Category: Food

Great Idea!

It’s about time somebody in Congress proposed something like this: the Food Safety Act of 2007.

Currently, 12 federal agencies and 35 laws govern food safety, often with overlapping jurisdictions and different priorities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration play the biggest roles in making sure the food Americans eat is safe. The USDA oversees meat and poultry, while the FDA is responsible for eggs and produce.

The lines are not always clear-cut. For example, cheese pizzas fall under the FDA, while pepperoni pizzas fall under the Department of Agriculture.

In January, the Government Accountability Office added federal oversight of food safety to its list of “high risk” programs in need of “broad-based transformation.” The GAO urged Congress to consider “a fundamental re-examination of the system … before public health and safety is compromised.”

Critics point to the FDA, in particular, as needing reform. The FDA oversees 80 percent of the food supply but receives only 20 percent of the funding.

But would Bush sign it?

Roasted Tomato and Fennel Soup

For an upcoming dinner party, Scott wanted to start with a dish we really enjoyed when we had it last year at a local restaurant: roasted tomato and fennel soup. Today, we set out to replicate it. February probably isn’t the best time of year to be trying recipes that depend heavily on the freshness and quality of its vegetables, but we’re lucky enough to live three blocks from a fantastic market where you can get top-quality, fresh produce year-round. The results were an unqualified success, and the dish is quite easy to pull off. We’re definitely serving this to our guests next week.

I’m sorry to say that some of the measurements and cooking times given below are my best approximation, not exact. This was a seat of the pants operation done by people who know their way around a kitchen. However, this is a soup, not a soufflé, and as long as you don’t burn anything the end result should turn out just fine. When in doubt, let common sense and your taste buds be your guide.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 lbs heirloom tomatoes
1 bulb fennel (about 3/4 lb)
4 cloves garlic
2 cups chicken stock
1/4 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Preparation:

First, we cut off the leaves and fronds from the fennel, de-seeded the tomatoes, arranged the cut pieces on foil-covered trays, sprinkled all the pieces with oil and salt, and then roasted the fennel and tomatoes in a 375 degree oven for 50 minutes. The garlic cloves were left in their skins, wrapped in a separate piece of tin foil, and roasted at the same time.

Roasted Tomato, Fennel, and Garlic

Next, everything (except the garlic skins) went into the blender, along with the chicken stock, and pureed. This puree went through a medium-mesh strainer and heated over low-medium heat for about 45 minutes to reduce. We then put the soup through a second, finer mesh strainer and reduced again for another 45 minutes or so. In went the cream, and simmered again for maybe 30 minutes.

First Strain

Although straining and reducing the broth down multiple times is a trick we borrowed from Thomas Keller, it felt counterintuitive to me and I was unsure how the result would taste. The pulp sitting in the strainer tasted good, after all, and I was hesitant to toss it out. But after tasting the strained liquid in the pot, I realized that I was wrong. Straining really does clarify and intensify the flavor.

We used no additional salt other than what went onto the veggies during the roasting stage. If you feel the need to add more seasoning, I strongly recommend that you wait until you’re at the final stages to make sure you don’t overintensify the flavors as the soup reduces down.

We were unsure what was going to be better to finish off the soup, so we tried two different toppings at the end: we topped one serving with a little grated Parmigianino Reggiano and diced fennel fronds, and a second with a drizzle of black truffle oil and fennel fronds. Both were good, but the truffle oil was definitely better.

The Finished Product: Roasted Tomato and Fennel Soup

The end product was four small portions of a very intense, flavorful soup. As we’re planning on serving this as an amuse bouche at the beginning of a meal, that’s just fine. However, if you want to make this dish a more central part of the meal, you’re probably going to want to at least double the recipe.

The whole set of photos from today’s kitchen adventure is up on Flickr.

Caffeinated Doughnuts?

That’s either insane … or brilliant.

That cup of coffee just not getting it done anymore? How about a Buzz Donut or a Buzzed Bagel? That’s what Doctor Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina, molecular scientist, has come up with. Bohannon says he’s developed a way to add caffeine to baked goods, without the bitter taste of caffeine. Each piece of pastry is the equivalent of about two cups of coffee.

Thinking about it, I’m leaning towards insane. But I’ve been wrong before.

Pre-Holiday Recipe Sharing: My Favorite Stuffing Recipe

Yesterday, while I was up on campus at an all-day class thing (ugh), Scott met with our friend Katie to plan out the menu for Thanksgiving. I won’t be doing much for the festivities other than acting as Scott’s prep cook, but I will be making the stuffing as well as an appetizer.

