Archive for December 2010
Homemade and Easy-To-Make Hummus
Hummus served with sliced carrots, celery, and, of course, pita bread, for dipping is a healthy “fast-food” treat and perfect for a New Year’s Day party. The simple goodness of hummus is a reminder that a “quick and easy snack” need not be a product of a fast-food system, with its highly processed, food-like substances, albeit edible. A slice of whole grain bread with a nut butter, an apple, or some carrots dipped in hummus are satisfying fast foods, nutritious and delicious.
The Honest Weight Food Co-op [www.hwfc.com] in my hometown of Albany, NY, carries several brands of hummus. I especially like the hummus prepared by Vegan Creations of Castleton (Columbia County), NY. But at $5.09 for an 8-ounce container of roasted red pepper hummus or $4.49 for an 8-ounce container of sun-dried tomato hummus, I thought the time had come to figure out how to prepare homemade hummus, especially since organic chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans) are $1.49 per pound.
The priciest ingredient for making homemade hummus is the tahini. My food co-op offers Arrowhead Mills tahini, made from organic dry roasted hulled sesame seeds, at $8.19 per pound, while tahini made from roasted hulled sesame seeds, which are not organic, are priced at $4.19 per pound. Sesame, an annual flowering plant requiring 100 days to mature and a hot climate, is grown for its little seeds. It is “quite possibly the oldest spice known” according to a fascinating description in Edible, An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Food Plants (National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 2008). Noting that it was first cultivated for its oil and that Egyptian tomb drawing dating back 4,000 years show bakers adding sesame seeds to bread, the entry in Edible on sesame credits the ancient Greeks and Romans for first making a paste of sesame seeds. How wonderful in 21st century America to fill a jar with tahini and think about this ancient food which I will be using to make a hummus dip. Even at $8.19 per pound, I will be using only 4 ounces of the tahini, or sesame paste, at the reasonable cost of just over $2.00 for an organic ingredient.
A potato masher is an easy way to crush the cooked chickpeas. But if time is no big issue, I like to use a mortar and pestle. Still considered the best way of releasing the true aromatic flavors of fresh herbs and spices, this centuries old method of food preparation can be used to crush the cooked chickpeas. I recently purchased a beautiful grey marble mortar and pestle at my local kitchen supply store, Different Drummer’s Kitchen Co. [www.differentdrummerskitchen.com/], at a reasonable price of $13.99 for a mortar (“a vessel having a bowl-shaped cavity in which substances are powdered with a pestle” [Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition, Random House, New York, New York, 1968]) with a 4-3/4″ diameter x 4-1/2″ tall and its matching grey marble pestle. If you don’t own a mortar and pestle, it will be a purchase well-used. (One of the best-received Christmas gifts this past holiday was a marble mortar and pestle I gave to my son’s fiancée.)
1 cup chickpeas (garbanzos)
½ cup tahini (sesame paste)
1 lemon
small garlic bulb or a couple of cloves
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
3-4 tablespoons drained liquid from cooking the chickpeas
Rinse in cold water one cup of chickpeas. Place in a large bowl and cover with water and soak overnight. [Chickpeas must undergo prolonged soaking before cooking.] Drain the chickpeas and rinse under cold water. Place chickpeas in a large pot and submerge and cover with cold water. Cook over low to medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 90 minutes until soft. Drain the cooked chickpeas while saving the liquid in which the chickpeas were cooked.
Using a potato masher or the mortar and pestle, mash the chickpeas and place mashed chickpeas in a large bowl. After all the chickpeas have been mashed, add ½ cup tahini, the juice of one lemon, and two tablespoons of olive oil. Mince the small bulb of garlic or two large cloves of garlic and add to the mixture along with a tablespoon of sweet paprika. (The paprika will also give the hummus a nice orange/red color.) Add 3-4 tablespoons of the drained liquid from cooking the chickpeas to create the desired creaminess while stirring the mixture thoroughly. This recipe produces enough hummus dip to serve 8-10 guests. Enjoy (FWB 12/28/10).
Eat Your Carrots: A Carrot A Day Keeps The Grim Reaper Away
A new study conducted by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] has determined that there is an association between high levels of the antioxidant alpha-carotene and longer life spans. The researchers analyzed alpha-carotene levels in blood samples from more than 15,000 adults. The New York Times reports that according to Dr. Chaoyang Li, a CDC epidemiologist and lead author of the study, the results were “pretty dramatic.” Study participants, with higher levels of alpha-carotene in their blood at the start of the 14-year study, had significantly lower risks of disease and death over the period they were followed by researchers. According to the report in the New York Times, “those with the highest concentrations of the antioxidant [alpha-carotene] were almost 40 percent less likely to have died than those with the lowest; those with midrange levels were 27 percent less likely to die than those with the lowest levels.”
