Happy Easter!

As someone who doesn't celebrate Easter, I have to say, it's one of my favorite holidays. I love Spring--chicks and bunnies, dyeing eggs, Easter egg hunts and deviled eggs. And in Italy I enjoy digging into the dove shaped cake called Colomba di Pasqua and big Perugina chocolate eggs impeccably wrapped.  

I'll never forget my first day in Florence, because I got to see the famous "Scoppio del Carro," It's a kind of crazy spectacle with a cart coming into the piazza led by a team of oxen and plenty of pageantry. A wire connects the carriage with the duomo and a mechanical dove travels the distance between the two and when it reaches the duomo the cart explodes with fireworks. After that, it hard to get excited about peeps! 

Tomorrow I will be sharing a very cool new recipe I created for deviled eggs with a secret ingredients I will reveal when I demonstrate the recipe at Macy's Union Square at 2 pm. I do hope you can make it! I will share the recipe here on Monday. 

In the meantime I was sent  the perfect pan for frying eggs from Green Pan. The Green Pan egg expert is an eco-friendly pan and just the right size for one egg! It's also very cute and available for only $9.99.

Happy Easter! 

Amy

Coffee Blending & Peet's Anniversary Blend

To create a recipe you have to know your ingredients and to blend coffee, you have to know your beans. At Peet's Coffee & Tea they don't just taste their coffee once, but three times, once at purchase, once when it ships and finally when it arrives at headquarters they taste it in the coffee tasting room, where they also roast samples of it.

Recently I got to visit that very coffee tasting room, which feels a bit like a cross between a lab and a kitchen with drawers filled with bean samples, multiple kettles, a roaster, espresso machine and timers. I was in the company of a barista and Doug Welsh, coffee buyer and VP of Coffee, who combines beans to create coffee blends at Peet's. At the most basic level blending comes down to three things, says Welsh: Acidity + Aroma  + Body

Coffee tasting is also known as "coffee cupping" and it's not the same as just brewing coffee for drinking, in fact, like wine tasting, you spit rather than swallow the coffee. After visually examining the beans they roast the coffee very lightly so the true flavor of the coffee comes through and is not masked by the roasting, since roasting also adds flavor. After roasting and grinding, you smell the coffee grounds, then a few tablespoons of the grounds are placed in a glass and hot water is added. After a couple of minutes the crust of grounds is broken and you smell it again. The coffee is stirred, the foam removed with spoons and then you take a sip, aerating and slurping to get the most flavor. Finally you can spit the coffee out into a spittoon.

Reviewing the beans, the barista preparing the coffee, coffee samples

There are four varieties of beans in the 2013 Anniversary blend, I got a chance to try the beans from Columbia, Ethiopia and Java.

The Columbian beans lend acidity and have bright citrus notes, they comes from Palestina, from the South Central part of  Caldas, Columbia.

Ethiopian beans make up 40% of the blend, and have very floral aromas.  I also detected some spiciness in the Ethiopian.

The coffee from Java adds body, earthiness and sweetness, maybe even some caramel notes. It has a long finish. While many of the best coffees come from the Eastern part of Java, this coffee in particular came from the West, and has a profile more similar to Sumatra coffee, which is one of the most popular coffees Peet's sells.

The Peet's Philosophy
Do you prefer single varietals of grapes or blends? Single estate chocolate or blends? One really isn't necessarily better than the other.

Welsh explained that at Peet's they believe no coffee is "too good" to blend. They are not trying to cover up defects, but to create something truly unique and greater than the sum of the parts. In trying each component I was able to see how they all add to the final blend, making an even more complex but still harmonious coffee.

The Anniversary blend is seasonal and different each year, based on the supply of beans that they have, and will only be available for about six weeks so if you want to try it, get some soon. In grocery stores it is $9.99-11.99 per pound and $15.99 per pound in Peet's stores and online, with 5% going to a KIMSSA, to support the education of kids in Ethiopia.

Improving the nutrition environment in schools

For just a few more days, you can submit comments to USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) regarding the agency's new proposed regulations for "competitive foods," including vending machines and snacks for sale.

Highlights, according to the FNS summary, include:

• More of the foods we should encourage.  Promoting availability of healthy snack foods with whole grains, low fat dairy, fruits, vegetables or protein foods as their main ingredients.
• Less of the foods we should avoid.  Ensuring that snack food items are lower in fat, sugar, and sodium and provide more of the nutrients kids need.
• Targeted standards.  Allowing variation by age group for factors such as beverage portion size and caffeine content.
• Flexibility for important traditions.  Preserving the ability for parents to send in bagged lunches of their choosing or treats for activities such as birthday parties, holidays, and other celebrations; and allowing schools to continue traditions like occasional fundraisers and bake sales.
• Reasonable limitations on when and where the standards apply.  Ensuring that standards only affect foods that are sold on school campus during the school day.  Foods sold at an afterschool sporting event or other activity will not be subject to these requirements.
• Flexibility for state and local communities.  Allowing significant local and regional autonomy by only establishing minimum requirements for schools. States and schools that have stronger standards than what is being proposed will be able to maintain their own policies.
• Significant transition period for schools and industry.  The standards will not go into effect until at least one full school year after public comment is considered and an implementing rule is published to ensure that schools and vendors have adequate time to adapt.

