Cigarettes, Chocolate Milk, and Cauliflower

Rufus Wainwright is very popular in our household. This is a live performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," one of Rufus' signature songs these days.

As for the post title, I had this nice-looking head of cauliflower from our CSA earlier this week and wanted to use it in a two-day meal—that is, enough for two dinners—which we try to make twice a week.

So I turned to Molto Mario’s The Babbo Cookbook – which, admittedly, can call for ingredients beyond the reach of the typical at-home cook (hen-of-the-wood mushrooms or wild boar, anyone?) – and came upon this simple recipe that seemed perfect, and, as a bonus, also would make for a mostly “sustainable” meal: a red onion and cauliflower from our CSA, garlic from Farmers @ Firehouse, mint from our own herb garden. Molto called for ziti, but we only had cavatappi, which worked very well.

Ziti with Tuscan-Style Cauliflower

• 1/4 - 1/3 cup of extra-virgin olive oil
• Small red onion, finely diced
• 1 cup plus of roughly chopped mint
• 1 tsp of crushed red pepper
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or thinly sliced
• 1 head of cauliflower, cut into small pieces
• 1 lb of ziti or similar pasta
• Salt and pepper

Bring a well-salted pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta.

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil (I would lean more toward the 1/3 cup) over high heat for a minute or two. Turn down the heat just a little, then add the onion, garlic, mint, and crushed pepper, and sauté for about a minute or two. Add the cauliflower and cook until the cauliflower is tender and beginning to brown in spots, about 10-12 minutes.

Drain the pasta well, and when the cauliflower mixture is ready, add the pasta to the pan, mix well, and cook together for a minute or so.

Serve with grated pecorino romano, if you have it. Otherwise, use parmesan. This is not a saucy dish, so if it seems a little dry, just give it a quick swirl of a high quality olive oil in the pan before serving.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Carrots style

Enough about Giada’s cooking… assets. According to Serious Eats, today is National Taco Day.

Here is the recipe for tacos I’ll be preparing this evening…

• 1 lb or so of ground beef
• 2 cloves finely chopped garlic
• 1/2 cup of finely diced onion
• 1 tbs cumin
• 2 tbs chile pepper powder (not chili powder)
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1 cup of medium salsa (the only store-bought salsa I will even eat is Jardine's)

Toppings

• Chopped tomato
• Chopped cilantro
• Shredded cheddar
• Diced avocado
• Sour cream

Cook the garlic and onion in a little olive oil over medium heat until onions are soft. Add cumin, stir, and cook for another minute or so. Add ground beef and cook minutes until browned. Stir in chile powder, salsa, and cinnamon and let cook for 10 minutes or so until heated through and flavors have melded. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

Eggs for dinner… We love frittatas in our house. This one – which has Swiss chard in it, low on my scale of favorite greens -- ranks right up there with any we’ve ever made. My only deviations from the recipe were to use less onion than it called for, and not to add more parmesan on top before putting it in the oven.

Halloween Brews… As I said in the last post, I love September. It marks the arrival of fall, the return of the major European futbol leagues (Forza Roma!), the reintroduction of jeans as everyday wear, and the first beers of the holiday season, namely, pumpkin ales.

Now, I’ve had some bad pumpkin ales. Most noteworthy among those was one I had 8 or 9 years ago at a brewpub in Gaithersburg, Md. I actually didn’t have the whole beer, just a sip or two from a sample, because the bartender admitted that something had gone wrong during brewing, and the pumpkin ale tasted more like a bitter Goldschlager ale.

Not surprisingly, Dogfish Head makes an excellent Punkin’ Ale. Although, I have to be honest, this year’s version is a little sweet. Nevertheless, the true beer snobs seem to like it. I can assure you that it won’t go to waste in our house.

Puttin’ on the Grease… This week’s Fast Food Abomination of the Week goes to Applebee’s.

I understand that, technically, Applebee’s isn’t a fast food joint. I guess it’s considered a “casual dining” restaurant. Nevertheless, its recently introduced gimmick, Applebee’s Ultimate Trios, easily lives up to the FFA standard. It allows a diner to order, for service on a single plate, a choice of “boneless” chicken wings (aka, chicken tenders in wing sauce), mini bacon cheeseburgers, mozzarella sticks, dynamite (fried) shrimp, crispy fiesta wrappers (also fried), or the what I can only assume is the inaccurately named Tuscan cheese spread.

In other words, pass the Prilosec and see your cardiologist in the morning.

Odd combinations… I am a big Mark Bittman fan. I have How to Cook Everything and refer to it regularly. I also faithfully read his New York Times column. This week, however, he has a recipe for a zucchini & pear soup. Color me green with skepticism.

In the mood for lamb… Last Saturday, before our foray to Little Italy Days, we swung by the Farmers at the Firehouse farm market in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. While there, we purchased some honey, fresh lemongrass, and a few lamb steaks that I’m looking forward to preparing, although I have no idea how. This, however, sounds extremely appealing. And, while it might be a little bit of extra work, the chickpea fries recommended to accompany it seem like they might be, as the Brit announcers of European futbol games are fond of saying, simply sublime.

Safe Meat & the Farm Bill

Anybody who has read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation – except for representatives from the meat industry, that is – knows that the large, federally-inspected slaughterhouses where much of the country’s ground beef and steaks are produced are a worker and food safety nightmare.

One of the positive aspects of the Farm Bill that passed the House was some flexibility built into it that would help smaller farmers get their meat slaughtered at more modest, local facilities, and sell it across state lines, as long as those facilities meet federal standards. As Michael Pollan explained in Omnivore’s Dilemma, it’s hard for small farms that do the sustainable farming thing, e.g., grass-fed beef, to find slaughterhouses that are willing to take their cows because of their small volume.

Meanwhile, the feds really are only interested in the large production facilities. In the example Pollan cited in the book, one fellow who sunk millions into setting up a state-of-the-art slaughtering facility for farmers in Virginia producing mostly grass-fed beef was eventually rebuffed by the USDA: told that the agency couldn’t provide an inspector because there wasn’t enough meat flowing through the facility. In other words, it was a waste of their time because the plant “wasn’t industrial enough,” as Pollan put it.

That’s because, as Schlosser explained last year, only 13 slaughterhouses produce most of the meat consumed each year by the large majority of Americans. Those slaughterhouses probably move more cattle through their facilities in a week than a smaller facility servicing smaller farmers might in a whole year.

And let’s just say inspections haven’t been the feds strong suit. As Schlosser explained, how could they?

Cutbacks in staff and budgets have reduced the number of food-safety inspections conducted by the FDA to about 3,400 a year — from 35,000 in the 1970s.

Then, of course, there are the overlapping food inspection duties, with the FDA responsible for some things and the USDA responsible for others, based on seemingly arbitrary differences, such as whether suspect eggs have intact or broken shells. Seriously.

And then there is the efficiency thing. You know that recent recall of meat patties? When first announced, it was in the neighborhood of a few hundred thousand pounds. But then it was expanded to nearly 22 million pounds, the second largest in U.S. history. That company, Topps, the largest maker of frozen meat patties, is now going out of business.

But as we’re learning today, it took the USDA 18 days after they first learned about the contaminated meat to decide that, hey, maybe, you know, we should recommend a recall.

Which brings me back around to the Farm Bill. Now a lot of people are hoping that the Senate will make some serious improvements to the version that passed the House. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), however, seems to be going backwards.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she will block the Senate bill if it includes a House-passed provision that would allow some smaller meat processing plants to opt out of federal meat inspections in favor of state inspections. …

"In recent months, the safety of our domestic food supply has been called into question," Boxer said at a news conference Tuesday with food safety advocates. "Congress should be focused on more stringent food safety standards, not rolling back the federal government's crucial role in protecting our people."

