White Fluffy Icing

Musings of a reasonably competent home cook.

Archive for April, 2010

One more thing about honey…

Apr 27

Posted by Laura in Food of Love | 2 Comments

I forgot the most important factoid about honey!

When Leah and I were talking this week’s blog post, she specifically asked that I mention that honey shouldn’t be fed to infants, and explain why.  Her feeling was that lots of folks were unaware, and I think she might be right.

Here’s the deal:  Botulism is a type of bacterial infection, of the particularly nasty sort.  You can pick it up through wounds via unclean water or soil, or you can ingest it and have a horribly severe case of food poisoning.

The tricky part is that botulism spores can survive without oxygen, which means that it can live in honey (along with improperly canned food, or infused oils – like garlic and herb infused olive oil).  Folks with a healthy, mature intestinal tract can usually fight off the infection, but the immature digestive systems of babies can’t.  They can get really really sick, and in some cases, it can be fatal. 

This is why honey should never be fed to babies under one year of age.

Not sure how many food bloggers out there are covering the yummy topic of potentially deadly food poisoning, but then again, this isn’t just any old blog, is it?  I’m thinking of it as a geeked out public service announcement. 

Plus, as I’ve said before, Rule #1 of Food of Love is not trying to kill people…

If you’re interested, read more here and here.

Honey for Your Hunny

Apr 26

Posted by Laura in Food of Love | 8 Comments

I love mowing the yard. The hum of the engine and repetitive motions lull me into a zen-like state. In fact, some of my best ideas were born while walking behind a mower.

The trouble at our house is that we both like to cut the grass, and Matt almost always beats me to it. But since his experience I’m about to describe, it hasn’t been quite the calming activity it once was.

It was early spring of 2004, that hopeful time of year when birds are arriving, plants are budding, and the sun is starting to peek out with increasing regularity. Our usual practice was to spend a weekend giving the flowerbeds a face-lift with ridiculous amounts of mulch and a highly optimistic number of annuals. (I say this “was” our practice because since our son arrived, our yard has become an abomination. But that’s beside the point.)

Sometime during this annual yard-work weekend in 2004, Matt fired up the mower and started cutting the grass. I ducked inside to grab a quick drink of water, and while I was filling my glass, I heard the mower engine suddenly cut off. Through the back door window I saw Matt doing an I’m-being-swarmed-by-bees dance that only Steve Martin or Jim Carrey could accurately emulate. I’m telling you, I’ve known Matt literally all my life, and I’ve never seen him move so quickly.

It didn’t take him long to go from panic to shock to outright anger. There’s nothing like bee stings to take you from zen to fury. It was war.

The honeycomb inside the cable box, post-eviction. Poor things!

The hive was in a cable box, hidden at the back of one of the flower beds. There were bees everywhere, and apparently they’re not big on lawnmowers. Or their operators. They were pissed. Matt was pissed. (Can you already see that this will not end well?)

First he targeted the tiny hole they were flying in and out of with the water hose, thinking he might be able to fill the box with water and ruin the hive. They laughed.

Then he attacked with wasp killer. They pointed and nudged each other, three elbows at a time, mocking him. (Ever notice that no one sells cans of bee killer? Hmmm.)

Then his engineer sensibilities kicked in. He’d heard that soapy water will suffocate bees by coating their spiracles. So he took one of those Miracle-Gro hose feeders, dumped out the fertilizer and re-filled it with dish soap. He then quickly discovered that by removing the nozzle (you know, the one that creates a gentle fan of water for delicate plant foliage), it will shoot out water with laser propulsion. But when he unleashed this model of bee-slaying ingenuity on them, they yawned and told him they really expected better.

Now it was personal.

Matt realized that since the cable box was Time Warner’s property, and since the hive would eventually threaten the functionality of said box (if he hadn’t destroyed it already), he had an ally – and surely they’d dealt with this problem before and could offer a quick resolution…

Uh, wrong. The problem with this otherwise sound theory is that Time Warner (now Comcast) is absolutely inept. It took Matt forever on the phone to find the right person and explain what happened, and then it took another forever for them to send someone. When they finally did, they sent a repair guy instead of the beekeeper. And not only that, but this particular repair dude was severely allergic to bees. Matt drove up to find him sitting in his company truck, hands on the wheel, staring out of the windshield in a daze. He was Hispanic, but you wouldn’t know it, because he was white as a ghost. (I imagined him whistling Dixie as he traipsed through our yard to have a look-see at the “broken” box, and then peeing in his pants when the bees swarmed him.)

