What To Eat, by Marion Nestle

Is it a cookbook in the sense that it has recipes with amounts measured out and instructions on how to make dishes? No. But to cook you need ingredients, and to cook well you need good ingredients. The beauty of this book is that it doesn’t tell you what to make, it simply tells you what to use whenever you make whatever you make. That’s valuable. You’ve probably heard of Michael Pollan by now, the journalist who has become somewhat famous for his books about our food system, leading to a set of speaking engagements where he has become a leader in the slow food and organic movements.

On the very top of the cover, it reads: “Absolutely Indispensable.” – Michael Pollan.

So, there’s that.

The author, Marion Nestle, is an award-winning author and educator who lives in New York City’s Greenwich Village and teaches nutrition at New York University. Now that you know the angle the information is coming from, you probably have an idea of what she is going to tell you to eat.

Nestle actually took the time to examine all of the questions that probably dart through your mind when you go to the supermarket. The book even starts with an introduction called “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” In it she talks about why things are located where they are. Supermarkets display up to 40,000 of the 320,000 retail food-related products out there, and there is a reason why things are where they are. Generics are to the right of name brands because of the fact that people (in America) read left to right. The most profitable items are displayed at eye-level. Slower music on the speakers keeps you in the store for longer. And so on; you get the idea.

But that’s just background. She has chapters that spend a good deal of time with the questions about different kinds of meat, fish, dairy and other products, going into the debates around organic and not, the dilemmas shoppers and cooks face between pricing and sizes, and, ultimately, what she thinks is the best way to go. Then she goes into frozen foods, processed foods and beverages. Her writing is almost like a scientist talking to someone at a Saturday afternoon cookout. It’s easy to understand, but you know that she knows way more than you do about everything she’s talking about. Often, she will ask a question that you yourself have had before, and then just answer it. I love that- she is dealing with highly controversial issues, and she isn’t afraid to just give you a straight answer.

That’s the value of this book. Whereas Michael Pollan does a lot of reporting on the different angles and food sources, he doesn’t offer much in the way of specific recommendations. Good research, from a journalist’s angle. Nestle goes the next step and tells you what to eat, and by that I means she tells you what to buy and why that’s her advice.

It’s valuable information, and it will lead you to a healthier, happier time in that kitchen- no matter what you’re cooking.

Photo Credit: WhatToEatBook.com

Tasty, Healthy and Easy Salmon Fillets with Lemon Relish

Salmon is of course a staple cuisine of the Pacific Northwest and there are literally hundreds of different ways to prepare it, most of them quite tasty. Recently, I decided to cook up some salmon a la ex-con Martha Stewart, who has become my new kitchen Guru at long last for her simple, healthy recipes despite her criminal history.

The recipe called for lemon zest, roasted pine nuts, and raisins to be put into a bowl ad covered with boiling water. To make the lemon zest, either thinly slice one entire lemon or grate one lemon peel. In the photo of this particular recipe, the lemon zest was sliced into slivers. While I was preparing the combination, I substituted the raisins for cranraisins and added in the zest of an orange- both choices proved to be delightful.

As Carrie Bradshaw would say, meanwhile, across the kitchen, I prepared the salmon fillets with salt and pepper and cut them in half. I then roasted them for roughly ten minutes at 450 degrees until they were “opaque throughout”.

The next step called for adding fresh parsley (which was taken out of the herb garden), and olive to the lemon zest mixture after draining the water from the mixture in order to make what Martha and presumably cooks across this great country of ours term as lemon relish.

I then divided some baby spinach carefully onto each plate, topped the spinach with the salmon and then covered the salmon with the lemon relish. I hate to say it, but the results were absolutely great and I received compliments on the meal, which was both healthy and delicious as are many of Martha Stewart’s recipes.

Since I started teaching myself to cook recently, I’ve discovered that it takes patience to learn the timing for cooking the meats to the right temperature, that it’s necessary to read the entire recipe from start to finish before you begin, and that the better quality ingredients you have on hand, the better the food will turn out. While this recipe was much simpler than many recipes out there, it looked and tasted like it would have been more difficult to prepare. It definitely took a little longer than pre-packaged macaroni and cheese, but I think the entire prep time (including zesting the lemon) took about 25 minutes, which isn’t altogether that much more time and if I can cook it, so can anyone else.

Pic from flckr

Subway To Tessellate!

In a huge announcement that rocked the sandwich world, Subway Sandwiches has finally decided to tessellate their cheese.  Instead of stacking the triangles horizontally so that all the bases overlap (thus loading half the sandwich with more cheese than the other half), Subway finally figured out that you can interlock equilateral triangles so that they evenly spread the cheese across the sandwich.