Now, again, Topps, the second largest provider of frozen-beef patties, is a federally inspected plant! The provision in the House bill says the state facilities must meet federal safety standards.

The provision, supported by House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn. and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., would allow some state-inspected meat to cross state lines, provided that the state guidelines are identical to federal guidelines.

Yet, despite this, Sen. Boxer issued a statement, which her office forwarded to me when I called about this issue, that runs counter to this fact:

If the House provision becomes law, meat and poultry plants could choose to forgo federal inspection in favor of more lax and uneven state-run inspections — putting the health and safety of millions of Americans at risk.

I’m not sure what Sen. Boxer’s beef is, pardon the pun. But, as has been pointed out by many knowledgeable people, the tremendous centralization of food production in this country – where a company like Topps could even produce 20-plus million pounds of beef patties – leads to far greater dangers when something goes awry.

And why all of a sudden is Sen. Boxer so concerned about food safety? She didn't even mention it in her May 31 letter to the Senate Agricultural Committee, in which she laid out her priorities for the 2007 Farm Bill.

This is a reasonable provision to which she is objecting, one that could possibly enhance meat safety by bringing more beef from smaller, sustainable farms to market -- you know, from cows that have spent their lives grazing in a pasture and eating grass, not wallowing in their own shit eating corn and filler products that make them so sick that they need to be pumped full of antibiotics.

Something stinks here, and it ain't cow poop!

Days of Beer and Goombas

September in Pittsburgh brings with it two events that are must-attends in our household: Oktoberfest at Penn Brewery and Little Italy Days in Bloomfield.

The food at these celebrations isn’t fancy. Bratwursts and knockwursts and German-style potato salad are prerequisite dining at Oktoberfest (alas, the potatoes were a little undercooked this year, but the dressing was spot-on). You won’t find much in the way of high-end or even classic Italian fare at Little Italy Days. Well, let me rephrase that. What you will mostly find are a few classic Italian dishes popular in America -- simple baked pastas, sausage and peppers, cannoli -- and Italian-American classics like the warm and flaky pepperoni roll pictured above that we disappeared into our bellies in a matter of minutes.

Aside from the pepperoni roll, which came from the stand outside of our favorite Italian grocery, Groceria Italiana, we also enjoyed a pretty good slice of pizza from the stand outside of Angelo’s pizzeria and the gnocchi with sausage and olives from the stand outside of the recently opened Café Roma. The gnocchi itself was perfect—firm, but not hard, and an inviting texture that held the gravy quite well. The latter, a red sauce, of course, was overpowered by too much garlic—but we still scarfed down the whole thing.

Some delicious gelato and espresso -- the former mostly consumed by the young 'uns -- and some inappropriate-for-children, old-school jokes from a Dean Martin impersonator (back-to-back jokes about carnal relations with the neighbor's wife) and we called it a day. Fantastico!

Scrapin' Up the Bits, Bolognese Style

It happens to the best of us… You make something you expect to be delicious and, eh, it just ain’t. So was the case for some bolognese I made the other evening. In the past, we’ve relied on Mario Batali’s bolognese recipe. This time, I went with one from Food & Wine.

The two are highly similar, although the round-bellied one’s has twice as much onion and garlic, 6 ounces of tomato paste compared to none (although, to be honest, I could tell it just needed something, so I added about 2-3 ounces of said ingredient), a little more white wine, and water instead of chicken broth.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, what I found most bothersome about tonight’s meal: the taste of chicken broth.

Lesson learned. Stick with Molto.

Howevah… while the bolognese was a disappointment, our Sunday dinner of tequila-honey glazed chicken, which was accompanied with some green beans and corn on the cob from the farm, was very good. Ah, the dark meat. It never disappoints.

Bill Maher has been recruited by the lefty Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine as a big name to push for changes to the Farm Bill. The PCRM, probably best known for its efforts to curtail animal use in medical research, has launched an ad campaign calling out U.S. Senators about money they have received from the companies who excessively benefit from the Farm Bill at the expense of promoting obesity.

Sadly, Maher’s letter to Senate Agricultural Committee Chair Tom Harkin is just a freakin’ form letter. C’mon, Bill. Couldn’t take a second to add some tonge-in-cheek zinger? Sen. Harkin’s from Iowa! Not even one “corn hole” joke?!

And for the five people who read about my glorious run-in with a Vietnamese sandwich, this incredibly smart – and extremely fortunate -- person has got my back.

Bad, Bad Spinach; Great, Great Salad

Seriously, this is just freakin’ ridiculous. Another bagged spinach recall because of E. coli contamination. Once our CSA season is over, I truly don’t know if I’ll be able to trust any of these bagged salads from the grocery store. I wouldn't be surprised if this contamination, as was the case last time, was due to cow poop flowing down into the spinach fields from an adjacent cattle ranch. But the most infuriating part:

A recent Associated Press investigation found that government regulators never acted on calls for stepped-up inspections of leafy greens after [the previous] outbreak, and regulations governing farms in the fertile central California region known as the nation's "Salad Bowl" remain much as they were.

Ah, your corporate-friendly government regulators at work, dutifully ignoring the public health!

On to more positive salad-related news… I usually don’t pass on a recipe I’ve only made once. But this one, adapted from the August ’07 Bon Appetit, was excellent and easy. Assuming you can get your hands on a variety of non-cow poop laden greens and are willing to dish out the funds for a head of radicchio, this is highly recommended:

Grilled Radicchio Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette

Vinaigrette

• 1-2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped tarragon
• 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon of honey
• 3 tablespoons of high-quality extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Salad

• 4-6 green onions, tops and bottoms trimmed
• 1 small head of romaine, quartered, with a bit of core on each piece
• 1 head of green or red-leaf lettuce, quartered, with a bit of core on each piece
• 1 head of radicchio, quartered, with a bit of core on each piece
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Prepare the grill, medium-high heat.

Make the vinaigrette: Combine the vinegar, tarragon, mustard, honey, salt and pepper; whisk together, and then slowly whisk in the olive oil.

Prepare the greens: Put the salad components on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper. First put the radicchio on the grill. You want the radicchio to be on the grill for a good 10-12 minutes total, about 5-6 minutes on each side. It should be charred and the internal leaves should be a little cooked.

After the radicchio has been on for a few minutes, put on the green onions. When the radicchio is looking good (I mean that – use those tongs and inspect, baby, inspect!) and the green onions are starting to get a little charred, put the other greens on the grill. These should be on for about 30-45 seconds per “side,” if a quartered piece of leafy lettuce can really have a side.

Remove all of the greens from the grill, chop into thin slices on a cutting board, put in a large bowl and toss with the vinaigrette.

The Molto Seesaw and Less Meat Eating, Please

Several news outlets have been reporting that the Food Network and Mario Batali are parting ways. Well, they were saying that Mario had been sacked. Not so fast. According to the Well Fed Network, Mario and the Food Network are doin’ just fine.

One report that has been confirmed, however, is that the big MM has a new gig with PBS: A show about the food and cooking of Spain, with co-host, actress and apparent pork teetotaler, Gwyneth Paltrow. Gee, kind of like a modern Laurel & Hardy, eh?

On a more serious note, an international group of researchers has published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet arguing that humans, particularly those of us in developed countries, can reduce the rate of global warming simply by reducing amount of meat we eat.

Worldwide, agricultural activity, especially livestock production, accounts for about a fifth of total greenhouse-gas emissions, thus contributing to climate change and its adverse health consequences, including the threat to food yields in many regions.

