The Holidays are Over

January food column, as it appeared in Satellite Magazine:

The holidays are over. For you, maybe it started with the errant Tootsie Roll around Halloween. Maybe you went with a Krackle bar, or maybe you decided to go high-end and demolished a pyramid of Roche ganaches. Chances are, it didn't stop there. The leftover Skittles and Snickers got you through to Thanksgiving. You sat at some familiar table and gorged on turkey, ham (two proteins!), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes made with marshmallows, and that cranberry sauce shaped like the can from which it was dumped, unceremoniously. Then you celebrated the end of football season, Hanukah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa, and those latkes aren't exactly low calorie. And now here we are in January, the month of resolutions. That singular time of year when we vow to ourselves that we'll quit bad habits, call our relatives, and be better people. We'll eat salad.

But it's not that easy. Next time you're in the grocery store, check the salad dressing’s ingredients. Not long ago I checked my fridge and found that six out of the seven salad dressings contained high fructose corn syrup, a sweetener that many believe is linked to America’s growing obesity problem. Suddenly that salad doesn't seem so healthy, does it? Not to fear. A healthier salad dressing isn't hard to construct. Not even creamy ranch. And some salads, like the seasonal recipe my sister sent all the way from North Carolina, don't require a dressing at all.

Vinaigrette
Vinegar and oil is perhaps the simplest of salad dressings. In some restaurants, you can still find two stoppered bottles on the tables. But to get a truly good vinaigrette, you have to pay attention to ratios, and it’s best if you have an emulsifier. Once that’s handled, though, you can begin adding additional ingredients to taste.

Ratio: 1 part vinegar to 2-3 parts oil
Emulsifier: A binding agent to hold the two together, however briefly. Mustard works well. As does egg white or even skim milk, though you have to worry about curdling.
Additional ingredients: Honey, lemon juice, salt, pepper, crushed garlic, or shallots.

A fine example might be 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 4 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon prepared mustard and 1 teaspoon honey. Salt and pepper to taste. Combine all ingredients in a tight-lidded container and shake to combine. Drizzle on your favorite mixed greens.

Creamy dressings
Most creamy dressings are made with mayonnaise or sour cream, but you can often substitute yogurt for a slightly healthier alternative. Begin with 1/2 cup mayonnaise. It’s just eggs and oil. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice (approximately the juice you’ll get from half a lemon), a little minced garlic, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. You now have the base for a number of different dressings.

Add some cracked black pepper and four or five tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese, and you’ve created a wonderful Parmesan peppercorn dressing.

Or, add 2 ounces of crumbled bleu cheese, and you’ve made bleu cheese dressing.

Or, begin with equal parts mayonnaise and buttermilk (1/4 cup each), add 1/4 teaspoon of dried parsley flakes, a pinch of onion powder, a pinch of garlic powder, some dried thyme, and salt and pepper to taste and you’ve got yourself some ranch dressing without ever having to tear open a foil packet.

Any of these dressing formulas will work well for your standard salad of greens, tomatoes and a little cucumber. But those can be tough to find fresh in the dead of winter. However, hearty root vegetables keep a long time, and we’re just entering the end of orange season in Florida, and it’s a perfect time to enjoy this native crop in as many ways as possible. Ann’s beet salad is just one of them.

Beet salad (yummy, yummy)
4 beets
3 oranges
2 teaspoons orange zest
1 small red onion
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
(you may also want to add sugar to the final salad, though the natural sweetness of the orange juice should be plenty)

Place the beets in a large pot and add water until the beets are covered 1 – 2 inches. Bring the beets to a boil and let them go for about 45 minutes, or until you can easily pass a fork into them. If you need to add water to keep them covered, do so. Drain the beets and shock them in a bath of ice water to stop the cooling process.

While the beets are cooking, peel and cut the oranges, saving the juice (you can probably cut them over a large bowl—perhaps the very bowl you’ll use to serve the salad. Deseed the orange wedges and cut them in half. Zest the peels. Slice the onion thinly and separate the strips.

Bring the beets out of the ice water. Peel the beets (their skins should slide off after cooking) and cut into irregular, bite-sized pieces. In a large bowl, combine the beets, halved orange sections, onion slices, vinegar, oil, and orange rind and mix to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste and sugar if necessary. Let the salad stand for half an hour so the flavors can come together. Garnish with a curled orange rind for a touch of fanciness.

Ensaios FP Tinto

Food lets us travel. From China to Vietnam, from India through Turkey and into Hungary, from Germany To France (with a detour through Italy), when we eat certain foods we know where we are. Or where we wish to be. It's no accident, either. The foods we most often associate with place are those foods that can be grown easily and are (or were) plentiful.

