I was watching Gonzaga dispatch the University of Iowa in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament today, which renewed a hypothesis I’ve had over the years. A key factor in reducing the prejudice against Catholics in this country over the years was not the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960; rather, it was Notre Dame football in the 1920’s and 1930’s (e.g., “Knute Rockne, All-American”) and the basketball powers in the mid-20th century that were Catholic schools.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/22/a-march-madness-hypothesis/
Mar 22
Hold the Mayo–PLEASE!
When I was growing up, I hated mayonnaise, salad dressing, mustard, pickles, and anything made with these ingredients. As I got older, I learned to like mustard and some pickles. Mayonnaise and salad dressing (and their derivative sauces) are still on my won’t-eat-by-choice list. The problem is I often don’t have a choice.
McDonald’s takes a good bit of the blame for this. Think of the “special sauce” on a Big Mac. Since then, nearly every joint is hell-bent on putting a mayonnaise-based sauce on its burgers. Some restaurants will refer to the sauce as aioli, but it’s just pimped-up mayonnaise with different oil and flavorings.
- The mayonnaise pestilence extends beyond burgers. Three examples:
- We had lunch at a mall bakery. One of the sandwich offerings was hot pastrami, with mayonnaise. This is not kosher, even if the mayonnaise is. Wolfie Cohen, of the dearly-departed Rascal House delicatessen in North Miami Beach, would do cartwheels in his grave at the thought. Mustard is the only correct spread for pastrami sandwiches, specifically Gulden’s spicy brown. Fortunately, I looked the woman taking the order in the eye, said “Hold the mayo”, and the mayo did not appear on the sandwich.
North Carolina-style pulled pork sandwiches are traditionally topped with coleslaw. The Lexington-style slaw is vinegar-based, and works wonders to cut the richness of the pork. The Eastern-style slaw contains mayonnaise. I found this out the hard way when we stopped at Wilber’s Barbecue in Goldsboro many years ago. - “French fries” or pommes frites served with mayonnaise. This is wrong on so many levels. (Sorry, Belgium!)
What’s wrong with a little Hellman’s (or Best on the West Coast or Duke’s in the South), you ask? Plenty.
- Anthony Bourdain refers to mayonnaise as “food glue”, and I agree with his assessment. Mayonnaise keeps canned tuna from falling out of your sandwich and onto your lap–sometimes.
- Over 90% of mayonnaise’s calories come from fat. I have a better use for those calories–chocolate.
- Most supermarket mayonnaise is bland oil (such as soybean or canola) emulsified with egg yolk. Bland oil = bland mayonnaise.
- Life is too short to eat bland food. Why else do you see yuppie burger joints top their cheeseburgers with pesto aioli or chipotle mayonnaise?
- That tablespoon of basil or teaspoon of chipotle per cup of mayo is the difference between a $4 burger and a $12 burger. Do the math, friends.
There is one good use for mayonnaise: as an instructional aid. I was a teaching assistant for a food chemistry laboratory in graduate school. The students made both mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce (butter-based mayonnaise made over heat). This demonstrates the basic principle that oil and water don’t mix unless you have a compound such as the lecithin in egg yolk to coat tiny fat particles so they stay separate and don’t coalesce. This concept, emulsification, can be used to teach about other situations where you don’t want large clumps of oil, such as the use of detergents to clean oil-slicked beaches and animals.
A more important example of emulsification is how your body transports fat through the bloodstream. Fat and cholesterol from your diet are packaged with protein, lecithin and similar compounds in the small intestine into particles called chylomicrons. If you get your blood drawn a few hours after a burger and fries meal, the liquid portion of your blood will look a lot like thin mayonnaise. The chylomicrons stay suspended even after the red and white blood cells settle to the bottom of the test tube. Fat and cholesterol made within the liver are similarly packaged into particles called very-low-density lipoproteins (or VLDL). As cells in the body take fat out of the VLDL, the cholesterol-rich particle becomes low-density lipoprotein (LDL, the “bad cholesterol”). High-density lipoprotein (HDL, the “good cholesterol”) shuttles excess cholesterol from body cells back to the liver for eventual elimination in the bile, which contains other emulsifiers to disperse fat into tiny droplets in your next meal.
Mayonnaise is a great teaching tool, provided that I don’t have to eat it once class is over.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/22/hold-the-mayo-please/
Mar 15
Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Camera
Every tech-klutzy blogger has someone who can make the glitches go away. I have my significant other (aka the SO), Julian. In addition to his computer skills, he is a gifted photographer. Most importantly, the man can cook!
We met through mutual friends when I was in grad school at Cornell and he was working in the Neurobiology and Behavior section there. When he first invited me to dinner at his apartment, I was certain that he’d make burgers and supplement it with potato salad from the A&P deli. Wrong! He made chicken satays with homemade peanut sauce and cucumber salad, with fresh papaya for dessert. He did demonstrate his humanity by having his corkscrew self-destruct as he was opening a bottle of wine.
Julian prefers to stay behind the camera. Often the only way I can get a photo of him is to take one while he’s noodling with–sorry, I mean adjusting–his camera. However, several years ago he did deign to have some pictures taken before we made lobster for dinner. [For those of you on the East Coast, lobster is usually about $20 a pound here in the Seattle area. We managed to get them on sale for $12 a pound one December.] Since neither of us had any experience cooking lobster, we went to the “Source of All Knowledge” for help: The Joy of Cooking. This is a companion photo to one in which I stared down a Dungeness crab just before easing it into the pot.
This blog is a beta test for Julian’s upcoming blogs. Stay tuned for links!
