Tag Archives: Food Talk

Two Interesting Health Newsbytes

I found two really great bits of health/food information lately that I recommend catching and wanted to share

First up: The Splendid Table had a bit on willpower.  Not willpower, the fuzzy metaphysical concept; no, willpower the expenditure of mental energy to delay gratification, make good decisions, or otherwise act in a responsible manner.  And even the phrase “mental energy” doesn’t really belong.  We’re not talking about “energy” the way newage hippies talk about energy.  We’re talking about physically burning glucose to power your brain.  It’s a physical explanation for what isn’t typically thought of as a physical trait.    This has bearing for all facets of life, not just food.

Then, the BBC has some show called “The Truth About Food,” which is the kind of thing I wish were on the Food Network, instead of some horror show like Fat Chef, but is also the kind of thing that would never fly in the States.  There was an episode about slimming down that I think anybody thinking about their weight will find useful.  My wife had been doing the South Beach thing for a while, and (aside from the first two weeks), most of that seemed to me like good solid advice, rather than funky fad dieting.  And, a lot of the BBC show squared well with that.  But it had more information than the South Beach stuff, and I think clears up a lot of the bullcrap surrounding the discussion of healthy eating these days.

So I’m taking away a few things from this.  First, I (and probably lots of people) need to eat more protein.  Also, westerners typically relegate soup to a side dish, which is a shame.  And third, creating an environment encouraging good decisions is the best way to make them.

There are a number of reasons why you might not want solve the protein problem by just eating more meat, but doing so is slightly less intuitive.  But I have been recently reconnecting with my Mennonite homeboys, and their More With Less cookbook is stupefyingly prescient.  Not only is it about 35 years ahead of its time in terms of buzzwords like “sustainability” or even “Meatless Mondays” (see page 30, for example), but it also has some neato tips for increasing the protein in your cooking without adding meat.  You can make a dish with a milk-based sauce, or put hard boiled eggs on your salad.  Yogurt, for goodness sake.  Think Greek food, Tzatziki sauce.  Nuts, if you’re into that sort of thing.  It turns out that soybeans  are an even better source of protein than an equivalent number of calories of sirloin steak.  And if you think eating fast food is cheaper than real food, just start getting your protein from split peas ($0.49 / 100 grams), lentils ($0.56 / 100 grams), other beans, peanut butter ($1.47 / 100 grams), or chicken legs ($1.52 / 100 grams – cheaper than eggs, even).  Oh, and an adult male only needs something like two-thirds that amount daily.  Of course, there’s more to a diet the protein, surely, but a lot of those other needs are addressed by the cookbook as well.  Consider this an endorsement.  It’s probably the most comprehensive discussion on how to live and be healthy on either a severely reduced budget or a substantial ecological conscience I’ve seen anywhere.

By Matt Good on January 23, 2012 at 10:31 pm | Posted in Food Talk | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

My Recipe for “Chicken” as a Four-Year-Old

When I was four years old, I used to watch Jeff Smith on PBS cook.  I guess I fancied myself something of a chef, so one day, while sitting on the toilet, I came up with the following recipe for chicken, and yelled it from the bathroom to my mom, who was dictating frantically:

Four-year-olds say the darnedest things

It reads, “Take 6/4 of milk, 2 pistachio nuts.  Take some flour and tuck the flour in there.  Take 3 butter pecan nuts and add some licorice to it.  Take 2 loads of baking soda and add that.  Take 6/4 of salt and 7/4 of sugar.  Backe 26 minutes.  It turns into a chicken and you can eat it.”

Needless to say, I’ve never tried it, and can not confirm or deny the magical transformation to a chicken.

By Matt Good on November 26, 2011 at 5:04 pm | Posted in Food Talk | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Hollandaise, Fools

I still kind of suck at poaching eggs.  I’ve seen lots of people say that your water should be around 160-180 F when poaching eggs, but I’m starting to think this is too low.  I did them at 170F today, for 3:30 minutes or so, and the yolks were okay, but the whites were less firm than desirable.  So I watched Jacques Pépin do it, and judging by the activity of the water, he starts much higher than that, a bit under boiling, and then lowers the heat after adding the eggs.  So maybe next time I’ll try that.