So it is with wine. The French call it terroir. They claim even subtle differences in micro-climate from one appellation to another will show themselves in the wine's character. I'd have to see some kind of spectrum chromatograph before I'd go that far, but I will agree that wines from different regions can be quite different. Australian and American wines, for instance, tend to be different than French or Italian wines. Often, European wines exhibit more mineral characteristics than their new-world counterparts. The new-world wines, from the United States, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand tend to be bolder and more fruit-forward (Chile, I'm happy to say, seems to be a notable exception. Even in the country's value-priced wines, there seems to be a complexity and structure not found in many other new-world wines at low price points).

Knowing all this, it was no surprise that I had to buy my latest find from Dorn’s, a 2005 Ensaios FP Tinto from the Beiras region in Portugal. I love Spanish wines, and while I’m not overly familiar with Portuguese wines, I assumed they would have some of the same bold structure and lively tannins as their Spanish counterparts. I wasn’t worng.

Color: A deep, inky red, nearly purple/indigo fading to ruby at the edges.
Nose: A highly complex mix of dark berries and spice with a hint of star anis.
Palate: This Is a bold wine, with strong structure and tannins. Slight berry flavors, but it’s not the kind of wine that you have while sitting around a coffee table with a few friends. This is a wine made for food.
Finish: Crisp finish. Very clean and drying. The perfect accompaniment for heavier foods ranging from braised ribs (my meal with the wine) to roast duck, and even pastas with rich, rich sauces.

I loved this wine. For quite a while now I’ve been drinking American and Australian wines, and while I’ve enjoyed them, I really missed the flinty, mineral characteristics of European wines. The Ensaios FP Tinto delivered, and the travel-inspired label didn’t hurt, either.

Make time for food

The fine folks at Lifehacker have provided a link to Michael Pollan's Twelve Commandments for Serious Eaters. Among them:

9. Eat food from animals that eat grass.
10. Cook, and if you can, grow some of your own food.
11. Eat meals and eat them only at tables.

Interesting to note that Lifehacker's Kevin Purdy bemoans (however briefly) the time it takes to cook. This is nonsense. I get home from work most days and cook for my wife and daughter. One, I love to be in the kitchen. iPod playing my favorite music (The Clash's "London Calling" is about the best vegetable chopping music there is) and fresh ingredients on the counter in front of me. It's my home, and it's comfortable, and I can get all my food from fridge to table in about 40 minutes. Couple that with a nice, sit-down meal with people you love? Who wouldn't make time for that? Two, I've learned (however slowly) to cook, to experiment, and not be afraid of food. One day I just gave myself permission to mess it up, and it worked. I became more confident in my cooking and a better cook as a result.

I think it's interesting that so many people say they don't have time for this, or they don't have time for that. You will make time for the things important to you. If you want to eat better, live better, lose weight, or whatever other weird resolution you made to yourself this year, just make it important to you. Turn off Adult Swim. You've seen those episodes of Family Guy a dozen times anyway. Cook. Eat. Enjoy.

Buying local not as easy for some

Today's Morning Edition on NPR brings us a story of local distribution. Logistics is something many people forget when they consider buying local. Many times, farmers must truck their produce to a central distribution center, run by wholesalers, where it is weighed, packaged and shipped to buyers and markets across the nation. The problem, when it comes to buying locally, is the Farmer's aren't equipped to make small deliveries, and restaurants and individuals aren't equipped to take large ones. So a farmer in Ann Arbor must still take his potatoes all the way to Detroit to a distribution center. Even if his end customer is just across the street.

One man in Michigan is serving the niche market.

Potato and Leek Soup

A quick and dirty take on Amy Finley's Leek and Potato soup found on the Food Network site.

Ingredients:

• Two tablespoons of butter
• Two medium-sized leeks (about 1 lb each)
• Four medium-sized yukon gold potatoes
• (the original recipe calls for russet, but I like the smoother finish and higher starch content of the yukons)
• Approximately 3/4 carton of chicken stock (@ 28oz)
• 1/2 pint heavy cream
• Salt
• Pepper
• Chives (for garnish)

Directions:

1. To prepare the leeks, cut off the root end (about a half-inch will do it) and cut about an inch to two inches into the pale green section. Discard the roots and stalks. Cut the leeks in half lengthways and then cut the halves into 1-inch sections. Let the sections soak in a large bowl filled with water to rinse away the dirt that will be jammed into the leeks' layers.
2. Meanwhile, Peel the potatoes and cut into 1-inch sections
3. Heat the two tablespoons of butter in a medium soup pot over medium-high heat.
4. Once the butter has melted and the pot is hot, sweat the leeks for about three minutes. Do not sautee. You're not trying to brown the leeks, you're only trying to soften them.
5. After they've had a chance to soften, add the potatoes and chicken stock.
6. Cook, uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft to the touch.
7. Stir in the cream.
8. Puree the soup in a blender or with an immersion blender.
• *If you use a normal blender, work in batches and make sure you vent the lid from time to time. Hot soup in a blender releases a lot of steam and pressure builds up quickly.
9. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with chopped chives.

