Join the Sun Basket Team!
Pantry Essentials
While your Sun Basket comes with the ingredients to make our recipes, you will need to keep a few key seasonings and healthy fats on hand.
Kosher salt
We recommend using kosher salt or sea salt for your Sun Basket recipes. While chemically there is no difference between table salt, kosher salt, and fancy sea salts, there are additives to most table salts that you might not want flavoring your food. Kosher salt’s large, coarse grains make it easy to season evenly.
Freshly ground black pepper
The volatile oils in pepper degrade quickly when exposed to air. It’s absolutely worth it to grind whole peppercorns as you need them.
Olive oil
Our go-to fat for cooking and seasoning is olive oil. It’s good for you and does magic for the flavor of everything it touches. Use a good quality oil for cooking and making sauces and dressings, but if you invest in the fancy stuff, don’t cook with it. It’s rich taste is best enjoyed unheated.
Neutral oil: Grapeseed, Canola, Coconut, Rice Bran, or Ghee
Choose any of these hearty-healthy, neutral-flavored fats for sautéeing and stir frying.
Butter
Occasionally a Sun Basket recipe will call for a bit of optional butter to finish a sauce or enhance a dish. Don’t skimp. Buy the best you can afford—it really does make a difference—and use unsalted butter, so you can control how much salt goes into your meal.
Wine
Occasionally our recipes list wine as an optional ingredient for finishing a sauce. You don’t need to break out the good bottle, but never cook with a wine you wouldn’t want to drink.
The Sun Basket Guide to Kitchen Tools
You won’t need a lot of fancy equipment to cook Sun Basket meals. Most of our recipes can be made with just a pan and a couple of simple tools. Here’s a list of our kitchen must-haves, all with a few not-completely-necessary items that can be nice to have on hand.
Must Haves:
Bowls: Sun Basket recipes call for three sizes of bowls
Small bowl: 1 quart
Medium bowl: 3 quarts
Large bowl: 5 quarts
Colander: You’ll need this for rinsing grains and beans, and straining pastas.
Cutting Board: Wooden or plastic are both great options, but get a big one—at least 15-x-20 inches—so you have plenty of room to work.
Fine-Mesh Strainer: For rinsing and straining smaller grains and pastas such as quinoa, orzo, and couscous.
Knives: Invest in a good-quality 8-inch chef’s knife and keep it sharp. This is the single most important thing you can do to make cooking easy and enjoyable. A paring knife is not essential, but it’s a great tool to have around.
Peeler: For peeling potatoes and other vegetables.
Pots and Pans: Cast-iron and stainless steel make the best pans. They retain heat well, are easy to clean, and last a long time. Non-stick pans are great for cooking eggs and fish. Just make sure you choose one that’s made from a material that won’t break down at high temperatures.
Small frying pan: 8 inches
Medium frying pan: 10 inches
Large frying pan: 12 inches
Small sauce pot: 2 quart
Medium sauce pot: 4 quart
Large sauce pot: 6 quart
Sheet pan: An 18-x-13 inch sheet pan is a kitchen work horse. Use it for roasting vegetables and proteins.
Nice to Have:
Fine-toothed grater: A rasp grater makes quick work of grating ginger, garlic, and citrus zest. Much easier than mincing the seasonings with a knife.
Juicer: Not essential—you can squeeze citrus with your hands, or twist a fork into the cut fruit to get the juice out, but a hinged Mexican juicer is good to have on hand.
Faux-Groni
Facebook LIVE—July 12, 2017
ICYMI, we’re live on Facebook.
Tune in Wednesdays at 4 p.m. PST to watch our special guests cook Sun Basket meals in our test kitchen. Get pro tips from our chefs on how to make the most of your recipes every week.
Upcoming meals and dates:
July 19: Matt Chavez, Videographer Extraordinaire at Sun Basket and New Mexico native, cooks Southwestern Chicken Skillet Enchiladas, from our second stop on our Great American Road Trip, Santa Fe.
This week, Carol Berber from Mi Rancho Tortillas cooks SoCal Fish Tacos—the first recipe from our Great American Road Trip—with Chef Justine. Mi Rancho are our go-to tortillas, a family-owned business four generations strong, grinding their own corn to make the distinctive masa for their tortillas. We talk nixtamalization, history, and crack a few jokes about more than just cracking corn.
Future guests:
July 26: Jimmy Gale from Gulfish Seafood cooks New Orleans Shrimp Creole
August 9: Elazar Sontag cooks Buffalo Wings
It’s Matcha’s Moment
Matcha cupcakes, matcha crepes, matcha Kit-Kat candy bars, #matcha: powdered green tea is having its 15 minutes. Here at Sun Basket, we’re not immune to the trend, you’ll find it in our Mango Matcha Smoothie this week.
For the uninitiated, matcha is a powdered green tea from Japan. While most teas are steeped in hot water and strained, matcha is whisked to a froth and drunk, tea leaves and all. Because you’re essentially eating the matcha, you end up with at least 10x the nutritional content of traditional green tea. That includes a host of mood-enhancing, disease-preventing phytonutrients and antioxidants.