To me, a fundamental issue is that schools are supposed to act with the child's interest at heart.  No matter what your view about other health policy proposals to regulate food sales (such as sales of soda in New York City movie theaters for example), we should all recognize that schools are different.  This is not a question of regulatory overreach.  This is a question about whether adults in publicly funded institutions should be making money for education programs by selling high-calorie snacks and sugary beverages to young children in the midst of widespread health concerns about childhood obesity.

Current information resources include earlier coverage on this blog, the FNS site, and (if you want to see an example of suggested comments from a leading public interest organization that has studied this issue closely) the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

As deeper background reading, I greatly appreciate Janet Poppendieck's thoughtful book, Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press).

For local eastern Massachusetts readers, I notice that Poppendieck is giving a free public lecture at Boston University (in the College of Arts and Sciences Building, Room 211, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston, on Tuesday, April 2, 6 pm).

Passover Spinach Ricotta Gnudi

Spinach ricotta gnudi, made with no wheat flour, are my latest recipe, just in time for Passover. This week marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday celebrating the Israelites liberation from Egypt and also Spring, rebirth, renewal, freedom, belonging, ...you get the picture. Since the Israelites had to flee their oppressors quickly they didn't have time to allow bread to rise, so the story goes. To commemorate that time, during Passover Jews eat foods made with matzo meal or matzo cake meal, but not with regular flour. Most other non-wheat flours are also not allowed.

Gnudi are a little larger and plumper than gnocchi but somewhat similar. Some people think of them as "ravioli without the pasta."  This recipe is very easy because you use one of those "blocks" of frozen spinach. The secret is getting as much water as possible out of the spinach. You want the dough to be very stiff. Rolling the dumplings in potato starch also helps keep them from falling apart in the water when you boil them. Since I used potato starch instead of flour, these gnudi are also gluten free. I adapted my recipe from the Weelicious recipe for Spinach Gnocchi. 

The dumplings are primarily made from ricotta and parmesan cheese, so they are very rich. I like them served simply with brown butter and sage, but you could also serve them with tomato sauce if you prefer, but do cook them in butter before adding sauce. When you brown them they get slightly crisp on the outside, without browning they can seem a little gummy.

Passover Spinach Ricotta Dumplings

Serves 4, makes about 35 small dumplings

Ingredients

10 ounces frozen chopped spinach

1 cup skim milk ricotta cheese

2/3 cup parmesan cheese

1 egg yolk

Pinch fresh grated nutmeg 

5 Tablespoons potato starch, divided

1/4 cup unsalted butter

12 fresh sage leaves

3-4 Tablespoons parmesan cheese 

Instructions

Cook the spinach according to instructions, let cool then squeeze all the water out of it as possible using your hands and a colander. 

Combine the spinach, ricotta, parmesan cheese, egg yolk, nutmeg and 2 tablespoons potato starch in a medium bowl. Mix until all ingredients are fully incorporated. Use a teaspoon to portion lumps of dough, and roll into balls. Place on a rimmed sheet pan. When all dough is rolled, dust the dumplings with the remaining 3 tablespoons of potato starch and roll them until they are coated on all sides. 

Boil a pot of water and add a pinch of salt. Gently place the dumplings in the water and simmer them until they rise to the surface, about 3-4 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon, and place on a plate. 

Heat a skillet over medium heat, add the butter. When the butter is melted, add the sage leaves and the drained dumpling. Cook, rolling to brown lightly. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese before serving. 

Enjoy!

More Passover recipes

Hakka Cuisine

If you want to try Hakka cuisine, head to Hakka Restaurant in San Francisco, or read Linda Lau Anusasananan's book, The Hakka Cookbook. I received a review copy of the book in the Fall, and was lucky enough to dine with the author at Hakka Restaurant recently and fell in love with the hearty robust flavors and comforting rich dishes.

Even if you have other Chinese cookbooks, it's worth getting to know Hakka cuisine, because it's mostly home style cooking, ideal to try in your own kitchen. In the book Anusasananan traces her roots and shares stories from the people she meets on her journey into her past.

Since Hakka people moved all over the world, there are stories about the cuisine from places like Peru, Hawaii and certain cities in the US and Canada. There are classic recipes for Fried Pork Hash Wontons, Salt Baked Chicken (which Anusasananan thinks may have been the creation of a crafty salt salesman) and lots and lots of vegetable dishes including Braised Mountain Mushrooms, Pickled Carrots and Radishes and Stir Fried Iceberg Lettuce and Garlic. Anusasananan was previously a recipe editor at Sunset magazine, so needless to say you won't have trouble with her recipes.

According to Anusasananan, the Hakka are like the "Jews of China," nomads, who migrated from North-Central China to the South in the fourth century. They have their own language, and the name Hakka literally means "guest family." Their cuisine is the food of the working person, robust and sometimes fatty. They use a lot of salt-preserved ingredients such as preserved vegetables, cured meats and soy sauce. The food is related to Cantonese, but more rustic. Famous Hakka classic dishes include Steamed Pork Belly with Preserved Mustard Greens, Stuffed Tofu, and Salt-baked Chicken.