Alternatives: This soup would work just as well with normal onions. To prepare, caramelize the onions in a pan before adding them to the soup pot and add the potatoes and chicken stock immediately. The caramelized onions will make a brown soup and give the soup a smokier flavor.

You could also fry some additional julienned leeks for a garnish to give the soup and heartier quality than the chives. Finally, adding a quater to half-cup Parmesan cheese would provide the soup with a deeper, slightly nutty flavor.

What to pair it with? You want something with tannins but not something that's going to blow the soup of the water. A dry Chardonnay might do the trick, or you could go with a light, drinkable pinot noir

Smoking Loon Pinot Noir Color: A deep, translucent ruby color. Nearly watery on first appearance

Nose: Berries. Lots of them, from cherries and strawberries to cranberries. Slight vegetation and a hint of vanilla's roundness

Palate: Silky mouth feel with a tart berry taste and delicate tannins. Surprisingly good structure and balance. Will hold up to a lot of different foods.

Finish: Very clean and leaves the mouth wanting more. Surprisingly good finish without a hint of flabbiness or that cloying quality most often found in value-range wines.

This is an astonishingly good wine for the price--fine structure and lithe tannins make this a great wine to enjoy slightly chilled or with a wide variety of foods, from hearty pork chops to simple pastas and everything in between.

Elements of Cooking

I just came from Michael Ruhlman's second blog, Elements of Cooking. It's based in part on his latest book, The Elements of Cooking, which I'm sure is available at your local book seller, but will also be available soon from Ruhlman's own site, Ruhlman.com.

I'm excited about the book, and the site has just made it onto my permanent links section (over there, on the right). Why? Because it's not about recipes. One of the things I've loved about my own cooking journey is not recipes--don't get me wrong. A good recipe is a wonderful thing. But what I've found most valuable is basic cooking methods. Take, for example the simple béchamel sauce. A little flour, butter and milk and you have a base on which you can build all kinds of things.

Just the other day I used this small bit of knowledge to really jazz up a lunch of leftover chicken and mashed potatoes. 6:30 in the morning, and I knew I wanted something a little more than plain chicken. I checked around the kitchen, found some mushrooms, and in about 10 minutes time, had a wonderful mushroom cream sauce. Simple comfort food that didn't come from a Campbell's can.

You can do it, too:

• Sautee mushrooms in a teaspoon of olive oil with a just a dash of garlic
• When they've given up most of their moisture (probably about 2 minutes), remove them from the pan
• Melt a tablespoon of butter in the same pan and slowly whisk in a tablespoon of flour (you've just made a roux)
• ***The flour and butter mix should be about the same. For a single serving, a teaspoon to tablespoon of each should be fine. If you need more, up the amount accordingly
• Now, slowly add milk--just a little at a time--until you come up with a sauce that's the desired consistency
• If you want, you can add some Parmesan cheese to thicken the sauce a bit
• Add in the mushrooms, salt and pepper to taste and you're done

Done! In 10 minutes I was able to take bland, boring leftovers and turn them into something delicious (and even a little impressive).

Anyway, my whole point here is that by understanding a singular fundamental (béchamel is one of the 7 mother sauces used in French cooking), I made something. And I could have just as easily gone with bacon in the sauce, swiss cheese, or any number of additional ingredients. And that's key. As I said on Ruhlman's blog, recipes are great, sure, but...it seems that fundamentals, not a recipe library, are the real key to kitchen creativity.

I must see King Corn

Michael Ruhlman, noted author and Anthony Bourdain's arch on-screen enemy, has posted a brief note about a new documentary, King Corn. I've not paid much attention to corn in general, but I've tried to be more alert to high fructose corn syrup (which, it turns out, is in everything). From Ruhlman's description, though, the problem goes much deeper than that:

It’s an excellent and entertaining reminder of what Pollan describes in Omnivore’s Dilemma (Pollan’s work inspired the film and he’s interviewed as well): that we are walking, breathing corn.  The film makers (above) buy an acre in Iowa to get hands on experience of America’s most important crop.  And also its scariest.  We grow a single strain designed to thrive in close quarters (urban corn); it costs more money to grow than it’s worth and you can’t eat it.

It sounds like an excellent movie, taking a very small, very real look at two guys' efforts to grow corn and make corn syrup and using that approachable situation to shed light on a much larger picture. Ruhlman maintains the real tragedy is that people eating this food won't get to see the movie--and probably wouldn't go even if it came to their towns. I agree. But more tragic than that is people's inability to buy anything healthier.

