Food and Drink

Over the last year or so since I gave up my unfounded fear of dietary fat, I’ve had to learn new cooking habits.  I think what I’ve learned might be of interest, especially to anyone out there who cooks regularly for a family.  Just to be clear – we are not on any kind of paleo diet here.  We’ve just allowed ourselves to eat more of the high-fat foods we want (especially meat and butter), and we’ve eliminated meals that are primarily carbohydrate-based like any kind of pasta or rice dish.  We still eat most of those carby foods, we just don’t eat much of them. 

What I’ve found is that I spend a lot less time shopping and cooking, I cook real meals more regularly, I actually eat more vegetables, and my family enjoys the food more than ever.

I make real dinners almost every night.  Sure, there is the occasional mac’n'cheese with hot dogs or fish sticks and frozen peas (and we enjoy those things!) but most nights I cook a meat and a fresh vegetable or salad – no more and no less.

I rarely use recipes.  I don’t often make casseroles or anything that requires more than a few ingredients or has to go in the oven for a long time.  I make those things on occasion to keep it interesting, but the planning and shopping and preparing of those kinds of meals takes too much time, and we don’t enjoy them any more than our meat and veggies.  

Lunch is usually leftovers, but Sammy and I also eat a lot of fast food lunches because it’s fun to go out and we can’t afford real restaurants very often.  I feel just fine about it because I know we’re eating well at home, and really, I think fast food is unfairly vilified. 

Because I’m cooking differently, I’ve gradually had to revise my kitchen staples – the ingredients that I keep on-hand at all times.  Now, I can make any meat or vegetable delicious with these items:

• Onions
• Canned Parmesan cheese
• Sliced cheddar (for burgers)
• Butter
• Heavy cream (I now buy it by the quart)
• Whole milk
• Bottled lemon juice (for emergencies since my lemons seem to go bad so quickly)
• Minced garlic in a jar (love garlic, hate chopping)
• Various mustards
• Mayonnaise
• Ketchup (used rarely, but important to have)
• Capers
• Rice vinegar
• Balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil
• Red wine
• Soy sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Sesame oil
• Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning (a must for steaks)
• Canned tomatoes (although I rarely use them)
• Coconut milk (again, used rarely, but I like to have it in case I want to make a curry sauce)
• Currants (for salad)
• Sliced almonds (for salad)
• A few salad dressings, always including ranch, which is like magic sauce for kids (if we ate salad more often, I’d make my own dressing but we only go through a few bottles a year so it’s not worth it)
• All the common dried herbs and seasonings

This is usually how I shop and cook:  At the grocery store, I pick out a few meats that are on sale and whatever vegetables tickle my fancy.  (I always buy the bagged lettuce and spinach because there is no way I’m washing that stuff if I don’t have to.)  At this point, I have no idea what I’ll do with any of it.  The other day I bought a cabbage for the first time in years, and had no problem finding a great way to cook it with the things I keep on-hand.  When you allow yourself to use fat in cooking, you don’t need so many ingredients because fat tastes good!

At home, I make a plan for the next few dinners, which is usually based on the expiration dates of the meats or the perishability of the vegetables.  But the plan is something in my head along the lines of, “Steaks, pork, chicken then burgers; asparagus, spinach, salad, then broccoli.”  A half hour before I want to serve dinner, I go in the kitchen and think about how I’ll prepare everything.  I rarely take more than 45 minutes to make dinner, but 30 minutes is the norm.  Here is something I made for just Sammy and myself last week when Adam was on a business trip.  Because I made potatoes, this took a bit more than 30 minutes:

• Lamb chops with rosemary and thyme, pan-fried in butter, and with a red-wine and cream sauce
• Baby Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced and fried in butter with garlic powder, onion powder, and lots of salt and pepper (I don’t make potatoes often, but I love these with lamb)
• Boiled cauliflower, smashed up (but not mashed), with butter, cream, Parmesan cheese, garlic powder, and lots of salt and pepper

And here is where I really have to brag.  My daughter eats just about everything I make.  She eats every kind of meat I’ve ever made (although not every preparation of it).  She actually likes spinach!  She even gobbled up that cabbage I mentioned.  The reason is probably that all of it is cooked with generous amounts of fat, in one form or another.  It’s just so much easier to cook and enjoy food when you realize that fat is not the enemy.  And Sammy loves fat, as I’ve mentioned before.

The bottom line is that carby foods are not the only convenience foods.  It’s faster and easier to grill up a steak than it is to boil spaghetti and put canned sauce on it!  It’s just a matter of habit and mindset.

When I was a kid, one of my dad’s favorite snacks was “C’s and B’s,” also known as crackers and butter.  He would slather butter onto saltines as an appetizer before dinner and eat them with shameless enjoyment. 

I loved C’s and B’s until I bought into the myth of how fat is bad for us and how we need to reduce our dietary cholesterol.  Then, I was horrified at my dad’s reckless behavior.  How could he eat so much butter?  I denied myself C’s and B’s for many years. 

But I’ve recently come to see the light and I am no longer afraid of fat, thanks to Gary Taubes.  (I’m not afraid of carbs either, though, as he would have me be.)  I’ve started cooking with butter and cream, and I use as much mayonnaise as I please.

So when Sammy asked for crackers with butter on them, I didn’t bat an eye.  Now, C’s and B’s are one of her favorite snacks.  I think my dad will like to hear that.

When I was growing up, my family usually had two big dinners for Christmas, one at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve, and one at my aunt’s house on Christmas Day.  My mom and my aunt are both great cooks, but despite my aunt’s fantastic shrimp cocktail appetizer and chocolate mousse dessert, by the time the evening of the 25th rolled around I felt like Christmas was over.  Santa had come and gone, the presents had all been unwrapped, and everyone was a bit tired.

Christmas Eve was always the big event for me.  Even as a child, I think I loved Christmas Eve as much as I loved Christmas morning.  Christmas Eve is when we sang Christmas carols and felt the magical anticipation of what was to come the next morning.  Christmas Eve is when the kids would plot how we would stay up late enough to catch our parents playing Santa Claus, while the adults got toasted and argued about politics, God, and football.

So as an adult, I decided Christmas dinner would always be on Christmas Eve in my house.  And a few years ago, I stumbled upon the idea of cooking traditional Jewish food for Christmas dinner.  I think I had the itch to make a beef brisket and the idea just blossomed from there.  That year I made brisket, potato latkes, a buttery noodle dish called kugel, and a fruit dish I’ve forgotten the name of, although I do remember it had Manischewitz wine in it.  That mostly-full bottle of wine sat in our pantry for over a year, mocking Adam by bringing back all of those painful Passover memories.

Anyway, I fell in love with the idea of making Jewish Christmas Dinner a tradition in the Mossoff home.  I was looking for some kind of food-theme that would carry over from year to year, and I’m not really crazy about turkey or any of the other traditional foods.  I also love the humorous dig at the supposed religious nature of the holiday!

That was in 2005.  Now, finally, in 2009, we are having Christmas at home again and I’m getting my second chance to cook Jewish Christmas Dinner.  I spent 3 days planning the menu and making my shopping list.  Today, I do the grocery shopping, and tomorrow, I start cooking.  I had to create a written schedule for the cooking because so much requires advance preparation (brisket is much better after sitting in the fridge for a day).  Here is the menu:

• Matzo ball soup (appetizer)
• Beef brisket
• Broccoli soufflé
• Potato latkes
• Jewish apple cake (dessert)

And check out the cooking schedule:

Wednesday

• Noon – 1pm:  Prepare and brown beef brisket
• 1pm:  Get brisket into crockpot on high
• 2pm:  Turn crockpot to low
• 4 – 5pm:  Make chicken soup and refrigerate
• 7 – 7:30pm:  Remove brisket from crockpot, separate meat and veggies, and refrigerate

Thursday

• 10am – noon:  Make apple cake
• Noon – 12:30pm:  Prepare matzo balls (don’t forget the schmaltz from soup) and refrigerate (for at least a half hour)
• 1 – 2pm:  Prepare latkes batter and refrigerate
• 2:15 – 2:30pm:  Take 6 eggs out of fridge and separate.  Keep whites at room temperature.
• 2:30 – 3:30pm:  Boil matzo balls and reheat soup; add matzo balls to soup and cook for a few minutes
• 3:30pm:  Serve matzo ball soup
• 4 – 5pm:  Prepare broccoli soufflé
• 5pm: Put soufflé in oven
• 5 – 5:30pm:  Prepare brisket and veggies in 9X13 pan for oven
• 5:30pm:  Put meat in oven with soufflé
• 5:30 – 6pm:  Fry latkes
• 6 – 6:15pm:  Make thicker sauce for meat if necessary
• 6:15:  Dinner is served!

I am so excited to cook all of this good food!  And now there are 3 of us to eat it instead of just 2.

I can’t remember where I got this recipe, but I never cook anything without my own modifications and this appears to have been simplified in a typical Amy way, so I think it’s ok for me to post it as my own.

I’m not a big fan of chicken.  Boring!  But this super-easy recipe makes the tastiest chicken I’ve ever had.  I’ve made it 3 or 4 times in the past few months, and that’s saying something.  (I improvise so much that I have a hard time making anything more than once.)

Ingredients:
1 yellow onion
About 3.5 pounds of chicken thighs, bone in or out (as much as you can fit in the pan)
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Dried parsley flakes
Olive oil
Red wine
Chicken broth

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Corsely chop an onion and place at bottom of 9X12 lightly greased baking pan.
• Coat chicken in salt and pepper, a little garlic, and parsley.  Put on top of onion and drizzle a little olive oil on top.  Bake for 20 minutes.
• Add ¼ cup red wine and ¼ cup chicken broth to bottom of pan and continue to bake for 40 more minutes.

You can also just cook a few thighs in a pan using the same principle:  brown them in butter and herbs (I used onion powder instead of onion), then add the liquid, cover and cook until done.  Also, you can increase the liquid (within reason) if you like more sauce.

You’ve got to love a recipe that starts out like this:

A classic American dish, this preparation takes full advantage of every delicious bit of the lobster.

Kill with a knife, [see page] 491,
     3 lobsters (1 1/2 pounds each)
When they are still, separate the tail and …  

From Joy of Cooking
recipe for Lobster Newburg

On page 491, it does indeed tell you exactly how to kill a lobster by stabbing it in the neck.  It even gives you this handy tip:

[After stabbing the lobster], to avoid muscular contractions, you can put the lobster in the freezer for a few minutes until it is still.

And no, I haven’t tried it yet.  Maybe next Thanksgiving…

Lately, I’ve been enamored of simple recipes with very few ingredients.  I made up this salmon recipe based on a suggestion from a friend to use heavy cream for sauces, instead of making a roux with flour.  I’ve made this a few times now and it’s one of those “no fail” recipes – always good and always easy.  I like to serve it with roasted asparagus.

• Season 2 or 3 salmon fillets in Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning (or some tasty seasoning of your choice)
• Heat 1 Tablespoon butter in a large frying pan on medium-high heat
• Swish the butter around and when it starts to bubble a bit, add 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• Once it’s hot, add the salmon
• Fry for about 3 minutes per side (Tip: cut off and remove the thinner parts before they get overcooked – it doesn’t look as nice, but it tastes better)
• Remove the salmon to a plate, turn the heat to low and then let the pan cool off a bit
• Add about 1/2 cup of heavy cream (I never measure), some lemon juice, and a dash of balsamic vinegar
• Stir, heat it through and reduce it if you like
• Season to taste (if you use Chachere’s, you won’t need any more seasoning) and pour over salmon to serve

My first pet was a cat named Geddy who was a tabby-Siamese mix.  He was orange and white like a tabby, but his short hair, markings and face (and his loud, demanding meow) reflected his Siamese heritage.  He was so sweet that we often called him the “orange creamsicle.”  Don’t you remember those orange popsicles with the cream inside?  We had to put Geddy to sleep almost 3 years ago and I still miss him.  He was an irreplaceable value to me. 

Anyway, I’m a sucker for orange and cream now.  This recipe is just a modification of something I found in Joy of Cooking, but I made it up in honor of my old cat.  I don’t like sweet dishes much, but this one turned out delicious, with just a hint of orange/citrus.  It was cheap and easy and I loved every bite.  This one’s for you, Geddy!

Orange Cream Chicken Drumsticks

• Enough chicken drumsticks (or other parts you like) to fit in your biggest frying pan (I got 9 drumsticks in mine, probably about 2 pounds?)
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1-2 Tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• Pinch of allspice
• 1 cup chicken stock (or less, to taste)
• 2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice (I used a lazy squeeze of one whole orange)
• 1/4 cup heavy cream (I might have used more)
• 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinaigrette
• Salt and pepper

Season your chicken with salt and pepper to taste.

Heat the butter and oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat until golden and fragrant. (I used the vegetable oil as recommended this time instead of my usual olive oil but I’m sure you can substitute any fat you like.)

Arrange chicken pieces skin side down in a single layer in the pan.  Fry until the chicken is nicely browned on the bottom and detaches itself easily from the pan, about 6 minutes.  Turn and repeat.  Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook the chicken, turning often, until the dark meat pieces excude clear juices when pricked, about 20 minutes more. (I had to do it more like 40, including some time with the lid on the pan, but I had reduced the heat to medium-low to keep the fat from burning. You must use your judgement, here.)

Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with aluminum foil (or put in a low oven) to keep warm.

Leave the fat in the pan, keeping the heat at medium, and add your garlic, honey, and allspice.  Saute for a couple of minutes.

Increase the heat to high and add 1/2 cup chicken stock and the orange juice.  This is where you need to use your judgment about how much liquid to add.  The idea is to scrape the bottom of the pan for all the good brown stuff and boil the liquid for a while (5 minutes or so?) until you have a nice, condensed, fatty, tasty liquid of about 1/2 cup.  I like a concentrated taste and reducing seems to take much longer than recipes call for, so I add less liquid, but the recipe called for a full cup so you might need it.

Then, add 1/4 cup heavy cream.  I didn’t measure, but I think I used about that amount or maybe a bit more.  Again, this is the art part.  Add enough to make it creamy, but not enough to dilute the flavor.  I like cream.

Boil until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 3 minutes (don’t let it boil too much…keep stirring.)

Add the vinegar and stir.  Add salt and pepper and any other seasonings to taste.  Right now, the sauce should taste STRONG.  Remember, you are not eating it straight.  If it is bland, you need to reduce and add spices.

Once you have a strong, absolutely delicious sauce, turn off the heat, pour it into a cup, and serve it with the chicken.

I’m trying to reduce carbs now, but this is one dish that goes well with mashed potatoes or anything else that you like to sop up sauce with.

Enjoy!

Homemade mayonnaise.  Try it.

Well, I’m breaking my own rules by spending even more time on the food issue, but there is something that is bothering me.  While responding to comments on my earlier post, I realized that I may have implied something in my last post that I didn’t intend. 

A very popular Objectivist blogger, Diana Hsieh, posts a lot about food issues on her blog, and I’m not sure she would call herself a follower of the Paleo diet, but she has certainly referred to it on NoodleFood and her diet is similar.  Since we share quite a few readers, I want to state that my earlier post was in no way meant to insult her or her beliefs about food.  I do not think she is anti-man.  As a matter of fact, her blog is a big part of what has inspired me to look at my diet more carefully, and I think she has done the same for many others.  Thank you, Diana!

I don’t agree with all of Diana’s choices, and she does take much more care about what she eats than I do, but I do not consider her neurotic and I would hate to think that I implied that by not being more specific.  As she wrote recently in a post about the same article I referred to, many food choices are good or bad for an individual.  I wholeheartedly agree.  As I said in my post, most of my convictions are formed from my own personal experience with food and how my own body reacts.   I need to put more thought into what I eat than most people do, and apparently, so does Diana.  Still, I believe very few foods are “bad” for everyone and that moderation is indeed a good principle as regards food, whereas I think Diana takes a much stricter approach and finds much more of the research to be credible than I do.

Since many of my readers read NoodleFood as well, I just realized that people might have thought I was referring to her, and that it was unfair to be so critical about this issue without mentioning Diana and the overall good influence she has had on me, even if we aren’t in agreement on the issue.  She certainly knows a lot more than I do about the latest studies in nutrition and she is one of the few writers whom I respect enough to even bother reading a post from about food.   Her link to the Gary Taubes article is what really convinced me to work harder to avoid unnecessary carbs.  While responding to a comment on my prior post, I realized that my main experience with the Paleo diet came from a doctor I saw who held the position that diet was responsible for all health problems.  I did some research through that doctor’s resources (and one other person who followed the diet) and I found none of it credible and much of it to be disgusting propaganda.  So that’s what I was thinking about and referring to when I was writing.

I reject the Paleo diet, as a whole.  And to clarify some confusion in the comments:  I think the diet is anti-man because, at least from what I’ve seen, the promoters are against modern foods because they are man-made, and will attach all kinds of other anti-progress, anti-business garbage to the diet.  I do not necessarily think that anybody who follows the diet is anti-man, just as I don’t think all environmentalists are anti-man, but the idea of environmentalism is.  I’ll take the parts of the diet that make sense to me based on the knowledge that I have, which includes the knowledge that just about everything we’ve ever been told by scientists about nutrition has been reversed later.

I want to expand a bit on the passing reference I made the other day to people taking food too seriously. 