I originally found this recipe on, of all places, the now-defunct webvan.com site back in the fall of 2000, when Scott and I were getting ready to cook our first big Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve made it pretty much every year since then. It’s tasty and not at all difficult; the biggest challenge is the prep time, which can take a while what with all the chopping and bread drying.

Anyway, here it is. I’d be happy to e-mail a file with the recipe on request:

Cornbread and Sage Dressing

Ingredients:
1 9″ x 9″ cornbread
1 16-ounce loaf sourdough bread
2 cups diced bacon
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced carrot
2 tablespoons fresh sage chiffonade
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup half-and-half
1 cup chicken stock

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375° F. Cut the cornbread and the sourdough bread into 1/2 inch cubes. Spread onto baking trays and bake for 15 minutes or until the bread has dried out. Set aside in a large mixing bowl.

Cook the bacon in a large frying pan over medium heat until it begins to crisp. Add the onions and carrots. Cook until the onions soften and start to turn translucent (about 5 minutes). Add the sage, salt and pepper. Turn heat to low and cook an additional 10 minutes.

Add the contents of the pan to the mixing bowl and gently mix with the bread cubes. Add the stock and the half-and-half, continue mixing until the dressing is moist and well blended. I usually use my hands for this but a large wooden spoon is good too.

Put the mixture into a 13″ x 9″ x 2″ greased baking pan. Cover with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover and bake an additional 15 minutes or until the top is crispy.

Substitutions:

If you want to add more turkey flavor, use turkey stock instead of chicken and/or spoon some turkey pan drippings onto the dressing.

Use 1 teaspoon dried sage instead of fresh sage if you can’t get fresh.

If you can’t get sourdough bread, then nice peasant bread would work too.

Notes:

This is dressing, not stuffing, and should not be cooked inside the bird.

I use a cornbread mix to make the cornbread, but if you want to save time, buy one from a store.

Prepping the bread can be done the day before and the bread kept, loosely covered, overnight. Use day-old bread for faster drying.

I usually use beef bacon instead of pork due to having been raised in a somewhat kosher home, although given that there’s also half-and-half in the mix, this recipe is in no way kosher. If you used all kosher ingredients and replaced the half-and-half with more stock, it could be easily made so.

12 Slices of Roast Beef

Couldn’t sleep, so I was browsing the news sites this morning. I came across this gem from Salt Lake City: No-Carb Eating Couple Booted From Buffet.

Roast beef was the issue. As Reuters put it, “when [customer] Amaama went up for his 12th slice, the manager asked Amaama to stop.” Chaos ensued.

What rational person is going to think they’re controlling their weight by eating that much food? ‘Oh, but it’s low carb!’ you hear the cry. ‘Cut out the carbs and you can eat anything you want and still lose weight!’.

I call bullshit.

If each slice of roast beef averaged a mere 2 ounces, that’s just under a pound and a half of meat eaten. Let’s look at the calories in that (you remember calories, right?). According to the handy guide at http://www.calorie-count.com/, 3 ounces of cooked beef, all fat removed, has 232 calories. So those 11 slices of roast beef contained approximately 1700 calories – more if my estimate of a 2-ounce slice is too small or if all the fat had not been trimmed off.

It passes my understanding how people can think this is a good way to lose weight. The FDA recommends consuming approximately 2000 calories a day, depending on a person’s age and activity level. You can bet dollars to doughnuts (if you’ll pardon the carb-laden expression) that this goober ate much more than just 11 slices of roast beef that day. Whether he was exercising regularly or had an active lifestyle wasn’t mentioned in the article, so perhaps I’m doing the guy a disservice. Maybe he mountain bikes to work every day and rarely sits down on the job. But somehow, I suspect that’s not the case.

You want to lose weight? It’s simple but it’s not easy. Burn more calories than you consume. How you do that is up to you. Exercise or don’t, eat carbs or not – it doesn’t matter, as long as your net calorie count is negative, you’ll get lighter.

Maybe I should write my own diet manual. Call it “The Sanity Plan.” I’d make millions, quit my job, and spend my days doing book tours and being pampered. With merchandising tie-ins (I see ‘I want sanity’ t-shirts, maybe kitchen products), perhaps a chain of Sanity fitness centers, I’d be set for life.

Unfortunately, most of America is not ready for sanity. And people (I do not exclude myself) are generally lazy. They really want the magic fix-it that’s going to let them do as little as possible and still shed pounds. Sanity is too hard.

Ah well. Time to brew some coffee and get ready for work.