Or I can just get one of those little egg-cup things Katie G. had that sit under the water and let you pour the eggs right into them.  They worked quite well, actually.

Made with a 1/3 batch of Julia Child’s hollandaise recipe from Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom.  My arm kinda hurts now :)

By Matt Good on January 29, 2011 at 4:05 pm | Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Black Eyed Peas

As I said in my post about pork stock, the basic recipe I was using to make my black eyed peas wasn’t much of a recipe at all – it was more like a sentence:


“Oil, Cajun trinity, andouille sausage, garlic, salt pepper, bay leaf, ham hocks, a bag o’ peas, some stock, cook for an hour, hour and a half.”

But, you know, you don’t need any more than that.  Like a lot of my favorite recipes, it’s dead simple, and yet you’ll never be able to figure out exactly what magic is at work to transform such ordinary ingredients into the delicious amalgamation it becomes.

Here you have your aromatics:

And you add that yummy pork stock you made (or whatever stock you have – homemade is seriously best.  Not only is it the most flavorful and has more gelatin for thickening potential, it’s completely without unnecessary additives).

Try it sometime.  It’s cheap, it’s easy, its redonkerously flavorful, and it will feed you for about a week.

By Matt Good on January 23, 2011 at 12:39 am | Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Southbeachy Foods – Chicken Cacciatore (Kinda)

Well, after a lovely Christmas and New Years, Kristin wanted to start doing a reboot of the South Beach thing.  So, today we (well, mostly just her) started.  I made some Chicken Cacciatore with some small modifications, and sauted asparagus, as well as a romaine salad with a homemade vinaigrette, thanks to a recipe from one Ms. Child.

Note: Beer is not South Beach friendly.  This is my plate :)

Like our Christmas Tree?

By Matt Good on January 3, 2011 at 9:24 pm | Posted in Food Talk, South Beach | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Super Hydrated Doughs, Focaccia, and yum

So I have recently been experimenting with some higher hydrated doughs.  Normally the breads I make are somewhere around 60%-70% hydration. This mean there is 60% of water to flour.  For example in a 500 gram loaf I would have 310 grams of flour and 185 grams of water.  The texture of a 60% hydrated dough is nice, it is slightly sticky but easily comes off your hands and the bowl.  It is easy to form into a dough and knead.  It is slightly softer than the play-dough you played with as a kid.  The crumb on this type of dough tends to be tight and uniform.  Perfect with a pad of butter and good for sandwiches.  The bread you see above is closer to 90% hydration. It was a sticky wet mess and ended up being this beautiful focaccia.

I used this recipe http://veganyumyum.com/2008/05/poolish-focaccia/  I added garlic from a garlic press, sliced tomatoes and sea salt to the top.  It ended up being great and you would do yourself a favor by trying your hand at it. (I didn’t use the full cup of olive oil for the top, only about 1/3 of  cup)

In highly hydrated dough you get more of that artisan look, with large bubbles and un-uniform crumbs.  They are pretty bread and the textures tend to be soft and chewy.  The downside is they are pain to handle.  They don’t really form into dough and instead you have to try some other techniques to make them into bread.  One technique that is used in this recipe is folding.  Folding and waiting allows the gluten to develop on its own as the flour continues to absorb the water and it hydrates.  The gentle folding allows it to continue to stretch like you do when you knead.  Some people don’t like this method because you end up using a lot of bench flour and flour that doesn’t get entirely incorporated is noticed.  Additionally, as you add more flour you reduce the hydration and there is no exact way of knowing what hydration you end up at with this method.  I just found this method which I think is called a french fold and looks fantastic.

