Summer Surplus

I’m harvesting way more tomatoes than I can eat (unless I wanted to do that awesome tomato diet). But it’s been my pleasure to give them away. I’m rather proud of my tomatoes; they’re all flavorful and sweet. All except for the Romas, which are mealy and characterless. Romas are a paste tomato whose high pectin content makes it good for cooking. In a sauce they come alive and you can really taste their tomato-y goodness. My ego prevents me from letting people eat the Romas I give them raw. God forbid they think I grow bland tomatoes. And I only would be giving them enough for a half cup of marinara. What's the point? So I’ve been keeping them, which leads to another dilemma: My one Roma plant has yielded a dozen or so every days which is substantial but not enough to start canning. What to do? From the first harvest I made a salsa, which, while not cooked, tastes amazing.

Salsa Fresca (adapted from Two Hot Tamales) 6 paste tomatoes, halved (around a pound?) ½ medium onion 2 cloves garlic 2 tbsp cider vinegar 1 handful of cilantro ½ dried chipotle chile (or to your heat tolerance) A healthy dose of salt and pepper Put everything in a blender and blast it. FYI, using canned chipotle is fine but they can get super hot. Also, slicing tomatoes can be used but your salsa will be more watery.

maybe enough for a few cups of sauce With the next harvest I had a lot more tomatoes, but still not enough for sauce. I seemed to remember Mario Batali roasting tomatoes so I tried it. I sliced them lengthwise and sprinkled them with salt and sugar and olive oil, added a couple cloves of garlic and put them in a 275 degree oven for a few hours. I guess the sugar might be considered cheating, but whatever. It's only a couple teaspoons and it tastes better. Some people add herbs but I just want pure tomato flavor. Your results may vary – oven fluctuations, tomato size – so after a couple hours, it’s best to check on them periodically. You’re looking for something that’s dried but pliant with just a tiny bit of juice. You don’t want a sun-dried tomato. Pack them in olive oil and store them in the fridge. Put them in pasta, salad, sauces, sandwiches, or whatever. At least, that’s what I read. So far mine haven't made it beyond the antipasto plate.

Skinny Monkeys Susceptible to Fatal Gastric Bloat

On Thursday I went to Birds, a rotisserie place in Hollywood where I broke my poultry boycott to get their chicken chili cheese fries. The dish arrived so smothered in cheese that the only evidence that fries were on the plate were the vague contours of the shiny yellow blanket of melted cheddar. That there was chili underneath was a complete assumption. G'day coronary artery disease The dish even looked more artery clogging than Outback Steakhouse’s 2,900 calorie cheese fries, considered by some to be worst food in America. Nonetheless I gamely dug into my chili cheese fries but I couldn’t finish them. I was doubly ashamed: 1) That I couldn’t eat them all. Twenty years ago I would have polished off a dish like that in between gulps of Milwaukee’s Best. And 2) That I ate so much of said dish. Alone I ate what would have been a barely acceptable portion for half a dozen normal people. I disgust myself. Meanwhile there is a growing movement of “calorie restrictors.” For decades, research has repeatedly shown that if you restrict the calories of some lab animals by a third, you can extend their lifespan by 30-40%. I don’t know if it’s because everyone’s metabolism has a finite number of calories they can burn or whether it’s an insulin thing but this phenomenon has been replicated in rats, fruit flies, yeast, fish and dogs, among others. It should come as no surprise that some wacky humans have latched onto to this trick and have reduced their food intake so that they can live a few precious more years. There are books and websites based around this diet. 6’ tall, 135 pounds and 103 years old. I have poo-pooed these crazies with the rationale that if you eat less to live longer, you aren’t necessarily living better. But still, these guys could eat half a bite of foie gras or a tiny hunk of brie – so long as they adhered to their sub-1,300 daily calories – for decades after I was gone. That might not be all that bad. A recent study at the University of Wisconsin found that monkeys on a reduced calorie diet outlived their gluttonous counterparts and had lower incidences of age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, brain dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. Study leader Richard Weindruch says, “There is a major effect of caloric restriction in increasing survival if you look at deaths due to the diseases of aging.” The only one I distrust more than a skinny monkey is a skinny human It’s the last part of that quote that threw up a red flag. What the press release and subsequent articles failed to mention was that there were sixteen skinny monkeys who died during the study from “non-age-associated causes” who weren’t included in the data analysis. Buried deep in the New York Times article on this study was this illuminating nugget:

Some monkeys died under the anesthesia given while taking blood samples. Some died from gastric bloat, a disease that can strike at any age, others from endometriosis. When the deaths judged not due to aging are excluded, the dieting monkeys lived significantly longer.

