What can you expect in the Food Thread on PF?

[turbo]

Oh, cute ferret!

Thanks! Turbo was just a baby when I took that picture. He LOVED ferret bowling. I'd grab him and tickle him and then scale him across the slippery Pergo flooring, and he would try to right himself (little feet churning) and stop so that he could run back to me. He'd play keep-away for a few seconds, then allow me to grab him so we could do it again. After 15-20 minutes or so, he'd come directly back to me and put his front paws on my legs. That was the sign that I should pick him up and hold him so he could take a nap.

 

[Astronuc]

Top chefs push Obama to improve food policy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090124/ap_on_go_pr_wh/inauguration_top_chefs

WASHINGTON – Visiting one of his favorite Chicago restaurants in November, Barack Obama was asked by an excited waitress if he wanted the restaurant's special margarita made with the finest ingredients, straight up and shaken at the table.

"You know that's the way I roll," Obama replied jokingly.

Rick Bayless, the chef of that restaurant, Topolobampo, says Obama's comfortable demeanor at the table — slumped contentedly in his chair, clearly there to enjoy himself — bodes well for the nation's food policy. While former President George W. Bush rarely visited restaurants and didn't often talk about what he ate, Obama dines out frequently and enjoys exploring different foods.

"He's the kind of diner who wants to taste all sorts of things," Bayless says. "What I'm hoping is that he's going to recognize that we need to do what we can in our country to encourage real food for everyone."

Phrases like "real food" and "farm-to-table" may sound like elitist jargon tossed around at upscale restaurants. But the country's top chefs, several of whom traveled to Washington for Obama's inauguration this week, hope that Obama's flair for good food will encourage people to expand their horizons when it comes to what they eat.

These chefs tout locally grown, environmentally friendly and — most importantly — nutritious food. They urge diners, even those who may never be able to afford to eat at their restaurants, to grow their own vegetables, shop at farmer's markets and pay attention to where their food comes from.

Dan Barber, chef at New York's popular Blue Hill restaurant and a frequent critic of the country's food policy, says a few small gestures from the president and first lady Michelle Obama could accomplish what many of the chefs have been working toward for years.

"I recognize that I'm an elitist guy," says Barber, who cooked a $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides and other guests at a small charity fundraiser the night before the inauguration. "Increasingly raise awareness, but don't do it through chefs like me. ... My advice would be more of a symbolic nature, and to not underestimate what can be done through the White House."

. . . .

I'm all for promoting a healthy diet and food quality , but what's the deal with $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides?

The farm/agriculture bill needs trimming, and the focus should be small and family farmers, not subsidies to Big Agribusiness like ADM, Cargill, Dole, Chiquita, . . . .

 

[Evo]

I read that cooking, on average, uses 10% more energy that that used in transporting food. I was very surpised. The article was about "green food", touting eating foods that require less energy to cook. So it's not as important to "buy local" as how long you cook something, if fuel concerns you. What is supposedly a benefit of "buying local"? Local produce is not always the best quality, or the best variety. I believe it was turbo that pointed out that the best produce is shipped out and what's left can be substandard.

A major disappointment has been with a local grocery store that has a section devoted to local produce, they even have the farmers come out to talk about their food. The local produce was awful. The yellow squash was wrinkled, bruised, had cuts on it and looked about ready to rot. I was appalled that they were selling this. Supposedly this had come from their farm that morning. That might be true, but it had to be sitting for weeks before that.

 

[turbo]

Top chefs push Obama to improve food policy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090124/ap_on_go_pr_wh/inauguration_top_chefs
I'm all for promoting a healthy diet and food quality , but what's the deal with $500-a-plate meal for incoming Obama aides?

The farm/agriculture bill needs trimming, and the focus should be small and family farmers, not subsidies to Big Agribusiness like ADM, Cargill, Dole, Chiquita, . . . .

