The library did it to me again. That shelf of new books, just as you walk in, beckons me every time I enter the building. There is always some book that I can’t pass up. Never mind that I have ten books checked out already and will never get them read before they’re due; I must stop and browse. Last week was no exception and, of course, there was a book I couldn’t leave without.
“What the World Eats” written by Faith D’Aluisio and photographed by Peter Menzel is a look into the kitchens of the world (and a kid-focused follow-up to their 2005 book “Hungry Planet”). Twenty-five families from twenty-one countries share with readers a glimpse of what a weeks worth of food looks like for each household.
The families are photographed with all the food they eat in a week displayed before them. These portraits are fascinating on so many levels. The meager rations of a family in a Chad refugee camp compared to the calorie-rich but nutritionally deficient fast food diets of the US are startling. Fresh fruits and vegetables take up much of the photos from countries where the majority of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Those colorful photos look so much more appealing than the boxes and bags of processed food on the tables of developed countries.
The kitchens themselves command attention, from a rug laid on the ground next to small cooking fires in Chad, Mali and Ecuador to the large modern kitchen complete with stove, refrigerator, microwave, and servants in Kuwait.
And let’s not forget about the people. The families range in size from four to fifteen, many of them dressed in traditional clothing. Some are photographed in front of the family shrine whether it is a true place of worship or just their TV sets. Some are smiling and proud of the food they provide for their families while some look a bit embarrassed by how much of their food doesn’t really look like food.
On the page opposite these portraits is a list of the foods pictured and their cost (in US dollars), what if anything was raised by the family, and a list of facts about the community and country in which the family lives.
The facts include information such as how much residents of each country spends on health care (Mali spends $11/person, the US spends $6,096/person) and what the rate of diabetes is (Mali’s rate is 2.9% while the US is 8.8%), how many people in the country live on less than $2 a day, and in some cases, the ratio of animals to humans.
Once you can tear your eyes away from the portraits, there are short biographies of each family, describing daily food gathering and preparation (plus more good photos). You’re taken along on a seal hunt in Greenland and the three mile hike down a steep hill to the weekly market in Ecuador (and the even harder hike back home up hill with the week’s groceries). You can see the struggle of the older generations to hold onto their food traditions while the youngest generation begs for what the authors refer to as global marketplace food, i.e. McDonalds, KFC, and Coke.
There are even recipes for things like Greenlandic Seal Stew and Pigskin Jelly (which I probably won’t be making anytime soon), all of which use simple techniques and local available ingredients. For those of us who don’t have a ready source for quandong, pig’s knuckles or pimento berries, there’s a note in the beginning of the book with substitutions.
Interspersed throughout the book are charts and graphs relating to global food consumption. These are laid out on two-page spreads, one chart per page, and are obviously selected for the interesting comparisons they make. For example, the chart that shows the number of McDonald’s restaurant in each country is opposite one showing the percentage of overweight and obese populations in those same countries. The take-home message is subtle but powerful.
This book fascinated me from beginning to end. I had never really thought about the fact that Greenland is below freezing 336 days of the year or what people might eat there to survive. I was amazed that 98% of the food in Kuwait is imported. I hadn’t realized how all pervasive corn flakes, ketchup and instant coffee are. I wanted to know more about each family; the brief peek into their lives was not enough.
As I read, I tried to imagine what my week’s worth of food would look like. I wanted to believe it was like the family in Guatemala, brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables with very little packaged fare, and not like Australia and Greenland which was predominated by meat and packaged refined foods. I’m guessing it would more closely match the family from France with its wide variety of mostly healthful food, some of packaged or prepared but with a good amount of fresh ingredients.
Once I found out there was another book to this series, I got on the library website and put a hold on it. I can’t wait to read more about the food lives of these families. Now I just have to make it past that first bookshelf without bringing too many other books home.
Vicki Reich reads and cooks in Sagle, Idaho. She wonders if she could bring herself to eat pig’s knuckles, fried seahorses, or cicadas on a stick, all of which were pictured in this book. She thinks she probably could if she was hunger enough. Could you? Let her know at wordomouth@yahoo.com.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
25 Random Things
I joined Facebook about a month ago (if you are not yet on it beware; it is the biggest time sucker since computer solitaire). It’s been fun and weird to see what has become of all my old high school and college friends. Lately, there’s been this flurry of notes, kind of like a chain letter. A friend sends you (and 24 other friends) a list of 25 random things you might not know about them. You’re supposed to compose your own list and send it back to them (plus sending it to 24 more friends). They are mostly fun to read; finding out your hippie friend was once a cheerleader is always entertaining.