In fact, when you include deaths not due to aging, mortality rate differences between the two groups were not statistically significant. But I guess “Skinny Monkeys Live Longer” is a sexier headline than, “Skinny Monkeys Susceptible to Fatal Gastric Bloat.” Thankfully, there are shrewd and skeptical eyes out there who can see through the hype.

Another Veiled Excuse for Insobriety

precursor to a Technicolor yawn I’m a beer and wine kind of guy but I love the idea of the mixed drink. It’s kind of a flavor/math brain teaser. When I’m not thinking about what I’m eating for my next meal, I’ll frequently fantasize about some elaborate concoction involving dashes of bitters and twists of citrus zests. But I couldn’t care less about your [insert cloying flavor] martini, or your double entendre shot. I mean, isn’t a Screaming Orgasm just a single entendre? I sneer at these libations not just because I’m a condescending snob. There’s a tiny part of me that doesn’t drink them because they’re disgusting. somehow more civilized than a ___-tini The three types of cocktails that interest me begin with the classics: Manhattan, martini – gin only (snob), side car, etc. These are the potent potables I imagine businessmen from the 1950s drank in the smoky Metro North bar car on their way from Grand Central Station to Greenwich. A single rye Manhattan (neat, of course) can transport you to a more refined emotional state. Subsequent refills can transport you to different place entirely. I should know. The second kind of cocktail are the forgotten ones. The ones from Edwardian times that use some obscure liquor like crème de violette, pernod, or absinthe. These drinks are frequently mixed in some ritualistic fashion involving the backs of spoons and sugar lumps which makes them all the more pretentious (yay!). Take for instance, this delicious looking apple jack concoction mixed by my lesbian crush and cocktail historian, Rachel Maddow: How is this drink not cool? The third kind of distilled liquor-based beverage that interests me is the sort of nouveau artisanal (I’m starting to sound super-douchy) cocktail that eschews factory flavored syrups in favor of pure essences. The Hungry Cat broke new ground for me when their bar insisted on making their own herb-infused simple syrups and juicing their fruit to order. You'd think it would slow them down and maybe it does, but there's the giant Vegematic juicer on the bar that makes it all worth it. With drink names like “Peach Pit” and “Root Beer Float,” you’d think they’d be completely sissified girl drinks, but in fact all their drinks are restrained (unlike sissified girls) while still tasting exactly like they’re described. My favorites is the cucumber martini, the one exception to my flavored martini ban. It is one of the most refreshing intoxicants I’ve ever had. not part of the DeKuypers product line At home I’ve had mixed success in creating my own flavored cocktails. I’d experiment more but I can’t really handle the hangovers. My interest has been on vodka infusions, a focus driven by the fact that most mass-market infused vodkas tend to taste like liquid Jolly Ranchers. First, I start with a decent, neutral vodka – Smirnoff has been both rated highly and it’s relatively cheap when it’s at Trader Joe’s. I pour a fifth in a decanter with the flavor component and stick it in the refrigerator for a spell. I’ve had success with raspberries (12 ounce sack of frozen ones) and ginger (a few ounces of fresh peeled slices). You let them soak for a few days and then decant them back into the original bottle. The raspberry creates a lot of cloudy sediment so you have to be really careful decanting and then you have to filter the last few ounces (or drink the murky stuff separately). It’s worth the hassle; pure ginger and raspberry flavors shine through without any high fructose corn syrup getting in the way. You can always add sweetness later.