Some highlights of the meal we enjoyed at Hakka Restaurant:

Chinese Bacon with Preserved Greens

This is a very rich dish of pork belly which are somewhat sweet, served with luscious preserved vegetables.

House Special Pan-Fried Tofu

This was one of everyone's favorite dishes. Lighter and with a delicate sauce. Inside the tofu was a mild ground pork filling.

Fried Pumpkin Strips with Salted Egg Yolk

If you've never had salted egg yolk before, I'd describe it as tasting a bit like cheese. It has a strong umami flavor.

Chicken Stuffed with Preserved Greens

The chicken was good, but the gingery preserved green stuffing was particularly delicious/

Stir-fried Chinese Broccoli with Rice Wine

Another unusual dish, this one had a sweet wine sauce.

Clams with Spicy Salt and Black Beans

I'd say the garlic and green onions were the predominant flavors in this dish.

Home-Style Steamed Sea Bass

Another knockout dish, this one had a thin sauce but was loaded with shredded pork, and sour, crunchy and juicy sliced preserved mustard greens.

Hakka Restaurant
4401 Cabrillo St @ 45th Ave
San Francisco
415-876-6898

More:

Linda's Hakka dinner post

Note: This dinner was organized by the San Francisco Professional Food Society and was open to members.

OMG! Sodium!

I showed this cereal box to my 10-year-old daughter at breakfast this morning, but she couldn't see the pun.  At first, I thought maybe she didn't know the text message shorthand, OMG.  On the contrary, she could only read the message, "Oh my God, sodium!"

Quinoa Salad with Feta and Dill Recipe

I've very excited to announce I will be doing a cooking demo during Macy's Flower Show in San Francisco on March 30th at 2 pm. I'll be sharing some recipes for jazzing up your sack lunch. So skip the sandwiches! This fresh and hearty salad is healthy and inexpensive to make and might make your co-workers jealous. Better bring some to share! 

Quinoa is kind of like a blank canvas, it doesn't have much flavor or texture. It has protein but to be satisfying I think you need more variety. A little bit of feta and chickpeas add more protein and creamy textures. Originally I was trying to make a Greek inspired salad, but I didn't want to add salty olives and I found it was a little bland. Fresh dill and lemon really add some zest to it. I also used English cucumbers which are available all year round.

I do have a few tips for making this salad, for one, always remember to rinse quinoa before you cook it. It is very bitter otherwise. Also I use less water than the package suggests, I find 1 and 1/2 cups of liquid is plenty for 1 cup of quinoa. Finally serve this salad at room temperature. It keeps well in the refrigerator but doesn't taste quite as delicious when it's chilled so just take it out a half an hour or so before serving it.

Quinoa Salad with Feta and Dill
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

1 cup quinoa
1 cup canned chickpeas, rinsed
1 cup English cucumber, diced
1 cup feta, crumbled
3 Tablespoons chopped fresh dill
1/3 cup green onions, minced
3-4 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions

Rinse the quinoa under cold water then cook according to package instructions. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork. Let quinoa cool to room temperature.

In a large bowl, combine quinoa, chickpeas, cucumber, feta, dill, green onions and lemon juice. Add plenty of fresh ground pepper then taste for seasoning. Serve at room temperature. Keeps for up to 3 days in the refrigerator

Enjoy!

Virginia Tech seminar, March 22

I will be giving a departmental seminar in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at Virginia Tech, tomorrow, March 22, at 3 pm.

The title is: "Not just for farmers: Six ways that agriculture programs affect food, nutrition, and the environment."

Please come visit if you are in Blacksburg, Virginia.  The room is Fralin 102.

Albany Law School professor Timothy Lytton has a new book, Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food.  A key point is that this topic is more broadly relevant than one might think, because kosher food is just one of many examples of food regulation systems that can be adopted by the private sector.

Lytton was interviewed on the What is Your Food Worth? blog.

As a general matter, private food safety audits and industry-sponsored nutrition labeling schemes have been a great disappointment. Behind most major food-poisoning outbreaks is some private auditing firm that gave the food producer a phony five-star rating. And when nutritional rating schemes give high marks to sugary cereals and full-fat ice cream, you have to wonder.

As a kosher-observant Orthodox Jew, I realized that kosher certification offers a 2000 year old example of private food certification. My initial suspicion was that kosher certification was full of price gouging and unnecessary, super-stringent standards. As I began to get into my research, however, I found that, although fraud and corruption were rampant a century ago in kosher meat production, today’s kosher system is highly reliable. My book tells the story of how, within the span of a century, kosher certification became the one of the most reliable systems of private certification in the food industry, indeed, perhaps in any industry.

Michael Moss: Salt, Sugar, Fat

New York Times reporter Michael Moss's book released this year is Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.

The book has some older themes and some newer distinctive contributions.  The basic indictment of highly palatable processed food is familiar to readers of Michael Pollan, Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, and David Kessler, and to viewers of movies such as Supersize Me and Food, Inc.  The novelty and strength of Moss's new book is the persuasive on-the-record interviews with food industry executives and scientists as they try to understand the consequences of their products and even to make improvements.

I ended up with two competing impressions.  First, I felt sympathetic to the industry scientists and executives, several of whom really would have preferred to sell better products, but who were defeated by competitive pressures.  Second, it seemed that the industry people themselves are usually naive about the possibility of making substantial improvements on a company-by-company voluntary basis.  I say "usually" naive, because I think deep down they know their efforts are partly for show, and at key junctures the industry scientists and executives are forced to be blunt about the real situation.

