That's just one of the cookbooks I'm reading this summer. Yeah, I read cookbooks. This one, in particular, is a great read because there are so many stories within. The book is the result of food writer Molly O’Neill's ten-year transcontinental road trip, undertaken in order to research the prevailing opinion that Americans had stopped cooking at home. The opinion persists in spite of her efforts, but doesn't tell the whole story of what goes on in America's kitchens. This book does. It contains hundreds of recipes from passionate home cooks to four-star chefs (and a few from their mothers). The recipes reflect the diversity of the American palate and the array of foods Americans put on their tables each day.
I traversed the continent myself this summer. I ate roasted trout aboard an Amtrak train between Chicago and San Francisco (the side of watery veg went untouched); salmon up and down the West coast; more than my share of blueberries on Bainbridge Island, WA; Italian cured meats in the soft sand at Jones Beach in New York; and French Vietnamese back home in Chicago at my surprise birthday party. Maybe I ate other meals that were better, but those particular ones, which were enjoyed in the company of those who I hold most dear, are the ones I will remember.
It's been a glorious summer. As it comes to a close, I'm perusing my new books for inspiration. I came across recipes for Beef and Barley Soup, Caramel Frosting, and Malaysian Broccoli that I cannot wait to try. Most of all, I'm looking forward to the days and evenings spent around tables big and small.
That's all.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
One Big Table
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Are Your Cookbooks Making You Fat?
As my high school social studies teacher used to say, You bet your sweet bip.
In the Pinch kitchen, food has a triple mandate: healthy, delicious, and family friendly. Everything cooked here has to be a ten in each category, or it doesn't get made. The average cookbook has a taste mandate. Food will taste great, but it may take you awhile to produce, and it's going to contain unhealthy fats, excessive calories, and probably too much sugar or salt.
It goes the other way, too. If health is your priority, your food will meet different criteria, umami not among them. Plus, vegetarian fare can be loaded with saturated fat.
Concerned your cookbooks are adding to the girth of your sweet bip? Here's what you should look out for:
What cut? - You don't have to limit animal protein in your diet to eat a heart healthy diet. You just have to choose your cuts carefully. Leg of lamb is very lean, compared to chops or shoulder. Flank steak trumps skirt steak, and ground beef comes in a variety of leanness. It's no surprise that for poultry, white meat trumps dark. Pork loin and tenderloin beat everything else porcine. One reason I love Trader Joe's is that I can check the nutrition data on meat.
Trim the fat/Drain the fat - This is a hugely important step in lowering the unhealthy and unnecessary fats in your diet. Leg of lamb, which starts lean, should still spend some time under the knife before it's cooked. Unwrap the whole thing, separating it in its natural places and cut out everything white and unsightly. You can then tie it back up with butcher's twine (but not before adding some rosemary, salt and feta, or maybe a smidge of Gorgonzola), or leave it butterflied since it grills up so quickly.
Bacon has tremendous flavor - go ahead and use it sparingly (like use a slice or two) and trim the heck out of it, discarding all the bits that are white or translucent. And drain it after cooking. Same goes for the ground beef used for tacos. Start with a 96/4 (superlean) ground beef. After you brown it, drain it. The purpose is twofold here - you don't want wet meat in a taco shell, and following this step removes even more of the fat. Especially in this case where there is so many flavors (cumin! chili! jalapeño! lime! avocado!) the extra fat is not going to bring anything to the table.
Too much of a good thing - Olive oil is a wonderful thing but don't be mislead: like all oils it is 100% fat. One tablespoon contains over 100 calories. Let 3 T be the maximum addition of oil into anything you make - sauces, dressings, etc.
Oils are shifty when exposed to heat, meaning they become harmful ingredients. Instead of following a recipe that directs you to saute some garlic in a cup of olive oil (that's sixteen tablespoons - you do the calorie math), do this: use a scant bit of oil - like 1-2 tablespoons, or saute in an oil with a higher smoke point, like canola or safflower oil, and add a tablespoon of olive oil to the sauce at the end of cooking. It will give your sauce a velvety smooth finish, not unlike the beurre monté championed by the French.
Further, all oils are not created equally. Canola and walnut oils win bonus points for being exceptionally low in saturated fat. Any pan frying you can't talk yourself out of should be done in canola.
Removing skin from poultry before cooking. Chicken breasts are most lean when the skin is removed. That means cooking them without the skin. Don't worry about losing moisture. Sure, if you overcook it a turkey or chicken breast will dry out, but that will happen with the skin on too. A marinades will help with moisture, and allow you to control the fat content. I never cook a chicken breast that didn't get at least 20 minutes in a basic olive oil/tamari marinade). I take the skin off turkey too, whole and split breasts. If you're especially anxious about not overdoing a turkey breast simply cover the breast with an broth- or olive oil-soaked cheesecloth. For weeknight turkey meals, just rub the surface with a little olive oil and few shakes of salt and pepper or a blended seasoning like the Spice House's Milwaukee Iron.
Cheese - if you're using more than one ounce of cheese per person in a given dish, then that recipe gets low points on the health scale. One ounce is not a lot. Cheese should absolutely be enjoyed - just enjoy it sparingly. I prefer to forgo dairy where it's not needed (like on those tacos) and instead enjoy a selection of the world's finest as a cheese course now and then.
Butter - At best, you can make substitutions, or at least compromise with a blend of butter and olive oil.
Cream - Please. Only the truly disciplined have read this far, and the truly discipled aren't cooking with cream.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Why Do YOU Read Cookbooks?
Adam Gopnik has some ideas. Read them here, in the New Yorker's recent Food issue. I like anyone who echoes my opinion that if you eat out regularly you're eating a lot more salt and fat than you would if you cooked the meal yourself. Which makes it all the more important for the home cook to be a good cook. How else could you be expected to eat your own food? Cookbooks, I'd say, are around to encourage and excite us about food so that we'll do what we're itching to do anyway: TRY THIS AT HOME.
Gopnick puts cookbooks into categories: cookbook as dictionary (where recipes are written to remind the cook of the ingredients of a dish they already know how to prepare); as encyclopedia (which will enable the cook to master a particular cooking style); as anthology (enables the cook to prepare a culturally diverse menu than the encyclopedia approach). The final category, Gopnik calls "grammatical." By this, he means that the cook is not trusted to know anything about cooking or food preparation. Grammatical cookbooks offer extremely specific instruction.
In Gopnikese, Pinch is an anthology. I generally appreciate books written that way. I am always looking to broaden my repertoire. One of the reasons I'm always irritated by Cooks Illustrated is that it's SO grammatical. There are times, though, when I need this kind of instruction. Brining a turkey? Trussing a chicken? Filleting a whole fish? Cooks Illustrated is the perfect resource. I do have some dictionary-type reference books. Many times I just scan a familiar recipe just to make sure I'm not leaving anything out. And as for Mastery...well, I have other demands on my time right now. Also, I'm lazy. I'm not a bread baker because that art demands mastery and nothing less. Of course I just love to buy bread books. I just nabbed The Bread Baker's Apprentice at a school book swap.
I read cookbooks to learn new techniques, new ingredients, new recipes. It's kind of like listening to political pundits. Some get an Amen. Some make me change the channel. The good ones make me think.
How about you?