They call for implementing an “international contraction and convergence” strategy under which the amount of meat eaten would be modestly reduced in all countries over the next several decades, with the majority of the reduction coming from a 50% cut in the amount of red meat from ruminants like cows, goats, and sheep (and “other digastric grazers,” aka, I guess, animals that are supposed to eat grass and have two stomachs).

And for those of you worried that limiting Americans to one Big Mac a week is too much to ask, these researchers have some reassuring words:

The resultant gains in health and environmental sustainability should help to offset any (initial) discomforts from restrictions on some popular foods and altered dietary customs. Replacing ruminant red meat with meat from monogastric animals or vegetarian-farmed fish would reduce methane production and lower the pressures on wild fisheries as sources of fishmeal for aquaculture.

Scrapin' up the bits, musical style

My 5- and 2-year-old are totally digging the hit single from the newest Apple iPod gal, Feist. Gotta hand it to Letterman, his act's kind of old at this point, but he still has good musical guests from time to time.

On to actual food-related items...

Robert Samuelson at the Washington Post lays out some staggering numbers about farm subsidies and begs the Senate to do something about them in its version of the Farm Bill. Only problem with Samuelson's column is his suggestion that beef, chicken, and pork producers get by just fine without subsidies, when really they are indirectly subsidized because they get cheap (subsidized) corn feed. I suspect he knows this, but admitting it would have undermined his argument. Pundits these days, unfortunately, are a lot like politicians: they don't like facts to interfere with their blanket assertions.

Speaking of the Farm Bill, I write letters about it and they get published.

And the awards for belly-bloating fast-food atrocities of the month go to (drum roll)...

• Domino’s Pizza, for its Oreo pizza
• Pizza Hut for its dippin’ strips pizza. Mmmm, just what I want, pizza dipped in ranch dressing. Excuse my French, but WTF??!!

If you are a big fan of microwave popcorn, you might want to think twice about eating it on anything but a very occasional basis.

Finally, not sure what your meatloaf recipe looks like, but mine is kinda tangy:

• 1 pound of ground beef
• 1 pound of ground pork
• ½ cup of finely diced onion
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of fresh bread crumbs
• Heaping tablespoon of diced fresh thyme
• Good bit of salt
• Good bit of pepper
• 1/3 cup of ketchup
• 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoon of brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce
  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together the first 8 ingredients very well. Either put in a loaf pan or mold it into loaf shape and place it on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper.

Mix together the last four ingredients.

Put the meat loaf in the oven for 30 minutes, remove, cover the top in the glaze, and put back in for another 15-20 minutes.

My preference is to make the meatloaf the night before because, darn it, it’s just better the next day.

More Banh Mi, Please

There are only a few individual meals or food items I have had that have managed to achieve “hallowed” status. There was, for instance, my wife’s cote du boeuf at Marcel’s—the single most tender and delicious steak I’ve ever tasted. The baguette with brie and bottle of red wine we slowly devoured in a tree-and-bench-lined park in Paris also qualifies.

There are probably less than a handful of others. I can now safely add to this list a sandwich I had this past Saturday. Said sandwich was consumed during the first annual meeting of “The Strip Club,” a gathering of three couples with the sole purpose of eating and drinking our way through Pittsburgh’s Strip District over the course of 8 to 10 hours.

I first read about these sandwiches, called banh mi, 3 years ago in the New York Times, and I have lusted after one ever since. When I initially saw the stand in the Strip District in the spring -- directly in front of one of what I believe are only two or three Vietnamese restaurants in the Pittsburgh area – selling sub-like sandwiches, I immediately knew what it was.

To be blunt, there is no excuse to have waited this long to get one. In my defense, though, every time we venture to the Strip we typically have kids in tow, bags filled with cookies and cheese and seafood, and an unofficial but child-required appointment for a thick slice at The Little Oven. Thus, I always find myself uttering with utmost regret, “Next time.”

Well, last Saturday, with the kids safely in the care of grandparents and our only responsibility to eat as much as seemed feasible – and drink just somewhat less – my first destination, after the obligatory alcoholic appetizer at Roland’s, was that stand for that banh mi.

In many respects, this is the perfect sandwich. Let’s begin with the bread: a fresh baguette, cut in half and sliced down the middle just to within an inch or two of the tip, the perfect envelope for the contents about to be heaped onto it The baguette was excellent: A slightly crisp, pliant crust, and a fresh, cushiony interior that worked with the ingredients about to make it their home, albeit temporarily.

Next came the chicken: thigh meat, bathed in what I would guess was fish sauce, garlic, maybe some shallot, possibly some honey, and I’m sure other spices or herbs. One of the two kindly Asian women working at the stand took the chicken from a grill, where it had been cooked on two skewers, pulled off little pieces of chicken and tucked them into the awaiting baguette. Next came thin slices of red onion, cucumber, and carrot, all of which had been relaxing in some type of pickling agent.

The other woman’s role was simple: add some healthy pinches of fresh cilantro and fresh jalapenos, before returning it to the first woman for the grand finale, a modest drizzling of a sweet and spicy glaze.

The wonder of Vietnamese food is the fresh, often intense flavors, and the banh mi captures that perfectly. There is an ever-present sweetness that’s perfectly counterbalanced by the heat from the glaze and jalapenos, the cool taste of the cucumber, carrot, and cilantro, and the richness of the fish sauce.

And when you put all of that on a crispy baguette, your only option is to really chew each bite, literally forcing you to take your time and enjoy each bit of banh mi that enters your mouth.

Hallowed status, indeed.

Props also go to the Penn Avenue Fish Company for its bangin’ – as the kids say – fish tacos. Unlike the more traditional fish tacos that are popular on the West Coast, these were made with what I believe was salmon (instead of a fried or grilled white fish) and came in a hard, corn shell (instead of a flour tortilla). It was, as is traditionally done, topped with cabbage and very fresh diced tomatoes, with a spicy, creamy sauce to ratchet up the heat index. Excellent.

The Saphire Martini – with 4 olives, without even requesting it – at The Firehouse Lounge was top notch, as was the eponymous Kaya Burger, although with a little too much “secret Kaya sauce.” I like to eat my burgers, not bathe in them.

Overall, the first-ever gathering of The Strip Club was a rousing success. May there be many more.

Photo courtesy of MaosRedArmy.

Scraping Up the Bits, Organic Milk, Peaches & Beer Style

Alleged "organic" milk producer nailed by the Feds, finally! The folks at the Cornucopia Institute deserve huge kudos for going after Aurora Organics, which produces organic milk for lots of big box and grocery chains that isn't even "organic" by the letter of the law, but that has been getting away with it for a long time. Until now, that is! (h/t Orange Clouds at DailyKos).

The Environmental Working Group calls for the Senate to make serious reforms in its version of the Farm Bill…

Another good reason for reforming the Farm Bill: Not a single state saw a decline in obesity rates in 2006, while 31 had increases.

One week after buying some new olive oil at one of my favorite Italian food shops -- in our old stomping grounds of Bethesda, Md. -- I find that it’s made by the same company that is infamous for occasionally engaging in olive oil fraud!

Forget the Mackinaw peaches, Jerry! Bring on the peaches from Chambersburg, Pa. But are those “Chambersburg peaches” I’ve been getting from our CSA really from Chambersburg, or just somewhere in the vicinity? Hmmm. I’ll have to ask them. No worries, though. They have been tremendous.

Finally, last night I had my first-ever Oaked Arrogant Bastard, from those brewing geniuses at Stone Brewing Co. in sunny San Diego. It seemed a tad darker in color than a "traditional" Arrogant Bastard, and with a slightly more intense bitterness. Was it “oakey”? I can’t say that. But at 7.2% alcohol, it was a welcome nightcap.

