Defending your food

Michael Pollan is a journalist who teaches at Berkeley. His recent work, In Defense of Food, An Eater’s Manifesto, takes a fresh approach in addressing American eating and what he calls nutritionalism. Basically Mr. Pollan breaks it down to this: eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

No secret I like food. What I learned in Defense is that I like the right food, that is, food without process, food that’s out of a vegetable bin, not out of a box. By eating less of the boxed types of food product, Mr. Pollan says, we can eat better. Eating processed food leads to loss of health and weight gain.

He does not suggest a strictly vegetarian diet, and I liked that; instead he suggests, as Thomas Jefferson did, that we treat meat as a condiment rather than a main course.

All good sound advice, if you ask me.

Let’s eat just food, not a whole lot and maybe eat more leaves than flesh.

And cake, so long as it’s good cake, just a small slice and not too sweet.

Holy Bakeoff

Big, fat baking weekend. Don’t know what got to me…maybe the failed golden butter cake. I pulled up my boxers, laced on my oven mitt and stormed into the kitchen for three holy days and dusted the shit out of the house with flour.

Friday was Banana Tea Bread from the Times Cookbook to regain my form.






In the afternoon, I hooked a wad of sweet, egg dough and made hot cross buns.



Saturday, as long as I was still lousy with Fleishman’s yeast I made Cinnamon buns.



While enough to make most people tear up just smelling them – I actually got to eat them. They’re good for about three minutes, of course, then they start to go south. With a shot in the microwave though, they resurrect just fine and well, you know.

I know... way too much time on my hands? Saturday I'm scrambling together a Red Velvet Cake for another lucky birthday girl.

Lost my touch

How do you forget to add baking powder to a cake!?! Gawd, where has my Mo-Jo gone? I've plunged to the depths of bakery. Mija is 21 years old. You'd think I'd be able to manage a simple Golden Butter Cake with an eyes-closed-butter-cream....

I suspected something fishy when I opened the oven to check after 20 minutes and the cakes deflated like bad tires. While a normal cake is something like three inches high, these came out measured in centimeters.

All is lost...

better

Atul Gawande ends his most recent book, “better, A surgeon’s Notes on Performance”, with five suggestions for becoming a “Positive Deviant.”

1. Ask unscripted questions;
2. Don’t Complain;
3. Count things (i.e., keep statistics);
4. Write; and
5. Change.


Although offered as a guide for practicing physicians, I thought this list could be expanded for other professions, well, for anybody, really.

6. Read books;
7. Cook food for yourself and others;
8. Exercise;
9. Engage in some creative activity;
10. Listen to children;


Reading is a gift. And there are so many good books available. Reading exercises your imagination. With so many personal responsibilities, worries and political madness around us, reading allows a welcome retreat. Reading lets you keep learning. No one learns anything from watching American Idol. But read a book and you’ll learn what the author knows and maybe find out something new about yourself.

Cooking, and especially cooking for others, provides multi-level, deep satisfaction. I’ve covered this before but can’t stress enough the benefits.

Exercise converts into health. Exercise reduces stress, produces endorphins, burns fat and increases strength, just to name the generally accepted results.

Creating can include almost any activity. Make something, build an object, render an image, start with nothing – add yourself and your effort to end with something, enhance your home – level your house and build a new one or just paint the inside of all the closets, sew, knit, sing, play an instrument, participate in community theatre, do stand-up on open mic night, visit your local arts supply store and just wander the isles until you land on an object that catches your attention and buy it, take a class, learn to blow glass, learn how to make jewelry, collect penguins, garden, you get the idea.

Finally, hear what your children and other children are trying to tell you. They have lots of interesting ideas. Open up to the possibility that they can teach you how to live a fuller, less oppressed life. Then act more like a child.

Yucatan

I had the good fortune to spend the past week on the Yucatan peninsula. I could go on and on about the very gracious people we met, the splendid atmosphere of the Caribbean coast of Mexico and my fundamental connection with the culture. But I should concentrate on the food.

I live in one of the richest and most diverse restaurant centers of the known universe. In New York I can sample food from just about every culture. So why is it that no one in New York has yet succeeded in truly capturing the flavors of Mexico? I can replicate a few dishes at home with help from smuggled spices and chiles but I have not encountered anything that approaches the richness and depth of the food I’ve tasted in Mexico.

Certainly, you could argue that any meal would be better if you were to eat at an outdoor table under a market umbrella surrounded by the Caribean sea. But if that meal also included the freshest pescadillos (fish tacos), cerveza Sol, savory squash and arroz, then something transformative occurs. The textures of the food meld so well with the spice. The flavor of the cold beer matches the food so perfectly. We found just such a small outdoor restaurant at Punta del Sur on the southern most point of Isla Mujeres. And while the food was truly remarkable, the setting took our breath away.