It's long been a cruel joke to obsessive compulsives and geometry nerds.  Left Handed Toons summed it up nicely in the comic "An Open Letter to Subway."  If a company goes to all the trouble to create bizarrely equilateral triangle shaped cheese, why would they waste the opportunity to spread them evenly?

Personally, I have always pondered a question of a higher order.  How does the cheese get to be equilateral shaped anyway?  Not to point out the obvious, but you don't get an equilateral triangle by cutting a square in half.  Or a rectangle.  Or any other sensible shape that cheese might come in.  There are only two ways to get an equilateral:

1.    Form your plastic processed American cheese food in equilateral triangle shaped molds.  Perhaps to make it look more hand-crafted, like you actually sliced your cheese into triangles.  For those customers whose grasp of geometry is weak at best.

2.    Batch create your cheese in the shape of a rhombus, and cut it in half.  This makes so little sense that my brain rebels at the very thought, but I felt I must include it for completeness' sake.

Personally, I only eat at Subway under the direst of circumstances.  Like when you're trying to decide where to go for lunch, and the other person chirps "Oh, let's go to Subway!" all excited, and you don't want to be the wet blanket who sneers that "your lunch choice is inferior to mine."  I have two main problems with Subway:

1. The Exhausting Process of Getting the Darned Thing Made

It would be one thing if, like any other sensible deli, Subway had a stack of order forms at the head of the line.  You tick the boxes for the things you want, and hand your order form to the sandwich assembler.  Done and done.  Proceed to checkout, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Instead you're forced to slide step by step along the cooler display as some poor unfortunate soul mumbles your choices.  I can never hear what they're saying, so I have to be the jerk who keeps asking the Subway guy to repeat himself.  

Since Subway doesn't trust you to hold more than three things in your mind at once, you have to go through this decision process about ten times before your sandwich is finished.  By the time they hand me my sandwich, I'm already sick of it.

2.Weird Bread

I have it on good authority that the "weird Subway smell" is in fact the bread.  And that the strange pervasive "weird Subway taste" is also the bread.  Subway uses the cheapest flour and a weird yeast, which taste bad in a distinctive way.  And they send out loaves of dough which have to rise at the store - it's the rising loaves which give their stores that awful smell.  

In theory this is meant to give the store a home-y smell of freshly baked bread.  In practice, it's just gross.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user jetalone

The Deceptive Simplicity of Steak

A proper steak is easy to cook, though by "easy" I just mean "involving relatively few steps and a short list of ingredients". It's the details that make the difference between an okay steak and a really excellent one. So, first, let's look at the simple version of the steak-cooking process.

  • Procure meat
  • Gently massage meat with olive oil, salt and pepper
  • Brown one side of the steak in a heated pan for approximately 1-2 minutes
  • Turn steak and place the pan in a 475 degree oven for no more than 2 minutes
  • Carefully retrieve the pan, then let the steak rest while covered for at least 5 minutes

And voila! You have steak. But it's really not as easy as that.

Let's look at the first item on the list, Procure. Not all steaks are created equal. In fact, finding the right cut and marbling can be a pretty meticulous process. The specific cut isn't a big issue, but quality really does count for a lot. Not every steak needs to be a filet mignon, but you'll never get an amazing steak dinner out of chuck. You'll be better off with a sirloin or strip steak. But just as important as the cut is the marbling. Marbling, put simply, is the ratio and distribution of fat to meat. In the United States, marbling is the most significant criterion for the USDA grading system. The highest grade, Prime, has the greatest amount of intramuscular fat distribution, which results in a juicy, tender steak. Not all grocery stores list grades, so keep an eye out for steaks that are evenly and heavily flecked with bits of fat rather than steaks that have large swathes of red or bands of fat on the outside.

As for the next step, it's not absolutely necessary to marinate your steak but it does help. Marination can be as simple as massaging the oil, salt and pepper into the steak the night before it's cooked, or at least several hours prior to cooking so the flavors will soak into the meat instead of just sitting on the surface.

The actual cooking process is where there's the most room for error. Having the right equipment is essential. Ideally, you will be cooking your steak in a cast iron skillet and turning it with sturdy tongs. The tongs allow for quick, efficient turning that won't puncture the meat while the iron will allow the skillet to get hotter than most regular pans and hold onto that heat more evenly. Non-stick pans have a habit of transferring nasty flavors to foods that are cooked on higher heats.