Simple Syrup Equal volumes sugar and water, heated and stirred until melted. If you want to infuse it, add flavoring, e.g., a couple rosemary sprigs, mint, etc., during heating process. Keep in the fridge.

My failures include pineapple, wild blueberry and fresh cranberry – all tasted nothing like their original form, i.e., tasted like crap. Lemon zest didn’t yield anything special and split vanilla bean was a total pain (thousands of tiny seeds cloud the mix). It doesn’t end up tasting much different than the stuff at the liquor store and I actually missed the sweetness. I still have a full bottle of chipotle chile infused vodka sitting on a shelf. No one can handle more than a sniff. I’m thinking of bottling it in aerosol form and selling it as a self-defense weapon. my basil failure At my local haunt, The Chalet, one of the bartenders, Gerkin, poured me a shot of his house-made (is that different from homemade?) basil infused vodka. It was a summery revelation with just the right amount of heady green fragrance. Very clean tasting. I tried to make it at home with a handful of pinched-off basil flowers that were going to be tossed anyhow. Four days later it tasted like an overwhelming torrent of resinous, pine-y flavors. Gerkin told me last night that the key is to let the basil macerate for 36 hours tops. Or was it 18? Hm. More experimenting is in order. Hopefully I can take my herbaceous stuff and cut it with some more vodka to make it drinkable. Over-infusion is probably the same problem I had with the pepper vodka; the same shriveled chipotle has been sitting in the bottle for 6 years slowly imparting more and more of its smoky toxicity. why not kaffir lime? Infusions on the horizon: shiso, lemongrass and whatever other foofy herbs I see at the Asian market. I’m talking to you, galanga!

A Short and Lazy Entry

Last night I was feeling rather peckish and lazy so I defrosted some spaghetti and meatballs I had made a couple months back. It was an icy lump that was enough for two meals but I couldn’t well portion it out without a hacksaw so I reheated the whole thing in a pot. Long story short, I ate the entire thing (covered in cheese) in one sitting and complained of stomach pains the rest of the night. It was one of those not-so-rare moments where food made me feel bad about myself. For those guilty times I turn to This Is Why You’re Fat, a collection of reader-submitted photographs of disgusting foods. When you read about The Tobias (a grilled beef sandwich topped with fried pepperoni, salami, provolone cheese, fried onions, tomato and special sauce), suddenly a double helping of spaghetti and meatballs doesn’t seem so bad. Most of the featured dishes are various fast foods stuffed in a bun or on a pizza: The Potluck Burger A burger with sliced hot dogs, potato salad, mac and cheese, tomato, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. But every so often there is an inspired entry: Breakfast Cake Two layers of egg, sausage, bacon, cheese quiche with country gravy in between, topped with gravy icing garnished with bacon bits. I’m sad to admit that I’ve eaten more than one of the featured items on multiple occasions. I refuse to say which ones. I know I mentioned them in the previous entry but the Planet Money team just podcasted on the Fancy Food Show. This blog isn’t really meant to pimp out other websites but that’s apparently what today is about. Slow news day, I guess. The podcast is one of their rare food-centric episodes and it's humorous and informative (and I promise, it’s the last time I’ll mention them or NPR for the rest of the year). Lastly, a brief tomato update: All the plants are flourishing, though many of the fruit are afflicted with blossom end rot, a condition that blackens the ends of tomatoes. It’s due to a calcium deficiency so I tossed in a couple Tums into the water. Very scientific of me, I know. The Sweet 100s have been producing consistently, truly living up to their name. A handful a day of super-sweet little tomatoes. The big ‘uns have been slow to mature but I picked the first pretty one yesterday. This Early Girl has a date with the inside of a grilled cheese sandwich Tons of Big Boys and Romas to follow.