All tea comes from the same plant, but matcha typically comes from one of three Japanese varietals thats are cultivated according to traditions that are thousands of years old. About a month before harvest, the plants are exposed to increasing amounts of shade until they’re almost in complete darkness. This forces the leaves to increase their production of chlorophyll and amino acids, boosting the glutamates, which give matcha its intense umami flavor. Premium matcha, can cost as much as $300 for a 30 gram jar.
Though matcha contains about a third of the caffeine found in a cup of coffee, many drinkers find that it produces a gentle buzz that allows them to remain focused for an extended period of time. (That’s one reason matcha is a favorite drink for software coders.)
Commonsense Rules for Healthy Eating
1. More Is better
Abundance, not restriction, is the basis of a healthy diet. Of all the reasons we eat, none is more essential than to provide our bodies with the nutrients we need to thrive. Honor this intention by focusing on foods with the highest nutrient density. Good health hinges on the quality of our food choices, not the individual metrics.
2. The Power of Plants
One day pasta is good for you, the next it’s bad. In a field where the pendulum swings at a dizzying pace, there’s one thing nutrition experts will always agree on: Optimal health is achieved through a diet that prioritizes the powerful nutrients in plants.
3. Diversify
Just as in a smart financial portfolio, the key to a sound investment in your health is to spread the wealth around. Yes, there are superfoods, but there is no one perfect food. When a variety of colors and food groups unite on one plate, there’s a synergistic effect that no single food can ever offer on its own.
4. Cook at Home
The increasing reliance on food prepared outside of the home provides the allure of convenience at the cost of our personal health. Become acquainted with your kitchen, regain control over the ingredients in your food, and claim full authorization of what deserves a place on your plate.
5. Eat here now
Take the time to be present and savor your food. You’ll enhance your appreciation of eating, allowing you to enjoy meals more, and cultivate a stronger awareness and greater appreciation of the food you eat and how it got to your plate.
6. Do You
There never was and never will be a one-size-fits-all approach to healthy eating. Nutrition is highly personal and varies according to age, gender, genetics, activity level, biochemistry, ancestry, geography—the list goes on. Opt out of rigid diets, resist the temptation for comparison, and rebel against conformity. Listen to your body and embrace the opportunity to find what brings out the best in you. Your diet should be as unique as you are.
Artwork by ekström design
Third Stop—New Orleans
One of the world’s great food cities, New Orleans has cuisine all its own. Jambalaya, po’ boys, muffaletta sandwiches, beignets, oysters Rockefeller, chicory coffee, and potent Sazerac cocktails, this list of iconic NOLA dishes is a long one. The region’s rich history, geography, and lively, food-loving, music-making residents make it one of the most delicious destinations on our road trip.
Cajun vs. Creole: What’s the difference?
Many of New Orleans’s best-known dishes can be traced back to either the Creoles (descendants of any race of the settlers in colonial La Louisiana), and the Cajuns (French Canadian immigrants). And since there are often both Creole and Cajun versions of the same dish, the differences are sometimes difficult to discern.
Creole cooking is typically more refined, while Cajun food is a rustic affair. Because Creoles were more affluent, they tend to use more ingredients along with a generous amount of butter and cream. Creole food also draws from a broader range of influences including Italian, African, Portuguese, German, and Spanish. Cajun dishes tend to be simpler and more heavily seasoned, not to be confused with spicy. Both Creole and Cajun dishes are built on what is called the holy trinity, a base of sauteed bell peppers, onions, and celery.
You’ll find more oysters, crab, and shrimp in distinctly Creole dishes like shrimp rémoulade and oyster po’ boys, while foods like boudin sausage and boiled crawfish are staples in the Cajun diet. Try Creole gumbo with blue crab, oysters, and Gulf shrimp at the legendary Antoine’s (513 Royal St., New Orleans), and a Cajun crawfish boil with all of the fixins’ at Cajun Seafood (1479 N. Claiborne Ave., New Orleans).
Classic Cocktails
New Orleans’ legendary cocktail scene dates to the 19th century, when the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street became the place to drink for people like Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and—later—Frank Sinatra. Navigating the city’s raucous nightlife can be daunting. Rather than go it alone, opt for the Drink & Learn Cocktail Tour through the French Quarter, where you’ll get a taste of classic local cocktails, visit historic landmarks like the St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest of its kind in the U.S., and drink in some of the city’s cultural history.
A New Wave of Immigrants
In the final years of the Vietnam War, an influx of immigrants from Southeast Asia settled in New Orleans, where the proximity to the Gulf and hot, humid climate made them feel at home. Today around 14,000 Vietnamese live in the city, and have done what immigrants do, opened restaurants and markets and made their food a part of the regional cuisine. Thanks to their influence, it’s now easy to find authentic Vietnamese food all across the city. Grab spring rolls and a bowl of pho at Pho Tau Bay (1565 Tulane Ave, New Orleans) or a banh mi on housemade Vietnamese French bread at Dong Phuong Bakery (14207 Chef Menteur Hwy, New Orleans).