The time windows I have listed above are extremely relative, depending on both your rareness preference and the thickness of your steak. Naturally, thinner steaks cook more quickly and unless you feel like doing extensive testing to determine how quickly your likely idiosyncratic oven cooks one pound of beef, it's best if you just keep an eye on your steak while it cooks. You'll likely be able to tell how long it should spend in the oven by how it looks during and after the initial browning. If upon turning you have the signs of real charring, your steak is going to cook more quickly and you'll want to retrieve it from the oven earlier if you want it nearer to rare.

And yes, tempting as it is to dive right into your steak, resting the meat is essential. If you cut into your steak immediately you will lose a lot of the moisture and flavor to the juices that will squirt and leak out. Those juices are proteins suspended in water and while the fibers of the meat itself are colorful, those proteins are where the flavor lives. Letting the steak rest will allow the juices to settle back into the meat and make each bite tasty.

National Vinegar Month

Boy, did I used to hate vinegar. I’m talking a deep, lasting loathing that was epic—a Capulet/Montague hatred. The smell alone turned me off, and I think I can trace it back to childhood when vinegar was used on my sunburn. It’s funny how such things stick with you and really affect you from such an early age.

Today, however, I love vinegar. We use it to clean, cook, and yes, to relieve sunburns (though apple cider vinegar is preferred in that area!). I can trace this love back, too—to the first Subway sandwich I had with it. Too afraid of it, I always ate my veggie sub with ranch dressing until my husband (then-boyfriend) told me to try his (not telling me there was oil and vinegar on it). I took one bite and was hooked, not knowing what that delicious substance was!

May is National Vinegar Month, so if you haven’t yet tried this delightful elixir in your own life, it’s the perfect time to do so. Here are just a few wonderful uses of vinegar.

  • Use it in salads, sandwiches, or other crisp, fresh vegetable dishes. It’s amazing with a dash of olive oil.
  • Try some malt vinegar with your fish and chips.
  • Use vinegar in place of lemon juice if you don’t have any available.
  • Try vinegar chips (one of my husband’s favorites).
  • Use vinegar to freshen up limp, wilted-looking veggies.
  • Flavor a dish you’re cooking with vinegar, such as roast lamb. Doing this with some honey and onions is a popular method.
  • Marinate your food in vinegar to help kill bacteria and make it tender.
  • Add vinegar to your boiled eggs while they cook to help keep them from cracking.

And be sure to try a new variety if you’re already familiar with vinegar. I had no idea that it had so many different varieties! There are many different flavored vinegars, as well as raisin, coconut, rice, honey, fruit, wine, malt, and my favorite—balsamic.

A low-calorie food, vinegar is a great condiment for people hoping to lose weight or simply stay fit. Some studies show that vinegar may help lower blood pressure and cholesterol when consumed regularly as well.

Of course, vinegar is a great cleaning agent for most surfaces as well. It’s particularly helpful in cleaning chrome, chinaware, mineral deposits, and hard water stains.

How to Make Homemade Yogurt

Another stop on my quest to reduce my grocery bill was making my own yogurt.  Smoothies are a great way to get a good portion of fresh fruit and protein, but that much yogurt can get really expensive!   Plus, my county doesn't have recycling for big plastic yogurt tubs, but we can recycle plastic one gallon milk jugs.  Less packaging, less money, fewer additives - and it's really simple!  

The basic procedure for making yogurt is to scald milk, cool it and mix in some yogurt to serve as a culture, then hold it in a warm place overnight for the culture to propagate.  Super easy!

First, the milk.  I have read that 2% works better than either skim or whole milk.  That has certainly been my experience so far.  And ultra-pasteurized milk works fine - maybe even better than normally pasteurized milk.  (Ultra-pasteurized milk has a "use by" date of four to six weeks, whereas normally pasteurized milk is good for one or two weeks.)

About the texture.  Store-bought yogurt includes gelatin or pectin to help it set, and make it artificially stiff.  Homemade yogurt tends to be a lot creamier and looser.  (This is great for smoothies!)  One way to make your yogurt turn out thicker is to add some powdered milk to the mix.

Keeping the culture warm overnight is the hardest part.  It will need to be at least 90 degrees, but not over 100 degrees.  If it's too hot, it will kill the bacteria.  If it's too cold, the bacteria won't culture.

I used a thermometer and found that my oven will stay at 95 degrees if I leave the light on and the door closed.  If you have a gas stove, you may be able to set the yogurt on the warm spot on the stove top, or inside the oven.  People have also successfully used a cooler filled with warm water, food dehydrators, sunny spots on the windowsill, crock pots, and even a heating pad inside a bucket.  Anything that can maintain that specific temperature range for 12 hours will work fine!