This part of the story drags out a bit, so I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that Matt wound up more ticked off at Time Warner than at the bees, and that’s saying a lot. Eventually a beekeeper showed up, haz-mat suit and all, and with his magic smoke machine, he coaxed the queen and all her cronies out of there.

Honestly, I was secretly glad that Matt couldn’t obliterate the bees, because I find the little critters fascinating:

  • When the worker bees scout out a good location for nectar gathering, they give each other directions to the sweet spot by dancing. How cool is that? (“You put your stinger in, you take your stinger out, you put your stinger in, and you shake it all about…”)
  • They’re an important part of our food chain, because while they’re gathering all that nectar, pollen sticks to their fuzzy wuzzies and they wind up pollinating all sorts of plants. In fact, the bee population in the U.S. has been declining since 2006, and it’s causing gigantic problems in the agriculture industry, because – get this – there’s around 15 billion dollars worth of crops that depend on bees for pollination. Ouch.
  • Studies on the hexagonal design of honeycombs has revealed that it’s the most efficient way to store honey and larvae – in other words, it holds the maximum weight and volume with minimal material (beeswax).
  • Speaking of beeswax, have you ever thought about where the bees get it?  (Answer: They secrete it from special glands, and then chew it to make it malleable.)
  • We all know that bees make honey, but it occurred to me that I’ve never heard the details on how they actually do this. I mean, it’s not like they have a little Viking range back the hive, where they cook down all the nectar and put it up in little heat-sealed jars. Not to mention their marked lack of opposable thumbs. So I looked it up (of course), and guess what their secret is? Regurgitation. That’s right, people. It’s bee barf. Bees have a special “honey stomach” where they store the nectar they gather, and then by regurgitating and re-ingesting it several times, it gets “processed” into honey. The “processing” removes oxygen and water (catalysts for food spoilage), which explains why honey – if stored properly – will keep indefinitely.
  • I could go on and on about their engineering and culinary feats, but I won’t risk boring you. But I’ll leave you with this… their accomplishments are even more impressive when you consider that their brains are about the size of a sesame seed. Isn’t that wild?

You might be wondering what got me thinking about bees and our backyard incident that happened years back. Well, for starters, Leah and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about how her favorite food in the world just might be honey, and how she’d take a homemade tortilla dipped in bee barf over a fussy dessert any day.

And then later that day, by pure coincidence, I was on our back deck and heard a dim buzzing sound.

They’re baaaaaaaaaack.

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As I mentioned, Leah enjoys her honey served straight up — but when I made this honey-glazed chicken for her, she wholeheartedly approved.  It takes a while to cook, but the prep is easy and you can do other things while you wait for the oven to do its magic.  It also works on the grill.

 

Honey-Glazed Orange and Rosemary Chicken
From Fresh & Fast by Marie Simmons

2 seedless oranges
½ cup honey
2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 large chicken, cut into 8 serving pieces
8 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
½ teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Using a vegetable peeler, cut two strips of orange zest from one orange; cut into thin slivers and set aside. Halve the orange and squeeze the juice into a bowl large enough to hold the chicken; add the honey and rosemary and stir to blend. Cur the remaining orange in half lengthwise and then into thick half-moon slices.

Add the chicken, orange slices and garlic to the orange juice mixture; sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and toss to blend. (The chicken can be marinated for 30 minutes at room temperature or for up to 2 hours, covered and refrigerated.)

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Line a large baking pan with foil. Arrange the chicken and all the marinade ingredients in the baking pan. Bake for 50 minutes, or until the chicken is golden, turning it a basting it with the marinade every 10 to 15 minutes while it is cooking. Serve immediately.

Serves 4.

 

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Saving the Planet, Foodie Style

Apr 20

Posted by Laura in Food of Love | 4 Comments

Speaking of Earth Day, Lisbeth sent this photo of Greenland from an airplane. She thought the ice sheet resembled white fluffy icing, and I think she's right!

I’m no Jane Goodall, but I like to think that I’m pretty eco-friendly. I drive a fuel efficient car, I recycle, and although parenthood has thrown a wet blanket on my eco-conscious food shopping habits, I buy produce from a local farm when I can. I also try to use produce that’s in season (to reduce shipping distances).

However, with Earth Day coming up this week, I’m reminded there’s plenty of room to up my game in this department, especially from a cooking point of view. First, although I despise throwing out food, I do it way too often. Labeling food containers with dates has helped, so that I can manage leftovers before they become a penicillin factory in my fridge.