I am going to try this next.  See if it works.  Since my last post I also have made beautiful sourdough loafs.  The secret to a great crust on sourdough, a spray bottle at the beginning and middle of the baking process.  The more I make bread the more I realize this simple fact: flour+water+time+yeast=yum.

By Ian Kitterman on March 22, 2010 at 1:31 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Broth. Bean Broth.

Bean broth?

I was reading this recipe for Drunken Beans from my favorite food porn radio show, The Splendid Table, and I got myself all confuserlated.  It calls for four cups of cooked beans, in their broth.  I guessed correctly that the broth means “liquid you cooked the things in, dummy,” but was confused by the absence of any sort of quantity.  I guess whatever fills in the cracks of 4 cups of beans.  But I wasn’t sure, so I did some Googling.

And came across this fascinating article about bean broths or bean stocks on a site called Culinate.  The article takes the idea of a bean stock to a more elevated level, suggesting that perhaps you add in some carrots, onions, bay leaves, and the like to the beans while they cook, as if you were making a more conventional vegetarian stock.

This is a real win, guys.  A twofer.  While you’re making beans for a recipe, you can add a few more ingredients (with no extra work), and end up with more flavorful beans, and a delicious, useful, and unknown byproduct!  Fantastic.  Again, measure out the stuff into bags and freeze for later.

I’m going to have to start reading Culinate, I think…

In the words of Pepin, Happy Cooking.

By Matt Good on March 15, 2010 at 6:35 pm | Posted in Food Talk, Try This Now | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Chicken Noodle Soup – Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Scary-Frugal Mennonite Heritage

Chicken Noodle Soup can be good eats, too.  The secret is to embrace your Mennonite heritage.  Even if you don’t have one.

What I mean is that the secret is in the stock – you have to make your own to really kick chick-soup up to eleven.  Which, if you really think about it, is GREAT – because making your own stock is EASY and BASICALLY FREE.

Hokay, here’s what you’re gonna do.  You’re gonna get a gallon freezer bag, and you’re gonna put scraps in it from all the “mostly plants” and “real food” you’ve been eating.  So you’re having a nice celery and PB snack? Stick the ends you trim off in the freezer bag. Use carrots for something? The tops that you would usually throw away go in the bag. I had some junk from a leek I used,  scraps from some fennel I didn’t need, stalks from some parsley I choped up, junk like that.  It’s a great way to get rid of slightly-wilted, not-so-awesome-anymore veggies/herbs.  And meat bits.  Don’t forget the MEAT BITS.  Make something with a bone-in chicken breast, and then throw the bones and bits you don’t eat into the bag.  Throw fat you trimmed off a roast IN THE BAG.  If you’ve bought a whole chicken recently, it probably came with a neck and some organs (this is in fact a biological entity we’re talking about here. Don’t get grossed out on me). It goes in the freezer. In the bag.  What’s that?  You bought some shrimp and now you’ve got some shimpy shells and tails and stuff? You know what to do.

So basically, over a period of weeks or months, you just try to remember not to throw things out without thinking about stock first.  After a little while, probably right around the time you start to need more stock, you should have a nice little collection of stuff in your bag.  You put in in the biggest pot you have and add an onion (quartered).  Add 5-10 whole peppercorns, and fill it up to the top with water.  Don’t add salt.  You can always add salt later, but it’s purdy hard to get rid of it once you’ve put it in.  Bring it to a boil and then simmer for HOURS. Go play some Wii Fit or something.  Check it every now and then, maybe give it a little stir.  Add more water if you want.  The idea here is that more time is better, up to a point.  So whenever you decide you’re done, pour the stock into a bowl, through a strainer, and discard the veggie-meat junk.  The liquid is what you want.  After it cools a bid, measure it out and put 1 cup each in ziploc baggies, then freeze.  If you want, you can also fill an ice cube tray with the stuff, for smaller quantities.