I have seen this pattern in my own conversations with food industry scientists and executives.  In nine sentences out of ten, they will express great optimism that their company can make healthy changes in its product mix.  Then, in the tenth sentence, especially if pressed with a hard question about whether the proposed changes are sufficiently ambitious to make a real difference, they will say, "Oh, well, don't be unrealistic.  You can't expect THAT from us in the real world of competition."

An article-length version of the book was published in the New York Times Magazine.  The Grocery Manufacturers Association released a statement treating Moss's book as an "obesity book" with an unfair axe to grind: "Michael Moss’s work misrepresents the strong commitment America’s food and beverage companies have to providing consumers with the products, tools and information they need to achieve and maintain a healthy diet and active lifestyle."  But this statement misses a key theme of Moss's book, which focuses above all on the quixotic efforts of industry scientists and executives to make improvements.

South Carolina explores restriction on SNAP purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages

Economist Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach recently argued in the Christian Science Monitor against proposals to disallow purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages using SNAP benefits.

Without question, the advocates for a policy to ban the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages using SNAP benefits have the best of intentions. But policymakers need to be careful not to let their zeal for combating obesity push them into hastily adopting policies that at best are unlikely to help fight obesity, and, at worst, can do substantial damage to the safety net.

New York City had proposed such a policy some time ago, and South Carolina was reported more recently to be considering a pilot study.  As with the SNAP policy suggestion discussed in yesterday's post, a pilot study is important, because there are serious concerns that SNAP spending restrictions could increase stigma and discourage participation by eligible potential participants.

Perhaps, a pilot study would show increased perceptions of stigma, reduced participation, and even hunger and food insecurity as a consequence of the sugar-sweetened beverage limitation.  At the same time, it is quite possible that the pilot policy would strengthen the healthy identity of SNAP benefits and reduce stigma.  The policy may be popular with low-income parents, who must manage the intense marketing environment for unhealthy beverages just as middle-income parents must.  As a practical matter, any proponents of such a pilot study should take seriously the concerns that the anti-hunger community has expressed about such policies.  As in yesterday's post, I think the views and experiences of SNAP participants should be most influential in this policy decision.

Wine industry visualizations

The food industry visualizations of Michigan State University professor Phil Howard focus on relationships among businesses or sectors within the food system.

It is interesting how visualizations can carry different implicit messages even when they seem at first to address the same topic.

For example, the first of Howard's recent (December 2012) interactive visualizations of wine industry brands emphasizes the great diversity of options in the marketplace ...

... while the second of these visualizations emphasizes the comparatively heavy concentration at the corporate level.

For more about the food system more generally, see Howard's 2012 working paper with Harvey James Jr. and Mary Hendrickson. More to come on this topic of food system visualizations.

Food stamp cycle in the Washington Post

The Washington Post this weekend published a long and thoughtful feature by Eli Saslow titled: Food Stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle.

At precisely one second after midnight, on March 1, Woonsocket would experience its monthly financial windfall — nearly $2 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Federal money would be electronically transferred to the broke residents of a nearly bankrupt town, where it would flow first into grocery stores and then on to food companies, employees and banks, beginning the monthly cycle that has helped Woonsocket survive.

For research background, my dissertation in the late 1990s and the resulting article with Christine Ranney in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics provided the first nationally representative estimates of the monthly cycle in food spending and food use for food stamp program participants.  My 2002 article with Margaret Andrews in the Journal of Consumer Affairs used Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) data to get an even sharper view of the exact timing of food stamp and cash transactions over the course of the month.  In 2005, Jesse Shapiro provided more economic insight in the Journal of Public Economics.  In a 2012 article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Harvard researchers Cindy Leung, Walter Willett, and Eric Ding recommended further research on whether the monthly SNAP cycle could be related to risk of overweight.

One policy-relevant question is whether the federal government should ever consider providing benefits twice monthly.  Michigan considered such a policy in 2008, but I think it never came to pass.

One objection I have heard is that twice-monthly benefit delivery is paternalistic and might force low-income SNAP to conduct a potentially burdensome shopping trip.  This argument seems incorrect to me.  Let me lay out the case in an orderly fashion.

Whether benefits are delivered once or twice monthly, SNAP participants can freely choose whether to shop once or twice monthly.

• If benefits are delivered to the EBT card once monthly, then a SNAP participant who wanted to shop once monthly is perfectly satisfied, but a SNAP participant who wanted to shop twice monthly and smooth consumption over the course of the month must save half the benefits for use two weeks later.
• If benefits are delivered to the EBT card twice monthly, then a SNAP participant who wanted to shop once monthly must save half the benefits for use two weeks later, but a SNAP participant who wanted to shop twice monthly and smooth consumption over the course of the month is perfectly satisfied.

The key point is that the two policies are exactly equally paternalistic.  When middle-income speakers say that twice monthly benefit delivery is paternalistic, they implicitly assume that it is most natural for low-income people to shop once monthly and go hungry later -- a shopping pattern that the middle-income speakers would never use themselves.  I think it is the middle-income speaker's implicit assumption that really is paternalistic.

