Fraudulent Fish

As someone who doesn't really eat a huge amount of fish, it never occurred to me that you can fairly easily pass one fish off as another, but apparently the practice is pretty widespread. The New York Times says it's an astounding 20-25%. However, it sounds like the technology is available to make a big dent:

Policing the seafood industry has historically been challenging because even the most experienced fishmongers are hard pressed to distinguish certain steaks or fillets without the benefit of scales or fins. And many arrive in supermarkets frozen and topped with an obscuring sauce.

Older laboratory techniques to identify fish meat looked at the mix of proteins in flesh samples, but were unreliable, expensive and cumbersome. Investigators often relied instead on laborious legwork, tracking inconsistent fish names on paperwork as seafood moved across international borders. Eighty-four percent of seafood consumed in the United States is now imported, often passing through a multistep global supply chain.

With the new genetic techniques, the gene sequence found in a fish sample is compared with an electronic reference library like that maintained by the International Barcode of Life Project, which now covers 8,000 varieties of fish compiled by biologists over the last five years. The testing is now relatively cheap: commercial labs charge about $2,000 for analyzing 100 fish samples, for an average of $20 apiece, but the cost is under $1 per sample for labs that own the equipment.

Douglas Karas, a spokesman for the F.D.A., said in an e-mail that the agency had been working with scientists to “validate” DNA testing for several years. It recently purchased gene sequencing equipment for five F.D.A. field laboratories and hoped to use it “on a routine basis” by the end of this year.

Seems like it's going to take a while to ramp up though. Not like it wasn't hard enough to eat sustainably fished seafood in the first place, eh? Now you can't even be sure it's labeled correctly.

Morbier and Salami

Once I read that the Tomme de Crolles I had paired transcendently with salami, I knew it was inevitable that I was finally going to jump aboard the charcuterie train (the sensation that is sweeping the foodie nation!). Not to deceive you: actually making and home curing salami is still a bridge too far (where exactly am I going to cure it in a tiny Cambridge apartment?) - but I sure can buy it. So I headed over to Savenor's to see what they had, and after asking for a little advice, brought home two salamis from Creminelli.

Thus started my new afternoon snack tradition, as I slowly ate through the Tomme de Crolles and the Creminelli salamis... and it's been fantastic. Obviously cheese and meat is not the best snack from a calorie counting or cardiovascular health perspective, but it really is quite delicious and holds off my hunger perfectly for the the semi-random times I end up eating dinner (especially when cooking, but also when Anna teaches at night, etc).  Probably I should be eating an apple, but what's the fun in that? So I'm pretty happy with this new snacking regime.

The problem is... I finished the Tommes and salami a week ago. So what to do? Well buy more cheese and salami, of course. For cheese I picked mobier, a fairly mild rich and creamy cheese with a distinctive line of vegetable ash (note: not actual ash) through the middle... and for salami I chose two very basic ones from Creminelli: casalingo and sopressata. Casalingo is just a simple salt and pepper salami that anybody who has had salami is likely familiar with, while sopressata is equally ubiquitous, but with more of a flavor of garlic and wine.

Honestly, probably not the best paring in the world (nothing like the Tommes - which was awesome)... I think you need a funkier, more assertive cheese to complement the relatively strong flavors of the salamis. I had hoped that the basic choices in that area would work well here, but morbier may just be too mild. Not that it was bad by any means... it contributed a nice creamy richness... but not more than that, so I may need to head over to Formaggio Kitchen and ask for some advice. 

Russ Parsons Says Pork Should be Brined and Cooked to 155

As a follow-up to the USDA pork news from yesterday, we have Russ Parsons weigh in from the LA Times:

But here's the rub, albeit from the standpoint of flavor: Though some really good cooks do recommend cooking pork to less than 160 degrees, I think there is a good reason not to, and it has nothing to do with food safety — it just doesn't taste as good. Granted, the meat will be moister (particularly if you're talking about lean cuts from the loin and tenderloin). But as repeated taste tests have shown, pork cooked to lower temperatures has what is generally called a "serumy" or "metallic" flavor. Probably better to brine the meat for moisture, then cook it to at least 155 for flavor.

