The Triumph of Whole Wheat Pasta

Last I wrote, Andy had the day off and had amenably agreed to cook me dinner. He tried to keep the menu a surprise, but had to give away a key ingredient when he asked me to pick up a few things on the way home ("Fairway only had farm-raised salmon. Could you go to Whole Foods to get some wild-caught?").

No surprise there.

Still, I was floored to arrive at his apartment, greeted by a box of whole-wheat spaghetti, a bottle of capers, and a perfect pile of basil leaves. I spied a bottle of sparkling wine chilling in the fridge, and Giada de Laurentiis' smiling face looked up at me from a Food Network web page.

I know Andy has a thing for the Italian cooking star, but he claimed he found the recipe searching for salmon, not Giada. But if her clout can convince Andy to eat whole-wheat pasta and capers, two things he despises, then more power to her.

The simplicity of the preparation really let the high-quality ingredients shine. While the pasta bubbled away, Andy gave the salmon a healthy coating of salt and pepper and cooked it till it was just pink in the middle. Then he drained the pasta and added chopped garlic, olive oil, lemon juice and zest, chopped basil, and the capers.

I poured the wine while he plated the pasta on a bed of baby spinach and topped it with the seared salmon.



I was really impressed Andy picked this dish. It came together very easily and had great flavor. If you're not a whole-wheat pasta fan, you really should try it with lemon. I find lemon to be overpowering at times, and whole-wheat pasta to taste woody, but those two qualities actually complemented each other in this dish. We both agreed it wouldn't have been as good with regular pasta.

Needless to say, I was proud of Andy's dinner choice and preparation. It was absolutely delicious. He's certainly on the hook to cook dinner again soon!

Things to Come

Tonight, I caught Andy reading a cookbook.

It was one of those moments of disbelief, where you blink a few times and keep staring until your brain finally registers what it is looking at. Indeed, it was my cookbook in his lap. A good cookbook too, though a bit ambitious in technique and ingredients, which he will surely discover in due time.

I hope he doesn't discover it in the middle of cooking me dinner tomorrow night, which I asked him to do since he has three luxurious days off from work. I hope he picks something simple and satisfying, wholesome yet healthy. Something heaped with vegetables and brimming with color. Something rejuvenating after a day of work in winter-dull Manhattan.

Not one to judge a meal I don't have to cook, I would be equally pleased with a heaping plate of pasta and sauce. Less dishes for me to wash!

Aside from Andy's dinner tomorrow night, I have other another good thing on the horizon.

Yesterday I signed up for a class at The New School in Manhattan titled, "Food Policy and the Local Food Revolution." Eating local is a hot topic these days, especially as people become more conscious of the environmental and economical impact of shipping in food from afar.

Growing up in the country, I remember drinking milk from the small family-owned dairy my aunt worked at. For a period of time, my parents raised chickens and sheep. I have yet to taste fresher lamb or eggs. And we always had neighbors, friends, or our own backyard to offer tomatoes, corn, beans or squash.

But I didn't think anything of eating local then. We still bought most of our food from supermarkets, but the bottom line was budget, not whether the food was local or organic.

When I visit my parents, I'm amazed at how much organic food they buy today. They now have the economic means to do so, but many people do not, if they even have access to these foods. Class issues aside, food policy is a great contributor to this.

But organic does not always equate local. I've been nosing around the organic produce lately, starting to replace a few conventional items in my basket each week with a pricier organic equivalent. But I am confused to pick up an organic apple from WA when I live in NY, a state that produces fabulous apples. I wonder how this came to be, and I wonder why it's currently so inconvenient to buy local foods.

Of course, I can hedge a guess (it's all about the money!), but I look forward to learning more about food policy nonetheless. Almost as much as I look forward to eating Andy's dinner tomorrow night.

Trash Talking

Well, it never did snow last week, but I got over it (eventually). But today my office was closed, so I was treated to a leisurely day of shopping, eating, and enjoying New York City, even if it was 20 degrees! But I'm not complaining. It could be colder. Like, Minnesota-cold.

Anyhow, I picked up a copy of Edible Brooklyn today, a free publication that comes out quarterly, touting the seasonal culinary delights of my favorite borough. You can subscribe to Edible publications in over 40 communities nationwide, which I think is quite impressive. You should check it out and see if there is a magazine in your town, or a town you love (though I found this always makes me jealous of the people who actually do get to eat in that town).

The last page of the magazine displayed a perfectly-arranged circle of trash, including Snickers wrappers, plastic water bottles, four tubs of hummus, and what appear to be charred bones. Pork ribs, maybe?

This photo was just a sample of a week's worth of trash from Brooklyn-artist Katherine Hubbard, who spent a year photographing everything she discarded. Week 31, featured in Edible Brooklyn, was from a camping trip (hence the charred bones?).

