Food News. The Good, Bad and Ugly served with Sesame Oven Fried Chicken

Just when I didn’t think it was possible for Mark Bittman (refered to as Boyfriend Bittman in my house, even by my boyfriend) to get anymore fantastic than he already is he does. Bittman essentially led the charge in encouraging, if not reintroducing home cooking to a generation of cooks by dedicating his work to creating recipes that are healthy and easy to make in the home. On top of his fabulous cookbooks he also wrote The Minimalist for the New York Times for ten years. The column has finally come to an end and Mark Bittman has chosen to refocus his efforts in a op-ed weekly column centering on sustainability, nutrition, regulation and policy as well as the continued effort of getting people back into the kitchen called the Opinionator. In his first column he lays out a plan of attack, a food manifesto if you will,  the most interesting of which is a Civilian Cooking Corps. Jaime Oliver took a step in this direction when he left a cooking teaching center behind in Huntington WV, after the first season of Food Revolution came to an end. Reportedly, the kitchen is booked several months in advance.  The idea of a food corps supported by teaching kitchens and ideally farms is surely the most sensible way to help people reconnect to actual food. All of this is of particular interest to me because I have just begun a project teaching a non cooking(as in eats out every meal,) mid thirties friend to cook starting with the basics which includes teaching him how to shop at farmer’s markets and the like. Those posts will be coming soon.

In the not so good food news, total understatement, I should say in terrible food news, the useless and toothless USDA approved Monsanto GM alfalfa. This move imperils the entire organic dairy industry. Would it were that I were exaggerating. On the upside Stonyfield Farms, Whole Foods and Organic Valley have not thrown in the towel and are still battling the decision. In an article posted on Huffington Post Green, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield said this:

Let me first state the obvious — leaving aside the fact that USDA’s own organic standards do not allow the use of genetically engineered crops, Stonyfield is absolutely and utterly opposed to the deregulation of GE crops. We believe that these crops are resulting in significantly higher uses of toxic herbicides and water, creating a new generation of costly “super” weeds, pose severe and irreversible threats to biodiversity and seed stocks, do not live up to the superior yield claims of their patent holders and are unaffordable for small family farmers in the US and around the world. We believe that organic farming methods are proving through objective, scientific validation to offer far better solutions. We also believe that unrestricted deregulation of GE crops unfairly limits farmer and consumer choice.

He goes on to talk about how lobbyists have spent over half a billion dollars trying to push this through. Let us pause for one second, half a billion dollars.  When I think about all that could have been done for food, farming, cooking and hunger in this country, not to mention the world with this money I see a lot of red which may sound naïve and tree huggerish it is also exactly the point.

Though I am sure that the science involved in bioengineering meat to be grown in vats for consumption is actually exciting and cutting edge, and even may be present in an inevitable future,  the idea of actually eating ‘in vitro’ or ‘cultured’ meat makes Oprah and her staff’s decision to go vegan for a week seem like not only a fantastic idea but an absolutely necessary one.

Finally, my favorite recipe of the moment, meaning one that I have been making a lot, probably due to the inclement weather is the quick, simple, delicious and satisfying Sesame Oven Fried Chicken with Soy Dipping Sauce, ala Boyfriend Bittman. Though this recipe does call for an entire chicken I just adjust the amount of crumbs and sesame seeds for whatever chicken parts I have on hand. To make this ‘fried’ chicken even more low fat, remove the skin.

1 cup buttermilk (or sub in one lightly beaten egg, which is what I usually do)

1 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 whole chicken cut into 8 pieces (or whatever you have on hand)

1 cup panko bread crumbs

1 cup sesame seeds

A neutral nut oil to coat the pan, grapseed, sunflower, corn

Preheat the oven to 400F.  Mix the buttermilk (or egg), paprika, cayenne and salt in a large bowl. Add in chicken parts coating them and let sit soaking for 10 minutes. Mix the bread crumbs, and sesame seeds on a large plate set aside. Rub down a baking sheet with the oil.

While the chicken is soaking make the dipping sauce:

1/2 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons dark sesame oil

1 tablespoon sugar

As a side note I use just these four ingredients often as a salad dressing.

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon minced or grated fresh ginger

1/4 cup minced scallions

Another side note: If you have the Ginger Scallion Sauce in your fridge, which I often do, just add to tablespoons of that mixture to the soy, vinegar, sesame oil and sugar.

Remove the chicken parts from the soak and coat each piece in the panko and sesame seed mixture, then place on the oiled baking sheet and bake for 30-40 minutes for chicken with bone in, if you are using boneless thighs or breasts then the cooking time will be closer to 20-25 minutes

Roasted Rice Cakes with Korean Red Dragon Sauce

Truly, I don’t know how it is that I had never had rice cakes. Indicating how much I have overlooked them is my total lack of memory of having ever seen them on a menu. My curiosity was finally peaked at the excitement that one of my dining companions at Momofuku had at their appearance on our slim paper menu. What arrived looked like gnocchi coated in a red sauce with a texture akin to ketchup, but with a heat that set my nose tingling even from the distance of the tabletop. These red cloaked, rice-gnocchi-looking-pillows were tossed with sesame seeds and sprinkled with scallions. It was truly love at first bite. The rice cakes were a little crispy on the outside and creamy clouds of slightly sweet smooth slightly chewy white rice in the middle. The spicy red dragon sauce’s sting nicely offset the sweet, a sting that continued to build forcing a break between every third rice cake. My first taste of dragon sauce resulted in the wonderful thought that I would never have to buy ketchup again.

