Mediterranean Cookbook Reviews

I’m just going to say it. I hate it when actresses or country music stars write cookbooks. First of all, I don’t believe they write them, I believe they hire ghost writers and use their celebrity to sell them. But now, I’m going to give you the one exception to this rule and why. Extra Virgin is written by the glamorous actress Debi Mazar and her Tuscan husband Gabriele Corcos. Together they cook up a storm on their quirky food TV shows. Corcos is the real deal. I lived in Tuscany and he cooks just they way I remember. It’s the recipes but also the style of cooking that he captures so well even in the few non-Italian recipes. 

This is food I fell in love with when I lived in Italy and am happy to make in my own kitchen. I promise you too will love the ridiculously easy recipes for Pappardelle with Duck Ragu, Shrimp and Zucchini Risotto (made with Carnaroli rice!) Sausage and Beans, Beef Stew with Polenta and the Cod Florentine Style. These are comfort food dishes I ate in Florence and I adore. I am grateful to Debi Mazer for sharing the culinary prowess of her husband with a wider audience. I was particularly pleased to note that their recipe for making Lasagne Alla Bolognese, is EXACTLY the same as mine.

I have Eataly envy. After visiting Eataly in NYC I desperately wish there was one here. The complex--I really don’t know how else to describe it--has shops, restaurants, bars, a cooking school and selection of products that makes me homesick for Italy.

How to Eataly is not just a cookbook, but a kind of guide to how Italians shop, cook and eat with wonderful photos and all kinds of mini tutorials. The recipes go beyond the well-known and include the kinds of things people really do eat in Italy like lentil soup with Italian sausage meatballs, grilled polenta with mushroom ragu, celery root and apple salad and stuffed zucchini blossoms. 

The guides in the book include everything from a discussion about Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano, to how Italians use leftover bread, to how to make mozzarella and how to taste olive oil and how Italians eat pizza. It’s not comprehensive and it’s certainly not definitive, because it really can’t be. But it’s a really fun and fascinating book for any Italian food lover. 

Diane Kochilas is yet another chef I met at the CIA Worlds of Flavor conference a few years ago. Her new book, Ikaria (subtitled lessons on food, life, and longevity from the Greek island where people forget to die) features a range of ingredients and dishes that go far beyond the same old spanikopita and gyros you find everywhere outside of Greece. Wild foraged ingredients especially greens are common in the cuisine of the island of Ikaria, where the authors parents came from. Her recipes also include some meat and seafood, but vegetables and legumes are the core. 

Recipes I can’t wait to try include Taro Root Skordalia, Mushroom Stew with tomatoes and red wine, Purslane and Olive Salad, Eleni Karimali’s Noodles with Yogurt and Herbs and Simple Onion Pie. The photos, stories about life on the island and recipes are irresistible and will significantly increase your knowledge of Greek food, and just possibly your life span.

When I was growing up, one of my favorite restaurants was French Lebanese. The people running it were friendly and the food was divine. Unfortunately Le Petit Lebanon closed eons ago and my main resources for cooking Lebanese food have been a little booklet I picked up in London at Books for Cooks and Joumana Accad’s lovely blog, Taste of Beirut. Now there’s a cookbook Taste of Beirut that features many classic recipes and a guide to the ingredients used in the cuisine as well. Because I’m a fan of the blog, my favorite recipes are the ones with headnotes telling stories. Most of the recipes are very healthy, using whole grains, vegetables, legumes and lean meats. There are quite a few vegetarian recipes.

This is a cuisine that is really easy to love and there’s plenty of room for more Lebanese cookbooks. I don’t know if I will ever get to Lebanon, but Joumana Accad definitely transports me there through her recipes. You will want to make her Lebanese Couscous with Chicken, Zaatar and Yogurt Cheese Hand Pies, Fattoush Salad, Turnip Pickles, and some of Accad’s own creations like her baked not fried Falafel Loaf with Tarator Sauce, Red Lentil and Pumpkin Dip or Roasted Cauliflower and Potato Sandwich. The photos are good in the book, but I wish it were hardcover. It’s paperback and my copy is already beginning to show some wear and tear. 