Green and Garlicky

While in Los Angeles for work in April, I was fortunate enough to nab a stool at the pizza bar at Mario Batali’s fabulously popular joint pizza venture, Pizzeria Mozza. [“Fortunate” being the operative word, considering there are reportedly hour-long waits at the minimum to get a seat for more than two people here on most evenings. As a single diner -- who paid a ridiculous cab fare to get to the restaurant – I got a seat within 1 minute of arriving.]

Prior to downing what was an excellent pizza topped with, as I recall, some salami, red onion, and dried chili, I had as my appetizer some brick-oven flamed fava beans topped with grated parmesan and speck, a prosciutto-like cured meat that I need to have again, soon.

Since then, I’ve been hoping to duplicate that appetizer. Fava beans, it turns out, are hard to find, as is speck. For the last month or so, however, our illustrious CSA has had these remarkably long, hardy green beans called Kentucky Wonder Beans. So, no fava beans or speck, but I had Kentucky Wonder Beans and prosciutto, and that was good enough for me.

I also had a packed container of baby arugula – from, I readily admit, the grocery store (double gasp!) – that was coming up on its expiration date. And being the pesto freak that I am, arugula pesto seemed like a no-brainer.

Thus was born last Saturday’s dinner, a delightful, reflux-inducing feast. Admittedly, there are enough similarities in the ingredients used in the entrée and the side that they might not make the ideal pairing. The beans would probably go better with a grilled New York strip or a bold piece of fish, and the shrimp would go very well with a light tomato salad.

Nevertheless, we really enjoyed them together.

Grilled Shrimp on an Arugula Pesto Bed and Grilled Kentucky Wonder Beans al Forno with Prosciutto

Pesto

• 2 cups of well-washed arugula [Note: baby arugula, in my experience, is far more mild than its large-leaved brethren. So if using the latter, just be aware it may be quite strong.]
• 1 cup of basil leaves
• Half cup of freshly grated parmesan
• 3-4 tablespoons of toasted pine nuts [Walnuts or hazelnuts would be great, if not preferable]
• 1 large clove of garlic, roughly chopped
• plenty of salt and pepper
• 1/2 – 2/3 cup of high-quality olive oil

Shrimp

• 12 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• Swirl of olive oil
• Shake or two of crushed red pepper
• Salt and pepper
• (Some lemon zest would be good, too)

Green beans

• ¾ to 1 lb of green beans
• 2 tbs of olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 2-3 tablespoons of grated parmesan
• ¼ pound of prosciutto, roughly cut

To make the pesto... Combine all of the ingredients except the olive oil in a large food processor. Turn on food processor and slowly add the olive oil in a stream until the mixture starts to look almost creamy, approximately 20-30 seconds.

Turn the grill on to medium-high heat

For the shrimp... Combine the shrimp with the olive oil, red pepper, salt, and pepper in a bowl and mix well. Put shrimp on 2 or 3 skewers.

For the green beans... Combine green beans, olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic in a bowl and mix well. Place foil on half of grill and spread beans out so they are evenly layered. Cook until you start to see a little char on some of the beans, but they still have a nice crunch. About 10 minutes. Remove from heat and combine with a little parmesan and the prosciutto.

About 5 minutes into grilling the beans, put the shrimp on the other half of the grill. Cook until one side is just turning pink, then turn and cook until entirely pink. Approximately 4-5 minutes maximum.

Spread about 2-3 tablespoons of the pesto on a plate, top with 6 shrimp and place a hefty portion of beans on the side.

BIG TUNA

There are two perfectly good reasons why I tend to heavily research a restaurant before I eat there. One, I don’t care to eat food that doesn’t taste good. Two, I don’t like paying for food that doesn’t taste very good, particularly if I have to pay a lot to do it.

On our recent family vacation to the Outer Banks, we mostly prepared our meals at the beach house. But one night was set aside for each of the respective families staying in the house to go their own way for dinner.

So I spent a few hours after a long morning beach stint digging around on food blogs and message boards and finding what reviews I could for kid-friendly OBX restaurants with reportedly good food (lofty expectations, I know).

Notice that I didn’t use terms like “great food,” “exquisite dining,” or “transcendent culinary delights.” Just a mostly satisfying meal, preferably one that has, as some component, fresh seafood.

And so it was that I found a January 2007 post on Chowhound – which I consider to be a reputable source of restaurant reviews from knowledgeable eaters (it served me very well on a business trip earlier this year to L.A.) – that offered some fairly hearty praise of a “family-friendly” restaurant in the Kill Devil Hills area of the Outer Banks. Another Chowhound post on OBX dining also spoke well of this same restaurant.

I found the original post to be particularly convincing because the writer described the food she had eaten and prepared during a recent week’s vacation in OBX, and came off as somebody who understood food (which, I realize, sounds way snobby, but I’m not trying to fool anybody here: I’m a food snob).

So I decided to accept this anonymous advice, and my wife agreed to play along.

Now, a bit of important background before I tread any further. First, when last in the OBX two years ago, we had an absolutely dreadful experience for our dining-out meal, one that came with a hefty price tag and two plates on which the entrees were, well, left fairly intact. That particular excursion was carried out with no previous research, although I recall that I selected the restaurant. I actually forget how I chose it, but believe it was listed in the phone book or an OBX “entertainment” guide in the house we stayed in that year. No matter. It was wretched.

This most recent dining experience started off well. The restaurant atmosphere was funky and laid back. The dining room ceiling, for example, consisted of grayish-blue waves with the bottoms of surf boards and jelly fish and other sea creatures jutting out. There was a kiddy drink menu with goofy names involving frogs and sharks. My son’s lemon-lime soda came with a little Great White shark filled with some sugary raspberry mixture to pour into it.

We got the kids the typical kiddy menu fare (something I hope to start moving away from soon), and ordered some fruity adult drinks and an appetizer sampler for ourselves: shrimp, crab, and scallops in various fried preparations, all of which had good flavor and were mostly well executed. Our entrees, both from the specials menu, both sounded interesting and potentially “good.”

Then they arrived, and what had been an enjoyable experience to that point came to an abrupt halt. I had my suspicions about my dish when ordering it – a five-spice coated tuna on top of noodles in a peanut-sauce – but figured it was one of the specials, which in my experience are typically among the best a restaurant has to offer. My wife got a mixed grill, which included some bacon-wrapped scallops and a pork chop.

I suppose I should have paid more strict attention to the menu’s description of my entrée or asked the waiter about it, because the tuna – something I was really looking forward to after a week of heavy dinners -- was not a thick piece of Ahi seared and sliced, but instead was two thin pieces, cooked almost all of the way through. It was dry and useless. The noodles topped with peanut sauce were serviceable, but could not compensate for the desecrated fish resting upon them.

The highlight of my wife’s dish was the side of creamy mashed potatoes. The bacon around the scallops was some of the most bland bacon I’ve ever had, and the pork chop, while moist, appeared to have little to no seasoning.

So, for the second straight time, we had a lousy, somewhat expensive meal out on our vacation. And, as important, I was still craving tuna.

So, on our way out of town, I stopped at a highly-regarded seafood market, picked up an excellent looking/smelling piece of tuna (and some beautiful sea scallops) and threw it in a cooler with some ice for the ride home.

On Saturday night – exhausted and mentally unfit for most tasks after the 9-hour plus trek back the day/night before – I looked through different recipes for seared tuna.

We settled on…

...coating the tuna in olive oil, the smoked salt that I’ve been hooked on, lots of freshly ground pepper, and the zest of one lime.

I seared it, sliced it into 9-10 long pieces with a big, rosy, raw center, and laid them on some greens (organic baby romaine that I got at our local big grocery chain that were probably the best greens I’ve had from a supermarket) topped with teardrop yellow tomatoes from our garden and diced avocado.