The Self-Righteous Porkchop

I resisted listening to the Planet Money podcast for months because I find financial journalism about as scintillating as reading old tide tables. But it’s actually fantastic and entertaining; it takes a reasoned lefty approach to economic news and spices it up with a little slacker humor (it is a This American Life co-production). This week there was an unhumorous piece on world hunger and how 40 percent of the population lives on two dollars a day or less. And that’s adjusted dollars: the equivalent of what two bucks buys in the U.S. as opposed to two bucks converted to the local currency. That number has been haunting me. I don’t see how you could eat on that. Sheesh. I’m so single minded, I don’t even think about shelter and other expenses. Low-income Americans spend a quarter of their income on food, which we can (inaccurately) extrapolate for the impoverished third world to be $3.50 a week. Is that tenable to survive here stateside? At Costco, a 25lb sack of rice is around ten bucks and a 25lb sack of beans is $20. That’s probably enough for a cup of rice and a cup of beans a day for two months. And that’s what $.50/day buys you. No Tabasco, no soy sauce. Just 1,200 calories of rice and beans. Wow. What this Malian family eats in a week. If you’ve never seen these photos, you should To assuage my gustatory guilt, I turned to the Nimans. Bill Niman founded Niman Ranch, a cooperative of farmers who raise sustainable livestock and then sell the meats at exorbitant prices. I’m actually a big fan, but it’s just super expensive. And their bacon is overrated (tastes like salty smoke). Bill is no longer part of the company so I can't blame him. He and his wife have move on to a new, goat-centric venture. I digress. The missus, Nicolette Hahn Niman, is a food activist (and ironically a vegetarian) who just published a book called The Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms. On their temporary Chowhound blog, the Nimans offer ten tips for “affordable sustainable eating.”

• Reduce consumption of meat, dairy and fish. Just watch Food Inc. if your stomach needs convincing to eat less meat. But dairy? That’s, like, cheese. No way.
• Shop and eat in harmony with the seasons. The Nimans live in Marin County where they suffer through winters by eating artichokes and asparagus with their golden beet salad. What’s a Nova Scotian to do? Suck ice?
• Plant a garden. Gardening is expensive. I spent over $400 on my twelve tomato plants and have harvested maybe a pound of fruit. Soil, water, planters, tools, plants – it only starts to be “affordable” when you scale up and do it for successive seasons. And if you have the space. I'm lucky enough to have a backyard. The Nimans live on a 1,000 acre ranch.
• Keep a flock of laying hens. I actually plan to do this next year. But it’s only because I’m a crazy person. For other urban dwellers, this is preposterous (did I mention that the Nimans live on a 1,000 acre ranch?). Space aside, figure about $500 in equipment and $35/month for organic chicken feed for six chickens. If your hens are amazing layers, you’ll get maybe ten dozen eggs a month…which works out to be substantially more expensive than the cage-free organic eggs at Trader Joe’s. And who eats ten dozen eggs a month?
• Cook more. Well, this is kind of a no-brainer. You don’t have to tell that to the readers of Chowhound.
• Shift budgeting priorities. They say that Americans spend a smaller percentage of their budgets on food than any other developed country and that it should be larger. My #1 budget priority is food so I’m O.K. here, but for the rest of the country? They're essentially saying, "If you want to eat responsibly and affordably, you must spend more money!" As long as industrialized food is so damn cheap, albeit artificially, I don't see that happening.
• Buy cheaper cuts of meat. Yeah, yeah. But nothing beats a prime dry-aged ribeye. Niman Ranch, of course. Whoa. I just checked: $54.98 apiece. This tip was starting to make more sense until I found out the Nimans' new company, BN Ranch, sells goat shanks, a cheaper cut they recommend, for $45/5lbs. I'm thinking the first tip about reducing meat consumption makes the most sense.
• Buy whole chickens. I’m on a semi-boycott of chicken. Screw PETA, it’s actually because chicken farmers are huge unregulated industrial polluters. But if I did buy chicken, I would argue that you should opt for the dark meat pieces. They are in less demand, i.e., cheaper, and dark meat is juicier and more flavorful than white meat.
• Buy foods during low demand periods. The Nimans say prime rib at Christmastime is in high demand as are spare ribs in summer so it’s cheaper to buy them off-season. But whenever I see those meats on sale, it’s always in their respective season. I just checked the July Von’s advertiser – beef ribs on sale for $1.29/lb. I mean, when is turkey the cheapest? Duh.
• Eat organ meats. What if you don’t like organ meats? Luckily I do. Except for kidneys. Which taste like pee. For me, the hardest part is getting sustainably raised organ meats. Where do I get grass-fed beef liver? Not at Whole Foods. Oh, wait. I can order it online for a mere $57.95/10lbs.

