A Little Useless Information

McDonalds and Burger King sugar-coat their fries so they will turn golden-brown.

Since Hindus don't eat beef, the McDonald's in New Delhi makes its burgers with mutton.

The average child will eat 1,500 PB sandwiches by high school graduation.

Weekend Joke

A man and his wife were driving home one night and ran into a bridge abutment and both were killed. They arrived in heaven and found it was a beautiful golf course with a lovely clubhouse and fabulous greens. It was free and only for them, and the husband said, "You want to play a round?"

She said, "Sure." They teed off on the first hole, and she said, "What's wrong?"

He said, "You know, if it hadn't been for your stupid oat bran, we could have been here years ago."

A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book

Old Versus New: Middle Eastern Food

A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

The collection began fifteen years ago with a recipe for ful medames. I was a schoolgirl in Paris then. Every Sunday I was invited together with my brothers and a cousin to eat ful medames with some relatives. This meal became a ritual. Considered in Egypt to be a poor man's dish, in Paris the little brown beans became invested with all the glories and warmth of Cairo, our hometown, and the embodiment of all that for which we were homesick.

Our hosts lived in a one-room apartment, and were both working, so it was possible for them to prepare only with tinned ful. Ceremoniously, we sprinkled the beans with olive oil, squeezed a little lemon over them, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and placed a hot hard-boiled egg in their midst. Delicious ecstasy! Silently, we ate the beans, whole and firm at first; then we squashed them with our forks and combined their floury texture and slightly dull, earthy taste with the acid tang of lemon, mellowed by the olive oil; finally, we crumbled the egg, matching its earthiness with that of the beans, its pale warm yellow with their dull brown.

I always have loved A Book of Middle Eastern Food even though I have never cooked anything out of it. My affection stemmed from the fact that it has qualities no long found in most cook books. Roden is passionate about the food of the Middle East and writes with a charm and enthusiasm that is infectious. Throughout are stories of her life growing up and old folk tales from the region. Although the writing styles are very different, this book makes me think of M.F.K. Fisher's which have a connection to times past and human experience.

I have known for some time about the updated version but didn't become curious about it until recently. For one thing, I wasn't cooking from this book, which is perhaps all to the good as many of the Amazon reviews of this older edition are not very happy with recipe quality.

After reading the updated book I am sure that the recipes probably are more accurate and better written. However, much of the charm is gone. Roden herself admits that, upon rereading the original, she was embarrassed at the youth and passion which poured out of it. It is all too obvious where her prosaic, modern voice is inserted and many of the stories that flowed naturally in the original are now broken out into boxes which I thought broke up the book in a choppy manner.

I am happy enough to go to local restaurants for Middle Eastern food. If you want to make it yourself I am sure the new book is the best bet. I will stick with the original, however, and the passionate voice of Roden's youth.

Nutrition Basics - Fat, Part I

In recent years fat has become the focus of countless articles, books, diet plans, and advertising claims, many of which give the false impression that fat is the ultimate dietary villain, to be avoided at all costs. While it is true that excess fat in the diet is unhealthy because it raises the risk of coronary artery disease, obesity, and certain cancers, it is still an essential nutrient that provides energy and fulfills vital bodily functions. Fat is essential in making the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K available to our bodies. Fat is digested slowly, providing a lasting sensation of fullness (known as satiety), and slows the digestion of carbohydrates and protein ingested along with it, thus giving the body time to absorb the nutrients contained in foods. Lastly, fat has a crucial role in the development of flavor in cooking.

Fats are grouped into three main categories according to their degree of saturation, a term that refers to the molecular structure of the fat. A single fat is actually a number of chains, known as fatty acids, composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen linked together. The individual fatty acids can be saturated, monounsaturate, or polyunsaturated, depending on how many open sites there are for hydrogen atoms to bond with a carbon atom. Saturated fatty acids cannot accept any more hydrogen, monounsaturated fatty acids have one open site on the chain, and polyunsaturated fatty acids have more than one site open.

Current dietary recommendations are that fat should account for 30 percent of calories at most, and most of the fat should be mono- and polyunsaturated. Saturated fats should not exceed 10 percent of total daily calories because they have been shown to have an adverse effect on serum cholesterol levels. In a 2,000-calorie diet, these limits translate to approximately 600 calories from all fats (about 67 grams), with no more than 200 of these calories (22 grams) coming from saturated fats.

(to be continued...)

The Professional Chef, 7th Edition by The Culinary Institute of America

Weekend Joke

A pickle walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey, you're a pickle! What are you doing in here?"

The pickle says, "Well, for starters, I'm celebrating the fact that I can walk."

A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book

Thought for Food

Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.

George Bernard Shaw

A Little Useless Information

The word 'cappuccino' is the result of several derivations, the original of which began in 16th century. The Capuchin order of friars, established after 1525, played an important role in bringing Catholicism back to Reformation Europe. Its Italian name came from the long, pointed cowl, or cappuccino, derived from cappuccino, "hood," that was worn as part of the order's habit. The French version of cappuccino was capuchin, from which came English Capuchin. In Italian cappuccino went on to describe espresso coffee mixed or topped with steamed milk or cream, so called because the color of the coffee resembled the color of the habit of a Capuchin friar. The first use of cappuccino in English is recorded in 1948 in a work about San Francisco. There is also the story line that says that the term comes from the fact that the coffee is dark, like the monk's robe, and the cap is likened to the color of the monk's head.