Disclaimer: These books were provided as review copies, this post also includes affiliate links. 

Rick Bayless on Mexican Beer

Rick Bayless is a chef, restaurateur, host of Mexico: One Plate at a Time and a beer enthusiast. He knows a lot about the history of Mexico, Mexican food and drinks. Recently I was fortunate enough to attend a blogger event hosted by Negra Modelo and I had the opportunity to talk with him about  Mexican beer and food pairing and his plans for a microbrewery as well as a bit about the history of beer in Mexico.

What styles of beer complement Mexican food? 

Rick Bayless: All types of beer complement Mexican food because Mexican food is so varied! On a hot day Pacifico with ceviche is great. Negra Modelo goes well with barbacoa which I make with short ribs, slow cooked with red chile sauce. 

The reason I like Negra Modelo is because it has a little fruitiness from the hops, the natural sweetness from the barley malt even helps it to pair with richer dishes like queso fundido.

Is it true you're opening a microbrewery?

RB: I am opening a microbrewery in Chicago, it’s a think tank and it’s where we’ll create beers for our restaurants. We will also see if there is a beer that we can scale up working with Negra Modelo for larger distribution. 

What kinds of beers are you developing? 
RB: I’m not super into flavored beers. I am exploring Belgian yeast strains, I find they make food friendly beers. I like the gentle use of spices, not chiles to heat up but to cool down like green coriander for example which has citrus notes.

Why aren't beers commonly sold on tap in Mexico? 

RB: Tap beer has to be refrigerated and that wasn’t easy to do in Mexico. The distribution of bottles was much easier, but the craft beer movement is changing that in Mexico and you’ll find more taps today.

How did beer become the most popular drink in Mexico, surpassing the indigenous drink, pulque? 

RB: Pulque is made every day and it’s delicious the first day, sour the next day and it just gets more and more sour. By the fourth day it’s terrible. Unlike beer it can’t be pasteurized. Anywhere you can make mezcal, you can make pulque because it’s made from the maguey sap which is collected twice a day. The plant takes 6-10 years to produce the sap, then it produces it for 6 months and dies. It’s a very nutritious drink, low in alcohol and contains active cultures. But it is labor intensive and hard to mass produce, unlike beer. 

Pulque was associated with the poorest classes who drank it because it was nutritious. The upper classes were European and drank beer, which is not particularly nutritious, but the lower classes saw the Europeans drinking it and aspired to drink it too. Beer was more expensive but much more stable and sanitary than pulque.

Disclaimer: My thanks to Negra Modelo for sponsoring an event during which I was able to interview Rick Bayless. I was not monetarily compensated for this or any other post. 

Broccoli Crunch Recipe

They say there are no original ideas and sometimes even when I think I've come up with something new, I find a quick search on the internet proves otherwise. While I try to invent my own creative combinations, sometimes I do find my inspiration online, in cookbooks or in restaurants. Recently I was in Las Vegas where I had a couple of very inspiring meals at Carson Kitchen.

The restaurant serves rich small plates including impossibly crunchy chicken skins and meatballs in a luscious creamy foie gras sherry sauce. One of the dishes I knew I would want to try and recreate at home was their “broccoli crunch.” It turns out there are lots of versions of this dish online, although their version was certainly unique. The menu description included sunflower and pumpkin seeds as well as green goddess dressing. The salad also has dried cranberries and a handful of halved grape tomatoes. I decided to substitute tangerines in place of the tomatoes, which aren’t really in season this time of year. I like the way this dish straddles the line between salad and green vegetable. I plan on serving it at Thanksgiving.