I worked for a company that went bankrupt just before 9/11. After 9/11 the job market was incredibly soft. I bounced to a couple consulting gigs, but even those were few and far between. With one salary between us (bless her heart, my wife--to be, at the time--drove a two-hour commute every day to keep us fed), we had to hunt for bargains. I realized inexpensive food fell into one of three categories: easy to make, hours to make, or required specialized knowledge. The people who won't see King Corn probably don't have the time or money necessary to eat healthier, whether they know about it or not.

World Health Organization's guidelines for child nutrition

According to Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, the United States pressured the W.H.O. into recommending a child's daily caloric intake should be one-quarter sugar.

That's a lot of sugar.

Savory and Sweet Pumpkin Soup

October marks a transition. A transition to fall after September's equinox. A transition from lush green to spare orange. It's a harvest month. A time when autumn's vegetables supplant summer’s fruits and berries.

Ask people what they associate with October, and many will say Halloween and its requisite pumpkins. But pumpkins can be used for more than just jack-o-lanterns. You can use fresh pumpkins to make a delicious, savory/sweet soup that’s just the thing on October’s chilly evenings:

Pumpkin Soup

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1 celery stalks, chopped
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 1 2-pound pumpkin peeled, seeded, chopped (about 6 cups—you can substitute two cans pure pumpkin for the fresh, just add the pumpkin during the puree process) approx. 4 cups chicken stock or low-salt chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• Several shakes of allspice (to taste)
• Salt and pepper (to taste)

Reserve:

• 1/4 cup whipping cream
• 2 tablespoons honey (brown sugar also works very well--you can alter the amount to suit your sweetness cravings)

Melt the butter in a large, heavy soup pot over medium-high heat. Toss in the carrots, celery and onion (this is called mirepoix, if you want to get fancy and Frech). Sauté about 8 minutes or until tender. Add the pumpkin, the chicken stock and spices. Cover and simmer about 25 minutes, or until the pumpkin is tender (you should be able to pierce it with a knife with bare resistance).

Puree the soup in a blender using short pulses (Safety warning: take the top off the blender after every two or three pulses to allow the steam to vent out. I didn’t, and pumpkin splatter shot out the stop and all over my counter, floor and clothes). You can also use a food processor. Put the soup back in the pot and stir in the cream and honey. Add salt and pepper to meet your tastes (or you could always let your guests season the soup at the table). For a delicious additional touch, pan roast a small handful of walnuts for each bowl of soup. October is harvest month for walnuts and the only time you can get fresh ones.

This soup can be made well in advance and frozen. It also keeps well in the refrigerator--just heat and serve.

What to pair it with?
This soup calls for a wine that's going highlight the sweet and savory characteristics. A good white pairing would be a gewürztraminer, as the spice and floral characters would enliven the soup's flavors. If you wanted to go red, however, I think a petite syrah would do well, or you could always fall back on a solid California Zinfandel.

Ravenswood Vintners Blend
2005 California Zinfandel
Ravenswood wines traditionally offer great value. They are all new world in style, very drinkable and pair well with a broad range of foods.
Color: A marvelous cranberry red that fades to salmon at the edges
Nose: Fruit. Definite berry (strawberry) and other red and dark fruits. A hint of vegetation or moss and a touch of leather and spice.
Palate: Very bold. Berry flavors and some spice. Strong body with little complexity but is highly food friendly. Nice tannins and a good structure.
Finish: Clean. Lingering hints of the nose, particularly the leather. Leaves you eagerly anticipating a bite of food, or another gulp from the glass.

Eric Asimov provides 10 reds for under $10 a piece

New York Times columnist Eric Asimov gives us a list of 10 excellent wines priced at under $10 a piece. I try not to spend more than $10, ever. If pressed, I'll spend up to $15. But for the most part, I've been very happy with the wines I get for about $10 a piece.

Eric's list:

Casa Cadaval Portugal Ribatejano , $8.99, ***
Padre Pedro 2002

Domaine de l’Ameillaud France , $9, ** ½
Vin de Pays de Vaucluse 2005

Viña Gormaz Spain Ribera del Duero , $9, **
Tempranillo 2005

Georges Duboeuf France , $9, **
Beaujolais-Villages 2006

Altas Cumbres Argentina Mendoza , $9, **
Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

Wyatt California Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 , $10, **

J. Vidal-Fleury France , $10, **
Côtes-du-Ventoux 2005

Domaine Monte de Luz , $7, **
Uruguay Tannat 2006

Ravenswood California Vintner’s Blend , $10, **
Merlot 2004

Paringa , $9, * ½
South Australia Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

I'll have to trust the man. I mean, he did get the Ravenswood, which are pretty consistently good values. I wish more people would seek out and try the some Rhone reds, especially the Domaine La Garrigue 2004 Cotes du Rhone Cuvee Romaine. They're all surprisingly complex and deliver an excellent value for under $12 a bottle.