Secondly, I recently learned something new about food waste. Aside from the fact that it’s a stupid misuse of grocery dollars, and the whole don’t-you-know-there-are-starving-children-in-China guilt trip, tossing food hasn’t really registered with me from an environmental perspective. I mean, sure, it takes up precious space in the landfills, but eventually it breaks down – which makes more room, right?

Sort of. If you were to toss an apple core in your backyard, it would eventually degrade and actually add some nutrients back into the soil. This is the basic idea of composting: let biodegradable stuff rot in a container, stir occasionally to ensure it all gets enough air and water, and you wind up with compost to spread in your garden or flowerbeds. Mother Nature does this on the floors of forests every day.

But here’s the thing about landfills: no one is stirring them occasionally, so the degrading process of all that buried food happens without oxygen. Yeah, so? Well, anaerobic decomposition of organic matter produces a mix of methane and carbon dioxide. Oops.

Let’s review. Throwing away food is not only wasteful, it increases the volume of garbage being carted to landfills, which burns gasoline and other resources. And once it gets there, it produces harmful greenhouse gases. Dang it! There goes my ignorant bliss on the subject. (For those of you that just can’t wait to know more about how landfills work, look here.)

Growing up in rural setting, we walked our food scraps out to the back fence and tossed them into the pasture. In addition to minimizing the number of garbage bags we had to haul to the end of our long driveway, the stated goal of this policy was odor control. Any environmental benefits were certainly unintended, but there we were, being all eco-friendly.

So what’s a suburban cook without a back pasture to do? Well, I could buy a compost bin and start doing my duty – good for the environment, good for my flower beds, and easy on the chemical fertilizer budget. But even though I dream of keeping an organic life-cycle garden one day, it’s honestly just not a high enough priority at the moment.

So what’s a time-crunched, somewhat lazy suburban cook without a back pasture to do? Answer: at the very least, reduce the amount of food I toss out. I need to think while I shop, and buy only as much as I actually need, instead of tossing in a few more [insert produce item here] just in case. I need to improve my leftover management system – oh, and follow it. And I need to be open to creative solutions, like the recipe below.

Readers, any eco-friendly kitchen tips to share? Do you recycle and/or compost?

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Here’s a great idea I recently ran across to reduce food waste, with the added benefit of having homemade broth on hand. Why didn’t I think of this before?!

When cooking with vegetables, put the trimmed ends, stalks, peels, and other scraps in a zip-top bag and stow in the freezer. As you use more veggies, add the scraps to the freezer stash. When you have enough scraps and enough time, make vegetable broth.

Eco-Friendly Veggie Broth

Vegetable scraps (see note above)*
6 garlic cloves, unpeeled, smashed with the side of a knife
A bouquet garni of fresh or dried herbs (toss in an entire bunch of Italian parsley, fresh or dried oregano, fresh or dried thyme, whatever you like)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients in a large pot, filling no more than two-thirds full. Add cold water to cover by an inch. (Don’t bother peeling the garlic or chopping the herbs, because you’re going to strain the final product anyway.)

Heat to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for at least one hour, stirring occasionally. Taste and adjust the seasonings as you go. Pour or ladle through a fine sieve. Use or freeze within a few days.

Vegetable broth can be used to cook rice or make soups, stews, sauces, and about a bazillion other things.

*Adding mushrooms to the vegetables (especially portobellos) will make a darker, richer broth.

Well, Phooey.

Apr 19

Posted by Laura in Lagniappe | 1 Comment

It was all very proactive of me, you see.  I ran across an article about environmentally friendly gardening, and I realized that Earth Day was coming up, and I got all excited and churned out a blog entry about it.  Weeks ago.  On a different computer.  One that I don’t have with me at the moment. 

No, I didn’t save another copy to my flash drive. No, I didn’t email it to myself.  Yes, I do have a bird brain.

This is why I do things at the last minute, folks.  Procrastinators rarely have to remember where they stashed away all the work they’ve done ahead of time.  Geeeez.

So, please tune in tomorrow evening, where you’ll find a (hopefully) enlightening take on the foodie side of being green.  And you’ll (probably) think it was worth the wait.  And (if I’m lucky) you won’t think less of me…

(Sigh.)

Lagniappe: Cooking and Healthy Kids

Apr 16

Posted by Laura in Lagniappe | No Comments

I’ve been meaning to share this article with you for some time now.  I saw it on CNN’s website, and it captures many of the things I love about home cooking… let me know if you agree.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/26/swensson.kids.cooking/index.html?hpt=C2

Bon Appétit Challenge: Whatever Happened to the Low Carb Craze?