Closer to Cancun, we found more refined tastes. One night for dinner we ate Sopa Tortilla with such astounding aroma and flavor that I may never experience its match. For our second courses we had Pescado de Dia which that day was a plate of right-from-the-sea grouper nestled in a rich sauce of spice and queso blanco and another dish with anchiote rich braised pork wrapped in banana leaf. All this bounty served with fresh, softly pliable corn tortillas and pico de gallo. For desert, a remarkable Mexican chocolate ice cream and tres leches cake. Oh, and a nice crisp Chilean white wine as a clear background note.

Could be the tacos de pollo and ceviche was the best thing we ate; or maybe it was the tamales at breakfast one morning… I won’t turn it into a contest, I’ll just let all those regional flavors set in my memory until I return.

Red Velvet Cake

I made an awful cake over the weekend. Using an untested Times recipe, I blundered through the process and produced one of the worst tasting cakes in the history of cakedom.

While I generally work with butter as a shortening in my cakes, this one asked for Canola oil. In addition to baking powder, this recipe needed vinegar. Let’s not talk about the $9.00 worth of red food coloring…..

Somehow, the cake came out tasting slightly of fish.

Did I have some residue in the oven from the stuffed fillet of sole we made the other night? Was the canola oil rancid? Does red food coloring come from the sea? Did someone lay a trout across the cake pan just before I poured the batter? I don’t know.

The frosting recipe seemed to work and I reluctantly applied it to the cake even though I suspected something was off after they came out of the oven. If I were a better baker I would have trashed the first cakes and remade them. I was pressed for time. I had to prepare a birthday party and I just couldn’t spare the extra hour.

So how can I move forward from disaster? Everyone was very nice about the cake but no one had seconds. The cake looked pretty, funny aftertaste though.

I’ll try it again with butter maybe or with a different food color.

It’s a setback…….

Peanutbutter and Jelly

Really, how hard can it be to make a decent peanut butter and jelly sandwich? You’d think the recipe involved manufacturing a chasseur sauce for cryin’ out loud.

OK, this is a rant so if you have crybaby, girly-man, casper milk-toast ears, stop reading.

After driving my kid through three states over two days to play at four ice rinks I was all but done. We tried to avoid the variety of road food generally available – McDonald’s, Burger King, Dunken Donuts, etc. – so our meals were scarce but better than the crap along the road. After the last game, we shuffled over to the local ice rink snack bar and looked for something to get us through the remaining 50 miles or so left before we could collapse into our warm hockey-free homes. Mijihita ordered a few Gatorades, her teammate weenied-out and got fries. Still deciding, I looked up and saw a sign that represented to me what this country stands for – “Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich $2.10.” Longing for home, I ordered the PB & J and waited.

Before I go on I just want to say a few things about God. He eats Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches. He eats them every day. The Bible says very little about this but as best as I can tell, God created the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich somewhere between the time when he let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed and the fruit trees and when he created the great whales. And it was good.

The beauty of the PB&J is that it’s so simple to gracefully execute one. With just a few ingredients and a dull knife, a standard poodle can make one. And this is the rant – assuming the nincompoop behind the counter at the ice rink actually had something other than squid ink in his brain-pan, how could he have fucked up such an easy task? The sandwich arrived – after about 15 minutes I might add – no really – it took him this long- and it was disappointing in every way imaginable. One half of the sandwich was made with stale bread, the other semi-fresh. The peanut butter seemed to have an after taste of onion. (Did the little bastard put the condiment spreader used for the burgers on my sandwich!?!). I could not identify what type of jelly he used. It was so sparsely spread that it may as well have been excluded altogether. Did I take it back and demand to see the Manager? I’m frequently a crank, but I choose my battles and this one didn’t deserve it. Besides, the little dim wit, future laborer behind the counter was by then furiously text messaging someone while the queue backed up all the way to the blue line.

Here’s the rule – if God had intended peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to be made at and sold from ice rink snack bars, he would have required it pursuant to one of the ten commandments or something. It’s not there. I looked again just this morning. If you want a PB&J, make it yourself and don’t make the same mistake I did.

Peanut Butter and Jelly (jam) sandwich

1 Loaf fresh, sliced white bread (e.g., Wonder Bread)
1 Jar “Crunchy” peanut butter at room temperature
1 Jar Smuckers Strawberry Jam

Open the loaf of bread and take two slices from the middle of the loaf. Keep them together so the seams match up when you spread the jam and peanut butter. Now open the two slices like you’re opening a book and lay them on a suitable, clean, flat surface. Using a clean butter knife, spread a generous amount of crunchy peanut butter evenly over the surface of the right hand slice. Without cleaning the knife, dip into the jam jar and remove enough jam to cover the left hand side slice of bread. (Portions are incredibly personal so I will not suggest recommended amounts). Using as much skill as required, join the two slices together again so the seams match and the jam oozes slightly. With a clean sharp knife, slice the sandwich diagonally in half.

Enjoy with a large glass of cold milk.