Other equipment you will need is a meat or candy thermometer (ideally a clip-on model), a pot big enough to scald half a gallon of milk, large glass or plastic containers to hold the yogurt, and one small container to hold your new culture.

INGREDIENTS - this makes about 2 quarts of yogurt.


A half gallon of 2% milk
1/2 cup powdered milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt, unopened

DIRECTIONS

1. Pour the milk into a big pot, and whisk in the powdered milk.  Heat it over medium-high heat to 185 degrees, stirring almost constantly to keep the milk from scorching at the bottom.  
 
2. Cool the milk to 120 degrees, using an ice or cold tap water bath.  The kitchen sink works well for this.

3. Whisk the yogurt into the scalded milk, making sure to blend it in completely.

4. Pour the yogurt into your clean containers.  Pour about 8 ounces of the mix into your smaller container.  (This will be what you use to culture the next batch, so be sure it doesn't get eaten!)

5. Cover the containers loosely, and place them in a warm spot.  Keep the containers between 90 and 100 degrees for about 12 hours, until the yogurt has set.

6. Refrigerate the yogurt for at least 12 hours, until chilled.

Five Revolutionary Cooking Shows

Food has always been a big part of television, from the first acts of product placement to the most slick, modern chef competition. Along the way, certain cooking shows have changed the way food is presented on TV and indeed the way people look at the act of cooking. Here are a few programs that revolutionized food on TV.

The French Chef with Julia Child

In 1961, a former Office of Strategic Services officer named Julia Child who served as, among other things, a spy in WWII era France became famous for writing a highly influential cook book called Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Being the Anglophone member of the three-person editorial team for the book, Julia promoted it in America where she eventually found herself on an educational talk show on public television. Her culinary skill and TV-friendly demeanor led Julia Child to create one of the first shows dedicated to cooking in TV history. The French Chef with Julia Child became the foundation on which all other cooking shows are built. Charming, informative and without frills, Child's first foray into television created a genre unto itself.

 

Emeril Live with Emeril Lagasse

Cooking shows didn't change much between 1963 and the mid 1990's when cable opened up the medium with higher budgets for niche programming. One among a new wave of genre-specific channels was The Food Network, a 24-hour network dedicated to cooking, dining and the science of food. One of its flagship programs and arguably the one to keep the network alive in its first couple years was Emeril Live, a boisterous take on the cooking show format that capitalized on chef Emeril Lagasse's larger than life personality. Lagasse cooked for a large studio audience and bantered with them during the entire fast-paced program, democratizing cooking and turning it into a celebration.

 

Ryori no Tetsujin (Iron Chef)

In 1993, Japanese TV station Fuji Television premiered Iron Men of Cooking, known in America as Iron Chef. The show was a smash hit and after seven seasons it found new life with a dubbed American release and soon after a complete adaptation in several different countries. Iron Chef comes from a completely different television tradition than most American cooking shows. Instead of trying to bring the art of cooking to an accessible viewer level, it fetishizes gourmet cuisine and elevates those who prepare it to heroic status. The flashy, high-budget format of Iron Chef exemplifies the Japanese obsession with rare and unusual food, all while taking what is usually such a low-key affair and transforming it into a riveting sporting event.

 

Good Eats

Host Alton Brown has a background in the technical aspects of television that predates his culinary education. His lovably ramshackle show Good Eats mixes the usual ingredient and technique format of cooking shows with the inventive science content of Bill Nye. Relentlessly energetic and thoroughly entertaining, Brown makes both food and learning into one of the most fun experiences on modern television, and has since 1999.

 

Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares

Chef Gordon Ramsay is known as much for his foul mouth and short temper as he is for his cooking expertise, but that's what makes the original BBC version of Kitchen Nightmares so interesting. The show is only half about the food itself while the rest is about the brass tacks of running a proper restaurant. Ramsay's drill sergeant routine puts a fine point on the hard work, know-how and common sense of fine dining, more so than in any other show on TV.

Frittata!

I like to say it like that.  "Frittata!"  Ideally, with Jazz Hands.  Why?  Couldn't really tell ya.

A frittata (Fritatta!) is an egg dish, sort of like a quiche without the crust.  Think of it as a casserole made with eggs instead of pasta.  As such, it's ideally suited for a low-carb, high-protein diet.  And since it takes a lot of eggs, it's perfect for those of us who own pet chickens.  I'm besieged with eggs right now, which is why I started researching frittatas!

Like a quiche, you can put just about anything in a frittata.  So thrifty!  This is a great way to use up those odds and ends: that last little wedge of cheese that's quietly solidifying, the deli meat you won't be able to sandwich up before it goes bad, the vegetables either cooked or raw, either fresh or pushing past their prime.  