I’ve wanted to send out my own list but can’t think of enough interesting things about myself that I haven’t already revealed to anyone who’d listen. However, while trying to think of a topic for this week’s article, it hit me that I know at least 25 random and interesting things about food, so here’s my list:
1. The two most expensive spices come from flowers. Saffron is the stigma of a crocus and is by far the most expensive and labor-intensive spice out there. It takes 70,000 flowers to make 1 lb of the fine dried threads. They are used for both their flavor and color, both of which diminish in the presence of light and heat, so store them in an airtight container in the freezer. The second most expensive spice is vanilla, which is the dried fruit pod of an orchid. The orchids are hand pollinated and the pods go through a lengthy processing and cure for months before they taste anything like vanilla. It takes 5 lbs of green pods to make 1 lb of vanilla beans.
2. The reasons the edges of blueberries turn green in muffins is because there was too much baking soda added to the mix. The alkaline environment reacts with pigments in the skin turning them green.
3. Cream of tartar is “harvested” from the inside of wine vats, or at least the tartaric acid comes from there and is then mixed with potassium hydroxide to make this slightly acidic baking aid. Add it to egg whites to get better volume when whipping up some meringue or use it the next time you make candy for a creamier mouth feel.
4. Honey never goes bad. It might crystallize (which you can fix by warming it slightly until the crystals dissolve) but it will stay sweet and tasty as long as you live. Archeologists found edible honey in Tut’s tomb.
5. There are over 15,000 varieties of rice.
6. There are three plants referred to as Bergamot (mentha citrate, monarda didyma, Citrus aurantium ssp. Bergamia). All three are used in making tea but only the oil from the citrus fruit Bergamot Orange is used to flavor Earl Grey tea.
7. Caffeine can kill you. That is, if you drink 100 cups of coffee in less than 4 hours (I’m not sure I could get that much down between all those trips to the bathroom).
8. The grossest part of drinking milk from cows treated with the genetically engineered hormone rBST isn’t the fact that you’re consuming the hormone or extra antibiotics but the fact that treated cows are very prone to mastitis which results in lots of extra pus in the milk. Yuck. Drink and eat organic dairy products to avoid this.
9. Tomatoes got a rough start in the culinary world. Before humans started to cultivate them, they were small and bitter, not the juicy, red orbs we know and love today. When they were brought to Europe, tomatoes were considered poisonous and it took about 500 years for them to gain acceptance and only if they were boiled for hours. Luckily we came to our senses. In the US alone, we eat 22 pounds per person per year. Unfortunately, it’s mostly in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce, not fresh and warm from the garden.
10. The first soup was thought to be made 6000 years ago out of hippo bones
11. The best thing to put out the fire of hot chili peppers is milk or some kind of dairy product. Just make sure it’s organic (see #8). And it’s really only a temporary relief; you may just have to wait the fire out.
12. Hop plants are related to marijuana and hemp.
13. When eating spaghetti, if you wind the strands all the way onto your fork, you’re more likely to get sauce on your shirt. Sauce on the last four inches of the strand can accelerate up to 9ft/sec as those ends come out of the sauce and onto your fork.
14. Mussels can live to be 50 years old, but most of the ones we eat are much younger.
15. Eating cheese at the end of a meal may help prevent tooth decay. Plus it’s a delicious dessert.
16. Back in the days that soldiers carried shields, they used them as cooking implements when they weren’t being used to deflecting body blows. They would even bake flat bread in them.
17. Some psychologists believe we eat hot chilies not because we enjoy the burn but for the pleasure we get from chemicals our brain produces to relieve the pain.
18. It makes no sense to call food grown with the aid of manmade chemicals “conventional” food. Growing food with manmade pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer has certainly not been the convention for very long. It’s been less than 100 years that we’ve used chemicals to grow our food. Before that everything was “organic”. Why isn’t organic food the convention?
19. The botanical definition of fruits and vegetables is much different from the culinary definition. Not only are tomatoes considered a fruit in the botanical world but so are green beans, eggplant, cucumbers and corn. Botanists consider anything that develops from a flower’s ovaries and surrounds the plant’s seeds a fruit. The culinary definition is based on taste and when in the meal we eat them. If it’s sweet and we usually eat it for dessert, it’s a fruit. If it’s usually a side dish or main course, it’s a vegetable.
20. We use herbs and spices because 10,000 years ago we got really bored with our new agrarian diet. As hunter gatherers, we were used to keeping track of hundreds of different tastes and smells so we wouldn’t eat anything that might kill us. When we started living off of wheat, barley, rice and corn our taste buds and olfactory senses missed the diversity, so we started experimenting with herbs and spices to make food more interesting. We’re still at it.