Green goddess dressing is something I had never made before. The original recipe comes from the Palace Hotel here in San Francisco. It was named in tribute to an actor who was starring in a play called The Green Goddess. The original recipe blended green onion with mayonnaise, tarragon, parsley, vinegar and anchovies. I adapted my recipe from some updated ones I found that included sour cream and use chives instead of green onion. The creamy herbal dressing really complements the fresh crunchy broccoli, the rich crisp seeds and sweet notes from the cranberries. The tangerines provide that pop of bright acidity as well as sweetness.

Broccoli Crunch 

Serves 4- 5, easily doubled or tripled for a crowd

Salad

1 pound broccoli cut into bite-sized florets

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds

1/4 cup toasted pumpkin seeds

2 tangerines or mandarins, peeled and seeded 

Dressing

2 anchovies

1 1/2 teaspoons minced tarragon

2 Tablespoons minced chives

2 Tablespoons minced parsley

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup mayonnaise 

1/4 cup sour cream

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 

Freshly ground pepper

Heat a large pot of water and when it boils add the broccoli and blanch for one minute, then drain and place in a bowl of ice water to chill. Drain and dry thoroughly. Combine the broccoli with the cranberries, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. Break the tangerine into segments and cut each segment in half crosswise. Add tangerine pieces to the broccoli. 

In a bowl mash the anchovies. Add the herbs, vinegar, mayonnaise, sour cream, salt and a few grinds of pepper. Stir until well combined and taste. 

Combine the salad and dressing until thoroughly combined. Chill until ready to serve.

Enjoy!  

Cooking Turkey for Small Gatherings

I've cooked whole turkeys when developing recipes for clients, but a Thanksgiving feast? I’m most thankful that I can spend the holiday at my parents house and let them take care of cooking the bird.

Some years I return home with leftover turkey, other years I buy a turkey at the store and ask the butcher to cut it into either halves or quarters so I am not overwhelmed with too much turkey for my household of two. 

Here are some more great ways to enjoy turkey without buying a whole bird:

William Wilkinson

Dark meat

Legs and thighs are great for lovers of dark meat. They can be roasted or braised. 

How to roast turkey thighs 

How to roast turkey legs 

My recipe for braising turkey legs in cranberry sauce 

RosieTulips

Light meat 

Turkey breast is a good option for roasting, if you like light meat only.   If you are only cooking the breast, it will be much easier to cook since the breast meat tends to cook faster and become dry more quickly than other cuts. 

How to make herb roasted turkey breast 

Dark & Light meat

This year I got a chance to try the Diestel light and dark roast. They are fully cooked, from boneless breasts, legs, and thighs with skin and are hand-netted. Size wise they are around  2 1/2 to 3 pounds (more than enough for 4 people) and cost $34.99. Each slice has both dark and light meat. The instructions recommend coating the roast with paprika but I used an herb and spice mix. These roasts are available at Whole Foods market. 

Disclaimer: My thanks to Whole Foods for providing a Diestel roast for me to try. 

Pomsgiving Cocktail: Drinks on Friday

The last few years I've created a cocktail for Thanksgiving. It's a fun way to start the long Thanksgiving day feast. It perks the appetite and gives everyone something to talk about.  I recently attended a POM Wonderful lunch and was inspired by all the wonderful cocktails. So instead of using the more common cranberry juice, I thought it would be interesting to try using pomegranate juice.

This cocktail uses truly some of my most favorite things--limoncello, Plymouth gin and La Marca prosecco. I discovered La Marca prosecco when I was looking for the perfect prosecco to make the Ruby Sparkler last year. It's from the Veneto, tart and fresh with plenty of bubbles. It's about $10 at Costco and makes a terrific mixer. Plymouth gin is my go to gin, I find it the easiest for mixing because the botanicals are so well balanced. Use whichever limoncello you like. 

I am not a bartender and I find it tricky to come up with cocktails. Working out the proportions took some time but I'm very happy with the final result and hope you like it too! I haven't decided on a garnish yet, what do you think? Lemon peel? Pomegranate arils? Let me know in the comments. 