The Nimans on their 1,000 acre Marin County ranch So now that I’ve crapped on everything the Nimans have to say, I basically agree with all of it. And I really like them. I'm just jealous about the whole 1,000 acre ranch thing. My only beef (no pun intended (whenever you see “no pun intended” doesn’t that kinda mean “pun intended in case you missed it?”)) with their manifesto is the “affordable” aspect to it. Eating sustainably is expensive. And inconvenient. And time consuming. While I strive to do it because I think it’s important, at the end of the day, it's a luxury.

Look, I'm thrilled about my $400 hydroponic, organic tomatoes. They're awesome. And when I buy pesticide-free heirloom peaches at the local farmer’s market for four bucks a pound, I know I'm doing the right thing and that makes me feel good. But I can’t expect a working-class single mother of three to do the same just because it’s good for the planet. To say otherwise is unreasonable. Greg Critser wrote about this much more extensively (and more curmudgeonly) in his excellent article about food piety.

To be fair, the tips the Nimans offer are suggestions, not demands, and there is a lot of sense to most of them. My cattiness aside, I appreciate all their work and their articles about food. I just take it all with a grain of salt (pun intended in case you missed it).

Balsamic Blows

Traditionally, balsamic vinegar is made from boiled down grape juice. It gets its flavor as it ages in barrels made of various woods: cherry, chestnut, acacia, oak, ash, juniper and mulberry. Over several years, water evaporates so they keep pouring the vinegar into smaller and smaller casks. The finished product ends up tasting concentrated and raisin-y with woody, sometimes resinous, flavors. I have very generous friends who give me some fancy bottle of balsamic vinegar every year for Christmas. Not to sound ungrateful but I hate the stuff. Does this look appetizing? I think it’s so popular because it’s sweet and instantly recognizable. But it’s also incredibly overpowering. A sage-dusted apricot-balsamic glazed chicken breast is just going to taste like chicken dipped in balsamic vinegar. A microgreen salad with an herb raspberry-balsamic dressing is just going to taste like lettuce soaked in balsamic. It’s kind of like Adam Sandler – his movies are dominated by his semi-amusing schtick and there’s not a lot of variation from film to film. But you know what you’re getting so you’re not risking much by buying a ticket. Similarly, there’s not much mystery about what your balsamic dressing’s going to taste like. Me, I like my salads to taste like something more than just cloying vinegar. note that it says "gourmet" So my little trick is to add a tiny splash of seasoned rice vinegar in most of my salad dressings. Seasoned rice vinegar contains added sugar and salt and it has a neutral flavor with mild acidity. So it rounds out the sharpness of a red wine vinegar or lemon juice without adding the sledgehammer flavors of balsamic vinegar. It heightens whatever flavors you have in the salad. People could actually taste the nectarines I put in the salad. Just don’t add too much SRV (if Rachel Ray gets EVO, I'm taking SRV). A little sweetness goes a long way.