When I got the Momofuku cookbook, I was delighted to find the recipe for this lovely snack/appetizer in it. I promptly wrote my list of ingredients and headed to the closest Korean mart, which luckily for me is walking distance. I don’t speak or read Korean and when you are in a real Korean store not all labels are translated. However, most imported foods have an ingredient and nutrition label in English and sometimes if you get lucky a brief translation of the actual label itself. My search for ssamjang was

Ssamjang

fueled by the cookbook telling me it was a chili and fermented bean sauce and not much else. When I finally did find a container that said chili and bean paste in teeny tiny letters I then looked for the ssamjang that was the right color and grabbed it. Because of course ssamjang’s come in different flavors. Yea, yea, I know, I could have looked it up online before I went to the store, but I was excited and kind of got ahead of myself. I was lucky and they had some already defrosted rice cakes. If you can only find frozen ones thaw them before making this dish. These are quite rich and spicy and honestly I think a serving of 5 or 6 cakes per person is enough for an appetizer.

Both of these recipes are straight from the Momofuku cookbook, it’s all Chang all the way.

Korean Red Dragon Sauce

Makes about 1 ½ cups

½ cup water

½ cup sugar

¾ cup ssamjang

2 tablespoons usukuchi (light soy sauce, which means in taste not in color, I was confused my first time trying to find it)

1 teaspoon sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

Bring the water and sugar to boil in a small saucepan stirring until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes then stir in the ssamjang until it dissolves, it has the consistency nearly of a tomato paste. Stir in the soy, vinegar and sesame oil, you can add more of any of these to taste.

Roasted Rice Cakes

¼ mirin (rice cooking wine)

Mirin

¼ cup Ramen Broth (I did not have his Ramen broth made and used a pork stock I had on hand, obviously to make this dish entirely vegetarian just use a veggie stock )

½ cup Korean Red Dragon Sauce

¼ cup roasted onions

2 tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral oil

6 long rice cake sticks (mine were cut into two-inch pieces and came in a 2 lb bag, I used ¾ of a pound for this recipe)

Rice Cakes

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

½ cup sliced scallions (greens and whites)

Combine the mirin and broth in a saucepan that is large enough to accommodate the sauce and the rice cakes, turn the heat up to high. Boil to reduce until slightly thickened about 2 or 3 minutes. Add the dragon sauce and turn the heat down to medium reducing the sauce until is had a glossy consistency about 5 minutes. Stir in the roasted onion. Cover and keep warm over minimum heat until the rice cakes are cooked.

Heat a 12 inch skillet over a medium high heat until hot. Add the oil to the pan and just before the smoking point add the rice cakes. The should sizzle when they hit the pan. Reduce the heat to medium and sear the cakes for about 2 minutes per side you do want them a light brown but if you overdo it they will dry out. I found that once the skin started to bubble on the outside before they turned brown they were done. If you are using sticks cut them into 1 inch pieces.

Bring the sauce back to a boil and toss the cakes in the sauce until coated, just a few seconds. Sprinkle them with sesame seeds and toss again. Serve with a few large pinches of scallions and serve them as quickly as you can.

Roasted Rice Cakes with Korean Red Dragon Sauce

There were two pieces of good food news this week.

The USDA finally ruled that slaughter houses must euthanize downer cows, (finally) which are those cows that mysteriously fall over and die of unknown diseases (madcow in my opinion) and have still ended up on our plates.  This is a step in the right direction, however the enforcement of this will be difficult at best.

The good news is that Chung Po Liu who illegally imported honey to the United States that was contaminated with antibiotics will serve some jail time and has to pay 400,000 dollars in restitution, the bad news is he is 70 years old.

Spinach, Mung Beans and Stuffed Artichokes Caught in the Web!

Fall is cooking season and I am more than content to stand in my kitchen and try recipe after recipe challenging myself to try new foods and new techniques. Admittedly, I’ve been going a little crazy and I’ve tried so many recipes this week, that I have to break them down into a couple of posts. This I will call vegetable side dish heaven.

I love vegetables I do, but spinach is one of those vegetables that I eat more because its good for me rather than out of sheer love, thus I am constantly on the prowl for a spinach recipe that will elevate it from the, “Fine, I’ll eat it.” To the, “I hope they have spinach today at the market so I can make_____.” Interestingly, when I was reading this weeks blog entries for Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog, two of my favorite blogs, You Feed a Baby Chili?!? And Korean American Mommy both had a recipe up for Korean Blanched Spinach or Sigumchi Namul. This side dish is delicious, just tasting the sauce which is soy, kosher salt, sugar, white vinegar or rice vinegar, a thinly sliced scallion and red pepper flakes, forewarned me that I had found my, “I hope they have spinach today!” dish. Both recipes did call for toasted sesame seeds, but sesame seeds bug me since they insist on lodging themselves in between my teeth so I tossed in a few drops of sesame oil instead.

