Trying to ignore the camera.
Posts for Your Pleasure
I'm sorry. I'm just too darned obsessed with my new iPhone to post anything original right now. I have been surfing the web however, on my new iPhone, and came across some posts you really should read.
Pocket Farm has announced One Local Summer. This is very cool and I'm sorry I didn't hear about it earlier. The idea is to prepare one local meal each week of the Summer. I know I've been critical of the whole eating local thing in the past, but to me, this is totally doable and a really interesting experiment/habit. You can check out what meals look like regionally on the One Local Summer blog.
Are you sick of posts about dining at the French Laundry? Of course not! Kristen of Give Me Some Food includes plenty of photos to make you feel like you are there. If you want to skip ahead to know how much she enjoyed the meal, the smile on her face in the last picture says it all.
Derrick of Obsession with Food points out the irony of a "real food" contest being sponsored by Hellman's mayonnaise and Yahoo! Food. I know people love this product, but Hellman's or Best Foods mayo tastes like chemicals and sugar to me. It's very satisfying to make your own homemade version so do give it a try sometime.
p.s. Please don't hate me for having an iPhone, it was a birthday/anniversary present and my old phone was really, really old and dying...
FOOD
A Morning in the South of France
The chill in the air and the smell of wood burning in fireplaces are what first hit me when I step outside to make a quick trip to the épicerie.
Our village lost its boulangerie several years ago, but the owner of the épicerie, Marie Thérèse, has bread delivered every morning. Baguettes, gros pain (a fatter, larger baguette) and croissants. Not the best choice, but perfect when I don't want to get in the car and drive five miles to the nearest bakery. She opens at 9 am and if you're not there by 10, the croissants are all gone.
Needless to say, we don't eat many croissants.
The gros pain has a soft, puffy interior which is much friendlier to the roof of your mouth than the baguettes, which have an ultra crispy, crunchy crust and a far too airy crumb for our taste.
The best thing to do is to be organized, plan ahead and reserve our bread and croissants so they'll be waiting for us when we finally meander down there to pick them up. We just don't plan from day to day if we'll be making the trip into town or not, other than Tuesday which is Market Day. Another good reason to bake my own bread!
Ideally, most of my writing is done in the morning, after a strong cup of coffee and either some plain yogurt drizzled with our local beekeeper's miel de garrigue or a croissant, but as I already said, we don't eat a lot of those!
Around 11 a.m. the dogs get restless and want a walk - I think they keep time by the church bells that chime every hour. If it's raining like it has been the last couple of days, I fake them out by putting on their leashes and opening the door. They put one paw on the damp ground and quickly draw it back, dismayed at the thought of wet paws. It cracks me up. They're such little prima donnas!
Then before I know it, it's time to get some lunch together. Lunch is usually our largest meal of the day and I love looking at recipes in the morning, trying new French dishes, as well as keeping our Indian, Thai, Italian, Chinese and Mexican cravings satisfied.
Life is pretty tranquil in our little French village. But like anywhere, time passes far too quickly!
Our village lost its boulangerie several years ago, but the owner of the épicerie, Marie Thérèse, has bread delivered every morning. Baguettes, gros pain (a fatter, larger baguette) and croissants. Not the best choice, but perfect when I don't want to get in the car and drive five miles to the nearest bakery. She opens at 9 am and if you're not there by 10, the croissants are all gone.
Needless to say, we don't eat many croissants.
The gros pain has a soft, puffy interior which is much friendlier to the roof of your mouth than the baguettes, which have an ultra crispy, crunchy crust and a far too airy crumb for our taste.
The best thing to do is to be organized, plan ahead and reserve our bread and croissants so they'll be waiting for us when we finally meander down there to pick them up. We just don't plan from day to day if we'll be making the trip into town or not, other than Tuesday which is Market Day. Another good reason to bake my own bread!
Ideally, most of my writing is done in the morning, after a strong cup of coffee and either some plain yogurt drizzled with our local beekeeper's miel de garrigue or a croissant, but as I already said, we don't eat a lot of those!
Around 11 a.m. the dogs get restless and want a walk - I think they keep time by the church bells that chime every hour. If it's raining like it has been the last couple of days, I fake them out by putting on their leashes and opening the door. They put one paw on the damp ground and quickly draw it back, dismayed at the thought of wet paws. It cracks me up. They're such little prima donnas!
Then before I know it, it's time to get some lunch together. Lunch is usually our largest meal of the day and I love looking at recipes in the morning, trying new French dishes, as well as keeping our Indian, Thai, Italian, Chinese and Mexican cravings satisfied.
Life is pretty tranquil in our little French village. But like anywhere, time passes far too quickly!