Nouveau Tater Tots

Bar Centro at The Bazaar My favorite meal of the year was at this fancypants restaurant, The Bazaar at the SLS. A Beverly Hills scene filled with emaciated model types who look like they haven’t eaten in weeks, it’s not really my scene. But the chef, José Andrés, trained under Ferran Adria at El Bulli and is fantastically talented. He manages to make molecular gastronomy satisfying as well as mind boggling. High-tech fare like spherified olives and foie gras cotton candy are counterbalanced by the more traditional tapas of sautéed mushrooms and Spanish tortilla. Every dish is gorgeously presented and more importantly, delicious. One of the standout dishes was the papas Canarias, potatoes in the Canary Islands style. Basically it’s baby fingerlings boiled in salty water with mojo verde. They look unimpressive, shriveled with a thin rime of dried salt, but they taste delicious.So when I had some friends coming over last night, I thought, how hard can it be? I tossed handfuls of salt into a pot of water until it tasted as acrid as seawater and boiled some baby potatoes from the farmer’s market in it for 25 minutes. I drained them and let the taters dry in a warm oven. Meanwhile I grabbed some various herb sprigs from the garden for the mojo verde – mostly Italian parsley, a couple sprigs of cilantro, a couple leaves of basil. I added a garlic clove, a teaspoon of lemon zest, a squeeze of lemon, a half a teaspoon of red pepper flakes with salt and pepper and then blended it with 3/4 a cup of extra virgin olive oil. close enough Despite perfectly cooked tuna and a grilled shrimp and nectarine salad, the potatoes were easily the hit of the night. Salty on the outside, sweet and creamy on the inside, the potatoes were almost identical to the Bazaar ones. They weren’t quite as salty which is probably a good thing. And I don’t quite remember what the mojo verde was like at the restaurant but my green sauce was tasty to the point where people were dipping tuna, bread and everything else in it. So I’m onto you, Chef José! Next, I’m ripping off your modern Caprese with spherified liquid mozzarella! I just need some sodium alginate

Summer Solstice is Carnage!

Last night my friends, Drew and Jenna, hosted grilled lobster night with me cooking. Truth be told, while I like lobster, I’m much more of a crab kind of guy. Better flavor, more versatile to cook with, blah, blah, blah. But it was the first hot day of the summer so grilled lobster seemed to be the appropriate plat du jour. I vaguely remembered seeing some cooking show where the guy split these live lobsters down the middle, slathered the insides with some sort of concoction and grilled them so I thought I’d do the same thing. It seemed to be a more humane way to kill them than dumping them in a pot. As I mentioned last week, it kinda sucks to deal with the crustacean death throes when you’re trying to entertain. I know some people will just have the fish monger steam their lobsters so they won’t have to deal with it, but the critters are still clanking around whether their in an industrial steamer or on your stovetop. Though I’ve never slaughtered a cow, my feeling is that anything you eat you should be prepared to kill. So I was mentally steeled to deal out some lobster death. Luckily, Drew, who had split lobsters before, offered to slaughter while I slathered. Thanks, Drew.

Lobster Slather 2 sticks of butter, softened 3 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced ½ onion, minced (or a big shallot) Juice of a lemon Chopped Italian parsley Chopped fresh thyme Salt and pepper Mash everything together.

It turns out that lobsters are hardy and obstinate creatures. Even split down the middle with their claws removed, lobsters continue to squirm. Their antennae twitch and their mouths flutter, as if gasping for air. It made slathering them with butter feel particularly savage. Post fact, I learned that some believe that lobsters are aware even when they are missing their appendages and cut in half. Oops. Between the initial carnage and me discovering that fact, I grilled the then unmoving lobsters and they were delicious, but I couldn't help but feel pangs of guilt in my lobster-filled gut. Later, I also learned that most lobsters go through this insane journey from Nova Scotia to Louisville (UPS’ hub city), where they are housed in a sort of lobster motel until they are overnighted to some restaurant or fish market where they flop around in a murky tank awaiting their torturous demise. I felt like the Hannibal Lecter of the ocean floor. I researched into other killing methods that were supposed to be "humane," but there was no definitive, painless way to murder a lobster. I even looked into the CrustaStun, a $4,000 gizmo that kills lobsters with 110 volts in five seconds. But then I thought, how big is the difference between five seconds of electrocution and 20 seconds of boiling water? It’s not like the lobster’s going to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder; either way it’s dead. And there’s even some debate whether lobsters even have a brain with which to feel pain. Sure they respond to physical stimuli, but, heck, so do plants. And wait a second - if I cut them in half, which half feels pain? I started to feel a little less homicidal (lobstercidal?). I mean, what's the big deal? While writing this, I’ve swatted three flies without remorse and isn’t a crustacean kind of like an overgrown underwater insect? Wait. By that logic, flies should be on my list of gastronomical treasures. Hm. On that note, it’s unlikely I’ll be eating lobster again any time soon.