Salmon Tacos with Mango Corn Salsa

To be honest, I haven't been feeling very inspired in the kitchen lately. I've been busy with lots of things including travel, and when I'm home I've been trying to eat the food in the freezer since it is on the verge of overflowing. But yesterday I was at the store and I found local king salmon on sale and some beautiful white corn. I thought about the mango I had and just like that, a plan came together.

Sometimes ingredients speak to you and the lightbulb goes off. I diced the mango to serve with dessert a few nights before but it was firm and a little too sour. That's not good for dessert but it's excellent for salsa. The salsa can be used with chips, with roast chicken or scallops. It's actually pretty good without the tomatoes too. I was a little undecided as to which way I preferred it, so try it both ways and you tell me which you like better!

This recipe has a lot of parts, but you can make the salsa and the sauce for drizzling ahead of time. You can even use already cooked salmon if that's what you have on hand. Even though it's cooked on the stove and not on the grill, it really tastes like summer--the fresh corn, tomatoes and salmon look like summer too. Here's to a little summery inspiration!



Salmon Tacos with Mango Corn Salsa
Serves 4

Ingredients

2 teaspoons mild flavored oil ( I use rice bran oil)
1 ear of corn, white or yellow
1/2 cup diced firm mango
1/2 cup diced tomatoes, drained
2 scallions, chopped
1/2 - 1 serrano pepper, thinly sliced
1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice, or to taste

3-4 Tablespoons mayonnaise (I used wasabi mayo)
2 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 Tablespoon plain non-fat Greek yogurt

12 ounces wild salmon
Chili powder

8 Tortillas
1 1/2 cups finely shredded napa cabbage
Sprigs of cilantro, to taste, optional

Instructions

Make the salsa first. Slice the corn off the cob, you should have about 1/2 cup of corn kernels. Heat a skillet and add a couple teaspoons of oil. Add the corn and stir, cooking a couple of minutes until fragrant and sweet. Remove the pan from the stove and allow the corn to come to room temperature. In a bowl combine the mango, tomato, scallions and sliced serrano pepper. Add the cooled corn and lime juice and taste for seasoning.

Make the drizzle by whisking together the mayonnaise, lime juice and yogurt. Taste and adjust to your liking.

To cook the salmon, remove any bones and cut some slits in the skin. Heat a non-stick skillet and when it's hot, add the salmon, skin side down. Sprinkle the salmon with chili powder and cover with a lid. Cook until barely medium, about 120 degrees internal temperature. Break the salmon into chunks or large flakes. Do not overcook.

To prepare the tacos, heat a dry skillet and warm the tortillas over medium heat. When pliable and hot, top each tortilla with salmon, shredded cabbage, salsa and drizzle with the mayo sauce. Add cilantro if desired and serve.

Enjoy!

On Point covers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) today

An episode today from the syndicated NPR radio show On Point, with Tom Ashbrook, is titled, "Food Stamps: Fighting Hunger or Draining Resources?"

The guests include AP reporter Mary Clare Jalonick, Boston Medical Center researcher and nationally known child health advocate Deborah Frank, and UC Davis agricultural economist Daniel Sumner. 

There are good reading suggestions on the On Point website.  The episode is at 10 am Eastern.

For further context, the Senate is considering moderate cuts to SNAP of about $4 billion over 10 years.  The House of Representatives is considering cuts perhaps five times as large.  Here from C-SPAN is Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) arguing unsuccessfully for an amendment to make deeper cuts in the Senate, which would make the two bills more similar.

The Food Police by Jayson Lusk

For fifteen years, Oklahoma State University economist Jayson Lusk sought to study food regulation issues in a balanced way.  As he recounts:

I tried to approach the study of food regulation from an objective standpoint by comparing the costs and benefits of the policies in question -- seeing which actions and policies made the best use of our scarce resources given all our competing desires.  I labored under the assumption that this was the key issue in determining the merits of a regulation.  I was naive.

The Food Police (Crown Forum, 2013) is the new book Lusk wrote after he outgrew this foolish impartiality.

In the Food Police, every government initiative to address any environmental or social problem within the food system represents misguided overreach.  There may be an exception, but I couldn't find one.

In the Food Police, the conventional food system is fine as it is.