Have you ever tasted ten varieties of salt? Trying them out I only found a couple that tasted different from one another, which confirms my belief that the texture of the salt--flakes, grains, chunks, has more to do with how we taste it than it's origin. They were awfully pretty to look at though. For the record, the smoky salt and the Hawaiian salt were not only differently colored but differently flavored.
Another delicious first for me at the tasting this past Sunday was Tupelo honey, which frequently appears in music (band names, song lyrics, etc.) and was also featured prominently in the movie Ulee's Gold. It is produced courtesy of the bees and the Tupelo gum trees in the river swamps of Florida. Special elevated platforms have to be built to house the bees. Unlike other honeys it will not granulate. It is also okay for diabetics because it is low in dextrose and high in levulose. Hard to describe the flavor, it is not as cloying as clover honey and much more complex. A good everday honey, though it can be expensive.
My other favorite discoveries were Agrinion green olives. Coming from the Ionian coast in Greece they are the epitome of what a green olive should taste like, spicy and crunchy, but not too bitter or salty. I also liked North of the Border Chipotle barbecue sauce and "catch up". At only $4 each a bottle, they are both a pretty good value. The one new product I had never seen before let alone heard of was Korean chili threads. Looking like extra long threads of saffron but smokey and mildly spicy, these chili threads are addictive! Now if I can only find a Korean market that sells them...
The one product I will warn you about it is Dave's Insanity Hot Sauce. I love hot sauces and have tried more than my fair share of them. This was absolutely the hottest I have ever tried, at 80,000 scoville units, I think you'll agree. Just the tiniest speck of the stuff will have your tongue burning for minutes. I've heard that it has been banned at some hot sauce competitions. Deservedly so!
All in all the tasting took a tremendous amount of planning and effort, but was well worth it for those of us who participated.
In praise of braising
I’m not one for favorites. I have no favorite movie, no favorite color, no favorite number, no favorite song. Declaring something a favorite seems to freeze it unfavorably in time, mark it with an expiration date, foist it up onto a pedestal from which it will inevitably tumble when the next favorite comes along. Instead, I like to think of myself as more of an equal-opportunity appreciator. I
About Umami
Umami was discovered by a Japanese researcher one hundred years ago. Dr. Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University recognized that certain foods like asparagus, tomatoes, meat and cheese all shared a common taste. It's a bit hard to put your finger on, though it's often described as "savory." I think it's easier to think of it as the taste that makes your mouth water. It also has a distinctive mouth feel, it lends a fullness or roundness.
One of the first things I learned at a recent Umami Symposium is that while taste and flavor are often used interchangeably, they are not the same thing. Flavor is determined by taste and smell. There are only five tastes--sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Just as sweetness is imparted by sugar, umami is imparted by glutamate, a type of amino acid, and ribonucleotides, including inosinate and guanylate, which occur naturally in many foods. It is also manufactured in monosodium glutamate. It is added or occurs naturally in products with hydrolyzed soy protein and autolyzed yeast such as Marmite, Vegemite, Maggi, and Kewpie mayonnaise. It also exists in most cheese flavored snack foods.
I'm not going to talk about the myths surrounding MSG in particular "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome," but I will say that I particularly like cooking with the naturally occurring sources of umami. Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce, dashi broth, fish sauce, bouillon, tomatoes, shiitake mushrooms and even potatoes are all sources of umami. Mixing and matching is fine. I sometimes add Asian fish sauce to chili and while not perceptible, I find it helps to round out the flavor.
Scientists and chefs alike are interested in umami. While the isolated glutamate does not taste very good on it's own, research shows that it enhances the taste of many foods which is why umami was considered a "flavor enhancer" for so long before being recognized as a taste. It makes food taste better and can be used in making healthy foods more palatable for people who have a decrease in their ability to taste due to health or age.
One of the symposium panelists, author and scientist Harold McGee mentioned that the chef Heston Blumenthal found the flavor of umami to be stronger in the seeds and surrounding juice of tomatoes than in the pulp. Coincidentally, he pointed out that Ferran Adria had created a dish using the seeds and surrounding liquid instead of the tomato flesh or pulp. The dish served at El Bulli was Blood Orange Foam with Tomato Seeds and Sorbet. Even if you aren't thinking about umami, you might be using it to make dishes taste good. In case you missed it, check out the amazing lunch served at the symposium, prepared by chef Kunio Tokuoka, chef Hiro Sone and chef Thomas Keller.
If you'd like to learn more about umami, register with the Umami Information Center. You'll receive both newsletters and a free copy of a book called "Umami The World" which overs both the science and culinary aspects from both a Western and Eastern perspective.
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