Food – Page 49 – Into the Woods

Irish bread

All winter I’ve continued my experiments with bread pones. Though the method I use is like making biscuits, still I think the bread is more like Irish bread than anything else. Irish bread is a quick bread. It’s always brown (at least, all the Irish bread I’ve ever seen is brown). Irish bread can be made with a variety of types of flour. And Irish bread varies from day to day and from cook to cook. One of the interesting things about the food in Ireland, which is very good by the way, is sampling different cooks’ take on Irish bread. It might be served with butter as a starter. Or with soup. Or with a meal. It’s like biscuits in the American South — every cook’s version is different.

I’ve experimented with mixing generous amounts of almond meal into Irish bread, and it works very well. I have a hard time cooking with almonds. They’re hard, and if eaten whole I’m always afraid of breaking a crown or something. But, using something like a coffee grinder, fresh almonds grind into a nice, oily meal. The Irish bread above was made from King Arthur whole wheat flour, almond meal, flaxseed meal, coconut oil for shortening, and soybean milk. That’s a great mix of amino acids for improving the quality of protein — legume, seed, and nuts.

I have no way of measuring it, but I assume bread like this would be pretty low carb, for bread at least. And it’s high protein. Almonds are expensive, and probably not very fresh, if bought in little packages at the grocery store. But bought in bulk from places like Whole Foods, almonds are less expensive than a lot of meat.

The risks of eating meat

Whether meat is good for you has been debated for decades. Now we have a new study, a huge study which included 500,000 adults, and the verdict is clear: Meat is very bad for you if you eat it every day. Eating meat every day increases the chance of early death (from heart disease or cancer) by 30 percent. For women, the statistics were particularly grim. For example, women who ate the most meat every day had a 50 percent higher chance of early death from heart disease.

One of my particular interests, as many of you know, is the analysis of propaganda. The Washington Post’s story on this study (which was on the front page), has a quote from someone at the American Meat Institute:

“Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet, and studies show they actually provide a sense of satisfaction and fullness that can help with weight control. Proper body weight contributes to good health overall.”

The fallacy in the first statement is easy enough to unravel: “Meat products are part of a healthy, balanced diet.” That is precisely the point the study addressed. How did the study’s conclusions differ from what the American Meat Institute says?

The second fallacy is more difficult to unravel, because it requires knowledge that many people don’t have. The claim is that science shows that eating meat can actually make you healthier because eating meat contributes to weight control. That is intentionally misleading. It’s actually fat and protein that provide satisfaction and fullness. That fat and protein can just as easily come from vegetable sources, and it will be a whole lot better for you. This is the way most propaganda works. A claim is made that may be sorta kinda obliquely true, but the fallacy can be detected only if one is aware of some other facts.

There are so many benefits beyond health from reduced consumption of meat. Meat farms use huge amounts of water and energy, and they cause nasty pollution, both to air and water. Meats these days are particularly dangerous because they contain hormones and antibiotics that factory farm animals are pumped with. Meat production also is inefficient, because the protein fed to the animal far exceeds the protein derived from its meat.

When you're craving something fried…

Sometimes the craving for something fried is irresistible. It can get bad enough to tempt me to start up the Jeep in the pouring rain and go out and eat something I shouldn’t. Sometimes hot homemade bread and butter will extinguish the fried-food craving, but I’m always looking for alternatives.

I’d rate a pasta and vegetable stir-fry about B- for curing a fried-food craving. But it works.

Start by browning lots of onion. Then throw in the cooked pasta and brown that too. The pasta in the photo, by the way, is whole wheat pasta — it’s not that brown from being fried. Pasta likes to be lightly browned. It gives it a nice chewy texture. Tonight I added some walnuts and let them get nice and hot with the onion and pasta. I used “broccoflower,” which is cheap and good here in the wintertime. To cook the vegetables, I threw in a little white wine and covered the pan until the broccoflower was good and hot. Then remove the lid and make sure all the wine has boiled away.

Browned onions are a great seasoning. It’s easy to forget just how sweet onions are until you’re reminded how nicely they caramelize.

Lunching out in Southern France by Anivid.