Pizzaiola

This is from Pasta by Eric Treuille and Anna Del Conte. A gorgeous looking book, the recipes (so far) seem to work as well beautifully as they are photographed. This went together quickly with little trouble and probably is fairly authentic in that the sauce really does merely accent the pasta instead of being a major ingredient.

Everyone loved it. Even my picky 16-year-old ate it tossed with the sauce and that is unheard of. The recipe says that it serves 4 but that was really too generous. It would easily serve 8. By the way, pizzaiola means something like in the style of the pizza maker, because of the oregano used.

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1-3/4 pounds rump steak, cut into strips 2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide
1 14-ounce can chopped Italian plum tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 teaspoons fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon dried
2 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup pitted, sliced black olives, such as kalamata or gaeta
1 pound dried pasta
1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

Heat oil in a skillet. Add steak and cook over high heat until browned all over, 3 minutes. Remove from skillet with slotted spoon, cover to keep warm, and reserve.

Reduce heat to medium high. Add tomatoes, garlic, oregano, capers and olives. Simmer rapidly, stirring occasionally, until thickened, 10 minutes. Remove pan from heat. Return steak to the skillet to keep warm.

Meanwhile, cook pasta (I used spaghetti) in a large pot of boiling, salted water. Drain. Add pasta and parsley to the hot sauce. Toss well to coat. Serve immediately

Culinary Mythology: Marco Polo and Pasta

I didn't know this story was still circulating but, believe it or not, I came across it in a cookbook just last year. I guess a really good myth never dies. It just resurfaces every so often. Setting the record straight:

MARCO POLO'S SUPPOSED INTRODUCTION OF PASTA FROM CHINA TO THE WESTERN WORLD
This durable myth, which requires that nothing should have been known of pasta in Italy until 1295, when Marco Polo returned from the Far East, can easily be shown to be wrong by citing references in Italy to pasta of an earlier date. What is interesting about the myth is the question of how it arose. An explanation was offered to a distinguished audience at Oxford University by the famous Italian authority Massimo Alberini:

As far as I can make out, the "Chinese" story originates from an article entitled "A Saga of Catai" that appeared in the American magazine Macaroni Journal in 1929. There it was written that a sailor in Marco Polo's expedition had seen a Chinese girl preparing long strands of pasta, and that the sailor's name was Spaghetti. Obviously an unlikely tale.

It is tempting to add that the Macaroni Journal explanation may itself be a myth; but no better explanation has been offered. The question of interaction between oriental and occidental forms of pasta and the extent to which particular forms may have traveled either eastwards or westwards, through C. Asia, is a different one, of a subtlety and complexity sufficient to deter myth-makers from trying to intervene in it. (To be effective, a myth must be comprehensible at the lowest level of intelligence.)

The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

Cyndie's Banana Pudding

My good friend, Cyndie, gave me this recipe which makes the best Banana Pudding I have ever had. It makes a LOT and is perfect for family reunions, large parties or ... CRHP retreats where you are feeding 60 starving people.

1 can condensed milk
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 small boxes instant vanilla pudding
8-9 bananas, sliced
3 cups whole milk
1 large container Cool Whip, thawed
1 to 1-1/2 boxes vanilla wafers

Prepare both packages of pudding mix with the 3 cups of whole milk, stir until thickened and set aside. Mix condensed milk and cream cheese together until smooth. Add cream cheese mixture to pudding mixture and blend well. Reserve 1 to 1-1/2 cups of Cool Whip and fold remaining Cool Whip into pudding mixture.

In a large bowl, place a layer of vanilla wafers followed by a layer of bananas and end with a layer of pudding mix. Repeat 2 to 3 times (depends on depth of bowl). Top with reserved Cool Whip and sprinkle crushed vanilla wafers on top. Keep refrigerated.

Culinary Mythology: French Cookery

I don't know why someone hasn't made a book of culinary mythology. These are fascinating and also eye-opening as several are things I had taken as gospel truth, including the one below.

CATHERINE DE' MEDICI TRANSFORMED FRENCH COOKERY
Catherine de' Medici arrived in France form Italy in 1533, as the 14-year-old financée of the future Henri II of France. She was accompanied by a train of servants including cooks. The myth consists in the idea that she and her retinue between them transformed what had been a rather primitive cuisine at the French court into something much more elegant and sophisticated, on Italian lines.

Barbara Ketcham Wheatam (1983) is not alone in demolishing this myth -- far from it, since it has become an almost routine activity for food historians. However, she has mustered more evidence and more detail on this matter than more of her colleagues. She shows that French court cuisine was not transformed (in any direction) in the 1530s and 1540s, and that in any case the interchange of ideas of people between France and Italy had begun before Catherine was born and continued after her death. Italian culinary practice could exert such influence as it may have had on the French by means of the steady traffic and also through books; but the French in the 16th century had a conservative outlook which in any case immunized them against sudden and foreign influences. Where Catherine did eventually have an effect, it was less on the cooking and more on the attitudes and expectations of the diners, for the wonderful festivals or masquerades which she planned and executed (this was after the death of her husband Henri II) developed into an institution of great visual and dramatic significance.

The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson