Be mindful and plan your menu

A brief, lovely post at The Kitchn offers the following:

Speaking on a panel about the philosophy of Slow Food, [Carlo] Petrini, the movement's founder, exhorted us to "try every day to consume a little bit less." Hand in hand with over-consumption is waste, and we can start to tackle the problem by examining the contents of our own refrigerators. Dig out the "Jurassic Park rabbit" and stash of old parsley (if there's a rotten leaf, just cut that part off), he urged. Cook it, eat it, and share the leftovers with the homeless. Regardless of one's opinion on Petrini and the Slow Food movement, I think waste is something that many of us can pay closer attention to.

Every weekend, I clean out the refrigerator. And every few months I take a look in the pantry to see what's spoiling back there. I'm guilty of over-buying groceries and am guilty of tossing things that look slightly off, or worse, are perfectly good but have passed some kind of internal expiration date in my head.

I'm vowing now to stop. Or try to be better about it.

Teaching myself to cook has involved reading a lot, and a lot of that reading has focused on professional chefs. A well-run restaurant wastes little. A whole chicken might be used for some kind of leg-and-thigh dish (bistro style), a fettuccine alfredo with blackened chicken breast, the wings appetizer, chicken tacos for family meal, and the carcass used for stock (Lifehacker.com provided an excellent link to The Simple Dollar's article detailing just such a process--I'd go with my wife's favorite chicken recipe, however, which involves lemons and garlic in the cavity and an oven roasting to get the skin nice and crispy).

The problem usually isn't with proteins, though. We (my family) use those up (broiled flank steak day one, steak sandwiches with grilled onions on day two). The major problem is vegetables. Our local supermarket chain tends to wrap vegetables in plastic and styrofoam and packages them in portions for...six? Eight? They urge customers to ask for smaller portions, but let's be serious for a second: Who's going to track down the produce guy to ask him for half the packaged asparagus? And he'll just use more packing material re-wrapping the unsold portion.

So I suppose the solution must be two-fold.

First, let's ask for unwrapped vegetables. Supermarkets often claim the wrapped vegetables stay fresher longer as they're not exposed to the open air. This may be the case, but after seeing some of the carrots I've unwrapped, I know they also wrap vegetables to disguise their age. So no more plastic where it's not necessary. If if the only parsnips available are in the little plastic bag? I guess I'm going without.

Second, let's be more mindful in our cooking. The ingredients unused today may (and should) be used tomorrow. This moment, for example, we have green beans, asparagus (yes, the whole package), and zucchini jammed in the crisper. The green beans are being used tonight as a side item for the roasted chicken. The asparagus? The zucchini? I'm not sure. But if I take a moment to plan, to think about the week unfolding before me, I can see the asparagus tossed with pasta on Thursday, the zucchini sauteed and served with steak on Friday, and the remainders of each coupled with ham and eggs in a big, brilliant frittata Saturday morning.

So yes, buy less. Consume less. But also be mindful. Use a menu plan. Part of cooking is figuring out what to do with all the things you think don't belong or what you think you can't use. I might even argue that singular trait is the mark of the best cooks--the most conscientious, the most deserving of our praise.

Wednesday news bites for June 4, 2008

Jamie Oliver calls for sex ban to get men cooking
Jamie Oliver runs neck and neck with Gordon Ramsay for Crazy-ass British Chef award

The Trouble with Teflon
What you're cooking with could kill you?

The World on a Plate: A Tour Through the History of America's Ethnic Quisine
Denker, a professor and food writer, assembles oral histories of various immigrant endeavors in the food industries of America.

The Perfect Hate Storm: Malkin vs. Rachel Ray and Dunkin' Donuts
Evidence of a few zealots willing to follow the retarded. Dunkin' Donuts should have called foul on Malkin and been done with it.

German Dairy Farmers Now On Strike
And pouring food down the drain :(

Farmers Market Search Page
USDA provides interactive listing of farmers' markets close to you

Friday fundamentals: walter, salt and green beans

The importance of solid cooking fundamentals can't be overstated. They are the skills that enable a person to toss cook books and recipes and just be in the kitchen. To start, I thought I'd tackle salt, but salt is such a crucial, complex cooking component, I simply can't do it justice in a single blog post. It would probably take an entire book to even scratch the surface of salt's importance, so I decided to stick with green beans.

Salt. It's lifestuff. Our bodies need it to regulate the water that sustains us. Too much salt and we bloat like Ball Park Franks. Too little, and we feel run down, lethargic. Our blood pressure drops, our heart rate increases. We can feel lightheaded or go into shock. It is also fundamental to cooking and is what we talk about when we talk about seasoning.

Properly seasoned food shouldn't taste salty; it should taste like it's supposed to, only more-so. Salt, used properly, will enhance flavors and make them pop. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than with boiled vegetables.

Most people consider boiled vegetables an anathema to good cooking. Boiling, they argue, leeches out the vegetables' essential vitamins and nutrients and leaves nothing but a pale green mush. That may be, for improperly boiled vegetables. Properly boiled, however, will give you delicious, well-seasoned vegetables whose color comes straight out of some MGM musical. The secret is in the ratio:

"For pasta, grains and legumes, enough salt should be added so that the water tastes pleasantly seasoned, between 2 and 3 tablespoons of Morton's kosher salt (or between 1 and 1.5 ounces of any noniodized salt) per gallon; evaluate it just as you would evaluate a soup for proper seasoning level; the salt level of the water will mirror the salt concentration absorbed by the food. For cooking green vegetables, heavily salted water is recommended: between 3/4 and 1 cup Morton's kosher salt (or between 6 and 8 ounces) per gallon of water."
- "Salted Water," Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman

• To begin, select enough green beans for two side servings (I ended with two large handfuls--approximately 50 beans)
• Set 2 quarts of water with six tablespoons of kosher salt added on to boil in a very large pot (4 qt at least)
• Note: People often don't use enough water when boiling vegetables. When the vegetables hit the water, especially if they've come straight from the fridge, they're going to rob the water of its heat. When this happens, the water stops boiling and suddenly your vegetables aren't cooking as quickly or in the manner they should. When boiling vegetables, feel free to use as much water as you can handle. Just remember the ratio: 3/4 cup per gallon.
• While the water comes to a boil, snap the ends off the green beans (like asparagus, they should break where they need to)
• When you're ready, place the green beans into the water and let them boil for about four minutes (as boiling temperatures differ based on proximity to sea level and other factors, your cooking time might be slightly different)
• When the green beans are done, you can toss them with a small dash of very good olive oil, and serve immediately

Note: If you're going to serve the green beans later, you'll want to shock them in an ice water bath to prevent them overcooking. Let them come up to room temperature before you serve them.

Salt is, of course, a subject too complex to handle in a single blog post. In fact, I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the stuff by relegating its use to boiled vegetables, but it's a start. The thing is, you should never be without salt. And not that lame, iodized stuff. It can lend a weird, metallic taste to foods. Get some good kosher salt and learn to season your food. Your food and you family will thank you for it.

Michael Pollan lectures on food vs. nutrition

Another in the wonderful At Google lecture series.

Michael Pollan is one of the preeminent thinkers on food today and has earned accolades for his books, including The Omnivore's Dilemma and his latest, In Defense of Food.