In France we still have midi, or siesta – meaning shops and offices closed from noon to e.g. 2 p.m. during workdays.
A lot of people are using the time for having lunch together in a nearby restaurant.
We chose a restaurant which is also a shop, selling bread, wine and specialties.
Every morning when going for the bread, I’m studying the menu cards, observing what’s today’s special in the different places.

Today it was Salmon, delicious cooked in foil with slices of lemon on the top and a couple of clams (cocquille Saint-Jacques) in each end.
Cooking in foil serves the same purpose as cooking in bain-marie, namely to keep the food out of direct contact with the cooking media, whether it be water or oil. When properly wrapped the food tend to keep more of its natural flavors and fragrances during this indirect cooking.
On the side we got a little bowl with chopped haricot vert (green string beans) and leek, and some rice as a mix of wild rice and rice from Camargue, the famous natural region in Southern France (the delta of the river Rhône) where the horses are bread, and where the wild fowls, live in the marsh.
The wild rice is also called water oats, as it botanically is no rice at all, but of a different genus (Zizania) than the white/brown rice (Oryza).
After the sumptuous meal (at $ 15.25) we took a stroll in the lovely spring sun, and soon found an open place where the outdoor cafées flourished.

Here they served us a nice petit café a concept which costs $1.50-1.90 all over France.
Coffee in France is rather on the strong side, hence the glas of water.
As always, the coffee was served with a little sweet on the side, a chocolate covered almond, pure chocolate, or as in this case, a little spiced cookie called Speculaas (originally dutch).
Signing out: Anivid, gastronomy and culture 😉

Local sweets

By far, the most royal of all the local sweets is the sourwood honey from the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a light-colored honey, delicate and floral. There must be rules about what can and cannot be properly called sourwood honey. Though the honey in the photo above is not labeled “sourwood,” the color and flavor are that of sourwood honey, though pure sourwood honey is probably a little lighter in color. A year ago it was selling for about $7.50 a quart. Lately it has been $9.69 at a little market in Walnut Cove.

The market also sells fruit preserves that are made without sugar. The strawberry and blackberry preserves are particularly fine. The ingredients are listed as fruit, grape juice, cider, and spices. The strawberry preserves sell for $5.99 a pint. The blackberry preserves cost about a dollar more.

Sourwood honey is incredibly good with hot buttered biscuits. And it’s great for dulcifying one’s herb tea.

The local sweet potatoes

I can’t rave enough about the local sweet potatoes. They’re cheap, they’re good, and they’re fine winter fare, “Rare ballast for an empty belly,” as Sam Gamgee said. They’re so flavorful that I don’t even bother to season them, not even salt. They’re highly compatible, though, with toasted sesame oil, a compatibility the exploitation of which I must explore.

I’ve got to try growing me some this year.

Sauerkraut update

When I first tasted my homemade sauerkraut, which was put up in October, there were two problems. The first was that the sauerkraut wasn’t quite sour enough. The second was that it was too tender and lacked crunch.

Now that the sauerkraut has fermented longer and I’ve worked down into the crock, away from sauerkraut at the top of the crock, I am happy to report that these problems are gone. The sourness is just right, and the crunch is just right. I’m guessing that the the sauerkraut at the very top, which is more exposed to the air and to other biological and chemical processes, is not like the rest of the sauerkraut. Many people who make homemade sauerkraut have scum, or even mold, at the top of the crock. I had none of those problems. My sauerkraut is nice and clean. But I’m guessing that it’s the same principle — the sauerkraut at the top of the crock doesn’t really count.

I don’t hesitate to declare that this is the best sauerkraut I’ve ever tasted.

Pepper sauces

Though cayenne pepper sauces are not necessarily a big deal in Southern cookin’ at these latitudes, still, to many people they’re an essential item. The fancier grocery stores such as Whole Foods have some of the boutique brands. But even country grocery stores have three or more brands to choose from.

Tabasco, in my opinion, is not the best. It’s thin, very hot, and doesn’t have much taste. There’s a local brand, Texas Pete, which I wish I liked because it’s local, but I don’t. Texas Pete also is too thin and tasteless, and it even has preservatives in it, something for which there is no excuse. My favorite brand, by far, is way cheaper than Tabasco. It’s Louisiana brand. It’s a little thicker and redder than most pepper sauces, and it has a nice flavor with no ingredients other than the basics: peppers, vinegar, and salt.