I think of dishes like these as a kind of game.  What do I have that I could use in a frittata?  Going to the store to buy ingredients for a frittata seems like cheating.  Although, begrudgingly, if you had a specific idea for a frittata that sounded really good, then I guess you could do that.  

Unlike a quiche, you don't need to futz about with a crust.  Even though I'm capable of making crust by hand, I prefer not to.  And sometimes even those "unwrap and roll out" pre-made crusts are just too much trouble.  Plus, the empty calories.

Perhaps the best aspect of the frittata is that it's almost impossible to screw up.  I say that as someone who, believe me, is capable of screwing up almost any dish.  This is a forgiving dish, one which even the inexperienced cook can make on the stovetop just by cooking until it looks done.  Once the egg is set (no longer runny) and the edges are browned, you're done!

The basic procedure for a frittata is to cook all your add-ins, then assemble it, whisk the eggs and pour them over the filling, and cook it.  How you cook it will depend on the type and volume of ingredients, and what sort of frittata you want to make.  

Alton Brown has a super-quick recipe for an omelet style frittata.  He has you put the filling in a pan, add the whipped eggs, cook it on the stovetop for a few minutes, then stick it under the broiler for a few minutes.  (This style of frittata can also be flipped in the pan, if you prefer, and if you have the dexterity.)  Alton's frittata is quick and off-the-cuff, perfect for a Sunday morning brunch or a weeknight dinner.

Joy the Baker has a frittata on the extreme opposite end of the spectrum. This is a multi-stage affair that starts with fresh ingredients, and ends with baking in the oven for half an hour twice.  Joy's frittata is the casserole style, which turns out thick and creamy and hearty.  This is a wonderful dish to bake for an early Sunday dinner, especially on a cold winter weekend!

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user cobalt123

For Reals, Kellogg? Pop Tart Ice Cream Sandwich!

The video isn't online, but a friend recently emailed me about the newest Pop Tarts commercial, which pushes Pop Tarts ice cream sandwiches to kids.  People, this is insane!  

I'm already annoyed at Kellogg for pushing Pop Tarts as a breakfast food.  They are marketed as breakfast, sold in the cereal aisle, the whole thing.  Surely this is the greatest marketing anti-nutritional coup of the past few decades, second only to Cookie Crisp cereal.  Walk down the breakfast food aisle and you'll find a panoply of Pop Tarts and Pop Tarts clones, right there alongside the oatmeal and granola.  What's next?  Snickers as a "breakfast bar"?

In order to stay healthy, an average kid between four and eight years old should be getting between 1200 to 1400 calories per day.  Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts (my personal favorite) have 210 calories per serving size - that's per pastry - with two pastries per foil packet.  So 420 calories for two Pop Tarts, or about a third of the kid's calories for the ENTIRE DAY.

That's not breakfast.  That's a calorie bomb.

Make it an ice cream sandwich for an afternoon snack, as the commercial suggests, and the kid is cramming down about 600 calories.  That's half the kid's daily allowance of calories in one fell swoop!

Now I agree, the idea of a Pop Tart ice cream sandwich is pretty ****ing delicious, and I wish I'd never heard about it, because I can't stop thinking about how delicious that would be.  In a horrifying calorie bomb kind of way.

I've made ice cream sandwiches out of graham crackers before.  Which were pretty darned good, don't get me wrong.  But sandwiching ice cream with Pop Tarts is just taking it to a whole new level.

A more reasonable choice as a special dessert - for a birthday party, say - can be found on the Pop Tarts website.  I turned this up while digging around looking for their commercial.  If you made an ice cream sandwich out of a pair of Pop  Tarts AND THEN YOU CUT IT INTO QUARTERS, and rolled the edges in pretty sprinkles, you'd have something around 150 calories.  Even less if you use a low-calorie ice cream alternative.  (Come on, you're going to wedge it in between Pop Tarts - it's not like the kids are going to notice it's actually nonfat frozen yogurt!)

150 calories is much more in the realm of a snack.  Heck, you could carve up something like this as dessert for the family, one quarter for each person.  That's reasonable.

Two Pop Tarts and a scoop of ice cream for ONE CHILD, however, is not reasonable.  Although it is an excellent example of what's undermining our efforts to teach kids to make sensible eating choices.  And an even better example of the kind of horrific things that marketers aim at children, knowing that the temper tantrum is an excellent leverage for purchasing power.

For what it's worth, a lot of bloggers have tried out their own Pop Tart ice cream sandwiches.  By all accounts, it IS delicious, but a bit much, even for a grown adult.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user poolie

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