Bananas Foster Recipe
We make no claims to this being a “healthy” version of the beloved NOLA dessert, but compared to recipes we’ve seen that call for an entire stick of butter and a half cup of sugar, ours seems downright virtuous. Coconut oil and sugar only enhance the tropical flavors here, and the end result manages to still taste rich, though far less cloying than the original.
Bananas Foster
serves 2
Shopping List
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped walnuts
1 orange
½ vanilla bean
2 ripe bananas
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
½ teaspoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons coconut sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 to 2 tablespoons dark rum
Vanilla ice cream, frozen yogurt, or Greek yogurt, optional, for serving
From your pantry
Kosher salt
Tools
Fine-toothed grater, medium frying pan with a lid
1 Toast the walnuts
In a dry medium frying pan over medium heat, add the walnuts and toast, stirring occasionally, until fragrant and starting to brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer the walnuts to a plate to cool. Wipe out the pan.
2 Prep the remaining ingredients
- Zest and juice half the orange, keeping the zest and juice separate; set aside the zest for garnish and save the remaining half orange for another use.
- Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds.
- Peel the bananas and cut crosswise on the diagonal into ½-inch-thick pieces; or slice the bananas in half lengthwise and then in half crosswise for planks.
3 Cook the bananas Foster
In the same pan used for the walnuts, over medium-high heat, melt the butter and coconut oil. Add the coconut sugar, cinnamon, 1½ teaspoons orange juice, and the vanilla bean and seeds and cook, stirring gently, until the sugar has dissolved, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the bananas and cook, turning once, until just softened and starting to caramelize, 2 to 3 minutes. Discard the vanilla bean.
Pour in as much dark rum as you like. To flambé, carefully ignite the alcohol with a wand lighter or a long match. Once the flame extinguishes itself, remove from the heat. Stir in the walnuts and season to taste with salt.
4 Serve
Fill individual bowls with your choice of ice cream, frozen yogurt, or Greek yogurt, if using. Top with the banana mixture, garnish with the orange zest, and serve.
Chef’s Tip: To infuse the bananas with rum flavor without the alcohol, this recipe uses the classic French technique known as flambé, or “flamed”: spirits are added to a hot pan, where the alcohol ignites on its own or is burned off with help from a lighter. It’s dramatic and fun to watch, but for safety’s sake, keep a lid nearby to extinguish the flames if they don’t burn out on their own.
Nutrition per serving: Calories: 270, Protein: 3 g, Total Fat: 12 g, Monounsaturated Fat: 2.5 g, Polyunsaturated Fat: 4 g, Saturated Fat: 5 g, Cholesterol: 15 mg, Carbohydrates: 39 g, Fiber: 5 g, Added Sugar: 8 g, Sodium: 250 mg. Contains: milk, tree nuts.
Bonus Recipe—ingredients not included in box
Five Essential Apps for Travelers
Summer travel is in full swing and between packing our suitcases, finding a dog sitter, and booking sightseeing tours, it’s easy to skimp on the details. Luckily, there’s an app for that. For everything from learning phrases in the local language to finding the best bakery in town, our five favorite travel apps may help make your vacation the most relaxing one yet.
Parlez-vous Google?
Avoid some of the mysteries that go along with foreign travel with Google Translate. A new feature allows you to point your phone’s camera at text and have it instantly translated. Google Translate is especially helpful for reading menus and deciphering directions.
Free
4 ½ -star user rating
Requires iOS 9.1 or later
Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android.
Apple or Android
Eat like a local
Like a more curated version of Yelp, The Infatuation collects restaurant reviews from trusted critics, instead of crowdsourcing opinions from sometimes less-than-credible sources. The to-the-point reviews and 10-point rating system help you locate delicious bites in over 17 destinations, both in the United States and abroad, including Cape Town, Mexico City, and Barcelona.
Free
5-star user rating
Requires iOS 9.0 or later
Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android.
Apple or Android
Stay in touch
We all start our trips with the best of intentions of sending postcards home. Now TouchNote makes it easy to send cards from wherever you are in the world. All you do is open the app, snap a picture, write a message, and include an address. The team at TouchNote handles the rest, printing and then mailing your customized postcards to your family and friends.
Free
4 ½-star user rating
Requires iOS 9.0 or later
Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android.
Apple or Android
Don’t forget to eat your vegetables
This international restaurant guide is every traveling vegetarian and vegan’s best friend. Finding meat-free eats in Portland, Oregon, is easy. It’s more of a challenge in Taiwan or Paraguay. Happy Cow has been compiling a list of restaurants with vegetarian and vegan options since 1999, which means they have a huge collection to offer. You can view and organize restaurants through the Happy Cow app before you begin your trip.
Free on Android, $3.99 on Apple devices.
4 ½-star user rating
Requires iOS 8.0 or later
Compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android.
Apple or Android
Recent Comments