So now you have this STUFF – which is basically yummy-infused water.  What do you do with it? Well, you make soup!  Or you use it to make cous cous!  Or…  if you’re doing a big skillet full of yummy kind of thing it usually calls for liquid, so use stock!  You can usually substitute stock pretty well for anything that calls for white wine without too many troubles.  Which is handy if you don’t want to use or don’t have any wine in the house.

Anyway, stock has flavor. Store-bought stock doesn’t have quite as much, but fools you into thinking it has flavor by adding a lot of salt.  Don’t be fooled. Make you own stock.  It’s worth it, I swear.

By Matt Good on February 22, 2010 at 11:19 pm | Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

Kitchen-Destroying Cod

I’m sorry the photography sucks.  I never have enough light.  Contrary to what it looks like, this is NOT a breaded piece of offal.  It’s fish.  Tasty, tasty fish.

I call this “Kitchen Destroyer Cod.”  It’s another Cooks Illustrated recipe, which reliably kicks out recipes that are incredibly tasty, and occasionally more involved.  The breading on this sucker was huge and crispy and awesome, but it took a good deal of time to make, and dirtied about three dishes all by itself.  That’s why I call it the Kitchen Destroyer.  Here, have a look for your self. The black bean salad was a variation on an Alton Brown recipe, which kicked serious butt.

I’ve you’ve been playing along at home, you may have noticed a great deal of thyme being used in the past few recipes.  In fact, before I started the Foodblog, I had made French Onion soup, which ALSO used thyme.   So why all the thyme?  Because fresh herbs both ROCK and ARE EXPENSIVE.  Normally I try to grow my own, but I had to ditch my herb garden when we moved to North Carolina.  So when you have them, USE THEM.

The other thing of note with this mean is the fish.  Fish is great.  I love fish.  So do a lot of other people.  Lots of people have become really good at fishing, actually.  So much so, that populations are starting to crash.  Food doesn’t taste good if you know you’re doing damage by eating it.  So what you do is check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium website and print out their pocket guide and stick it in your wallet.  And use it.  Kroger and the like don’t always do a good job of telling you where your food comes from (and their seafood isn’t the freshest either), so your best bet is something more like a Trader Joes, or a local Fishmonger.  As my buddy Ian pointed out below, Trader Joes still sells fish like Orange Roughy that just can’t be fished sustainably – so you can’t buy without thinking here.  But it has been my experience that it is easier to find seafood that meats the Monterey Bay Aquarium guidelines here than at mass-market grocery stores.  It’s a complex issue, which is why you NEED to print out the pocket guide and tuck it in your wallet.  That should be a good guide.  If your store won’t tell you where it came from, go somewhere else.

Maybe you don’t really care too much about fish populations, but I think you should.  We’re running low on a lot of fish.  Consider orange roughy; this is one ugly bugger of a fish that we couldn’t catch until recently, because it lives so far down below.  Why are we bothering with this fish if its so hard to catch?  Because we’re starting to wipe out the easier fish species.  Oops.  The problem with orange roughy is that they can live to about 150 years old.  The fish you’re eating for dinner is older than you.  Couple that with their sporadic breeding habits, and you’ll find that there is practically NO sustainable way to eat this fish.  It will just be gone.

At any rate, there’s a good deal to this issue, and I suggest you listen to this really good Teri Gross interview if you’re interested.  Fish is so good, it would be a shame to crash it to oblivion.

By Matt Good on February 6, 2010 at 12:48 am | Posted in Food Talk, Foodporn | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

In Defense of Food Summup

In Defense of Food Cover

I was reading this book by Michael Pollan called “In Defense of Food” that a whole bunch of barefoot NPR-loving hippies were going on and on about a while back.  Sorta kinda being one of them, I had to pick it up and give it a go.  I was talking to my bud Ian about it the other day, and trying unsuccessfully to explain Pollan’s position articulately, so I promised to write up a longer (and presumably more well thought out) blog entry about it.

And boy, did I do a good job when it comes to the “longer” part. Read More »

By Matt Good on February 4, 2010 at 12:27 am | Posted in Food Talk | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)