21. The blue color of poppy seeds is an optical illusion. The seed casing is actually brown but there is a coating of tiny crystals of calcium oxalate over the casing that acts as prisms, reflecting blue wavelengths to our eye.
22. The word pumpernickel derives from two German dialect words meaning fart and devil. Not surprising. It is a high fiber bread after all.
23. Less than 4% of salt produced each year goes into food; hard to believe after eating a bowl of canned soup.
And for dessert:
24. Ice cream headaches are caused when a nerve center in the roof of your mouth overreacts to the cold of the ice cream and causes blood vessels to quickly dilate in your head in an effort to warm up your brain.
25. And lastly this bit of personal trivia: I eat at least a small bite of dark chocolate everyday. For health reasons, of course.
I’ve wanted to send out my own list but can’t think of enough interesting things about myself that I haven’t already revealed to anyone who’d listen. However, while trying to think of a topic for this week’s article, it hit me that I know at least 25 random and interesting things about food, so here’s my list:
1. The two most expensive spices come from flowers. Saffron is the stigma of a crocus and is by far the most expensive and labor-intensive spice out there. It takes 70,000 flowers to make 1 lb of the fine dried threads. They are used for both their flavor and color, both of which diminish in the presence of light and heat, so store them in an airtight container in the freezer. The second most expensive spice is vanilla, which is the dried fruit pod of an orchid. The orchids are hand pollinated and the pods go through a lengthy processing and cure for months before they taste anything like vanilla. It takes 5 lbs of green pods to make 1 lb of vanilla beans.
2. The reasons the edges of blueberries turn green in muffins is because there was too much baking soda added to the mix. The alkaline environment reacts with pigments in the skin turning them green.
3. Cream of tartar is “harvested” from the inside of wine vats, or at least the tartaric acid comes from there and is then mixed with potassium hydroxide to make this slightly acidic baking aid. Add it to egg whites to get better volume when whipping up some meringue or use it the next time you make candy for a creamier mouth feel.
4. Honey never goes bad. It might crystallize (which you can fix by warming it slightly until the crystals dissolve) but it will stay sweet and tasty as long as you live. Archeologists found edible honey in Tut’s tomb.
5. There are over 15,000 varieties of rice.
6. There are three plants referred to as Bergamot (mentha citrate, monarda didyma, Citrus aurantium ssp. Bergamia). All three are used in making tea but only the oil from the citrus fruit Bergamot Orange is used to flavor Earl Grey tea.
7. Caffeine can kill you. That is, if you drink 100 cups of coffee in less than 4 hours (I’m not sure I could get that much down between all those trips to the bathroom).
8. The grossest part of drinking milk from cows treated with the genetically engineered hormone rBST isn’t the fact that you’re consuming the hormone or extra antibiotics but the fact that treated cows are very prone to mastitis which results in lots of extra pus in the milk. Yuck. Drink and eat organic dairy products to avoid this.
9. Tomatoes got a rough start in the culinary world. Before humans started to cultivate them, they were small and bitter, not the juicy, red orbs we know and love today. When they were brought to Europe, tomatoes were considered poisonous and it took about 500 years for them to gain acceptance and only if they were boiled for hours. Luckily we came to our senses. In the US alone, we eat 22 pounds per person per year. Unfortunately, it’s mostly in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce, not fresh and warm from the garden.
10. The first soup was thought to be made 6000 years ago out of hippo bones
11. The best thing to put out the fire of hot chili peppers is milk or some kind of dairy product. Just make sure it’s organic (see #8). And it’s really only a temporary relief; you may just have to wait the fire out.
12. Hop plants are related to marijuana and hemp.
13. When eating spaghetti, if you wind the strands all the way onto your fork, you’re more likely to get sauce on your shirt. Sauce on the last four inches of the strand can accelerate up to 9ft/sec as those ends come out of the sauce and onto your fork.
14. Mussels can live to be 50 years old, but most of the ones we eat are much younger.
15. Eating cheese at the end of a meal may help prevent tooth decay. Plus it’s a delicious dessert.
16. Back in the days that soldiers carried shields, they used them as cooking implements when they weren’t being used to deflecting body blows. They would even bake flat bread in them.
17. Some psychologists believe we eat hot chilies not because we enjoy the burn but for the pleasure we get from chemicals our brain produces to relieve the pain.
18. It makes no sense to call food grown with the aid of manmade chemicals “conventional” food. Growing food with manmade pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer has certainly not been the convention for very long. It’s been less than 100 years that we’ve used chemicals to grow our food. Before that everything was “organic”. Why isn’t organic food the convention?
19. The botanical definition of fruits and vegetables is much different from the culinary definition. Not only are tomatoes considered a fruit in the botanical world but so are green beans, eggplant, cucumbers and corn. Botanists consider anything that develops from a flower’s ovaries and surrounds the plant’s seeds a fruit. The culinary definition is based on taste and when in the meal we eat them. If it’s sweet and we usually eat it for dessert, it’s a fruit. If it’s usually a side dish or main course, it’s a vegetable.
20. We use herbs and spices because 10,000 years ago we got really bored with our new agrarian diet. As hunter gatherers, we were used to keeping track of hundreds of different tastes and smells so we wouldn’t eat anything that might kill us. When we started living off of wheat, barley, rice and corn our taste buds and olfactory senses missed the diversity, so we started experimenting with herbs and spices to make food more interesting. We’re still at it.
21. The blue color of poppy seeds is an optical illusion. The seed casing is actually brown but there is a coating of tiny crystals of calcium oxalate over the casing that acts as prisms, reflecting blue wavelengths to our eye.
22. The word pumpernickel derives from two German dialect words meaning fart and devil. Not surprising. It is a high fiber bread after all.
23. Less than 4% of salt produced each year goes into food; hard to believe after eating a bowl of canned soup.
And for dessert:
24. Ice cream headaches are caused when a nerve center in the roof of your mouth overreacts to the cold of the ice cream and causes blood vessels to quickly dilate in your head in an effort to warm up your brain.
25. And lastly this bit of personal trivia: I eat at least a small bite of dark chocolate everyday. For health reasons, of course.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A Free Skein
I was given a skein of very expensive yarn by the owner of my LYS to knit up a sample for the store. It's a very fine yarn of buffalo, cashmere, and bamboo and it was screaming out for a delicate lace pattern.
My first choice was this beautiful and intricate creation I found in "Victorian Lace". It was one of those lace patterns that you have to do something on every row. This involves purling two together and slip slip purling. These are not fun or relaxing stitches especially when you are left handed, reading the pattern backward, and have an unusual way of wrapping your yarn which makes stitches face the wrong way. I gave up. It was too hard and too much work.
I have never ever said this about knitting before. I've given up because a project wasn't turning out the way I wanted or I was bored or I got a better idea. I have never found knitting too hard. I annoy other knitters with my constant "try it, it's easy" or "you can knit anything you want to, I'll show you how easy it is". Knitting has never daunted me; it's intrigued me or made me study it to see how it was done but I have never stopped because it was too hard. I was humbled by a silly lace pattern.
To get my courage back, I searched out another really hard lace pattern but one that you only have to do stuff on every other row. This gives you a row to catch your breath (and any mistakes you made on the previous row). It also gives you the opportunity to look up and maybe talk to another human being (lace knitting can be very anti-social).
There are three kinds of lace: the easy kind where it takes one pattern repeat to memorize it and you never have to look at the chart again, medium lace where it takes several pattern repeats to memorize it and you have to keep the chart handy just in case, and hard lace where you have to be some type of savant to memorize the pattern and the chart goes everywhere with you.
My new pattern was definitely the latter but I would not give up again. I ripped out I don't know how many rows. I counted stitches every other row to make sure I still had them all with me. I knitted in silence (not even listening to a book on tape) for the first two pattern repeats and then suddenly I GOT IT.
I'm not sure when it happened but I could recognize when to yarn over and when to knit two together. I could tell immediately when I was off by a stitch and I stopped holding my breath at the end of every row hoping beyond hope that I would end up with the right amount of stitches for the border.
I got cocky. I took it out in public. I knit while watching a dvd. I carried on conversations. It was finally fun. Then, of course, I made a mistake and had to rip back a couple of rows and was humbled once again.
Then the bad news came. My LYS was closing up shop, going out of business after four years. We were all devastated and I had this very expensive skein of yarn that I was finally enjoying knitting and I was going to actually get the sample done before all the yarn sold. I ask Audra, the owner, what she wanted me to do with the yarn now. "Merry Christmas" she said.
So now this sample is going to be a scarf and I'm almost done and if I only had another skein of the yarn I might even get the pattern memorized (but I kinda doubt it). It's hard knitting but damn, it sure does look good now.
My first choice was this beautiful and intricate creation I found in "Victorian Lace". It was one of those lace patterns that you have to do something on every row. This involves purling two together and slip slip purling. These are not fun or relaxing stitches especially when you are left handed, reading the pattern backward, and have an unusual way of wrapping your yarn which makes stitches face the wrong way. I gave up. It was too hard and too much work.
I have never ever said this about knitting before. I've given up because a project wasn't turning out the way I wanted or I was bored or I got a better idea. I have never found knitting too hard. I annoy other knitters with my constant "try it, it's easy" or "you can knit anything you want to, I'll show you how easy it is". Knitting has never daunted me; it's intrigued me or made me study it to see how it was done but I have never stopped because it was too hard. I was humbled by a silly lace pattern.
To get my courage back, I searched out another really hard lace pattern but one that you only have to do stuff on every other row. This gives you a row to catch your breath (and any mistakes you made on the previous row). It also gives you the opportunity to look up and maybe talk to another human being (lace knitting can be very anti-social).
There are three kinds of lace: the easy kind where it takes one pattern repeat to memorize it and you never have to look at the chart again, medium lace where it takes several pattern repeats to memorize it and you have to keep the chart handy just in case, and hard lace where you have to be some type of savant to memorize the pattern and the chart goes everywhere with you.
My new pattern was definitely the latter but I would not give up again. I ripped out I don't know how many rows. I counted stitches every other row to make sure I still had them all with me. I knitted in silence (not even listening to a book on tape) for the first two pattern repeats and then suddenly I GOT IT.
I'm not sure when it happened but I could recognize when to yarn over and when to knit two together. I could tell immediately when I was off by a stitch and I stopped holding my breath at the end of every row hoping beyond hope that I would end up with the right amount of stitches for the border.
I got cocky. I took it out in public. I knit while watching a dvd. I carried on conversations. It was finally fun. Then, of course, I made a mistake and had to rip back a couple of rows and was humbled once again.
Then the bad news came. My LYS was closing up shop, going out of business after four years. We were all devastated and I had this very expensive skein of yarn that I was finally enjoying knitting and I was going to actually get the sample done before all the yarn sold. I ask Audra, the owner, what she wanted me to do with the yarn now. "Merry Christmas" she said.
So now this sample is going to be a scarf and I'm almost done and if I only had another skein of the yarn I might even get the pattern memorized (but I kinda doubt it). It's hard knitting but damn, it sure does look good now.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Stinking Rose
I’m reading a book about vampires. It’s not my usual fare but it caught my eye one day at the library and made its way home with me. Not having read much in this genre, I wasn’t sure what to expect. However, I wasn’t surprised when garlic was introduced in the first chapter.
The main character of the book grows garlic in his home, which has become a fortress against the vampires. He has to harvest, peel and chop lots of garlic to keep the fiends from invading his house and he can no longer stand the smell.
I couldn’t relate.
Garlic is a staple food in our house. We have a five foot long braid of it hanging by the fridge and we’ll be lucky if it lasts until next year’s crop is ready. It goes in almost everything we cook. Garlic adds delicious, savory, meaty flavors to food that would be sorely missed. I even like the smell of my fingers after chopping lots of cloves.
Ironically, the smell and bite of the “stinking rose” probably evolved to keep me away (or at least my distant ancestors and the bugs and birds around at that time). Garlic and its allium relatives (onion, leek, chive, and shallot to name a few) developed an amazing defense system. The plant takes up sulfur from the soil and stores it in its cell fluid. The cell walls contain enzymes that, when combined with the sulfur, produce sulfurous molecules with a bitter smell and taste. In an untouched state, there is no smell, but as soon as you chop, mash, chew or otherwise damage the cell wall and allow the sulfur and enzymes to mix, look out! Garlic is the king of producing these sulfurous compounds; it makes about a hundred times more than any of its cousins.
No one is sure when we overcame garlic’s defenses and started to enjoy both the smell and taste of these bitter compounds but it was at least as far back as the building of the pyramids. Since then, there are very few cultures who didn’t embrace this vegetable. Italy, Korea, China, and my kitchen would be lost without it. Aioli, kim chi, skordalia, bruschetta are a few dishes that wouldn’t exist without garlic.
Garlic’s versatility makes it indispensable. Depending on how you cook it, at what temperature and in what medium, you’ll get different flavor compounds. Slow cooking over low heat in butter will give you sweet, almost caramel flavors. Blanching will take away the hotness and leave you with just a hint of pungency and a bit of a nutty note. Cook it on high heat in oil and you’ll keep those bitter flavors and most of the bite.
The variety of garlic also affects the taste. It’s hard to find more than one kind of garlic in the grocery store (and those have been bred for long storage and high yield, not for flavor) but during the summer, you can collect garlic from different farmers and see which varieties you enjoy the most.