You can view five other weeks of trashscapes online at Good magazine, or all 52 weeks if you can track down the magazine, which I plan to do.

Here is a sample, courtesy Good.



I really love the idea of turning a more critical eye to the volume of trash you produce in a year. I love it almost as much as one of my favorite books, Hungry Planet, a fascinating, culturally-rich book that chronicles everything that average families across the world eat in a week.

Each family is photographed with their food around them, and you really have to marvel at the sheer excess of food we have access to in industrialized nations, as compared to those in poorer nations. An extended family clan in Bhutan does with much less food each week than a small family of four in the Texas could imagine.

You can draw whatever socio-economic-political conclusion from these pictures that you like, but I assume that if the same project were to be recreated photographing the trash of each family instead of the food, the message would be not one of nutrition and access, but packaging waste.

Again, my opinions are all based on my own experience and observation, but I know that the majority of my trash comes from the kitchen, and I have been trying to make small efforts to curb my own addition to landfills. I try not to buy anything at the grocery store that involves multiple packaging (boxes & pouches within boxes), and I try to pack my own lunch so I'm not ordering take-out.

I cringe at the plastic take-out container, packed into a paper bag, with a plastic fork/knife/napkin combo (wrapped in plastic) thrown on top, and the paper bag then packed into another plastic bag. And the majority of New Yorkers get their lunch on the go in a similar fashion.

One day I did the math on the number of paper cups I was throwing away at work each day - one for my coffee, a second for my packet of oatmeal, and sometimes a third for my afternoon pick-me-up. 3 cups a day x 5 days a week x 49 working weeks = 735 cups. Even if I only use two, that's 490 cups, and one a day is still 245. Pretty horrifying. Needless to say, I use my travel mugs whenever possible, though my track record isn't perfect.

What can you do to reduce the trash in your life? Do some math of your own, and you may be inspired to make a small change in your life that can make a big impact.

Unofficial Snow Day

Approaching snow storms always give me a thrill – more so when they promise double digits of snow fall. I know I’m too old to entertain the fantasy of snow days, but I’m rooting for a full-on blizzard and the promise of a lazy Monday spent stewing something for hours and cuddling on the couch with my kitten.

Sadly for me, it’s more likely that New England will feel the full wrath of the winter storm heading our way tonight, and I’ll begrudgingly trudge through the snow to work tomorrow morning, cursing NYC for its knack of transforming gorgeous snow into piles of blackened, frozen filth an hour later.

So I made today, Sunday, my unofficial snow day. Today I would do nothing but cook, watch movies with my kitten, and go for a walk, if only to work up an appetite for a big dinner.

I set early out for the store to stock up on veggies for stew and some missing baking supplies to replicate a cookie I had yesterday, called the Brooklyn Whoopie: two perfectly moist pumpkin cookies sandwiching a scrumptious dollop of cream cheese frosting – heaven help me!

Perfectly moist cookies usually require lots of butter, which I’m trying not to indulge in these days, so instead I adapted a recipe for applesauce cake from Sally Schneider’s cookbook, A New Way to Cook. I don’t use this cookbook as much as I should, because it’s a great resource for recipes with maximum flavor quotient and minimum added fat.

I replaced the applesauce with pumpkin, but kept the raisins, cinnamon, and cloves. In a stark contrast to most cakes, this recipe only called for 2 Tbs. of butter, 1 egg, 1/3 cup of brown sugar, and 3 Tbs. honey to 1 3/4 cups cake flour. I actually thought it came out quite sweet, so I will reduce the honey to 2 Tbs. next time, but was very impressed with the moist crumb.

Cream cheese frosting was sadly absent, but my roommate Anne and I dreamed up all manners of tasty possibilities for adding back all those calories to the cake – frosting, butter, ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate chips…mmmm. Though to be fair, this was more quick bread than cake.

My sweet tooth usually goes dormant on snow days, though, and I find myself craving hearty, savory stews. For dinner tonight I made a Moroccan-spiced vegetable ragú of sweet potatoes, chickpeas, tomatoes and kale served over couscous. I could seriously eat kale all winter!

If you’re looking for a lighter pumpkin bread, try this recipe. Of course the cookbook author, Sally Schneider, should be credited with figuring out how to lighten it up in the first place.

(Lighter) Pumpkin Bread

2 Tbs. unsalted butter, softened
¾ c. pumpkin
½ c. golden raisins
1 ¾ c. cake flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground cloves
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
¼ tsp. kosher salt
1/3 c. buttermilk (I used soy milk + a splash of vinegar)
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
3 Tbs. honey
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a loaf pan with ½ tsp. of butter and dust with flour.

2. Put the raisins in a bowl and cover with boiling water (3/4 c.) to soak for 10 minutes. Drain and press with a paper towel to dry.

3. Sift together the dry ingredients (cake flour, baking power, soda, spices, salt) and set aside. In a separate bowl, mix the buttermilk and pumpkin.

4. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the sugar, honey and butter. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until just incorporated.

5. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients until fully incorporated, stopping to scrape down the sides if need be.

6. Pour into the loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, until you can insert a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes before transferring cake out of the pan onto a wire rack.

What To Eat

Two post ago, I mentioned I was reading What to Eat, a book by Marion Nestle. I bought this book simply because I was interested in her take on food allergies. Nestle only skimmed the surface of food allergies, but after all, in 500+ pages, Nestle is trying to tackle quite a beast - the entire supermarket.

Between discussions of American Heart Association endorsements on sugary cereal and the realities of farm raised fish, I have gotten completely distracted in my quest for food allergy information. I only have a few more chapters to go, but already Nestle's status of my new food hero is concrete.

If you are at all confused about the choices that face you when you walk into the grocery store, I strongly recommend this book. It is not a diet book, but rather a well-researched manual to deciphering what marketers want you to think about the health values of their food, and the reality of those claims.

The book covers most sections of the grocery store: produce, dairy, dairy substitutes, meat, fish eggs, frozen foods, processed foods, sugar, cereals, health endorsements on packaged foods, oils, snack food, food marketed to kids, water, beverages, tea, coffee, baby food, supplements, bred and prepared foods.

Nestle isn't shy about her opinions - she will always urge you to buy organic produce, does not recommend artificial sweeteners or margarine, and makes a strong argument for buying Fair Trade coffee. But she presents the information in a way that you will be better informed to make a decision for yourself (and also acknowledges an affinity for Oreos).

The fish chapters really opened my eyes - I had no idea that farm-raised salmon was so full of chemicals (PCBs, mercury, etc) and has less of the omega 3 fatty acids that are so hyped these days. Farm-raised salmon eat fish pellets similar to dog food, but wild salmon get their beautiful pinkish red color from the krill they eat. Without the natural diet of krill, the flesh of farmed fish is grey, so they are fed dyes to get their hue up to a color more acceptable to the consumer.

Fish farmers can literally pick out a shade for the salmon the same you would go to your local hardware store and select a paint color for your kitchen. It's not at all surprising, but I don't know if I'll ever consciously buy farm-raised salmon again.

And I will leave you with that pleasant thought, and the link to the book on Amazon if you're interested. Eat well!

A Tasty New Year

This morning I gave some vague thought to setting some goals for myself in relation to this blog for 2008. I'd like to write more, but that's a given. I'd also like to get Andy cooking again, but he's been too busy applying for grad school and playing Mario Galaxy on the Wii to be bothered by the likes of cooking. Instead I thought I would make a list of dishes or techniques that I'd like to at least attempt, let alone master, before another year passes.

The first task that came to mind was making raviolis with Andy, which goes along with the more general goal a homemade pasta. Likely I'll try this once, then decide the time, effort and mess doesn't even begin to compete with the variety of prepared raviolis for sale at Fairway. But one must try.

I was also inspired over the holiday break to revisit etouffee, a Creole dish that was my favorite from my days working at a Cajun place in high school. I was pleasantly reminded how much I love etouffee while enjoying a steaming plate of a spinach and mushroom variety at Yatz, a restaurant in Indianapolis. Kudos to my new friends Joe and Leslie for introducing us to Yatz!

I only had the mental energy to contemplate three goals today (can always add more in the future), the last of which I've already accomplished: making my own black beans. I am a big fan of beans, but black beans and garbanzo beans have a special place in my heart. I got a beautiful new dutch oven for Christmas this year, and I thought a nice, hearty batch of beans would break it in nicely.

I left a note on my bathroom mirror to soak the beans before bedtime, knowing that I'd be coming in late and likely fuzzy-headed from New Year's Eve champagne, but I did remember to soak the beans overnight. This afternoon I rinsed them out, covered them with fresh water, and set them to boil for an hour or so with a bay leaf a few strips of bacon.

When they had softened, I refried a few scoops with some crushed garlic and canola oil, mashing the beans before adding them back to the pot. Next I added salt, cumin and some cayenne, which made little discernible difference to the taste, and let it all simmer for another 10 minutes.

This all seemed to take ages before it was all done, and I made a big mess skimming the strange, thick film that formed on top of the beans if they weren't stirred every 15 minutes. My whole stove is covered in black bean juice. I made lots of dirty dishes, and all to create a more authentic "black bean experience". In the end, I almost wished I'd just opened up a can, but perhaps I need to try a recipe that yields a richer, thicker sauce with the beans. One goal completed; another goal born.

Here's to a tasty new year!