Apr 13

Posted by Laura in 2010 Bon Appétit Covers, Cover Announcements | 13 Comments

Well, the May cover is out:  Fettucine with Peas, Asparagus, and Pancetta.  The second pasta in five months!  Clearly the Atkins diet fad is well behind us.  I wonder whether all those folks who lost weight eating bunless burgers are still skinny?  Or, shall I say, bunless?  Ha!

Looks like I’ve got some chopping to do, but I don’t see any meatballs to shape or eggplant to salt/broil/roll/bake.  And with meat, vegetables, and starch all represented, I won’t even need a side salad or a hunk-o-bread.  Bring it!

As a side note — I’m not complaining, because I looove me some pasta, but if we’re going whole hog on the processed carbs, I sure wish we could work in a dessert somewhere.  Babs?  Anyone?  

Bueller?

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Bon Appétit Challenge: Salmon with Sweet Chili Glaze

Apr 12

Posted by Laura in 2010 Bon Appétit Covers, Cover Recipe Results | 9 Comments

Apparently salmon is a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of folks.  You may have known this, but it’s news to me.

I show each cover to Matt when they’re published, and his reaction to this one was, “Meh. Salmon’s not really my thing.”  Well that’s nice to know, considering that I’ve made it more than a few times for him.  (Maybe I should start leaving customer comment cards on our dining room table, with a header in bold print that reads “Your opinion matters to us!”  But on second thought, maybe I shouldn’t.)

What’s wrong with salmon?, I asked.  “Nothing.  There’s just lots of other fish I like more.”  Huh. 

Next thing I know, I’m standing at the fish counter in the store, talking with the seafood dude about which salmon filet looks best and what kind of poundage I need.  Suddenly, this otherwise well-adjusted looking woman approaches me and strikes up a very enthusiastic conversation.  She’d had a revelation, she said.  She had salmon at a restaurant recently, and (gasp!) she liked it!  Wow!  Isn’t that amazing?! 

I immediately started going through my mental Rolodex, trying to decide if I actually know this person.  Meanwhile, she starts asking for salmon advice.  I steal a pleading glance at Seafood Dude, whose eyebrows are up.  His look tells me I’m on my own.

Now, she asks, which variety of salmon did I have at the restaurant?  Forget the Rolodex, now I’m looking for security and/or the candid camera.  Lady, how am I supposed to know what kind of salmon you ordered?

She continues her monologue, and soon it becomes clear that she thinks there’s a magic species of salmon that’s not dry and fishy-tasting.  Ohhhh.  She’s not crazy, she’s just been consuming abused salmon.  Poor thing!

I tell her that I’m no expert, but those issues are more a factor of freshness and cooking technique than species.  All salmon tastes more or less the same, although some are fattier than others, and farmed salmon doesn’t have the high levels of Omega-3′s that the wild stuff has.  She got so excited that I thought she was going to hyperventilate.  Seafood Dude, who taking his time so as to avoid getting involved, finally handed me my prize.  I deftly handed her off by mentioning that he could tell her all she ever wanted to know, and made a bee-line for the dry goods.

I broiled grape tomatoes alongside the salmon.

The next day, I made Salmon with Sweet Chili Glaze for Leah, who was down for the weekend.  Luckily, our neighbors Ryan and Shana were able to join us and brought this amazing salad (which I’m hoping they’ll share the recipe for via a comment – hint, hint).  

Over lunch, my neighbor Ryan explained his position on salmon, which was similar to Crazy Grocery Lady’s, but without the hyperventilation.  He pointed out that casual mid-level restaurants often mistreat salmon, serving it overcooked and less-than-super-fresh.  But when he goes to a higher-end restaurant, he orders something out of this world, not ho-hum salmon.  Hmmm.  Makes sense.  No wonder salmon has a bad rep.

And that brings me to the low-down on this month’s Bon Appetit cover, whose layers of flavors can go toe-to-toe with anything at a nice restaurant (if you cared to waste your order on salmon, that is).  And here’s the thing: it was fast, super easy, and tasted great.

This time around, the pea tendrils and sweet chili sauce jumped out as the ingredients of note.

Pea tendrils, according to the recipe, are the young leaves and shoots of the snow pea plant.  Translation: good luck finding them at a store.  (I used sunflower sprouts.)

Sweet chili sauce, though — now that’s interesting.  Folks who don’t recognize the name may know it by sight as the slightly sweet dipping sauce for spring rolls at Thai restaurants.  The zing comes from chili paste, and the rest of the flavors are rounded out with garlic, vinegar, and cilantro.  By the time you add soy sauce and ginger, per the recipe, you’re balancing tons of different flavors with just three ingredients.  Bravo!