Both soft neck and hard neck varieties grow in this area. It’s good to know what type you’re getting. Hard neck garlic doesn’t store well but they have big juicy flavorful cloves and produce garlic scapes (my favorite early summer treat from the market). Soft necks will last all winter and can be braided into beautiful plaits that hang on your wall and give you easy access to locally grown garlic even as the snow falls.
Garlic not only tastes good but may be good for you. Research is being done on garlic’s effect on cholesterol and blood sugar, and on its antibiotic and antifungal properties. Someone even did a study that found adding fresh garlic to mouthwash had an antimicrobial effect; it just didn’t do much for the participants’ breath.
And it is the fear of bad breath that keeps some people from eating this noble bulb. It is not an ungrounded fear since eating garlic can give you a bad case of halitosis. Eating salad, parsley, or an apple after indulging can help with the immediate bad breath. However, as garlic passes through your digestive system, another sulfurous compound is produced that is then expelled from the body through sweat, saliva, dandruff and even earwax. My cure for this is to hang out with other garlic eaters. They’ll never notice.
As I was writing this article, I kept getting phantom whiffs of garlic. It seemed that just writing about it was enough to invoke its delectable smell in my brain. It was making me hungry and I began fantasizing about roasting garlic (my most favorite way to cook garlic) for dinner. When I got up from my desk and went to the kitchen, I realized it wasn’t a fantasy but the emanations from the loaf of garlic parmesan bread sitting on the counter. I made some toast and started peeling cloves for dinner.
Vicki Reich gave into garlic breath years ago and only occasionally gives in and has a mint. It’s a rare night when garlic is not consumed at her house in Sagle, ID and it’s even rarer that she gets a cold. She can be reached at wordomouth@yahoo.com.
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Serves 4
2 heads garlic, split into cloves and peeled
5 T olive oil
2 T+ 3 T butter, divided
1 t sugar
4 medium Yukon Gold Potatoes, cut into quarters, peeling is optional
¾ c milk, warmed
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 350 F.
In an oven-proof pan, melt oil, 2 T butter and sugar. Add garlic and toss to coat. Place pan in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until garlic is soft as lightly browned. Set aside.
Meanwhile place potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook potatoes until a fork pierces them easily, about 25 minutes.
When the potatoes are done, drain them and return them to the pot. Add the garlic and any juices in the pan and mash the potatoes and garlic thoroughly. Turn the heat on very low and add the butter. Slowly stir in the milk. Mix well until creamy and the butter is melted. Serve immediately.
The main character of the book grows garlic in his home, which has become a fortress against the vampires. He has to harvest, peel and chop lots of garlic to keep the fiends from invading his house and he can no longer stand the smell.
I couldn’t relate.
Garlic is a staple food in our house. We have a five foot long braid of it hanging by the fridge and we’ll be lucky if it lasts until next year’s crop is ready. It goes in almost everything we cook. Garlic adds delicious, savory, meaty flavors to food that would be sorely missed. I even like the smell of my fingers after chopping lots of cloves.
Ironically, the smell and bite of the “stinking rose” probably evolved to keep me away (or at least my distant ancestors and the bugs and birds around at that time). Garlic and its allium relatives (onion, leek, chive, and shallot to name a few) developed an amazing defense system. The plant takes up sulfur from the soil and stores it in its cell fluid. The cell walls contain enzymes that, when combined with the sulfur, produce sulfurous molecules with a bitter smell and taste. In an untouched state, there is no smell, but as soon as you chop, mash, chew or otherwise damage the cell wall and allow the sulfur and enzymes to mix, look out! Garlic is the king of producing these sulfurous compounds; it makes about a hundred times more than any of its cousins.
No one is sure when we overcame garlic’s defenses and started to enjoy both the smell and taste of these bitter compounds but it was at least as far back as the building of the pyramids. Since then, there are very few cultures who didn’t embrace this vegetable. Italy, Korea, China, and my kitchen would be lost without it. Aioli, kim chi, skordalia, bruschetta are a few dishes that wouldn’t exist without garlic.
Garlic’s versatility makes it indispensable. Depending on how you cook it, at what temperature and in what medium, you’ll get different flavor compounds. Slow cooking over low heat in butter will give you sweet, almost caramel flavors. Blanching will take away the hotness and leave you with just a hint of pungency and a bit of a nutty note. Cook it on high heat in oil and you’ll keep those bitter flavors and most of the bite.
The variety of garlic also affects the taste. It’s hard to find more than one kind of garlic in the grocery store (and those have been bred for long storage and high yield, not for flavor) but during the summer, you can collect garlic from different farmers and see which varieties you enjoy the most.