My reading of that was it was a charity fundraiser, and the aides were paying exhorbitant prices for the dinner for the sake of the charity. It's pretty common in political circles.

I agree that there is WAY too much pork in farm bills, and that it overwhelmingly benefits agri-giants. There is a trend around here that is catching on. Small farms are selling shares in their crops, which helps the farmers with costs of seed, fuel, etc in the Spring. In return, the people get shares of whatever vegetables are in season, and whatever excess the farmer has is sold at local farmer's markets or wholesaled to restaurants and stores. A lady farmer I know has 25 acres under tillage for vegetable production, and she is committed to organic gardening methods with non-GM crops. I'd love to see Bobbie and small farmers like her get low-interest loans to increase their production, buy implements for their tractors, build cold-storage units to extend shelf-life of the food, etc. Their farming practices are sustainable and are dedicated to bringing the highest-quality food to market. Just the kind of farming that we need.

We are pretty well-situated here in central Maine, with FedCo Seeds and FedCo trees located about 20 miles away. They sell a lot of legacy seeds and fruit trees. Then there's MOGFA (Maine Organic Growers and Farmers Assoc) not far away - another great resource. Unity College gets a great deal of the food for their food services from local organic farmers.

 

[turbo]

I believe it was turbo that pointed out that the best produce is shipped out and what's left can be substandard.

That is a practice employed by large farms to avoid USDA inspection/grading standards. Never buy Maine potatoes in Maine unless you buy them from a small farm or buy them in season. The largest farms have to export to sell their crops, unless they have standing orders with the big processing plants. Frozen french-fries and similar products are made not too far from the biggest farms, and if you have a lot of potatoes that have been damaged by harvesting equipment, etc, nobody's going to notice if it turns up in Tater Tots or McDonald's hash-browns.

 

[LowlyPion]

I read that cooking, on average, uses 10% more energy that that used in transporting food. I was very surpised. The article was about "green food", touting eating foods that require less energy to cook.

I suspect those are funny numbers. In winter all cooking heat goes to heating the house anyway as it has since before Stonehenge.

Gas stove. Gas heat. - It's a wash.

Summer is different of course.

 

[turbo]

I suspect those are funny numbers. In winter all cooking heat goes to heating the house anyway as it has since before Stonehenge.

Gas stove. Gas heat. - It's a wash.

Summer is different of course.

Luckily, the time to harvest and process chili peppers here (just before frost, for maximum maturity) coincides with the onset of cooler days, and having several gas burners going on the stove-top just keeps the place cozy (if a bit "tingly" on the eyes and mucous membranes).

 

[turbo]

Man! Am I getting cabin-fever! My garlic is in the ground, and I can't wait to start gardening again, making chili relishes and other spicy stuff. I'm going to cut back on production of cucumber pickles a bit next summer, but hope to can a LOT of pickled chili peppers, chili relishes, etc.

On an interesting side-note, a local artist has bought the now-vacant Somerset County jail, with plans to turn it into a very foodie place. She wants to establish a grist mill to process locally-grown grains, and host some bakeries to turn those flours into breads. I wish her all the best. There is an unmet market for high-quality crusty breads here - delis in local supermarkets have very poor imitations of bread.

When my friends were going to drive back to PA so he could work as a pharmacist and put his wife through graduate school in special education, I made them some of my whole-wheat bread to take with them and included some cheese and mustard in the "care package". They drove all the way from Maine to PA just ripping off pieces of my bread and eating it - never made a sandwich or dressed it up with any condiments. It's hard to beat good crusty breads with substance and body.

 

[Evo]

I think my issue with the "buy local" hype of restaurants is that what is local in San Franciso is not comparible to what's local in Detroit. But you don't have fancy shmancy restaurants in Detroit. Like this food competition I'm watching, this guy in San Francisco said, at the local farmer's market, he can get Ethiopian, Laotian, a whole list of exotic foods and then says, so I'm cooking food that's readily accessable and available. Uhm, I can't get any of that here in Kansas, so that's ridiculous. If you are competing on a national level, you need to be cooking ingredients that are nationally available.

Also, these restaraunts that tout local produce only use a couple of truly "local" ingredients, the rest must have to be grown in a hothouse.

 

[turbo]

Also, these restaraunts that tout local produce only use a couple of truly "local" ingredients, the rest must have to be grown in a hothouse.

This is especially true on the East Coast, with our cold winters. There is a VERY large operation a few miles south of here called "Backyard Gardens" and they sell vining tomatoes to restaurants and supermarkets. That's OK because they're better than the Hi-pack cardboard tomatoes that we normally get here. Still, it doesn't seem really "local" to buy tomatoes from an outfit that can throw up 25-acre greenhouses at will.

 

[Astronuc]

We have several local farmers' markets and they sell fruits, berries, vegetables grown locally, and it is generally good quality. I know one of the orchard growers, and I always by bags of fruit and berries.

We also have a local dairy, which provides some really great specialty cheeses.

Then we grow our own tomatos, peppers, peas, various herbs and berries.

 

[Nick M]

Cool thread!

I'm a self-taught cook - traditional french technique applied to regional/ethnic dishes.

I've been experimenting with traditional Western Chinese lately - Fuschia Dunlop's books.
"The Breath of a Wok" is also exemplary.

 

[turbo]

Early supper tonight is fresh Maine shrimp sauteed in butter with minced garlic and a tossed salad on the side with roasted red pepper vinaigrette.

 

[turbo]

Supper tonight was toasted wraps. Take large flour tortillas and lay down a strip of crispy bacon, fresh chopped tomato, Romaine lettuce, shredded cheese, mayo, chopped onions, and some nice hot chili sauce (no you can NOT have my garlicy mixed chili relish). Roll them up and toast them in your oven in a roasting pan greased with olive oil. We want to add black olives to the mix, too, but we need to get some smaller cans in the pantry. I hate to open a large can of them and not use the excess for a while.

These are very tasty, and a quick meal if you are short of time.

 

[turbo]

Winter is getting long and tedious, so tonight we had cheeseburgers dressed with the garlicy mixed chili relish and yellow mustard. I can't wait to start spending time on the back deck grilling and eating. Our 34th anniversary is on the 28th, so my wife is going to pick up a bag or two of jumbo shrimp for me to marinate and grill in a grilling basket.

I never measure, but here is the marinade, roughly in the order of quantity.
Olive oil
Red wine
Ketchup
Annie's roasted red pepper vinaigrette (substitute Italian if you want)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1-2 cloves crushed garlic
Hot habanero relish (substitute something really hot, here - keep your paws off my relish!)
Molasses
Oregano
Salt
Black pepper

Peel the shrimp all the way (don't let the tail shell block the marinade from the meat), de-vein them and marinade them at least overnight in a sealed container, agitating and turning them every few hours. Put the shrimp in a clam-shell grilling basket and cook them on a hot pre-heated grill, basting them periodically with the reserved marinade, until they are getting some blackened spots. Mmm! My wife got a good deal on jumbo shrimp one time, brought them home and said "find a good way to fix them". I invented the marinade on the fly, and after her first bite she said "don't ever change that!"

If Bobby Flay steals this and puts it on his show, I'll hunt him down like a dog.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Over the weekend my girlfriend and I made some awesome roast chicken with rosemary and thyme and a pan sauce made from the drippings (with vermouth and mushrooms). It was amazing...

We've been trying to learn basic cooking techniques, and I have to say, I really like roasting if it's done right (with plenty of basting, and a sauce made by de-glazing the pan afterward).

 

[turbo]

Over the weekend my girlfriend and I made some awesome roast chicken with rosemary and thyme and a pan sauce made from the drippings (with vermouth and mushrooms). It was amazing...

We've been trying to learn basic cooking techniques, and I have to say, I really like roasting if it's done right (with plenty of basting, and a sauce made by de-glazing the pan afterward).

That's critical. If you don't make a sauce (too little time, for instance) you must still de-glaze the roasting pan and add that juice to the the chicken stock. When the chicken is cooled enough to handle it, strip the meat from the bones and pack that in the 'fridge, cut the larger bones (cleanly if you can because chicken bones can make sharp shards) and boil the whole carcass, skin and all for a couple of hours. Strain through a colander while hot, save any scraps of meat that you might have missed, and chill the stock. Skim off the excess fat, and there is the stock for a nice soup. It doesn't have to be chicken soup. It is a nice base for vegetable soups, tomato soup, etc, or it can be the primary liquid for a casserole. Hint: for extra flavor, adding some red wine to the water when boiling the carcass seems to help extract more of the flavors from the carcass, and it can be a welcome accent to the dishes that you make with your stock.

 

[turbo]

We've been trying to learn basic cooking techniques, and I have to say, I really like roasting if it's done right (with plenty of basting, and a sauce made by de-glazing the pan afterward).

Also, you might want to look up Alton Brown's "Romancing the Bird" on YouTube. Brining poultry is a sure-fire way to get more moistness and flavor - just add more allspice, pepper, and ginger than he recommends. Also, always roast your birds breast-down so that the fat from the dark meat on the back side of the bird migrates down to the white meat during the roasting. You'll be glad that you did it this way.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

I have that particular Alton Brown on DVD, actually (gift set somebody got me a few years ago).

How can one "not have time" to make a pan sauce? :P It only takes like five minutes...after you've been roasting a bird for an hour it seems silly not to deglaze the pan.

However, the bit about keeping the bones to make a stock did slip my mind. I just threw some of them away! Oh well, our freezer is full right now anyway. A few weeks ago I made a beef stew that involved several dark beers (four, I think). It turned out to have extra liquid, so we saved the stock.

As for the skin, we left it on the chicken to eat. The skin is crispy and loaded with thyme and rosemary. :)

 

[turbo]

However, the bit about keeping the bones to make a stock did slip my mind. I just threw some of them away!

Ahhh! Waste of good chicken-age!

 

[Evo]

My "meat connection" got me a case of restaurant t-bone steaks from his friend, a restaurant supplier. The restaurant they were for will only buy fresh steaks and they didn't need all that he had, so my friend asked me if I wanted some. Not a great deal, but not bad, $8 for a 20 ounce steak, top quality.

Of course to hear the Evo Child describe it "mommy, you bought a box of meat out of the trunk of someone's car? Hey, he supplies that jalapeno sausage that you crave so much.

It's been so long since I've cooked a steak that I'm afraid of ruining them. You only have one chance with a steak.

 

[hypatia]

When we first moved into this house a old guy with a freezer on the back of a old truck came by to sell "meat". I was really horrified at the thought of what kind of meat it may ...or may not be.
Then I noticed neighbors buying it, so I asked them about it, they said about the same thing as you, Evo. He gets it from a restaurant {of course we don't really know how he gets it} and its great quality at a great price.

 

[lisab]

My "meat connection" got me a case of restaurant t-bone steaks from his friend, a restaurant supplier. The restaurant they were for will only buy fresh steaks and they didn't need all that he had, so my friend asked me if I wanted some. Not a great deal, but not bad, $8 for a 20 ounce steak, top quality.

Of course to hear the Evo Child describe it "mommy, you bought a box of meat out of the trunk of someone's car? Hey, he supplies that jalapeno sausage that you crave so much.

It's been so long since I've cooked a steak that I'm afraid of ruining them. You only have one chance with a steak.

How do you like your steak cooked?

Me - rare. Like, still mooing.

 

[Evo]

How do you like your steak cooked?

Me - rare. Like, still mooing.

Mooing is good. :!) Mostly rare is perfect, but it's hard to get "mostly rare".