The recommendations err in the other direction when it comes to cooking other whole cuts to 145 degrees. That's not a bad recommendation for something like a leg of lamb, which has a lot of sinew and connective tissue that needs to be softened. But cooking lamb chops, racks or an expensive cut of beef to 145 degrees puts it squarely in the "medium" doneness range -- a culinary crime against good meat.

The first dissenter! I have no real idea about this, as I haven't cooked a pork chop in several years (pork should be fatty)... as when I cook pork it's generally a shoulder (or belly or spareribs or...) that's cooked to a much higher temperature to break down connective tissue. Ruhlman was calling for 135(!) on Twitter yesterday, so I'd be curious as to whether there will be any kind of foodie fight here. One can only hope.

USDA Says Pink Pork is Safe at 145

Good news if you know someone deathly afraid of underdone meat... but you like your pork juicy and tender, then you've got some governmental backup if you want to argue with them when they propose roasting it to a dry leathery crisp at 165.

Chinese Chili Scallion Oil Update

So one problem I noted with bottling 3/4 of a liter of chili scallion oil in a liter bottle, is that you can't really effectively reach down in there and dredge up the chili "sludge" (not an appetizing name, I know, but what else would you call it?). So I decided to strain out the excess oil and bottle it separately from the sludge (still covered in oil, mind you). I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with the strained oil (pretty color though, eh?)... I guess I'll have to start experimenting with Sichuan cooking... Ma Po tofu perhaps? I guess I could also cook veggies in it, or simply drizzle it over finished dishes... I guess I'll need to brainstorm a bit. Anyway, the chili sludge is the condiment I'm most used to using in our local ramen and pho places, so I don't find expect using it to be a problem... like in the recipe for vegetarian pho (from Veggie Times) we made this weekend:



I guess I'll just need to make it more often. I have some more comments on making the oil (and preserved lemons) here.

UPDATE of update: Great drizzled on pizza... this is confirmed.

A Vegetarian Dinner via The Essential New York Times Cookbook

Anna got Amanda Hesser's The Essential New York Times Cookbook out of the library last week and has been giving it a bit of a test drive (I have yet to make anything from it). What you see before you is an entirely vegetarian dinner she made from its pages. From left to right we have: Baked Zucchini with Herbs and Tomatoes, Sautéed Asparagus with Fleur de Sel, and Sformata Di Ricotta (Ricotta Custard). Since the recipes are culled from The New York Times itself you can find some of them online, like the Baked Zucchini with Herbs and Tomatoes and the Sformata di Ricotta. No dice on the asparagus, but while it was good, it's not exactly an exotic recipe... and I don't really know about this "peeling asparagus" business. Allegedly peeling will help deal with the stringiness that you get with older asparagus, but that should be at the end (which you snap off) according to McGee. Peeling all the way up really doesn't make any sense to me: it results in asparagus that doesn't taste as much like asparagus and asparagus that is a hard to cut.

As for the other two... both quite good. I was surprised I liked the baked zucchini as much as I did, but it came out as a nice flavorful medley. I'd never had a sformata before, but I found this one to be surprisingly light... certainly not "airy" or any such thing... but despite it's substance, it didn't come across as heavy or too rich. The roasted cherry tomatoes help by adding a nice sweet pop.

Anyway, like I said, I've only paged through The Essential New York Times Cookbook, but I'm liking the it quite a bit... I only wish all the recipes had a beautifully written Amanda Hesser headnote. But being that the cookbook already weighs in at well over 900 pages, that's probably a bit unreasonable of a request. Maybe.  

D.I.Y.: Chinese Chili-Scallion Oil and Preserved Lemons

Kimchi was one of my favorite things to make (yes, ever)... and with that early success I've always had plans to pickle all sorts of things and make sauerkraut and, and, and.  Yet here we are a year and a half later and basically all I've made is ghee. Not that there's anything wrong with ghee, but I was hoping to have a little more "Do It Yourself" experience by now than making a few quick pickles in the course of a recipe. Well luckily for my (lack of) motivation, a while back The New York Times released a handy little interactive guide (if you just want recipes go here) on some simple D.I.Y. projects. There's plenty in there, from the aforementioned kimchi to crème fraîche, but the two projects I pricked were chili-scallion oil and preserved lemons. The former because it's my favorite condiment to dump into phở or ramen, but have never really found a good store bought equivalent for home use... the latter just because I've never had them before and a bag lemons and a bunch of salt are a lot cheaper than the $10-12 you pay for a small jar of preserved lemons.