Both soft neck and hard neck varieties grow in this area. It’s good to know what type you’re getting. Hard neck garlic doesn’t store well but they have big juicy flavorful cloves and produce garlic scapes (my favorite early summer treat from the market). Soft necks will last all winter and can be braided into beautiful plaits that hang on your wall and give you easy access to locally grown garlic even as the snow falls.
Garlic not only tastes good but may be good for you. Research is being done on garlic’s effect on cholesterol and blood sugar, and on its antibiotic and antifungal properties. Someone even did a study that found adding fresh garlic to mouthwash had an antimicrobial effect; it just didn’t do much for the participants’ breath.
And it is the fear of bad breath that keeps some people from eating this noble bulb. It is not an ungrounded fear since eating garlic can give you a bad case of halitosis. Eating salad, parsley, or an apple after indulging can help with the immediate bad breath. However, as garlic passes through your digestive system, another sulfurous compound is produced that is then expelled from the body through sweat, saliva, dandruff and even earwax. My cure for this is to hang out with other garlic eaters. They’ll never notice.
As I was writing this article, I kept getting phantom whiffs of garlic. It seemed that just writing about it was enough to invoke its delectable smell in my brain. It was making me hungry and I began fantasizing about roasting garlic (my most favorite way to cook garlic) for dinner. When I got up from my desk and went to the kitchen, I realized it wasn’t a fantasy but the emanations from the loaf of garlic parmesan bread sitting on the counter. I made some toast and started peeling cloves for dinner.
Vicki Reich gave into garlic breath years ago and only occasionally gives in and has a mint. It’s a rare night when garlic is not consumed at her house in Sagle, ID and it’s even rarer that she gets a cold. She can be reached at wordomouth@yahoo.com.
Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Serves 4
2 heads garlic, split into cloves and peeled
5 T olive oil
2 T+ 3 T butter, divided
1 t sugar
4 medium Yukon Gold Potatoes, cut into quarters, peeling is optional
¾ c milk, warmed
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 350 F.
In an oven-proof pan, melt oil, 2 T butter and sugar. Add garlic and toss to coat. Place pan in oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until garlic is soft as lightly browned. Set aside.
Meanwhile place potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook potatoes until a fork pierces them easily, about 25 minutes.
When the potatoes are done, drain them and return them to the pot. Add the garlic and any juices in the pan and mash the potatoes and garlic thoroughly. Turn the heat on very low and add the butter. Slowly stir in the milk. Mix well until creamy and the butter is melted. Serve immediately.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Pizza Party
This is my second winter in Sagle and it’s another doozy. I’m no stranger to winter, having lived just 120 miles south of here in
Cranking up the oven is not the most efficient way to heat a house unless, of course, you can make something delicious in it while it’s good and hot. After consuming more than my share of sweets over the holidays, I was looking for a savory reason to turn the oven up to its hottest. Having a pizza party was the perfect excuse.
The pizzas I planned to make for the party would be a far cry from the original pizza that developed in
Pizza was sold on the streets in the poor sections of
Italian immigrants brought pizza with them to the US but it didn’t gain popularity until soldiers who had served in
But enough about pizza from long ago and far away, let’s plan our North Idaho style pizza party (
As for toppings, if you like it on its own, it’ll taste even better on a pizza. I’ve used everything from your standard pepperoni and cheese to grilled chicken in peanut sauce, to just olive oil and grilled onions. My only rules for toppings are they shouldn’t be too wet or they’ll make the crust soggy, and any meat should be pre-cooked. Sauté the mushrooms first and use Roma tomatoes instead of beefsteak if you’re going to use fresh tomatoes. Fry up your bacon and brown your sausages before you start building your pies
For our party we used anchovies, basil, black olives, green onions, mushrooms, Italian sausage, kalamata olives, pepperoni, pesto, roasted garlic cloves, sautéed onions, smokies, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste seasoned with oregano and basil, and lots of cheese: cheddar, feta, mozzarella, and provolone. Everything was chopped, shredded, sautéed or sliced and put into bowls before the guests arrived.
You don’t need any special equipment to make pizzas. If you have a pizza stone and a peel, your crusts might be a bit crisper, but you can make a delicious pie on a baking sheet as well.
When guests arrive, divide the dough into as many balls as there will be pies and start spreading the first one out. You can use a rolling pin but half the fun is stretching the dough out by hand. The thick and thin sections that result from hand-forming give the crust more interest and flavor. If you’re feeling daring, try twirling one around on your knuckles.
