ramen burger fad, buns for burgers or that you could eat instead of bagels.
The realization that a spiralizer accomplishes much of what a mandoline can do opened up an entirely new world of recipes, like a red onion and watermelon salad or apple and kohlrabi slaw.
"Inspiralized: Turn Vegetables into Healthy, Creative, Satisfying Meals" (Clarkson Potter, $19.99) covers most of these discoveries and includes her definitive guide to what you can and can't spiralize. (Among the surprising produce you can use: Butternut squash, jicama, pear, plantain and cabbage.)
Maffucci knows that most people are using their spiralizers to make those zucchini noodles that attracted her in the first place, but many cooks face a common problem: Watery sauce.
To avoid this, Maffucci lends her insight.
First, use more noodles and less sauce. The water in the zucchini will thin out the sauce no matter what you do, so make the sauce thicker than you would normally. Cook the noodles in a skillet with a little cooking spray, drain them in a colander and pat the noodles dry before adding to the sauce. The longer the noodles sit in the sauce, the more water they’ll release, so only combine the noodles and sauce right before serving, and use tongs to remove the noodles from the pan instead of pouring them into a bowl.
Many of the less expensive spiralizers, around $15, work like a pencil sharpener. They are adequate for some dishes that use long, narrow vegetables such as carrots, zucchini and cucumbers but require more work on your part because you have to manually twist the vegetable. They usually have two blade sizes and come with a brush to help clean the pieces of food that get stuck between them.
The higher end spiralizers use a crank, similar to an old-fashioned apple peeler or the spiral cutters that have been making curly fries for decades, and are more versatile because you don’t have to cut vegetables to fit through a 2-inch cone. They also keep your fingers away from the blades and are a little safer, but one of the biggest benefits is the varied sizes of the blades.
Maffucci designed one like this, whose lettered blade sizes increase the accuracy of her recipes, and sells it for $49.95 on her website. Many kitchen and grocery stores carry versions made from other manufacturers.
She’s found that a spiralizer helps her use parts of a vegetable she might otherwise throw away, such as broccoli stems, but it’s also just expanding how she thinks about cooking. If there’s a new way to make rice, maybe there’s a new way to make paella. If sweet potatoes can be used in a carbonara, maybe there’s a way to work them into chocolate chip muffins.
“It’s reinventing the way we see vegetables, which is pretty powerful, and not many cooking tools can say that.”
Pears with Farro, Cherries, Walnuts and Goat Cheese
Despite the fact that this cookbook is devoted to vegetable substitutes for rice and noodles, that doesn’t mean I never eat grains. On the contrary! Farro is one of my favorites, with its pleasant chewiness and lovely nutty flavor. The creaminess of the goat cheese and the sweetness of the cherries and pear noodles complement its al dente texture. I always keep a bag of farro on hand, and I love mixing it into salads and vegetable dishes. My grandfather introduced me to farro, claiming that it fed the Roman Legions. If it’s OK for the Romans, it’s OK for me!
— Ali Maffucci
4 cups water
1 cup uncooked farro
Salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 medium Bosc pears, spiralized
1 cup pitted and halved fresh cherries
1/3 cup crumbled goat cheese
For the dressing
1 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. whole-grain or country-style Dijon mustard
2 tsp. minced fresh parsley
Bring the water to a boil in a large saucepan over high heat. Add the farro and a pinch of salt. Cook for 15 minutes or until the farro is al dente. Drain well.
Place the walnuts in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat and toast for 2 to 3 minutes or until fragrant and lightly browned.
Pulse all the dressing ingredients in a food processor until emulsified and evenly incorporated. Combine the farro, pear noodles, walnuts, and cherries in a large bowl. Pour the dressing on top and toss to combine. Transfer to a serving bowl and top with the goat cheese. Serves 3 to 4.
— From "Inspiralized: Turn Vegetables into Healthy, Creative, Satisfying Meals" by Ali Maffucci (Clarkson Potter, $19.99)
Pickled Onion and Watermelon Salad with Ricotta Salata
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 small red onion, peeled and spiralized
1 Tbsp. honey
Pinch of salt
3 cups cubed watermelon
1 Tbsp. fresh mint leaves
Shavings of ricotta salata
In a medium bowl, combine the vinegar, onion noodles, honey and salt. Let marinate in the refrigerator for 15 to 20 minutes.
Combine the watermelon and mint in a large bowl. Add the pickled onion noodles and toss. Transfer to a serving bowl and top with the ricotta salata. Serves 3.
— From "Inspiralized: Turn Vegetables into Healthy, Creative, Satisfying Meals" by Ali Maffucci (Clarkson Potter, $19.99)
“Everything Bagel” Breakfast Buns
If you ask most kids who grew up in New Jersey what their favorite breakfast is, they’ll most likely come back with “Taylor ham, egg and cheese on a bagel.” Taylor ham, or pork roll, is apparently indigenous to Jersey — and I always had mine on an everything bagel. The mere scent of this doughy breakfast favorite makes me recall those wonderful mornings when my mother would bring home a fresh batch from the local shop. Of course, I had to spiralize the undeniably best type of bagel in the world.
For the bagel mix:
1 tsp. poppy seeds
1 tsp. sesame seeds
1 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt
1/4 tsp. freshly cracked black peppercorns
For the buns:
Cooking spray
1 large Idaho potato, peeled and spiralized (can substitute sweet potato)
Salt and pepper
1 large egg and 1 egg white, lightly beaten
2 Tbsp. olive oil
Combine the bagel mix ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
To make the buns, heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat and coat with cooking spray. When water flicked onto the skillet sizzles, add the potato noodles and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook, tossing occasionally, for 5 to 7 minutes or until the potatoes are golden brown. Transfer to a large bowl and allow to cool for 2 minutes.
Stir in the eggs and bagel mix. Toss until the potato noodles are evenly coated. Fill four 6-ounce ramekins halfway with the potato noodles. Cover each with a piece of foil or wax paper, pressing it firmly down onto the potato noodles to compress them. Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes to set.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. When the oil is shimmering, add the buns two at a time, flipping each out of its ramekin into the skillet and patting the bottom until the bun falls out. Cook for 3 minutes or until set, being sure to push in any stray noodles. Carefully flip and cook another 2 to 3 minutes or until the buns are completely set and browned on both sides. Repeat with the other ramekins, adding the remaining tablespoon oil as needed.
Serve the bagel buns with the spreads and toppings of your choice. Makes 4 buns.
Note: If you don’t have 6-ounce ramekins, you can still make this and other bun recipes. Just heat 1/2 tablespoon olive oil in a skillet, and instead of packing the noodles into a ramekin and refrigerating, put 1/2 cup of the mixture in the middle of the skillet. Immediately form it into a patty and flatten with a spatula, taking care to keep the noodles tightly packed. Flip the patty after about 2 minutes, or after the bottom sets, and cook for another 2 minutes, flattening again with the back of a spatula.
— From "Inspiralized: Turn Vegetables into Healthy, Creative, Satisfying Meals" by Ali Maffucci (Clarkson Potter, $19.99)
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