So, some tips and issues. For the lemons, it seems a lot of recipes (including the NYT one) want you to cut the lemons into quarters and leave them attached at the base, so that you can get salt inside but so they can still sort of look like a lemon if you push the quarters together. I don't really have any idea why this is... aesthetics?  So I know exactly how much one preserved lemon is? I dunno, I feel like I can add four quarters together and still get one... and its seems really inefficient as far as stuffing lemons in there.  Why not just quarter them, squeeze out some juice into the jar, salt the squished flesh, and dump them in like that? Maybe a lemon preserving expert will come by and give my the reason... but not knowing the answer at the time, I followed directions for the most part (there were some gaps that offended my sensibilities, so I stuffed some quarters in to fill). What's also interesting is that two recipes I found didn't have you worry about whether the lemons were covered until after few days, whereas the NYT one seemed fairly obsessive about getting them covered from the get go. Presumably the salted lemons will exude more juice, but I squeezed out quite a bit trying to get them in the damn jar, so I don't expect I'll be pouring a bunch out in the coming days...  but I suppose I shall have to monitor and report back. Perhaps having them covered in the juice preserves the flesh better? Regardless, it takes at least 4 weeks to brine these babies, so it'll be a while before you see any Israeli Couscous with Roasted Butternut Squash and Preserved Lemon type recipes posted here.

As for the chili oil, there's not a whole lot to say. It makes about 3/4 of a liter, which is obviously a lot for a condiment... though it will last for ages. If you're good with fractions and cup to tablespoon conversions, it might make sense to half or third it for something more in the "small jar" size (though make sure you have a small enough saucepan). The simmering here is key to avoid any risk of botulism that you have with oils infused with raw garlic... the 15 minutes between 200-250 degrees is plenty, but this is something where you want an accurate thermometer. Too low and you won't kill the germs and too high and you've got rancid oil. Last night I used our old candy thermometer and compared it to my (admittedly exorbitant) Thermapen and the old thermometer was off by 30 degrees (and slow as molasses). You don't need to own a $100 thermometer to make this, but I would certainly recommend an accurate one (perhaps the RT600C for $25?).

UPDATE: I decided to separately bottle the chili oil and "sludge"... to much better utility I think. Read more about it here.

Terrior in Cheese

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

A pretty interesting (and short) discussion of how the environment a cheese is made in (i.e. terrior) can have large effect on the final product. This is most obvious in winter vs. summer cheeses, where often cows are pastured in the summer, but eat grain in a barn during the winter. I have never tasted such cheeses side by side, but allegedly the difference is quite noticeable... though whether you can really taste "summer in the Alps" or some such is not something I can confirm. 

T.G.I. Friday's Embraces Craft Beer

According to Eater, the beer availability will vary by state, but here's some of the beers you might be able to snag to wash down your next order of Loaded Potato Skins:

· Harpoon IPA

· Magic Hat #9

· New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale

· Goose Island Honkers Ale

· Abita Amber

· Alaskan IPA (Alaska only)

· Boulevard Wheat

· Uinta Cutthroat Ale (Utah only)

Some solid beers, but not exactly threating the existence of your favorite brew pub. While this change will have zero impact on my (lack of) desire to dine in a T.G.I. Friday's, it's good to see a better quality beer becoming more widely available.

EDIT: Yet another post that disappeared in the Great Blogger Crash of 2011 and has now magically reappeared. Not a post I especially missed, but I suppose there is no reason not to put it back up.

Saveur's Best Food Blogs of 2011

A few more food blogs for the RSS feed. And if that's not enough, they've got 50 more they liked but didn't make the cut for the finalists.

Why are Cambridge's Restaurants Better than Boston's?