Pumpkins and carrots top the list of foods with the highest levels of the antioxidant alpha-carotene, according to a top twenty list at nutritiondata.self.com [a very useful website which provides comprehensive nutrition analysis based upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference]. With this CDC study in mind, carrots zoomed to the top of my shopping list. Inspired by Rowan Jacobsen’s American Terroir, I decided to compare the tastiness of carrots from three small family farms which offer carrots for sale at the Troy Farmers Market (in Rensselaer County, NY). One of the hopeful signs in the United States and Canada is the growing number of farmers markets: There are nearly 800 farmers markets shown on American Farmland Trust’s google map. I also found two additional sources of local carrots at my hometown’s food co-op, the Honest Weight Food Coop in Albany, NY [www.hwfc.com]. Most food co-ops are a great place to find local produce, and there are 300 food co-ops in the United States and Canada listed in a directory maintained by Cooperative Grocer .
The scene was set for a carrot tasting. With the friendly assistance of one carrot aficionado and another willing friend, who actually confessed that she wasn’t a big fan of eating raw carrots, we all boosted our levels of alpha-carotene with a surprisingly fun-filled tasting of local carrots grown near the Capital Region of upstate New York, which tested our palates in a surprising way. Although not as pleasurable as one of the coffee “cuppings” described by Rowan Jacobsen in American Terroir, we all learned to appreciate the concept of terroir, the taste of place.
Before we started our pursuit to boost alpha-carotene levels in our blood stream, we attempted to develop a standard for tasting carrots. We decided on four general categories for judging the carrots: (1) sweetness, (2) crispiness, (3) color and shape, and (4) aroma. We were especially pleased that all five of the carrots we tasted were designated as “organic.” The decision was unanimous: the carrots from the Farm at Millers Crossing in Hudson (Columbia County, NY) were the winning carrots with their sweet flavor, and pleasant crispiness (a moist texture without any graininess). These carrots also had a consistent color and size, which made for a nice carrot appearance. The tender, yet crisp, carrots from Slack Hollow Farm in Argyle (Washington County, NY) were a close runner-up with their juiciness and sweet carrot flavor. Nonetheless, there was absolutely no doubt that, at the least, the two carrot lovers among the three tasters would happily stock up on four of the five carrots we tasted and enjoy the crunchy way to higher alpha-carotene levels. The other tasty and wonderful carrots were grown by Little Seed Farm in Chatham (Columbia County, NY), and Dennison Farm in Schagticoke (Rensselaer County, NY). The exception were the carrots from Lakeside Organic Farm in Hadley (Hampshire County, MA). These carrots, suitable for cooking, would be fine in a tomato-based stew given their very deep orange color and large size, but for eating as raw carrots, they were bitter, unlike the other carrots we tasted. Enjoy some local carrots! (FWB, 12/27/10)
American Terroir, Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields
This past fall’s food festival of the Slow Food movement in Turin, Italy showcased 910 small-scale food producers from around the world. The only products from the U.S.A. on exhibit were beers at the American Craft Brewers Association exhibit. Disappointment over the lack of participation by small-scale food producers from the U.S.A. at the festival is somewhat ameliorated by Rowan Jacobsen’s erudite, yet humorous, American Terroir Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields (Bloomsbury USA, New York, New York, 2010) which celebrates great American foods “that are what they are because of where they come from.”
Terroir or “the taste of place,” usually associated with wines, has taken on a much deeper meaning, which is demonstrated by the record attendance, estimated at over 200,000, at this October’s Slow Food festival. Mr. Jacobsen loves food that is real and distinctive and he makes a strong case that “The amazing fruits and fish, cheeses and wine profiled in this book make obvious that places are not interchangeable.” He persuades the reader that the Americas (North, South and Central) have their share of foods “that are what they are because of where they come from” and presents some shining examples of great foods, including Geisha coffee grown in Panama’s lush Jaramillo region, apples from Eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, orange blossom honey from Florida, Totten Inlet oysters from Washington’s Puget Sound, slow ripened avocados from Michoacan, Mexico, raw milk, mold ripened cheese from Vermont’s Jasper Hill creamery, and chocolate ( “our most complex food with more than 600 different aromatic molecules”) from Mexico’s Chiapas province. Still, it was no surprise for me, as an upstate New Yorker, that Mr. Jacobsen leads off American Terroir with his discovery of a maple syrup which is “rich, creamy and sweet but not cloying” as if “somebody had melted a pad of sweet butter in it,” since maple syrup is so uniquely American.
According to Mr. Jacobsen, the only suitable terroir in the world for maple syrup is the Greater Northeast, described as a triangle running from Michigan to New Brunwick (Canada) to West Virginia. He explains in fascinating detail how only sugar maples have flowing sap with a “miraculous formula of high sugar content, a few flavor compounds and nothing nasty.” Besides explaining in readable and poetic prose how maple syrup is produced, Mr. Jacobsen sketches the history of maple syrup production. Until the Civil War, most maple sap was boiled down all the way to maple sugar in this early era in U.S. history when cane sugar from Florida and the Caribbean was not commonplace and “when the market wanted maple sugar” as a main sweetener. The writer finds poetry even in the modern innovation for maple syrup makers, who instead of hanging a bucket beneath each tap, now run the tap straight into a 5/16-inch tube of blue plastic: “A tubed sugar bush has an incongruous spider-webby look to it, with electric-blue lines zigzagging through the snowy woods, but it can feel pretty miraculous to stand near the collection tank and listen to an entire hillside’s worth of sap thundering into it.”
The extraordinary maple syrup, which Mr. Jacobsen discovers, is produced by Paul Limberty. His Happy Hollow, a one-man operation in Huntington (Chittenden County), Vermont, has 2000 taps in his maple grove, which constitutes “one of the highest sugar bushes in the world at 2100 feet.” Mr. Limberty tastes every single barrel of syrup that comes off his evaporator, jots down a few tasting notes in his log, and when he hits a batch especially excellent it becomes his certified organic Private Reserve line. In Mr. Jacobsen’s eloquent words, a bottle of this maple syrup, called Dragonfly Sugarworks’ Private Reserve, “contains the essence of the life force of a single day in a high mountain maple grove” [www.dragonflysugarworks.com].
The pleasure of reading about this Vermont maple syrup prompted a visit to the local supermarket, which confirmed my fears that the aggressive work of marketers have co-opted the world of pancake syrups. As a child growing up in the 1950’s, the bottle of Log Cabin syrup, represented a happy sight, and its distinctive, old-fashioned logo was still there on the supermarket shelves of pancake syrup: the folksy log cabin, with a brightly lit interior, snow covered roof, standing starkly on a snow covered hill with a scattering of pine trees. My dreamy reverie turned sour with a close examination of the bottle. The front label displayed a marketer’s understanding of the American consumers’ growing unease over edible food-like substances. In capitalized words, the label announced: “LOG CABIN ORIGINAL SYRUP NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.” The back label provided the details on the actual ingredients: “corn syrup, liquid sugar (Natural sugar, water), water, salt, natural and artificial flavors (lactic acid), cellulose gum, preservatives (sorbic acid, sodium benzoate), sodium hexametaphosphates, caramel color, phosphoric acid.”
I then eyed on the grocery shelf an old-fashioned, heavy plastic jug of Log Cabin syrup that looked just like the plastic jugs that maple syrup is often sold in. Its front label noted “A Family Tradition Since 1887” and the words “All Natural Syrup.” This pancake syrup did appear to have a better list of ingredients: “syrup (brown rice, sugar maple [4%]), water, natural flavor, xanthan gum (natural thickener), caramel color, citric acid.” Touting “no artificial flavor or colors” as well as “No high fructose corn-syrup or preservative,” the marketers felt confident to note “We use only the finest All Natural ingredients in this authentic syrup.” The lesser quality Log Cabin syrup was priced at $5.05 per quart compared to the “All Natural Syrup” at $7.99 per quart. This trip to the supermarket made me wonder what exactly was in the Log Cabin syrup of the 1950’s that I poured on my pancakes. As a footnote, Vermont Maid Syrup, with its distinctive green label of a pig-tailed red haired lass with rosy cheeks, and offering “The Taste New England Loves”, although a “bargain” at a sale price of $1.99 per pound (or $3.98 per quart), was clearly not a better choice than the Log Cabin syrup. A chemist would be needed to translate the ingredients label: “high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, water, natural and artificial maple flavor, natural and artificial flavors (contains: propylene glycol, water, corn syrup, natural and artificial flavor, dextrose, caramel color, sulfites), cellulose gum, caramel color (sulfites), sodium benzoate, and sorbic acid (to preserve freshness)”.
I didn’t want to end my focus on maple syrup by this close examination of the concoctions marketed on the supermarket shelves, so a visit to The Honest Weight Food Co-op in my hometown of Albany, New York was next [www.hwfc.com]. The food co-op sells 3 types of maple syrup in its bulk department, and with Mr. Jacobsen’s chapter on maple syrup still in mind, I decided to compare the taste of the three on hand, all produced by Bruce Roblee Adirondack Maple Farm of Fonda (Montgomery County), New York. The dark grade A organic maple syrup I decided to purchase was delicious- nutty, salty, and sweet at the same time. Priced at $6.69 per pound, there is no doubt it was substantially pricier than the supermarket pancake syrups. But my solution was easy: I’ll use less syrup on my pancakes and enjoy a real American food from an upstate New York local producer.