Korean American Mommy also had a recipe up for Korean Mung Beans Sprouts which caught my eye because I had mung beans leftover in my fridge from all the Pho eating I’ve been doing, I recently cooked a cow shank into a whole lot of Pho stock. It was novel for me to actually cook the mung beans, I have only used them raw where I am throwing them into a soup or a hot dish where the ambient heat essentially quick cooks them, and I have never eaten them as a side dish on their own. This side dish was so delicate, crisp and clean in flavor and I was delighted by the texture that I ate quite a lot on their own before I did end up adding them to the spinach thinking that the crisp texture of the mung bean would be a nice contrast to the spinach. Both of these side dishes had some staying power and where just as flavorful and crispy 24 hours later when the remnants were devoured as a midnight snack.

Last week I asked a bunch of my friends for a list of things that they would really like someone to cook for them, for whatever reason. I got quite an interesting list and one of the things on the list was stuffed artichokes. I love artichokes but had never had them stuffed. Roasted, boiled, steamed, dipped in butter, aioli and cheese sauce yes, stuffed no. I used a recipe from Saveur.

The stuffing was very flavorful and very light, but it did end up being a little soggy. I may have stuffed the stuffing to far down into the artichoke. In the end I liked the idea more than the actual product. I think that I may be an artichoke purist and truly prefer them simply steamed and served with really good melted butter. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a stuffed artichoke if it landed on a plate in front of me, but I probably would not make them stuffed again, however if you are a stuffed artichoke lover this is a great recipe and the failings of the dish were mine alone.

Related Articles

• Celebrate National Spinach-Lovers’ Month With These Recipes (blogher.com)
• Meatless Monday: Here’s How You Can Do It (biggreenpurse.com)
• imabonehead: Almost Bourdain: Come Dine with Me (7): Japanese Spinach Ohitashi; Spice Temple’s Chinese Stir-Fried Pork with Green Onions; Thai Pork Pad Kra Pao with Fried Egg (almostbourdain.blogspot.com)

Superfoods- What are they…exactly?

Acai Berries

As a society we are stepping farther away from the kitchen.  Fewer people are cooking from scratch and households have become increasingly reliant not just on restaurants and fast food outlets, 1-5 American meals are consumed in the car, but on HMR’s (home meal replacements) the creation of which was specifically to compete for the dining out dollar. The scariest by-product of these trends is that the less people actually know how to cook the more control of what they put into their bodies is handed over to the makers of industrial food whose primary interest is profit and not necessarily maximizing nutritional content for the consumer. This coupled with the out of sight out of mind mentality that many Americans have regarding the actual sources of their food, i.e. farms of any kind, has necessitated the development of marketing campaigns, think acai, to push fresh wholesome foods back into our food dialogue. The success of the campaigns of course still revolves around the dollar. Acai berries seemed to be in everything for a while, juices, diet pills and granola to name a few, and the products were not cheap.  There is no denying that an acai berry in it’s natural berry state is good for you.  However, I do wonder how good that berry can still possibly be dried, ground up and put in a pill form. Acai has been and continues to be touted on many websites as the superfood of superfoods. So, what is a superfood exactly? A superfood is a food that provides multiple disease fighting nutrients without excess calories. Says WebMD.  A more refined definition:  superfoods are a special category of foods found in nature. By definition they are calorie sparse and nutrient dense meaning they pack a lot of punch for their weight as far as goodness goes.  Web MD also provided this partial list of what some actual superfoods are: low-fat or fat-free yogurt, eggs, nuts, kiwi, Quinoa, beans, salmon, broccoli, sweet potatoes, berries.

Oprah’s website provided this list: avocados, acai, beets, sweet potatoes, cabbage, blueberries, spinach, leeks, whole grains, turmeric, spelt, oregano, cinnamon, black pepper, miso, yogurt, sardines, salmon, sesame seeds, walnuts, green tea, dark chocolate, flaxseed, figs, seaweed. Other lists included; rocket, dandelion greens, kale, watercress, parsley, endive, chicory, broccoli sprouts, mustard sprouts, spirulina, barley grass, wheat grass, bee pollen. Gogi berries, coconuts, coconut oil, pomegranates, spinach, chard, asparagus, green beans, and bok choy made several lists as well.

Not unexpectedly a ‘superfood’ is a whole food that is good for you. We may not have heard of every single food on the list, or eaten all of them, but certainly most of them we recognize and identify as healthy. The phrase, “Eat your vegetables,” comes to mind. The key to rediscovering food is to connect to it on a basic level, which is in this case pleasure leading to satisfaction. Meaning always eat things that are good for you, but eat whole foods that you like. Super or not, I am not going sit down and eat a plate of swiss chard because I don’t like it,  but I can eat asparagus, green beans and bok choy until the cows come home. Because I like the way these things taste, I not only get excited when I see them in the market, but I look forward to cooking them and am glad to know that they not only delicious and good for me, they are super.

Related Articles

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