I guess the assertion itself is fairly debatable (before I moved across the river and learned to cook I would have found the idea preposterous - not so much now though)... but even if we set quality aside, certainly the generalization that there are more "hip, new, and exciting" restaurants popping up in Cambridge, while Boston seems more inclined towards corporate restaurant groups, rings true to me. So why is this? The Globe argues it's regulation and licensing. For one, liquor licenses are a lot more expensive in Boston apparently, but there are other factors as well:

It’s simply a more comfortable environment in which to take risks. For one thing, as Bond points out, it’s less expensive. Perkins says restaurant rents in Cambridge average $30 to $40 per square foot, which jumps to $75 per square foot in Harvard Square. In Boston, the average is $40 to $50 per square foot, but it can go much higher. "Back Bay has gotten so expensive," he says. "We just sold a restaurant that rents for $100 a square foot. They don’t take any prisoners." Restaurants in Cambridge also tend to be smaller.

Navigating Boston’s licensing board and neighborhood associations can be tricky, Perkins says. "You’ve got Newbury Street, which wants trash pickup seven days a week. Bay Village is really tough; they’re not going to allow another liquor license in there. In Boston, for fast food you need a 36A permit for takeout. You don’t have that in Cambridge. There are codes all over. Outsiders avoid Boston because of the zoning and permitting; they’re a real toothache. We don’t welcome new people coming in. It’s easier in Cambridge."

Miller Munzer finds Cambridge a good environment for small operators. "There’s a different feel over here. There’s bureaucracy here as well, but in some ways the attitude is a little better. Cambridge just has more of a culture of independent businesses."

Kovel agrees. "Cambridge has been great," he says. "It’s a lot more business-friendly and is really embracing restaurants." When he applied for Catalyst’s liquor license, the members of the License Commission were encouraging. "They said, ‘This is great. We can’t wait to come in. We used to go to Aujourd’hui.’ We all had a laugh. They’re excited and willing to support you."

It's not really that surprising that having so much more expenses, paperwork, and local licensing boards to navigate tilts Boston development towards corporate groups with deep pockets and extensive staffs... whereas Cambridge has conditions more amenable to independent start-ups. Most people would naturally assume that the latter situation is the better one (I'd certainly rather try a new restaurant from a new chef than a high quality national chain), but new restaurants are prone to failure, often need 6 months to get their act and menu together, etc... while a another Legal Seafood is a known quantity and virtually guaranteed to succeed... so it's not hard to see why Boston would favor that, but it's definitely not going to lead to an exciting dining scene.

Duck Ragù

I'm not feeling particularly "bloggy" in the wake of making this dish, but I thought it was worth putting up the photo regardless. Sam Sifton's recipe is the one I followed, and I thought it came together rather well. You're obviously not going to find juniper berries in your average super market, but they are available online... and otherwise it's just a matter of getting your hands on duck legs. So if you;'ve got access to those things I say go for it: definitely recommended.

Glorious Pasta Water

In my opinion, this is one of Bittman's most useful blog post of all time. It's about cooking... not recipes... and it's about understanding what you're doing and how things can build.

Pappardelle with Caramelized Onions and Parmesan

Anna made this last night from a Martha Stewart recipe and I thought it turned out really well. A good illustration that a dish doesn't need 500 exotic ingredients and lots of fancy steps to be good. Sometimes simplicity is best.

Buy a Kitchen Scale

Slate weighs in. In all honesty, it's only a critical tool for baking, but that would change if more recipes were done by weight. Any marinade/sauce/vinaigrette where you're adding a ton of different ingredients in succession would be a lot faster and easier if you had weights... but alas nobody writes recipes that way.

EDIT: This is one of those posts that disappeared last week during the Blogger crash and has apparently been recovered.

Potato Tacos and Pinto Beans with Pico de Gallo

Last night I made these tacos de papa and served them with frijoles de la olla... the recipes came straight out of the May issue of Saveur, whose cover story is the home cooking of the Zacatecas region of Mexico. From Anna's tales of hardship surviving as a vegan in Mexico, I normally expect "authentic" Mexican cooking to be pretty vegetarian unfriendly, since lard (and other pig parts) plus meat based broths are used even to cook something like beans or rice... however there is no reason in principle that the hearty peasant fare of rural Mexico can't be compatible with a vegetarian diet. Now I don't know if Saveur adapted these recipes to be vegetarian, or whether this particular region isn't as fond of the lard (bacon butter!) as others... but regardless, this month's magazine has a couple of pretty unique Mexican vegetarian dishes that you're not likely to encounter at your local burrito joint (in New England at least).