Any policy such as twice-monthly benefit delivery should be pilot tested.  The pilot should explicitly ask SNAP participants whether they had any shopping difficulties or budget difficulties, and whether they liked the new policy better than the old one.  It is possible that the new policy will reduce the occurrence of episodes of food insecurity at the end of the month.  The current policy should not be preferred based on implicit assumptions. SNAP participants deserve an influential voice in this decision.

American Wine & The Art of the Restaurateur

Did you know that there are more than 7,000 wineries in the US? Clearly American wine deserves its own book. While American wine has been covered before, I'm not sure it has ever been covered quite so comprehensively as it is in American Wine: The Ultimate Companion to the Wines and Wineries of the United States. The book is good for helping to sort through the American viticultural areas (AVA's) and works for wine drinkers, armchair travelers as well as those looking to actually venture into the places in the United States where wine is being produced.

For each region you get history, culture, a bit about the geography and a sense of who the major players are, and some great profiles of winemakers. There are maps and wine labels and glossy photos and the writing is straightforward and not too fussy, as you would expect from two preeminent wine writers, Jancis Robinson of the UK and Linda Murphy the former wine section editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Make no mistake, this is a coffee table book, but also a very useful guide for wine lovers. I can see it will be my go-to book when trying to familiarize myself with different American wine regions. 

Jancis Robinson will be in the Bay Area this Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. 

You can meet Jancis Robinson and Linda Murphy for a wine and cheese reception at Raymond Vineyards in Napa on Sunday, March 17, tickets are free of charge. 

Attend a Commonwealth Club program with Robinson and Murphy, hosted by Leslie Sbrocco on Monday March 18, ticket prices vary depending upon which reception you attend. 

Have your book signed by Jancis Robinson at Zuni Cafe later that evening from 8 - 10 pm and get a chance to meet Nicholas Lander, author of The Art of the Restaurateur. Lander's book will also be available. It features profiles of prominent restaurateurs the world over, and is definitely an "inside baseball" or perhaps inside restaurant book. 

While we often hear from chefs, few restaurateurs are in the limelight, sharing their stories and secrets. This book is a bit erudite, especially since the author himself was once a successful restaurateur, but should be required reading for anyone even thinking about getting into the restaurant business. Space is limited, and RSVP is required.

Lunch with Robinson and Murphy on Tuesday March 19 at Quince Restaurant. Tickets include a three course lunch and signed book. 

Walnut Mushroom Casserole Recipe

When I was growing up, my parents took me and my sister to all kinds of restaurants but rarely ones with "kid's menus." We regularly came into San Francisco to eat Chinese food, tried sushi long before it became popular, and celebrated birthdays and school graduation at fancy French restaurants. Unlike many kids who probably longed for Taco Bell or McDonald’s, I enjoyed eating at  The Good Earth, a casual restaurant near my house. The menu had a mix of salads and sandwiches and some very unique entrees. It wouldn’t necessarily be considered “health food” by today’s standards but there were quite a number of vegetarian dishes. 

At The Good Earth, pretty much anyone could find something they would like to eat, and that made it perfect for dining out with everyone from my teenage girlfriends, to my grandmother. The Good Earth was famous for it’s spicy cinnamon tea which you can buy to this day. Although the restaurant chain was sold and very few restaurants remain, I remain haunted by the memory of Walnut Mushroom Casserole. It was my go to dish.

I like to think of myself as fairly adventurous, but really, when I find one dish I love, I have a hard time straying beyond it on any menu. The Walnut Mushroom Casserole at The Good Earth restaurant was my absolute favorite. It’s still on the menu at just one remaining restaurant in Southern California. Here is the dish description:

Walnut Mushroom Casserole spinach fettuccini tossed with broccoli, mushrooms, onion and water chestnuts, blended with sour cream and sherry sauce. topped with two cheeses, walnuts and scallions

I found a recipe online but it didn't seem right to me, so I adapted it as best I could to fit with my memory of it.  I used Al Dente spinach fettuccini and it was perfect. I also tested out Al Dente's bonachia spinach fettuccine, and that worked great too. Note: Do not overcook the pasta! 

Walnut Mushroom Casserole

Serves 6 

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

1 medium onion, cut into quarters and thinly sliced

1/2 lb small button mushroom, halved or quartered into small chunks

3 cups thinly sliced broccoli, stems and bite-sized florets

8 ounce can sliced water chestnuts

1 clove garlic, minced 

2 Tablespoons sherry

2 Tablespoons soy sauce

1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons sour cream

6 ounces dry spinach fettuccini (such as Al Dente brand), cooked until barely tender

1 cup shredded monterey jack cheese

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Heat a large skillet over low heat, add walnuts and stir until lightly toasted and fragrant, then remove and reserve the nuts and return the skillet to the stove.

Add one tablespoon oil to the hot skillet and the onions and mushrooms and cook until just beginning to brown, remove with a spoon and reserve. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil to the pan and the broccoli and sauté until crisp-tender, about 8 minutes. Stir in the reserved onions, mushrooms, water chestnuts, garlic and spinach fettuccini. Remove from heat and add the sherry, soy sauce and sour cream. Stir gently to coat without breaking the noodles

Place mixture in a greased, shallow 2 1/2 quart baking dish. Sprinkle evenly with the reserved walnuts and then the cheeses. At this point the casserole can be refrigerated for up to 2 days. Bake until cheese melts and casserole is heated through, about 15 - 20 minutes. 