The dressing included grated fresh ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, cilantro, as well as some garlic, honey, lime juice, ground mustard, into which I whisked a healthy dose of canola oil.

The camera was still in a suitcase somewhere, so you’ll have to trust me that it looked incredible and tasted even better. It definitely was the meal I had been craving a few days earlier. The exception being that it was far more than just “good.”

Scraping Up the Bits, Vacation Style

Thanks, Homer.

The Nation argues that the House-passed version of the Farm Bill is not as bad as many have said it is, and that there may be a way to lower subsidies for the “big 5” commodity crops via the Senate version of the bill...

Now that’s a sandwich…

And, finally, I know that Hung guy on Top Chef just put some cauliflower in his ice cream, but garlic in cookies, I don’t know…

Off to the beach for some R&R. Have a great week!

Summer Drinkin'

It’s been a hot summer. A scorcher. I mean, for Pete’s sake, we’re just getting into August and daytime temperatures in the 90s here in western Pennsylvania have become as common as NFL player arrests.

Now, I’m primarily a beer guy, and in the summer there is nothing I like better than a good wheat beer (the local Penn Hefeweizen being among the best) or a hoppy IPA (Stone IPA has been killer recently). At this exact very momentous instant, in fact, I'm drinking a limited summer release from Dogfish Head -- now officially among the top tier of U.S. breweries -- called Festina Peche. It's light, subtly tart, and, as its name implies, slightly peachy. Not as good as ApriHop, but enjoyable nonetheless.

But I digress... Again, although primarily a beer guy (and a wine guy secondarily, if we're limiting the conversation to alcoholic beverages, which we are), this summer my wife and I have been enjoying a simple mixed drink that my wife’s friend turned her onto: Vodka and soda with lemon.

Nothing too complex here. Approximately one part vodka per every three parts of club soda, plenty of ice, finely dressed with a lemon slice. We’ve been using Ketel One much of the summer, but I would guess that any decent vodka will do.

The beauty of this drink, and its potential attraction to anybody watching their girly/metrosexualish figure, is that it’s low in calories: Zero calories in club soda and 64 calories in one ounce of vodka.

In theory, at least, the typical mixed drink has one shot, or 1.5 ounces, of vodka, which means a a satisfying vodka and soda with lemon has the same amount of calories as a bottle (or worse -- if it can actually get any worse -- a can) of that tasteless, sorry waste of tap water, Miller Lite (96 calories) and nearly half the calories of the new "Cosmo" of beers, Blue Moon (174 calories).

More recently, we’ve been enjoying a twist on this drink: Absolut Pear and soda with lime. My highest recommendations to either.

I Feel Ya', Guys!

These baby barn swallows have nothing to do with fresh tomato sauce -- which is supposed to be the subject of this post -- but they are darn cute and, like me, they are perpetually waiting to eat, which is why they are so perilously perched on the edge of their nest! They are waiting for momma or poppa barn swallow to deliver some bugs to eat, a process that, according to one source, begins at dawn and continues until dusk.

The little buggers – excuse the pun – may make a mess of our front porch, and mom and dad (not to mention sisters and brothers from the first brood of the year) can get a wee-bit aggressive when they see anybody within shouting distance of the nest, but it’s still enjoyable watching them go from scrawny gray balls of fuzz to sleek black and rust flyers in a matter of weeks.

Now, back to fresh tomato sauce…

This is in line with a number of recipes I have seen for fresh tomato sauce. The batch I made last night (using tomatoes from our CSA) had excellent flavor, but, to be honest, had a bit of an acidic finish, which is a known risk of fresh tomato sauce, particularly if, like me, you do not scoop out the seeds and pulp. I’ve seen several suggested remedies, from sugar to red wine vinegar to carrots (the latter of which Mario Batali includes in his basic tomato sauce recipe).

I suppose when I reheat the sauce to eat it some time in the future, I’ll probably stir in a teaspoon of sugar and I’m fairly confident that will temper the acidity. Also, I’m not a fan of thick tomato sauces (unless it’s a Bolognese or other type of meat sauce, which is an altogether different animal in my mind), so I only cooked the sauce for a brief time.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

- 2 to 3 pounds of garden fresh tomatoes
- 1 medium onion, finely diced
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- ½ teaspoon of crushed red pepper
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of fresh basil, chopped
- 1 teaspoon of fresh oregano, chopped
- A hefty pinch or two of salt and some fresh pepper


Fill a large bowl with cold water and some ice. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Score the tomatoes with two or three long slices (just on the surface) and put in the boiling water for 1 minute. Drain the tomatoes and quickly immerse in the cold water. After a minute, remove the tomatoes, peel them, and chop them up.

Put a few swirls of olive oil in a pan and warm over medium heat. Add garlic and crushed red pepper and cook for a few minutes. Add onions and cook until they are soft, 4-5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper, combine well, and let cook over medium-low heat for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the basil and oregano.

NOTES:

First, if you’d prefer the sauce not to be chunky, or if you have kids who think chunky sauce is just plain wrong, run the sauce through a big food processor.

Second, if you like a thicker sauce, you can let it cook for 20-30 minutes, partially covered.

Third, as I mentioned earlier, to temper the acidity of the tomatoes, you might want to consider adding a teaspoon of sugar at the same time you add the tomatoes. That said, I made a whole lot of fresh sauce last year with tomatoes from our garden and it was not acidic at all. Quite the opposite: light and a little fruity. To be safe, you might consider omitting the pulp and seeds of maybe half of the tomatoes, at least the first time around.

It's the Smell!

It’s a foregone conclusion that store-bought tomatoes simply don’t have the flavor of tomatoes you get from your local farmer or your own garden. The tomatoes we’ve had already from our own garden have been excellent.

But there’s something else you don’t get from store-bought tomatoes (and even from the farm): The smell of the whole tomato plant. Sifting through the leaves and vine-like branches on the three tomato plants in our garden leaves a fantastic, supremely fresh smell on my hands.

Some of the tomatoes pictured above went into a salsa I made this evening, while a whole bunch that I picked up from our CSA yesterday will go into a fresh tomato sauce I’m hoping to make tomorrow evening. The fresh tomato sauce we made last year using tomatoes from our garden brought a smile to my face: A light, almost fruity flavor that required little in the way of help from herbs or spices. I froze some and, man, did it taste good on a cool, fall day in November.

Can’t wait to make some more.

In any case, speaking of farms, hate to see things like this. In Finland, at least, farmers aren’t very happy:

Self employment is good for productivity, except for farmers, who score badly on every measure of health and quality of life, reveals a study published ahead of print in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Finnish researchers used validated survey data to assess factors affecting productivity, as well as perceived health and quality of life among a random sample of 5000 adults aged between 30 and 64.

[snip]

The farmers and entrepreneurs tended to be older than the salaried workers, and all the self employed who were sole traders tended to have lower levels of educational attainment and incomes than their peers with staff and salaried workers.

When productivity was assessed separately, more than a third of farmers achieved low or average scores. This compares with 16% of salaried workers and sole traders and 12% of entrepreneurs with staff.

MEANWHILE, in what you could put in the qualified good news bin, researchers from the University of Delaware report some findings on their research into the diet of chickens raised on big factory chicken farms:

Millions of chickens in Delaware--one of the nation's top poultry producers--have been on a diet to reduce their impact on the environment and improve the health of the state's waterways, and it appears to be working.

Extensive research led by William Saylor, professor of animal and food sciences at the University of Delaware, has confirmed that Delaware chickens now digest more of the phosphorus, an essential nutrient, in their feed, thanks to the addition of a natural enzyme called phytase. As a result, about 23 percent less phosphorus is output in chicken manure.