The recipes for tacos de papa (potato tacos) and frijoles de la olla (pinto beans with pico de gallo) can be found here and here. Both recipes are pretty straight forward... and I don't have much to add... except watch it with the salt level in the filling for the potato tacos. The recipe suggest boiling your potato(s) in salted water, but since it also says to peel them... that's going to season them some while they cook (not true if you boil them skin on, which might be a better choice - though skinning hot potatoes is not a lot of fun without a potato ricer). I did not taste the potatoes before adding in the 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and they ended up a little overly salty...  so in retrospect, it makes more sense to mash your potatoes, garlic, butter, pepper, and cumin together and then add salt to taste.

Also, you'll need to soften your corn tortillas if they are store bought to have any chance of folding them into tacos. I've had some success with microwaving a stack wrapped in wet paper towels in the past, but this time Anna put them in the microwave with a cup of water and that seemed to work well too.

Are Nitrates/Nitrites Bad For You?

I've always had some vague sense that nitrates are Very Bad Things, and that I should stay away from them... and I've never really given a thought as to why. I imagine this is true of most people who don't know anything about charcuterie, but Ruhlman fights back against the myths:

The fact is, most nitrate we consume comes from vegetables. Nitrate we consume coverts to nitrite in our body, which is a anti-microbial agent in our guts. Sodium nitrite in bacon cures the bacon (more info in my safety concerns for charcutepaloozians) and then converts to nitrous oxide, so, while I’m not chemist, I have heard others suggest that you’re not actually consuming any nitrite by the time the bacon gets to you. Again, almost all the nitrate and nitrite in your body comes from veggies. It’s an anti-oxidant. Studies are coming out now saying it’s good for the heart.

It really does seem to be a relic of 40 year old studies and bacon marketing (No Nitrates Added!!!). An AJCN article from 2009 by Hord et al says the following:

Approximately 80% of dietary nitrates are derived from vegetable consumption; sources of nitrites include vegetables, fruit, and processed meats. Nitrites are produced endogenously through the oxidation of nitric oxide and through a reduction of nitrate by commensal bacteria in the mouth and gastrointestinal tract. As such, the dietary provision of nitrates and nitrites from vegetables and fruit may contribute to the blood pressure–lowering effects of the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet. We quantified nitrate and nitrite concentrations by HPLC in a convenience sample of foods. Incorporating these values into 2 hypothetical dietary patterns that emphasize high-nitrate or low-nitrate vegetable and fruit choices based on the DASH diet, we found that nitrate concentrations in these 2 patterns vary from 174 to 1222 mg. The hypothetical high-nitrate DASH diet pattern exceeds the World Health Organization's Acceptable Daily Intake for nitrate by 550% for a 60-kg adult.

So either vegetarians have the unhealthiest diet on earth, or maybe nitrates aren't really a big deal? Bacon very well might kill you, but it won't be from the nitrates.

Best Chef Northeast: Tony Maws

Only been to Craigie on Main once, but it was indeed divine. The rest of the winners are here.

Maine Lobster Season Begins

I went home to Baltimore for Mother's Day, and didn't do much in the way of exciting cooking... so I don't have anything interesting of my own to post today. Instead I'll link to an good news/bad news article about the prospects for Maine's lobster season.

Subway for Lunch

I don't really know what to make of this story, but I would certainly be remiss if I failed to link it:

They had been lured by the promise of a clandestine dining experience. (“Please go to the North East Corner of 8th Ave and 14th St,” read the instructions e-mailed early that morning. “There will be a tall slender woman there with jet black hair who is holding an umbrella. Please just go up and introduce yourself. Her name is Michele and she is quite lovely, but no matter how hard you press she won’t tell you about the adventure you are going on.”)

It's pretty fun read.