Note: you can bake the mixture in any type or combination of casserole pans you wish. If you use large individual ramekins,  bake only until the casserole is hot and the cheese melts, about 10 minutes. 

Enjoy! 

Coconut & Chili--Fancy Food Show Trends 2013

In addition to "chia in everything" two other trends I saw at the Winter 2013 Fancy Food Show were lots of products with coconut and a more sophisticated use of chili. 

It was impossible to miss the virtual rivers of coconut water at the show. Interestingly, they don't all taste the same. Some are sweet and others have a funny aftertaste. Some are thin and others are slightly viscous or have chunks of coconut in them. I'm still not a huge fan, but maybe I just haven't tasted the right one yet.

Here were a few of my favorite coconut products.

Why So Good! toasted coconut chips are not yet on the market, but they will be soon. They are an addictive snack, salty and sweet but with a ton of crunch. Never mind potato chips, once you open a bag of these, poof! It's empty. Dang Foods makes a similarly delicious product, also imported from Thailand. 

JJ's Sweets Cocomels are nice little caramels that happen to be made with coconut milk. They are creamy, but not dairy so vegans can breathe a sigh of relief. 

I'm already a big fan of 479 popcorn, so I look forward to each new flavor. This time around, it's coconut, specifically toasted coconut caramel. And it's as good as it sounds. Not too sweet but kind of nutty flavored. 

Brad's raw onion rings are just one product in a line of "raw" chips and snacks. I liked the onion rings best. They are dehydrated and then flavored. "Classy coconut" is one of four flavors, but one of the best.

CHILI

Chili has been a popular ingredient in specialty foods forever, but it used to be more about heat than anything else. Now chili is showing up frequently in sweet foods in a more nuanced way. Here are some of my favorite chile products from the show. 

Chili lime chips might seem mundane these days, but Anette's Chocolate brand chili lime tequila tortilla chip brittle is anything but.  I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to make brittle out of tortilla chips, but it certainly was and incorporating sour and hot flavors into a sweet product makes it all the more delectable.  

Wild Poppy makes a line of interesting juice drinks. I particularly liked the grapefruit ginger and the blood orange chili. The heat in the ginger and chili add an almost refreshing quality to the drink, balancing the sweetness. 

Way Better Snacks Sweet Chili tortilla chips are made from sprouted grains and are flecked with sprouted chia, broccoli and daikon radish seeds, definitely a twist on the typical tortilla chip. The chili in these chips is cayenne but not too hot.

Chili mango flats from Pure Indulgent Foods are yet another example of sweet and spicy coming together, this time in a cookie like hazelnut cracker that is a good accompaniment to cheese or charcuterie. 

I'll have more favorite discoveries from the Fancy Food Show soon...

Azalina's Malaysian Pop-up Dinner March 10

Suvir Saran with Azalina Eusope at the SF Street Food Night Market, 2012

There are some chefs who cook with their whole being, with their blood, sweat and tears, with their heart and with their soul. Azalina Eusope is one of those chefs and you can taste her passion in every bite. I am not alone in feeling honored to eat her food. 

Azalina’s specialty is Malaysian street food, and it should come as no surprise because she’s a fifth generation street food vendor. Fifth generation. I have no idea what my great grandparents did, let alone my great great grandparents. I know they didn’t eat food nearly as vibrant and textured and layered with flavors as what Azalina cooks. Malaysian street food is not subtle or elegant, it’s in your face, big, bold, exciting, and comforting all at once. It demands your attention and you will be happy to give it.

I could tell you that Azalina is an inspiring role model, a success story, an immigrant, a member of the Mamak tribe renowned for their cooking abilities. But I’d rather just encourage you to eat her food. While she makes regular appearances at Off The Grid Fort Mason (a street food event) most of the year, and her prepared food is showing up in places like Bi-Rite and Whole Foods, there is another way you can enjoy it. There is one more pop-up dinner she will be doing at Wise Sons Deli next Sunday night, March 10th. But I must warn you, it’s a small restaurant and it gets very crowded so...

Come early and prepare to stand in line

Come with a very small group (2-4 people max)

Come prepared to eat! 

The a la carte menu changes every week, so you can check Azalina's website if you’d like to know what she’ll be serving. This is what I had this past Sunday night: 

Asam Laksa

This sour and tangy tamarind based noodle soup with a healthy dose of spice has mackerel and was topped with slices of cucumber, chile, red onion and pineapple. Asam laksa is very delicious, but don’t just take my word for it, CNN listed it as the #7 most delicious dish in the world in 2011. 

Mee rebus 

This is another popular street food dish, with yam, potatoes, tomato and spices, hand made noodles, fritters, drenched in a very rich and sweet curry like gravy and garnished with peanuts and herbs and a hard boiled egg. Pure comfort. 

Sweet potato dumplings

These chewy dumplings had a dash of coconut cream and some fresh sprouts. 

Azalina’s Pop up

at

Wise Sons Deli 

3150 24th St 

San Francisco

March 10, 6-9 pm.