So now when poultry litter is used to fertilize a farm field, a lot less phosphorus is available to potentially leach from the soil or be carried off in storm water to a river or bay.

And that's good news for waterways like Delaware's Inland Bays, where overloads of nutrients, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen, have contributed to serious water-quality problems, such as massive blooms of algae and fish kills.

I refer to this as qualified good news because it really will do nothing to reduce the size of these big-a@# farms, which are a toxic nightmare…

To put it in perspective, in 2006, Delaware farmers produced over 269 million broiler chickens--1.8 billion pounds of poultry--valued at more than $739 million, according to the Delmarva Poultry Industry. Those chickens produced more than 280,000 tons of waste.

They are a toxic nightmare precisely because of the way they house and care for the chickens in these factory farms (often called CAFOs) – jammed by the thousands into these long, open-air sheds with massive fans at either end to keep the air at a manageably toxic stench, pumped full of antibiotics so they don’t get sick and infect each other and become a loss on the P&L, if that’s the proper accounting term (if so, my wife will be very proud).

Hmmm, it makes me wonder whether this will make the folks who run these farms think, “Well, gee, then maybe I can jam even MORE chickens onto these farms now…” That’s a scary, and possibly realistic, thought.

FINALLY, some more qualified good news from Elanor at the Ethicurean, which she received from the Community Food Security Coalition, about the version of the Farm Bill passed in the House:

Well, the happy news is that the House, in all its (occasional) wisdom, passed a provision allowing state-inspected meat to be sold across state lines, assuming the state’s standards "meet or exceed" the USDA’s. That’s great news for smaller meat producers who can’t get their animals into the giant USDA-inspected facilities and for those living near a state line.

In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan relays the story of Bev Eggleston, a Virginia man who established EcoFriendly Farms, part of which included going into debt to renovate an old meat processing facility so that local farmers -- that is, local to Virginia -- could have their beef cattle processed in a facility where they could get a fair price for the processing service and that would treat their cattle as humanely as cattle about to be slaughtered can be.

But the USDA was giving Bev problems because he didn’t have enough volume. They said they couldn’t justify bringing an inspector there for so little volume. That’s why this provision appears to be so important, because it helps level the playing field – a little bit, at least – for small-scale farms.

UPDATE: I have emailed Bev at EcoFriendly to see whether this problem was ever resolved. Hopefully I'll get a (positive) answer.

Coconut Milk, Lemongrass, Shrimp – Need I Say More?

A great cookbook that we picked up at least 5 years ago, Asian Noodles, by Nina Simonds, is chock full of great recipes for soups, salads, entrees and dipping sauces, all — or nearly all — related to Asian noodles.

We’ve made this recipe from that book several times, and what I find most rewarding about it is that it tastes like something you’d get in a good pan-Asian restaurant. Of course, we’ve tinkered with it to make it more to our tastes (e.g., cutting up only 1 red onion instead of 2, which just sounds excessive), but it really is a satisfying meal when you've got a hankering for some Thai or Vietnamese flavors.

If you’ve never cooked with some of these ingredients or done any Asian cooking in general, it takes some getting used to. Read through the recipe carefully and make sure you have all of your ingredients laid out and ready to go. It’s really a simple recipe to follow, as long as you’re prepared, thus the overabundance of “notes” I’ve included.

Enough blabbering….

Curried Coconut Shrimp on Rice Noodles

• 6-8 ounces of thin rice sticks, often called vermicelli, cooked until just tender, rinsed under cold water and drained [NOTE: I fill a big pot with hot water, put the noodles in, and bring it to a boil and cook until all signs of stiffness are gone; recommend watching the noodles very carefully.]
• 1–2 tablespoons of safflower or canola oil
• 1.5 lbs of medium, peeled, deveined shrimp (remember, look for the domestic, wild caught stuff, if at all possible)
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
  
• 1.5 cups of frozen peas [NOTE: I suspect some blanched sugar-snap peas or cauliflower florets, or some other veggies along those lines would also work well]
• 1 cup of fresh basil, cut into chiffonade (aka, rolled up and sliced into thin strips)

Fragrant seasonings

• 1.5 tsps of crushed red pepper
• 2 stalks of lemongrass, outer leaves removed, cut into small lengths [NOTE: When I get lemongrass in the grocery store, it usually comes in a little herb pack, already cut up into 4-5 inch pieces; we use about 4 of these “stalks”, removing the outer layer and any tough ends.]
• One 1.5 inch piece of peeled ginger, cut into a few small pieces
• 1.5 tsps of cumin
• 1.5 tsps of coriander
• 1 tsp of salt
• Good sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper
  

Coconut sauce

• 1.5 cups of coconut milk [NOTE: The recipe does not distinguish between sweetened, unsweetened, light, etc. We have used light, sweetened coconut milk with good results].
• 3 tablespoons of fish sauce [NOTE: If you’ve never used fish sauce, it’s a pungent, brown liquid that these days can be found in most large grocery stores. It may not be the best fish sauce in that case, but as somebody who has tried to buy fish sauce in an Asian market can tell you, it’s a lot easier and produces a satisfying result]
• 1 tablespoon sugar

Cook the noodles as instructed above. Be sure to do this BEFORE you are ready to make the rest of the dish, because the rest of it happens quickly.

Combine the “fragrant seasonings” in a food processor and blend them until they are a coarse powder -- 10-15 seconds should do.

Mix together the coconut sauce.

Heat a big wok or stick-free skillet over medium-high heat

Add the oil and let it get hot for 30 seconds or so, then add the “fragrant seasonings” and sliced onion, reduce the heat to medium and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes until the onions are tender.

Add the coconut sauce and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

Add the shrimp and return the pan heat to medium-high, cooking until all the shrimp are pink, again, 3-4 minutes.

Add the peas and basil and stir in.

At this point, you can, as the original recipe instructs, put a little heap of noodles on a plate and spoon on the shrimp mixture. We have had good success simply putting the noodles in a big bowl and dumping the mixture over top of them, as you’d do with marinara and some capellini.

Serve immediately.

Scraping Up the Bits...

Some odds and ends from the last few days...

GO FIGURE… drinking a can of soda a day makes a person far more likely to develop “metabolic syndrome,” a constellation of physiologic factors that increases your risk for heart disease, diabetes, etc. Shocking, I declare, just shocking.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, brings in 6 chefs to review the new Catherine Zeta Jones-as-big-time-chef flick, “No Reservations,” and they are a little perturbed that Ms. Jones’ character’s signature dish, a quail, is really… a squab. Those crazy Hollywood folks.

And what’s that stuff they put in all of those sodas – that’s it, high fructose corn syrup, made from all of that corn grown in this country, subsidized by the government, so we can buy 32 ounce Big Gulps for 99 cents. Which brings me to …

This Farm Bill thing, about which I become less and less sure every day. A bunch of farm and non-farm groups are getting behind this FARM 21 proposal, but one of the big groups, the Center for Rural Affairs (CRA), says it doesn't do enough to help small- and mid-sized family farms, among other shortcomings. And now the Democrats are reportedly going to try to fund increases in food stamp and other nutrition programs included in the bill with some new taxes that the aforementioned CRA is attacking. I don’t like new taxes, but this is on profits made by companies that set up subsidiaries in other countries to shelter those profits from U.S. taxes. That doesn’t sound all that bad to me.

And now there is a White House veto threat. Maybe that would be a GOOD thing. A veto might slow this grain train down and allow more time to craft something that isn’t just another boon for the big agri-biz companies at the expense of small- and mid-size farms.