Clarified Butter

It only took me a year! Not to physically make it mind you... that takes like 15 minutes... but for whatever reason (laziness, cooking project ADD, etc.), even after being told time and time again that clarified butter (ghee) is incredible stuff... it's languished at the bottom of my "To Cook" list. Well, no longer! It's in my fridge now... and hopefully I'll figure out what to do with it in less than a year (since it's only supposed to last 3-6 months). I don't imagine that will be a problem.

David Lebovitz is your man here. He has the clearest and best illustrated instructions I could find. The general keys are: 1) low heat: it can go from golden to brown fairly quickly at higher heats, 2) a small diameter heavy bottomed saucepan: similar to the low heat, this will help keep you from browning your butter instead of clarifying, and 3) a fine mesh strainer, cheesecloth, and a funnel: the first two are key for clarification and the last keeps from making a mess. Two sticks of butter is enough to fill that cute little 8 ounce canning jar you see above.

A slightly different methodology was at O Chef:

Another method is to simmer the butter in a saucepan until the mixture separates. After the water has evaporated, the milk solids will begin to fry in the clear butterfat. When they begin to turn golden, remove the pan from the heat and pour the butter through a fine strainer lined with damp cheesecloth into a heatproof container. If the cheesecloth is damp, all the butterfat will pass through, otherwise some will be absorbed by the cloth. This method is a little fussier, but produces a clearer result.

This is actually what I did, since I had forgotten about the David Lebovitz post... though I got a little anxious at the end and didn't really let the milk solids get golden. So, since the water hadn't completely simmered off yet (i.e. stopped bubbling), I had a fine line of water at the bottom of jar... which you may be able to vaguely make out in the picture above. The damp cheesecloth seemed to work pretty well... though being that I've never made clarified butter, I can't comment on the yield... but I wonder if it led to a little more water getting into my finished product? Water isn't a problem from a spoilage standpoint, but it could lead to some splattering when the water boils off when the clarified butter hits the pan. Not the end of the world, but I'll have to consider heating it up again and simmering off and excess water (or decanting it) if it seems like a problem.

Serious Eats: Candied Jalapeños

An interesting idea. I'm pretty sure I've never had a candied jalapeño. As someone who once pickled a very scary amount of chile peppers, I have to commend the author on only candying a pound of jalapeños. Smart move. I could barely eat a fraction of those peppers; mainly because they seemed to get spicier and spicier the longer they sat in the brine... and at some point I could simply not tolerate the heat level (if I ate one Anna's eyes would water in the next room)... but also, that's more chile peppers than any reasonable, non-firebreathing, person needs.

Increasing Expectations

Jonah Lehrer at Wired has a nice post regarding a couple of studies about 1) how people can't distinguish between cheap wine an expensive wine in blind tastings... but 2) how if they're told a wine is more expensive they enjoy it more. I've mentioned this kind of thing a few weeks ago, but my angle was more from the behavioral economics scene than the "see what parts of your brain light up in an fMRI machine" one, and I also thought his take home message was particularly nice:

We should realize that we can make our wines much more delicious, if only we take the time to learn about them. Because we don’t need to spend a fortune on old fruit juice – price is not the only way to raise expectations. (It’s also, you know, an expensive way to raise expectations.) If my tippling experience has taught me anything, it’s that we can also make our wines taste better by delving into the history of the varietal or the region or the pretty picture on the label. And that’s why I will always be one of those annoying people who insists on muttering about malolactic fermentation while pouring Chardonnay, or on explaining the genetic kinship between Primitivo and Zinfandel when all you want is a damn glass to go with your red-sauce pasta.

It occurs to me that learning about cooking and food might be a nice way to "raise expectations" and make your food test better.

Weekend Cooking Roundup

So I went and made milk and honey ribs this weekend... but got finished so late on Sunday that I wasn't even hungry enough to eat them or photograph them. So kind of a blogging fail there... but they were (still are, in fact) tasty. I'd recommend them.

What you see above are pizzas we made on Friday. Both white pizzas, where the left is just some sautéed mushrooms and fontina... and the right is greens and goat cheese (Kale instead of Swiss chard in our case).