As a closing note, might Paul Limberty, the maple syrup maker profiled by Mr. Jacobsen, be persuaded to participate in the next Slow Food’s festival of local foods? Kudos to Rowan Jacobsen for spotlighting the positive in American agriculture as well as his detailed histories of the origins of maple syrup, coffee and chocolate in his memorable American Terroir (FWB 12/13/10).
Oats and Honey Bread
For nearly 40 years, I’ve baked homemade loaves of bread, and one of my favorite recipes comes from Beard on Bread (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 1973). The title of this wonderful book always makes me smile: James Beard was born to love bread, and with the transposition of one letter, his name is bread. His “100 favorite bread recipes,” carefully transcribed in this “everything you need to know about bread-baking” cookbook, confirm this truth. Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread, included among the 100 bread recipes, in Mr. Beard’s words “is as good an oatmeal bread as I have ever eaten, and it makes wonderful toast.” I can personally attest to his judgment having used this recipe, with occasional minor variations, hundreds of times in the past 40 years, as does the well-worn page 106 of Beard on Bread, which is still available in trade paperback [www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780679755043].
Over the years, I have used 100% organic thick-cut rolled oats and organic whole wheat flour. But in the past few months, my local food co-op, the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany, N.Y. [www.hwfc.com], has been carrying whole wheat flour in bulk, which is milled in upstate New York by North Country Farms of Watertown (Jefferson County) from wheat grown in upstate New York by Robbins Farm in Sackets Harbor (Jefferson County). At 52 cents per pound, it is a bargain compared to the 99 cents per pound for the organic whole wheat flour I’ve been using (grown in the breadbasket of the American Midwest but milled in upstate New York by Champlain Valley Milling). The fact that the wheat was locally grown, in my mind, did not really counterbalance the lack of an “organic” designation, and I continued to use the organic whole wheat flour. Nonetheless, after some Hamlet-like decision-making, North Country Farms’ whole wheat flour, which is stone-ground, unbleached and not treated with potassium bromate or bleaching agents, won me over: grown locally, milled locally, produced locally (and not hauled cross-country).
With its brown, grainy flecks, this local upstate New York whole wheat flour produced delicious loaves with almost a nutty flavor. Perhaps with some urging from the public, Robbins Farm will be encouraged to grow its wheat organically. I, for one, would willingly and happily pay more if it had the organic designation.
The Honest Weight Food Co-op has also begun to sell organic, cold-pressed local sunflower oil produced by Stolor Organics in Cazenovia (Madison County) [www.stolororganics.com] which I used in this recipe. In addition, in lieu of the molasses called for in the recipe for Maryetta’s Oatmeal Bread, I used Lloyd Spear’s organic raw honey from nearby Schenectady County. This wonderful raw honey, fairly priced at $25.00 for a 5 pound jar at the food co-op (though my most recent purchase was a 5 pound jar at the Troy Farmers Market [www.troymarket.org/] directly from Mr. Spear at only $21.50) is “produced from cappings and comb honey that are drained and from honey straight from the extractor, complete with all the natural enzymes, pollens, vitamins and complex sugars” according to the label on the jar. The flavor of honey is much milder than molasses, but worked well as a substitute. With flour, honey and vegetable oil all sourced in upstate New York, my most recent homemade loaves of oats and honey bread qualify as a product of upstate New York, except for the organic rolled oats which come from the Canadian plains of Saskatchewan.
3 cups rolled oats
4 cups boiling water
7-8 cups whole wheat flour
4 ½ teaspoons or 2 packages active dried yeast
4 tablespoons sunflower seed oil (or other healthy oil)
½ cup of honey
Pour the boiling water over the oats in a large bowl and leave for one hour to cool.
Stir in 2 cups of flour and the yeast. Place in a warm, draft free spot and allow to rise for one hour.
Stir down, and work in oil, honey and two cups of flour.
Stir in additional remaining flour to make a stiff dough.
Turn out on a floured board and knead, adding extra flour if necessary, to make a smooth, pliable, firm dough- approximately 10 minutes.
Divide the dough into loaves to fit 3 oiled or buttered 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf tins.
Allow to rise again for one hour until doubled in bulk.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven 45-50 minutes.
Cool on racks before slicing. Enjoy (FWB 12/1/10).
