Hands off my bacon

I haven’t really been doing much fun cooking lately, though today I will be attempting to recreate some sweet potato/black bean/caramelized onion quesadillas for my book club ladies. I figured I would share a few interesting and somewhat scary facts I’ve recently learned about food.

Hands off my bacon! Did you get wind of the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF)’s conclusion that processed meats are too dangerous for human consumption? According to reports, consumers should stop buying and eating all processed meat products for the rest of their lives. Processed meats include bacon, sausage, hot dogs, sandwich meat, packaged ham, pepperoni, salami and virtually all red meat used in frozen prepared meals. The cause is a carcinogenic ingredient known as sodium nitrite which is used as a color fixer by meat companies to turn packaged meats a bright red color so they look fresh. Unfortunately, sodium nitrite also results in the formation of cancer-causing nitrosamines in the human body. And this leads to a sharp increase in cancer risk for those who eat them. Just another reason to give some of the locally raised, grass fed meats at your local public market a try.

Do you know what’s in your yolk? According to Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, poultry hatchlings don’t have to eat or drink for the first forty-eight hours of their life. That’s where the yolk or food sac comes into play. The yolk of the egg is absorbed into the chick’s belly just before hatching, providing them with sustenance for their first few days of their lives. That’s why newborn poultry can be safely put into a box right after hatching and shipped anyplace they’ll reach within two days.

Where's the produce? According to Kingsolver’s novel, modern U.S. consumers get to taste less than one percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. According to India crop ecologist Vandana Shiva, humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. Today, three-quarters of all human food comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified soy, corn and canola. And garden seed inventories show that while about 5,000 non-hybrid vegetables varieties were available from seed catalogs in 1981, the number in 1998 was down to 600. That’s because most vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packing, and a tolerance for hard travel.

The sacrifice for having year-round access to fruits and vegetables, even when they aren’t in season, comes from the flavor of the produce. Long distance travel is to blame. Responding to market demands, vegetable farmers gradually dropped thousands of flavorful varieties from their planting schedules, concentrating instead on the handful of varieties purchased by transporters, restaurant chains and processed-food manufacturers. And with that has gone the flavor and even some of the nutrients in the produce. So next time you pick up a perfectly shaped and consistently colored pinkish greenhouse-grown tomato, think about what you’re missing.

For more information about our food supply, finding local produce, and healthy recipes, visit www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com.

Eat with your hands

My blog is beginning to make me think I have an obsession with tortilla wraps, but I suppose there could be worse things! It’s also making me see how cooking is just as much following recipes as it is trying to find a way to use the food in your refrigerator in new and delicious ways.

After three days of eating the four festival food groups at moe.down (that’s sausage, bacon, hot dogs and grilled cheese), I opted for something a bit lighter for dinner this evening, what I like to call pizza salad. It was also an attempt to use up the three packs of wheat tortillas I inherited after trying to sort through the post-festival food mess.

I used to work at a restaurant in Pittsford that served pizza salads, and the dish was among the most popular on the menu. Their version of pizza salad constituted plain pizza dough baked in a wood fired oven, brushed with garlic and olive oil, topped with mixed greens, grilled zucchini, peppers, portabella mushrooms, onions, goat cheese and balsamic vinegar.

My version of the pizza salad is a little different and based off a dish I once enjoyed at Blue Moon Grill in Fulton, NY. It’s very simple although it does make the oven smoke up.

First, make up a mixture of olive oil and butter (I know there is a culinary term for this, but I can’t recall it for the life of me) with fresh herbs like oregano, parsley, thyme and basil, as well as some pressed garlic or garlic paste. Mix that up into a nice smooth consistency. Thinly slice a few plum tomatoes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. This is the tricky part. Thinly coat the tortillas in the butter/herb mixture and place them on your oven racks so that they are full supported, especially on the edges. This can be tricky because as the tortillas heat up, they’ll want to droop off the oven rack until they start to get a little crispy. After you’ve placed the shells on the racks, place the tomatoes in a circular fashion around the center of the tortilla and then sprinkle them with a thin layer of some kind of Italian cheese mixture, such as a four cheese blend.