Pomsgiving

3/4 ounce Plymouth gin

1/4 ounce limoncello

1 ounce POM Wonderful juice or freshly squeezed pomegranate jucie

Prosecco (La Marca recommended)

Combine the gin, limoncello and pomegranate juice in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a glass, top with prosecco. 

Enjoy! 

Disclaimer: My thanks to both POM Wonderful and Plymouth gin for providing me with product to use in my cocktail experiments.

With community eligibility, what data source will replace the free / reduced price rate?

U.S. school children with household incomes below 130% of the federal poverty guideline have long been eligible for free school lunch and breakfast, while those with slightly higher income but still below 185% of the poverty guideline are eligible for reduced-price lunch. With a new community eligibility provision, some districts will provide free lunches to all children.

The most important thing to know about this policy is that it may feed more children.

This blog post is about a less important secondary question that nonetheless has some potential interest for readers in U.S. food policy: "What new source of data will replace the free / reduced price rate as a proxy variable for local poverty?" In the past, the percentage of children who received free and reduced price meals served to indicate the level of local poverty -- a higher percentage meant the neighborhood is comparatively poor.

At FiveThirtyEight, Ben Wieder explains the many policy and research uses for this proxy poverty measure:

Two analyses (.pdf) found that school lunch data has been used in about 1 in 5 studies looking at academic achievement conducted by education researchers; that doesn’t take into account its role in work by psychologists, sociologists, economists and researchers in a host of other disciplines.

The data has been used in studies looking at best teaching practices, school discipline and whether playing an instrument improves academic performance. It was a measure of poverty for a study on why kids start smoking, used to differentiate swimming ability among minority students, and a measure of socioeconomic status in at least one article in the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Who gets to participate in the program can have policy implications as well.

Matt Cohen, chief research officer at the Ohio Department of Education, is chairing a working group organized by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to find alternatives to participation in the school lunch program for measuring students’ socioeconomic status.

I agree with some of the sources quoted in the article, who point out that this never was all that great a proxy for poverty in the first place. For example, consider a study seeking to measure whether childhood food insecurity is higher in high-poverty neighborhoods. The free / reduced price proxy variable is a poor indicator for neighborhood poverty, because the meals themselves may directly help reduce childhood food insecurity. Still, it will take some new effort to find a replacement variable, and some research and policy purposes will be inconvenienced in the interim period.

U.S. food supply inconsistent with dietary guidance

The U.S. food supply is far out of balance with dietary recommendations. A new study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics quantifies the gaps. In brief, the U.S. food supply was quite unhealthy already by the 1970s and has not improved noticeably since then.

The authors -- Paige Miller, Jill Reedy, Sharon Kirkpatrick, and Susan Krebs-Smith -- use a measure more commonly applied to individual survey data, called the Healthy Eating Index. Getting this measure to fit national food supply data from USDA requires a bit of shoe-horning, but nonetheless the results are persuasive about the basic picture. As the video below illustrates, for example, Americans have for decades had all the protein we could possibly need, but the food supply for vegetables falls much short of recommendations.

The video -- from the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) -- generally thinks of the food supply as "upstream" and food consumers as "downstream." A possible implication is that policies should alter the food supply so that downstream consumers could eat more healthfully. It should be noted that people in the food business, and perhaps most agricultural economists too, give greater weight to consumer preferences for unhealthy food as a key driver of the gap the study describes. Economists may suggest that the food supply would provide plenty of healthy food if that's what consumers actually would buy.

Still, nutrition scientists and agricultural economists have in recent years been doing better than ever at listening to each other's perspectives on these big questions. For example, in an accompanying article, which calls on dietitians to get involved in designing federal policies such as the Farm Bill, Claire Zizza reviews agricultural economics perspectives as well as public health perspectives on how such policies should be evaluated. It all makes a lively conversation.