When the building project is done and I have time to focus on gardening and preserving, I hope to experiment with putting up my own pepper sauces.

What they're eating in the south of France #5

This is a guest column by Anivid, who lives in the South of France and who also took these photos in markets near her home.

By Anivid

Hello Everybody,

We’re here on a French town market in the South. Even though it’s January, it’s not extremely cold – around 48° Fahrenheit. The time of the day is early in the morning, where the customers haven’t yet started to arrive. The marchandises (fruit, vegetable & especially for this week: honey) are nicely presented – a quality, I personally am very fond of. It’s not only about finding something edible to a fair price – it’s also about esthetics – you first eat with the eyes, then the mouth & last the stomach – all three have to be given their share of attention & consideration 😉 E.g. the lettuce is presented in a nice row, the big tomatoes (called Tomato de Boeuf), are sliced into halves for the customers to enjoy the beautifully arranged chambers inside, with the intersections covered with film. There’s shown respect for the country’s products! Perhaps it’s better saying the countries’ products, as e.g. the egg-plant (aubergine) and the squash (courgette) are from northern Spain (marked: ESP), whereas the radish (radis), radicchio = Belgian endive (trévise = chicorée rouge, where the roots are used for “coffee”. Do you know chicory coffee in the States ??, in Europe we knew it during WWII, and in France it became a specialty we still know ;-), and tomato are from P.O. our departement (66) Pyrénées-Orientales.

You see, the northern part of Spain (South Catalonia), and the southern part of France (North Catalonia) once belonged together, but the Treaty of the Pyrenees 1659 gave one part to France and another to Spain (not to speak about an enclave in France, called Llivia, which became Spanish 😉 A little earlier Andorra had become a co-principality with the French President and the Monsignore on Sicily as co-princes – Andorra is situated at the foot of département Pyrénées-Orientales 😉 We have a lot of such historically based constructions in Europe. All this happened in the late Medieval Ages. Earlier, around 1100-1300 same landscapes together with Provence and the Balearic Islands belonged to a kingdom called, the Kingdom of Mallorca, and further back, in the Antiquity, the romans were here. Hannibal & the elephants crossed the Pyrénées before they finally came to the Alps. The road they made is still here 😉

Enough history ??

We’ll go back to the market.

There being a whole booth with honey, the light, creamy sort as well as the darker, almost liquid sort – and here on the honey booth we can see the two official languages in the P.O. represented: French (miel) and Catalan (mel). Catalan is a specific language totally different from both French and Spanish. One can learn a lot by a little trip to the market – eh ? I assume you know all the products over-there, also the avocado, the kiwifruit, the artichoke (artichaut), the pumpkin (potiron), the broccoli, and the fenugreek (fenugrec).

Voila ! – what are you saying ??

Some arithmetic with broccoli

Carnivorous protein lust!

The broccoli in my local grocery store today was beautiful, and cheap. I had it for supper, steamed, with a buttermilk dipping sauce. It was delicious and just seemed so substantial. It made me wonder if broccoli doesn’t have a significant amount of protein.

After supper, I checked. Indeed it does, about 15 grams per pound, close to a quarter of what you get with hamburger, per pound. So let’s do the math. If you need 60 grams of protein and 2,000 calories to get through your day (a good ration for those not doing heavy lifting), then four pounds of broccoli a day would supply you with all the protein you need. However, that would give you less than 600 calories. An astonishing 45 percent of the calories in broccoli is in protein, a very high protein-to-calorie ratio. You’d need almost two dozen oranges to make up the calories. The protein in the oranges would bring you to well over 75 grams. So, on twenty-two oranges and four pounds of broccoli a day, you could live for a very, very long time, with nice muscles.

About five hundred years, would be my guess. Substitute two glasses of red wine for three of the oranges, and you’d be looking at 800 high-quality years.

Too much broccoli for you? Then try about a pound of hamburger, a pound of broccoli, 18 oranges, and two glasses of red wine.

I’m sure that everyone realizes that this is just a tongue-in-cheek thought experiment in nutrition and not a diet recommendation.