When the dough is roughly 12 inches in diameter, place it on a baking sheet or a cornmeal-coated peal and start piling on the toppings. This is when the fun really starts. I like to stare into all the bowls of toppings and try to imagine what the different combinations will taste like (but not for too long, I want to get the thing in the oven so I can have a real bite). There are no rules. You can put the cheese down first and top it with a sauce. You can arrange items neatly or just toss them on. You don’t even need to add cheese. Give everyone a chance to build their own pizza and enjoy the results.
When the first pizza is ready, place it in the well pre-heated oven until the cheese and crust are golden brown (about 10-12 minutes). In the meantime, start building another one. We eat them as they come out of the oven, slicing them into thin slices so we can taste each pie. You could have a more formal affair where you baked a couple at a time and actually sat down at the table to eat, but I love to stand around the counter, building one pizza while eating a piping hot slice of the one that just came out of the oven.
By the time the last pizza is done, your kitchen will bit a bit of a mess, everyone will be full but still eating, and your house will be nice and warm. And wasn’t that the whole point.
Vicki Reich just finished the leftovers from last weekend’s pizza-making extravaganza. She and Jon made six pizzas for six people and stuffed themselves. She’s well fueled to go out and shovel more snow. She can be reached at wordomouth@yahoo.com
Pizza Dough (adapted from Dough by Richard Bertinet
Makes 3 pizzas (9-11 inch diameter)
1 package instant yeast
18 oz. all purpose flour (approx. 3 ¾ c.)
2 t. salt
2 fl. oz. olive oil
12 fl. oz. water
Preheat oven to 475F. Mix flour and yeast together in a bowl then add remaining ingredients and mix until well combined. Scrape dough out of bowl onto work surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic (5-10 minutes). It will be a bit sticky. Add more flour judiciously; you want the dough to remain moist. Form the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly floured bowl and cover with a lint-free cloth. Let rise for one hour.
Turn the dough out onto the work surface again and cut into 3 equal piece and form these into balls. Cover with cloth and let rest for 10 minutes.
Working one at a time, flatten each ball into a disc and start to stretch the dough out into a larger circle. You can do this whatever way works for you; press it out with your fingers or the heel of your hand, lift it up by the edge and let it stretch down while moving your hands around the edge, drape it over the tops of your knuckles and gently stretch it out. As a last resort, you can use a rolling pin. When the dough starts to fight you and keeps springing back, let it rest for a minute or two and start stretching again to the desired thickness, keeping the edge a bit thicker than the center. Now it’s ready for toppings.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Flower Power
It all started innocently enough with a request from a friend to teach her how to make flowers out of yarn. I said sure, whenever she had time (mind you, I really had no interest in making flowers, I was just being nice). I was in the library a couple of days later and found Nicky Epstein's Crocheted Flowers and thought it would be the perfect place to start. I sat down to test out a pattern or two and haven't really stopped. I'm not sure I can stop, it's a bit addicting and there's always one more flower to try or one more bit of yarn that would be perfect for that sunflower and gee, wouldn't it be fun to make all the flowers for my June wedding. And with the holidays, I could make holly for all the presents. Here's a sample of the addiction to date. 
They are so fast and so fun that when I needed a handmade gift for a party this afternoon, I sat down and cranked out this necklace while my bread for the potluck was rising. 
I have a ton of work to do but all I want to do is make flowers. Someone help me!
They are so fast and so fun that when I needed a handmade gift for a party this afternoon, I sat down and cranked out this necklace while my bread for the potluck was rising. 
I have a ton of work to do but all I want to do is make flowers. Someone help me!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Hanukah Stocking
Jon's been bugging me about having my own stocking for x-mas (he wants to give me chocolate so I can't argue with him). I made one last year by finger crocheting some roving. The stocking was HUGE and funny but I wasn't willing to part with that much perfectly good spinning fiber in the name of Santa.
Besides, I'm Jewish, so I should be honoring my religion while partaking in another, shouldn't I? Thus was born the idea of a Jew Sock. Amazingly enough, I had the perfect yarn for it (okay, it's not so amazing if you've seen my stash) and after charting too many versions of the Star of David, I started knitting. Having just learned how to make a sock on my new-to-me knitting machine, I cranked out the sock part then spent an equal amount of time hand knitting the top. My mom would plotz if she could see it.
Besides, I'm Jewish, so I should be honoring my religion while partaking in another, shouldn't I? Thus was born the idea of a Jew Sock. Amazingly enough, I had the perfect yarn for it (okay, it's not so amazing if you've seen my stash) and after charting too many versions of the Star of David, I started knitting. Having just learned how to make a sock on my new-to-me knitting machine, I cranked out the sock part then spent an equal amount of time hand knitting the top. My mom would plotz if she could see it.
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