Keep rotating the shells as they bake. They should get crispy in about four to five minutes. Remove from oven once edges start to brown.

In a separate bowl, I mix some salad greens and thinly sliced onions with balsamic dressing. Slice the cooled tortilla pizza in four quadrants and top with the salad mixture. This is eaten like a pizza, but you stuff the salad into the center of your pizza slices. It’s very messy and very delicious.

I’m considering using the broil setting on the oven as an experiment for a future bout with this recipe.

Okay, so my blog theme this week appears to be reusing old food, or leftovers. Staying in that same vein, today I made banana bread. I made it for two reasons…first, I’m going to moe.down this weekend; second, I had about nine black bananas in my freezer just waiting to be defrosted and born again.

Call me a monkey, but I am a big fan of bananas. On those weeks when I buy more than I can eat, or the warm weather ripens them before I can eat them, I toss them in the freezer where they accumulate until I have enough to make a nice big double batch of banana bread, or even some mini-muffins, which are fun to make, but it’s also a real pain to clean the pan afterwards.

The double batch I made today yielded seven mini-loaves and two large loaves. Here’s a nice simple and delicious family recipe I use. You can just throw all the ingredients into the bowl, mix it up and pour it in the pan and you’ll have plenty to share! Banana bread is just another way old food can be born again!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

½ cup of shortening or butter

1 ½ cup of sugar

2 eggs

3-4 mushed bananas

½ cup milk

¼ cup vinegar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups flour

Be sure to grease the pans before filling. You can get fancy if you want and add nuts, golden raisins or even chocolate chips, but even plain, this is a treat you’re guaranteed to enjoy!

A delicious use for day-old bread

Most of the time I consider myself pretty well informed in the culinary arts and different ethnic and cultural foods. Last night though, I was introduced to a delicious (new to me) creation called Panzanella thanks to my dear friends Jennifer and Ryan. Being that it originated in Italy, I was quite surprised I'd never tried this before.

According to my research online, Panzanella is a Florentine salad that always includes bread and tomatoes, plus vegetables from the garden, including peppers, cucumbers, and onions. Other additions include garlic, capers, black olives, basil and anchovies (though my hosts thankfully left this ingredient out as far as I know). The (fresh) bread was toasted in olive oil and tossed with salt to give it a little crunch, and all the ingredients were tossed together in a simple vinaigrette dressing. The combination is nothing short of delightful, and could easily be considered a full meal rather than just a salad.

Historically, Panzanella was an invention of necessity as Italian cooks waste nothing, and this salad was seen as a good way to utilize stale bread and vegetables from the garden. So the next time you have some day old bread lying around the house, maybe you should attempt a Panzanella. Am I the only person who’s never tried this delicious recipe before?

Leftovers, again?

Does the thought of leftovers fill you with dread? No matter how delicious a meal is that I’ve prepared, the prospect of eating it the second time around is just not the same as the first time. Growing up, my mother had a term for leftovers. It was mustgos, or Mus-gos if you want it phonetically. She used to say it was her fancy word for “everything in the fridge that must go.” When you put it that way, it’s just not as appealing.

Sometimes, though (ie. All things quesadilla), leftovers can be sheer delight. For dinner this evening, I will attempt a feat of deliciousness which I did not think possible with mustgo’s. Grilled pizza topped with basil pesto, shrimp, fresh cherry tomatoes, caramelized onions, roasted eggplant, bacon, arugula and fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese. Thanks to a tip from my bestie Nicole, I picked up some pizza yeast at the store and whipped up some dough that didn’t even need time to rise. I’ll try to take and post some photos afterwards. Best part of the recipe, I had all the ingredients here at home!

What creative uses have you come up with for leftovers?

The other white meat

Okay, so I’ll admit it. Besides maybe pulled pork, I’m not a big fan of the other white meat. Maybe it’s memories of having dried-up pork chops for dinner when I was growing up. It wasn’t her fault though. My mother is a phenomenal cook, don’t get me wrong. I recently realized one of the reasons for my dislike of pork, and probably the reason my mother’s pork chops were so dry.

