Mediterranean Diet: What a way to live

Living it up Mediterranean style

            If honey-fig jam, steamed mussels and avocado in my deviled eggs is the healthy way to go, count me in.

“Living the Mediterranean Diet: Proven Principles & Modern Recipes for Staying Healthy” offers tips on how to enjoy these great flavors with friends and family. Did you need any help to thing seared scallops over spinach would work?

            Recipes are easy, because your just dealing with real food and real flavors. Remember to eat real food, make plants the star and slow down to enjoy your meal and visit. It’s easy stuff and Nick Nigro, Bay Ewald and Rea Frey will walk you through it. I hope the walk ends with these chocolates:

Dark Chocolate Tangerine Slices

Author’s note:  We find a simple, juicy tangerine to be one of the great pleasures of life. They are the perfect endto a meal, especially topped with a little dark chocolate and a sprinkle of se salt.

8 tangerines (clementines are best)

3 an one half to 4 ounces dark chocolate (with at least 70 percent cocoa)

Sea salt

How we create

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Peel the tangerines. Using a double broiler, melt the dark chocolate. Dip each tangerine slice halfway into the melted chocolate and place on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and repeat with all the slices. Refrigerate for 10 to15 minutes, or until the chocolate has hardened.

Boiled Peanuts?

         Maybe you’ve heard of  boiled peanut stands or seen them in cans of brine. What is that? I met a woman with Georgia ties who was thrilled to find a bag at a Vietnamese market in the area, so I tried some, too. Not bad at all. So you remove the wet shell and get to the wet nut, which you can pinch flat with your finger.  It’s got a savory, seasoned taste. There’s a little juice inside. Kind of like peeling crawfish.

         That just doesn’t sound right to someone used to the aroma of a flat pan of nuts roasting in the kitchen oven.  Then you take your toasted goodness outside and get all dusty peeling to get to the crunchy nuts.

         But go ahead and get into the boil. The nuts came from the market featuring Saigon Sandwich, 1020 Ninth Avenue in Port Arthur.

darraghcastillo@icloud.com