Partnership for a Healthier America Summit 2013

The Partnership for a Healthier America Summit is this week, March 6-8, in Washington DC. The theme is "Building a Healthier Future."  I look forward to participating in a breakout session Friday morning, March 8.

The True Cost of Healthier Choices (Room: Constitution A)
Obesity prevalence among shoppers visiting budget supermarkets was three times higher than the obesity prevalence among shoppers visiting higher-price supermarkets. Does a healthy diet cost more than an unhealthy diet? It depends on how you measure it. As food prices rise, how can we not compromise nutrition by insuring access to healthy food?

Moderator:

• Lisa Sutherland, President, LA Sutherland Group

Panelists:

• Andrea Carlson, Economist, USDA Economic Research Service
• Janet McLaughlin, Senior Director, Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters®
• Parke Wilde,... Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University

An earlier post on the U.S. Food Policy blog offers some approaches to thinking about the cost of healthy food, along with links to other reading and resources.  Andrea Carlson and Elizabeth Frazao published a USDA report on food costs in May 2012, which this blog discussed at the time.  The Cooking Matters program from Share Our Strength has resources for healthy, affordable meals.

Following the breakout sessions Friday morning, First Lady Michelle Obama is giving the keynote Friday afternoon. There are many other great breakout sessions throughout the summit.

Dairy industry petitions FDA to make it easier to flavor milk with aspartame

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) have petitioned FDA to modify the standard of identity for milk, permitting companies to add a non-calorie sweetener without additional labeling.

The petition proposes to allow dairy companies to add the non-nutritive sweetener aspartame to milk, without being required to label the milk as "low-calorie" or "low-sugar."  Currently, aspartame is allowed in milk (just as in diet soda), but such milk must be labeled to let the consumer know.

It appears the dairy industry is especially interested in marketing low-calorie flavored milk through child nutrition programs.  The FDA summary of the petition explains:

IDFA and NMPF state that the proposed amendments would promote more healthful eating practices and reduce childhood obesity by providing for lower-calorie flavored milk products. They state that lower-calorie flavored milk would particularly benefit school children who, according to IDFA and NMPF, are more inclined to drink flavored milk than unflavored milk at school....

IDFA and NMPF argue that nutrient content claims such as "reduced calorie'' are not attractive to children, and maintain that consumers can more easily identify the overall nutritional value of milk products that are flavored with non-nutritive sweeteners if the labels do not include such claims.

My view is that milk with aspartame should be labeled as clearly different from regular milk.  The push to market sweetened milk through child nutrition programs is a debatable public health nutrition strategy, whether the milk is sweetened with sugar or aspartame.  The drive for sweetened milk seems like dairy industry marketing as much as sound nutrition program design.  It may be better to let children cultivate their taste for less-sweetened foods and beverages.  Although reasonable people may differ on that point, it would be unwise to settle the matter by allowing sales of aspartame-sweetened milk without noticeable labeling.

You can submit comments to FDA (by May 21) and read comments from others here. Some comments already submitted are strongly opposed.

Hat tip to Ashley Colpaart.

Sweet Potato Poha Recipe

Not long ago Chef Suvir Saran tipped off Facebook followers, letting us know his poha recipe that was on Tasting Table and urging us to try it. I know how good it feels to have people cook your recipes and so does cookbook author and food writer Marlena Spieler so we both took him up on it. Neither of us had ever cooked with poha before. Poha are rice flakes used in a variety of Indian recipes, especially for breakfast. They cook up light and fluffy and are very mild. Like hash brown potatoes, they make a great blank canvas for spices, aromatics and vegetables. 

Marlene Spieler shopping at Vik's

Planning to cook an Indian dish makes a fine excuse for lunch at Vik's Chaat House in Berkeley. Marlena and I met up for bountiful chaat, pani puri and a luscious special with creamy eggplant and okra then we headed over to the adjoining shop for further culinary adventures. I stocked up on fragrant curry leaves, coconut flakes, thick poha flakes, chiles and black sesame seeds while Marlena ogled the pickled mango and lime and picked out some beans. It's easy to get inspired in an Indian market! 

I found Suvir's recipe fairly easy to follow, though I adapted the instructions a bit and bumped up the crunch factor by adding more coconut and peanuts.  The preparation takes a little effort but the actual cooking goes very quickly. 

To prepare poha you simply rinse the rice flakes in cool water then gently heat them up in a pan with whatever ingredients you like. This recipe uses sweet potatoes, peanuts, coconut and plenty of red onion but I've seen much more basic recipes too. I served this poha dish as a side dish, instead of rice with veal chops.

In addition to being versatile, poha is very economical too, an enormous 2 pound bag cost only $1.49. I enjoyed the poha leftovers with a fried egg on top and it was heavenly. Now go see Marlena's post and recipe.