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/15/pay-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-camera/
Mar 15
When the SO’s Away…
The Significant Other (SO) had to fly Back East for a family funeral last year. To someone who lives in the Seattle area, Back East means any place on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. It could be Yakima, Nova Scotia, or anywhere in between. In this case, Back East was New Jersey. I was unable to go due to two deadlines I needed to meet at work.
Normally the SO and I split dinner duty, as he enjoys cooking and does it well. (One reason I fell for him.) The added responsibilities can be liberating, as I can bring zucchini into the kitchen without incurring his wrath. I can experiment without hearing his “Hello, Poison Control” schtick. The following was such an experiment:
I had some asparagus in the refrigerator that needed to be used, along with a shallot, a package of Northwest-style smoked salmon, a lemon, and enough penne for me. I made a riff on an asparagus recipe in Andreas Viestad’s book of Scandinavian cooking, Kitchen of Light. I minced the shallot and cut the asparagus into lengths slightly shorter than the penne. I sautéed the shallot and asparagus in butter while the pasta was cooking. After I drained the pasta, I added the salmon and a dollop of Dijon mustard to the asparagus mixture with a little lemon juice, white pepper, and a pinch of dried rosemary needles. I then stirred the penne into the pan with the asparagus, and dinner was served. Salt wasn’t necessary, as the smoked salmon had more than enough for my palate.
The beauty of this recipe is its flexibility. You can substitute broccoli or cauliflower for the asparagus. Leftover cooked chicken or fish could stand in for the smoked salmon. Whole grain pasta can stand up to the powerful flavors. Penne and mostaccioli seem to be the ideal shapes to match the asparagus; however, you could use other shapes if that’s all you have in the cupboard. I would cut the asparagus in smaller pieces for shells, fusilli, orecchiette, or elbows. The recipe was good enough to spring on the SO after his return. And he didn’t do his “Hello, Poison Control” schtick.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/15/when-the-sos-away/
Mar 08
Feeding Between the Lines
When we moved to Seattle, we acquired a group of neighbors who get together on most Friday nights for food and conversation. We congregate at different homes for potlucks or go to restaurants in the area. Our Friday Night Follies are frequently complicated by assorted food allergies, intolerances, or aversions. Here is the line up, with the number affected over the years in parentheses:
- Gluten (2 intolerant adults, 1 celiac child)
- Zucchini (3 averse, including my Significant Other)
- Meat, fish, and poultry (2 vegetarians)
- Tomatoes (2)
- Peppers and chiles (1 intolerant, 1+ chile wimps)
- Alliums: Onions, garlic, shallots, scallions, chives (1)
- Walnuts (2)
- Cow’s milk dairy (1)
- Goat’s milk dairy (1)
As one can imagine, this can make meal planning messy. However, we’ve managed to sidestep most of the issues. Here are some of the strategies we’ve employed over the years:
- Try to make a dish that the maximum amount of people can eat. Potatoes and rice are our mainstay starches. I made a brussels sprout and carrot coleslaw without bell pepper, onion, or paprika for one potluck.
- Put the offending items, such as tomatoes or croutons for salad, on the side.
- Gluten-free products are becoming more common. Some of them are even tasty. Tamari is gluten-free soy sauce. Meringues, ice cream, sorbets, and flourless cakes are also standard desserts.
- When you find a restaurant that will cater to the range of allergies in your group, go there often so it will stay in business! We frequent a Chinese restaurant that will use gluten-free soy sauce in the dishes ordered by our celiac friend. When a number of us were in California, we had brunch at a restaurant that accommodated the gluten-free and Paleo diet folks at the table.
- A make-your-own taco or burrito feed is a popular option that we’ve employed over the years to include all comers. Provide corn and flour tortillas, an assortment of fillings and salsas, and it’s every diner for his/herself.
We’ve hosted two dinners that put these strategies to the test. The first was a salmon feed in honor of my birthday. The onion-garlic-averse, gluten-phobes, and vegetarians were all present. Our usual salmon dish is grilled on a plank and smothered with onions and garlic. We roasted a bunch of new potatoes on the side, and made a red lentil dal for the vegetarians. We also planked a small bit of plain salmon for the allium-phobe.
One Easter the vegetarians were absent, but we still had gluten and allium issues to deal with. We bought a boneless leg of lamb from Costco. Since it was a very warm day, we unrolled the lamb and grilled it with nothing more than salt and pepper. It was served with a mint vinaigrette that balanced the richness of the lamb. Side dishes included new potatoes, pan-roasted asparagus with mustard-lemon sauce, herb bread, and flourless chocolate cake.
Sometimes the most meticulously-planned menu item will not be tolerated by someone. Often the gluten-free or vegetarian family will bring their own food as a backup. The philosophy of our Friday Night Follies is that nobody starves, and there’s no pressure to satisfy everyone in attendance. Camaraderie is the most important feature of our gatherings, diet restrictions be damned.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/08/feeding-between-the-lines/
Mar 08
The Evolution (or Not) of Bicycling
When my sister and I wanted to go for a bike ride when we were kids, all we did was get our Huffy single-speed bikes out of the garage and go. These days, it feels as if I’m preparing for a major expedition when I go riding.
- Bike apparel? Check.
- Helmet adjusted to fit? Check.
- Identification and cell phone in case I have a wreck? Check.
- Water bottle filled? Check.
- A few bucks in the pocket or pack? Check.
- Tires pumped up and headlight recharged? Check.
- Sunscreen applied? Check.
- House keys? Check.
- Sunglasses or clear glasses to keep the dust out of my contact lenses? Check.
- Empty bladder? Oops…
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/08/the-evolution-or-not-of-bicycling/
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/03/04/voila/
Recent Comments