Essentially, the preparation goes like this: mix three marinade ingredients, brush the fish with the marinade, and broil it until it’s barely done.   While it cooks, quickly stir fry the sugar snap peas, tossing in whatever sprouts you’re using in place of the pea tendrils you couldn’t find.  That’s it.  Done.  Finito.

Considering the time invested in mixing homemade meatballs, braising short-ribs, and rolling grilled slices of eggplant, this was a nice break.  But what I really love about this dish is that it packs tons of flavor and still lets you taste the fish. 

Ryan is right about not ordering salmon in a restaurant, and now that I have a restaurant-quality recipe, I may just never do it again.

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Press Pause for Fresh Fish

Apr 5

Posted by Laura in Food of Love | 8 Comments

Hold it!  Stop everything.  There’s fresh fish in the ice chest, and we know what that means: fish for dinner.  Tonight.  Right now.

I don’t mean fresh as in I-just-picked-up-at-the-store.  I certainly don’t mean fresh as in simply not-frozen.  I mean it-was-just-swimming-a-few-hours-ago-and-my-happy-hiney-reeled-that-sucker-in fresh.  And, like hunting, when you go out and acquire your dinner with some luck and your own two hands, you’re likely to treat the bounty with respect.  And how, pray tell, do you show respect for fish?  By eating it as soon as humanly possible, of course.

I don’t care if it’s Easter weekend, and you have four stops to make the next day.  It doesn’t matter that you’re going to have to leave the neighborhood egg hunt a little early.  Buy some candy at half-price and hunt eggs again if you have to, but you’re cooking fish tonight. 

For Christmas, Unk and Aunt ‘Nise decided that their gift to us would be a fishing trip sometime this spring.  Score!  A couple of calendar comparisons later, we determined that the trip would happen the first Friday of April: Good Friday.

When you’re fa-la-la-la-la-ing by the fireplace, April seems a long way off.  Talk of boat trips and sunscreen and rods and reels is a really foreign-feeling concept when you’re still planning New Year’s.  But bzzzzzt!  What was that?  Oh, just the first quarter of 2010 buzzing by.  And here we are.

We packed up Matt’s truck, dropped The Boy off at my in-law’s (thank you, Nonnie and Granddad!), and headed to Seadrift, Texas.  The next morning, we met a very nice and extremely talented gentleman named Gary Gray, who whisked us up the shore into Espiritu Santo Bay and immediately put us right on top of the reds.  Friends, there are few things as relaxing as trying to rip the lips off of a redfish, especially on a quiet morning without another boat in sight.

So, what’s the big deal about eating fish right away?  Would I really plan the rest of my weekend around it?  Um, yes.

You see, fish is a delicate protein and degrades quickly.  Fresher is definitely better – the first time you have something right off the boat, you know the difference.  It’s a brighter, cleaner flavor, and there’s nothing “fishy” about it. 

Plus, there are relatively few opportunities in life to know exactly how fresh a fish is and exactly where it came from.  Forget all that environmental guilt-trip stuff; this is the real reason to eat local.

If someone offers you some fresh fish, don’t even think about letting it sit in the fridge for a couple of days, much less (heavens to Betsy!) the freezer.  Drop everything, fry up some okra, bake some potatoes, and call me.

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Our favorite preparation for fresh redfish is grilled “on the halfshell”, with sauteed lump crabmeat.  The “halfshell” is the scales-on skin of the fileted fish, which hardens as it cooks.  The fish is seasoned very simply and cooked skin-side down the entire time, which lets the true flavor of the meat sing from the mountaintops.  YUM.

Grilled Redfish On The Halfshell with Sauteed Crabmeat

Vegetable oil
Redfish filets with skin and scales still attached
Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning, to taste
Pepper, to taste
8 ounces jumbo lump crabmeat
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Additional butter, melted
Chopped parsley (optional)

Brush the fish on both sides with vegetable oil, then sprinkle the flesh side with Tony’s and pepper, to taste. Grill on an oiled rack, skin-side down, until it flakes easily. Do not overcook! The rule of thumb is ten minutes per inch of thickness, but cooking time will vary depending on the heat of the grill. Check early and often if you have to.

Meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a small skillet or saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the crabmeat, season with salt and pepper, and saute until heated through, about 4-5 minutes. Stir or toss gently.

When the fish is done, drizzle with the additional melted butter and sprinkle with chopped parsley, if using. Spoon the crabmeat over the fish, or serve on the side.

Serve immediately!

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