Sweet Potato Poha adapted from a recipe by Suvir Saran & Tasting Table

Serves 4 

Ingredients

1 Tablespoon rice bran oil or vegetable oil

12 curry leaves, roughly torn

1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 dried red chile

1/8 teaspoon asafetida

1 medium red onion, halved and thinly sliced

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided

1 medium sweet potato, chopped into roughly ½-inch dice

1/2 cup roasted and salted peanuts, roughly chopped

1/2 cup unsweetened large-flake dried coconut

1 serrano pepper, finely chopped

2 cups thick poha rice flakes, rinsed under cold water and drained

Juice of 1 lime, plus 1 lime cut into wedges

1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro

Instructions

Heat a large skillet or wok over medium-low heat, add the coconut and cook until crispy and golden. Remove coconut from the pan and set aside. Return the pan to the stove and add the oil, curry leaves, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, red chile and asafetida and cook, stirring often, until the cumin seeds are golden brown, about 2 minutes (be careful--the mustard seeds will pop).

Add the onion and ½ teaspoon of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, 3 to 4 minutes (if the onions begin to brown, reduce the heat). Stir in the sweet potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are cooked around the edges, 7 to 8 minutes. Add the serrano pepper, cooking until the sweet potatoes are tender about 5 minutes, add a couple tablespoons of water to keep the sweet potatoes from sticking to the pan if necessary.

Add the poha and remaining 1 teaspoon of salt. Gently stir the poha into the sweet potato-onion mixture to incorporate it without breaking the delicate rice flakes. Drizzle the water around the sides of the skillet, cover and reduce the heat to low. Cook the poha until it is warmed through, about 5 minutes. Remove the cover and add the reserved coconut, chopped peanuts, and the lime juice use a fork to fluff the mixture and combine. Taste and adjust the salt if needed. Sprinkle with the cilantro and serve with the lime wedges on the side.

Enjoy!

Expiration of first-generation Roundup Ready soybeans

The patents for Monsanto's first generation of pesticide-resistant soybeans will expire in 2014.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have for many years been protected by patents, which allow one company to forbid farmers from saving and growing a particular type of crop seeds.  Without patent protection, farmers will be able to grow the pesticide-resistant soybeans, called Roundup Ready soybeans, without paying royalties and licensing fees to Monsanto.

For example, the case of the farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman was argued before the Supreme Court last month, receiving a lot of attention.  Bowman had purchased commodity soybeans, meaning non-brand-name soybeans ready to be used by food manufacturers.  A substantial fraction of his commodity soybean seeds did indeed have the Roundup Ready trait, merely because most U.S. soybeans have this GMO trait.  After patent protection expires in 2014, a farmer such as Bowman would be free to do as he likes.

Monsanto will still use patents to protect the company's new line of GMO soybeans, called Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield.  There had been some fear that Monsanto would use patents on specific seed varieties to extend the protection of first-generation Roundup Ready technology, but -- if I understand this Monsanto press release correctly -- it appears the company plans to let this first-generation technology really enter the public domain without any trickery involving specific seed varieties.  Monsanto does not plan to require farmers to destroy unsold seeds from the final patent-protected harvest, but instead the farmers may go ahead and save those seeds for the first legal non-licensed planting.

We should not exaggerate the importance of this news.  The change makes little difference for organic farmers or for people who have broad food safety concerns about GMOs.  If anything, wider availability of inexpensive Roundup Ready seed could worsen the problem of new weeds that are resistant to glyphosate (the generic name for Roundup).  The end of patent protection could in principle lead to new university-based crop breeding programs that seek to make seed technology more freely available, although I wonder if U.S. universities have lost the capacity to do so without corporate financial support. 

Yet, for some people who follow the ferocious public debate about GMOs, the end of patent protection seems like a big deal.  It helps to weaken the perceived linkage between the two distinct concepts, "GMO technology" and "corporate control of the food system."

A Place at the Table: Hunger in America & Beyond

Certain issues are very near and dear to my heart and none more so than hunger. Having worked in a homeless shelter, I got to know people who struggled to get enough to eat on a daily basis and it was an honor to be able to feed them. Ironically the homeless shelter I worked at was in a very wealthy county. But hunger is something that the richest and the poorest countries have in common and it doesn't just affect the homeless. And it will take public effort to make the changes necessary to see that hunger is wiped out. 

A Place at the Table, a film addressing hunger in the US is being released today, March 1. I got a chance to preview it and found it very moving with portraits of people struggling in our midst. It looks at just some of the reasons that hunger exists in the US. Perhaps not surprisingly, politics and subsidies are an important part of the picture. The film aims to increase our understanding of the problem it also points to some solutions. Though the current debate on raising the minimum wage is not part of the film, it's worth taking a look at too. Should anyone working full time making minimum wage still have a tough time putting food on the table? As taxpayers we are effectively subsidizing the big corporations that pay minimum wage in the form of programs like Medicare and food stamps. And we are subsidizing big agribusiness rather than family farms with farm subsidizes that do little to address hunger. 

Another effort to draw attention to hunger is Oxfam's latest research study looking a the policies of the ten largest food and beverage companies. They draw the connection between these companies who collectively make $1 billion dollars a day, and the millions of people in developing countries who supply the labor, land, water and other commodities needed to enable them to make their products and their profits.  

Solutions start with knowledge and taking responsibility---we all have a part to play and that includes our politicians and the brands we buy. I hope you will find a way to help reduce hunger in America and beyond. Here are some ways to get involved:

Voice your support for America's anti-hunger programs

Contribute to the No Kid Hungry campaign through Share our Strength 

Change the way food companies that make top brands do business

I donate to my local food bank and ask family to donate to it instead of buying me holiday gifts, what do you do to help end hunger?