The US Department of Agriculture recently lowered its temperature recommendation for cooking pork to 145 degrees from 160 degrees. The USDA also called for letting the pork rest for three minutes after cooking so the temperature is maintained during that time killing off remaining pathogens.

Whenever I cook pork, I’m always tempted to pull it off the grill or out of the oven when it’s still a little rare, knowing the meat will continue to cook. To me it seems sinful to cook the meat until it’s grey and as hard as a puck. So, with these new federal guidelines, I decided to give it another shot.

This light recipe for Chipolte-Marinated Pork Chops with Chimichurri Sauce is spicy and the Chimichurri is packed with all sorts of vitamins and minerals (besides being fun to say.) You'll need a blender or food processor for this recipe.

Blend 3/4 cup of fat-free, low sodium chicken broth with one drained can of chipolte chile in adobo sauce (Goya makes this) in a blender. Place the mixture with four, six-ounce pork chops in a container or plastic bag for about two hours before you are ready to start cooking (and trust me, no more than two hours or it will be too spicy.)

For the chimichurri, combine the following ingredients in a blender:

• 1 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1/4 cup fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup shredded carrot
• 1/2 cup minced fresh onion

Cook the pork chops on the grill or in the oven, following the new guidelines of cooking the meat to 145 degrees. Serve with the chimichurri and a dollop of sour cream to help cut the heat. I sometimes cook sweet potato fries with this meal. It’s scrumptious.

Virginia is for (food) lovers

While reading Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”, I came across a passage about morels, a wild mushroom with a honeycomb-like cap. It gave me pause to appreciate the natural culinary wonders which I was exposed to in the year of my life during which I lived in Blacksburg, Virginia.

From August of 2008 to 2009, I journeyed to Blacksburg, a small town of 30,000 tucked on a plateau between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains. Life happens slower in Blacksburg. After work, I often found myself bored. Cooking helped fill the void.

I quickly learned there was something different about food in Virginia. Number one, we don’t have a Wegmans. While that was reason enough to be hesitant about moving, I found the absence of the supermarket giant forced me to look outside the grocery store for the ingredients to a meal. Suddenly I wanted to follow the rickety wooden sign advertising a butcher 1.5 miles down the road. And the idea of spending hours slow cooking ribs on a homemade backyard smoker made sense. I recall one trip to the farmers market which netted a few pints of heirloom-variety grape tomatoes, and inspired me to spend an entire afternoon slaving over a fragrant pot of tomato, basil, parmesan risotto.

There were many opportunities to pick our own produce, like strawberries and blueberries. Several afternoons spent collecting the delicious homegrown fruits resulted in more than half-dozen varieties of blueberry pies, many evenings of frozen strawberry daiquiris, and a fresh blueberry pancake brunch.

One of my favorite memories was cooking with morels for the first and only time in my life. These wild mushrooms are tough to find. Some say they grow in old apple orchards while others insist they grow around the roots of tulip poplars or dying elms, Kingsolver writes. Morels do contain toxic hemolysins that destroy blood cells, chemicals which are rendered harmless during cooking.

“Wild mushrooms are among the few foods North Americans still eat that must be hunted and gathered,” Kingsolver writes.

It just so happened, my boss at West End Market at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, “Bubba” was an expert morel picker. He lived just over the state-line in West Virginia and he and one of the chefs would go out each spring and collect these rare and very expensive delicacies. To give you an idea, a one-ounce bag of dried morels is listed for $34 on Amazon.com. Lucky for me, I had friends in Virginia who were willing to share the bounty of their hunt.

Bubba instructed me to soak the morels in a bowl of salt water overnight before eating them. The next day I set out to incorporate them into a cheesy risotto, the recipe for which I’ve since forgotten. I will never forget the distinct flavor of the dish though. The results were absolutely divine, an earthy, melt-in-your-mouth kind of goodness that you can’t get with just any kind of mushroom. And the idea of getting to eat something so rare gave me a new appreciation for putting a little more time, effort and thought into hunting, gathering and cooking my food.

“With their woodsy, earthy, complex flavors and aromas, and their rich, primeval colors and forms, wild mushrooms bring to our kitchens a reminder that all the places we once inhabited were wildernesses.” ~ quote by Alice Waters, as borrowed from “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”.