• Food is highly affordable.  There is no need to spend much ink on commodity price spikes, the growing world population, or environmental constraints on food production.
• Organic agriculture is foolish, conventional pesticides are safe, and farmers in recent years have replaced dangerous pesticides with safe ones.  (How the farmers found any dangerous pesticides to replace is a mystery to me).  
• Americans live longer because of our "abundant, diverse, and nutritious food supply."  Moderate overweight is fine; it probably extends our lives.  The connection between obesity and diabetes is doubtful, and diabetes may be genetic, so don't worry about diabetes either.
• It would be unhealthy to reduce salt consumption.
• Crop yields increased from 1900 to 2010. There is no need to mention that yield growth has slowed in recent years or that agricultural economists are greatly distressed about declining public investment in agricultural research.

Very briefly, at sporadic intervals, Lusk vaguely refers to imperfections in the food system. On page 20, he says, "I'm not saying all food trends are heading in the right direction."  On p. 35, he says, "None of this is to say there aren't problems associated with our modern food system."  But, in each case, the reader never gets to hear any details about these problems.  Lusk quickly moves on to decrying how the Food Police exaggerate whatever problems there might be.

A long-standing principle of the U.S. Food Policy blog is that reasonable people ought to be able to agree on the toughest food policy controversies of the day.  When possible, we should avoid letting food policy debates get caught up in the broader divisions that have made American politics so dysfunctional in recent years: Democrat and Republican, heartland and coastal states, religious and secular, black and white.

At every turn, Lusk chooses instead to tie his food policy arguments to seemingly unrelated flame wars.  He writes, "The progressives' plan for slow, natural and organic food production has been tried.  It's called Africa."  The food police ignore personal liberties, even though these are "many of the same people who scream, 'It's a woman's body,' any time the subject of abortion comes up."  Lusk calls the food police "fascists."  Lusk accuses the San Francisco board of supervisors of astounding hypocrisy for regulating toys for kids in restaurant meals, because the same city values other liberties highly: "'In the City by the Bay, if you want to roller skate naked down Castro Street wearing a phallic -symbol hat and snorting an eight-ball off a transgender hooker's chest while underage kids run behind you handing out free heroin needles, condoms and coupons ... that's your right as a free citizen of the United States.'"

Jayson Lusk is a leading agricultural economist.  He co-edited a book from Oxford University Press, to which I contributed a chapter on food security in developed countries.  Yet, the new book reminded me of right-wing bloggers, such as Michelle Malkin.  I was going to bite my tongue and avoid mentioning this similarity, but then I noticed in footnote 3 of chapter 1 that the casually and irrelevantly homophobic San Francisco anecdote was a direct quote from the blogger Michelle Malkin herself.

The footnote provides reassurance that I may offer my frank summary of this book without giving offense.  Jayson Lusk's Food Police is like a Michelle Malkin blog post, but it's 190 pages long and about food policy.

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child Book Giveaway

If you’re a fan of Julia Child, it’s really worth reading Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, the biography written by Bob Spitz. It covers a lot of territory, starting with her family history and fills in gaps, sharing much more than you'll find in previously written books about her. Because Child was an avid letter writer, there’s a lot of source material. But there are also wonderful anecdotes from those who knew her best--from her editor Judith Jones to her TV director Russ Morash and many other colleagues, relatives and friends. It’s an entertaining book, and has the kind of “playful romp” feel to it that typified Julia Child as well. 

An average student, with a funny voice and not much of a career track, Julia Child found her calling later in life, first in cooking school and later on television. Her story is tremendously romantic, because it was her husband who not only supported her but encouraged her in everything she did. You may be surprised to learn about the causes she supported or the prejudices she held, but it’s hard not to admire her and feel even more affection for “Our lady of the ladle” as Time magazine called her. 

I’ve got 3 copies of this massive tome to give away. It clocks in at over 500 pages and over 2 pounds; it’s a great read to take to the pool or the beach. I fully expect her risqué humor will have you giggling and her can do attitude will inspire you in your career or perhaps in the kitchen. 

Let me know your favorite Julia Child recipe in the comments or a story you have about her for a chance to win. This giveaway ends at midnight PST on May 27, 2013. One entry per person, please. I will draw a winner at random on May 28. Open to US residents only. You must leave a comment and register your email to win. Please note that when you register your comment with your email, only I will see your email.

