cooking

"Canned food is a perversion," Ignatius said. "I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul."

-- from A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.

I've been catching up on the weekly Working Class Foodies video podcast lately. Hosted by siblings Max and Rebecca Lando (along with Humphrey the dog), the show is an entertaining combination of frugal cooking, fresh ingredients, informative techniques, humor. Cool camera work as well. Definitely recommended.

The latest video is all about Beeramisu, a no-bake Thanksgiving dessert.

Chicken, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, pepper, bay leaves. Rice. A few years back I happened across an article and recipe, "Simple Chicken Adobo and Adobo-flavored Garlic Fried Rice", from On My Plate. It became an instant keeper after the first try, and I usually make it once a month or thereabouts.

It is not to die for so much as kill for. ;)

I made it earlier tonight, and there's nothing like that heavenly smell wafting through the kitchen, particularly (if you've had it before) as you anticipate the upcoming bliss.

It's pretty simple to make, too. I grab a two-poundish bag of frozen, boneless Chicken Thighs from Trader Joe's, and go with sticky rice made with chicken broth in my rice cooker. Simple as heck. Just be sure to allow for the 1-3 hours of marinating time. Overnight might be a bit much.

Via TED.com,

Batch to batch, crust to crust ... In tribute to the beloved staple food, baking master Peter Reinhart reflects on the cordial couplings (wheat and yeast, starch and heat) that give us our daily bread. Try not to eat a slice.

There's an article in the LA Times today talking about early North Americans being forced to change their diet to incorporate more plant life when the woolly mammoth and other megafauna began dying off. "When the woolly mammoth ran out, early man turned to roasted vegetables":

Long before early humans in North America grew corn and beans, they were harvesting and cooking the bulbs of lilies, wild onions and other plants, roasting them for days over hot rocks, according to a Texas archaeologist.[...]

Meadowlands and forest edges were filled with lilies, wild onions and perhaps two dozen other wild plants ready for the harvesting. The bulbs of these plants are about as nutritious as sweet potatoes, but their energy is locked up in a dense, indigestible carbohydrate called inulin. The only way to make the bulbs digestible is to roast them for two days or longer.

Via Daily Dish

Tara Parker-Pope in the NY Times blog "Well" had a good post yesterday on "Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables"

A growing body of research shows that when it comes to vegetables, it’s not only how much we eat, but how we prepare them, that influences the amount of phytochemicals, vitamins and other nutrients that enter our body.[...]

“There is a misperception that raw foods are always going to be better,” says Steven K. Clinton, a nutrition researcher and professor of internal medicine in the medical oncology division at Ohio State University. “For fruits and vegetables, a lot of times a little bit of cooking and a little bit of processing actually can be helpful.”

The complication arises not just from raw versus cooked, but more from what cooking method is used. As the article says, there often isn't one best method.

In January, a report in The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry concluded that over all, boiling was better for carrots, zucchini and broccoli than steaming, frying or serving them raw. Frying was by far the worst.

Still, there were tradeoffs. Boiling carrots, for instance, significantly increased measurable carotenoid levels, but resulted in the complete loss of polyphenols compared with raw carrots.

And there's also certain positive effects of combining certain vegetables with certain others. Yikes! For the neophyte omnivore, all the complications can be overwhelming.

The important point to take away is the idea of variety -- eat a bunch of different vegetables prepared a bunch of different ways. Keeps you interested and covers your bases.

Big article in the LA Times on "The power of produce"

Whether it fights cancer depends on which you eat, how you eat it -- and your genes.

Fruits and vegetables are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber and scores of phytochemicals that scientists are just beginning to understand, and studies have shown that people who eat more fruits and vegetables have a lower risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes -- and some kinds of cancer.

In a related story, "A common complaint? Preparing produce is time-consuming and inconvenient"