 

[turbo]

I am a bit under the weather, but my wife and I are celebrating 34 years together tomorrow (though she has to spend most of that day taking care of her mother with dementia). I spent today making a large batch of hot pizza sauce, and peeling and de-veining a pound of jumbo shrimp. I made a nice marinade/basting sauce to soak those rascals in and we'll have a nice meal tomorrow with those shrimp. Tonight, we had some nice roll-up snacks consisting of the pizza sauce mixed with sauteed, hamburg, onions, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, mozzerella, ground Romano, etc, cooked in wont-ton wrappers, and even more that were built in halved, cleaned jalapenos. Mmm!

 

[lisab]

Happy Anniversary, turbo - 34 years is quite an accomplishment!

 

[hypatia]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3OPQqH3YlHA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3OPQqH3YlHA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Not many 93-year-olds have their own Facebook account, let alone a blog and a wildly popular show on YouTube. But Clara Cannucciari's got all three, and she's also got the rapt attention of budget-conscious, Internet-savvy cooks everywhere who can't get enough of "Great Depression Cooking with Clara." On the show, she shares the recipes she learned from her mother for dishes that kept the family nourished when times were even leaner than they are today.

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/food/2009/02/27/2009-02-27_clara_cannucciari_is_a_youtube_sensation.html

 

[turbo]

Happy Anniversary, turbo - 34 years is quite an accomplishment!

Thanks, basil! It didn't seem to take any effort. After a while it just happened. I love my wife and our marriage didn't come with an expiration-date.

 

[turbo]

My "meat connection" got me a case of restaurant t-bone steaks from his friend, a restaurant supplier. The restaurant they were for will only buy fresh steaks and they didn't need all that he had, so my friend asked me if I wanted some. Not a great deal, but not bad, $8 for a 20 ounce steak, top quality.

Of course to hear the Evo Child describe it "mommy, you bought a box of meat out of the trunk of someone's car? Hey, he supplies that jalapeno sausage that you crave so much.

It's been so long since I've cooked a steak that I'm afraid of ruining them. You only have one chance with a steak.

Alton Brown has a pretty good take on steak, and it works well with good cuts. Here's how it goes:

Let the steak come to room temperature, oil lightly and season with salt and ground black pepper.
Put your skillet in the oven and pre-heat it to 500 deg.
When oven comes to 500 deg, remove skillet and place on burner on "high" and put steak in skillet.
Cook the steak for 30 seconds without moving it, then flip it with tongs and cook for another 30 seconds.
Put pan and steak back into the oven for 2 minutes, then flip the steak and put back in for another 2 minutes. (This is for medium-rare - I don't use this much oven-time)
Remove from oven, put the steak on a room-temperature dish, cover loosely, and let the steak rest for a couple of minutes before serving.

I'm usually a "throw seasoned steak into pre-heated frying-pan kind of guy", but Brown's method works, and I use it with good cuts (especially with thick cuts).

 

[Evo]

Alton Brown has a pretty good take on steak, and it works well with good cuts. Here's how it goes:

Let the steak come to room temperature, oil lightly and season with salt and ground black pepper.
Put your skillet in the oven and pre-heat it to 500 deg.
When oven comes to 500 deg, remove skillet and place on burner on "high" and put steak in skillet.
Cook the steak for 30 seconds without moving it, then flip it with tongs and cook for another 30 seconds.
Put pan and steak back into the oven for 2 minutes, then flip the steak and put back in for another 2 minutes. (This is for medium-rare - I don't use this much oven-time)
Remove from oven, put the steak on a room-temperature dish, cover loosely, and let the steak rest for a couple of minutes before serving.

I'm usually a "throw seasoned steak into pre-heated frying-pan kind of guy", but Brown's method works, and I use it with good cuts (especially with thick cuts).

Oh, that sounds good!

Yes, the trick is to get it very hot immediately so it doesn't start "roasting". I used to broil my steaks, but not all ovens are good for broiling.

Happy Anniversary!