And the bill that passed the House Ag Committee is going to the full House for debate today! I want to call my House rep and tell him something, I’m just not sure what. No wonder this bill is the source of so much confusion. That’s because it’s so confusing!

FINALLY, coming soon, a recipe for an excellent curried shrimp dish.

Not Going Well

All indications are that it is not going well with the farm bill.

But first, this was too beautiful not to put on display:

That’s a 6-lb beauty from nearby Misera’s Organic Farm, prepared yesterday by my wife. It’s a Mario Batali recipe, a balsamic and red-wine glazed roasted chicken, with some rosemary and garlic rubbed under and over the skin, and some thickly sliced red onions thrown into the bottom of the roasting pan.

Those red onions make an excellent complement to the bitter grilled radicchio served with the chicken – all of which we enjoyed with a glass of Privada, an Argentinean wine from the Malbec region.

NOW, back to more important matters. As I have said in earlier posts, I am no expert on the farm bill and I am more than certain that there are some seriously different opinions on the most important reforms.

However, I am of the mind that, if the farmers and farm groups aren’t happy, then it must not be good. Mark “Mental Masala” also has an excellent rundown of farm-focused groups’s many cricitisms of this alleged reform bill.

While directing readers to let Speaker of the House Pelosi (D-CA) know how they feel about this bill, Mental cites one example that demonstrates just how out of whack this bill is:

Tell the Speaker that we need a farm bill for all Americans, not just the commodity growers and absentee landowners (like the mysterious Constance Bowles, who collected $1,210,865 in farm payments between 2003 and 2005 while living in a posh neighborhood in San Francisco…

Thanks, Neko

Had the privilege last evening of seeing who in my view is one of the best singer/songwriters around, with a hearty emphasis on singer, Neko Case. This clip, while good, doesn't do her live performance justice.

No Frying, No Cheap Hot Sauce

Having grown up in a town that was just shy of nutso about chicken wings – or buffalo wings, as they are often referred to by some – I have always had a fondness for a tasty wing.

Unfortunately, many bars and a good bunch of restaurants view wings as afterthoughts, over-frying them, using from what I can tell almost no seasoning, and then dousing them in surplus-style "hot sauce" or "tangy BBQ sauce" -- runny, bitingly spicy, often tasteless dressings that will likely be masked in part by the blue cheese or ranch dressings served along with the wings that said customers will proceed to dunk their wings in.

A pure travesty, I say.

We had never made wings at home until nearly two years ago, when I came across a wing recipe in Food & Wine from the monotoned “celebrity chef” Tyler Florence (who, I know, I know, has officially jumped the shark – or perhaps red snapper or bluefin tuna – with his new Applebees gig) that sounded too good and too easy not to try.

I believe Tyler displayed his remarkably diverse vocabulary in describing these wings as “delicious,” and, I have to report, he was correct. They are pretty close to the perfect chicken wing.

First, they are simple to make. Baking, no frying them in a big vat of just-waiting-to-scald-your-skin oil.

Second, they have the intense spiciness of red curry paste (but don't punish your lips by leaving them dry and burning for two hours after you've finished eating), countered by the welcome tang of lime juice and zest.

And, third… well, there is no third. That’s about it. Easy and "delicious." ‘Nuff said.

Red Curry-Lime Wings

- 4 pounds of chicken wings
- Few drizzles of extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- 4-6 tbs of butter (you can stick to the lower end and the result is still “delicious”)
- 1 tablespoon of red curry paste (most decent grocery stores carry this now)
- 1 tablespoon of honey
- Grated zest and juice of one lime
- 1 teaspoon (maybe a tad more) soy sauce

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees

Toss the wings in a bowl with the olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Bake the wings in the oven for about 40 minutes. [NOTE: An important tactic here is to use a quality nonstick baking pan and to check on the wings every 15 minutes to make sure they aren’t sticking. Otherwise, when the wings are done, you’ll be trying to pry them from the pan, which, if you're like me, leads to bouts of cursing and slamming of various cooking utensils!]

While the wings bake, mix together the remaining ingredients (butter through soy sauce). Do yourself a favor and soften the butter beforehand.

When the wings are done, mix the wings and curry paste-lime mixture in a big bowl. [NOTE: I’d recommend against using your hands. That curry has a way of finding any little nicks on your fingers and inflicting some serious ouchies.]

FINAL NOTE: I have yet to see 4-pound bags of wings. If you’re going to do 3 pounds, you really don’t need to adjust the amount of sauce. If you’re going with closer to, say, 6 pounds, just add a little more of each of the sauce ingredients. The key, in my opinion, is ensuring you have enough curry paste, butter, and lime juice/zest.

FINAL, FINAL NOTE: If you can afford it, try to find local or sustainably raised chickens. Whole Foods carries Bell & Evans' antiobiotic-free, horomone-free wings, but, unfortunately, they aren't cheap.

Subsidies: Is Farm Bill Girl Right?

I don’t know. I don’t know enough about this behemoth piece of legislation commonly known as the Farm Bill to answer definitively, but in her diary from a week or so ago on Daily Kos, Farm Bill Girl quickly made me question what just a day or two earlier I had felt was a good idea (so much so that I wrote an anti-subsidy post on it): to support and promote an amendment to the Farm Bill authored by Rep. Ron Kind, D-WI, that has generated some serious noise on the Hill called Farm 21.

But before any more on that, there’s a reason why this is important. According to Mark R. “Mental Masala” over at the absolutely excellent Ethicurean blog, the House Agriculture Committee today started what will be three days of work on finalizing a farm bill to send on to the full House.

So the next two days could be crucial. But back to subsidies and Farm Bill Girl...

FARM 21 would end the massive subsidies programs in the farm bill for commodity crops like corn and soybeans, and instead create “risk management accounts” for farmers.

These subsidies have been demonized by many well-intentioned people -- including the author of the wonderful book Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan, and the Environmental Working Group – as a root cause of the problems created by the farm bill (e.g., its impact on obesity, the environment, illegal immigration, etc.).

But Farm Bill Girl (whom I will refer to as FBG for the remainder of this post) argued the opposite. She said that subsidies were a symptom of the serious systemic dysfunction created by the farm bill.

The root of that problem is corporate consolidation of agriculture, where a few agribusiness companies dominate global trade markets (i.e. ADM/Cargill for corn, Smithfield/Tyson for livestock, WalMart and various other corporations who dominate supermarkets in Europe, the US) to the misery of all farmers suffering from low prices that never meet their costs of production.

This resonated with me. It made sense, particularly after reading Fast Food Nation some years ago and, more recently, an excellent expose of factory pig farms in Rolling Stone and the aforementioned Omnivore’s Dilemma.

FBG continues talking about commodity subsidies, and our food system, which is

premised upon letting the "market" set prices for commodities, and then using subsidies when those prices are driven too low. Subsidies do barely keep rural America afloat. Ken Cook [of the Environmental Working Group] deliberately distorts his database to look like it's all going to "millionaire farmers" and that 66% of farmers never receive farm payments. Well, most of that 2/3rds are "rural residence" farms, meaning a lot of wealthy landowners with their hobby farms, not real farmers. For full-time farmers, most do receive some sort of subsidy, and farmers I know that are family farmers are in the top 10% of that database, receiving about $20,000 a year (remember though, this was when prices collapsed after 1996. This year, those numbers will be significantly decreased because of the higher prices). Also, most payments are going to districts like North Dakota and South Dakota and Iowa and Nebraska (Scott Kleeb's district he ran in). What do these have in common? They're not known for millionaires. They're known for tough economies where young people are leaving in droves and no one young goes into farming. So clearly, subsidies are going to places that need it, but they clearly aren't doing much to keep these places alive or growing.