A lot of bloggers I read are trying to reduce carbs in their diet.  Some have discussed the merits of the Paleolithic diet, which is supposed to replicate the food humans ate before the advent of agriculture.  The reasoning is that humans have not physically adapted away from that diet, and that newer food such as grains, refined sugars, dairy, and processed oils are not digested or metabolized easily (or in some cases, properly), causing all manner of health problems.  “Good” foods include meat, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts. 

The paleo diet happens to be a very low carb diet, compared with the FDA recommended diet – you know, the old Food Pyramid, with grains being the foundation. (I can’t link to the FDA’s web site about the Food Pyramid – it seems to be down…hmmmmm.)

My position on the paleo diet is that it is a fad based on anti-man premises.  The idea that man might not yet have adapted to grains and dairy is an intriguing hypothesis, but the champions of the paleo diet (not the bloggers I read, I want to emphasize) do not act as if this is something to be studied.  They act morally righteous about their eating habits and seem to be on a quest to condemn particular foods because they are man made.  I’ve done enough reading to convince me that there is no evidence or reason to follow the paleo diet, as such.  The promoters of the diet lose all credibility with me when they start claiming that every single health problem can be solved by changing one’s diet. 

However, I also believe, based on first-hand experience, observations of the eating habits in our culture, and a little bit of science, that there is a “grain” of truth in the paleo diet, in that that the Standard American Diet (the Food Pyramid) is way out of whack.  I’ll just talk about my personal experience here.  I have read much more about this subject than this post might indicate, but a lot less than some of the people I’m criticizing.  I don’t think you need to judge every study about food to use common sense and to catch on to the fact that we still really don’t know much about proper diet.

To me, grains are not “real food.”  First of all, they have almost no flavor.  I’ve never understood why people love rice, bread, cereal, and pasta.  Even pastries leave me cold.  I’ll eat these things, but only as carriers for something that has flavor and substance.  Bread is great for holding meat and mayonnaise, but the less of it, the better.  Sweet, sugary deserts are nice sometimes, but again, I never used to crave them and I don’t think of them as real food. (I use the past tense because under my husband’s influence I’ve been eating more chocolate and sweets, and the more I eat them, the more I crave them.)

When I first started cooking (instead of eating frozen dinners or soup for almost every meal) I made a lot of pasta.  I like making sauces, and it was an easy way to get started: add some meat, vegetables, and sauce to a bunch of pasta.  Cooking steaks or fish was intimidating.  Even though I had always been thin to normal weight and I was exercising, I gained a lot of weight on this diet.

I also seem to be sensitive to blood-sugar dips.  My father calls it being hypoglycemic, but I’m not sure if that is really accurate.  What I do know is that if I eat carbs with no protein, especially in the morning, I crash within an hour or so.  I start to shake and sometimes come close to blacking out.  I can go much longer eating nothing at all that eating something like a bagel first thing in the morning.

It takes effort to reduce the grains and carbs in your diet, especially at breakfast.  We all were told to stop eating bacon and eggs because of cholesterol (which I think is a huge mistake) and told to eat cereal with skim milk or a whole grain muffin.  I’m sorry, but those things just have no “meat” in them – they do nothing to sustain me.  My body knows this.  Some people don’t have the strong reaction I do to eating pure carbs, but I suspect they suffer in the long-term for it.

So I’m making a conscious effort to reduce carbs and add protein to my family’s diet, but it’s not always easy.  Most convenience food is based on grains.  If you want to make a quick, easy dinner, there is spaghetti, macaroni and cheese, etc., or you can order a pizza.  Grains last much longer than meat and vegetables, so it’s easy to keep them handy on the shelf for emergencies.  I still use these types of foods in a pinch, but I try to plan meals of meats and vegetables for most dinners, and I make enough so that we can eat some leftovers for breakfast and lunch.

But there is no way that I’m going to have steamed mussels without bread, or curry without rice.  Those grains are great to sop up the yummy sauce.  And that leads me to my original point, which is that I think a lot of people are way too uptight about carbs in the same way they used to be uptight about fat and cholesterol.  I think moderation is the key, along with a healthy dash of skepticism about anything the government recommends.  This article talks about how kids are being affected by this latest food fad.  Whether you believe that “orthorexia” is a legitimate new diagnosis or not, it’s pretty easy to see that eating disorders can take many forms, one being obsession with “health” food.  I think it’s a shame when adults are so consumed with eating the “right” foods that they give their kids a complex.

I also think it’s a shame to outlaw any particular food in your home, labelling it “unhealthy.”  This includes cake, cookies, ice cream, and even candy.  These foods are fun, and fun is good.