Disclaimer: I was provided the book by the publisher to giveaway. I bought a digital copy of this book myself. This post contains an Amazon affiliate link. 

Using the Visual Understanding Environment software from Tufts University to illustrate food industry input-output flows

This new visualization tool allows you to explore resource flows between industries.

For example, you can see how much meat and poultry flows into the restaurant food industry, and then how much restaurant food flows to the final consumer (all measured in billions of dollars per year). You can create your own diagram showing the industries and flows that you select, in any order you choose.

This project extends the capability of Tufts University’s Visual Understanding Environment (VUE).  I worked on this with Rebecca Nemec, Graham Jeffries, Mike Korcynski, and Jonelle Lonergan.  Our working paper (.pdf) gives instructions for using several practice data sets, or for downloading your own data from the federal government's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).  Accompanying data files and a processing program are available on my department's working paper series page.

The best way to understand the capabilities of this visualization tool is to watch this video, also available full-size on Vimeo.

Visualizing Input-Output Data Using VUE from Tufts University - Online on Vimeo.

House and Senate mark up farm bills

At long last, the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry both marked up farm bills this week.  But there are many miles to go before this legislation ever reaches home.

The Associated Press has a summary of several key differences in the main provisions (with dollar amounts stated on a per year basis).

In a partisan division that we saw already last year, when this legislation was still over-optimistically known as the "2012 Farm Bill," the House committee proposes deeper cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) than the Senate committee does.  The House committee proposes to cut $2 billion per year, while the Senate committee proposes to cut $0.4 billion per year.  The Republican committee leaders in the House sought the deeper SNAP cuts in part so they could move slower on budget cuts to direct payments for cotton farmers (largely in the South), and in part so they could accommodate the strong anti-food-stamp sentiment among some Republican legislators on the floor.  Yet, these deep SNAP cuts may make it difficult to reach eventual agreement with the Democratic-led Senate, leading to possible continuation of the years-long impasse over U.S. food and farm policy.

For the Senate committee bill, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition summarizes provisions of interest to producers interested in sustainable production practices, especially at the local and regional level.  For the House committee bill, Politico reports on the political angles.  The Hagstrom Report (gated, but valuable) is working overtime this week, and the FarmPolicy blog links to many national and regional media sources.

ProCook Enameled Cast Iron Cookware

I love my enameled cast iron cookware. Nothing can really beat enameled cast iron for stews and braises. It holds the heat well, and is easy to clean. It is compatible with every type of range (gas, electric and induction) and is ovenproof up to 500 degrees. It's heavy, so I leave some pieces on the stove all the time. I mostly have Le Creuset, because that's what I registered for when I got married and I have bought some for friends too. But Le Creuset is terribly expensive so I have a hard time recommending it. 

Late last year I wrote about the Martha Stewart line of enameled cast iron. It was much less expensive than Le Creuset and definitely performed as well. The colors and shapes were a bit different from Le Creuset, but the price made up for any differences. Now I've got an even better recommendation, the ProCook line of enameled cast iron. 

Take a look at how the ProCook in aubergine compares to my Le Creuset in white (and ignore the crumbs on the stove). The ProCook casserole is a bit larger at 4.2 quarts versus the Le Creuset 3.5 quarts.  

The lid on the ProCook actually is a bit better in my opinion, because it has those braising ridges that help baste.

I cooked onions in both and they performed equally well. 

But when it comes to price, there is no comparison. The Le Creuset is $235 and the ProCook, only $52! On sale the Martha Stewart 5 quart oval is $99, almost twice the price of the ProCook piece. I have no idea how they can produce these pieces so inexpensively. Even better, they offer free shipping for any online purchase over $50. The range of colors includes black, red, cream and aubergine. The colors, shape of the pieces and the handles are all very attractive. 

ProCook is a family owned company from England, though I imagine the pieces are manufactured in China. I had never heard of them, but found they get very good customer reviews online. They have only two retail shops in the US in New Hampshire and Maine, but sell everything online. They also have great prices on other types of casseroles and cookware, an "Atlas" style pasta maker for only $27, box graters for $5. Whether your are setting up your own kitchen or buying a gift, ProCook is well worth a closer look. 

Disclaimer: ProCook provided me with a piece of cookware for review purposes. I was not paid for this or any other post.