FBG goes into some of the history before the farm bill, before gross agricorp consolidation. You can read more about this history in a great primer on the Farm Bill by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

All of it is much more than I wanted to go into here. But the history does point to the wisdom of reinstituting a policy from years past that helped to curtail the overproduction of crops, which keeps prices low for the big agribusinesses (prices below what it costs the farmers to produce the crops, thus the need for the subsidies, which began in 1996 as “emergency payments”): a reserve for crops that can store well, to keep them off the market and keep prices fair for the farmers producing them.

The IATP, FBG, and other farm groups also advocate the establishment of a price floor for commodity crops. This goes back to the subsidies argument, and again I’ll go back to FBG:

Subsidies DO do all the bad things progressives think it does: fuel agribusiness, fuel factory farms, dumps on third world. But it does NOT cause overproduction. It's the pricing system we need to look at. If farmers got a fair living wage for their product, there would be NO NEED for subsidies.

Again, this really resonates with me. And it makes sense. Pay farmers a fair price for their product, as well as encourage organics, support local food systems, support environmentally sound uses of farm land, and stop indirectly subsidizing the Tysons and ADMs and Cargills of the world. Sounds like a good bill to me!

As for FARM 21, the Center for Rural Affairs’ Blog for Rural America has this to say:

• While FARM 21 would change the basic structure of farm programs, it does little in the way of making sure that farm program benefits flow to small and mid-size family farms (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 does not close the loopholes used to avoid farm program payment limits (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 shifts large amounts of money to conservation programs- a laudable goal- but invests most of that money into the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which subsidizes enormous manure lagoons and the concentration of livestock production (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 places much-needed resources behind some rural economic development programs, but others receive inadequate amounts (jump to more about this);
• FARM 21 does not include any crucial livestock market competition reforms;

But even any discussion of FARM 21 may be moot. Mental Masala pointed to disturbing statements from House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., on FarmPolicy.com about the Farm Bill’s prospects:

“Reacting to public and private statements by Republicans that they think Congress is more likely to extend the 2002 farm bill than rewrite it, Peterson said, ‘Maybe there’s a bigger strategy. The Republicans don’t want anything [to pass] in the Congress.’”

So clearly activity from the net roots is going to be important to get a truly progressive farm bill through Congress. You can get far more information on this bill at several of the sources mentioned in this post, including the Ethicurean, IATP, Blog for Rural America.

This is actually encouraging

A new survey by Consumer Reports magazine finds that more than 90% of those surveyed want their food to come with a “country of origin” label. One of the study’s co-authors said he was “shocked” by the response, attributing it to the recent food recalls for things like tainted...

- peanut butter
- bagged spinach
- green onions

And, while it doesn’t qualify as food – for most people, that is - there's also that little carcinogen-laced low-cost toothpaste to make you feel all warm and groggy.

Speaking of real food, we haven't made this yet, but, you know how I feel about the dark stuff, and I'm becoming a big fan of Melissa Clark's recipes, even though she does bear a scary resemblance to an SNL-era Laraine Newman (of whom, remarkably, I cannot find a picture from that time!).

Fruits and Veggies Need Your Help

The United States has the highest incidence of obesity in the developed world. We scarf down Big Macs, barbecue potato chips, stuffed-crust pizzas, and 32-ounce Big Gulps as if we get bonus points in heaven for most calories consumed.

Part of the problem is the cost of this so-called food. It's dirt cheap. And that can be directly attributed to a behemoth piece of federal legislation commonly known as the farm bill. The 2007 farm bill currently is slowly winding its way through the House and Senate committees that oversee agriculture issues, committees chock full of legislators from "farming states" who, in years past, have developed this extremely important bill with little outside scrutiny.

To be very honest, I understand very little about the farm bill, including the most recent one passed in 2002 that some members of Congress want to renew as is.

But I do know a few things about it. For example, as a result of the 2002 farm bill:

- $67.6 billion in subsidies was doled out to support the production of just 5 crops, or, as they are often called, “commodities”: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice. In the case of corn, much of it will undergo significant processing and end up in various forms (high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, pectin, and a disturbingly long list of other additives) in a can of Pepsi, a box of Lucky Charms, or a package of Scooby Doo (not-so) fruit roll-ups. [The majority of it will end up as cattle feed, but that's another topic for another post.]

- Growers of fresh fruits and vegetables receive NO subsidies.

The outcome (free registration required)of this gross, entirely criminal discrepancy:

Between 1985 and 2000 the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables increased nearly 40 percent, while the price of soft drinks decreased by almost 25 percent, adjusted for inflation…

Now, combine that with the results of a study by obesity researcher Dr. Adam Drewnowski that Michael Pollan recently discussed and you start to see something truly devious at work:

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods--dairy, meat, fish and produce--line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more "energy dense" than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them "junk." Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly--and get fat.

In other words, beside the documented environmental impact of the monoculture farms that raise most of these “commodities” – it takes nearly 10 times the amount of calories of fossil fuel energy to grow and process the corn that is used in sodas and chicken nuggets, etc. for every calorie of actual food (if you want to call a chicken nugget that!) produced – the government is shelling out billions of dollars to make Americans fat!

Is it any surprise, then, that obesity is an epidemic in this country and America, by far and away, has the fattest populace in the world?

So what’s the impact of our national girth? I'll let the leadership of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) explain:

Obesity and unhealthy eating constitute a national crisis, with $117 billion per year in estimated treatment and indirect costs. The epidemic of child obesity, however, promises a worse crisis in the making – these children will have more heart disease, diabetes, cancer and stroke, in some cases not long after they become adults.

The IATP also has a great primer on the farm bill.

Sadly, the farm bill reportedly is well understood by just a handful of legislators, mostly from states whose farms – again, mostly big agri-businesses – receive most of its taxpayer-funded largess.

As I already acknowledged, I know little about the farm bill. But the fact that there are no subsidies for fruits and vegetables is enough to suggest it is a truly misguided piece of legislation.

Enough groups and people finally are now coming together to try to make important changes to the farm bill, including supporting a proposal put forth by Rep. Ron Kind (D) from Wisconsin that would slash many farm subsidies and boost funds for land conservation and rural development.

One way to get our government to make supporting affordable, safe [a related topic also deserving of its own post], and healthy food a priority in the farm bill is to call or email your elected representatives and tell them to support any measures in the farm bill that reduce subsidies for crops that make us fat and that promote the production of fresh fruits and vegetables and, very importantly, sustainable, local food systems.

UPDATE: To keep up to date on the most recent happenings with the farm bill, both the IATP and Environmental Working Group (EWG) maintain portions of their Web sites dedicated to the farm bill.

Is that a zucchini in your pocket?

One zucchini plant: $2.99

5 bags of Miracle-Gro organic soil: $30

Going away for a 5-day weekend and forgetting to check if any zucchinis were ready for pickin': Scary big zucchini!



FOR THE RECORD: This zucchini from our garden measured in at 18 inches long and, at its most rotund point, 17 inches around.

So what to do with a zucchini this big?

Make Zucchini "steaks," of course.

I cut about 8 6-inch long, 2-inch wide, and one-inch thick slices of the above pictured gigunda zucchini, tossed it with about 2 tbs of olive oil, 1 tsp of chopped thyme, 1-2 tablespoons of chopped flat-leaf parsley, pepper, and a few good pinches of this ridiculously expensive chardonnay-barrel smoked salt that I got at Williams Sonoma last year (too embarassed to put it back after the cashier had rung it up and I saw the price on the register's display).

These were thick, so I grilled them over moderate heat for about 15 minutes, flipping about half-way through. They were great. Next time, though, I'll just do thick pucks. Much easier to cut them that way.